Posts Tagged ‘Web Apps’

Making Insignificant Ideas Magnificent.

The web is truly in a great place right now. Every day you can see dozens of new applications launched that required countless man hours to make. The nuances and specificity of them is beginning to boggle the mind. The sheer quantity of people on Earth capable of writing a web application is amazing.

In fact, as a web developer it’s somewhat daunting. You can have a thought like “what if I made a tool to keep track of when my next oil change comes due?” and a few seconds later realize that dozens of apps have beat you to the punch.

Sure, you could maybe improve the interface, make it prettier, promote it better, integrate it with Twitter, etc. But it seems like there’s nothing left in big chunks that isn’t a minute improvement on a small facet of something else.

Let’s skip to another subject for a second.

In 1997 NASA, in conjunction with the European and Italian Space Agencies, launched the Cassini-Huygens space probe. It had a far-reaching set of goals, most of which seemed more optimistic than legitimate. It’s track was outward from Earth- taking a layman’s tour of our solar system as it became accessible by coincidentally calculated orbit.

After near-space tours of Earth’s moon, Venus, and Jupiter, Cassini was en-route to one of Saturn’s moons named Enceladus. By this time it was 2005, and Cassini had already discovered three new moons of Saturn, tested General Relativity and made countless other minor discoveries leading to better understandings of our close corner of the universe. Keep Reading

A Million Little Finish Lines.

Kristin 11/04/10
Paste

The race is never over. Your app is never done.

I haven’t been in this business for long, but if there’s one thing I’ve seen proven to be true, it’s that the launch of an app is only step one. Yeah, it’s a big step, and something you should be really proud of, but it only signifies the beginning of a long stretch of finish lines to be crossed.

It’s an endurance race. There are always hurdles to clear, coaches yelling at you to do better, and teammates who are counting on you. Each update or feature addition takes preparation and time; each user comment takes careful consideration.

But every time you cross one of the little finish lines, you remember why you love what you do. That satisfaction is what motivates you to train for the next ribbon you snap. And each time you stretch your arms toward the sky in victory, you’ve made progress toward a better app.

The All-New Staction Web App.

By far our most requested feature on Staction has been an iPhone optimized version. I think a lot of users may have just considered us obstinate for not having one sooner. It seems like such a small thing to do… Shrink the interface, and call it good.

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.

Pay it Forward.

In life, there is usually piss on the seat.

But every now and then, you get lucky and things go your way.

In line at Starbucks yesterday, it actually happened to me. (Not the nasty thing, the lucky thing.)

Someone ahead of me paid for my drink. I’ve heard of this happening to other people, but I never thought it would actually happen to me, you know? Keep Reading

Sacrifices for Simplicity.

Jumpchart, Staction and Paprika are all geared toward simplicity. But with simplicity comes a lot of feature requests, and proclamations that “if it just had this one feature, it would be absolutely perfect!”

We continue to make updates as the internet, and our users evolve, but we’re stubborn in a big way: we’re sticking with simplicity. We feel this mentality is what makes our apps useful to the majority of our users in the first place. Keep Reading

Believe.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with anybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” – Simon Sinek via Bobulate

This is so true. I think it’s especially true for someone who really loves your app, and doesn’t know how they ever did without it. For example, lovers of Jumpchart have to appreciate simplicity, and organization. Lovers of Staction have to understand the importance of communication with a minimal amount of clicks, and want the ability to do things quickly. We create apps as extensions of ourselves, knowing (hoping?) that others like us will get a kick out of them, and find them really useful.

Ideas from Another.

Kristin 03/17/10
Paste

“Block off the first hour of every Monday to organize your todo list. Turn off instant messenger, close e-mail and silence your phone. You need absolute silence so you can focus.” – Ryan Carson, Think Vitamin.

I really appreciate hearing other people’s ideas on how to stay organized and on top of your To Do list. I don’t know if it’s me being interested in different processes, or having a strange desire to know how others think, or an internal quest to improve the processes in my own life…

Even though they might not all work for me, it’s infinitely interesting to see, hear about, or even try someone else’s process. Who knows, the slightest tweak to your way might be a perfect fit for my lifestyle and workflow. To me, it’s worth a shot to come up with the perfect solution because in a geeky way, it’s a rush to know I’ve got it right…

It occurs to me that this is also what’s appealing about web apps and development. Many apps are a variation of what’s been done before, and those slight adjustments can make all the difference to one user… giving them that same rush of satisfaction.

Invigorating, isn’t it?

A Lucid Revelation.

Kristin 01/26/10
Paste


A lot of conversation about modal editing recently brought our studio to a very simple conclusion- one that seemed undeniable the second we arrived at it.


The consequence of any action must be near the action itself to prevent confusion.

For example, when I’m in “Preview”, and I want to make a simple edit to an image, I click “Annotate”, but I don’t immediately see the result. That’s because it happened away from where I clicked, which is not what I expected. I have to search for it, which is frustrating.

Instead of popping up somewhere near the annotate button, a tool bar drops down from the bottom of the preview screen, which depending on how big your Preview window is, isn’t always readily visible.

This threw me off just enough to make me realize that other people probably have the same frustration/hesitation. It’s something many people take for granted and expect out of the apps they use- usability based on expectations.

It seems too simple to have to put into words, but I’m going to do it anyway. For every action, there should be a nearby reaction.

Overcoming the Guilt of Quitting.

Don’t be a quitter is ingrained in us from very early on in our lives. Quitters are lazy. Quitters are something to be pitied or even despised.

I quit lots of stuff. There. I said it here in public, and not because I need pity. I’m proud of quitting- and I think more people need to give themselves the permission to guiltlessly quit things.

It used to be that every time I quit something, I felt like I failed a little. Like I left some incomplete portion of my brain behind. I became reluctant to start new things because I worried I wouldn’t finish them. Keep Reading

Alternative Ways to Price Your Web App.

Paste Interactive 01/19/10
Paste

There are lots of ways to go about pricing your web application, and there may not be a single right answer for any single app. When considering pricing, it’s important to evaluate all the options. Here are a few less traditional methods we’ve been discussing.

Charge once.
Great for building momentum. Great for quick revenue. Maybe not so great for long term earnings.

Advertise within your app.
We’ll see more and more advertising fueled apps. It can work if done well.

More customers = higher pricing.
The more customers you get, the more you charge. Have to start really low… Pinboard does it. Keep Reading

Paste Interactive is a small app studio that makes cool, smart tools to help next generation workers work better, simpler, and faster.
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