nocivus

From my experience, while working on a software development team and replying all the time to questions from testers, business owners, managers, etc., I think I would sum it up like wheels did: as soon as possible, even if you don't know the answer. People will appreciate the consideration.

There are cases when may not have the time to reply immediately to all questions (e.g. small team). In that situation common sense will tell you which ones are more pressing, I guess.

Going a little off topic, one thing I've been noticing that works pretty well (especially in agile environments), if you can afford it time-wise of course, is to have one person exclusively dedicated to support for a week. Then rotate to another person next week. That will both keep the requesters happy to get answers on time, but also the repliers, who can fully focus on other things when they are not "support person of the week".

Hackers paradigm, if it does not kill you :)

Besides, it's always good to know about all sorts of things, including how to setup a mail server, even if you will never need one. I'm sure that there is something that you will learn in the process, which will prove itself useful in the future. For instance, while setting up my own server I learned some stuff that helped my while coding something using the python email libraries.

So nothing wrong in learning ;)

Anyone used this before? Is it easy to get it to work in a simple application? Thanks.

Really? Do you know why that happens? Is it intentional, from their government?

Just an update, on an interesting article that talks exactly about how "savings" applications are the most successful in times of recession: http://embought.com/blog/show/17?t=Apps-to-Build-in-a-Bad-Ec...

Thanks for the insight, I appreciate it. I'm currently aiming at some rarely explored user base in the social networking area. Can't disclose details, but it entails the sharing of life events.

That's a great point, regarding improvements on already existing services/companies; they will welcome any ways to decrease their costs or increase their revenues. But do you think that a recession is also good for starting a company with a brand new product/service?

I must say that it's the first time I see a funder not really worried about the business plan. And I must agree 100% with what he says; If the team is excellent and passionate with what they are building, then there is a good chance that something great will come out of it. How you will make money from it becomes almost secondary, since it will show itself during development.

Indeed, but isn't that going into the integration tests scope? :)

True but, like everything in life, nothing is written in stone. I think the general purpose of the post (and also of most things I read in the 37signals "real" book) is to serve as a guideline. And it serves it's purpose even if it just makes you take a second look at the gear (product features) you want to take with you :)

Exactly. Thinking outside the box is usually not easy; you have to be able to abstract yourself from the domain you are considering, otherwise you are biased from start and might miss obvious information.

It seems to me that the hardest part about implementing an idea is probably figuring out how to make money out of it and, since that is something (smart) investors require for starters, my question is: How does one come up with a business model for, say, a website for monkey owners to ask questions about their food (not the owners', the monkeys' :))?

Is the grand majority of websites limited to rely on advertisement or are there some constructive guidelines to help in this subject?