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.

So, you have a cool idea and a prototype you’ve built to show off the idea. It’s time to build the company you have dreamed of. You’ve gone as far as you can on your savings and need to find an investor as you are ready to build a team, a product, and launch the company.

You send some intro emails out and one investor is interested and writes you back asking for more info. You send back what he wants and, Bingo! he asks for a meeting.

At the meeting you give him your business card, which has your Skype name, your cell phone, and fax numbers on it. You encourage him to use whatever mode of communication is best when he has questions and needs a fast response from you.

Later you are at your computer and your Skype chat client goes off and it’s him asking for a phone number for one of your references which you immediately give him because he can see you are online and you want to be very responsive to him.

A bit later he texts you saying he thinks your proposed valuation of your company at $1.5M is reasonable and he is going to give you a term sheet for a new investment valuing your company at that amount. You are so thrilled you can hardly speak and you can’t wait for the fax machine to get a call.

Indeed a fax does arrive on your multi-function printer an hour later and it’s the term sheet. But here the valuation is set at $1.0M and you are surprised, confused and disappointed. Of course, you assume this is just a mistake. You call him but he is not there so you leave a voice mail. 

You have some other meetings and when you check your cell phone voicemail, you have a message from him saying he agrees there was a mistake and he had meant to have the term sheet say $1.2M. Well, that is a bit better but it’s still not what you had hoped for and it’s not what you had agreed to.

You are certain he had agreed to $1.5M and you want to prove it to him. He’s very fair and reasonable and if you can just show him he already agreed to this he will honor it. But with so many clients and so many modes of communication you cannot remember by which mode he said that. You look in your email but nope not there. You look in your saved chat sessions but not there either. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t find any history of deleted voicemails or text messages so there is no hope there.

Maybe you dreamed that he agreed to $1.5M so now you are beginning to doubt yourself and you decide to just accept his $1.2M valuation. Because you can’t see all modes of communication in one place you just devalued your baby by $300K! And maybe even questioned your own sanity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have one client for all your modes of communication, where with a click you could see in one place all emails, all chats, all faxes, all voicemails, and all text messages that form a conversation with one of your contacts?

So many people seem confused about what Twitter really is and what it is good for. First, let’s clearly disabuse anyone of thinking Twitter is just like Facebook status updates. It is not that. Facebook status updates are more personal in nature and tend to answer the question “What are you doing now?” Tweets on the other hand answer the question,”What have you learned

Now let’s compare Twitter to an RSS feed. You can sit in your RSS reader (usually a browser or an email client) and the updates come to you,, which is great for blogs and news sites you are already aware of and trust.  

Then there are the sites that are full of information you never knew you were dying to know about.. So how can you possibly know about all the cool content you could know about? The answer:  find someone you trust, who spends their time discovering and reporting on things you want to learn about and follow their every move. They effectively become a human RSS feed for tons of information you would never find out about otherwise. Enter: Twitter.  

Eventually the vast majority of users will realize that Twitter is a personal promotional tool (I promote my content and I also promote what I find interesting elsewhere ), it will become more and more valuable,  providing you with the “Wisdom of Crowds” to get recommendations for what you should spend your time looking at. Once that happens, tools that aggregate the best Tweets from the best Tweeters on a specific subject will become the most important way to deal with not just Tweets, but entire conversations over multiple platforms including email, chats, texts and every other form of electronic communication. Twitter is another step in the process as we try to figure out how to deal with the complexity of so much input of information in our daily lives.