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

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

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

Handoff Begins

Today we began the process of passing off our first design document to development. Meeting between Michael, Larry, Ed, and Nelson. We’ve completed the bulk of our phase one design. Compared to the other software companies we’ve started we are much further ahead. We have a detailed design doc on what the iPhone app will do. It’s been rare in the past that we’ve had this much design work prior to the start of our coding. Nelson is certain that he can begin to code based on what we handed off today.

We’re all very enthused about what we’ve designed. Should be a very useful, simple app for iPhone, but one which has no c0mpeting iPhone app, even with the release of 3.0. Best part is this is phase one, we’ve already scoped out phase two and three. We also have two additional iPhone apps on the drawing board that are totally unrelated to this development effort.

July 2nd, 2009 Posted by Michael ORoark | SOFTA, development, iphone, mobility | no comments

10 Social Media People You Must Follow on Twitter

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July 2nd, 2009 Posted by Larry Zinox | development, social networking | no comments

A Taste of Coding Setting Up This Site

Never been a coder. Worked with many over the years, but never really had my head inside any code. OK so HTML and CSS is not really code, but a lot of the same strict coding principles apply:

I can work odd times
2 lines of good code a day – is a good day
I can get mad at the person who wrote the code I’m fixing – not my fault man
Oh so that’s why they did it that way – was my fault man (all the while apologizing to the person who wrote the code I’m fixing)
Coffee really helps – except when it doesn’t
If working on one computer is good, working on five is even better – unless two of them are your wife’s
This problem cannot be fixed, that’s just the way it is – until you find you can fix it
Every problem you have, someone has had before you – and documented it ad nauseum in some forum somewhere
Just when you think you are pretty smart you find that the ad nauseum part is the most helpful
Must be universal to spouses – “All that time spent and it looks the same as it did yesterday.”