Cynthia and Erin planned a fantastic holiday party for us, and it all came together last night at The Garage on Capitol Hill. Hope you like our slide show, and that you’ll check out all the pictures on Flickr.

Highlights of the night:

• JBJ and Kyle won the bowling tournament
• David dominated billiards
• Jason and Maria were the stars at karaoke (we’ve got it on video!), not that they had much in the way of competition

This holiday season, Pelago is giving back to our local community.

YWCA of Seattle

We have adopted two families in need through the YWCA of Seattle, and are collecting items on their holiday wish list.

Seattle Union Gospel Mission

We are also collecting food items for the Gifts in Kind program, organized by the Seattle Mission.

Habitat for Humanity

Our lovely holiday tree with be donated to Habitat for Humanity

Heather snapped this pic of me and John Fu before things got started – we were enjoying this incredible view of Seattle from the 27th floor of the WAMU Tower conference room.  Sunshine in Seattle in December – so there!

Wonder why they’re smiling (other than the inevitable “say cheese” behind the camera)?  John, John and Jeff got a chance to enjoy the sunshine!

Photo Credit: Nicole

We’re having a Halloween party and the costume contest in just a few hours, so there will be a lot more pictures to post soon.  However, I didn’t want to (read: couldn’t) wait to share this with you:



Dennis: “Uh, what are you supposed to be?”

Charles: “I’m Brightkite.”

Dennis: “Oh.”

To keep things going from our previous test team lunch post, here are our adventures from the second. I’m trying to get these all posted before they’re too out of date!  Do you have a place in downtown Seattle that you think we should try?  Give us a holler – leave it in the comments.

September 18th

Goal: Longhorn BBQ

Summary: It was time to decide on a lunch spot and Dan decided BBQ sounded good. After a veto from me for Mad Oven we left for Longhorn. It was a great walk. Easy place to find and it was fun walking past the Utility Kilt place.

The line was good and surprisingly the team was well behaived considering they had lighting in the place that resembled what hell must look like:

The cooks asked Dan what his favorite part of a cow was to eat and he responded with this:

The way back to work got crazy. Blade was impatient and took off across the street. Here’s a picture of Blade across the street waiting for us:

Company wikis are full rare gems, and many are never found, so when Joni discovered a page dedicated to photo blogging the test team’s lunch adventures we had to get their permission to share it with our readers here on the Whrrl blog.  I’ll be checking the wiki page frequently to look for more stories to share, enjoy!

September 11th – “Ripped Apart By Hunger” (by David Berge)

Goal: Salumi’s

What Happened: Dan was hungry for lunch at about 10:30am this morning. About the same time he rolled into work.

The team walked there and got a bit lost because we were on the wrong 2nd street. We were supposed to be on the 2nd street one block over. I guess Whrrl can guide employees to a great lunch spot but it can’t help them find it if the city just names all the streets with the same name.

We stood in line and didn’t move. 5 minutes later we were in the same spot. In line out on the street. That’s when Dan started pacing. Blade felt sorry for him and took him to a nice looking Gyro place that used to be a gas station. Both of them are “high maintenance” and had to change the order from what was given them. I believe they were both asked to never come back again. They then walked to a local waterfall spot that we had found when we were lost on 2nd street… the original one… not the correct one.

Eventually we got to order and had some great sandwiches. We took them to where Dan and Blade were next to the waterfall.  It was a great time.

I was walking around Pelago and noticed that we have a lot of weird and interesting “stuff” accumulating in our offices since we moved here in January. I hope you’ll find this as entertaining as I do…

Click on the pics to see the whole slideshow over at Flickr.

Traveling to our event at BluWater Bistro I used Whrrl on my iPhone to find my way. At each intersection I tapped ‘Go’, next to Move Map to Current Location, and watched in awe as my map centered on where I was. I even called Emily, who was back at the office, and told her, “It works!” GPS has arrived, and life will never be the same (although I bet I’ll still manage to get lost somehow).

Thanks to everyone who came and contributed to a fantastic turnout of interesting people, as we hosted an invite-only event for technologists in the Seattle area. Pelago provided food, booze, and gave attendees the chance to have one-on-one conversations with the senior team and numerous employees. Guests heard firsthand what it’s like to build Whrrl for the web and mobile devices, including the iPhone.

Jeff was losing his voice, but managed to rally and give a talk about the founding and vision of Pelago. There was also a presentation on tough problems the engineering team is working hard to solve, and a demo of the Whrrl website and mobile application. Absent from all this was a demo of our new iPhone app, but I handed over my phone to folks so they could check it out.

The highlight of my night was when the Apple employee who sold me my beloved 3G iPhone last Friday at the Bellevue Apple Store showed up at the event. When I got my new phone (after 7 ½ hours of standing in line) the first thing I did was download the Whrrl iPhone app onto it, and proceeded to show him how it works. He looked us up online, and came to say hi. So cool!

Here are some pictures I took of the mobile application demo on my iPhone (this isn’t the iPhone app):

People can’t help but stare in awe at what Wendy is driving. Is it a car, is it a bike? It’s actually a Can-Am Spyder roadster made by Bombardier, the same company that make Sea-Doo watercraft and Ski-Doo snowmobiles. The three wheel Spyder has a Rotax 990 engine that accelerates 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds. It has a reverse gear and even has a cargo hold! As soon as the personalized license plate “SPYGRL” arrives Wendy & her sister – it’s a mutual investment – will be set for summer road trips! Everyone at Pelago is jealous!