Movin' on up!

Although the Alexa rankings may not be too reliable for a couple of reasons, we seem to be getting some results! Today our ranking is 2,644,108 which is up from 3,851,993 when we started tracking our position. Basically, this means that we are now slightly more popular on the Internet. there is over a million more websites that have less visibility than ours.
Is Alexa reliable? Yes and no. Alexa figures out how popular sites are based on the sites visited by users who have installed the Alexa tool-bar. Because only a small fraction of browsers have this installed, Alexa suffers from a 'small sample size'. On the other hand, Alexa is the only web traffic tool that follows actual users, so even if it is not perfect, it is the best tool available.
In any case, I believe that our change in ranking show that there has been some positive results of our web visibility improvement efforts that we described earlier this year!

Creeping Elegance

Every year our software can do more and more. We add more features, modules and functionality. It's great to be able to do more and to offer more ways to support our clients. But there can be a downside too. With more features there is more complexity. We now offer training and have help files. These weren't necessary when we were simply hosting lists of files.
There's a lot to be said for simplicity. In some cases, an improvement can be made by reducing functionality. Read what Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Blogger has to say about adding constraints as a way of making tools more useful. The popularity of this tool is in how little you can do!

Web 2.0 Summit: Twitter Founder Evan Williams Preaches Added Constraints October 20, 2007
Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Blogger, believes that developers should be adding more constraints to applications, ...

Traditionally, if you think about the development of desktop software, every new version has new menus and buttons. It feels great because you could do more and more stuff! But pretty soon, the interface becomes so complex that you can't find anything. Extra features impair the user's experience and performance.
In this context a better software has fewer features. I think Google has lead the charge here. Everything they provide is simple and clean and very easy to use. If you consider other tools like Skype, Twitter, Wikipedia and Facebook the common element is a simple uncluttered and well thought out interface.

Our goal in development should be to get rid of the help file. Put a great deal of thought and design into the application and give it a lot of power in the back end, but keep the interface as minimal as possible.

Google Reader

In the previous post I was suggesting that we scan the news for items and issues that are of interest to our clients in order to be able to add more value to the services we provide to our clients. Searching the web for news on specific topics can be an arduous task simply because there is so much content out there.
There are two related technologies that make sifting through lots of content a lot easier. The first one is RSS. RSS stands for 'Real Simple Syndication'. It is a technology that allows us to 'subscribe' to the web content that is often updated.

In IE7 you can directly subscribe to these feeds by clicking on the RSS button in the toolbar. These feeds are then available in your browser next to your favorite links. There are also software programs you can install that will manage feeds. The new outlook can do this for example.
The best tool I have seen for this is Google Reader. You can add all the feeds that you are interested in and you can organize them into folders. It's very easy to scan through the articles and it keeps track of what you have looked at.
Here's a movie of what it can do:

Chris Gadula's friend Jesse Hirsh pointed out a key benefit of this tool that you can share what you are reading very easily. You can then publish this list on a web page or integrate it into other pages. A really cool feature is that your shared list can also be seen as an RSS feed! One of the feeds I am subscribing to is Jesse's shared items. You can see them on a web page here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/00787694365499276274
Here is a link to my shared items page: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/05387315875848305761 And you can also see the same items in the side bar further down on this page.
Play around with Google Reader and keep your eyes open for RSS feeds. I look forward to seeing your shared news items!

News, news, news

We are on a mission to raise our profile and to add more value to our clients. One of the ways we can do this is through knowledge. We work very hard to understand out clients needs and the issues that they face.
We all follow the news to some extent to make sense of the world around us. We pick and choose the topics and items that are meaningful to us. As we scan the paper and the web we filter and select from vast content the few items that effect us in some way.
I will suggest that one of the ways we can help our clients is to slightly alter the way we read the news. If we look at the news from the point of view of our clients we will both be better informed about their needs as well as more aware of ways that we can help them. So when we follow the news, online, in print, on TV and on the radio, let's pay a little extra attention to news that might effect or help commercial real estate people.
We want to raise the level of knowledge that we all have in regard to our clients' concerns. To support this goal we have added two new web tools. First we have a rotating block of news on the front page of the main website. This is pulled from Wall Street Journal articles on commercial real estate. The other new tool we have is a blog that contains a compilation of relevant news items. It can be found at http://news.spacedatabase.com
Take a look at our news items each day and please let us know if you come across anything interesting that you think we should share!