Twilio is an API services company who are massively disrupting the telecoms industry. Through the online tools they provide, you can add voice and text messaging into your apps; or even build entire services around them. It’s these tools and incredibly flexible APIs that allowed us to build the first iteration of Airwaves Voices in such a short space of time.

Airwaves Voices is a fun little side project that will allow Radio DJs and Podcasters to have an easily accessible and cheap voicemail box for their shows. Since the early days of podcasting DJs, such as Adam Curry, have had voicemail numbers that users can call up leave messages to be played in future shows and episodes. A great idea that was, unfortunately, poorly implemented and expensive to run. Our solution is to provide every DJ and presenter with their own voicemail numbers and an easy to use online interface that allows them to download and play their messages straight from the web.

Forever wanting to challenge ourselves and build the best apps that we can, Joel and I weren’t content with simply building an online voicemail box; we decided to add a few unique and cool features. Dropbox support means that every time a new message is left on your voicemail hotline, an MP3 of the recording will automatically be sent to a folder on your Dropbox account, so you don’t have to worry about downloading files manually. We’ve also added transcription support so that any messages that are left will also be turned into readable text, to make it easier to browse and search through comments.

Although we’ve only been working on the app for just over a week we’re already getting some really positive feedback about what we’ve built. A project that initially started off as a way to learn the ins and outs of what’s possible with Twilio’s services has started to grow legs of its own and we’re inundated with requests from podcasters and radio DJs who want to give it a spin.

Today and over the next few weeks we’ll be working closely with selected testers to build out all of the functionality and make sure that our platform is rock solid. If you have any suggestions, or immediate feedback, please get in touch so we can have a further chat!

Chris Leydon.

At the start of July I left the company that I founded with James Cunningham, Pitchie (now called StackBlaze). Admittedly I didn’t leave under the best of circumstances in the world. All parties involved are no doubt still a little sore about what happened, but we’re moving on with our lives. Since leaving Pitchie I’ve been predominantly focusing on my video production work with Keyone Productions and my new favourite co-producer, Olly Newport. Together, over the past few months, we’ve gone on to produce videos for a number of startups and tech events as well as a few creative pieces. Although video is the medium which first drew me into the creative digital media space, it’s not something that completely satisfies me. Any of my close friends will notice that I’ve always got my eye on more ‘meaningful’ projects, ones which are for the long haul and not over in a matter of weeks.

Over the summer I started to take an active interest in online journalism. An opportunity was handed to me by those in charge of the online lifestyle magazine, It’s A BiG! Thing, they needed a part time tech writer for their site and wanted that to be me. After writing a few articles, which were met with quite an overwhelming positive response, they asked me if I would be interested in finding more people to write for the site and take up the position as ‘Tech Editor’; I agreed. I’ve been Tech Editor at BiG! for just under a month and I’m throughly enjoying it. Admittedly it is a part time position and I have become rather lazy, as of late, in posting content; but I attribute that to moving out of Brighton and living in a major state of flux.

Most people would be content with producing freelance video work and editing a Tech micro-site. Then again I’m really not most people. I’m not content with what I’m doing. When I was working on TinyGrab I felt as though I was making a difference to someone, somewhere, every single day for over two and a half years. Not a day would pass when I wouldn’t receive a compliment, or a thank you, from someone who loved what my team was producing. I was active proof at the start of the app gold-rush / explosion that the student in a bedroom with little development knowledge, but a great idea and undeterred will, could build and achieve great things. I inspired people. As much as my ego may be leaving a seeping stain on the floor, it’s true and I’ve had people thank me for inspiring them. I want to do that again, whether that’s through my own startup, or someone else’s, I’m not fussed. That’s what I tried to achieve again with Pitchie, but the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.

Right now is an interesting time for me. I’m at a crucial point where I could be on the cusp of starting my next big journey, or missing a step and having to climb from the very bottom again. I’m in the middle of the interview process for an incredibly exciting job where I’ll be able to achieve all of the great things that I’ve set out in this post. I’ll be able to build great things, inspire brilliant people to do fantastic things and my hunger for the next big thing shall be satisfied. I think that I’m the right person for the job, of course, let’s just hope that they do to.

On to a new and exciting dawn. I hope that in yet another 6 months time I shan’t be writing yet another ‘pivoting’ post. I’m getting as sick of the term as you are. It’s time for a good dose of stability.

Chris Leydon.

BlackBerry Messenger is a platform that allows users and owners of BlackBerry handsets to send private and public messages to each other. Users are identified by a screename and a PIN. BBM is believed to be the preferred method for the London Riot organisers because it’s essentially a private social network where almost all messages are encrypted when they leave the sender’s phone – meaning that many messages are untraceable by the authorities. RIM, the creators of the BlackBerry, has previously insisted that it cannot decrypt users’ messages when sent on the devices. According to a recent OFCOM study BlackBerry devices account for 37% of the teenage smartphone market.

Yesterday afternoon rumours started to circulate throughout Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, that RIM were going to blackout and close down its BBM service over London for the evening, in an attempt to roadblock the organising of further riots. This rumoured blackout was denied by RIM and never happened, but it raises an interesting point. With the increasing reliance on private social networks and platforms to organise protests, events, and other acts of freedom of speech; what happens when a company is ordered to close down a network for ‘national security’ matters?

In June Apple announced its own take on a private social network for iPhone users, iMessage. Many other handset manufacturers have started to integrate Facebook’s Chat platform into their devices. With this move away from open standards, such as SMS, to privately closed networks we’re gaining many new features but are we sacrificing the open communication platform that we all call for in times of need or free protest?

Unfortunately with the riots in London, and across the UK, freedom of speech will suffer. Instead of addressing the issues with the materialistic capitalist system, which encourages an obsession with wealth, possessions and leads to looting when angry; it will be freedom of speech and civil rights that will be affected. Looting is predominantly a western-world problem. When the “free world” gets angry it takes what it feels it’s entitled to, possessions. When oppressed nations and people get angry and speak out they take what they feel entitled to, civil liberties. A stark contrast.

Since starting this article this morning, reports have started to appear that mobile internet access is being restricted by authorities in the West Midlands and Birmingham, in an attempt to prevent users from communicating through the BBM service.

What do you think the implications are when we rely on closed privately controlled networks to control with each other? Should there be some sort of unrestricted back-channel that can always be relied on for private and open communication?

Chris Leydon.

This post originally appeared as a feature written for “It’s A BiG! Thing” on August 9th 2011.

Young Rewired State calls itself a hack week, on the front it’s all about young developers honing their skills, learning new ones and building cool stuff; but it’s so much more than that. For the past two years I’ve been an observer of Young Rewired State, always attending their presentation afternoons to see what’s been created. For the past two years I’ve been blown away by what I’ve seen and experienced. The applications that come out of this event are outstanding and often have commercial viability. From natural language parsers (Wolfram Alpha for your local government statistics) to location aware public transport journey planners; Young Rewired State has churned out some truly amazing applications, some of which have gone on to be adopted by the government and commercial organisations since.

Building things, honing your skills and learning new ones are all well and good but a vital part of what Young Rewired State offers its young developers is often overlooked. Young Rewired State offers a community, a place for these young developers to get together, meet new people, share experiences and build long lasting friendships and potential business partnerships. Young Rewired State isn’t JUST about building cool stuff, it’s about helping these young people to build better relationships with their peers and those who share common interests. Participants at Young Rewired State aren’t just hacking cool apps together, their hacking friendships together and, as a supporter of this programme over the past few years, that’s the most important and unique part of Young Rewired State that stands out for me.

I encourage all young developers, designers or even those with cool ideas, to get involved in Young Rewired State 2011. There are centres based all over the UK, you can even work at home if you can’t find your own centre and YRS will make sure that you can get to the presentation ceremony on the Friday (last year they even flew someone down from Scotland). More information can be found at Young Rewired State’s official website for Under 18 year olds (http://youngrewiredstate.org/yrs2011/18-or-under/). Now isn’t too late to get involved, but leave it a few more days and you might miss out.

Chris Leydon.

This post originally appeared as a feature written for “It’s A BiG! Thing” on July 28th 2011.

Apple officially announced the Mac App Store in October 2010, it was then later launched in January 2011. According to Apple the Mac App Store is now the biggest software selling platform in the US. The benefits to having a store for software or ‘Apps’ built right into an OS are very clear. Developers have an easy and direct gateway to would be customers, consumers find it much easier to discover new apps and have them all ready to download in one convenient place. What do Apple get from building the OS X App Store though?

Apple like their own universe, they like to be in control. If we look through Apple’s product line and past we can see this. Apple’s operating system, OS X, is only commercially available on Apple manufactured computers. Apple’s commercial software, such as Final Cut Pro and iLife, only work on Apple’s operating system. Most famously though, of course, only Apple approved apps are allowed to run on its iOS powered devices (iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches). Apple claims that by only allowing Apple sanctioned apps onto iOS, obtained through it’s iOS App Store, that it can control the quality and security of the platform. Other operating systems, such as Android, allow users to install their apps from many other repositories much like they can on their personal computers. Whilst the reasoning for a quality controlled and ‘secure’ platform can be understood, the motivation for the iOS App Store is (most likely) financially driven. We can safely assume that the same is true for the reasoning behind the Mac App Store, it’s a financially driven inclusion.

For every purchase that you make through the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store, Apple receives a 30% cut of the revenue. Initially this may not seem like much, but when you factor in that paid upgrades and In App Purchases are also subject to this 30% cut rule, it adds up. With the Mac App Store Apple have created a centralised platform for all applications that run on their operating system. All updates are delivered through the Mac App Store, all add-on purchases are made through the Mac App Store; complete control is in Apple’s hands. If Apple doesn’t believe that an app should be on its operating system then it doesn’t grant it permission to be featured in the Mac App Store. Independent app developers who build applications that infringe on Apple’s strict guidelines, or those who object to Apple taking a 30% cut of their revenue, are forced to offer their apps through other distribution means; usually the internet or physical distribution. However, how much longer are these alternative methods of distribution available?

Unlike OS X the only official way to install applications on the iOS platform is to obtain them through Apple’s very own iOS App Store. There are signs, however, that OS X will soon be following suit. In the Apple keynote given at WWDC 2011, Phill Schiller (Senior Vice President, Apple Inc) stated that applications in Lion will now be able to run in a sandboxed mode. Changes to Apple’s guidelines and documentation for developers state that within the future applications on the Mac won’t have direct access to the operating system’s file structure, very much like on iOS. Instead applications will have to make a request to an Apple API to access the file system indirectly. These are seemingly quite innocent changes to the way that applications and the operating system work together, however it does hint to one potentially major change that could be coming in the next major iteration of Apple’s OS X… Applications may not be obtained, installed, or otherwise acquired through any means other than Apple’s official Mac App Store.

Apple, despite sitting on the Board of Directors for the Blu-ray Disc Association (the official consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray Disc technology), started to phase out their optical drives in their computers in 2008 with the introduction of the MacBook Air. With the latest refresh of the Mac Mini line the optical drive has disappeared from there too. Apple still hasn’t included native Blu-ray support in its operating system and doesn’t ship a product with a Blu-ray capable optical drive. Apple’s keen destruction of the optical drive becomes apparent when you take into consideration that CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray are the last major threats to Apple’s ever expanding media empire; iTunes.

Without an optical drive on a MacBook Air or Mac Mini, the easiest and most efficient way to obtain media content (legally) is through iTunes; it’s pretty much integrated into all parts of the operating system, like a virus, and is also the gateway to your iPhone and Apple TV. Music, HD films and TV shows are all available to purchase from Apple. Apple are keen to destroy physical media because, of course, they take a cut of every purchase that’s made through iTunes. This is a theory that’s been thrown about the internet for a very long time, but why shouldn’t it apply to OS X?

The heavy inclusion and integration of the Mac App Store foreshadow the future of Apple’s operating systems. A world where applications on your desktop have to be sourced through an officially sanctioned Apple marketplace; where no other forms of distribution for applications shall be allowed. Apple is getting greedy and is building the wall around their garden even higher. An exclusive Monopoly on the distribution of applications for OS X will hinder progress and creativity. Gone are the days of the free computer, one which you own and can do anything you want on, we’re now in Apple’s world where we need to be told what we can and can’t run. Hello 1984, you look so familiar.

Chris Leydon.

This post originally appeared as a feature written for “It’s A BiG! Thing” on July 26th 2011.

Backtracking 7/8 months; I moved to Brighton at the end of September. After finishing University and spending the summer months working on TinyGrab and searching high and low for a job, I had the promise of a fresh start in a city that I’d fallen in love with over the previous year. The problem with working in the web industry is that you have no real grasp of geographical boundaries or constraints. You turn on a computer and all of your friends are seemingly there. Your work is accessible at a moments notice and you’re content. When I started my new job at Kineo at the start of October I was busying myself with finding a flat to live, at the time I was staying with family just outside of Brighton and commuting every single day. When I eventually found a flat to live in and people to live with, I then concentrated on getting TinyGrab 2.0 ready to launch. Things slipped, they didn’t go to plan and within 3 months of starting work in Brighton for Kineo I was let go. Initially I wasn’t phased and continued to work even harder on my TinyGrab work; trying all that I could to make it a success. For 3/4 months I got by working every day on TinyGrab and getting the ball rolling for what would later become Pitchie. There was only one problem, my lack of a social life.

My poor real life lack of social interactions only became completely apparent to me recently. It was only when my business partner moved to Brighton, to work out of the Pitchie office with me, did I start to realise how much of a social recluse I’d become. Please don’t get the wrong impression here, I was quite content with my ‘virtual’ social life; or so I thought. The problem that I faced is that I’d spent so long finding a place to live, losing my job, working on TinyGrab, setting up Pitchie, that I hadn’t actually noticed that I didn’t have an active real world social life. I started to ponder why this was and then it hit me. It’s not that I have a lack of social interactions, barely a week goes by when I’m not at some tech event with beer and pizza, it’s that I don’t have any boundaries on geographical location. I spend half of my time travelling up and down the country going to these events where I have friends, making social interactions, that I didn’t notice that here in Brighton things are actually quite lonely.

My partner moving down to Brighton gave me the kick up the arse that I needed. It made me realise how small my social circle is in the city that I lived in. I started looking around for mutual interest groups and was incredibly shocked to discover that in one of the most open cities in the country, one with such a creative flare and history, there weren’t any groups of creatives who weren’t under the age of 30. I’m not talking a quick afternoon of Googling here, I’m talking three active weeks of hard core searching, phone calls, foot work, everything that I could think of. It’s quite upsetting that in a city of two Universities there isn’t a regular meetup where creatives of a similar age can get together, socialise, form working partnerships and exchange brilliant ideas.

“Silicon Beach”; it’s a name that is incredibly cheesy and I almost hate myself for saying it, but it’s the new name given for a new social group and regular meetup in Brighton for creatives aged under 30. As I said at the start of this post, if you want something done properly just do it yourself. On Thursday June 9th at 1730 at Marwood Café, in Brighton, the first ever Silicon Beach meetup will take place. Sure initially it’ll only be a small group, made up mostly of the creative friends that I already have in Brighton, but the dream is that over time it will grow. I’ve already had a few interesting plans to help grow the group’s numbers and encourage social interaction in Brighton’s creatives under 30, these will all be revealed in due course.

Silicon Beach is open to anyone under 30 years of age who can attend the meetups in Brighton and has any kind of creative flare. I’m wary of defining anything yet, I don’t want to exclude from an already small group. Whether someone is creative digitally, online, theatrically, or with a paint brush, it doesn’t matter; I encourage you to join us and come along. Details about the group can be found on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_100668096692721) and details for the first event are there too (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=100666950025545).

If this group interests you please do come along, if you can’t make it please spread the word on to those who you think might be interested. And in the inevitable case that a complaint comes about the chosen name, I’m pretty much ready to switch to Silicon Seaside; which is more quintessentially British in tone.

Chris Leydon.

I rely on my friends and family an unbelievable amount. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the likes of Nick Cooper, Charlotte Spencer, Olly Newport, Lawrence Job and James Cunningham. These are the people who I rely the most on and trust more than any other group of people. Unfortunately over the past year or so I’ve let them down.

From a young age I’ve always been fascinated with drama and fantasy. I was encouraged when growing up to embrace my creative side in dramatic ways, driven towards the theatre arts I found an escape. I could lose myself and my problems in drama and have it not affect my personal life. Unfortunately when I went to University and started working on other projects I stopped attending theatre workshops and consequently lost my dramatic outlet; or so I thought. It’s taken me a very long time to realise this but it’s become apparent that when I stopped having a defined time when I could pretend to be someone I’m not, get lost in the moment and create really dramatic stories, it started to enter into my every day real life. Instead of having a few hours a week where I could escape into a new world and pretend to be someone else, I’d started to blur the lines and allow the drama to become reality.

Lying, cheating, betraying, manipulating, are all things that I’ve done over the past year and I’m really not proud of it. I’ve lost touch and alienated countless friends (and family) through this behaviour and last week I reached breaking point. Thanks to the seemingly never-ending and stubborn support from Nick, Charlotte, Olly, Lawrence and James, I finally managed to realise that I have a problem. I have a problem and I need help.

It’s time to lose the drama, it’s time to stop lying, it’s time to start earning back the trust of my friends and family.

To all of those who have been affected by my awful behaviour over the past few years, I am sorry. To all of you who I’ve hurt in ways that I can only imagine how it feels, I am sorry.

Thank you Nick. Thank you Charlotte. Thank you Olly. Thank you Lawrence and most of all thank you James. I’m going to get better, let’s pivot and start a new chapter.

Chris Leydon.

I wasn’t happy at Kineo. I knew it, they knew it, it was pretty much obvious to everyone who spoke to me. Even my former boss, Steve Rayson, said that he picked up on a vibe where I was bored. Please don’t get the wrong impression, Kineo was a great company to work for. It just turns out that I’m not a worker, I’m a player. As pretentious as that sounds it means that I don’t like to think about what I do as work. I don’t work for anyone, or on anything, I play.

The trouble with playing is that it doesn’t often tend to pay the bills. There’s a fine line between playing for profit and procrastinating. It’s an incredibly tricky job to get it right. In many cases of the practice, playing for a living can be much harder than working. However the rewards, feelings and self satisfaction are much greater.

A year ago I was pretty much in a similar to position to where I am now. I’d just dropped out of / finished University and I was just coasting; starting the first bits and pieces of work for TinyGrab 2.0. In my spare time I was searching actively for a ‘real’ job in the ‘real’ world for ‘real’ money. I hadn’t yet been switched on to the concept of playing for a living. I find it fascinating, as do many of my friends and family, that I have some canny ability to pivot my life and situation around every 6 months or so. I’m not trying to sound like a cocky twat in the slightest, or even condone my actions; but whenever I’m in a rut I manage to pick myself up and pivot my life around, ready to work on the next chapter. I change and I adapt. Perhaps it’s luck, or perhaps I’m a restless guy who wont stop until his needs are met and fulfilled.

I’m now at a stage in my life where it seems that my constant pivoting is finally starting to pay off. Things seem to be going well. TinyGrab is running at full power, things at Real Dataware/Pitchie are starting to take form & happen and there haven’t been any major catastrophic dramas that could form the basis of a new Hollywood blockbuster.

Two weeks ago I was presenting at the Microsoft UK Imagine Cup Final 2011. I was giving a talk on TinyGrab and my role in its founding. The purpose of my talk was to prompt and inspire the already talented developers attending to go out and build great things. My method of communication may have changed, as well as the original direction of this post, my message stays the same now.

If you’re not happy in work, like, or anything else; change it. Make a pivot. Shake things up. Start playing about and doing things you love. Work out how your projects are going to make money later. Even if you only take an afternoon out a week to work on something you love, there’s a strong chance you’ll start to feel happier. As that idea evolves and grows you can start to expand that afternoon to a day, then a week and eventually a full week.

If you want to get rich quick, rob a bank. If you want to start feeling happy, creative and enjoying what you’re doing, make the change. Start playing.

Chris Leydon.

Business is risky, we all know that, TinyGrab is incredibly risky too. When we started building the app we leaned towards annual subscription charges, but quickly switched to a fixed one off payment system in order to pick up stronger sales.

TinyGrab works on a voluntary basis, everyone who works on it does it for the fun of it and sees very little financial return. Times were tight in April 2010 and we decided to launch ads on the site to help pay for the server bills. Whilst the advertising revenue and fixed payments have been great to help support the service, for the past few months they haven’t been enough to cover the bills. Consequently my partner (Nick Cooper) and I have been covering the gap in-between revenue and costs for the past 6 months or so.

Our business model relied on getting TinyGrab 2.0 out, but after flaky developers and lack of financial incentive heavy delays set in. We came to a point where we couldn’t promote the old system, because it just didn’t work anymore and we didn’t have the manpower to fix it and we couldn’t launch the new system because it wasn’t ready yet. Despite everyone’s best efforts we were fighting a losing battle. Add into this mix competitors with dodgy tactics, blackmail, sabotage and seemingly unlimited funds of capital.

We’d always gotten abuse with TinyGrab, a service which most people used in the world for free and started to see as a right, very much as breathing was. It doesn’t seem to cross our users minds that someone has to pay for all of the bandwidth, the servers and the development to keep going. However we carried on because of the love for a project.

I’d started TinyGrab whilst I was at University, using my student load to help build and fund it. When I graduated I quickly had to find a job, unfortunately it took me much longer than expected. In September I moved to Brighton and began working for an e-learning company unfortunately, due to reasons I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, I lost my job at the end of November 2010 and have been trying to get by ever since.

I had to begging searching for a job again, whilst still attempting to run TinyGrab and keep it ticking over. The Christmas period came and went without so much as a part-time job. Coffee shops were full, McDonalds turned me away (again) and no one was looking for freelancers. Every single month since November it’s proved a marathon task attempting to find £500 for my rent and bills just to keep living. I haven’t eaten properly in months, pinning my hopes and dreams on TinyGrab 2.0. Knowing that if it launched we could start up a massive marketing campaign to our 400,000+ registered users and see a significant pickup in sales.

Last week something awful happened. TinyGrab got attacked again, but this time it was so much worse. The original code base was effectively destroyed and unfortunately it was something that backups wouldn’t be able to restore. We’d been running two systems for a while, TinyGrab v1 and TinyGrab 2.0; we had to make the switch to the premature TinyGrab 2.0 just to keep the system running and just to keep the users up. It was our priority, no matter what, to keep TinyGrab going and try to have as little interrupted service as possible.

Everyone who knows me personally will know that I have been answering a barrage of support requests ever since we went down on Wednesday. I have gone the extra mile for EVERY single user, no matter what they’ve said, or done, or threatened. I had to sort out their issues. Today I snapped. I can’t take anymore. My parents have had abusive phone calls and letters through the post from users who have gone as far as to look up my personal details through Companies House and through the electoral roll. Users who haven’t even paid for the service are going ape shit because they can’t upload an insignificant screenshot of something funny their friend said in a Skype conversation. I really do understand that it can be frustrating when a service goes down, but I put my heart and soul into this service. It’s a thankless task. I haven’t seen any financial return out of this myself and neither have my business partners. Yet we still make sure that our team still get what they want out of it, whether it’s laptops, iPhones, cash, parties or even just favours; Nick and I do this all out of our own pocket because we care.

To get the kind of abuse that both Nick and I have had this week is incredibly stressful and upsetting. Luckily for Nick he’s managed to escape on holiday for a week, whilst I have to stick around and pick up the pieces. I don’t begrudge him for this at all, lord knows that he needs it, I just wish that I was there with him too.

Right now I’m penniless. My current bank statement reads that I’m £1,523 overdrawn (my limit is £1,500) and my credit card bill is at £556 (limit of £500). TinyGrab’s payment system is down, the current web developer hasn’t thought about building it into the new system. No money, no support, no food in the fridge, no way to pay off my phone bill for this month, no way to afford my rent in two weeks. In short I’m tired of it all and I can’t be bothered to run a thankless service for the amount of emotional and financial cost that it takes. I’ve done this for two years and I’ve had enough.

For all of those who will ask about the money for Pitchie that’s coming in from the TSB, it’s not my personal money. Again it goes to run a company and we probably won’t see any of it until mid May. What am I supposed to do until then?

I’m going to leave you to your thoughts as I lay down on my bed and stare into space for the next few hours. I’ve had enough, I want out. For now it’s goodbye but I shan’t do anything drastic without warning everyone first.

Chris Leydon.

I stumbled into the new media and development scene purely by accident and honestly, in some respects, I feel like a bit of a fraud. Here I am without any development or programming knowledge, not the greatest of designers in the world, plodding along. As most of you are aware, my degree is in Film Production Technology; I call myself a creative digital media artist but increasingly I’m calling myself lost. I honestly don’t know what to do, or what I should be doing.

As of this moment I have two long term projects that I’m focusing on, the ever ageing TinyGrab and the new baby on the block, Pitchie. Both are projects that I love to pieces, but neither are great money earners. I believe that most of my frustration stems from my lack of ability to keep a roof over my head; my financial reserves are rapidly depleting and soon I’m going to have run out of options. Freelancing is something that I’ve started to look into, with sites such as freelancer.com, but the ladder to actually get anywhere on them is incredibly high. The problem being that there’s always someone willing to do the job cheaper than you and with hundreds of recommendations.

This short little blog post is really just a way for me to vent my current frustrations with myself and my position. How about you? How do you keep a roof over your head, make some money and do you have any suggestions for me? I’m feeling lost and I could really do with someone to shine a light and help me find a way home.

Chris Leydon.