Web Worker Daily

What’s Your Favorite Web App, Laura Roeder?

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 04:00 PM PDT

Laura Roeder heads up Roeder Studios, a boutique consulting and teaching firm headquartered in Venice Beach, Calif. She moderated the Are Women Taken More Seriously On The Web? panel at SXSW.

Laura reveals why screencasting app Jing (previously covered here on WWD) is her favorite. Strictly speaking, Jing is not a web app, but it’s a great choice if you’re looking for easy-to-use, inexpensive screencasting software.

What’s Your Favorite Web App, Laura Roeder? from WebWorkerDaily on Vimeo.

We have a few more video interviews from SXSW about web apps coming up. Find out when by following us @webworkerdaily on Twitter.

New Work City: Coworking and More in Manhattan

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 03:00 PM PDT

Written by Pamela Poole.

New Work City is more than just a Manhattan coworking center; it might even turn out to be a movement. One thing is for sure, the founders of NWC are not sitting idly by during this economic crisis.

Founded in November 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo (co-author of “I’m Outta Here: How Coworking Is Making The Office Obsolete”) and Sanford Dickert, NWC has two central objectives: 1. To provide community workspace for location-independent workers, and 2. To facilitate entrepreneurial activity in NYC.

To further objective number 2, they launched The Runway Project, a project to help people turn this crisis into an opportunity to become entrepreneurs. They also recently helped to form the Coalition of Office Space Providers, which joins together available work spaces in NYC. The Coalition will be working with the NYC Economic Development Corp. to provide discounted workspace for first-time entrepreneurs, as well as events and other benefits.

These guys are clearly coworking heroes to be admired and emulated.

At the NWC center, members share their expertise through workshops and use the space for anything tech-related, from presentations to labs to social get-togethers.

If you’re in the Manhattan area, don’t wait to check them out. If you’re not, head over to their site and steal some ideas for making coworking a reality in your area!

(And for those of you in Paris, France, be sure to stop by La Cantine, the exceptional coworking center I wrote about last year. La Cantine, a nonprofit organization run by Silicon Sentier, is a hopping hub that offers all manner of tech-related activities and is a great place to pop in and work, for free. Thanks to Nathanaël of La Cantine for the tip on NWC)

Please leave a comment to tell us and your fellow readers about coworking initiatives in your area.

Manage Design Collaboration With CreationFlow

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 11:00 AM PDT

Written by Imran Ali.

Hot on the heels of our coverage of ProofHQ and redmark comes another collaborative review app, Argentina’s CreationFlow.

CreationFlow differentiates itself from its competitors by virtue of its integrated project management features and its focus on visual design and advertising projects.

The service is more of a complete collaborative workflow and project management tool that you would use throughout the life of a design project, whereas tools like ProofHQ are intended more for design sign-off at the end of the process.

CreationFlow incorporates functionality to assist with project and task management, scheduling and deadlines, client review, version control and task history.

While this is a very comprehensive array of features that should support a wider range of user roles than competing apps like redmark or ProofHQ, CreationFlow’s interface is a little dry and clunky. More importantly, it lacks some of the more useful collaborative tools seen in competing apps, such as ProofHQ’s discussion threads and, perhaps crucially for this kind of service, the ability to add your own branding to the interface you will share with your clients.

CreationFlow is available in a tiered pricing model, ranging from a free “XSS” option to an unlimited, $500-per-month package. If you’d like to try out the service without signing up, a demo account is freely available for experimentation.

What tools do you use for design collaboration?

Unwrapp: Help for the Web App-addicted

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 09:00 AM PDT

Written by Darrell Etherington.

unwrapplogo If you read this blog, and if you work primarily online, then chances are you’ve used your fair share of web applications. My own legion of web apps cycle in and out of active use depending on my mood, what type of project I’m working on, and which new apps have just been released. All in all, managing and keeping track of all the apps I use requires a web app of its own, and that’s just what Unwrapp does.

Unwrapp is currently in beta, but you can sign up easily from their homepage, and hope for an invite code to follow. It took quite a while to receive mine, but the developers are hoping to release a version for wide public use soon. It can’t come soon enough for me, since I can’t even remember the names of all the web apps I was using last month, let alone be expected to check back and see if they’ve received any significant updates.

My first impressions of Unwrapp were positive, owing to the app’s gorgeously designed user interface. Mac users will feel at home thanks to the site’s simple yet visually rich styling. And it doesn’t hurt that the default avatar I was assigned when I chose not to upload my own was Darth Vader. Sure beats the generic Twitter pic!

You need an avatar because Unwrapp is more than just an application tracking site. It also incorporates aspects of social networking. These features aren’t fully implemented yet, but you can see the reviews of other users, and use their opinions to decide whether or not a particular app is worth your while. You can also view the profiles of other users, and, if you trust their opinion, maybe find new apps by checking out the list of what they use.

Unwrapp’s directory of apps is pretty good, and it includes most of the biggies like Google, but they depend on user submissions for finding many new and more obscure apps.

When it eventually does release to the public, I’d advise web app developers to make listing among their launch priorities, since with public buy-in, Unwrapp could do a lot of your PR legwork for you. That’s especially true for when you release revisions and updates. It can be quite a chore convincing media outlets to cover an app they’ve already seen just because you’ve introduced some new features. With Unwrapp, your updates get some much-needed exposure. New updates are posted in a persistent notification box on the right-hand side of any Unwrapp page when you’re logged in. Clicking on any app listed in that box brings you to a list of all of that app’s updates and feature additions since its inclusion in Unwrapp’s database.

Every app profile also includes a list of other, similar applications in case you’re shopping around for a better alternative, or want to go to a client with a number of different options for consideration. Unwrapp will eventually feature “The Charts” if you’re in the mood for browsing for something new, which will feature app ranking. And of course, you can search by keyword or browse the directory by category if you feel more like digging around.

Sign-up for the beta is free, although if you don’t have an invitation code, you might not get priority acceptance. But if you’re a fan of Go2Web20 or other web app directories and search services, Unwrapp is definitely worth signing up for, especially for its social networking features. We’ll let you know when the full release become officially available.

Have you tried Unwrapp? What did you think?

Where Startups Are Headed: Rapid, Lean and Micro

Posted: 02 Apr 2009 07:00 AM PDT

Written by Eric Berlin.

Whether you help run a web-based startup, are a member of an online production team, or earn your living in part by understanding how things get done on the web, it’s important to get a sense of how the most innovative Internet companies create their products and build their businesses today.

Even though the current economic climate is not so hot, amazing advances in the open-source software movement, coupled with vastly reduced costs for such things as infrastructure, bandwidth and software services are allowing web-based companies to develop online products and services faster than ever before. And Internet companies themselves are developing non-traditional strategies that best meet the needs of the hyper-paced modern web marketplace.

Rapid Iteration Model/”Ship It!”
xing-logo socialmedian founder and XING Chief Product Officer Jason Goldberg discusses the utilization of a rapid iteration model that allows development of “great products and enhancements that meet your needs.” Goldberg has evolved this model into something he terms “Ship It!” Boiled down, “Ship It!” means that product development cycles are run in quick succession, making user feedback explicitly part of the build process. Goldberg goes on to define an ethos that many cutting-edge startups live and breathe today: launching features publicly before they are “fully baked,” with the expectation that avid users will provide the feedback and direction needed to allow development teams to put on the final spit and polish.

We will launch new features before they are finished. Our plan is to get new stuff out there on the site and learn from our users as to how to make them better. You tell us what you like, don’t like, and want to see improved — and then we’ll do our best to keep up with your input.

Whereas for most industries it would be sheer folly to release products that were not yet perfected, on the Internet this is beginning to be more rule than exception, particularly for free and advertising-supported products.

Goldberg further strengthens his company’s policy of transparency by making himself available for answering questions and receiving feedback both on his XING profile and on Twitter.

The Lean Startup
Web-based startups are getting faster and more responsive, and they’re also getting leaner. Eric Ries, entrepreneur and co-founder/CTO of IMVU, defines the lean startup as “a disciplined approach to building companies that matter”:

It’s designed to dramatically reduce the risk associated with bringing a new product to market by building the company from the ground up for rapid iteration and learning. It requires dramatically less capital than older models, and can find profitability sooner. Most importantly, it breaks down the artificial dichotomy between pursuing the company's vision and creating profitable value. Instead, it harnesses the power of the market in support of the company's long-term mission.

So not only are startups becoming faster and more adept in rolling out product iterations, the lean startup concept allows startups to conserve resources while utilizing feedback and a rapid iteration model to find the fastest and most efficient path possible to maximum profitability.

The Microstartup
mahalo_logo1 In November, Mahalo founder and CEO Jason Calacanis issued “The Future of Startups,” a proclamation on the state of startups and the Internet. Calacanis lays out that the era of “The Zero Cost Startup” (vastly lowered overhead, servers, hosting costs, and so on) has led to “The Age of the Microstartup.” Echoing the trends of the Rapid Iteration Model and the Lean Startup, Calacanis muses that “[m]icrostartups are amazing because they can try ten different things over a year with very little pressure to "break out." This leads to a lot of people taking a lot more risk, starting a lot more crazy ideas.”

Low costs and freedom to “crowdsource” feedback allow, then, for a “Try Everything” era in which startups can spin out ideas, fail, and try again in rapid succession until finding the idea, product and business model that gains traction. In the microstartup model, the most important resource is the founders’ and team members’ time.

What do you make of the trend of web-based startups going rapid, lean and micro?