The post goes into the thought process behind the logo, the stages it went through, and hints at ways to brainstorm brand identities, particularly for web applications. Make sure you don’t miss the post. Click here to read it.

Back in 2006 we weren’t too happy about the existing project management and collaboration solutions out there, and we desperately needed one to manage our relationship and work with a growing customer base. We started the first version back in May 2006 and launched officially (after a long public beta stage) in March of 07. It’s been growing steadily since and with the new version, we’re aiming pretty high.

About the new version

Goplan 2 is a complete rewrite, both in terms of code as well as vision. It is now fully company centric (even though it fits single users just as well), and while we removed some things that we figured didn’t make sense for the majority of our users (public blog, real-time chat, fine-grained permissions), we added a few things that make it a compelling product.

The new calendar is insanely good, the status updates and per-user activity stream make sense in a team environment, and the new company dashboard makes everything come together. We’re biased, but we’re really happy about how the product has evolved. Here’s a quick glimpse over how it looks:

We’re always excited about a product launch, and this one is special because it’s one of our own products. We really hope you try it out and send us your feedback if you have any. For more information about what’s new on Goplan, check the official blog.

PS: Now that Goplan 2 is out, we’ll get back to posting on this blog more often. Thanks for being a loyal reader, even when posts are lacking.

Mike argues that Yahoo should foster innovation throughout the whole company instead of just one group of isolated people up in San Francisco. However, while he’s obviously right about the need for innovation to be ingrained into Yahoo as a whole, I do like the idea of them having a group of individuals whose goal is to - at the lack of a better expression right now - think differently.

Changing a company’s mindset isn’t an easy task, particularly when you’re employing thousands of people. So by having a separate group of people working on inspiring products that normally wouldn’t come out of the “main house”, you might instill some healthy competition for great ideas - on everyone. This is the main reason why closing Brickhouse is weird unless there’s a set strategy to get people to innovate effectively inside Yahoo. On top of that, Brickhouse had some fantastic talent that shouldn’t go to waste.

I guess we’ll see how things unfold. I’m curious about what the strategy behind this move is, and about what happens to the products, ideas and people out of Brickhouse.

I like slow weekends when I’m not under the gun with work. Matt Webb says this feels like “zero gravity”, and I have to agree. I typically take this time to catch up on my reading, so in case you’re interested, here’s what’s caught my eye in the past week.

1) This interview with Jeff Bezos on Smartmoney (about the future of Amazon.com) is interesting. I’ve always been a huge fan of Amazon and I do admire a company that manages to pull away from what most would call its core business (online sales) to fill a need of others - which is the case of their Web Services platform, that we‘ve been using for a few years now^[1] - or the Kindle, which follows Bezos’ vision that people will read again.

2) My copy of Adaptive Path’s Subject To Change has finally arrived and I can’t wait to go through it. I’ll post some more thoughts as soon as I finish reading it, but usually those guys don’t disappoint. It is safe to assume that if you’re into the business of building products, you’ll like (and get value out of) this book.

3) If you’re a fan of number crunching (we’re doing a few interesting things with map/reduce with a client of ours), you’ll probably be interested in a post about data mining over at New Scientist. It talks about what kinds of data companies are collecting based on your online habits. It also briefly mentions Stephen Baker’s new book The Numerati which I personally haven’t read yet (but will). If you fancy number crunching, though, you may want to look at Supercrunchers as well, that I personally loved.

4) For the rubyists out there, the Rubyconf 08 videos are now online, so you might want to start your downloads if you (like me) missed the conference. The guys over at Confreaks - who go through all the trouble of filming, encoding, uploading and serving these videos - deserve a few drinks.

^[1] For those curious, an interesting tidbit: Goplan was the first rails-based application to publicly run on EC2 instances (while EC2 was in beta, in September of 06). How cool is that?

Yesterday in particular I posted an article on peak potential (and how some people unfortunately never reach it) that I’d love you to read and discuss. It talks about how talent needs nurture from the individual himself and the environment or team around him.

If you like that one post, here’s the rest of the blog and the RSS feed so you can subscribe. I hope to have some of you as readers of that blog as well as this one. Thank you!

PS: naturally I’ll still be writing on this blog about both what we’re doing as a company and the topics we think and work on: design thinking, development and web-based product strategy. So stick around, obviously.

A few years ago when we started there weren’t that many companies like ourselves out there. These days, there’s quite a few. I feel it is important to share one very important thought we sometimes overlook: you should never forget where you came from, why you are where here, and where you want to go next.

Our solution, CEPs

When we first started (when there was only 4 of us) I thought it would be a good idea to keep an updated list of Concerns, Expectations and Priorities [1]. So we created that list in our private wiki (more on how we use our wiki in a future post). Every one of us went in and wrote down his concerns, expectations and priorities.

I feel like writing these things down was almost as important as writing down our core values for several reasons. One, it made us actually consciously communicate what we want to get out of the company (personal satisfaction, money, experiences). Two: it made us understand others better, because quite often, communicating personal wishes is a pain. And three, it became an unconscious goal to meet these challenges.

A few months ago we went through the first few lines we each wrote when we got started. Not only had we taken care of most of the Concerns, Expectations and Priorities we each had, we found we had surpassed them. Not only was it a realization of a job well done, it was also a great motivator for the future.

Concluding thoughts

How often do you have the chance to know what others really need in order to work passionately? Or how they feel the company you’re on should be moving? I imagine not a lot of large companies let everyone dictate direction. But small companies and studios definitely can - and should - let people chime in and take the helm. We chose to use our CEP list to keep everyone focused (even if unconsciously) on our goals. How do you do it in your company? Share a story, if you have one, of dealing with business growth pains in the comments - thanks!

[1]: For those curious, we had a different name for it in portuguese (PEP). This is actually a translation of that name. [2]: The photo in this post (of a slide on Sagmeister’s presentation on Happiness in Design) is by karmagirl on Flickr.

It’s pretty easy to let routine take over. No shame in that, everyone gives in. This weekend we popped out of the same old, same old and decided to build something new - sure, there was a motive (Rails Rumble 2008), but we just took it as an excuse. In 48 hours (well, we slept two full nights, so make that about 24) we sketched, built and privately launched a new product called Melee.

If you do agile work (design or develoment), you probably do the stuff Melee helps you with, but with sticky notes and office walls. Melee is an agile brainstorming app. What does that mean, you ask? Let me give you a couple of use cases.

1) You’re a design and development shop who just got a RFP for a new social network. You might brainstorm a few ideas, throw them at the wall, cluster them, prioritize them, and build a proposal. Melee is your new wall.

2) You’re a development shop that uses SCRUM (ed: if you don’t use it yet, give it a try, you’ll love it). You maintain a product backlog which is a list of things to do, ordered by priority, and before each sprint, you look at the backlog, decide what to do next, and proceed to be awesome for the whole sprint. Melee helps you maintain the backlog.

It’s meant to be used either locally or over the web, so it should be a great tool to dump, cluster and prioritize ideas on those product planning conference calls you all do (we know we do them, at least). It’s all Ajax-based so you see live what others are doing, and they see what you are doing too. The goal is live collaboration.

Anyway, it’s easier to see it rather than reading about it, but since we’re not completely ready to show this baby to you yet, how about a Flickr set with screenshots and photos of the development process? Fine, you say? Well here, then.

Launch details

Melee will hopefully launch as a beta later this week - we’re doing all sorts of work with Totspot and Goplan 2.0 but we *will* get this out to you. Here’s what we can tell you already: there will likely be a free version and a paid version to help with our costs of running the app. In the beginning, it’ll be free for all, anyway. We do hope it’s useful for you and your team. It’s useful for ours - heck, otherwise, we wouldn’t build it. More details really soon, promise. Did I mention that Flickr set already?

I have an iPhone and I love it. I love how it looks, how it feels, the possibilities it has as a platform, the whole experience. But now I want this. Sure, the form factor may be weird because it’s tall/wide, but if the tilt experience is as good as on the next few videos, I’m hooked.

Now obviously these are marketing videos, and a device like this is only as good as the combination of hardware and software it uses. But for now you’ve got my attention, Intel. Where do I sign? For those of you looking for more information, check out Intel’s press release or Boing Boing Gadgets, who are running an article on the prototype as well.

The full message to developers is quoted below:

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software. We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Now maybe Pragmatic Programmers will be able to release their upcoming book on iPhone development, and more authors will feel free to write about building apps and services on top of the iPhone platform. Me, I’m glad to see the blog posts with iPhone development knowledge roll in. It felt a little weird to finally have what I’ve been craving for so long and not being able to talk about it. Good times.

[Thanks to Chris Messina for the heads up on twitter]

So I went in to take a look at the new browser-based Joost, and all is not well - particularly when it comes to experience. I login, and I get to my Home. First thing that happens, Joost asks me to install a plugin - which deep down means “browser, but not really”. So I bite that bullet and what do I get as a reward? A 15 second ad - great. And after I watch one of the videos that was tagged as part of Joost’s “Our Picks” section (a 2 minute video on robots), I get another ad. Thanks Joost. But no, thanks.

If you’re going to ask someone to sign-up for a product, at least reward them in some way that doesn’t envolve the feeling of being lured into installing stuff and watching ads. Not only will people just close the browser window and leave, they’re probably going to remember the crappy experience, tell their friends about it, and just stay away - quite possibly, for ever.

I know solving the internet TV problem is tough, but if you’re going to start somewhere, you should start by not frustrating your visitors - it’ll just remind them of good old TV. You know - the one we all stopped watching a long time ago. In fact, I think I feel like I had more control over the old one - at least then I could zap those ads with a flick of the finger.

PS: Where’s the real content? I’ve seen that video on robots, a video-clip by Pink and some report on summer festivals (and a total of 4 ads to go with those). Joost was called the future of television before, but honestly, if all TV is going to have is robot videos, pop music and awkward comics, I’d rather read a book.