The great and the good of my on and offline reading list have been telling me for years: an idea without execution is worth nothing. So I decided at the start of this year that I’d start executing. For someone in my position (easy access to knowledge and skills required to build web apps), it seemed like a simple plan: just build an app in your spare time! But when business is out the door and spare time is no longer spare, it gets a little more complicated than that. Turning down good work for time on your own projects is tough on cashflow and extremely stressful at times too. But if just one person (that I don’t know) signs-up for FoldSpy, it’ll be worth it.
For those with an interesting idea haunting their daydreams: try it out! It’s the only way to know if it’s any good. FoldSpy is in extreme bootstrap mode. We’ve put just enough time and money into it to see if it works. If it does, hurrah! If not, which is statistically likely, bring on the next one…
I’d like to thank everyone who installed the beta version on their site and give a special shout-out to those that gave such excellent feedback: Paul Campbell, David Rice, Alan O’Rourke, Laurence Veale, Damien Blake, Thomas Baekdal, Eamon Leonard, David Doran, Derek Organ, Dan Stevenson, Ken Stanley.
Oh, and what is FoldSpy? I’ll let the cheesy screencast explain!
17 Comments
Congrats, and the site looks great! Best of luck!
Congrats! Looks like an interesting (and beautifully simple) application. I’ll be sure to give it a whirl this evening.
Good work, Eoghan. It’ll all pay off in the end as they say! It’s a very cool app - simple and very useful.
Brilliant idea Eoghan and extremely well executed. Not two niggles…… when trying to sign up using my myname+foldspy@gmail.com I was told that was an invalid email address. Secondly it said my blog address was invalid so I guess it’s for top level domains only?
Well done Eoghan, it’s like the crack on the floor that no one recognised as the start of the earthquake..
Good man for giving it a go. Best of luck. BUT: Where is the demo?
Thanks for your really nice comments, guys. They mean a lot.
James, thanks! Your fancy Gmail address should work now. And your domain should have always worked. Just put in “eirepreneur.blogs.com”.
Congrats Eoghan,
One quick thing,
dammit your site eats my comments!
Try it on Safari beta on windows. It wouldn’t accept my domain name
Thanks Eoghan, leaving out the http:// means it works, but surely it should work when including that as well? Gmail trick works fine now too, signed up :)
It’s not at all obvious that the overview page is actually a slideshow as the arrow is almost the same colour as the background.
I spent a couple of minutes staring at the screen before I noticed the arrow
Well done, excelently packaged and delivered. I’m going to have to jump on your screencast bandwagon I recon. It works really well.
Michele: You’re dead right and it’s on our list. Thanks.
Des: None of your fancy comments! WP hates snobs. :-) I’ll check it out. Thanks for the heads-up.
I see you got listed here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/17/exploring-design-outstanding-start-pages/
Congrats
Nice Work! The screencast does a great job of explaining what it’s about (I didn’t understand what it did from previous explanations:))
Hi Eoghan,
Best of luck with FoldSpy.
What screenrecording application did you use? I’m considering purchasing iShowU but I would like to know what alternatives are out there.
Cheers.