We received this testimonial from Joe Venuto:

Mobile Consulting, Inc. and MIGEW.com

“Mobile Consulting needed to reinvent our website and Michigan’s Global Entrepreneurship Week needed to develop one. Merlee and Chris of MutinyWare exceeded my expectations with their work on MobileConsultingInc.com and MIGEW.com. Both sites secured everything we were looking for. Working with their team was a pleasure. They are professional, knowledgeable, efficient, informative, creative, and completed the projects ahead of schedule. I look forward to developing my professional portfolios with MutinyWare. Thanks Merlee and Chris!”

Joseph Venuto
Mobile Consulting Inc.
Michigan Global Entrepreneurship Week

Michigan Global Entrepreneurship Week

We just completed the site design and development for the Michigan Global Entrepreneurship Week initiative.

We met Joe, the owner and founder, at an Ann Arbor Spark meeting.  We had worked on his company website for Mobile Consulting, Inc, and he asked us to setup a site for MIGEW as well.

Joe had already had a design layout for migew.com, and we discussed how best to set up a website on short notice.  After some consideration and discussion, we recommended that the site for migew.com be a WordPress blog.  This would enable the site to be setup quickly, would allow for quick and easy updates, and also automatically incorporate a content management system.  By customizing a WordPress template to match the originally desired design, we got the look that Joe was hoping for.  Also, by utilizing some WordPress plugins, we were able to gain the functionality that he was looking for as well.

Please feel free to check out MIGEW.com and see how you can participate!  Also take a peek at our design services and portfolio at Mutiny Designs.

Mobile Consulting Inc.

We just completed the site design and development for Mobile Consulting Inc. Mobile Consulting is a company that provides a service to help you lower your cell phone costs. By negotiating ethically with your current carrier, Mobile Consulting can lower your monthly cell phone bill, as well as save you money on device and plan upgrades. Mobile Consulting offers a 100% money back guarantee with their services

We met Joe, the owner and founder, at an Ann Arbor Spark meeting.  We got to talking, and matched up our needs, resulting in MutinyWare being selected to complete the design and development of the website.

When coming up with the design for mobileconsultinginc.com, we wanted the site to be bright, bold, friendly and welcoming. By utilizing fresh, bold colors and graphics, we have achieved this goal. We also customized their blog to match the site, and reworked their logo slightly to co-ordinate as well.

Please feel free to check out Mobile Consulting and their services. You can save money on your cell phone bill as well! Also, don’t forget to visit Mutiny Designs to see some of our work, and what we could possibly do to boost your online presence.

Sir Chrisalot and the Reports Dragon

This is the story of the brave knight Sir Chrisalot who vanquished the foul and vile dragon called Reports from the land of Mutiny!

The Queen of the land, the fairest of them all, our beloved Queen Merleesa summoned our hero to her palace.  Upon arrival, the court marveled at the astutefulness, intelligence, and utter heroism of our knight Chrisalot.  The Queen, upon beholding our hero knight, lost all sense of mind and could not think of what to say – and promptly ordered his head chopped off. 

Fortuitous for all, she soon regained her composure and remembered why she had summoned the knight and saved us from a rather short and abrupt ending.

She then spoke…   “Sir Chrisalot wilt thou heretofore vanquish the evil and foul dragon Reports from our beloved land of Mutiny?”

Our hero Sir Chrisalot did thus kneel and swear to his Queen that he would utterly vanquish and dispose of the dragon Reports.  Oh what a joyous day it was when our hero did thus defeat the vile dragon and bring peace, harmony and prosperity to the land.

Online Property Management

We have a product in development called QuarterMaster Property Management.  It is a system to help property management firms manage their websites for their main company, as well as for each individual community.

QuarterMaster came about when a Cambridge Partners, Inc. requested a basic content management system to manage some facets of their websites.  This is a client that I have had for several years, one that I manage the regular maintenance on and last year, had completely redesigned and rewritten all of the sites.  Needless to say, as we were working out the details for their requirements, we ended up creating a system that was much, much more than they had bargained for.  We can’t be accused of doing things half-assed!  Thus, QuarterMaster was born.

The system is being used by the Cambridge Partners site right now, and has been for the past several months.  Currently the system is only handling portions of the website data, those that are directly related to the properties and their details.  The textual content and layout of the site is still being maintained manually.  Ultimately QuarterMaster will manage all of the content on a site.

Currently, QuarterMaster handles the following features:

• Create and manage individual properties
• Create and manage individual models (floor plans)
• Create and categorize all of your amenities
• Manage pricing
• Manage locations, contacts, URLs
• Create and manage custom neighborhoods
• Amenity value assessment
• Create, manage and schedule specials
• Apartment search functionality
• Leads management
• User management
• Changes to the QuarterMaster system updates your site immediately
• Integration with your existing site

If you have any questions, or are interested in using QuarterMaster for your own property website(s), please don’t hesitate to contact us.  As we move forward with development, and have a public demo and beta system in place, we will post updates here.

CrowsNest Assessment System

We are making excellent progress on the CrowsNest application!  We have completed the private launch, first release, and are working on finalizing some significant changes that were made to the base functionality of the system.  By the first of July we are looking at opening up a beta program for the Assessment portion of CrowsNest.

If anyone is interested in participating in the beta of the assessment system, please contact us.  The assessment system is geared towards creating and delivering online assessments/tests.

Primary features of the assessment system include:

• Ability to create a question bank
• Ability to show images with individual questions
• Ability to categorize your questions
• Ability to add custom proficiency levels to your questions
• Create manual/custom assessments, save in bank
• Create random assessments using the generator
• Ability to define grading systems
• Ability to assign point values to individual questions
• Automatic scoring/grading
• Assign time limits to an assessment
• Customize and assign documents to an assessment
  • Invitations
  • Instructions
  • Case Studies
  • Closing Notes
• Ability to group multiple assessments into a “Course”, save in bank
• Schedule assessments/courses
• Skip question functionality
• Timer functionality
• User Management
• Customer Management
• Review Scorecards
• Terminology customization
• Interface customization

Coming Soon!!

Sometimes it can be a real challenge working for yourself, and starting up a new company.  One of our biggest dilemmas comes in the form of having too many ideas.  We are always thinking, and finding ideas for new products, add-ons, functionality, etc.  It comes down to prioritization.  We have to prioritize our ideas into what is most feasible, most desirable, and what we have the time to do.  Sometimes, we can jump off track a little bit when a client comes to us for a specific product.  In that case, we change course as there is an engaged customer.

We did however have an idea come to us recently that we simply couldn’t sit on.  Since we have recently become very involved in the Twittersphere, we quite quickly were hit with a couple of thoughts on things that could be done to improve our Twittering experience.  As it is a relatively small application, we decided to jump on it, and the timing is just right.

Keep an eye out soon for the launch of this new application

CrowsNest Survey & Assessment System

A quick update on the CrowsNest Survey & Assessment System.

Development is coming along nicely, and we are looking to launch for our first client towards the first week in May.  The initial launch will be for them only, as the assessment features and functionality have been developed around their requirements. This initial version will include only the assessment portion of the system.

Soon after this private launch, we will be adding in the survey and poll portions, then doing a public launch.  We are soooooo excited to get this up and running and available publicly!

We do have the website up for CrowsNest, at www.mw-crowsnest.com.  The website indicates a mid-2009 launch, which is what we are targeting for.  Please feel free to take a gander around the website, and let us know if you have any questions or comments.

If you build it, they will come. This is the extent of many peoples’ thought on developing a product such as web-based software.

And of course, initially, when a great product idea pops into our heads, that is what we tend to focus on as well….product development.

Then reality comes a knockin’ and as development is progressing and our Master Shipbuilder, Chris, is in programming hell, I, the designer…start realizing everything else that needs to be done prior to launch. Things such as:

• Product website
• Help documentation
• Forums
• Marketing
• Support
• Payments

Now, of course, if one already has other products on the market, some of this is already in place, such as Forums, Support and Payment systems. Others, need to be done each and every time. This is where a small level of panic starts to set in, and I join my partner in hell

All of this is par for the course however. The only truly scary part for me is the marketing. I am no sales person, and doing the whole social networking thing is difficult enough. I think, first order of business, is to find someone to take this on for us!

There are two key problems, or rather hurdles, when designing software.  One is that you want to put everything into the first version, you want it to be perfect from the get go.  The other, is being inherently unaware of every scenario or functionality that your customers will experience or desire.

So many ideas, too little time

It is a constant battle to not put in everything but the kitchen sink when designing and building a new application.  Many times, ideas will continue to come to you throughout the development process, which is a good thing!  However, often, if a person were to implement everything that came to mind, and was determined to wait to launch until the system were perfect in every way….well, the thing would never get launched!

This is one of our biggest struggles.  We have to learn to prioritize and to keep a list of all ideas for future versions, so we can get that critical first version out there.

That is the beauty of working on web based software, or software-as-a-service.  We can implement enhancements and new features quickly and easily.  Unlike traditional installed desktop software, or even worse with server based software, where an update needs to be packaged, the client notified of an update, and then getting them to install it; web based software is a much simpler process of deploying it, and giving a nice surprise to the customer when they next use the application and see something new available to them!

The second obstacle, and perhaps much more important, is acknowledging the fact that we don’t know, and cannot anticipate everything!

As much as we labour over the features list, functionalities and possible uses to which a customer may put our applications, we can never think of everything.  This is where user feedback is so critical to the development process.  The goal of any software developer should be in meeting as many user requested features as possible, to provide the best experience and most robust feature set that we can.  So, be sure to let your feelings and desires be known.  If your software provider has a forum or method whereby you can communicate this information to them, take advantage of it.