October 2009
1 post
SixCentral is Changing Names
Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking to SixCentral users, reviewing usage statistics, and digging through hundreds of emails.
After all that work, I finally feel like I have a enough information to create a roadmap that’s inline with my vision for the future.
Simply put, my vision is to deliver something that’s going to change the way designers present their services.
By...
September 2009
2 posts
SixCentral and the Future
I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself, since I’ve not had a chance to do that yet. As Ryan mentioned in his excellent post, my name is Ruben Gamez and I recently reached an agreement to acquire ownership of SixCentral.
I’m very excited about where I see things heading; SixCentral users are going to find themselves in a great spot. I see so many possibilities in this...
SixCentral is changing ownership
Acquired is probably too big of a word, however it’s actually the truth. Late Tuesday, September 15th 2009, we came to terms with a private bidder on the sale of SixCentral. It’s a bitter sweet day for us, as we’ve been entirely dedicated to the application since February 10th, 2009. Although we’re sad to see it go, we’re also very excited at the new opportunities the...
August 2009
6 posts
Launch Stats & Thanks
First of all, thank you so much to everyone who participated in the launch. We appreciate all of your comments and feedback, and look forward to building some of your ideas for version 2.
Since we’ve always been open and transparent about our app, we wanted to fill all of you in on some of the details of the launch:
(note these statistics are from Aug 10 - Aug 24)
11,873 unique hits
...
Launch Day: What it's like to launch a new web app
12:30 AM - The app is done
12:35 AM - First user
1:00 AM - Try to fall asleep
2:00 AM - Still awake in anticipation
7:30 AM - Alarm goes off for work. Damn I thought I was launching the app to stop this.
7:45 AM - Try to send e-mail campaign to subscribers. Blocked. Saying we need special approval to send to a list this large. E-mail Campaign Monitor.
8:00 AM - 37signals Product Blog article...
Outline launch plan
You may be asking yourself what we did to promote our app for our launch. I’ll try to outline exactly what we planned for our launch to try to generate customers.
We were open about our development. We’ve actually been promoting for 6 months, gaining support and traction in the community as well as a team of dedicated individuals who were just dying to get their hands on our app. We...
SixCentral is giving away an iPhone 3GS
If you sign up for the SixCentral Unlimited account between August 10th - 24th, you will automatically be entered to win an iPhone 3GS (well, a $200 Apple gift card that could buy you an iPhone 3GS).
For more information, visit http://sixcentral.com/iphone.
SixCentral launch is here!
After 6 grueling months of design & development, we’ve finally launched. We began our project on February 10th, 2009 and here we are, 6 months later we finally have completed our initial product. We’d like to thank everyone for their patience and support as we worked on the application. You have truly helped us create a product we can be proud of.
We have so many other features...
Getting Real with SixCentral: How the book by...
Let me start by saying that Getting Real by 37signals (https://gettingreal.37signals.com/) has drastically influenced how we chose to build SixCentral. This is a book I would recommend to every single person or shop trying to start their own business, regardless of the business nature. So many topics apply to everyday aspects of business, not just web apps.
In this post I’ll outline how...
May 2009
1 post
The Calendar
We’ve just finished putting the final touches on the calendar feature for SixCentral. With the Calendar, you can manually add events for deadlines, follow-ups, reminders and meetings. Also each time you create proposals or invoices with due dates, they will automatically be added to the calendar. We also allow you to set notification preferences for when events are upcoming. For example, you...
April 2009
1 post
Invoicing & Other features
Just a quick update to let you know that we are currently working on the invoicing feature of our application. Now we know that there have been many applications launched in the past few months that do invoicing, so we aren’t going to try to reinvent the wheel. Our invoicing feature will generally have the basics of what we feel a freelancer may need to organize their business. After we...
March 2009
6 posts
Tools we use to run SixCentral
We’ve had a few comments about what Wess and I are using to organize and manage all of the facets around SixCentral. I thought I’d take you on a wild ride into the engine behind SixCentral.
Blogging
I guess the easiest place to start is with blogging. As you are here reading the blog, I’m sure you’ve alreadyed guessed that we use the all-powerful Tumblr. Since we’ve...
Beta days are here.
This afternoon, we finally wrapped up everything we wanted to accomplish for the beta. After many twists and turns, feature creeps and feature slashing, we’ve finally arrived at a fully functional product. After 200 Subversion revisions and an idea that sprung in the first week of February 2009, we’ve hit our first milestone.
Even if you didn’t have time to help with the beta,...
Updated SixCentral website
We’ve updated the site with a few new screenshots of some of the features within the SixCentral application. We’ve also added another brief summary section to explain a little more about SixCentral. Our goal was to provide more value to first time visitors coming from many different sources.
Hope it works!
What's planned for the SixCentral beta?
As many of you already know, we’ve chosen to postpone the beta a few weeks for two reasons:
We realized that our timeline for fixing bugs was a bit unrealistic. We only have 7 outstanding bugs right now — but we know we will encounter more when we finish the last few features.
We decided to add more features to the beta. We had originally drawn the line in the sand and cut it off...
1 tag
Beta coming soon
We’re working on some of the last features and bug fixes before the beta launch in the next week. We are looking for people in the industry (freelance for now) that would be interested in helping us work out the rest of the kinks. During the beta, we will be developing more features like invoicing integration and contracts but would like to get something out there for a first look. We have...
The Cogs behind the Machine
I was asked earlier about what platform we are using to develop SixCentral while discussing the development: “What are you using to build it and on what system?” I figured I would write a quick post to talk a little about the technology that will be driving the application.
I am a huge fan of LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql Python). So the operating system we are hosting on is Ubuntu...
February 2009
5 posts
Great strides on Client and Proposal Management
Although I don’t have any screenshots to show in this post, we are really making great progress on the entire SixCentral application. We have completed the roadmap for what we would like to release in the Alpha version — a very limited release that probably won’t include some of the more advanced features. We wan’t to get the application into the hands of some of the...
Proposal Generation and Creation
We have a few new screenshots to show. We’re in the process of completing the proposal portion of the application and I figured it would be nice to show you what we’ve been working on (trying to hold to my promise of posting every week).
Bellow is a screenshot of our proposal creation screen. A user has the ability to populate the new proposal with text from existing proposals or...
Pixels and Programs: Getting to Know the...
So what makes SixCentral such a powerful client proposal organization and management application? For the answer, you need not look any further than the team that created it. The SixCentral team is a veritable case study in the wonders of thoughtful and efficient project management. Throughout our development process, we have had to balance the ideas and projects of three individuals separated...
SixCentral Sneak Peek!
Hello!
This is Ryan from SixCentral. I’m responsible for the overall design of all the facets of SixCentral, including the application you are all eagerly anticipating. We’ve been promising all week that we would start showing some of the early stages of the application, including screenshots of features we have already completed, so here it goes.
The first screenshot is a view of...
What is SixCentral?
With SixCentral, you will have the ability to have a single place to organize all of your current and prospective clients. From there, you can create new project proposals and send them to any client in your database. Your clients will have the ability to accept, deny, postpone or comment on your proposal. Everything will be stored at SixCentral — instead of your inbox.