We announced a promotion a couple weeks ago to support freelancers and independent consultants in these tough economic times. Freelancers who sign up from our promo page receive an Individual premium Backboard account for a year ($108 value), completely free of charge!
As 2009 approaches, the promotion is coming to an end — if you are a freelancer or independent consultant, make sure you sign up today!
Check out the full details:
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Here at Increo, the fun just keeps on rolling. After the introduction of the new viewing experience two weeks ago and projects and recent activity last week, there’s more new stuff to tell you about today.
embedit.in is a new service that lets you embed files in your website. We realized that since we’ve built this great in-browser document-viewing technology for Backboard, we should make it available for more people to use. So we took that viewing technology and made a version you can embed right in your website.
It’s even simpler to use than Backboard: just upload your files and click the “Embed It!” button. After a quick login screen that lets you use accounts you already have (no registration required!), you’re instantly shown the document or documents along with the code to embed it in your own blog, profile page, or website. There’s no seven-step process, just two clicks and you’re done. What could be easier?
As an example, if I took these flyer PDFs for a marketing job opening and a software developer job opening and uploaded them to embedit.in, I’d get this:
You can view the document without having any additional plug-ins installed and without opening any software. And, of course, embedit.in works with any file formats that Backboard supports, including images, documents, and slide decks. You can embed multiple documents at once in a convenient tabbed interface. You can even embed websites in other websites! Try doing that with Scribd or SlideShare.
Check it out and let us know what you think. We think it’s pretty great.
Well it’s the most wonderful time of the year again, and I’ve been listening to a lot of holiday music. An album I’d definitely recommend is Christmas with the Rat Pack – it’s got a bunch of classics and I’ve been listening to it almost everyday while I code.
Recently at Increo we’ve made some major updates to Backboard, including a new viewing experience and the ability to organize Backboards into projects. Developing those two features was fun and challenging — they’re excellent examples of why we love making great software. However, one aspect of development I dread is making sure Backboard works in all the major browsers. Backboard officially supports Internet Explorer 6 or later, Safari 2 or later, and Firefox 2 or later. Most of the browser rendering discrepancies are minor, except for those pertaining to IE6. So to express my frustration, I’ve written a little poem/song in the holiday spirit:
The IE 6 Blues (sung to the tune of The Christmas Blues by Dean Martin)
We’re making applications
For the triple-W,
But there come some big frustrations
When I need to look into
How our code is generated Read the rest of this entry »
In IE 6’s shoes.
It’s giving me the IE 6 blues.
For the last couple weeks I have written about my answer when faced with the question “What are three things you wish you would have known as a Junior or Senior in college?” Here’s part three on dealing with the competition.
Dealing with “The Competition”
The glass-half-empty way to think about the competition: “Oh my goodness, there is another company in our space! We need to punt what we’ve been working on for the last three months and try something new and unique.”
The glass-half-full version: “Ah, yes, another competitor. That makes 59! Wow, what an awesome validation of our concept, let’s keep going full speed ahead.”
I once heard a good rule of thumb from Tim Draper: two or three competitors squarely in your space are good validation. More than that and you might want to really think about what makes you unique.
I’ve learned to be aware, but be impartial. It’s important to know what competitors are up to and try to understand where they will head in the future. Make a spreadsheet and understand where everyone fits in relation to what you do. Add competitors as they arise to get them off your mind.
Excessive worrying about competitors is not a good use of your time. Get out there, execute the best you can and build your business first. You can start really worrying about competitors when they are all that stands between you and the remaining market share.
Every once in awhile during a normal conversation around the office someone says something so entertaining that it must be recorded. Enter the Official Increo Quote Board — a small whiteboard (which recently became two small whiteboards) that is dedicated to housing the “brilliant” things that we all say during the course of the day. These quotes range from nonsensical to absurd, but it is always clear when one belongs on the board. There will be brief pause after someone says something particularly noteworthy and then someone will blurt out: “That belongs on the board.” Below I’ve included a few of them for your enjoyment.
“We can do pain-in-the-***. We just can’t do impossible.”
“We now have six out of two approvals.”
“My first thought is, someone’s going to jack this yurt.”
“This is because I almost murdered Thelma.” (Thelma, of course, is one of our servers)
“I’m not a human diff, and not only am I sure of that, I’m quite pleased.”
Hopefully this gives you a small idea of some of the fun we have around the office while building great software. Keep an eye out for more office antics in the future!
Warning! Technical content ahead!
Increo’s office network is small and simple. All of our servers live at professionally-managed data centers, and our office has nothing more than a consumer-level wireless router on a shared Internet connection from Palo Alto’s Fiber Internet Center. Everything is wireless. It’s great, inasmuch as our total network equipment cost was in the two digits and adding a new computer takes no time at all. There’s no DNS server and no IP assignment; everything “just works”.
It becomes interesting, of course, when computers in the office need to connect to each other. For this, we turn to Zeroconf and multicast DNS, implemented as Bonjour on the Mac, Bonjour for Windows on Windows, and the team of Avahi and nss-mdns on Linux.
Now we can use computer names to connect to each other’s machines, no setup required. It’s really slick, and it has worked really well for us. At least, it works seamlessly up and to a point.
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Last Monday, we revealed The new Backboard viewing experience.
Today, we are excited to announce the second half of Backboard’s redesign: a revamped, more powerful My Backboards page.
Projects
Few people work on just one thing at once, and keeping tasks separated and organized is of utmost importance. Now, it is easy to distribute your Backboards into different projects so you always know where to look. On your My Backboards page, simply click Create Project and enter a name. You can then quickly organize your Backboards by dragging and dropping them into the appropriate project.
Recent Activity
Stay on top of new feedback and approvals with the new Recent Activity view, right at the top of your My Backboards page. This new tracker shows you the latest activity on all the Backboards you are involved with and doubles as a convenient shortcut to your currently active Backboards. Soon, you’ll have no idea how you ever lived without it!
Upcoming…
We are hard at work adding new features to Backboard and making it ever easier to use. If there is something specific you’d like to see, let us know in the comments!
Last week I wrote about my answer when faced with the question “What are three things you wish you would have known as a Junior or Senior in college?” My second tidbit is about a fear I had prior to launching into the entrepreneurial lifestyle…would I still have a life? Would I spend long days and nights isolated in the office, not meeting anyone outside the team? Would I have just one day a year to devote to the special people in my life?
What happens to your life when you decide to become an entrepreneur?
I’ve seen successful entrepreneurs work nearly 24-7 and others a more balanced lifestyle. Certainly you’re thinking about your startup more than just 9-5, but it’s up to you to be honest how you work best.
An important part of your job is to meet people, so a fear of isolation in a small office is somewhat unfounded. Networking events, meeting with customers, career fairs, fundraising, speaking gigs, recruiting — starting your own company has plenty of people to meet for the most gregarious souls.
Making time for all the important things in your life is always something you’re working on as an entrepreneur. Carol Bartz puts it best:
One of the most important things you can do in running your own company is to define your own success. Make sure you define you goals and work smartly so you can both have a life and achieve that success.
A few weeks ago Jim wrote about “How to make yourself look good” as a startup presenting at a career fair. I’d like to take the opposite approach and share how a fairgoer can impress me.
It’s easy to sense excitement in your voice. Tell me about what drives you and what gets you motivated. Take a look at our product during the demo and give some feedback. If you think it’s cool (which it is), say that.
Don’t tailor your history or experience based on the technology you see in a demo. I’d rather hear about what excites you (#1) and what you have experience doing. If you’ve never worked in the specific technology we’re using, say that; it certainly won’t disqualify you. Dancing around the issue and trying to make it seem like you know more than you do is not worth it as it won’t help your chances.
Nothing shows interest like spending time since everyone is busy. Doing a quick drop of a resume doesn’t leave a favorable impression. Ask some good questions, show some interest and then leave a resume (and make sure to email one in later as well). Now, you shouldn’t take up too much time, but you also shouldn’t take up too little.
“What type of job are you looking for? One at a startup…” Uh, duh! You’re at a startup career fair, don’t tell me obvious things. Go back to #1 up above, tell me about your passions.
Everyone always says that dressing up shows that you’re interested. I’m more worried about what you say than how you look. Nice clothes feel stiff and in my eyes, make it seem like you’re trying to distract me with your fanciness. Don’t take this to mean you should wear rags, but I think a shirt and tie are pushing it at a startup fair.
Interrupting people is generally a bad idea (unless of course the sky is actually falling), however, with the time pressure of running around to speak with multiple companies it can be tempting to get your one quick question in. Don’t. Getting that question in will probably cost you the job and just mean that your question was not time well spent.
Today, the whole team is proud to launch a major update to your Backboard experience.
We’ve listened to your requests and addressed many of them with these six features and many more:
One of the biggest shortcomings of the old Backboard was that you had to be constantly scrolling between the document and the feedback people left on it. Viewing markup was even worse: the page automatically scrolled for you, but you couldn’t see what the person was talking about where they were talking about it. It was inefficient at best and maddening at worst.
Starting today, the feedback is on the right side of the page, always conveniently in view for your reference.