Goals

September 24, 2013

Tuesday.  Is it Tuesday?  This week has been nuts.  It feels like NEXT Tuesday.  Anyway.  Goals.

1. Get Thumbprint 1.0.2 up on the App Store.  Well, it's done already.  Despite horror stories on the Interwebs about app rejections, my little team is 3 for 3.  Good job, guys.

2. Get 3 schools to agree to install Thumbprint on their iPads.  Currently one down, two to go on this one.  If you're reading this, and you'd like to be one of the other two, send us an email: info@thumbprinteducation.org

3. Hook up web login to the Thumbprint DB.  This is the first of about 84,729 steps required to release a browser version of Thumbprint.  By then end of this week we should be out of basic research and into a mix of R&D and actual coding.

 


September 17, 2013

Tuesday!  Goals!  We're busy around here, so let's get to it:

1. We're launching the revamped version of our website this week.  After the logo, the website was the first customer-facing thing we built.  Now it's the oldest.  Over the last six months our graphic designer, Lisa Wu, has done an amazing job creating a fun visual style for our videos and emails.  Now, finally, the website will reflect all that amazing work.  As soon as Rick sorts all the CSS nonsense out...

2. Treebeard!  We're working on a new architecture for the Thumbprint data that will allow us to start gathering richer data on how students are using the app.  What this will mean for the future, it's too soon to say.  But the pieces are starting to fall into place so that we can start asking and answering some interesting questions.

 


September 10th Goals

Having had our first "normal" week of work in what feels like decades, the intrepid team gets down to work on the development plan for the next year.  I can't get too detailed at this point, but we're looking at both a version 2 for iOS that includes several features we had to cut from version 1, as we'll as a web-based version of the app.  Android and desktop users rejoice.  Well, not just yet.  We still have a lot of work to do.  Prepare to rejoice, I guess.

The early stages of development are my favorite time. This is the time when we dream big, don't think too much about being realistic, and take in fresh ideas from all corners.  This is the time when we create the internal excitement that will carry us through the rough months down the road when we're tired from looking at buggy code.  This is the time when we take a break from hitting deadlines and try to imagine a better future.

It's also the time when goal lists are hard to write, so I'm going to skip mine for now. Soon enough we'll be back into deliverables and stuff to track.  This week there's one goal: dream big.

 


September 3rd Goals

It's been quite a week (quite a year).  Thumbprint version 1.0 is now available on the App Store.  If you have an iPad, search for Thumbprint and give it a try.

So after all of that, my team took the week off and played paintball, right?

Wrong.  We took Labour Day off, then got right back up on the horse.

This weeks goals:

1. Submit the 1.01 patch to the App Store for approval.  This fixes a couple of rare but serious issues that could cause a user to lose some data.  It also dramatically improves performance for users looking at extremely large collections (like the one we built with over 400 quizzes in it).  I'm excited about this release.  Sometimes 1.01 releases are furious scrambles to keep the app from exploding on launch.  This is much, much calmer.  We're catching a few things, making it run more smoothly, and hopefully delivering a build that users can enjoy for quite awhile.

2. Build out a complete survey course on World History.  I love history.  I love Crash Course.  I love Thumbprint.  This week we put them all together into a sample set of lessons that history or social studies students can use to get up to speed on What Happened Earlier.  For teachers, it gives them some raw materials to play with - Grab the bits you like, modify to your hearts' content, and share them with your students.  By the end of this week, a search for "world history" should give you some helpful results.

I'd like to do a project of this scale every week for the next few months, but we're a small company with a lot of irons in the fire, so that's a goal, not apromise.  We'll do our best.