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.

As Cassini neared Enceladus for it’s second trip, nearby a faint glow was picked up around the moon. Just 310 miles in diameter, this moon is barely a chunk of rock in cosmic terms, but Enceladus clearly had an atmosphere. What’s more, it’s irregular halo clearly showed something more exciting. Something called cryovolcanism, which is essentially ice-spewing volcanoes. Amazing.

By analyzing the light given off by the halo around the moon, its effect on nearby Saturn’s rings, and it’s pockmarked surface, scientists were able to say with near certainty that the tiny moon had a salty sea beneath all that ice and rock.

It’s a seemingly minor finding, but in terrestrial terms, literally every time we find liquid water on the Earth there is some sort of living eco-system thriving within. Always.

So here we have a hopeful expedition, a collaboration of many minds, and many goals. Countless thousands of things could go wrong; many did. Despite the odds, the cost, and the time elapsed, real discovery happened that moved humanity forward.

I don’t believe you can calculate its worth in dollars. At least not today. But I don’t believe anyone rational would discount the worth of the eye-widening endeavor.

Sometimes we don’t know where a journey is going to lead. Often times (every time?) we need to set aside our ego, and turn our focus toward curiosity and wonder. What if? It may seem grandiose to compare an oil change web app to astrophysics and rocket science.

I suspect the analogy is more accurate than we realize. Somewhere in NASA, someone is designing a piece of a latch that goes on an instrument that goes on a satellite that fits in a rocket that hundreds of people have slaved over for years. Some day that latch needs to do its job, making sure that snap happens at the right time so the little lens can see that brilliant corona that lets us understand the tiny moon floating in the dusty ring around the huge planet that just might contain a few living microbes that are the very first discovered outside of our home planet Earth.

I think the problem with discovery is that it’s nearly purposeless in its beginning. But I don’t think you can discount it because of that. That tiny web app may never make you rich, it may never improve more than a few people’s lives, but it was your job to follow your curiosity and make it happen. There are many greater things than monetary reward in this short life, on this tiny planet. We all owe it to ourselves, and each other to put aside our egos, and do our small part to make the big picture move forward.

If you want more on science and inspiration, follow this article up with this video.

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.

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.

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?

Of course, I paid toward the order being taken behind me, to keep the kindness going.

Then, this morning, we received an e-mail telling us how great Jumpchart is, and that they recommend it to everyone they can. Their excited tone came through loud and clear, even in an e-mail.

I’m once again compelled to keep the kindness going. I’m reminding everyone to take some time today to tell someone whose product you use why you find it useful. Feedback of any kind does wonders to improve a project, and letting the creators know you care enough to send an e-mail says “Thank You” even louder.

It’s contagious, and it’s part of what sets our industry apart from others. We help each other through beta tests, we give each other feedback on projects, we learn from each other daily. We’re proud of creating a tight community of designers, developers, and ideas.

So pay it forward, keep our community strong, and don’t piss on the seat.

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.

Our core values revolve around eliminating the things that might distract you from what you’re really trying to do. With Jumpchart, you get to focus on architecture and content. With Staction, you get to focus on communicating quickly and succinctly while staying organized. With Paprika… well, stay tuned (Or be one of our beta users!).

We love hearing from our users. We learn a lot from the feature requests we get, and take each and every one of them into consideration for future updates. But at our core, we’re willing to hold off adding extra features to save compromising the simplicity we’ve built our apps around.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The important caveat to this is that you have to try long enough and hard enough so you can be honest with yourself about your reasons for quitting. You can’t quit because it’s hard. You can’t quit because it gets boring. But if, with effort and time, you can honestly say there’s no joy in it… Quit.

The thing about the “fear of quitting” is that it also leads to “fear of starting”- and starting is the most important thing. In order to see if something is worthwhile or rewarding you have to give it a shot. Not just a tentative fleeting try, but an earnest, honest try.

As a proud quitter I’ve recently and guiltlessly:

• Quit three books midway through, and then skimmed the last pages and index.
• Abandoned plans for two new web apps.
• Stopped two video games after nearly five hours into each.

I’ve also kept doing (and finished) more things than are worth listing here. But I abandoned these former commitments because I wasn’t getting enough out of them. I have opened up time, and mental capacity for new things to start. I might quit those things, too… But broadening my experience and maximizing my time towards the things which are most rewarding surely can’t be a bad thing.

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.

More customers =  lower pricing.
On the flip side, the more users you have, the more money you’re making, and more money helps to take care of other costs (like hosting).

Charge based on a granular sliding scale.
A sliding scale is a cost based on your customers’ ability to pay. Usually apps have predefined tiers- but do they have to?

Pay What You Think it’s Worth.
Lots of restaurants swear by it. Desktop software has embraced it for ages. Why not web apps?

Give power through participation.
There’s a site called stackoverflow.com, and it nicely demonstrates just how cool this can be.

Whatever works
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with your pricing, – but it’s important to think about which option fits best. Before you commit to “big,” “bigger,” “biggest” pricing plans, – at least take a few minutes to think if it’s really the best way to price your app.