Apparently Intuit QuickBase Isn’t Dead

Filed under: business, development, technology

Ok, so almost 3 months ago when TechCrunch wrote that Intuit (the makers of TurboTax, QuickBooks, Quicken, etc) were launching a development platform within QuickBase I signed up.  I thought it would be pretty cool to at least see what they were doing and I’m really into Enterprise software (small, medium or large enterprises are all the same to me - business is business no matter the size).

Well, after registering I didn’t get a confirmation email, a “thanks for registering” email or even a “you were rejected, better luck next time”.   I figured it was a good try, I guess I’m not getting that 5 minutes back.  Then yesterday, completely out of the blue, I get a note from QuickBase that  I’ve “been accepted into the Intuit QuickBase Developer Program”.  Ok, well that’s cool but you may want to communicate a little better next time.  I figured some server troll somewhere ate my application.  Good thing you didn’t make me submit my password when I initially signed up or I would have been in trouble.

Anyways, I’ve completed the registration and I’m going to begin poking around what they have to offer.  At first glance it seems functional but not as visually pleasing as something I’d expect from Intuit.  It is in Beta though so I won’t give them too hard of a time.

More to come on QuickBase in the near future.  Maybe if I can find a few hours I’ll get an example application up.

Needed Gmail Enhancements

Filed under: development, technology

As I’ve stated several times, I love the various Google products and use several of them on a daily basis. My Gmail is open almost all day long, I use Google Reader to sort, manage and read my news, I share photos and documents with Picasa and Google Docs and I communicate with people all over the world (literally) with Google Talk. When I start my own business I’ll probably use Google Apps to keep costs low and because it allows me the ability to use the Gmail web interface and it’s easy to install. Simply put, they have created an amazing suite of free services but as my usage grows, so does the need for a few enhancements to make things even better.

Since Gmail released the IMAP feature a few months ago I’ve been a pretty happy camper. While I’m pretty happy, there is always room for improvement. I think Gmail recognizes that since they’re continually releasing new features! Keep it up guys.

• Tagging: The ability to label emails with several tags is great but having to select them from a drop down list is inefficient. It would be great if there was a type-ahead feature that auto-completed tags as I began typing them. It would also be great if you could apply multiple tags to filters.
• Filtering: Gmail has a great filter set-up but there is one thing I’d like to see added. The ability to apply multiple tags to filtered messages. Some people may not use tags to quite the same extent I do but I like to keep an organized mailbox. With my travels for work I also like to make sure I keep as many records as possible and there are some emails that I get on a regular basis that I like filtered into two buckets. Hotel receipts are the main culprit (expense reporting can be such a pain). Currently, I just have to filter it with one tag and add the second manually. Not a huge deal, but it would definitely be a time saver.
• Shortcut Keys: For those of us that use Outlook all day for corporate email, shortcut keys are where it’s at. I can successfully navigate almost all of Outlook (that I use at least) without touching the mouse. Google has done a pretty good job building out the shortcut keys but some of them are counter-intuitive. Maybe the problem is they just aren’t intuitive based on the Windows habits that we have all picked up. I’d like to see the ability to customize your shortcut keys or at least add a few more like ‘ALT+s’ to quickly send an email from compose mode.

If I new anything about writing GreaseMonkey scripts or had a couple hours of extra time I would consider writing a couple of these enhancements myself. But…since I don’t and I have no extra time I’m hoping the various Google teams go ahead and step-up.

These are obviously just my opinions but I think they’re enhancements that would benefit the masses.