SOFTA Ventures

Today January 14

Another day closer. Goal line in sight. Excellent afternoon meeting with enormous progress on all fronts. Everything is coming along. Thanks to Michael and Ed and the development team, we see the light at the end of the tunnel now. Pretty soon, we will once again, after a several year hiatus, be busy interacting with users of our products. This is our fourth company in high tech, always with the same mantra, of making the experience for the user exceptional and beyond their wildest expectation. Cheers, Larry

Sent from my iPhone Larry C Zinox

January 15th, 2010 Posted by Larry | SOFTA, development, smartphone | no comments

It’s the Little Things

There is a correlation between golf and business, and in this case releasing a new software product. In golf a one foot putt counts exactly the same as a 350 yard drive. In fact it’s probably easier to recover from an errant drive than from a bad putt. The latter messes with your mind, gives you the yips, the former just tends to get you mad. The point being the little things count just as much as the big things. Concentration, attention to detail, and the ability to compartmentalize.

The base code has been completed for some time. It’s getting all the little things right that is now taking the time. Short putt – long drive = cosmetic correction – new feature. The little details can absorb as much time as adding a feature: Website flow, colors, labels, typos, all these short putts end up being just as important as that long drive – the main application. But ultimately it will be the short putts that determine whether our long drive was worth it (assuming we didn’t shank the drive out of bounds).

But we’re almost there, on the 18th green, well maybe on the fringe but definitely the 18th hole.

January 12th, 2010 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, development | no comments

First Home Page Text

Simple. Smart. SOFTA.

The smartphone wave is growing.

In less than a year the iPhone garnered a 28 percent smartphone marketshare, according to Apple.  Recent studies show that smartphones now outsell standard cell phones.

Informa Telecoms & Media predict that while traditional handset sales are expected to fall, Smartphone sales will maintain robust growth, 35.3% year on year – Smartphone penetration will reach 13.5% of new handsets sold.

Smartphones are bringing people together.  It is the next level of networking. Even established networks like LinkedIn and Facebook are seeing the value in mobile networking.

One common feature of Smartphone users is the desire to have easy-to-use, cost-effective apps.

The SOFTA Ventures team has been riding the wave of software solutions for more than 20 years, combining their marketing know how with an ability to keep technology, intuitive, inexpensive and instant.  Applying this knowledge to iPhone’s and other smartphone technologies in the natural next step.

SOFTA Ventures is in the business of making smart phone smarter.  Follow us on our latest adventure.

October 28th, 2009 Posted by softaventures | SOFTA, apple, blackberry, development, iphone, smartphone | no comments

Life Beyond the App

Now that the iPhone application is coming together, both the front end and the back end engines, it’s time to start working on all the ancillary pieces.

Attended a 3 hour class this morning at the Illinois CPS Society on using social sites to build your brand.  Ostensibly it was for job searchers, but the lessons apply to building a corporate brand just as well.  Covered using all the major sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, as well as several less known but hopefully just as effective sites.

We had already done a lot of discovery on the topic, but there were several insights on doing specific, targeted searches to help build followers, especially regarding Twitter.

My goal over the next 30 days is to build out our main social sites in a coordinated professional looking manner.

October 21st, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, social networking | no comments

Two Steps Forward and One Step Sideways

Although we are nearing completion of our first release we still have some unsettled issues.

From a software standpoint we need to complete the registration process our users will use once they download our application from the iTunes store. For that registration process to be as solid as we would like there is a key piece of data that we will need to obtain from the cell phone independent of the person doing the registration. Unfortunately to date we’ve been unable to ascertain whether that information is made available to us or not.

Our trials with testing the equipment we would need in our data center have been going on for about a week now. The device looks promising, but we’ve struggled all week to get it to consistently work. Looks like we finally isolated the problem today. A swappable part of the device appears to be bad, or at least incompatible. Assuming we have solved that part of our roadblock we should be able to make some quick progress toward our goal of submitting our application to Apple by November 1, 2009. And I think we are comfortable enough with how this will turn out that we have begun to spec our application into a Blackberry platform.

We are now rapidly approaching the point where the need to complete all the incidentals will have moved ahead of the software code. Incidentals such as landing page at iTunes, FAQ’s, support website, all are open issues that must be completed along with the code in order to have a fully functional application.

October 1st, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, blackberry, iphone, smartphone | no comments

All Good Things Come to Those Who Research

Well it ends up that our trials with the iPhone SDK 3.x shortcomings proved to be one of the best things that could have happened to our project.  In searching for a work around we uncovered an answer that is not a work around but is truly a superior solution to what we had thought the SDK could provide.  The answer moves us from the realm of just providing a software application to being a service provider.

It entails adding some equipment at a data center, but that equipment opens us to some very expansive telecommunications possibilities.  It will allow us to create an engine that we can then use not just on our iPhone app, but as the back end for any smartphone on which we choose to release our application.  We’ve had numerous conversations with both the manufacturer as well as the local VAR and we are convinced it will do everything we need for now and well into the future.

And in a serendipitous twist it also solves the issues we were having with out Iowa project.  It will allow us to do everything we wanted our third party technical partner to provide but couldn’t.

In speaking with the manufacturer it seems that no one else is using this hardware in the way we intend, even though it is 100% capable of doing what we want.  That may be the best news of all, it gives us a competitive advantage.

Shows what you can do when you view problems not as roadblocks that impede, but as challenges to succeed.

September 9th, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, Uncategorized, blackberry, development, internet, iphone, mobility, palm, smartphone, social networking | no comments

Challenges with Progress. It’s the Yang-Yin?

Well our disappointment with Apple‘s iPhone SDK 3.1 is not going to go away anytime soon.  Our technical issue is systemic to the SDK There is a wall between where we want to go within the iPhone and the SDK that can only be circumvented by jailbreaking the iPhone.  And being the legitimate developers we are, we’ll leave that to the hacker apps.  Hopefully Apple and AT&T will see the potential  revenue here and eventually open it up.

In the mean time we have identified a couple of alternatives that will provide a decent workaround,  and could quite possibly be a benefit that we wouldn’t of otherwise had if were able to ue the iPhone SDK the way we had originally intended.  The benefit will accrue to us when we migrate our app to other smartphones.

As for our Iowa project that one is looking to be on long-term hiatus.  Another technical issue that one of our third party technical partners was not willing to move on.  Too bad too, because I was doing the coding on that one and was truly enjoying it.

But have to move on,  can’t dwell on what might have been.  We have enough other ideas in the pipeline that there is no downtime.

August 18th, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, development, iphone, smartphone | no comments

Twitter Takes Off

Why do we bring you this clip?  Because Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, will all become and integral part of business solutions we will be rolling out on iPhones, Blackberrys, and other smartphones in the coming months.

All geared toward businesses that want to touch their customers with relevant, useful information, specifically targeted at them.

August 7th, 2009 Posted by Larry Zinox | SOFTA, blackberry, iphone, smartphone, social networking | no comments

Progress with Challenges it’s the Yin-Yang

Saw the first pass of our Apple coding effort yesterday.  It’s looking awesome.  It is always a big thrill in software when you first see what started as an idea, morph into a design document, then into code and finally into something that you can actually see on the screen.  And in this case the screen is on an iPhone, even a bigger thrill.  Fun to be on the cutting edge again.

We are still dealing with an issue related to the iPhone and accessing certain areas within it with our code.  If Apple support is not able to give us a satisfactory resolution we have begun work on a plan B for that part.  Plan B would allow us to do what we had originally planned to do within the iPhone,  we would just be doing it outside the iPhone app, and it would add a fixed cost component we otherwise would not have.  On the positive side Plan B would give us some technology that we can use to piggyback with some other projects we are developing.  Yin-Yang

Also making progress on our other project code named “Iowa” (always wanted to be able to say that) (code named that is, not Iowa). We’re dealing with some third party technology in that one too.  Unfortunately their API doc looks as if it were written by Ph’ds for Ph’ds. Oh wait it was.  Lots of read, re-read, re-read and re-read with it, followed by head scratching and hmm wonder what they are trying to say.  But we’re plodding our way through it.  Should be starting our live field testing with our first beta tester next week.

Good thing is we’re learning there is a lot we can do with the technology we’re using in Iowa.  Both straight “out of the box” with our third party API’s (when we can figur them out) and even more so in conjunction with our own engines.  Bad thing is our technology partner is a startup with non-existent, or at the very least woefully inadequate support.  Yin-Yang

August 7th, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, development, iphone | no comments

Nothing Comes Easy

After doing extensive design and development work on our first iPhone app we hit a glitch.  Seems there is a technical issue within the iPhone that might keep us from doing what we want to do.  Or at the very least will force us to find a work-around.  Seems others have encountered similar issues and have used non-supported APIs to get past the issue, but we are planning on releasing this through the iTunes stores so that is not an option.

Time to get creative in how we solve this.  Meeting tomorrow to discuss.

Also our second project has hit it’s own technical hurdle.  Waiting to hear back from one of our code providers to see if they have a solution for us.  Otherwise time to get creative here too.

But that is the “fun” in what we do.  We are developing in  some cutting edge areas of iPhone, sms, and short codes.  Problems are bound to pop up as we push what these products can do.  The satisfaction of solving these problems is the initial reward, then hopefully followed by a monetary reward.  We are not 100% geek, money is good too. /wink

August 2nd, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, development, iphone, smartphone | no comments