supergloo builds web applications with developers from around the world.

It’s similar to sports teams with players who come from all over the world. It’s about building the best team possible with the most skilled people. This means the best team of players regardless of their place of origin.

Stop and think of the major worldwide sports teams today. While once new, it is now common when teams are formed with multinationals. Baseball, Hockey, Football, Futbol, Rugby, Cricket, Basketball

It’s about winning. It’s about putting the best team possible on the field, ice, court, etc.

Now what does this have to do with software development and supergloo?

Well, at supergloo we’re fortunate to have a network of worldwide developers. Our developers are specialists who are focused. They help form the best possible team for you. Our worldwide developers are fast, focused and specialists for your project.

Just the other day, I took a look at the supergloo developer’s home countries and realized we are across the world. Western Europe, Eastern Europe, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, China, Mongolia, New Zealand, Australia, South America, North America. On a recent project, the supergloo development team consisted of 18 developers from 12 different countries.

And the client didn’t know it. They didn’t need to know it because we made it easy for them and showed results. I don’t really like to, but I’ll write about even more success stories in the future.

Now, I should take a step back and describe my perspective a bit. I have local pride. And I’m what you a call a “homer”. I cheer for the Minnesota Wild, Timberwolves, Vikings and Twins. My favorite team is the Minnesota team.

I like the University of Minnesota Gophers hockey. It was sad when the Gophers hockey team decided to bring on players from outside of Minnesota. I wasn’t alone in considering it a point of pride to have a team of all Minnesotans. As a fan, it felt good to beat a team of players from around the world. But, times changed and the Gophers have players from outside of Minnesota now. Simply put, I’m over it, because I’d rather win.

We probably all have some kind of story like my Minnesota Gophers. I imagine you have a similar story of local pride or import-vs-export or big-chain-store competing with the mom-and-pop. On one hand it’s sad. Whenever something changes, there is usually an element of sadness.

And maybe on the other hand, you don’t particularly care where people come from as long as they play together and win. And win with honor and integrity.

Or maybe it depends on the circumstance?

Let me be clear and direct with you. I’m not talking about what some people consider “offshore software development”. In their view, this means using cheap labor at the expense of local software developers. In fact, I’ve seen this approach where all local developers are wiped and replaced with a team at the other end of the world. I haven’t seen it work well in practice; probably sounded good in theory to the people watching costs.

No, that would be like suddenly taking my Minnesota Twins and shipping them to India or some other country; rather than bringing a player from Venezuela to play for the Twins.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, because I imagine you get my point by now.

What I’m talking about is putting the best team of software developers on the field for you.

We put this team on the field for you and yet we don’t ask you to speak multiple languages, stay up late at night or get up early. We don’t expect anything different from our clients. In fact, we don’t even want you to think about the team. We want you to be pleased with the results of a winning team.

I won’t bore you with the nuances of “coaching” the best team for you. We’ll show you in the results. We hire specialists. We don’t particularly care where they come from as long as they are good people with great skills.

So what’s the bottom line? supergloo is fast and focused for you. We put the best possible team on the field with players from around the world.

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Addictions come in many flavors: smoking, drinking, drugs, reading, exercising, email, watching tv, news. Yes, I did say reading, exercising, email, watching tv and news can be addictions. There are probably a few others we don’t typically associate with the word “addiction”. I believe doing too much of any one thing is an addiction, if that thing negatively affects you or your surroundings. That’s my opinion. But, we commonly misconstrue the idea of an addiction to be smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. This is related to what I’ve heard people refer to as having life balance. But, regardless, I’m not qualified or smart enough to bore you with the social ramifications of “addiction” and what a true “addiction” is or is not.

Actually, I’m writing to solicit your help in what I consider my most recent addiction: personal measure and monitoring. I’m going to ask for your feedback on tracking tools you use to monitor individual accomplishments or events.

But first, a little background-

Let me say right from the beginning: my latest addiction is focused on tracking myself and not comparing myself to other people. It’s about measuring and monitoring myself and only myself. I’m competitive, but this is not about other people.

I wrote a post a while back about the impossibility of determining if an event, project, task, etc. was successful if there were not pre-determined expectations going in to it. I mean, how do you honestly know if you don’t have a measurement? Sure, on an emotion level, it’s easy to determine if the event was pleasant or not. But, I’m talking about using benchmarks to measure and monitor. This way we can go beyond the emotional level in order to determine success along the way and after the fact.

Besides, you can use this data to grow on the next occasion.

As a participant in communities, groups and teams, we use all kinds of tools to measure and monitor, but I’m curious about what tools people are using to track themselves individually? You know, some people use Quicken or Wesabe to track personal finances. Some people use online logs to track their runs before a marathon. You might track golf rounds, geocache findings or honey hole fishing spots.

With these examples, hopefully you have a reference to what I’m talking about. The following are my paraphernalia for personal measure and monitor:

Measure and Monitor Sleep with Sleeptracker PRO

I’m what you might consider an early riser; 5am most days. I originally purchased the Sleeptracker because of the vibrating alarm. I thought my family would appreciate not having their sleep interrupted from my alarm. It also allows you to set an awake time “window” which I thought sounded pretty cool. (it is) But lately, I’ve been using the Sleeptracker to measure and monitor my sleep. It allows me to easily record data about things that might have affected my sleep the night before: things like temperature, big meal, whether I had a scotch or two, stress, etc. I’m starting to notice patterns which are interesting to me.

Measure and Monitor Tasks with GTD/Vitalist

By now, I imagine you’ve heard of Getting Things Done. GTD. I’ve been a believer and follower for about 2 years now. I started out using Yahoo Notepad with @ in front of folders and then moved to Google Docs. I even tried the Outlook plugin for a bit, but due to a variety of circumstances (reads: I use multiple devices, operating systems, access points and the idea of synchronization doesn’t seem DRY to me), I dropped it pretty quickly.

I tried Remember the Milk, but found Vitalist easier to use for GTD. Also, recently I’ve started to use the Jott Link to record to Vitalist from my mobile phone. Really handy!

Measure and Monitor Heart Rate with Polar

I measure and monitor my heart rate during runs using an old Polar S150. I’m actually looking to improve this initiative though. I purchased the S150 when I ran a marathon a gazillion years ago. At the time, I also used a free, online, ahem, crappy run log. I’d like to be able to use one device to measure and monitor heart rate and distance. This SmartSync Heart Rate Logger with PC Download gizmo seems like a good candidate to try. Anyhow, I benefit from being able to measure and monitor my body using a tool during exercise rather than rely on my mental attitude towards the particular workout.

Measure and Monitor Thoughts with FreeMind

Ok, I’m fairly certain on not being capable of improving my thoughts. Which means, I’m sure to continue to have bad ideas along with the occasional good ones. In any case, mind maps are a beneficial way to organize my thoughts. I’ve been using FreeMind.

Measure and Monitor Music Listening with Last.Fm

Frankly speaking, I don’t have the social network I did in college and high school anymore. At that time, it was easy to find new music due to the amount of exposure. Those days are gone. Gone, but not forgotten! Anyhow, where was I? The Last.fm recommendation engine is fantastic. By monitoring (scrobbling) my listening habits, I am able to receive recommendations for new music. Well done, Last.Fm. Must admit, I had a difficult time switching from Pandora, but I’m glad I did.

Conclusion

The measure and monitor of sleep, tasks, heart rate, thoughts, music are beneficial to me in a variety of ways. In short, it’s a positive thing so far. However, I am trying to be cognizant of what I believe is my latest addiction. Also, just realized I’m probably a dork with this kind of addiction. Not the first time! Anyhow, help me go a bit further? What tools are you using for personal measure and monitor?

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Err, that’s not how it’s suppose to go. As far as I remember, it’s suppose to be “show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are”. At least, that’s what I’ve always heard. But, back to the point - hopefully, you have heard this saying (or something similar) in the past. The concept or premise remains the same: I can assume things about you based on the company you keep.

Background

As we experiment and grow with social networking applications, there will be attempts to make personalized recommendations based on the tastes and experiences of people in one’s network. For example, if 5 people in my world have recommended the book Atlas Shrugged, the application would recommend I might enjoy it as well. (By the way, I do recommend it).

It’s important to note this recommendation is different than the “people who purchased this book also purchased a,b,c” cross sell recommendations (aka: collaborative filtering) that are prevalent in e-commerce sites.

In this case, recommendations based on your network, the recommendation is more personal, carries more credibility and might be more accurate.

Implementation

The code would need the ability to gather and process hobbies, interests, travel experience, likes/dislikes from people in your network. The recommended book example has already been provided. But, this could be taken much, much further. The application could make recommendations on what classes you might enjoy, movies, tv shows, vacation ideas, groups you might be interested in joining and so on.

The application could also pull tastes and experience from people (people to be determined similar) outside your network as well. In this case, the application might be add-on or augmentation to existing collaborative filtering solutions.

Privacy

Help me out here? I’m thinking the data gathering could be done in a way that still protects privacy. Or am I missing something?

Focus

* Company marketing and branding efforts could enhance their community development initiatives by developing specific applications for recommended ways to use their product, add-ons or partner products and services. And still, the application could gather from a variety of social networking applications. Am I thinking of a widget here? Is this the kind of application that fits into Open Social?

* Affiliate. Build it ourselves and recommendations lead to affiliate commissions.

Conclusion

After 13 years of coding, developing and hearing startup ideas, I don’t place much emphasis on my application ideas. I do respect when others want their ideas to be kept secret. But, for my ideas, I place emphasis on whether it can implemented and executed rather than the idea itself. Furthermore, this isn’t a game changing idea. I imagine there are plenty of people working this kind of product. In fact, Chris Anderson of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, doesn’t seem to care for the idea.

I learn from everyone I meet. Let me know what you think? Who is working on something like this? Or, should we build it? Or build a few of them?

Final Thought

Show me who your friends are and I’ll show you recommendations. I guess your recommendations for books, music, activities, etc. might be enlightening because they are being made to you based on the people in your network. It might be interesting in a stare-at-your-own-navel-kind-of-way. Will these recommendations further show you who you are based on who your friends are? Or, who cares, as long as the recommendations are worthwhile?

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Everything has been going smooth with Google Docs and Spreadsheets experiments. Why did I feel compelled to pony up for Office licenses for home PC and Mac? Tell me. I need to know. Is it because I’m not the smartest bulb on the tree? Or perhaps it’s because I’m not the brightest knife in the drawer? Well, honestly, that could be true. Ok, I can see where this might go - don’t tell me why I bought MS Office. But, note to self- how come I didn’t just stick with Google Docs and Spreadsheets

In retrospect, it seems silly to think that I needed any more gizmos and whatchamacallit functionality in a word processor and spreadsheet program. I mean, I’m probably still using the same available features from 8 years ago. Did I really need to pay for another doohickey? Give me bold, italics, alignment, and I’m good. Throw in some fonts and sizing. Fine thank you. Underlining? Are you kidding me? I’m totally in. Now for spreadsheets, I’d like to be able to sum using something like: =sum(c12:c22) Heck, with something like that, I’m happy. Format certain columns as currency or percentage. Well, hot damn. Can I create some charts with the numbers and labels? Oh, that’s just peachy.

But, you cry, what about Sharepoint integration! And I’d say, sure, I’ve been exposed to the all mighty Sharepoint and it’s integration fancy schmancy-ness. On a positive side, I do think the alternative to Sharepoint collaboration- emailing attachments around is much worse than Sharepoint. But, are you going to hear me praise any more than that? hell, no. And besides, I can do some non-email-attachment-sharing with a gazillion other web based document sharing sites.

Ok, yes, I admit Google Docs and SS, isn’t as fast as local installed Office. You got me there. But common, it’s not that bad. I’m on a high speed network most waking hours. And besides, the benefits outweigh this only con. Sharing is easy. Backups are not a concern. And the functionality I use? It’s there.

Does this post have a happy ending? I can’t think of one. Is it intended for you to think about buying an Office license? Maybe, but this is more of a pointing the finger at myself moment.  Well, at least I could do is leave you with some kind of intellectual tidbit? wait a minute- are you serious? we already went over the bulb and knife thing, right?

But, if you are an home user or small business, I do suggest considering Google Apps (Docs and Spreadsheets are included) for your word processor and spreadsheet needs.

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Don’t you find it impossible to determine if something was a success or failure if you have no expectations going into it? Sure, it’s easy to determine if the emotional experience was pleasant or uncomfortable, but I’m talking about something beyond the emotional level. How do you know if something was successful or not? I think it has to do with what your expectations were going into the process.

After 13 years in web development, I still see client expectations vary greatly when it comes to outsourcing website design, development and hosting. It makes we wonder what kind of experiences they’ve had in the past that have influenced their expectations today.

It’s 2007 and here are 3 things you should expect if you are building or upgrading a 1-25 page website:

1) Professional, Clean Design

It doesn’t matter if you are doing it yourself or hiring a freelancer or engaging the trendiest ad agency. You should expect to see a few rounds of composites (aka: “comps”) of the design. This can be thought of as screenshots of the website. No functionality is in place, just a preview of what the site will look like once programmed. Comps give you chance to pick which look-and-feel you like the best and facilitates communication for the next round of revisions.

Cost: Good design is something that can be offshored for $500-$1,500

2) Hosting with Functionality Tools

Next thing to expect is choosing a company to provide monthly hosting of your website. In other words, an entity who manages and procures the computers and infrastructure that serves www.yourcompany.com. In addition, the monthly hosting should include tools/applications designed for a non-technical person. I’m talking tools beyond email. Simple, easy to use tools to make content changes (aka content management system or cms), manage calendars or events, process contact forms, sell or display products, blog, manage mailing lists, provide a support knowledge base, etc.

The types of functionality tools you need will be particular to your industry.

With the plethora of open source applications available, you should expect a hosting company to provide these tools as part of their monthly hosting charge to you. The hosting company should be knowledgeable in the tools they provide.

Cost: With quality hosting infrastructure and open source tool knowledge, you should expect to pay $75 to $250/month.

3) Fantabulous Support

You should expect responsive, competent, non-technobable support from the company you choose to design and host your website. This is the area where companies can really distance themselves from competition. Expect the company you choose to be aware that another company will be thrilled to provide good service to you.

See point 2 for cost. The cost of fantabulous support should be included in monthly hosting fee.

Conclusion

Expect 1) Great Design 2) Solid Hosting with functionality tools the layman can use and 3) Fantabulous support.

If your expectations are not being currently met or you are interested in learning more about these 3 points, contact this company.

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Like many gaijin living in Japan, I earned some money as a conversational Englis