Unfortunately, we had a big problem. The Staction website is designed to be used with a keyboard. The whole application is built around using the mouse as little as possible. But on the iPhone the keyboard is, well, small. Using a tiny keyboard to bang out tags, and a clunky half-visible auto-completer just wasn’t the experience we wanted to give our users. It wasn’t the experience we wanted for ourselves… It just wasn’t great, – believe us, we tried it.

After lots of experimenting, eventually we realized we had to rely on touching and scrolling for tag input. Like with lots of ideas, -it seems quite obvious looking back.

As of Today

As of today, all of our paid accounts have access to the Staction web app. Simply visit your normal account URL, and you’ll be directed to the optimized site. (You can still access the regular site if you like.)

Once logged in, you’ll have access to all the most commonly used features of Staction. Creating todos, logging time, and keeping up with your teammates.

Make sure to tap “+” and add Staction to your home screen, – it works really well that way.

If you want to see the web app, but don’t have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad you can visit your normal account URL and add a /m at the end like this:

http://accountname.staction.com/m

We think you’re really going to like the web app experience. In some ways it’s the best Staction experience yet.

Why Not the Free Account?

We’re going to be honest in a way that I don’t think most companies would. We really hope that the web app drives upgrades for us. By far the biggest portion of Staction users are on the free account. It seems that when we created our plans for Staction, we gave away too much on the low end.

It’s no problem, -we’re happy to have our users, on any account that fits their needs. But we do have to make money to keep our jobs!

Talking over the problem, we came up with a plan that we hope will make sense to you. As we add new features to our apps, you’ll probably see most of them added only to the paid accounts at first. As we recoup the cost of our development time through the upgrades that the features drive, we hope to trickle the features down to the free accounts as well.

We’re hoping this is a sustainable system that can keep everyone happy. Paid accounts just get the features a bit sooner than everyone else. We hope you’ll think it makes as much sense as we do.

I can imagine a time when the screen and input devices go away, and we just speak or gesture at computers to get results, but I think that’s a long ways off. However, I think there is a near-term step that dissolves the computer even more. Not making it smaller, but doing away with it all-together.

Computers communicate to their monitors at a given data rate (I don’t want to look up that data rate, because it sounds irritating to find) -but they do. Eventually, we will be able to reliably and wirelessly communicate with devices at speeds that meet, or exceed the speeds of devices connected by cables. We may already be able to do that speed-wise, I’m not sure. But “reliability” is the big part of this equation.

Nobody can tell me that Apple cannot wirelessly synch an iPhone to a computer. They can. For sure they can. But it occasionally probably doesn’t work. Or goes slowly. Or works not at all due to interference… Whatever the reason, it’s not ready for prime time, and a cable is more reliable.

When wireless is as fast as, and as reliable as cables connecting screens to computers, the whole game will change.

At that point, the small little white rounded rectangle that is my AirPort could be my computer. If you’ve used Air Display, the software for the iPad that does screen sharing over WiFi, you know the feeling. You see it instantly… If this was faster, I wouldn’t need my computer! I could bring my extra monitor with me wherever I went. As I return to homebase, I can again have the added real-estate. But I think this is near-term thinking still.

Imagine the new Mac Mini. About the same size as an Airport. It’s connected to your internet connection and your WiFi. Or is your WiFi. Your iPad, or iPad HD that’s 35” wide can connect to it at will. As different users on the same box. Depending on permissions, able to see different resources.

Face it. Right now your computer is faster than you. It’s only going to get faster. Soon it will be faster than two, three, four, and 10 of you. At that point, your one computer can run all of your devices at once, the same as a webserver serves hundreds of users tiny 500K bunches of files today. When bandwidth increases, it no longer requires your computer to be attached to your device.

In fact, as bandwidth increases, not only on local area networks, but on the internet as well, you no longer really have to own a computer. One really, really great computer can be hundreds, or thousands of people’s computer at once. No different than Gmail is millions of people’s inbox today. When horsepower, and bandwidth increase to that point, you’re just receiving the results of computed cycles that happened nowhere near you in the form of a generated picture.

The same as movie theaters turned into TV. The same as phonographs turned into radio. Same as the printing press turned into the NY Times. Technologies climb to where small capitalistic devices become really big commune services that are free, or very cheap to consume. Not everyone needs to own them, as they become ubiquitous in their availability.

So is this a good thing? I have no idea. I’m just making wild guesses here. I could be, and likely am, totally wrong. But as I chart today’s growth, I see it heading here. Extenuating circumstances, invention, sociological changes, could all change this possible future. But no waffling. If I had to bet today, that’s what I see happening in the next 10 years.

• “What time is it?”
• “New voice memo”

And I’d like to add to the list:

• “Play Audiobook:”

Although the music selection is fantastically implemented, I always have to do a hack playlist to get an audiobook to play.

Let’s face it, selling is hard. Really hard. You can try and list out features and benefits, or you can focus on the beautiful design of your product, or, if you’re Sandwich Dynamics, you can just make a lighthearted joke out of your new iPhone app as a way to introduce it and explain what it is and what it does.

The beauty of the video is that by the end of it you feel as if you are watching a couple friends goofing off. They are genuine and genuinely funny – which makes it much easier for you to open your wallet. Which illustrates an often forgotten, but tremendously important, point about selling. If you treat your customers as friends, instead of users, you’ll not only have an easier time making the original sale, but an easier time throughout the entire customer life cycle.