BackupBrain: My MicroISV Venture

For awhile there, I was posting quite regularly, but then I started getting into initial development work. Actually, I’ve done a lot less coding than I’d have liked but I now have a lot more of my ideas and direction sorted out. For instance, I now know that ThoughtFiler needs to be a desktop product first, and a web service second. I still believe the web service would be unique and innovative enough to succeed, but it needs to go on the back burner while I concentrate on getting a 1.0 desktop version out there.

With all the thinking I have been doing about how to structure the product and the user interfaces required, I am once again excited by it and can see the benefits that it will provide. Heck, I want to start using myself NOW!

Matt Cornell‘s article, Where’s the IDE for personal information?, has been quite helpful in finetuning some of my own ideas for ThoughtFiler.

The downside is that I’m no longer sure exactly how to code all this, the upside is that I have now confirmed in which direction I need to go.

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Workflow…

I’ve also been thinking a lot about workflow at the moment… What types of information do people deal with in their daily lives? How do they keep it for later referral?

How do people use paper? What areas are best handled by PIM software? And what, if anything, is best left to paper? Some things are just better done in physical form (or paper first, then digital).

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It is quite a challenge to find the right balance between advancing my product/company, retaining enough energy to give my day-job my best (after all, it is through that salary everything else is being accomplished), and maintaining a healthy social life so as not to become some kind of hacker hermit!

Ever onward!

“Skypecasts are live, moderated discussions that allow groups of Skype users anywhere in the world to discuss shared interests, from classes to computer support to cultural or political debates. They amount to the conversational equivalent of Web blogs, complementing the written interactions of blogs.”

Read the full article here [via ZDnet] and also this [via the Skype blog].

A few minutes after reading this, I started wondering if this could be something useful for our Micro-ISV community. Kind of like a virtual uISV conference – but no travel expenses! Especially convenient to those of us, like myself, on the other side of the world from the U.S.

I think this could be worth a go. Anyone agree? Feel free to post topic ideas for a first Skypecast in the comments here and I may just see if I can get something going…

…if there’s enough interest I’ll try and pick a convenient time for those interested and announce it here and the relevent forums. Now it’s over to you…