I don’t think a blog is the best use of this space, and it’s kind of hard to divide my time between both. I shouldn’t have to try to think about where I want to write about something, so I’m just going to do that all in one place.

If you’re one of the (very few) people that have subscribed here, you may want to consider moving your subscription over.

Aside from the front-end stuff, INDUSTRYimages also wanted a way to keep content on the site up to date easily. Being a print production/creative house, most of the updates they need to make are visual (adding images to the portfolio etc.). Instead of building out some sort of elaborate content management system, I went the simple approach: things like the portfolio just read a folder of images on the server. Adding to/updating the portfolio is as simple as adding/removing images from that folder.

I don’t think that Sarah’s comments are at all out of line. Her post talks specifically about telephone and e-mail support: 37signals has (always) decided not to offer customers telephone support. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Companies have a finite budget to spend on support costs. Is it better to take that and divide it into multiple streams, or is it better to focus it?

The answer is probably “it depends on who you are”. I think that 37signals has made a fine decision here — their software is web-based, so chances are that most (all) of their customers have access to e-mail. On the couple of occasions where I’ve had to contact their support, I have always received a very timely reply from Sarah, Jason, Matt or David about the problem. Contrast this with the phone support that I’ve received from various companies where I’ve had to wait on hold for hours, and still haven’t received a resolution to my problem.

The ultimate goal is to provide fast, accurate answers to customers’ problems. If you have the resources to do that properly through 2 or 10 different channels, that’s great. If you’re only doing a half-assed job in 2 places, can you reduce it and do a stellar job in one place instead?

An unexpected outcome of this, however, may be the creation of entirely different applications integrated closely with 3rd party applications (dependent on them). This has been anticipated by some web applications, and they’ve gone so far as to dub their API “a platform” (Facebook for example). What is the difference between an API and a platform though, and can/should applications be built on top of an API?

Back it up

Everything from project management applications, to online storage, to billing and invoicing applications have exposed themselves through APIs. Google does it with a large number of their products: we’ve seen a proliferation of great data visualization applications become available thanks in large part to the Google Maps API.

Up until now, this exposed access has led to some really great features within applications. You can import your client list from one application into another. You can display a map (or satellite view) of an address stored in your contact list. You can deploy an application on a social network and instantly have access to millions of users that will recommend it to their friends. With the exception of Facebook applications, however, there have been very few products that have taken it from the feature level to the platform level though and built applications that simply could not stand on their own.

Why not?

There’s always that fear that the company providing the original product will simply integrate what you’ve done as a set of new features. Instantly, you become irrelevant. It happens on the desktop all the time — Apple has often been criticized for “stealing” the function of a 3rd party app and simply integrating it into the OS.

There’s also the possibility that the originating company will change the terms of service for their API, and institute some restrictions that cripple 3rd party products. I don’t know the whole story behind FriendConnect and Facebook; but it’s a classic example of what could go wrong when you rely on another company for access to their product. Finally, they could just shut you down altogether with no notice because they don’t like what you’re doing. Unless you’ve got the time/money to get into a legal battle over it, you’re better off just moving on.

The advantages

There are some huge advantages to be gained from building off of an API though. You receive a massive jump start in functionality. In some ways, it’s almost like working with a framework on a massive scale; you don’t have to worry about a lot of application details because they’re dictated to you.

Depending on the company, you may have a massive PR/exposure boost right out of the gates. Some companies communicate with their users about any new developments, either internal or external to the company, that could have a positive impact on the way customers use their product. It’s in their best interest to keep the buzz going about their products.

Depending on the product, there is already a certain established “behavior” with customers. For example, users of various web-based applications will be used to a subscription model, and will be comfortable having applications hosted off-site. They’ll be comfortable actually paying for their applications (if they provide value).

Photoshop Plugins

I like to use the Photoshop plugin analogy here. A lot of companies make a good deal of income off of Photoshop plugins. It’s software that can’t exist without another piece of software (Photoshop) made by a different company (Adobe). Photoshop does a lot, but it doesn’t do everything — so various plugins have been released to fill in those gaps.

A lot of people have said that web apps will eventually replace desktop apps — is this another step forward in that space?

Techcrunch

Techcrunch is well known for their coverage of web startups, web technology, and twitter’s perpetual downtime (couldn’t resist). It’s also fairly well known that they like to have exclusives on stories, and get the inside scoop. They do an excellent job of covering the web community, from “Yet another annoying social network”, to really innovative tools that are aggregating conversations, and breaking down walled gardens. I read them multiple times a day, and this post is in no way meant as a slam against them.

On one hand, Mailmanagr falls into their area of interest. On the other hand, it completely doesn’t.

Mailmanagr is a web-app (well, loosely — it’s more of an e-mail app), but it’s not being built with hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment capital (it would probably be prettier if it was). There isn’t really a Hollywood story behind it, the idea just came from my own personal realization that I’d like to have a product like Basecamp that had mail integration (and then finding out that I’m not alone in the 37signals customer forums).

I built it slowly, started out with a handful of features and about a dozen users and allowed pretty much anyone in on “the beta” that asked to be included. Users were helpful and supportive, and seemed to genuinely appreciate what was shaping up. Growth has been modest since the “official” release of Mailmanagr; I feel good about the numbers, and it appears that people are finding real value in the product.

There’s no glamorous future for Mailmanagr, as well. I’m committed to it, and have some really great ideas for future development (watch the Mailmanagr Blog for latest developments. I’m going to start charging a very modest fee ($5 per month) for some of the advanced features, leaving a free plan for everyone else. I see my prospects for acquisition (not that that was ever a goal here) are nil because Mailmanagr is completely dependent upon a product developed by another company. What I’m hoping is that Mailmanagr becomes a useful tool for Basecamp users everywhere, and that I can make a little revenue from it in order to get it paying for itself.

Getting the word out

But getting the word out is still important to me. My biggest concern is not that the entire tech community become aware of Mailmanagr, but rather that any Basecamp user who has felt the pain of a client that sends everything over e-mail, or any Basecamp user that remembers a todo they need to add for their team when all they have is their cell phone knows about Mailmanagr. I’ve heard from a few people that they loved everything about Basecamp, but wish that it had the e-mail features of Highrise, and as such, had disqualified it from their list of potentials. If I help that segment of people out as well, all the better.

37signals has been amazingly helpful and supportive. They initially announced the idea on their product blog which drove a number of “early adopters” over to Mailmanagr (before it was even Mailmanagr). When I was done with my “version 1″ release, they again blogged about it at their product blog, and ran it prominently in a “summary post” on Signal vs. Noise. I saw great increases in traffic after those posts. I’ve subsequently contacted a couple of other blogs that, as web professional myself, I read regularly. Web Worker Daily today ran a piece about Mailmanagr.

The future

I’m looking for more outlets to evangelize the benefits (and existence) of Mailmanagr. I can’t wait for the newly announced 37signals affiliate program to reach Canada; I’ll be giving away free Mailmanagr (pro) accounts to those who sign up through my referral link.

I have yet to implement a very important feature (to me), payment — that’s going to come hand-in-hand with a major feature that will be available for pro customers; hopefully something else that eases another problem I’ve seen reported by some Basecamp customers. Look for that in the coming weeks.

Aside from that all, I think there’s some really interesting territory being explored here. A number of products already integrate with Basecamp on some level (and with products like Basecamp), but I think there can be a lot more done in the integration space. Simply importing a list of projects of clients is only scratching the surface. I’d like to challenge some of those other products to dig deeper and see if they can’t integrate more fully to improve workflow, centralize information, and generally improve user experience.

I think that Microsoft has lost a great deal of credibility. It used to be that when I’d think of the software giant, I would think that they’re an unstoppable powerhouse. Lately though, I think of them as one failure after another, and that they’re constantly trying to play catch-up with others.

This perception, in turn, has led to having absolutely no trust in them. What I mean here is that if Microsoft released the coolest web 2.0 service tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t bother with it. If they bought Twitter, or Facebook (completely hypothetical here, but I’m not the first one to suggest it), I’d probably stop using them. I don’t know why, and it’s probably irrational to a great degree, but more and more, I find myself wanting to put distance between my computing activities and Microsoft.

When I see those ads for “Sync”, Microsoft’s bluetooth automobile setup, I instantly think of all the jokes that used to float around about if vehicles ran Windows, you would have to pull over and restart your vehicle every couple of hours just to keep driving (it dates back to the lack of protected memory in Windows 95/98).

Have I just become a bigger Apple fan-boy then I ever expected? Anyone else think that MS is having some PR problems? Is there a general perception that Microsoft = Failure?

Big is not so beautiful

Google’s had a few losses to Facebook over the past few months. Why on earth would that happen to a company that’s been rated best company to work for by Fortune magazine (for several years running)? Google offers it’s employees perks that most of us can only dream about.

“Entrepreneurs want to work at the hottest place on earth…” is a quote from one Google employee. But why? Don’t people like security? It’s not likely that Facebook is a “risky” place to work, but they certainly aren’t profitable, and burning through piles of investment money just isn’t a sustainable model. Google is a far “safer” bet for the money.

Do people really like safety though, or are they willing to sacrifice safety in order to get something more; something like importance?

People like to make a difference

People need to feel needed, and they like to feel important. Job satisfaction comes out of feeling like you’re making a difference: be it on a global scale, or just for the company you work for. If you stopped being there, would anybody notice? Are there enough layers of cruft (also known as middle management) piled on top of you that nobody nobody can see you?

When companies reach a certain size, more time needs to be spent communicating within the company and ensuring that the right people are working on the right things. I think that this level of overhead just continues to grow as more people are added, eventually, pretty much grinding things to a halt. You eventually hit a point where everyone is spending so much time managing and communicating that it’s a major achievement just to have something to manage and communicate.

I’ve seen this happen at places where I’ve worked. As departments grow, all of a sudden one person can’t keep a handle on everyone else. A hierarchy develops and everyone has to spend time communicating and clarifying and reporting. Basically, everyone becomes a manager, with less and less to manage.

What’s the answer?

One approach is to take the 37signals stance and stay small. Only grow when you absolutely have to. I’m really curious to see where this position goes as 37signals continues to release products and has to continue to grow the team. I think they’re managing to delay the onset of organizational paralysis, by only adding people when they have to, but if they continue to do more, they will inevitably grow. What will 37signals be like when they have 50 people? 100 people? They’re a smart group, so I’m sure they’ve given it thought, and will be ready when the time comes. They may be an interesting company to keep an eye on, because of their slow growth, we’ll be able to identify when that paralysis point hits (if it hits).

That doesn’t help those places that are already big though. Could Google scale back it’s operations? Probably. In any large organization, there are people that aren’t really all that effective. I can’t for the life of me find the quote, but I once read that one CEO decided that when someone leaves, they wouldn’t replace them immediately and they would see how things operated without that position. Honestly though, the could never shrink back to the size where every employee would kick ass.

If there’s a large company out there willing to get experimental, let me know. I would love to know if what I’m about to propose would, in fact, make a difference.

It seems to me that companies used to divide a lot, and in some places still do. Why is it that an oil and gas company can recognize a clear separation in it’s business and split into two distinct companies; and yet a technology company like Microsoft, keeps rolling unrelated businesses together under the same umbrella? Related, what’s with this attitude of technology companies that they have to be everything to everyone? Microsoft excels in operating systems and office software (and to some degree) hardware and they’re just not positioned to become a serious player in online search, advertising or even online applications. I don’t need a Microsoft-powered car, nor do I want to wear MS branded shoes. Stick to what you (were) good at, and spend your resources recovering from the steaming pile of crap that is Vista.

But would splitting a big company into smaller ones help to reverse innovation paralysis? Even if you don’t want to split up a company, in order to be able to move employees around (for example), would subdividing into AUTONOMOUS units help the situation? I think the trick, no matter what you do, is to make each company/unit hungry and in control of their own destiny. Simply paying lip service to it is not enough.

I worked for a department within a university for a number of years. When that department first started, we kicked ass. We had to, we worked on an entirely cost-recovery basis (we were a separate business running within the University, charging for our services). The only thing that the university provided to us was space and access to their infrastructure (we didn’t need to create our own payroll system as an example). We did have to cover all of the cost of each of our employees as well as buy any hardware/software we needed. Gradually, as we began to show that there was a demand for our services (and we billed other departments directly enough that they complained to admin about us), we became more and more funded by the institution. It started out as a couple of positions, then it was a core team. Then it was a hardware and software budget. Then it was a training budget. The point is, that this department became just another department at the university, and I think it changed. There was less hunger and less drive to do everything faster and better. People started to burn out once they recognized that they didn’t have to stay on their toes constantly. Paralysis STARTED to set in. I left before it became just another bureaucratic machine, and it may never become that. It wasn’t the atmosphere of the early days though.

Splits in technology

There is a classic example of this at work, and the results, unfortunately aren’t very promising. Palm the makers of handhelds split into Palm Inc. and Palmsource with Palm continuing work on hardware and Palmsource focussing on the Palm operating system. Unfortunately I don’t think that the result was that great. There’s too many factors at work to know whether the split is a cause of Palm’s decline, or just an unrelated factor.

Dangers

Getting back to the conversation that sparked this post, my good friend raised a very good point: this approach can be dangerous if all of the top performers congregate in one company, and all of the under-performers form the other. I think that the answer here is that any split needs to be tightly managed. It could be that with the split, certain employees need to leave, and new individuals brought in. I don’t think that one team needs to be weakened in order to “prop up” another team, but rather these need to be treated as distinct (smaller) companies, that should have the best people working for them.

A while back, I developed a “Dashboard” for myself to give me answers to some common questions I regularly ask. Here’s a snapshot taken late in the month of April.

The main feature of this display is the bar chart (although the most important feature for me is the “x days left in the month” displayed at the top). The bar chart shows billing progress throughout the month; so as I log more billable hours, the grey area grows and the white area shrinks. I’ve defined two “modes”: “survival mode” which is the number of hours I need to bill in a month in order to ensure that my expenses are covered, and “growth mode”, essentially anything above survival mode that gets banked and can be invested in other areas of the business.

If you scrutinize this chart, you’ll notice that with 4 days left, I’ve still got about 3 hours left to bill in “survival mode” (which I’ll quite easily make). That’s actually not that big a deal; April isn’t going to be a huge growth month for me — the large plateau area in the middle of the month was time I spent writing and working on other projects. The figures under the headings “Other Projects” and “MGIH” aren’t quite accurate; I’m still trying to get into the mindset of logging ALL of my working hours, and so I missed a bunch.

But that’s really only looking at the trees in the forest. I need to be able to see how I’m doing over the course of the year. Directly below this section, I’ve got a “sticker chart” which gives me a quick view of how things are going. The majority of the months are filled with grey boxes because I have no time-tracking data for them. The check-mark from last month indicated that I achieved “Survival status”. The “pie chart” from this month popped up when I hit the half-way point on billable hours. I’ve got a different “sticker” for significantly exceeding “survival mode” — but I haven’t seen that in the past two months (hopefully soon!).

My dashboard is web-based, but I run it in it’s own Fluid browser so that I keep it open 90% of the time. In the near future, I’m planning on integrating it into my Basecamp account through the API — maybe having it post weekly “snapshots” so that I can look back and see historical progress. I haven’t quite thought that part through entirely yet.

Update: Yeah, I did just fine this month. Final graph:

I opted to go for a separate Twitter account because there are some people who are specifically interested in Mailmanagr, and probably don’t want to be bothered with the other aspects of my life. Hey, I can understand that, new blog posts with pictures of my kids just aren’t interesting to everyone.

I’ve posted a couple of questions there as well as a couple of calls for help. If you’re feeling generous, and want to help out with development, stop by and give it a read.

Oh yeah, because it’s Google. They’re special.

I like Google, don’t get me wrong. I think they’re a great company, and they certainly get all of my search traffic, but I’m far from being a Google fan-boy. Yet, I felt a little excitement about this announcement too. Why is that?

I wondered a while back whether Google has hit that point (size) where new product releases are a long, painful and entirely too complicated process. It seems that innovation has slowed — it doesn’t seem like we’re getting a fast and frenzied stream of new products/features out of Google anymore. Have they become the next Microsoft, where there’s so much bureaucracy that everything is bogged down?

I don’t know. I don’t even know anyone who works as a janitor for Google, let alone someone who works on any of their applications. I do know that a bunch of reasonably high-profile Google employees have jumped ship recently; is it because they’re sick of having innovation crawl at a snail’s pace?

At the same time, I like to think that Google hasn’t become THAT COMPANY that just can’t produce anymore. So I still get excited when something is announced. I’m a little disappointed that all of their products/services seem to be a “me too” lately (c’mon Google App Engine is just a Google-branded version of Amazon S3/EC2). I hope that if the rumours of a Google Task Manager are true, that it brings something new to the table. I can’t for the life of me think or, or suggest what that might be, but I don’t really think the web needs another Ajax-powered to do list, do you?