Now that I work only part time at my day job, I have more bandwidth to work on Binary Formations than I did before. All of that time, up until recently, has gone exclusively to Home Inventory. The problem is that focusing on one thing and one thing only makes for a very dull programmer and I have been in desperate need for a palette cleanser, so to speak.

While I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago I came up with an idea for a very simple iPhone app that would help me deal with a personal situation I’m going through at the moment. When I say simple, I mean REALLY simple. I decided to give myself a week and a half (four full days, considering I do this part time) to build this thing. Initial coding was finished on Wednesday and after a few minor tweaks, the app is ready to be submitted to app store after it goes through one more round of testing.

I’ll write more about what it is and why I wrote it once it’s up on iTunes. Until then, take a look at some of the artwork below and see if you can figure just what the heck this thing is. Now it’s back to Home Inventory for me.

Juggler

Dunce Hat

Burning Out Can Lead to Smaller and Better Things

I started Binary Formations almost five years ago as an outlet for me to develop software for the Mac. As a longtime Windows developer, I had become frustrated and bored with the platform. The pace of innovation was slow at best and Microsoft’s insistence on including software activation in Windows left a bad taste in my mouth (I did not appreciate being viewed as a would-be-criminal when I had already forked over my hard earned money for their crappy product).

At the time I was seriously considering leaving software development for another profession, so when my aging Dell laptop started acting flakey, I replaced it with a PowerBook G4. It didn’t take long before I was hooked. Though I had owned Macs before (back in the days of System 6 and 7, and again with the first release of OS X), they never really clicked with me. This time was different and I wanted to write something for it.

I decided to develop a home inventory application because I could not find one for the Mac that worked the way I wanted. Work on the app came in fits and starts as I slowly came out of my software development malaise and learned my way around Objective C and the Cocoa framework. Coding a few hours here and there in my spare time, Stockpile, as it was called at the time, slowly but surely inched toward completion. The first version was completed and released as a shareware application in late October 2005 where it went on to put up sales numbers so abysmally low, it would have left even the most pessimistic of pessimists disappointed. No doubt you are wondering just how low those numbers were. How does five copies through the end of the year sound? And one of those I bought myself to test the purchasing system.

I didn’t have a clue about marketing software back then (still don’t, truth be told), so my promotional activities were limited to building a VERY simple website and listing it on MacUpdate and VersionTracker. I wasn’t expecting to sell a lot of copies, but I certainly thought I would shift more than five in just over two months. It was disappointing and probably would have been the end of Binary Formations if it weren’t for the feature request emails I received from my tiny user base.

Good Customer Service is its Own Reward

My mother used to head up the customer service division of a printing company. She was serious about her work and believed (still does, actually) that if you are going to offer a product or service for sale, then your customers should get their money’s worth. Period. No Excuses. No Exceptions. She instilled those same values in me, which is why there was no way I could ignore those emails even though it would have been easy to say, “Hey, this thing is shareware. You got to try it before you bought it, so you knew what you were paying for.”

The features that were requested were relatively simple to implement and, truth be told, should have been in the product from the get go. They probably would have been in there if I had bothered to give enough thought to what other people might want out of a home inventory app. I added the features as quickly as I could and provided one off builds to a couple of users who didn’t want to wait for the update to be formally tested and released. This was customer service like Mom used to make. And it paid off.

Slowly but surely, my user base started to grow as that first handful of happy customers began telling others about Stockpile. I still wasn’t selling a lot of copies, but I liked talking with people who used my software and finding out what they liked and didn’t like, what they thought was missing, and how they used it in ways I had never thought of.

Unlike my day job, where I write software that runs in the data centers of some of the biggest companies in the world, developing and selling my little home inventory app was a much more intimate and satisfying experience. Finally I was writing software that I actually had a need for myself and I had this direct, unfiltered dialog going with many of the users who were all genuinely interested in helping me make the product better. Even though I wasn’t making much money from it, I was hooked.

This week I had the opportunity to meet more professionals in our area when I attended a local networking meeting.  The  group called St. Expeditus meets weekly at 7:00 A.M. Now, I am not a morning person (have I told you that before?)  and was not looking forward to a 7:00 a.m. start, but I was so glad I went!

Though a small group, it was diverse and even included others in the ‘home’ industry such as an insurance agent, mortgage loan officer, and appraiser as well as other small business owners and even a licensed lobbyist.    I am looking fowrard to exchanging ideas, advice, and feedback in the future.  It’s a greet group of people and If I can get over the early morning commitment, I may just visit again!  Thanks  too all for the warm welcome!

It’s easy with Home Inventory!

Let’s take the example of adding a box of brand new matchbox cars just purchased at your local toy store.

First add an item for each car but only fill in the information that is unique to the car, for instance in the following example the only item filled in is the ‘model’.

Next, select all the items that were just added.

To select consecutive items in a list click on the first item in the list you are interested in. Then, while holding down the shift key on your keyboard, click the last item. Home Inventory will automatically select the first item you clicked on, the last item you clicked on, and every item in between. If you wish to select multiple items that are not grouped together in the list, you can hold down the Command (⌘) key while clicking an item. That item will be selected without deselecting any previously selected item(s).

When multiple items are selected, double click to edit.  Enter the value for the fields that should be the same for all the selected items and click update.  In this example we updated the make, location, condition, purchased,  date, and price.

All items are now updated.

When we released Home Inventory 2 earlier this year, my wife and I resolved to change this. Not only did we want to greatly expand the media coverage  for Home Inventory, we wanted to get reviewed (or at least mentioned) by some of the bigger players in the Mac media world, such as Macworld, Mac Life, Mac Format, and TUAW.

We have been sending out release announcements and contacting editors as far back as January of this year to no avail. My wife and I started joking that we were the Rodney Dangerfield of the independent Mac software world — we get no respect.

Well, all of that changed yesterday. Both Macworld and Mac Format posted reviews of Home Inventory, both giving us a 4 out of 5 rating. We were absolutely thrilled. Even better, some of our users have taken the time to add comments to the Macworld review letting others know they like our software and support, which we are most appreciative of.

If you want to take a look at the reviews, follow the links below:

Macworld Review

Mac Format/TechRadar Review

• The ability to adjust the size of photos and receipts in the item, location, and collection views.
• Item and value totals for the selected location, category, or collection are shown across the bottom of the window.
• A new preference setting for turning off the label prompt when importing photos and receipts.
• Fixed an issue where importing photos and receipts under Snow Leopard could result in a blurry image.

Download Home Inventory 2.1.0 Now

We have been working on our messaging and our 60 second ‘elevator  speech’ and this event was a great place to test it out during the ‘Speed Networking’ session.  When asked about keeping a home inventory the response is most often “that’s something I have always planned to do but have not yet” or “I took a video years ago” and the responses Friday were no different.  Also it seems that not being prepared to file an insurance claim or police report in the event of damage, loss, or theft is an after thought in most cases.  In the past, creating a home inventory has been too painful and slow and hard to keep up to date and it is just easier to ignore the risk until something happens at which point it is often too late.

When made aware of a product to help make creating a home inventory and keeping it up to date much quicker and easier than traditional tools and also analyze personal property coverage needs the feedback was extremely positive with comments like “Everyone needs this”, and “Is it available now, I need it”, ‘Where can I get this” and of course “do you have an iPhone/iPad version?”……

Now the hard part — spreading the word so that more people can be prepared before it’s too late.  We’d love your help!  Share with us how you use Home Inventory at contact@binaryformations.com

To register or for more information follow link:

https://Affiliates.eSellerate.net/affiliates/JoinNow.aspx?PubIDC=PUB7053414936