Nothing Happens Automagically

After a brief hiatus (due, if you must know, to a relocation, several family emergencies, and general life upheaval), I am back in the blogging business.  I do wish that WordPress (or someone) would write an application that would “automagically” post whenever I thought of things that might be of interest.  While mind reading is still sci-fi fiction, I have enjoyed Twittering away and encourage you to follow me there (Twitter, as a micro-blog, probably being the closest thing to automagic, which ironically is a term I read for the first time in a Twitter post earlier this week).  I really do hope you missed the blog posts and the updates on the development of Remarkable.

So, on that topic, we have been working diligently on building out the application and are nearing a critical alpha milestone.  For those of you unfamiliar with software development methodologies, most have stages of development during which critical foundational code is written, but only used internally.  This stage is called alpha.  It is usually not in the final user interface (a $20 phrase that means things like how the software looks, how people would click around to do things, and the colors, font styles, and button treatments used).  It is usually pretty unreliable, but is a way to start testing and building out the core functionality. 

With the development of agile philosophies for programming and a “nothing beats real code” attitude, the alpha phases of development are getting shorter.   Even the alpha phase can have several sub-phases as you anticipate changes and iterations throughout the project.  Ours will be several months in total (hate to publicly commit at this point) before we turn our attention to the beta phase which comes next.

Beta is a word that has gotten a little skewed (or expanded, rather) lately as many companies have public, “all comer” beta periods that last a year or more.  In most companies, beta is reserved for either a select group of testers or product champions who can use the real application (usually still with some final tweaks and adjustments to be made) and provide feedback.  Usually beta releases are feature complete and try to represent, as best as possible, the real user experience.  Beta phases also allow a forum for testing pricing, promotions, and for getting the word out about the coming application.  If you haven’t yet registered to receive an invitation to participate in our beta , click here and sign up.

Eventually, you call the application “production” and the beta is complete (you never call it “done,” of course, as you always have ideas and things you can do to improve).  In my days of working in packaged software, we’d do the final release sign-offs and exclaim “ship it!”  With this web application, it is just a matter of pushing the code live.  Now that I think about it, I will probably still yell “ship it” when we get to that point, as “push it” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Yes, development is going well even though we are in the early stages.  Thanks for asking!  I am sure we all wish that the process of developing software, just like blog posts, could happen automagically, but alas…our hard work will be your gain when Remarkable is ready for you to use.