The nice guys over at Adobe got their camera out and shot a short interview with myself after I got off stage at the ‘Adobe On AIR’ event in London a few weeks ago.

The tour continues on the 2nd June in Stockholm and you can fine more information at http://onair.adobe.com/

Today we are excited to finally release Alert Thingy, our FriendFeed desktop client, into the world. Since the first screen shot appeared on TechCrunch a couple of weeks ago we have been very pleased at the level of interest and anticipation in this launch. For anyone who does not know, FriendFeed is a great website that brings together personal data streams from over 30 of the most popular websites, applications and social networks into one single feed. That means your latest Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and many more activity feeds in one place. Following the release of their API we are now able to deliver that data to your desktop via Alert Thingy.

Alert Thingy was only possible through the recent release of Adobe AIR which allowed us to leverage our familiar web skills of XHTML, CSS and AJAX to develop a cross platform desktop application. We were able to get from concept to working application within 1 week and would have been able to release sooner had we not been waiting for our code signing certificate (handy hint for anyone thinking of building an AIR app, apply for your CSC today).

We would like to thank the guys on the Adobe OnAir tour for their help in developing this application and giving us the opportunity to demo at the London event. Special thanks also to Bret Taylor and the folks at FriendFeed for their advice and support. Great API guys!
If you already have a FriendFeed account then get up and running with Alert Thingy in a few minutes by visiting alertthingy.com and clicking on the install button. Otherwise visit FriendFeed.com and sign-up for an account today.

If you are interested in Adobe AIR and how it may help your business please contact us and we would be happy to discuss your requirements.

Alertthingy.com
Friendfeed.com
Adobe.com/go/air

It has been reported on TechCrunch today that we are soon to release an Adobe AIR application that uses the new Friend Feed API. Our lips are sealed for now but if you would like to be kept up to date with the latest news from Howard Baines (including any product releases) please sign up for a mailing list.

Our first attempt at a video podcast. It might be a little rough round the edges, but hopefully we shed a little light around writing a design brief. More to follow…

27 February 2007 saw the largest product debut in Microsoft history with the launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. To mark the occasion Microsoft hosted a number of press events around the world and Howard Baines were invited to the London launch. We were able to share our experience of working with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 to build Meet with Approval. Other customers and partners discussed the impact these new products have had on their businesses and customers already. We are excited about the benefits of these releases in reduced development time, increased reliability, scalability and robustness. Working with Visual Studio 2008 we have first hand experience of how the products can benefit our clients whether traditional businesses or leading edge start-ups. To find out more about the Global Launch Wave you can visit the official Heroes Happen {here} website. There is more about Meet with Approval on our website and you can read the official Microsoft Case Study at Microsoft.com. To find out how these products can benefit your business please contact us.

Its always nice when someone mentions your name, but when ‘Computing magazine’ asked us to comment on the recent Microsoft Server 2008 Launch we where honored. Read more about what they said here.

The reason for many companies to have a website is e-commerce, the ability to sell their product or service over the Internet. The benefits have always been clear, maximum customer reach for minimum cost. Most organisations with an e-commerce website will be well aware of their online turnover and profit figures. They will probably be aware of user numbers and customer data such as geography and repeat visits. The data that often goes missed however is the number of shopping baskets that never reach the checkout.

The ratio of completed orders compared to those uncompleted can be surprisingly high. This issue has always existed and to a degree always will. However it is worth reviewing the figures and then considering how more of these potential customers could be converted into paying ones. Data from numerous reports going back to the emergence of e-commerce in the late nineties have shown a consistent trend towards an average of 60% of users abandoning their shopping carts.

Surveys by companies such as DataMonitor and Ernst & Young have found there to be a number of reasons why this happens but the most popular are shipping charges and the purchase process itself. I can remember advising clients 10 years ago to keep checkout forms short but still you come across long forms that require a lot of information to be input. Research by Customer Experience Management found the following reasons for abandoning carts:

High shipping prices (72%)
Comparison shopping or browsing (61%)
Changed mind (56%)
Saving items for later purchase (51%)
Total cost of items is too high (43%)
Checkout process is too long (41%)
Checkout requires too much personal information (35%)
Site requires registration before purchase (34%)
Site is unstable or unreliable (31%)
Checkout process is confusing (27%)

This means that making a few simple changes to the purchase process and/or reducing shipping costs could help to significantly reduce the number of abandoned carts and therefore increase revenue. Consider your site has a conversion rate of 1 order for every 4 abandoned with a turnover of $100,000. Simply by halving the bounce rate you could add $200,000 to your turnover. Looking at the reasons given by users above this could be achieved with some basic usability work. A good investment when you think about it.

Releasing an application before its development is 100% complete is now common and an extremely effective way of identifying bugs and making changes based on user feedback. These early releases are known as beta versions and users expect to encounter irregular behaviour and other issues. Despite this beta users continue to work with an application and often supply feedback in the form of bug reports or other feature suggestions. Monitoring their usage patterns also helps to identify possible usability problems and improve the user experience.

The end result is that the final finished release is far better and more reliable than it would have been without the input of the beta users. Considering the valuable contribution that these users have made it is only right to reward them in some way. How you do this depends on a number of factors including the nature of your application and budget available.

Microsoft have recently released the latest version of their .NET Framework and development tools, Visual Studio 2008. These were available in beta release for many months and Microsoft used the feedback from their early adopters to improve the overall quality of the final products.

We were amongst this group and can testify that the bug reporting and feedback system was extremely effective with almost 100% of the bugs we submitted being very quickly reported fixed.

To reward these users Microsoft sent out glass cubes with the product name and a thank you message etched into them. A number of people have commented on ours (pictured) having mistaken it for an award. For a corporation like Microsoft this was no big deal but still we felt rewarded.

At a recent networking event we hooked up with Intruders.tv (www.intruders.tv) to give some quick thoughts on what we think are 5 key issues all start-ups should consider.

Our five top do’s and don’ts were:

1. Avoid gratuitous use of “cool” technology just for the sake of trying to be Web 2.0 (e.g. using Google maps or AJAX when your site doesn’t require that functionality)

2. Think carefully about the underlying platform and its effect on your site’s reliability, robustness and scalability

3. Get feedback from real users (not your friends!), watch how they use your site and where they run into problems

4. Build systems with maximum audience reach (the latest iPhone or widget is cool but how many users is it really going to have?)

5. Explain what your site is about clearly and concisely and use plain English

The main thread that connects all of these is that the Web 2.0 community has given rise to a wealth of great technologies and concepts and the challenge for start-ups is filtering all of this to find the best options for your users.