You’ve probably heard, but the people at TechCrunch had a dream squandered. Their project, the CrunchPad was ripped apart and used as confetti two days before it was supposed to launch. Can you imagine? They spent almost a year and a half on this, and had it swept from under their feet.

Hearing this made me stop and think about the emotional process of building a brand new app. Your heart and soul goes into it; you put your time, talent and brainpower into making this thing work. Endless conversations about how to keep it simple, efficient, powerful, and extremely useful get you more excited by the day. Even though you may have developed an app before, you still find yourself learning something new with every turn of the project. Keep Reading

Of all the things to worry about, the name of an app is probably most agonized over. And rightly so. It’s the first, and last impression. The reason the app sticks, or doesn’t. A great app with an awful name has two strikes against it before it even approaches the plate.

A really great name is essential to a great app- but you don’t need to wait on development to find the perfect name. When we begin a new app, we pick a code name. Something we can call it. Something friendly, and neat. 

We try not to burden the codename too much with being perfect, we just pick one of the best of our first ideas that seems acceptable. Keep Reading

When we launched Jumpchart, it wasn’t to resounding applause. We didn’t max out a server 25 minutes after throwing the switch. We didn’t watch gleefully as money gushed into our bank accounts. When we turned on the homepage very little happened.

When we sent out the launch email we got a little traffic. When we sent out notifications to the few bloggers we had made contact with during dev, we got a little traffic. When we sent out our quasi-press release to a few websites, the ones that covered the launch sent us a bit of traffic. When the slight arch created in Analytics was over, we were back down to nearly zero. Keep Reading

We’ve entered the planning phases of a brand new app. It’s something we, of course, can’t tell you the specifics of for several reasons:

...We don’t know them ourselves.
...They’ll probably change a lot before we’re done.
...After exploring, we might decide not to finish the project due to several reasons.
...It’s a competitive advantage to be somewhat secretive when building niche apps.
...Keeping things a secret builds interest, and makes the whole thing more fun.

Still, keeping everything secretive goes against our nature. We love to share, and we love to help the community. As an experiment, we’re going to share some of the growing pains we’re experiencing as we plan, sweat and think about this new app. Keep Reading

Last week we announced the all new Staction AIR app. It was the first of many apps that we hope are built by us, and others using the Staction API.

Today we’re excited all over again to announce the Staction widget for the Mac OSX Dashboard.

Learn more about the new widget, and download it here.

WIRED Magazine recently published an article in their print edition about daydreaming being a more productive activity than most people think. It got us thinking about what we daydream of, and we can’t help but agree that a little mind-wander here and there isn’t a bad thing. The problem is not having a way of tracking where your mind goes, prohibiting you from turning those thoughts into something useful.

“For years, brain scientists viewed a wandering mind as merely a lapse in cognition. But recent studies have found that we lose concentration shockingly often. Keep Reading

If you’re reading this, you just might be one of a few dudes in a room working on something similar to what we built. Or a few ladies in a room, or pick your combo. No matter, if you’re one of the readers of this blog who is also working on putting out a web app, then you know this feeling: You work, work, work, and then you wonder what to do…

Our business is a weird business. In many ways it’s like other product-focused industries- but it’s different. When other product companies send a product to manufacturing, there is a gap. A time between the original products, revisions, and next products.

In the web app industry there is no such gap. No such cycle to give us cues on how to live, or work. As soon as you’re done, tweaking begins, then you find it hard to draw a line between tweaking, and adding. You’re never done. 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…

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

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