Posted by Steve Kickert on August 26, 2008
We have been hard at work here at Riverock. OnePlace is nearly at the end of the beta period. A special thanks to everyone that gave us feedback. OnePlace is a much better place because of it. We are excited about what the future holds and are looking forward to providing you OnePlace for a long time to come.
Posted by Steve Kickert on August 01, 2008
It is 2008 and we are just about there. Where is there? Well the beta of course. It has taken longer than we thought it would but we are happy with the results. The hardest thing is deciding what not to put into the product before we beta. That has been a much tougher process than I remember from past product launches. Perhaps this time it is different because we are both users and creators of the software? The ideas on ways to extend and improve the product have come in endless waves. Everyone that we have shown OnePlace to has given us ideas. We finally have made that fateful decision to "Ship it already".
Posted by Steve Kickert on August 01, 2008
The creative team at Riverock Technologies continues to march towards its planned first quarter beta release of OnePlace; however, a sneak preview of the working product is available now in the form of an online Test Drive (demo) at OnePlaceInfo.com.
Posted by Steve Kickert on June 11, 2008
In the short time Riverock has been around (about a year and half) we have developed several phrases that pop up in conversations all the time. They remind us of our philosophies. Here are a few of our favorites.
Posted by Steve Kickert on June 05, 2008
It has been a few weeks now since we made the decision to use Engine Yard (EY) for our application hosting. I want to report that it is one of the smarter decisions that we have made since starting the company. We agonized about this decision for quite some time. We even thought about hosting it ourselves. (ugh)
There current pricing is about $399 for each slice per month. For a startup, that is not insignificant, especially since we needed at least two slices.
Posted by Steve Kickert on May 12, 2008
Hello Everyone,
The Company blog has moved. Please update your rss subscription to point at this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RiverockTech-CompanyBlog
The Development blog has moved. Please update your rss subscription to point at this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RiverockTech-DevelopmentBlogThis will help us better understand who is reading the blogs and where they are coming from.
Thanks,
The OnePlace Team
Posted by Steve Kickert on May 01, 2008
Riverock has moved to new office space as of today.
Our new address is:
1275 Ramsey Street Suite #300 Shakopee, MN 55379
If you are ever in the area feel free to stop in for a visit. We usually have a fresh pot of coffee brewing and plenty of pop and water.
The new space is about 50% bigger than our old space and we actually have a private office for everyone. Now if we could only do something about the new carpet smell....
Posted by Steve Kickert on April 04, 2008
First, I would like to thank everyone that has taken the time to either visit the demo on the web or made the trek to our offices to see the product and give us feedback. We are finding that feedback (both positive and constructive) is what fuels Riverock. We have been listening.
Posted by Steve Kickert on February 22, 2008
I was reminded the other day that we have not posted much in the last month or so. I was blown away when I looked and saw that it had been almost two months since our last blog post. I guess we have not been very proactive with our communications. Sorry about that. Coding is hard work. ;)
Posted by Steve Kickert on January 26, 2008
The creative team at Riverock Technologies continues to march towards its planned first quarter beta release of OnePlace; however, a sneak preview of the working product is available now in the form of an online Test Drive (demo) at OnePlaceInfo.com.
Posted by Steve Kickert on January 14, 2008
It is 2008 and we are just about there. Where is there? Well the beta of course. It has taken longer than we thought it would but we are happy with the results. The hardest thing is deciding what not to put into the product before we beta. That has been a much tougher process than I remember from past product launches. Perhaps this time it is different because we are both users and creators of the software? The ideas on ways to extend and improve the product have come in endless waves. Everyone that we have shown OnePlace to has given us ideas. We finally have made that fateful decision to "Ship it already".
Posted by Steve Kickert on November 27, 2007
Sorry for the radio silence the last month or so. I am not a big fan of filling up your news reader with meaningless posts just to say we are blogging. We have been busy coding and testing. We are still on track for a first quarter 2008 beta.
I have to admit that it is taking longer, to create this product, than we originally thought. Isn't this always the case? Part of the challenge has been our dedication to getting it right. We have re-factored major sections of the product and also the user interface at least once. Another good/bad thing is that we keep thinking of features to add.
Posted by Steve Kickert on October 15, 2007
In my surfing this weekend, I ran across this Wired article about David Allen, the father of GTD (Getting Things Done).
It gives a pretty good overview of the philosophy of GTD. It also contains some insight into David Allen, the person, and where the idea of GTD originated.Posted by Steve Kickert on October 12, 2007
I just spent the evening at MinneDemo. If the number of people in attendance is any measure of success, then I would say it was a huge success. There had to be over 300 people there.
Posted by Steve Kickert on September 24, 2007
Hello everyone,
I would like to welcome our very first intern, Paul Schwarz. Paul comes to us from St. John's University, here in Minnesota. Paul is a junior there. I am not sure how we got so lucky but Paul has some Ruby on Rails experience. Paul has already dove into the code and is busy adding a few features to our company website. Welcome Paul!
September has already been a very busy month. We are working our tails off trying to complete our Alpha 1 release. This release will be an internal only release. There are several goals for this release but the most important goal is to be able to self host the Milestone project. Right now we are keeping the project in a Wiki (we call it "Riki", which is short for Riverock Wiki in case I slip and mention Riki). We should be able to self host the project this week. Even though we were able to "see" the product in prototype form, it is still exciting to be able to use it for real.Posted by Steve Kickert on August 28, 2007
We think it is very important to support a mobile version of our product right away in version 1. So, we have been spending a decent amount of time developing for and testing different mobile devices. I have to say that I am appalled at the the state of the mobile browser platform. I thought the desktop browser world stunk with all the different interpretations of the standards. Now I think I am in heaven when working on the full web version compared to what we are finding on the mobiles.
Our first test was with the Treo 700P. The Blazer browser on this device appears to have some Javscript support but we have unable to ascertain exactly what is and is not supported. So, we ended up using no javascript. In the end, this was a good thing because we were able to create a good solution that worked on a larger number of browsers. However, it is still lacking some of the sizzle that you see on full web applications.
Posted by Steve Kickert on August 23, 2007
We are in need of one or more paid interns.
Both Denis and I like the idea of having interns working for us. It allows the intern to get valuable real world experience building products and gives us some badly needed assistance without the need to commit to a full time person. We are planning on having the intern work side by side with us on the development of our product.Posted by Steve Kickert on August 23, 2007
I am not sure who first came up with the term but it fits. I first heard about it from a friend that worked at Microsoft. As applied to software, it basically means to be an active user of your software. Given that our Milestone product started out as "me-ware" it is no surprise that we are eating our own dog food. What we did not realize was what a fantastic energy source using your software is.
Posted by Steve Kickert on August 23, 2007
I can't believe it has been over a month since our last post. Argh! Since there are only two of us and enough work for probably 5, we are having a hard time putting down the brush and blogging. Sorry.
Posted by Steve Kickert on July 19, 2007
We are heads down in production mode.
I know that it takes time to produce something useful but we are getting more excited about getting the application to use ourselves the more we flesh it out. I suppose that is a very good sign.
Our plan to produce a HTML/Javascript prototype (no Ruby on Rails) is turning out to be a very good decision. We are able to focus on what the application does and what it looks like before we start to worry about how to wire it up to the database and all the other things that go with an actual dynamic webware application.
Posted by Steve Kickert on June 27, 2007
This is a little bit of a tangent from what I was going to blog about next but I thought that you might like to watch this. I know that I enjoyed it.
I just watched a video (1 hour 39 min worth) of a panel discussion at the Churchill Club that Guy Kawasaki moderated called "No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem".
Check it out.
Worth the time to watch.
Posted by Steve Kickert on June 26, 2007
It has been over a week since we turned on the blogs on our new website and I have yet to add an entry. Not good. I suppose I wanted my first entry to be special. Alas, that is not to be. As I tried to think of something profound to say the days kept flipping by.
So, I have decided to err on the side of blogging more often rather than worry so much about what is said. One of the core philosophies that Denis and I believe in is openness. We really like companies that explain what they believe in (and not) and how they arrive at decisions and product designs. So, we are going to try and be that same way.
Posted by Steve Kickert on June 08, 2007
We just went live with the blogging capability (6/8) and we will be blogging soon.