According to Apple, MobileMe is launching on July 9th Between 6pm-12am PT, just few hours away now. 
Apple describes MobileMe as a suite of web-based applications (Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, and iDisk) and Push sync services.
As I said in Is MobileMe Innovative?, Apple is approaching their massive consumer base with the message of Easy-to-use, elegant interface and desktop look-n-feel. As an application deverloper, I am interested in MobileMe’s perfermance behind the SproutCore javascript platform, and I am going to do some simple tests, including:
- I will test the speed of the iDisk with some large files. (Reason: To see if it gives me the desktop look and feel)
- I will test the mail with all basic features and then compare with Gmail’s conversation-style. (Reason: MobileMe and Gmail target the same market)
- I will run MobileMe on IE6 (Reason: According to W3C, 26.5% browsers are IE6, which is not on the supported browsers list of MobileMe)
- I will go throught the javascript to do a brief test about security.
P.S. MobileMe lives at me.com
- Google Trends - search patterns and trends.
- xinureturns - search engines, social bookmarking results aggregation.
- quantcast - Internet ratings
- alexa - traffic and changes
- analytics - keywords / traffic source / visitors and more
- compete - advertisers like reports from compete
- search-directory - categories search tool
I’d like to say a massive thank you to the guys developing these fantastic search engine optimization tools, which make our life much easier.
Matt
It is not hard to write a long list of great ideas. If you are lazy, you can just visit some business startup forum or network sites to steal them. Sitting around your office, sipping latte and looking at the idea list, now what? You probably thinking how the hell you can convert a idea into a product…. It is probably pain in the neck to get it built. But, if you find the right person to do it, you can still get it done without any problem.
And now, you feel released and excited about the beta launch… You are in danger if you think you make a solid step in the direction of making money, seriously. The real battle is just about to start, and the new product is no more than a weapon. Come to think of it this way, any senior web developers like myself can clone an application like ebay, facebook, amazon etc within months, but could any of them make me a millionaire? Not now, and not in a million years.
As time is ticking away after the beta launch, you will loss your enthusiasm and start to doubt about the product. The big question marks will be all around your office - what have I done wrong? Nothing wrong but you didn’t realize the fact that either the idea nor the product itself will make you rich.
9 months back, I was in that situation…. But, I was lucky, I found a great mentor who showed me everything from a new angle, including:
- Think globally from day one
- Understand your competitors as much as you can, including their strengh, weakness and targeted markets
- Ask yourself how are you going to provide the best customer service
- Ask yourself what could be the worst case scenario in terms of markeing approach, and then how you can improve on
- Don’t make assumptions. If you don’t know say I don’t know, and then try to find the answers
Regards,
Matt
If you ask anybody in the software industry to tell you some creative ideas, most of them could give you a big list of ideas fairly easily. However, the ideas themselves won’t bring you any success but the execution of the ideas will. Any failure of delivering ideas is rooted in the bad team design, in another word, you don’t have the right person working on the project at the right time.
If you have all the same team members working on the project during the entire development stage, you are in a dangerous zone for the cost-effective sake. I would like to share my experience of building a good team for web apps:
Development stage of a web app: (Usability and infrastructure)
- 1 full-time Graphic designer (core skills needed: css, html, usability, sense of style)
- 2 full-time Developers (core skills needed: Object-Oriented PHP / AJAX / Javascript / MySQL / server administration)
Close to the end of the development stage: (Start public relationship)
- 1 full-time Developer (core skills needed: OO PHP / AJAX / Javascript / MySQL / Unit test)
- 1 full-time SEO (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
Beta lauch stage: (all about PR)
- 1 full-time SEO focus on public relation articles (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
- 1 part-time SEO focus on blog and forum (core skills needed: professional writing)
- 1 part-time developer for ad hoc functions
Remove beta label: (PR and partnership)
- 1 full-time SEO focus on public relation articles (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
- 1 part-time SEO focus on blog and forum (core skills needed: professional writing)
- 1 part-time developer for ad hoc functions
- 1 partership builder (core skills needed: building partnerships across the web app industry)
I’d be a fool if I thought I knew it all. So, please don’t hesitate to share your ideas with us.
I’ve been doing software developing for 8 years now, and the reason I want to be in this industry is as simple as I love it. So, I enjoy my every single working day, and amazingly I never miss any deadlines for all my 31 projects throughout the 8 years. Early this year, I was promoted to the role of CTO, and then I have to do a lot of management work. To be honest, I really miss the days when I only need to concentrate on coding.
Bizroof platform is the first project I am in charge of after my promotion. We’ve got 8 people working on it full time, including 3 PHP developers, 2 javascript developers, 1 graphic designer, 1content writer and myself (project manager). Initially, I did write a project plan which states deadlines for each phase with time tolerance. Also, we’ve got daily and weekly meetings to help us understand our positions. There is no doubt that all those project management stuff helps to maintain a decent delivery speed. However, it makes most team members focusing on delivery with less creative ideas, and people get bored quite easily. So, I recently stopped using the initial plan and told my team members that they ONLY need to deliver stuff when they are comfortable with it. Also, we measure their performance based on quality rather than quantity.
Project management is all about managing exceptions. In another word, the project manager’s job is to try the best to help others solve their problems and to make your team members enjoy their work, and then your members will build their confidence and ready to contribute.
