While preparing for my URUG presentation tonight, I found that my ICal Ruby module now longer worked under Tiger. I found the that the location of the files had changed and that the .ics files had changed into XML. So I’ve corrected this and put a new link up in the Developers section of the infiniteNIL website. The old version is still available as well.

Well, I thought I would hear from somebody after my PackRat announcement. I see that the announcement has been seen in the Backpack forums but no one has replied to it, or sent me an email or, joined the discussion group. I guess everybody is underwhelmed. I realize it is not finished but it does show promise and I believe many of you have been asking for an offline backpack. What’s the deal? Are you all using something besides Mac OS X? Would you like to see a Windows or Linux version? I’d love to hear what you think and what you’d like to see. And if you’d like to see something sooner than later, that would be interesting and useful too.

My work continues…

I wanted to talk about PackRat and Knapsack, which is Ben Stiglitz’s project that is similar to PackRat. In the past, if I saw someone release a project that I was working on, I might have dropped it, but I now have a different opinion. Having two products in the backpack market simply reinforces that there is a market for an offline Backpack and having more than one choice is good for that market and good for the customers. It’s not may the best product win, but that both Ben and I win, and ultimately, you, the customer win. So Ben, I hope you’re not too miffed or disappointed in my announcement and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I’ve released my second app and it’s called PackRat. You can find out more about it here.

For those of you tuning in to this blog from the Backpack forums, I wanted to say a few things. Normally, I would completely finish an app before releasing it. Ben Stiglitz provided one stimulus to release it earlier and I’ll say more about that in another post. But mostly I’ve been reading a lot and thinking about how companies relate to their customers. I’ve worked for large companies and I’ve been a customer of large companies. Generally I don’t like either one. I’ve read the Cluetrain Manifesto and opinions of other independent developers and I’ve come to agree with them. So, I’ve decided that with PackRat it would be better to have a “conversation” with my customers and to release PackRat now, so you can actually use it (because you need it now) and together we can create an application that you will want. At the same time we’re open with each other and build trust with each other.

I hope you find PackRat beneficial and I look forward to our “conversations”.