Spent $500 plus $200 bonus on development for Version 1. Work done by Ukrainian programmer called Alex. Used Scriptlance.
Alex asked to see the complete design before quoting. I felt uncomfortable about handing over my precious ideas to a stranger. However, it turned out that it took a lot of additional explanation to get the ideas across. The lesson is don’t worry about handing your design over – it’s probably far from self-evident.
Before Alex, I nearly committed $1000 to a probable fraud called Greentech12. At the last moment I Googled them and discovered they were a sham. Lesson is do not rely solely on the Scriptlance ratings system.
Invested time searching for a better name. Received advice from friend who came up with ‘Ice Patrol’ for her forthcoming documentary on Antarctic research vessel. She slammed my candidates; none were compelling or communicable:
People must know how to spell the name on hearing it and have no trouble remembering it.
I used the ‘Friday Quiz’ at work to gain feedback on my domain names from my unsuspecting colleagues. Out of all my domain names, Look2Look came out on top.
I let LooktoLook back onto the market earlier in the year and, after rekindled interest in the name, I tried to buy it back. I discovered it had been acquired by a Swiss person and he/she was offering to sell it back to me for about £1000. The lesson here is to think twice before letting a domain name go.
Mootka is still relatively unpopular. I encountered ‘Ka’, ancient Egyptian for ‘spirit’, in the novel that I am reading.
At the end of the month my template looks like this:
It is a fragment of the design in order to protect ideas.
This diagram illustrates where search-on-search (new) may fit into existing user search habits (old):
A quote from Wikipedia that has a bearing on this project:
Others suggest that the term social software is best used not to refer to a single type of software, but rather to the use of two or more modes of computer-mediated communication that result in “community formation”.[6] In this view, people form online communities by combining one-to-one (e.g., email and instant messaging), one-to-many (Web pages and blogs), and many-to-many (wikis) communication modes.
A quote from Wikipedia describing Google Groups. My solution is very similar:
“Google has introduced a new concept in Google Groups to reduce redundant threads and therefore helping moderation of forums. Basically, the idea comes from the fact that many users do not bother to search a forum and directly create new threads to seek an answer to a question. When the user types a new thread subject it brings up similar threads automatically on the side. This helps keep the number of redundant threads (or the overall forum pollution) to a lower level as users that neglect to search for a topic and are posting a thread may find the answer to their question as they are creating the new thread. In essence it’s a search combined with creating a thread. Instead of having to search the forum, and then creating a thread if there is no satisfying answer, this duplicate thread prevention allows the user to go and seek the answer to a topic. In Google Groups [this feature uses an] AJAX type interface and only draws from the subject field of the thread to find similar threads.”