clear.your.mind

Many people ask me why I decide to do a web application, and why I decide to go free with it. “You want Google or Yahoo to buy you?” well, if they want to talk, we will sit down and talk, but that’s not the reason why I, along with another developer, are doing 15tags. But, why doing it free? that’s everyone’s question.

Users and free web applications

Charging isn’t necessary I think. I encourage everyone to think about it, for at least five minutes. Do it, come on. Why we have to charge for the web app? to earn money. Ok, that’s sensible. But what if we can do a free web application and still, we can earn money? for a second, just think about that. Accept it as a fact, just for a second. Ready? ok, now we have in our hands, a fully developed web application, and an income that allows us to chose what to do. We can give it away for free, or we can still, have a functional fully supported web application.

At this point there will be people saying “…ok, but I will charge anyway. Is my choice” and I say yes, it’s yours and nobody else.. What I’m trying to think at loud here with you is the possibility to think outside the box. If you can do a web application, I’m sure you can find a way to support it without asking five dollars to every user, can’t you?

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For the past several weeks I had been working into one of the most exiting projects of my life: 15tags. I started this pet project from the scratch a couple of months ago, with a fellow developer who hasn’t the time (or the commitment) to work after hours. Luckily me, a reader of this blog (that will be, Anty) has accepted to continue the project with me, so we became partners.

I have to say it, Anty (Andreas) is one of the most professional guys I ever worked with; maybe is the fact he learn things for himself like I do that makes me work pretty damn happy with him at my side. It’s strange when two geeks do a project together; it becomes a whole new experience.

What it does

I will not be saying what the 15tags web application does until the very launch date, so don’t ask! but it will be of great value for any Internet user (you will see!). For the moment, I only can say that we will be documenting the entire process in a blog and we choose not to ask for emails to anyone who wants to know when the project launch, but instead, we will keep people updated in 15tags blog.

Last time I subscribed to a “beta” launching, the beta had already launched like a week before the developers even sent me the “hey, it’s finally here!” invitation; so if you want to know, just subscribe to the RSS feed at the blog.

What you will be showing?

Well, we can’t say what the application is all about, so that leads us with everything else. This isn’t a new concept, Carson Systems did it for their web application Amigo (http://www.heyamigo.net) and we knew that was a special way to let everyone know what are we doing; so we went for it. After a quick chat with my friend Anty, we decided to document every step of the process. This are some of the thing you will find at the 15tags blog:

• Design and GUI
• Client Side Coding (XHTML/CSS) examples, issues, techniques, etc.
• Server Side Coding (PHP/MYSQL) issues, techniques, etc.
• Our kind and wonderful personallity.
• Day-to-day of the thinking process
• Creative Thinking
• Marketing strategy
• Our work environment

Of course, we will try to show you anything new you ask to know regarding the development. So you are noticed, if you want to live the geek experience, and want to know exactly what are we doing, how, when and why; here’s the address http://www.15tags.com/, enjoy the temporal home page, read the message, and go for the blog. Take care and spread the word!

What a title! take a good look at it! No, really… Matt, from 37signals & Signal vs Noise blog, posted my site on the 37signals flickr account and on the company blog as a reference of a previous post that called users to comment about sites they where inspired by. Someone commented my beautiful agency site (Emaginacion) there so Matt decided to pick it up for a new post. I really don’t think that it had anything to do with the visual feel or anything, I think he just grab a couple from that previous post and made a new one with them, so no rewards about that -for anyone I think-.

What people is saying

People say Emaginacion’s name isn’t very cool and they may be right. The name, was first created for Argentinean companies; so it’s a word game of “Imaginación”, which means, as you may be guessing right now, imagination. I added the E because at that time, the E was all about Internet business, Web Applications, Shopping Carts, etc. Right now it doesn’t mean too much doesn’t it? But, what are the alternatives right now if you want to build an agency like Emaginacion? Well, the topics from which you may be choosing your new agency name may be:

• A fruit (like, something around Silver Bannanas or White Oranges, something like that.
• Common sense for dummies, like for example WellDone or UsoSense, something around that.
• Something you saw on the sky, like, RedBird or TwoClouds (in allusion of course, that the team is integrated by two white male).
• A number plus something else, like 9rules, 37signals, 4guysfromaustria, 2littlecats, 10commandments, etc
• Anything that works for you.

The name of your company/agency/studio has to mean something for you and for the story of your company. Don’t forget you’re doing history right now, your company is your history. Now, it doesn’t have to be a name with history, you don’t need to live on an exiting adventure that involves a giant balloon around the world or anything to have a cool name, just peek something short that work for you and represent what your company stands for.

We, me and my guys, stand for imagination, and we lived the dot-com era, so we are Emaginacion. I totally agree, the name isn’t very pretty, but hey, no one here at the agency is pretty so… we will have to live with that aren’t we? ;)

About the design

Thanks for all the comments, we really enjoy our work. We LOVE (really) design, and we are learning new, interesting and uninteresting things every day to work a little bit faster, and a little bit better. Some day, I will achieve all my goals with Emaginacion and that will be the end of my journey as business man; I will then wonder the face of the earth helping people and fighting ninjas, living exiting adventures. Until that day comes, you will find me here, working to make the web a place a little bit more easy to use (and to look at!.)

Cheers
Javier Cabrera

Again. YES! WHY NOT!? Some people may think “this is a waste of time man! I didn’t even got used to the previous design and you already changed it!” Well, no. I just did a little tweaks on it. This is a transition time and I needed to feet the new Emaginacion design with this site, and I did.

I wanted to have more control over what I’m posting about. For those who read this blog for a while, you may noticed how the subject has changed over the last six months. The subject has changed because I’m still trying to discover what is CYM and now it’s time to face the truth; it’s a blog.

I wanted to post about productivity (which was the successful subject of my previous blog) but I also wanted to post about entrepreneur’s life and how is it to wake up at 6:00AM and come to your own office. of course, I also wanted to post about the Internet, and later series, movies, books and other stuff so I end up doing a common blog! So much for the horizontal approach…

But then, the question is not “what is this blog?” but, “who read this blog?” and the answer is simple: geeks. Nerds, Geeks, Techies, whatever you want to call yourself; you like this blog because you feel identified with me, with my experiences, with what I have to talk about. You may be running your own business, I’m sure you have your own blog, and if you are like me, you dream, you work and you live. You played Maniac Mansion, you watched Star Trek, you loved Futurama and you know the last Internet news because you read 4,000 feeds every morning.

So that will be my new approach (and hopefully the last one) for this blog. Internet life, Management (of yourself, and your time), Productivity and Entrepreneur’s life. It didn’t changed, it just grew up.

So now it looks amazingly good, you have new categories (for easy reading), from 2 to 4 posts a day, fixed-liquid layout and the best of all, me (well… let’s say the best of all is the design and that’s it ;)

[updated] it’s 8:49 AM and I’m still around. I took like 5 cups of coffee, read a book and talked with a friend. It’s good to be back!

Here I’m at the office at 1:15 AM trying to understand how to grew my business in just a couple of months. Right now things are going great but I’m far away from my original goal, so I need to keep up with things.

Wake up! you will have enough time to sleep when you die! right now, we have new worlds to conquer, amazing people to meet and extraordinary battles to lose.

Javier Cabrera