I’m thoroughly impressed with the team at Omega Vortex, the past few weeks. After a lot of development and testing, we finally decided to set a release date firmer than “Q3 2008″ internally. We had two specific products that we wanted to make a release on at the beginning of September (today), NextShout and ComicShout.

At the beginning of last week, one of our clients launched a fascinating exhibit. We’ve been supporting them through the opening of that exhibit and they identified some problems that they needed taken care of by this upcoming Tuesday. Even with the pressure surrounding these issues for Tuesday, our team has executed brilliantly. We brought our own goals to fruition and took care of our client’s problems, as well. We didn’t allow one to suffer for the benefit of the other, we did both.

NextShout and ComicShout were both released on-time, today. Go check them out.

Great job and many thanks to the team at Omega Vortex. You guys are all awesome.

While I was a little strapped for cash this year, I took on a job as a Sales Representative for Planet Celluar, an Authorized Retailer for AT&T Products and Services. It was an okay job, about as glamorous as retail sales can be. Due to some expansion at Omega Vortex and the fact that I didn’t really need the job anymore, I decided it was best that we parted ways. A recent e-mail that was circulated among the people I used to work with makes me glad that I did.

So, here’s my attempt to tear apart an e-mail from a retarded business executive. Some people’s names, product names, and location names have been changed to protect the guilty … or the mentally retarded.

(more…)

Adam Kinder of E29 Incorporated put up a blog entry on the internet’s phenomenon of producing fake companies not too long ago (I just recently noticed it, thanks to Twitter). Omega Vortex got an Honorable Mention on his list of companies that get it right:

A runner up that I’m going to give a nod to is Omega Vortex. Jeremy Privett knows what he’s doing when it comes to setting up a good, fluid development shop. The only reason I can’t 100% vouch for their work is that they haven’t released anything yet, and I’ve not worked with their custom shop. Good group to keep an eye on though.

Admittedly, Omega Vortex fell into the “fake” category not too many years ago before I was swept off to Colorado to go work at Completely Unique and Peak8. I filed papers on GU² Services, Inc. before it was acquired and wanted to file papers on Omega Vortex but never really got around to it until after the Peak8 era.

We do have papers, though! They’re currently in the wrong state, but Alabama’s business laws are incredibly annoying compared to Colorado’s so I may try to put off legally moving the company out of Colorado until I move to NY sometime within the next year. Unless there’s some legal reason to do otherwise which I’m not aware of. We don’t currently have any type of office space, as all of our employees work remotely, so our physical address is pretty much non-existent.

We’re working on fixing that unreleased products issue in the coming months and I’ve been working on ramping up our software division for more progress, now that we’re getting to the point where we can look at it again. Since we have some new people on our team, consulting work should no longer completely bog us down so that no work gets done in our software. We’ll have to see how it goes from here.

Even vague ones … and I mean really vague.

Quite a while ago, Omega Vortex adopted a policy that we would refrain from announcing specific release dates. We won’t even narrow it down to a month for you. There’s quite a few reasons that we do this.

We’re a startup that’s bootstrapping from consulting work. At any given time, said consulting work currently takes priority over all other things, because we have to make money in order to pay bills and keep developers paid. That’s all fine and dandy, but while we’re having to focus so much on consulting, software isn’t being written. This is eating us like the plague. We’re presently amazingly profitable, but not in the way that we want to be. No matter how good our scheduling is, it doesn’t make a difference because we’re constantly having to drop everything to invest time in a new consulting project.

On the plus side, we’re about to simultaneously release a new product that hasn’t been announced yet along with updates to two other products that you may already be familiar with. No matter how close we get to that day, we’re not going to tell you when that day will be, in advance. All of our releases are marked by quarters. Any one year is divided up into three month quarters. Q1 is January - March, Q2 is April - June, Q3 is July - September, and Q4 is October - December. That means that when we mark a release as Q3 of 2008, we could potentially release that product at any point within those three months. If we’re expecting to release in September, we’ll actually really say Q4 so that we have three extra months worth of time buffer to use in the even that something goes wrong. If we happen to meet our goal of September, we just managed to release an entire month early.

Three months of buffer is a pretty decent amount of time. Sadly, because of time constraints with our consulting work, we’re still having trouble meeting those release dates. OmegaVerge has suffered considerably because of this and it has allowed competitors to get a jump on us. (Speaking of OmegaVerge, I’d like to give a shoutout to Ben Babcock who actually managed to help me with a SimpleXML issue by letting me help him with a SimpleXML issue. We now have type-safety/inference of IP.Converge methods in OmegaVerge since we solved that issue, instead of having to pass around SimpleXMLElement objects. Thanks, Ben.)

If you’re a software development shop and, like us, you can’t dedicate 100% of your time to software development, don’t announce release dates. Even vague ones. Surprise people. People get incredibly antsy / angry when you don’t meet release dates.

Oh, and if you have a historic trend of lack of ability to execute, don’t try to say things like “this summer” or “next month” … I’m guilty of this too, but this is a practice that really needs to stop. I’ve seen so many projects say “next month” and it take so much longer than that. Two in particular have me facepalming, right now …

This is an interesting position for me. Before recently, Omega Vortex has just been a small group of close individuals who all knew each other and have worked together before. Now that we’re expanding and I’m having to actually interview and hire people, I’ve been able to experience what it’s like to be on the opposite side of the process. I’m used to being the interviewee or the person applying and sending in a resume, not the guy interviewing or receiving the resume. I don’t claim to be an expert on interviewing people or sifting resumes, but here’s my list of things that’ll immediately get your resume tossed out of the pile. (more…)

I think I’m going to change my technology focus. Now that I’ve stepped outside of my circle of really talented and competent people, I’ve learned that PHP Developers suck. I’ve been trying to hire people for a big project that we’re working on, and I am absolutely amazed by the number of unreliable and/or absolutely terrible programmers that I’ve talked to.

PHP is suitable for “enterprise development”. The problem is, only 1% of everyone who knows PHP actually knows what “enterprise development” is supposed to mean.

Maybe this’ll all have a happy ending, but this has so far been pretty close to the top, if not the top, of my list of “Worst Birthdays Ever” …

From ZDNet, it looks like Microsoft is preparing what they call a “don’t blame Windows” tool. What I found incredibly interesting is the description on what the tool does.

Windows Advisor is an easy-to-use self-help tool that notifies users about problems on their PCs and helps fix them. Windows Advisor scans users’ PCs continuously, notifies them about important issues, and, when possible, suggests easy fix solutions. The program also provides users with self-help solutions, including a 1-click checkup function that enables them to check their PCs whenever they like; tips and tutorials that teach users how to perform certain actions on their PCs; and a toolbox that concentrates the important tools that are found in the operating system into one easy-to-find location.

I feel like I’ve heard of something like this before … but, I can’t for the life of me remember where …

$5 Million seems a lot smaller, now that Microsoft has stepped into this particular game. Only, Microsoft has a much wider scope in mind: “Windows”

I should’ve expected something like this would happen over a year ago. Of course, I also didn’t expect I’d be more successful now. Only … I don’t have VCs to answer to. Wink, wink.

I know what you’re thinking: “You’re kidding, right?” (Okay, maybe that’s just what I thought.)

In some cases, I wish that I was …

So Long … And Thanks for All the Fish

Yahoo responded to the letter from Carl Icahn, but I think this is the lead out before the final nail goes into the coffin. Microsoft has said they’ve moved on, though? What happens if this new board of directors can’t get the software giant to bite? I think Dvorak put it best. This squad looks like a great bunch of sellouts.

If Yahoo can’t fend off Icahn, it’s game over. If Icahn does manage this take over, selling out to Microsoft might actually be the best case scenario. Can anyone spot the irony in that sentence? So, we’re looking at the possibility of Yahoo being sold to Microsoft where the clash of culture and technology is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services … or Yahoo being cut up and sold to the highest bidders … which is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services. I can’t find the win in this situation, can you? Oh right, I’m not a Yahoo shareholder … maybe I should be.

I feel really sorry for some of the more prominent members of the PHP Community who are currently employed at Yahoo. I can’t imagine that they would have any trouble finding a new home, if they decide to leave after whatever ends up happening. Maybe everything will settle down and nothing will happen, then they’ll get to just keep their jobs in peace. Who knows?

Let’s pick on CNET for a while … (more…)

(Obligatory Joel on Software Reference)

It’s really true, though. A couple years ago, I thought that in order to be successful I needed to make a big difference somewhere. Make huge changes and huge progress everyday. As time passed, I slowly came to realize that’s not possible. Things happen. Businesses aren’t developed overnight. Now, everyday, I wake up and contemplate what the next inch forward will be. Progress, any progress, is what it takes to be successful.

Don’t get me wrong. In today’s fast-paced global marketplace, being able to think quick on your feet and react faster than your competitors is what it takes to stay afloat. What benefit do you get out of reacting faster than your competitors and shipping a poor implementation of a requested feature? Take your time. Do it right. While your customers may complain about the speed, initially, you’ll certainly receive more praise for making it work properly, in the long run.

It’s a brand new day. Let’s see what kind of progress this day will bring.

A recent client of Omega Vortex has been hit by the pains of outsourcing. Now, I’m sure there are a ton of really good developers out in India … somewhere. Sadly, a lot of the people I have talked to have had nothing but negative things to say about consulting companies based out in India. It’s certainly a lot cheaper than development shops here in the states, but it’s also a lot riskier. So, here’s my five rules of outsourcing to make sure that you don’t get burned the next time you’re looking for someone to help you complete a project.

(more…)