At least to start with.  As with so many companies at the time, the ending was not a happy one.

Whilst I was there we used to rave on to each other and to our potential clients about all sorts of emerging technologies and software wizardry.  We talked a lot about Web Services, thin clients and WAP enabled this and WAP enabled that.  Since that time, of course, some of those things have come to fruition albeit years later (in ways we could foresee at the time) and some have not.  Indeed, since that time, the promised thin clients have become very fat with people walking around with massive computing power in their bags and more recently – possibly most significantly – in their phones. 

However, the Cloud now threatens to put at least some of those devices on a serious diet and companies like OnLive could even spell the end for game overweight consoles.

As we move into 2011 we are riding on a wave of some similar promises for the future and I’m excited to see which ones might emerge as real value adding players and which, as with the company I worked for in the early nineties, might fall into relative obscurity.

I love Foursquare.  Well, I have periods when I love it and then times when I forget about it. 

With Foursquare I keep asking, ‘what’s next?’ Sure, there have some been some interface upgrades, a shift to a more commercial approach for adoption by businesses and some functionality updates.  And I have blogged before about some plans that Mr Crowley has about which I’m sure we shall here more at South by Southwest in March.   But I wonder if 2011 will be a year where Foursquare keeps grabbing headlines or struggles to keep up.  I do hope it continues to grab headlines.

Augmented reality is something that’s been around for a while now and I was getting very excited about it 18 months ago.  I’ve had Layar on my iPhone for a long time now.  But I think I’ve used it twice since the first few hours of playing after the initial installation.  I blogged about mTrip the other day, a travel application that includes some AR functionality and I wonder, after an initial ‘wow’ from people who may not have seen AR before, how many people will use it. 

Robert Scoble posted on Quora the other day – What will be the most important developments in augmented reality in 2011? – with one contributor adding, ‘Most have realized that the simple experiences initially popularized in early 2010 by Layar, Junaio & Wikitude etc are gee-whiz, but aren’t sticky.’

Both examples are largely technology driven although Foursquare has made news with some successful integration with big brands such as Gap generating high numbers of visitors to their stores.

I’m still fascinated by AR and the potential it and all other exciting technologies offer.  I’m quite a geek too, but even this easily tickled geek needs to see something over and above that initial wow and coolness to adopt a technology.   

And not turning uber-geek technology fodder from the ‘gee-whiz’ to the application usefulness and stickiness just means more empty offices.