So you thought we had gone, didn’t you?

Alright, alright. I know what you’ve been thinking.

Founding duo…life’s blood of a rag-tag and financially-challenged startup, gets sucked into the money, politics, and intrigue of work at a publicly traded company and loses sight of the important things in life: like puppies, and walks in the park, and changing the world…

…yeah, like that…I know.

You don’t think I know, but I know.

And three months of silence on these pages doesn’t help.

Time to fix that. No cloak-and-dagger stuff for now, just the facts of a much-needed update.

To start, AppleSeed has semi-completed its move, lock-stock-and-dreadlock to the mixed-bag of sunniness and cloudiness that is the San Francisco Bay Area. The company which now employs Desi and me (and thusly funds this lovely effort), is ok. Way too big and too sluggish for us to be truly satisfied, but the money is good, and with the arrangements we’ve made, AppleSeed continues.

And so does the work. Along with continuing development on our platform, we’ve been taking some time to look for new digs (currently, the first AppleSeed node hums beneath the staircase in the corporate apartment we live in). Nothing found yet., but ideally, we’d land somewhere in below Market Street or thereabouts, in a loft space with a buncha space. We’ve got a real nice real estate guy helping us navigate the choices, so I’m thinking this will be the month.

Beyond that, we did a not-so-quick, 2-stop convention tour: 3GSM in Barcelona and Etel in San Francisco over the course of February. Nothing fancy, but you can see some of our trails at places like Hub Culture. Mad props to all the folks we’ve had the chance to meet along the way. Thanks for chatting us up, feeding us when appropriate, and helping us stay excited about what we’re doing.

And for those of you who “got” it, stay in touch - the digits are the same regardless of which coast we’re on.

Now for some bizzi-bizzi-business. We’re making some decisions ’round these parts on handsets, platforms and launch dates, and I’d like to share some of them with you guys to get your feedback. Initially, we’d hoped to launch our platform with a pair of devices (probably separated in time by a few months). The first, owning to our history with SavaJe Technologies was to be a Java-based handset (and I don’t mean some truncated J2ME brick either, I mean real Java).

Now that our pals at SavaJe are in flux, we’re shifting some of our energies to what was to be our second platform, Linux. To that end, we’ve already become fans of both Trolltech and OpenMoko, and will be building our goodies on top of their goodies. Question is, which is the platform that excites you guys most?

And don’t worry, once SavaJe settles, wherever that is, we’ll renew our work there and press forward with it. We really like those guys and their code.

Timelines next: we want to try and do a softlaunch of our services for up to 300 subs within the next 6-8 months, the Fates willing. The date is aggressive and as yet unspecified, but we want to get the word out to find out if 300 is the right number, or if we should save a few ducats and buy fewer phones, or blow-out the bank and buy more.

More info will follow as the time comes nearer, but drop us a line at the email addy above and let us know what you think.

For those souls who reached out to get another helping of our journey with DA MAN, a post along those lines should follow in a few days