In a comment on the last post, someone asked what was up with the eWallet Web Companion. For those of you who don’t know, the web companion is a web based application that allows you to view your eWallet wallet files online. You can sync to it, just like to any other mobile device, and securely view your wallets from any computer with internet access and a web browser. We even have a page about it here.
If you want to learn more about the Web Companion, read on after the jump!
A Little History
Work on the Web Companion has been going on (on and off) for quite some time now. One of my goals as Product Manager is to give you secure access to your important information no matter where you are. I don’t want our customers hampered by what device they are carrying or what computer they are sitting in front of. To that end, I got us started working on the eWallet Web Companion. The eWallet Web Companion (or EWC as I typically refer to it,) runs on pretty much any browser, from your mobile device to a laptop to a Ninetendo Wii (yes, we tested it on the Wii 🙂 ).
Shortly after the project got underway, the iPhone came out. At the time, native software wasn’t supported and Apple hadn’t confirmed plans to support native software, so the new goal became an EWC with full iPhone support. We started the Closed Beta with a group of iPhone users and got some great results. Before we could finish, however, the word came down from Apple that they would support native applications.
This changed a LOT for us. While we still felt that the EWC was important, we knew that we had to get a native version of eWallet for iPhone completed. As a result, our attention was refocused on that effort. By July of this year we had eWallet for iPhone done, and by September, we had sync in place. This significantly reduced the urgency for getting the EWC out there.
We also saw the EWC as a possible BlackBerry solution. Of course we ended up with a native BlackBerry version as well, which further reduced the urgency for completing the EWC.
So Now What…
As I said, the EWC was not dropped – simply bumped a couple steps down the “Get it done now!” ladder. We have someone working actively on it right now so we’re making good progress. There have been a number of minor improvements, and we have plans for some MAJOR updates in the neat future. We still have some challenges to overcome, however. To that end, I hope to get out the next Advisory Board assignment sometime this week, and that assignment will deal with those very challenges!
So keep watch! There is more to come!