I would like to provide a quick update on what is happening here at Kwiksher. Website: As you may have noticed, my main focus (especially now that Kwik 3 is pretty stable) in May was (and still is) to fix the issues with the newest website. It is really nice visually but performance is still far from what I expect. I have changed the hosting provider and I will do it again today because the performance is still not acceptable. I am sorry for this inconvenience but, without this important infrastructure milestone, I will not be able to bring some really important news in the next days. Kwik: Due the issues with the current provider – Kwik is not able to communicate with site services for…
Archives
Kwiksher’s New Shop Experience
After much work and sweat, the new website is finished, including a totally new shop experience, which includes access to your past orders as well. See the presentation video below and learn what is new: Are you having problems with the new site? For some users the new site sometimes cannot load pages or returns a php error. I am working with our provider to handle it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, just refresh the empty/error page and the right page will load fine. Sorry for this inconvenience. Did you like it?
Corona Composer GUI: do you need it? Check thoughts and the tutorial
Last week Corona Labs announced their new tool, yet in a beta stage, called Composer GUI (graphics user interface), which is pretty cool, by the way. If you haven’t seen it, check their blog. Minutes later, I received an email from a Kwik user asking about how it would change Kwik’s positioning for the future. You can read about my entire thoughts below but, in a few words, I would like to say that Composer GUI targets a different audience than Kwik. To clarify that, I decided to make a homage to Corona Labs, reproducing their demo in Kwik. See and take your own conclusions: A Threat Or An Opportunity? First of all, I believe is too early to say how good Composer GUI will become. As…
Update on Kwiksher
Hello everyone! I would like to share a few words on the past quarter, not only to remind of what we have done but also to give you a hint of things that are on my mind at this moment. You Speak, I Listen This first big milestone delivered was the official release of Kwik 3. Pretty much every reported bug was fixed and dozens of new features were added. Kwik 3 is more robust than its predecessors and ready to be used in teams, when necessary. More Services were added in our portfolio, to help users to improve their stories (thanks Anna Hines for your partnership here) but also to publish them. Now users have the ability to subscribe Kwik in different ways and…
Planning the future for Kwiksher and Kwik
With Kwik 3 being released, it is natural to expect constant updates for bug fixings. After all, now there is much more people using the new build. Today I released build 3.1.2, which fixes all reported and reproducible bugs. Besides updates, I think it is important to share how I plan to manage my week from now on. I constantly face myself stopping things to answer emails, generating delays in things that may have deadlines or different priorities. These changes will establish a predictable timeframe for you regarding when to expect updates, communications and new products. Exceptions will be handled whenever is necessary. Monday: Bug fixing and update release. As most users spend more time with Kwik during the weekends, it is common to have a long fix…
Introducing Kwik 3!
Today we just released the first public build of Kwik 3 (simply Kwik from now on). It took more time than expected but I strongly believe the new features and improvements will help the creation of even better applications. What’s new? The amount of new features is enormous, as already reported in several tutorials, postings and the new user guide, reason why I will not spend time talking about them here again. The most important thing to understand is the fact you will be more productive and your apps will have more resources when they need. It is important to remember that old projects (made with Kwik 2 or beta4) will need to be re-published due the complete new code structure of Kwik. Also, projects with…
Move Your Startup to Austin Contest
You probably have seen the tweets and/or the Facebook postings about me traveling Austin this week. As some have asked about the competition, here go my answers. For the second year, Capital Factory is promoting the Move Your Startup to Austin contest. As a big investor/incubator, they video interviewed more than 100 companies and selected 5 (Kwiksher included) to travel to Austin and, on the stage, pitch their products. The winner gets a big prize that includes money, mentoring and all support to transfer the company from its original origin to Austin. Pretty cool, right? The event happens in one of the largest conferences in the US: SXSW (South by SouthWest) and we will be presenting at the prestigious Interactive Festival. Being in the top 5 has…
Why I agreed to partner with Alex to critique stories for Kwik users and what to expect from a story critique?
With the introduction of our new Storyline Review service, find out why Anna Hines partnered with us to critique stories. The text below was written by her. My life’s work has been about creating stories for kids. As soon as the possibility of putting stories into apps came up, with some PhotoShop and Painter experience, and a tiny bit of html from years of maintaining my webpage, I jumped in to give it a try. When I first started looking at the story apps that were coming out (late 2010) I found most to be very disappointing. I found a few really nice apps based on already published books such as, What Does My Teddy Bear Do All Day? by Auryn, and some, also based on…