We’re very happy to announce today that the Staction API is live for the public!

Our vision for Staction has always focused on the web interface, -but we’re excited to be extending that vision to allow people to access their workflow from devices, widgets, apps, and anything our community can imagine.

This move is also important because it’s an expression of something very important to us. Your data is yours! Via the API you can now move your information in and out of Staction into the places where you need it most.

We hope you’ll quickly realize that the structure of Staction’s data is its’ real strength. The simple tagging system, and the chronological posts means that the database can provide structure and support for numerous applications that extend even further than Staction itself.

As always, -the fun part of our job is interacting with all the great people who use our products. We’re really happy to be giving this to you, and we’re prepared to help out as much as possible with all of the great projects you want to create.

To learn more about the API, please visit the new documentation section:
http://api.staction.com/documentation/

To grab your very own developer key, go here:
http://api.staction.com/documentation/developer-key/

Please send any questions or comments on how we can improve your experience with the API to the Staction support email, or leave a comment in this thread.

If you just build it, they won’t come. They’ll come only if you’re clever, persistent, generous, and loud.

We’ve been trying for 2 years now to build a following for our web apps. If you told us how successful we would be two years ago, we would’ve been shocked. But it’s still not enough.

Like many of the people who read this blog, we’re pretty relentless about outdoing what we’ve already done. The success you already have never feels real, it just feels like a stepping stone to that place you’re trying to get to.

When it comes to web app promotion, things that “don’t work” are your friend. The real enemy is the thing that “kind of works.” A powerful, and seemingly important distraction is one that generates a few results, and allows you to assume it might make more. Eliminating a failure, is almost as valuable as finding a winner. Keep Reading

Recently a user pointed out via Twitter that our Staction signup process could be smarter about how it handled errors. When you work on web apps, there are about a thousand things you should do better. Maybe a hundred thousand. You’ve worked so incredibly hard on the things you have done, that when someone points out the things you haven’t gotten to, it’s easy to get defensive. We hope that in the future we, and you, can remember this answer we gave to the user’s complaint:

“You’re right; we can do better.”

It’s the only proper answer to give…

So many people who have large platforms are terrified of being knocked off. We’ll all get a lot more done, and be a lot happier if we find joy in being inspired by, and in inspiring others. Great example:

This is also a testament to just how cool Adam Lisagor is. He knows imitation is flattery, and the more energy and dialog around a topic, the better for everyone involved. Plus he says things like: Love the smell of a bicycle shop. Smells like bicycles.

If you take a look at the reasons we create web apps, it boils down to mainly one thing: organization. With that in mind, it makes sense that we keep organization simple. If we don’t, we get wrapped up in everything that had us disorganized in the first place. Simple. Is. Better. 

Veteran creative director Rich Barrett recently talked to readwriteweb about some of the online trends he sees today.  Keep Reading

How cool is this?

danfrydman: using #jumpchart to build a menu hierarchy / sitemap in #drupal via #wordpress – more to come

-via Twitter

It’s strange- we used to think we were in the business of creating web apps.

What we sell isn’t bundled up javascript, and glossy buttons… We sell a process. We sell conceptual ways to work and organize. 

The thing to keep in mind is that people are actually buying into something completely different when you think they’re buying nothing more than your product. They’re buying…

... the attitude of your company.

... the belief that the process you preach is better than the alternatives.

... the experience of participating in your brand. Keep Reading

Our mission: to make yet another bridge between website planning and website running. A couple of months back we launched a new export format in Jumpchart that allows our users to swoop their project straight into the WordPress CMS. We think it works great, and we got a lot of amazing feedback from our users.

While WordPress is a widely used CMS, unfortunately we don’t use it for most of our own web projects. We have a totally custom built system that we’ve been constantly tweaking and evolving for three years to fit our exact needs — internally, we call it Haydn (after Joseph).

So how were we going to make link between Haydn and Jumpchart? Keep Reading

We’re a dispersed team. Spread all over town, the country, and even the world. Seven of us. Any one of us could be working in their underwear all day long, and the rest of us would be none-the-wiser. This is not something that could have happened a decade ago. The cost, and complication of it would have made it tedious, and frustrating. The thought of sending faxes to someone in their underwear is pretty funny though. Keep Reading

A few weeks ago we posted about the benefits of using hash tags to help keep track of important pieces of information in your Staction stream. Another little use of the hash tag is to mark the status of your various projects. This can be a godsend for teams that include a project manager. Keep Reading