Yep, Still Here!

Well, it's down to the last day in January, and I figure I better post at least one entry before the month slips by entirely. So what's up with the deafening silence you ask? Well, it's been an interesting month. "Interesting" being the traditional ambiguous euphemism that parents and optimists use for both good and, well, "not-so-good".

First, let's dispatch with the "not-so-good". Early in January, I came across a WSJ article featuring a site with significant similarities to some of the core capabilities of FamZoo. (I'm not going to mention the name because I'd really like to stay off their radar for now and smart companies regularly conduct Web searches on themselves.) Finding a direct competitor was quite disappointing. Until that article, I had not seen anything deployed on the Web that came close to what I am building, and I was relishing the idea of being the first company to launch in the space. Now I am kicking myself for taking so long to get the gumption to start a company around the idea that I originally implemented for my family back in 2002. Sigh.

But, as I always like to say: "Get over it". Aside from the usual platitudes in this situation ("It validates the market", "Google wasn't first either", etc.), there have been a number of positive side effects. My focus and sense of urgency have increased substantially. Seeing a competitive offering and being able to study their strengths, weaknesses, biases, etc. has forced me to think more deeply about what to emphasize in FamZoo and what will set our offering apart from this initial competitor as well as, ultimately, many others. Being first to market will just no longer be one of those points of differentiation, which is OK because that is more a matter of personal pride than a compelling reason to flock to (and remain with) the service.

So, what have I been up to in January? User interface and user interaction design. Having a great user experience will be crucial to my success, so this area deserves a lot of attention and iteration. To date, my family has been very prolific and helpful with their feedback, and my to-do list remains well stocked. So, I will not be widening the alpha test audience just yet. This allows me to iterate most rapidly with virtually zero customer support or production deployment overhead while still getting very real and actionable feedback. It is also helpful that my family spans all relevant age ranges and has zero hesitancy when it comes to (predominantly ;-) constructive criticism. I figure low burn rate, high productivity, and plenty of honest feedback makes a good combination.

Here's a little peek at how the user interface is progressing. It is still early with lots of fit-and-finish work to go, but the contrast between the January 2007 user interface and the November 2006 predecessor should be readily apparent even with the intentionally low resolution screenshots provided below.

FamZoo User Interface January 2007

FamZoo User Interface November 2006

It's been very enlightening to learn firsthand and in depth about all of the intricacies of getting a modern Web user interface to behave consistently and effectively across the popular browsers. Dealing with issues ranging from blatant browser incompatibilities like this famous one to separation of presentation and semantic content to supporting liquid layout (vs fixed width - yechh) to honoring the user's browser font settings to reliably implementing rounded corners and tabs (should be simple right? not...) to leveraging some of the emerging rich Web UI libraries makes user interface work an interesting combination of technical and creative challenges. Subtle, seemingly small technical decisions can have very large user experience and business impact here. Just the kind of multi-disciplinary challenge I like.

Time to get back to coding.

Oh yeah, and a happy belated New Year to you all.

Need a Last Minute Stocking Stuffer? Try the Gift of Giving...

If you are searching for that last minute stocking stuffer, perhaps suffering from a touch of yuletide materialism fatigue, and seeking to involve your youngsters in charitable giving - here's a quick and easy idea: consider a charitable gift certificate that allows the young recipient to choose where the funds go.

In my case, I purchased gift certificates from DonorsChoose for each of my kids (click here). I suspect there are other similar sites, but this is the one I am most familiar with, and I really like it. Selecting the email delivery option, I was able to print out the certificates, place them in envelopes, and add them to my stocking stuffer stash - all in a matter of a few minutes. Here's what one looks like:

I'll be challenging each of the kids to make their charitable selections by January 1st. Seems like a nice way to close out the year and kick off 2007.

Happy holidays to all!

Cheers!

TANSTAAFL.....Not!!!!

I have to say that my fundamental belief in the old adage "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" (TANSTAAFL) gets thrashed on a regular basis when it comes to software and the Internet. Yeah, sure, I know that, technically speaking, there is a cost in time, materials, etc. for somebody when it comes to providing all that amazing freeware out there. Practically speaking though, when it comes to software, I'm dining for free on a regular basis and loving every bite of it. In fact, sometimes the free meals are vastly more tasty than the ones that cost money.

Latest case in point: I bought a Seagate 300 GB External Hard Drive to perform regular backups of the files on my laptop. The package includes a program called BounceBack Express that allows you to define, schedule, and manage the backups. Here's a screenshot of the program "running" on my laptop:

Yikes!! Dig that user interface - a self-reflective mess! Doesn't exactly instill confidence does it? Can you find the prompt "Would you like to create a backup set?" Ummm, "No thank you..." And, by the way, I'm not running some bizarre or exotic operating environment - just a very vanilla Dell laptop running Windows XP. Believe it or not, being a persistent and forgiving type, I actually navigated a few of these bizarre broken screens (all laden with obscured prompts and buttons) to define a backup set and ultimately initiate a backup. The end result: the program crashed a few seconds later with an unhandled exception. Pathetic.

So it's midnight last night, and I'm really ticked because I wanted to get this item off my ToDo list. (It's not too smart to go for very long without adopting a responsible backup regimen, and my procrastination was getting somewhat ironic/hypocritical given that I am building a service that purports to encourage responsible behavior... ;-) Not to worry - free midnight snack to the rescue. A quick browse through the Backup section (under Utilities & Drivers) on c|net's download.com turned up a nifty little program called SyncBack provided by a small software company in Singapore named 2BrightSparks. It had solid user reviews (I liked how the first one was titled Please, marry me! ;-) - obviously a satisfied user), over 56,000 downloads since its release in June of 2006 and no reports of embedded spyware. What the heck? Certainly couldn't be worse than the BounceBack experience. Indeed! A quick download, a lightweight install, and a few clicks later, I had defined a simple custom backup profile and was happily backing up my files on a nightly schedule. Task accomplished, guilt assuaged. Simple, fast, effective. And, oh yeah, completely free. Gotta love it.

Another free tasty software morsel that I have been ingesting as of late last week: Google Analytics. One little cut and paste of a few lines of javascript into the page template for my Blog (which is also hosted for free on Google's Blogger I might add) and viola: all kinds of neat reports on the traffic over time. Check out the cool dashboard which shows traffic trends, geographic origin of the traffic (note the inlaws in Texas ;-), new vs. repeat traffic, and the web source of the traffic (for example, I can see that some traffic is coming from click throughs on startupnation.com where I maintain a profile and have posted in the forums - good to know):

Um, OK, no snickering at the tiny traffic numbers - remember, I'm in "stealth mode" (that cute startup euphism for having no traction yet ;-). Besides, as Guy says, better to take the "red pill" everyday and know the whole truth (see entry #11 here).

The above are just a few small examples of how the cost structure of starting and running a responsible business has changed drammatically over the past several years. Funny, I used to scoff when Oracle temporarily adopted the tag line "The Internet Changes Everything" back in the mid 1990's. It never ceases to amaze me how true that line is on a number of (but not all mind you) fronts.

By the way, the screenshots above are courtesy of a free screen capture program that I really like called ScreenHunter from Wisdom-Soft. Also, I have been developing the FamZoo application using a free hosted development environment from Oracle called Application Express. The list goes on...

TANSTAAFL.....I don't think so!