MPS Blog

 

We have released Organize v1.0!!!!!

 

It has been a long road to get here, but we're finally here - We have officially launched.  There were a few delays in February since some new additions to our families slowed things down for a few weeks, but we finally shipped!

 

A huge THANK-YOU to all the people who signed up as Beta Testers, and helped us refine our product.  Of course, the process of testing and upgrading Organize will continue on a permanent basis, so we still need your input and value your contributions.  Producing bi-weekly builds has proven to be a problematic, so we will probably scale that back to a monthly build for the beta testers going forward.

 

The Present:

- the website is up and running - people have been purchasing the beta versions and v1.0 with no problems.

- the web servers have been running for the last 2 months with only 8 hours downtime/month.  This is great, but there's still some work to do there.

- the product is out - early feedback is what we were expecting:  Solid, but needs more functionality.  Going forward, we will need to constantly add features and tweak the UI to user's preferences.

- We are still seeking more angel investors (and/or VC's).  We're still not self sufficient, but hope to be by 4th quarter '08.

 

The Future:

So we are now starting the version 1.x wave.  I'm hoping this will take us through 2008 and into 2009.  The key initiative here is to build upon the basic architecture in version 1.0 with the focus on simply adding features.  Probably more functionality and refinement.  The next wave (v2.x and beyond) will probably incorporate more interoperability and compatibility for other platforms.  Time will tell.

 

That's all - thanks to everyone for their contributions!

 

- Bill

 

 

 

We have released Organize v0.2.

 

We have also taken the website's financial transaction componant out of test mode.

 

This means that it is now possible to download the product from the website, install it, purchase it, and activate it.  The operational phase of this company has begun. 

 

To kick off this next phase of our operation, we're sending out a mass-email to the several dozen people we know, inviting them to become Beta Testers.  Basically, we want people to visit the website, download the product, and use it - and all the while, give us some clear feedback about what sucks, what's doesn't work, and what could be better.   The role of the Beta testers is to evaluate the entire end-to-end customer experience - that means the product, the website, the purchasing process, the activation process, the customer care expereince, everything.  We're hoping to start out with a small group of Beta testers (about a dozen or so), and release bi-weekly builds over the next couple of months, while gradually increasing the number of Beta testers up to when v1.0 is released in 2008.

 

We've also decided on a policy of ensuring that the challenge/response way of activating the product will not change during the Beta program, and hopefully will even continue into v1.x.   This means that anyone who purchases the product during the Beta phase will not have to jump through hoops to reactivate it if they download a newer version - it will just work.  Although the code may change, the purchase process will stay the same.

 

- Bill

 

 

 

The website is online and working!  The e-commerce transaction-processing works, and has been tested successfully several times.  We have a backup Web Server installed now too, so there is some redundancy to the system, and this should result in minimal downtime for the site.

 

The product is also available for download now too for the first time - we've posted version 0.1 on the website.  Due to the amount of work required in getting the website online, we've had to push back our ETA of v0.2 for a couple of weeks.  However, the key thing is that we have *something* online for people to download, install, and beta test.

We're also going to send out a small announcement requesting that people check out the website and give us feedback on both the website AND the product.  I'm very congnisant that getting a first-impression is nearly impossible when you've been working with something for a very long time, so we'll need to make sure we're not missing anything blindingly obvious.

 

Next step:  Get some beta testers, and release Organize v0.2

 

- Bill

 

 

 

Well, we've finally finished the first beta version of Organize.  It is version 0.1 and all the basic functionality is there. 

The beta works, with the exception of a bug that crashes the application when you click on a nested form.  There are obviously more issues with it, and it is clumsy and unintuitive in places, but it is possible to run the application in a production environment - this was our goal.

 

As far as avilability is concerned, v0.1 is an internal beta.  We've deceided the following:  The e-commerce functionality of the website is expected to be completed and tested this week.  As soon as the website is fully functional, we will make a build available online as a public beta.  This will most likely mean v0.1 - however, we will post the latest build (if 0.2 is available by that time).

 

Next milestone:  Version 0.2 - we're hard at work on this - it will fix the 5 known issues with v0.1, and include a slew of UI tweaks and usability improvements.  Our ETA on that is November 26th.

 

- Bill

 

 

 

We've had some trouble with our ISP - they couldn't handle what we required for an active e-commerce site.  The only scripting languages they supported were ancient, and they didn't support any database functionality!  Can you believe that?  Anyway, we've had to launch our own Web Server to host our website, and the server is up and running right now in our basement!  I transferred everything over to our server, and everything is working fine so far.  In the upcoming weeks I'll be upgrading the hardware so it can handle more connections.  The Beta version of the e-commerce site should be up any day now. 

 

On the product front, the Organize public beta is still not ready, but once again, it should be finished any day now.

 

We're shooting for November 15th to having a fully-functional website with a public beta of the product.  That's two weeks behind the original schedule, but it's not too much of a setback.

 

- Bill