smRty Time Blog

Official Google Blog: SearchWiki: make search your own

2008-11-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog: SearchWiki: make search your own

this looks interesting, soon to be released I guess, bout time we had some more control on searches.

Branding & Marketing: SEO... going WAY beyond Google

2007-07-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

Branding & Marketing: SEO... going WAY beyond Google

I'm just having a little fun on with your SEO work.

We're trying to place well for best web developers now that we've conquered google for Best web developers in the world.

Ahhh... if only we really were :)

Microsoft Opening shop in Vancouver

2007-07-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

From the Vancouver Sun:
A Microsoft first
The company announces plans to open a software development centre in Vancouver Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, July 05, 2007
Gillian Shaw
_______

I'll let you read up on the whole thing yourself, but in essence the city, politicians and the local business community is all excited about this as it will ... and I quote.

The Microsoft expansion here is seen not only as a coup for the province but as good news for a country that is struggling to see its technology sector compete on the world stage.

I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, we are not "struggling on the world stage". Companies like RIM, Rogers, Flikr... The list goes on.. are all Canadian success stories operating on a global level. We have no shortage of talent, which is why Microsoft wants to come here in the first place.

It's why the movies come here, it's why EA came and set up here, Satelite companies, production houses, animation studio's... ALL come to Vancouver for the great quality of life and the deep creative and technical talent pool that abounds here.

What this article does not discuss is that the only thing that is flagging is Canada's ability to support the growth of global companies with the proper funding and capital markets to enable Canadians to RETAIN their intellectual property rights.

The real issue is that like with the film production community, and as EA has successfully done, Microsoft will be able to attract the best and brightest, buy the promising technologies it wants or squash it's competitors with it's giant marketing muscle and deep reserves and generally acquire the real gold that is IP.

We will once again build a top notch service economy that has no longevity and is at the mercy of larger American corporations, instead of growing and retaining our own IP.

I don't see this as a good thing for the local software economy, I think it will drain talent, create artificial inflation amongst the local players and generally undermine any sort of local efforts to grow software associations and business building.

Branding & Marketing

2007-06-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of research about branding and marketing

We're having to really examine our choices around XLsuite and the way that we want to position ourselves in the market place.

What is our brands message, our position in the market place, what does the name say to people, how are the graphics going to affect the overall impression that people have of our soon to be product.

Of course my friend for these things whenever I'm stuck is to turn to google for answers.

In my search I've found this site http://brandandmarket.blogspot.com/ which has all sorts of good tips and resources on branding and marketing issues.

Since My struggles are rarely unique to me, I thought that I would share this with you, since many of our clients turn to us for branding and naming support. While we're pretty good at it, I never try to tell people that I know everything. This is a good place to learn more about this field of interest if you're starting your search for information on branding and marketing.

Growing Pains and Learning Curves

2007-03-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

Hello Interested Party.

Although you may thing that we've fallen asleep at the wheel and driven our little smrty truck off the cliff... it is not so.

In fact, we've been so busy working on another project that we didn't notice there were problems with the signup as we were merrily using smrty for our own billing as were the several other friends and associates that were already set up in the system prior to the signup going sideways.

Since we were unaffected, we really didn't notice that it wasn't working for quite some time.

Sorry :)

Of course the instant question is... When will you fix it?

Ummm, Soon?

To tell you the truth, we're working on embedding all of the functionality of smrty along with some upgrades that we've decided are needed, into our larger content and contact management system XLsuite.

You can visit our ruby on rails open source CRM, XLsuite, as we've made the bulk of the code opensource (sorry but some parts of smrty will be staying proprietary).

Or, if you're not the "get into the code type" or you can visit ANYSUBDOMAIN.xlsuite.com if you'd like to grab it as your own and try out the system.

Mobile switching: done

2006-08-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

What if you're on the road and you want to log your time in smRty ? Previously, you'd have had to write your time on a piece of paper, and type all those in when you got back to your office. We now have another option !

Send mail to: login.project.password@smrty.com to switch between issues !

The subject line of your E-Mail will be used to search in the issues list of the project. If none match, your default mobile issue will be used instead.

If your E-Mail has a body and/or attachments, they will be appended to the selected issue.

In more concrete terms:

Harry is a plumber. He's into technology: flickr, del.icio.us, blogger. He recently discovered smRty, and is keen on using it with his shiny new Cingular 8125.

Harry receives a call from Shannon. She has problems with her kitchen sink. Harry jumps in the truck, and before driving, sends a mail to harry.p.luke@iclock.in, with a subject of "shannon / driving", using his cell phone. When he arrives, Harry sends another E-Mail to the same address, but this time the subject says "shannon / onsite".

Harry quickly patches the problem, but he needs a part. He snaps a picture with his cell phone, and attaches the picture to an E-Mail, sent to the same address. This time, his subject says "shannon / order". The mail's body also contains the part number: "9218x0002".

Back at the office, Harry fires up Firefox, and navigates to smRty. He goes to the issues list for his "p" project, and selects Shannon's issue.

In the issue's comments section, at the end, Harry retrieves the picture, prints it and asks his helper to buy the appropriate part. Harry reminds his helper to not forget to log his time in smRty.

To start using mobile clockin, you need to configure your mobile password and mobile project names. Visit your Profile to set your mobile password. You must also visit all the projects which you want to use mobile, and set their mobile project names. If you don't use the mobile project name, the name defaults to the full project's title.

Switch !

Holiday in Maine

2006-07-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

I'm off (Riel that is) to see my family in the "Great State of Maine".

For those of you who haven't been, I highly recommend a visit, it's the sort of tranquil that you can't find anywhere else.

I will be meeting up with Francois, our first physical meeting in almost a year of working together.

Feels a little like a blind date or something.

I'm happy to say that our projects have been funded and we are once again on the path to building up the components for XLsuite. Rick has generously upped our budget and is now very serious about migrating his application to a commercial offering. Watch for RealtorXL.com coming to the web hopefully by January 2007.

smRty is still working out it's kinks, we've had to work some more on the invoicing module, I'll let Francois do the details on that one, we're also working on implementing the iclock.in SMS trigger, so you can use your mobile phone to turn on and off your timer. That'll be cool I must say, each project will have it's own email address that will start whatever item you've set as the default. Watch for this feature in the coming weeks, it's in production now.

Hope you all have a wonderful summer, I'll see you in a few weeks.

Riel

The "Empty State" got a facelift

2006-07-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

The so-called "Empty State" is when a user logs onto an application for the first time. Previously, we had an empty dashboard. That has now changed.

If you go to the dashboard now, you will be redirected to the first time help page.

Enjoy the show.

Switch!

Auto create issues for your projects

2006-07-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

Previously, if you typed the name of an issue that didn't exist in the switch box, smRty would just log time against a sitting with a description and no issue. That was bad enough.

Now, there's something better. There are three cases:

We can find the issue by the complete title;
We can find the issue by a partial issue title match;
We cannot find the issue at all.

In case #1, it's simple, we simply use the issue that we found. Case #2 is similar. If we have a partial match, we use only that match. Mind you, we take the first issue that matches. If you type "collect" and press Switch, you'll end up logging time against "collect bills" and not "collect kids".

Case #3 is the new feature. smRty will now create a new issue with the provided title and description, will put the priority to 0 - Unassigned, and will also tag the issue with quick. This is a quick way to find any issues that might need fleshing out.

Get paid to do surveys

2006-07-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone ever do any of these things?

These guys claim to hook you up with companies that will pay you $4 to $25 "or more" to do surveys in your underwear (don't think that's a pre-requisite... But it always sounds nice.)

As we sit and analyze what has become a much bigger project than the one we started, (GO smRty) I can't help but wonder.... What else could I be doing to make a buck on the net?

Not that I'm only in this to make a buck... Don't get me wrong, I love what I do... But hey, we could all use a little more cabbage in our pocket right?

We've discovered that we need to do more work on the "empty state" - (thank you 37signals for that term, it's very appropriate). New users are having trouble figuring out how to navigate the application. I guess when it's something you've evolved in house, it just seems to make sense. I wrote a detailed description today of the "work flow" which should make it's way into the site in the next few days.

We also plan to put more "WHAT'S THIS" buttons around the interface to help explain some of the more intricate details (see francois quick key post from a couple of days ago, it's very informative.

Another week raps up and we've finally started to get some user response. While it may not have been the best response (some was very good, but enough confused letters tells us we need more design work on the explanation side of things).

Have a nice weekend everyone, we'll be back at it on Monday.

(switch) (a little smRty humour)

Crumbling under the load

2006-07-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

I surrender!
Originally uploaded by varf.

We seem to do this more often than I'd like, but we're migrating servers again.

We've upgraded ourselves to a dedicated box as smrty, we put up lights and Rick site were starting to suffer on the shared hosting we had.

Would like to make a move to the engineyard, but we're not there yet ($wise$) where we can let someone else handle the headaches of running and more importantly scaling our server setup.

Oh well, as long as we don't get dug for a few more weeks, we should be fine.

Anywho... If you're trying to get into smrty right now, the only thing you'll find is a page that says "it works"... Which is ironic programmer humor I'm guessing, since really it doesn't work...

I digress.... Should be up by this afternoon, I trust that you'll excuse the necessary down time.

----

On a completely unrelated note... I just want to give the boys at SHOPIFY.COM a big shout out for a very easy to use, simple yet powerful shopping site. Anyone (including non coder me) can have a site up in an afternoon. As an example, I put up stuckers.com (new venture with my good buddy and vinyl sign guru Gord) in about 4 hours, including finding and registering what I think is a killer name.

Anyway.... If you need to do some ecommerce and want a painless way to set up a ready to go shop... I'd definitely give them a look... Great model too, costs NOTHING to set up and they take a very reasonable 3% off the top of your sales... I think that's a great model, let people see if there is a market for their product before committing to big development / integration costs.

Shortcuts for the interface

2006-07-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

smRty was created by a developer who hates the mouse -- me. This means using the keyboard, as we don't yet have a voice interface.

To help not reach for the mouse, here is a list of keyboard shortcuts you can use:

Alt+N: New Issue

On the issue edit screen, you can additionnaly use these shortcuts:

Alt+E: Estimated field
Alt+S: Save Issue
Alt+C: Close Issue

The Alt prefix is for Windows-based machines. On the Mac, you should use Ctrl.

It's ALIVE... the smrty beast rises

2006-07-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

Well, took longer than I'd have liked ... and like so many of these projects, every door we opened seemed to open 3 more.

However, I feel like we've built something useful and I hope others find so too.

May I present officially the launch of smRty.com

It's now almost midnight pacific time and even later where Francois has been busy updating the server.

There are still a couple of minor things to patch (don't forget your password, you'll find getting it back a little out of reach right now :) but overall it looks pretty good.

I just billed my clients for my time.... ah! finally no more exporting to excel

Please give it a try and send us any feedback to xl (at) ixld.com

(we'll get off our asses and set up some smrty address's soon... won't we Francois :)

A bit of corporate humour

2006-07-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK – The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday announced three people have been arrested for allegedly attempting to sell Coca-Cola company secrets to Pepsi. According to the Department of Justice the three people were caught stealing confidential information, including a sample of a new drink, from The Coca-Cola Co. and trying to sell it to rival PepsiCo Inc. “in a sting operation.” Ibrahim Dimson of New York and Edmund Duhaney and Joya Williams of Georgia were arrested and charged with wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling trade secrets. Williams was an executive assistant at Coca-Cola. In May 2006, PepsiCo informed Coke that the company had received a letter from a person calling himself “Dirk” offering detailed and confidential information about Coke's products for a fee. Immediately, the FBI became involved in the case and within the following weeks gave the alleged con-men manila envelopes with money in exchange for Coke secrets. “Information is the lifeblood of the company. As the health of our enterprise continues to strengthen and the breadth of our innovation pipeline continues to grow, our ideas and our competitive data carry increasing interest to those outside our business,” said Coke CEO Neville Isdell.

Boy.... and here I am telling the world what our plans are :)

Check out our new design job, garanteed not to be a trade secret, on smRty.com

Hard to work on a day like today

2006-07-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

Just felt like sharing this view of Vancouver with you. It's Saturday and I'm thinking about smRty and the frustrating details (what do they say? The Devil is in the Details?) that need to be ironed out before it's ready for public consumption.

Billing is not an easy business. While the "Punch Clock" functionality is worked out for the issues that you're dealing with... it's the "extras" that are holding us up.

Of course you're going to have expenses beyond the time billing. Things like external licensing, books, gas costs, buying your client a new laptop.... It immediately became apparent that we were going to have to add the ability to put "NON TIME RELATED" items on the invoice.

That raises all sorts of questions of course. Do you simply add the ability to add a section to the invoice for line items? Do you integrate a database for inventory? If you're selling it once, good chance it'll happen again? Isn't it easier to simply add items to your catalog as you go? Or is that adding an extra step that ultimately isn't desirable. Which one will take longer to implement? Do you add it later or delay launch to ensure a stronger product?

I'm not entirely sure what the answers are, like every step in business it comes down to polling your peers, asking questions, and ultimately going with your instincts.

Do we need to have a product catalog as part of the billing solution? Or do we simply go with the add a line item to the invoice model? Only time will tell (I'm guessing the catalog model, but hey, let's wait for Francois to weigh in shall we?)

smRty time and issue management

2006-06-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

Issue Tracking + Time Management + Billing = smRty

We're working on a new service that we hope will have some interest for people like freelancers and other "loose associations" of professionals.

In my experience as a product director for web and software applications, there's often been a lack of easy, unified tools to keep track of a project and communicate with other project participants in a central, unified way.

Of course there are several project management software packages like Microsoft Project, but they (as MS products often do) share a common thread, they're generally too complicated and laden with features to be useful to the average user doing smaller more routine tasks... Great if you're doing a massive product launch for a new OS or you need to build a factory, but for the average $1000 website or timing how long you worked on some copy... It's a little overkill.

We needed a simple way to comment on things, exchange screenshots, keep track of our time and generally have a central repository for information related to a project.

We came up with smrty.com

By combining a discussion thread type interface that allows you to upload files, with a timer... We solved the problem of sorting through emails trying to find the latest comments or last change to the graphic... It allowed us to work with parties all over the world in an easy and manageable way.

We added RSS feeds to all of the issues and comments keeping track of our projects was easy using our favorite start page or RSS reader.

Of course once you've timed how long you're working on a project, the next logical step is to tie that into an invoicing solution. We designed it so that you can easily input the hourly rate for you and everyone else working on the project and have a consolidated bill created for your client.

In other words... My client is REALTORX, I bill at $50/h, My web designer bills at $65/h and my graphics person bills at $40/h, we also have to researchers making $20/h.

At the end of my billing period I simply review all the time on the project, make any adjustments I need to and then, generate a bill for my client. All of my sub contractors can also create an invoice for me, and the whole process is available for viewing online by any of us.

So... A short invoice simply stating the total times for each participant is created, any of which can be drilled down to reveal the full "play by play" of what they were working on.

We have lots of ideas for future improvements (like being able to clock in and out with your mobile phone) but we feel that the system is functional enough to be useful to others now.

As such we're launching it in the next week or so and would really appreciate any feedback you might have on it. It's free to set up your first project (and future ones are only $1/month).

Hope you like it.