What we are being offered more and more is smart phones and a dumb Internet, when what we want is smart communications across devices and across services and sites on the simplest and most convenient devices we can get.  Is it so wrong to believe that our communications, our social messaging, and our relationships should be able to follow us around and not be ruled over by one headless monster or another?

The fact is that too many people want to control us and want to own our contacts, relationships, message streams, and our data.  We’re told we should share more and that it’s for our own benefit and we are willfully, against our wishes, opted in for things any sane person would opt out of. Even worse we’re either charged a line-item toll for each different services we use or told that we can have everything for free as long as we ’share’ our data and our communications with our benefactors. It’s not paranoia. It’s common sense. Stop telling us what’s good for us and give us back control over our own data.  Share with us what you have about us, rather than keeping it in a walled garden and not telling us what you are doing with it.

Everything the major data and communications services have about us could be shared with us, just like our credit reports, but there is no similar regulation or even interest in providing that sort of knowledge or personal control to us.  The business models of those we willingly or unwillingly share our data with are based on using our data to make money. What is also frustrating is that communications standards exist, for email, text messaging, or chat, for example, but not application development and deployment standards across platforms and devices. As a developer it is a real hassle to develop essentially the same application for every different platform, but despite some very good intentions across most of the industry, that is not going to go away in time to help us simplify our lives.  We are going to have to continue to live with incompatible applications on our different platforms.  That’s what is taking us time at Rocket Technology Labs to get our Beta on the street. Since everyone loves to build their own walled gardens, we’re stuck doing the heavy lifting because we do not think that users ought to suffer just because a bunch of self-interested companies insist that their OS or platform or service or format or website is sacrosanct or that they ought to rule the world.

We want to offer you the glue to hold your data together and control it, to manage who can and cannot reach you at any point in time, and to maintain your privacy. We’re not antisocial; we’re the next generation of social – social messaging we each get to control and define on our own terms.  Some of us are public, some of us are private, some things we will freely share, some with some of our friends, and some with only a few, and some with no one. At Rocket Technology Labs we defend the right to free speech but also to privacy. That take’s guts and that’s cool!

As we build out our product, we try to keep our head down, but perhaps sometimes too much. To paraphrase ZDNet, ‘Where are those guys?’ Our only answer is that we’re working away in obscurity, by choice, trying to build out a revolution.  To that end we always get told to, ‘just hack something together and get it out there!’  Ah, if only…

It’s semantics…

The words ‘hacker,’ ‘hacking,’ and ‘hackathon’ have always been difficult for us to deal with.  We come from a different school of thought and intent.  What we want to build is real software that solves a real need that really scales and has real security and real dependability.  We’re a startup with a product set that we think users will want and we want to be able to deliver an experience to them in a very complicated technology space that will simplify their lives and save them time. We’re also doing this on our own dime, so that extends our timeline and delays our production product deliverable. We’ve talked with our friends in the venture capital and angel investment communities and they (seem) to like what we are doing, but also think that we’ll get run over in the process by the 800 pound guerillas in this market.  Maybe so…?

That word ‘guerilla’ is also trouble, because we’re the guerillas in the revolutionary sense, not the 800-pound players who currently dominate the Tech Top 10.  This is an industry ripe at every turn for disruption and as each guerilla gets entrenched and joins the 800 pound club, other guerillas like Rocket Technology Labs are out there fomenting a new approach.  The opportunity persists because the 800-pound players, even if they get it, are often too encumbered to throw out their sacred code roots and start again.  They also lose a little of that skateboard ’street’ feel and get a little too much Wall Street in their thought processes.

So yes, they might crush us if we’re not careful, but meanwhile we’ll build the best set of products and tools to give them heartburn and scatter some marbles under their feet.  Troublemakers, in the end, are what we are.

]]> http://rocketvox.com/2010/04/26/hackers/%/feed 0 http://rocketvox.com/2009/10/23/getting-a-beta-launched-and-keeping-it-flying/% http://rocketvox.com/2009/10/23/getting-a-beta-launched-and-keeping-it-flying/%#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:48:24 +0000 jothmeister http://rocketvox.com/?p=628

I don’t know who invented software, but sometimes I want to take them out back and wring their neck. The problem is that it always takes longer to build good software than you planned. And while it has gotten immeasurably easier over the years when we try to innovate we still find ourselves out on the bleeding edge and confronting our own demons.

The demons those of us on the design, marketing, and development teams at Rocket Technology Labs face is that we are perfectionists, and in software that makes you your own worst enemy. Sometimes, however, it’s better just to face your demons and make a deal with them.

The deal we’ve struck with our own demons is to delay the release of our beta version of Rocketvox until we have a few more cool features embedded and can get a little closer to the unreachable quality we want. We’re past the painful decisions about what cool features not to include – that’s the first hurdle every one of us in this industry faces when we set deadlines and try to meet them. We’re now finishing the few things we’ve collectively decided we can’t leave out of Rocketvox Beta, and so our deadline has slipped.

What we are trying to do is both redesign and simplify the way we manage our communications and we want to have enough functionality in our beta to demonstrate where we’re going. Our focus is on making all communications from real-time to static accessible and manageable through a common user experience across devices. This means Twitter and status update streams as well as email, text messaging (SMS), chat (IM), voice, voicemail, and even fax.

Our goal is to make all of these communications channels tunable and uniformly available whether we are at our computer or mobile. It’s a big task and there are any number of bigger companies with far more resources than our little one chasing this holy grail. That’s where our technical approach comes in. We think we can and are doing this better, more powerfully, and making the experience simpler and more comprehensive for the user than our competitors. Doing it right and testing it takes time, and our eagerness to get our beta out is now balanced by our need to get it to where we’ve drawn our line in the sand.

What’s still on our plate is final integration of simplified social network messaging, some email and user interface brush up, and finishing and testing our voice network registration processing.

We will get the Beta into your hands very soon. In the meantime help us keep those software demons occupied elsewhere. Ask them to go bug someone with more money and resources than we have – tell them they’ll have more fun causing trouble at Google or Microsoft. In the meantime, we’re dealing with them here and are almost finished. We think you’ll like what we are working on!

There are speculations that Facebook “Lite” was constructed to compete directly with Twitter. The reason for this may be that the interface of Twitter is more simple and easier to manage than Facebook’s. Facebook can be complex and congested at times, especially with increased content on News Feeds and advertising. When initially logging onto your homepage you are immediately bombarded by your news feed, suggestions, sponsors, and highlights. This Facebook “Lite” version migrates towards what people are looking for which is overall functionality that is simplified. The goal of these tools it so make our lives easier, not more complicated, right?

The simplification and integration of the tools that are used on a daily basis to communicate has become a trend. Take for instance, TweekDeck, which is a free download that provides users with a single platform to tweet directly from multiple accounts, create and personalize groups to follow, and update Facebook status. Alongside TweetDeck a new web-based application, TweetFunnel, has recently been introduced which labels users as administrators, publishers, and contributors while providing them the ability to update multiple Twitter accounts using Bit.ly, schedule, monitor and assign the posting of Tweets from within the platform. Seesmic, which started out as a short video sharing service, is also vying for the spotlight by now allowing users to access and manage Facebook Pages. Users can view and post feeds from any page that they are fans of as well as manage their own.

There is a need for a single platform that allows users the ease of filtering through what is important to them without feeling overwhelmed because people today are looking for a more efficient way to stay organized while maintaining the ability to stay up to date with everything that is current. All of these new applications are combining what people use the most because it is more efficient for them to go to one place to be able to connect to more while getting less aggravated with all of the clutter.

 The people at Zenbe have created a platform called Shareflow as a way to follow a group project, without the messiness of group e-mailing. The initiative to unify a group of people via real-time message boards is a movement toward simplification much needed by professionals with constant e-mail clutter. This application intends to increase productivity, and reduce the amount of mental context-switching you have to do while processing your e-mail.

Shareflow differs from ordinary e-mail because you can manually forward your existing e-mails into it and they become part of the conversation. Not only can your e-mail be added to a flow, but you can also add in text comments, charts, files of any size, and events.  Once participants enter the flow they are able to respond just like an instant message. 

While trying to centralize e-mail, the application unfortunately adds to the mess of multiple inboxes. Shareflow does not eliminate the need for an email inbox; it only provides an extension for collaboration. Busy business professionals need an integration tool to unify all forms of communication in one location. Shareflow is on the right path, but we need a more simplistic way of communicating considering the recent boom of social media and multiple inboxes.

Real-time dialogue is fueling connections and perceptions in the statusphere, blogopsphere, online communities, and the social web in general. This chatter will only intensify and increase as it forces a new kind of Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM). 

Before the boom of social media, to comment on online content an individual would go directly to the source to post their response. Now, comments at the source are competing against comments in other online communities. Instead of formally responding with a blog post, many people now choose to respond with a tweet or a status update. One blog post can spark a widespread response in the respective communities where someone chooses to RT, favorite, like, comment, or share. These options decrease the possible success for attentive SCRM, and increase the need for a unified communication platform.

Keeping your loyal followers happy with timely responses and answers can be a crucial part of a relationship. They are the people who contribute to your brand essence. However, a timely response can be even more valuable for negative feedback. Damage control is a vital brand management tool that can be utilized fully when tweets and comments are centralized in one inbox. With a single home base for all forms of communication, success will be in the hands of the brand, and not strewn across the social web abyss.

I already had three email accounts and a few chat accounts to have quick interactions with people I work closely with. Joining a multi-national company added another email account to the mix. They use Microsoft Exchange as a mail client, presumably because they are big and find it difficult to adjust to new, better applications.

I also use an iPhone and since Apple assumed no one using an iPhone would work for a company so archaic they use something as old as Exchange 2000, the software is not compatible. So I can’t get my work email on my iPhone. 

I also try to keep my corporate and personal lives separate and use two laptops. On my personal Mac laptop I have iCal as my master calendar. And on my work Mac laptop, to talk to Exchange, I have to run Entourage. The plan was that built-in Microsoft Sync Services is supposed to synchronize my Entourage calendar and address book with the Apple equivalents. Alas, I quickly discovered that Microsoft’s sync services are broken beyond repair. There went Plan B.

Plan C, MobileMe, was foiled because my corporate network blocks access to the MobileMe site. Don’t ask me why. Corporate IT also blocks all instant messenger clients so if I want to keep in touch with people through chat I have to set up my personal laptop (next to my work computer) with the work-provided cell-phone network card. If I want to see my personal email accounts I can do that on that same personal machine.

So I have to use two different client applications to see email.

I have to manually double enter all appointments if I want to keep a single master calendar of work and personal appointments. I have to run a separate laptop with a cell phone connect card to use any instant message clients. Yet another client (the browser) has to be used to see messages in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Work wanted me to get a second work-only phone. I refused on grounds that I’ll develop a back problem from carrying around so much hardware.

The frightening thing is that my story is not unusual. Many people that work for large companies face exactly the same things.

This is not progress. We can do better.

In a recent article by Silicon Alley Insider, Nicholas Carlson stated that Twitter has over 11,000 registered applications, siting a tweet by Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Many of these apps are in development and not yet available but this is still a significant number. There are reportedly 52,000 apps built just for Facebook. And these apps aren’t going unused; according to Facebook.com statistics, every month 70% of all Facebook users engage with applications developed on its platform. 

Developers are motivated to create apps by shortfalls of a platform’s native features. The “wisdom of the crowd” is, after all, much greater than that of a single team of developers. The add-on features developed on APIs create a more holistic service offering but why are we trying to make these original platforms something more powerful than they are? 

It seems as though we are collectively reaching for an interface that can do everything we want it to. There is no longer a sustained awe or simply contentment after most new platforms are released. Software releases follow a slight variation of this pattern: Anticipation, Excitement, Frenzy (at the moment of release), Skepticism, Disappointment, Development, Growth. Of course there are always outliers, but, what does this pattern tell us about what we’re looking for in our digital lives? There’s no answer to that question because we each want something different. The issue is that the average user isn’t fluent in programming language. Someone needs to do for APIs what WordPress and Tumblr have done for blogging: a platform that translates code into something the average user can understand and manipulate. Then everyone can turn platforms like Facebook and Twitter into the applications of their dreams.

One of the biggest implications is that users will not have to load their smart phones with individual apps because Pageonce has the ability to keep track of travel, finance, social, utilities, e-mail, Netflix, and shopping information from one platform. Screen shots on the Pageonce website show applications for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The interface seems easy to navigate, an important quality when offering to simplify users’ lives: http://bit.ly/3UhYr. Alas, Pageonce is not relying on an advertising model for revenue. Instead, the price that users pay will depend on their service provider and usage.

Pageonce is a timely offering because as people become more mobile they also become more reliant upon web-based services that require individual accounts. The creators of Pageonce clearly understand that people are searching for simplicity in their digital lives; one place that will give them control over all their interactions with the promise of security.

As electronic communication behavior gets increasingly complex, so does the desire for a unified platform. Take the Google suite as an example; the ever-popular apps enable you to conduct your life within a Google browser window. This is a valuable service but it also means that all of your correspondence, scheduling, documents and contacts are housed on one company’s servers. As we begin to unify our online lives and entrust “the aggregators” with increasingly more personal information, it is important, as consumers to be aware of the protection offered by the gate keepers. One questions we must ask ourselves is, Does the steward of our data have anything to gain from that information?

The emergence of the universal inbox poses a new set of security challenges. If we are consolidating all communication (email, chat, text, voice, social networking, etc) into one place rather than distributing with a number of sites, the measures the company hosting personal information takes to protect that digital gold becomes increasingly important.