Wednesday, June 30, 2010

6/30 Brightwurks

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Brightwurks Feed My Inbox

Announcing B Combinator!
June 30, 2010 at 1:48 AM

Today we're announcing a new type of ongoing content for the Brightwurks blog ... something we're calling B Combinator.

So what is it? B Combinator is our attempt to build a bootstrapped web app ... publicly. As if it's not hard enough to self-fund a web app, we're also going to blog about the entire process. We're going to share every step of the way, giving people a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build and launch version one.

What's with the name?

Of course the name "B Combinator" is a play on the Y Combinator name. Early in 2010 we applied to YC with this idea and were not accepted. I want to be clear that we aren't bitter. It was just an idea without a proof of concept at the time, so it makes sense that we weren't picked. However, we aren't the kind of people to sit idly by and wait for things to fall in our lap. We're finding a way to build it anyways.

Will it be harder? Yes. Will it take longer? Yes. Could we end up looking stupid? Yes. Despite all the challenges could it still be a game-changer? Absolutely!

As for the "B", it could stand for a number of things: Brightwurks, bootstrapped, "plan B" (as Y Combinator was plan A), badass (we hope) ... frankly it doesn't matter. Since the app doesn't have a name yet, B Combinator will have to do until there is something more official.

What are you building?

That's the next post, so stay tuned! We're just out to solve a practical problem we think a lot of businesses (including ours) have. It's not ground-breaking, just something we feel everyone in this market has done wrong.

We built the first version of Feed My Inbox in roughly 24 hours. This app needs more thought and work before we can launch, so we're taking a different approach.

I also want to give a hat tip to Carsonified and the Bare Naked App project they did 4+ years ago. I really enjoyed reading it and B Combinator is very much inspired by what that project was about.

The Objectives

  1. Prove that an idea is worthless; execution is everything. Enough said.
  2. Inspire readers and people in our business by sharing the entire process publicly
  3. Build a larger audience by sharing our process with others
  4. Generate feedback, ideas and discussion from readers about how to make the app better; we hope you will participate by reading and commenting.
  5. Writing about the process holds us accountable to making consistent progress and launching version 1
  6. Build an app that helps companies do business more efficiently and helps us do this full-time. Currently we split time between working on our projects at Brightwurks and doing client work at Project83.

Upcoming Posts

  • What we're building
  • Selecting a Name
  • Wireframes v1
 

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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

6/29 Brightwurks

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Brightwurks Feed My Inbox

New Feed My Inbox Features
June 28, 2010 at 5:40 PM

Instead of burning one down in honor of 4/20 we decided to be productive and announce some new Feed My Inbox features! Along with a number of back-end improvements, there are four new customer-facing features you may be interested in. Here's a rundown of each:

1. 6-hour Frequency Option

If you want updates somewhere in-between real-time and daily, we've added a new frequency option that will check every six hours and email you when there are new items available. If you have a paid account, simply login and edit a feed to see the option:

6-hour Frequency

2. Pause Your Feeds

If you ever leave on vacation or wish to pause ALL Feed My Inbox notifications temporarily, you can do so very easily. Visit the "feed settings" page in your account and there is a "Pause Your Feeds" link. One click and it's done, then click it again to make them active.

Pause Feeds

3. Brightwurks.com Blog is Free!

Someone mentioned this to us a while back and we thought this would be fun. If you subscribe to our blog (Brightwurks.com), it no longer counts against your feed count. So go crazy and add 6, 26 or 76 feeds to your account! If one of them is ours you won't have to upgrade.

4. Unsubscribe from Multiple Feeds

Up until now it's been rather difficult to unsubscribe from multiple feeds at one time. You have to click the unsubscribe link for each one, which can be tedious if you have a lot of feeds. Now all you need to do is select multiple feeds in your account, then click the "Edit Selected" button on the top. There is now an "unsubscribe from selected" link on the top that you can click and instantly unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe from Multiple

Thanks for all the feature suggestions folks! We're listening and are working hard to keep 'em coming.

 

New Feature: Annual Payment Plans
June 28, 2010 at 5:40 PM

Today we released Feed My Inbox support for annual payment plans! This has been the most requested feature in the last month and we're happy to add it before most of the free trials expire.

By enrolling in an annual payment plan, you get the equivalent of two free months of service (save up to $32/year). For those that have been less than thrilled about our pricing plans, we hope this is just the push you needed to get on board!

The one thing we haven't released yet is the ability to switch from monthly billing to yearly billing (or vice versa) in the account area. If you already have a monthly plan and prefer to be billed yearly, please touch base with us and we can change it for you.

One last thing we added with regards to payments is pro-rated upgrades. If you upgrade to a bigger monthly/yearly plan at any time, the cost is pro-rated instead of charging you the full amount.

New Subject Line Option

Another small feature released today is a new email subject line option. You now have the choice of customizing the email subject line to read "Feed Name - Post Title", like so:

We appreciate all the great feedback and suggestions so far!

Update 2/11/10: We just added support so that you can change from monthly billing to annual billing in your account on the "Your Plan" page instead of having to ask us to change it.

 

New Feature: Confirm sites via meta tag
June 28, 2010 at 5:40 PM

Last night we added a new feature especially for webmasters, or anyone that has a Feed My Inbox email signup form on their website.

If you want to see your subscriber count and access who is subscribed to your feed, we have a process of confirming ownership of the feed. Up until last night the only way to confirm a site was by uploading an HTML file to your website. Since many folks are on hosted platforms like Blogger, Wordpress, etc. it's not possible to confirm ownership that way.

Now webmasters have the option of uploading the HTML file OR adding a meta tag to the <head> of their website. On most hosted platforms you have access to the head or header template of your site where the custom meta tag can be added.

Here are brief (untested, mind you) instructions for a few of the most popular hosted blogging platforms:

Wordpress.com:

Select "Meta Tag" as your verification and start at your blog dashboard. Go to Appearance > Editor > Header. The meta tag should be added in the header.php template file in between the <head></head> tags.

Blogger / Blogspot:

From your Blogger dashboard, click on "Layout" for the Blogspot you are verifying, then "Edit HTML". In the Edit Template screen, you will see the HTML for your blog template. The meta tag should be added near the top between the <head></head> tags.

Typepad:

The file upload method actually works best on Typepad. When logged in, click on the Library link at the top of your dashboard, then use the File Manager to upload the required html file.

Squarespace:

Select "Meta Tag" as your verification method, and insert the code within [Structure > Website Settings > Code Injection > Extra Header Code] in your site manager.

For more instruction on the process of adding a site in Feed My Inbox, refer to the webmasters page.

 

Feed My Inbox 2.0 is Launched!
June 28, 2010 at 5:40 PM

Launching Feed My Inbox 2.0 had many bumps today, but it's finally live. Thanks so much for your patience while the service was down most of the day.

Many more details about the site will be posted here in the coming weeks, but right now we're only going to cover the most important stuff.

Accounts have new passwords

All account passwords in the old and new system are encrypted in the database. We can't even see them. Since version 2.0 is a completely different platform with new code and so forth, we were not able to migrate over the passwords to the new database.

What's that mean? We had to reset account passwords and there are two ways to get in your account:

  1. Use the forgot your password link and the password will be reset then emailed to you. Upon logging in for the first time you will be asked to create your own new password.
  2. As I write this we are sending an email to every customer that has a Feed My Inbox account. The email will contain information about the new version along with their new account password.

Sorry about that folks, but we really had no way around this one if we wanted to keep account information 100% secure.

Enjoy the new site!

We worked extremely hard on the new website and account area. It's a great foundation for all the cool things we have planned in 2010. Go check it out!

 

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Sunday, June 13, 2010

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