January 2007

Tag - I'm It Too!

January 5, 2007 by Julie

Ellen walked into my office this morning and told me I’d been tagged, and I had no idea what she was talking about. It sounded like a bad thing at first, but I’ve found out that it’s just my turn in an online game of tag that’s been going on for a few weeks now. Doug over at Just Another Mobile Monday chose me. The rules are pretty simple, I have to tell everyone five things about myself, and then I get to choose five unsuspecting bloggers to tag next. It’s like a big ol’ chain letter. So here are my five things; I’ll try to make it as fascinating as possible:

1. This June, I will finally get my Bachelor’s Degree in web development, after eight years of going to college full-time. That’s right: I’ve changed my major four times, and dropped a heck of a lot of money in the process, but it’s almost over, and I can’t wait. I actually want to take a year off and then start working on a Master’s, but I haven’t found a program yet that interests me.
2. I love to read. I don’t get a chance to do it while I have classes, but I read three books while I was on my winter break. I read Lamb and Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore, and Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
3. I have two cats. Seuss weighs 22 pounds likes people food, including lettuce and pasta. Campbell weighs 14 pounds and does not like people food. Unfortunately, he eats everything else, inlcuding duct tape, wood, and plastic. (Don’t call the Humane Society - he has a chewing addiction. I’ve tried several methods to stop him, but none work. He was never weaned right. If anyone has ideas, I’m not kidding, I’d love to hear them.)
4. I had my dad make me a wooden Christmas tree this year, so Campbell wouldn’t eat the branches. It was pretty darn cool, too, but the cat still chewed through three of the limbs. That’s determination!
5. I collect Converse hightops. Right now I have eleven pairs. I’m trying to pick a favorite pair as I’m typing, but that’s too hard. I think it’s a tie between the red plaid, the ones with comics printed on them, or the black ones with little skull and crossbones on them.

So, there you have it. That’s me, in a nutshell. So now I get to tag five more people. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy trying to think of five people - this game has been going on for a few weeks now, and a lot of bloggers have already been tagged! I chose:

1. Jimmie Geddes (GadgetsontheGo)
2. Sammy McLoughlin (PalmAddict)
3. Todd Ogasawara (MobileViews Blog)
4. Warner Crocker (GottaBeMobile)
5. Doug Miller (Daily Gadget)

Tag, guys, you’re it now!

Tag, I'm It

January 5, 2007 by Ellen

So apparently there’s this new game among bloggers where someone “tags” another blogger. If you’re tagged, you have to post 5 facts about yourself that most people don’t know, and then tag 5 other bloggers. I just got tagged by spmwinkel at solsie.com who had been tagged by Patrick from JustAnotherMobileMonday.

OK, this is going to be pretty easy, and fun. First, the interesting people I tag are:

Dan Hanttula a hugely interesting person who has more credentials than I’ll even try to list.

Hal Goldstein, editor-in-chief of Pocket PC and Smartphone Magazine.

Jen Edwards, the Pocket Goddess, which title I wish I could have.

My good buddy and sometime competitor Alex Kac (I hope this counts; he calls it a blog though it’s a blog in a forum format).

Howard Tomlinson, founder and CEO of Astraware.

And 5 things about me, in no particular order, are:

One, I’m in the small group of people who are huge fans of musicals. Oddly enough, both Dan and Hal, above, are also in that group, so when I write them that I’m going on vacation to watch people kill people while singing, they know just what I’m talking about.

Two, I am one of the original founders of Ilium Software, which, to a large extent, I started because I didn’t want to work for anyone any more. It’s managed to keep me out of a “real” job for over 9 years, which I’m pretty happy about.

Three, I got interested in mobile computing when I worked at what’s now AT+T, and they handed me a Newton and sent me to the first (and, I think, only) Newton Developers’ Conference. I think I still have the t-shirt, though the Newton was stolen in a break-in at our “headquarters” at the time. (Working at AT+T was a big factor in convincing me that I never wanted to work for anyone again.)

Four, I am also involved with Bits du Jour, a one-deal-a-day site for Windows and PDA software.

And five, I consider the name “Ilium Software” as my biggest business mistake. Here’s what I learned: never, never, never start a company or a website with the letters i L i. Or even i L, or L i unless it’s a really well-known word. Nobody can distinguish ili from illi from lli from lil in those little tiny fonts without serifs. Ilium is Greek for Troy - I was working in Troy, Michigan at the time, and liked the sound of the name Ilium, but never thought about the readability issue until it was way, way too late. It’s not my biggest life mistake, but definitely a candidate for the bad company name awards.

Where's my template editor?!?

January 3, 2007 by Marc

Every time we release a new version of the software we not only get to announce what new features we added, but everyone quickly finds out which features we didn’t add. This makes a new release the best thing in the world for some people and a real frustration for others. For those of you who are frustrated, we hear you. It’s always annoying when a product you really like does an upgrade, and you discover that they didn’t include that one thing you’ve been asking for since 1997!

It happens to everyone, including us. Take ActiveSync as a great example. Pocket PCs have File Synchronization. Smartphones don’t. With every new release of ActiveSync or Windows Mobile for Smartphone we all cross our fingers and chant “Please include file sync! Please include file sync!” and every time….nothin’. Why Microsoft? Why?

Well, I can’t speak for why Microsoft does what they do but I can tell you about us. Here is what we consider when we try to make decisions about new features. There are always additional things that can influence a decision but these are the biggies.

What Users Want This is huge. We keep all sorts of lists of the things that users ask us for. We research the ideas, check out the options, and explore ways we could do them. The more people that ask for something, the more likely we are to include it. This is a prime area that we look at when considering a new feature.

What Users Hate Sometimes people come right out and say what they hate, other times it becomes clear in frustrated support emails about a particular issue. Either way we track this stuff and work to improve it. Areas of major annoyance get top ranking on the big list-o-future-features.

Where the Market is Headed We need to watch which way the wind is blowing. If we don’t keep up with current market trends we’re not going to be around to MAKE another upgrade. These are tough because sometimes people aren’t asking for the thing yet, but if we don’t add it we won’t be competitive 6 months from now. Windows Mobile Smartphone is a great example of this. We wrote a smartphone version before there was a smartphone on the market. This meant taking time that could have been used to add features to Pocket PC, but that’s where the market was going so we had to blaze a trail in that direction!

What Microsoft/Palm/Etc. Tells Us To Do I posted about this awhile back. There are things we have to do whether we like it or not. A great example in eWallet 5.0 is moving around a lot of files the software uses. From the info we’ve received, files that change as the user does different things (templates, sync files, custom graphics etc.) must NOT be in the program directory in the future. This means we had to redesign the file structure for eWallet 5.0, a big undertaking, at the expense of adding features. Failing to do so could lead to the software not working at all on new versions of Windows Mobile!

Making Things Better for New Users There are times when we need to make changes that will benefit new users more than existing users. For the existing users, they’ve often become used to whatever weird thing we did in the past. The problem is that every new user has to “get used” to that thing as well. To that end, we often make changes that will make the experience for a new user significantly better. This can be really frustrating for people who are used to the product working a certain way. There are a few of these in eWallet 5.0 and I’ll blog about them later, but these are things we just have to bite the bullet and do sometimes.

What We Love I’d be misleading you if I didn’t include this one. Every so often there is a feature that we really love so we add it. Sometimes these turn out to be the things everyone wanted but didn’t know they needed. Other times they are that feature that makes everyone wonders if maybe there is something in the water over here in Ann Arbor. Most features get added for the other reasons I listed but this one does come up every so often.

So there you have it. A few of the big things that we look at as we add new features to our products. Not a comprehensive list since there are LOTS of ways a feature could end up in the product, but a good descriptions of the major ones.

And don’t forget the first thing I posted! We take requests VERY seriously so send them our way! (Or post in a comment here even! We’re listening!)

Giving Stuff Away

January 2, 2007 by Ellen

There’s a lot being written right now about Microsoft’s giving Vista PCs to bloggers, and the ethics of the bloggers taking them. If you’ve managed to miss it, there are a few links at the bottom of this post that you can read, but frankly, I’m already tired of the whole subject, and imagine that many other people are too.

But since I’m no longer averse to stealing good ideas (way too many of mine have been lifted), and since we’re trying to drum up more activity on this blog (both posts and comments), we’re going to start a monthly giveaway to people who comment on the posts.

Here’s how it will work:

• Around the first of each month, we’ll give away one of our titles (recipient’s choice, and you can choose one of our suites, so you’d essentially get 3 or 4 programs) to someone who has commented on any of the posts in the previous month. People who have all the software they want can instead get some of our swag, which right now is still just stylus pens, though I’m thinking hard about getting something else.
• We’ll pick the winner each month using a random number that we map to the comment IDs.
• To be eligible, comments just need to be legitimate, and somehow related to the original post.

To help this along, I’ll encourage everyone here to post a lot more, so there’s more content to respond to.

And, as promised, here are the links to a few of the articles about the Microsoft giveaway:

I Started Something Jason Dunn Ed Bott Joel on Software

There’s a lot more that’s been written about this, but starting with the above will probably lead you there.