Cheap Hard Drives November 26, 2005 By Steve Fafel

I just found a great site for tech stuff, PriceWatch.com. I've been looking for hard drive enclosures for my home recording studio (nothing fancy, just PC-based recording) because I have a few too many drives to fit into the computer. I learned a few things in the process:

1) CompUSA has a deal on Hitachi drives--160 GB for only $20 after rebates. So I dug a bit, and found that they last about a year before they drop dead. I guess you get what you pay for.

2) Not all inexpensive drives are bad;  I got an external Seagate 250GB drive for 110 after rebates.

3) Don't count on your local store to have SCSI cables!

Have a great weekend. I'm going to get back to weekend computer maintenance...

Slow blog week November 23, 2005 By Steve Fafel

I've been off for a few days, though it's tough to be truly off.  I've postponed vacations 3 time, and the one I took I worked 12 hours a day. Not fun.

This working "vacation" I'm doing a lot of computer maintenance at home--reinstalling Windows, all my audio software, replacing drives, etc. My next project is to give wireless to the block near the office. We're in a low-income area and have a T-1 we can happily share.

In the meantime, check out co-Founder Dave Waver's blog on GiftWorks development.

Constructive Customer Feedback November 16, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Darius (AKA Chris) Dunlap has posted about 15 features around usability in GiftWorks that he'd like to see us improve, add, or change. He joins Brenda from Abbas Heart in Arizona and Ben McLintock of Arkansas as some of my favorite people. He sent this today and gave us permission ro reprint it:

"By the way, your folks are doing a first rate job supporting customers. My few interactions with your team have been handled very well, and I'm impressed with the open, succinct and useful answers on the forums.

I'm very happy that I chose Giftworks."

Sincerely,

Darius Christopher Dunlap
Executive Director

Square Peg Foundation

The key here isn't so much his generous compliment, it's about the feedback. We struggle during the design phase of each feature--good design is hard. We've done a very good job with GiftWorks in a lot of key places. But we can and will do better.

In fact, we're going to post an automated update in the near future with some of these improvements. And we're going to start posting the feedback from customers. And we'll post customer complaints and the resolutions.

You deserve great software at an affordable price. You also deserve openness and honesty. When we blow it, we'll own up to it and fix i in most cases. In some cases we just don't have the resources to respond as well as we'd like, but we'll be up front about that too. We're working on improving everything, especially the access to information about the product, product plans, etc. And I take personal responsibility for that.

Keep that feedback coming!

Reports, GiftWorks improvements November 15, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Later today we'll announce some improvements to GiftWorks. First, we'll fix the totals bug in Reports--that will happen by tomorrow and if you have updates turned on, you'll get it automagically.

Next, we're putting a major effort into improving Households and the importer. There are some minor fixes for major pains we'll be working on as well. I don't have the update release schedule yet, but we're definitely shooting for mid-December for the update.

Your feedback has been tremendous--it's amazing how much better the software is and will continue to get because of your feedback. If you have any gripes, concerns, ideas, please post them here or over in the GiftWorks Community.

Great week! November 11, 2005 By Steve Fafel

So the off-site meeting went well, though it ended a half-hour early because I had a meeting I had to take. But we talked about the past year's work on GiftWorks 2006, which is really good but not perfect--yet. Mostly we talked about processes--what broke down, what worked out, and how we pulled off such a solid product despite all of that. As we grow, though, we really need to have better processes internally. So we're working on that and will start rolling out the new plan in a few weeks.

So how does this effect you? I'm not sure yet. We've already started to revamp support, the Help Center, and our online resources. Our products will likely improve, and we'll be able to get more done because we should become more efficient. We have a standard for releasing products that I'm particularly wed to: we will only ship solid, stable products. There might be the occasional bug, but there's a gut feeling about stability that needs to be there for us to ship.

For GiftWorks 2006, I didn't have that feeling until September 15th. We were scheduled to release on August 15th, but I pushed out the launch because it just had to be right. The delay effected a few business deals and pushed some sales into October, but overall it was a good decision. We have a new Reports product coming in December, and a GiftWorks upgrade that will scale up in performance due in February, but we'll slip those dates if the results aren't up to your standards.

So thanks for another great week!

Where we are today November 9, 2005 By Steve Fafel

The product and support teams are taking most of the day to talk about how we can improve on the success of GiftWorks 2006--not the sales success, which is really great, but the product development and product management processes. We're a pretty lean company, and every efficiency we gain means better products.

But today would be a lot harder to go through without your support--thanks for all of the feedback you've given us. You've informed our discussions substantially--we'll let you know how it goes.

GiftWorks 2006 Update is Now Available November 2, 2005 By Steve Fafel

You're like E.F. Hutton: you spoke, we listened. The update is full of improvements, more help, and printable manual, and lots of refinements. The update is available automatically over the web--just click Internet Updates at the bottom lefthand part of your GiftWorks screen, and you'll get the updates pain-free!

Note the new survey on the home page--we want to know more about what kind of reports and report functionality you would like to see. We have a very special announcement about that coming very, very soon :)