Tim Howell’s Weblog

Shipping is the goal of any software company. Tonight we pushed the button, flicked the switch - however you want to put it. ActionThis is now live.

The team’s worked fantastically hard over the past few weeks, not to mention the 10 months of effort that had already gone into the solution.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be listening to what people say about ActionThis. Thanks to Read/WriteWeb and Mashable, amongst others, for their support and coverage.

We believe we’ve got a great foundation to help people get things done, and this is just the start - there are a lot of ideas as to how we can add more capability, develop our community, and drive growth through partnerships.

It’s been a busy time up until now, but this work has largely been behind the scenes. Now our service is out there, our focus changes: we need to make ActionThis a compelling and useful service that helps people get things done and go home early. Does that sound interesting? ActionThis trial for a free trial.

Avenue A | Razorfish has released their 2007 Digital Outlook report which “examines trends in the way consumers, publishers, and advertisers employ digital media to have a conversation with each other. In the 2007 edition, we examine issues such as how to measure the value of new media, and what’s on the minds of today’s “digital class” - the 18-to-24-year-olds who shape tomorrow’s consumer experience.”

There’s also an accompanying podcast. Very useful and nicely presented if this kind of information is of interest.

Reports are coming through that New Zealand once again had a strong prescence at CeBIT, to the chagrin of the Australian exhibitors, it seems.

Putting national rivalries aside, we found CeBIT a useful exercise back in 2005, which also received strong support from NZTE. The takeaways for us, at our first international show were:

Use the event as a launchpad into Europe and, in particular, the German-speaking countries. What they require from you: German language versions of your software and, ideally, all associated documentation.

The event is also a useful one to research other companies and, in particular, competitors, who are most likely to be there. We set aside a couple of days for competitive research, and found it worthwhile understanding how our major competitors positioned themselves, promoted themselves, as well as observing the questions they were asked - assuming the questions were in English, of course.

Lastly, depending on what you want to get out of it, the event is also useful for partnering, with resellers, distributors and technology partner candidates all available.

Dealing with the volume of people is key, and taking good notes about any useful conversations will prove invaluable later on - this is the case at any tradeshow. During the busy periods, we were scrambling to write details on the backs of business cards - anything to keep track of who the person was and what they wanted, so that we could make meaningful contact later on.

After yesterday’s euphoria (and it wasn’t just you, Rod), everyone’s had time to think about the iPhone and its Achilles heels. Like most people, my initial reaction was “I want one,” but now I’m having to think twice - lucky I’ve got 12+ months to think about it before it arrives here in New Zealand.

Key weaknesses or unknowns for me are:

• Limited battery life (up to 5 hours) which is not great for serious usage or for when you want to watch video on a long plane ride and then use the phone. Why isn’t there a way to replace the battery?
• The robustness of the touchscreen is unknown. If the phone is used as an everyday device, how beat up with the screen get? I carry my Blackberry in my pocket and it’s stood up to a lot of wear and tear.
• What the device doesn’t have: 3G, slot for expandable memory, Wifi syncing, ability to swap batteries etc.
• No support for native Exchange or Office, which will limit its market for those of us who need this for business - not that this is Apple’s target market.

Paul Kedrosky and Scoble elaborate further, and these are indicative of other comments I’ve seen.

No doubt we’ll ignore these weaknesses given the sexy looks and interaction model, plus the increased forgiveness we have for anything carrying the Apple brand, although it cannot be disputed this is a revolutionary device.