David Berube’s OLD Blog

I’ve been using 37signal’s Ta-Da List now for a little bit and I find it very helpful to keep track of what I need to get done every day at work.

Before using Ta-Da List I’d just wing my day, now, first thing in the morning I review my daily list and begin working. If I forgot or just didn’t create the list the night before I’ll do that first thing in the morning. As the day progresses I find myself adding things to the list, before I was using Ta-Da List I would put these things off and eventually forget about them.

It’s been a huge help in keeping me productive and on course with what I need to do. This is also the only 37signals product I use.

About a month ago I created a new support system for MoFuse. Before this new support system all support requests were handled via email. Now, with the new system, support requests are sent, received and replied to right from the user’s MoFuse dashboard.

I made the system for my own well being. Since I handle 98% of all support requests I wanted a system that didn’t let me lose things. If I let a support request email go two days without responding, it was lost in my email clutter, forgotten about and then there was an angry user. I didn’t want that anymore, so I spent a few days making MoFuse messaging.

When a user sent a support request in through the old system, I’d send a reply email with the answer and I usually never heard back from the user. Now with MoFuse messaging users are replying to my replies and I’m sort of developing this one-on-one relationships with some users. Almost every support request I reply to gets a reply back from the user, whereas before I only got a reply back if my answer wasn’t satisfactory enough for their needs.

So now I’ve had a chance to develop a somewhat personal relationship (as much as it can be through support requests) with a few hundred users, and they’re almost unanimously happy with the level of support they get which makes them happy, and me happy.

Little changes sometimes have a great affect. Building those relationships with people who had a problem with our service, and then getting into a conversation with them about their problem and how I’m able to help solve there problem goes a long way. Some of them write blogposts about it, others just give you a big ole’ thank you. Both of which make your day.

I want MoFuse customer support to be as good as Apple’s. They are a leader in making their customers happy and every company, small or large, should model themselves after them. After all, without customers or users, you have nothing.

No more “malware” on this blog. The intermediate page you got warning you that my blog could be hazardous to your health if you found this blog via Google is now gone. Turned out that my default Wordpress installation came with a vulnerability, yadda yadda yadda, it’s fixed.

I broke my iPhone’s screen this weekend. Had about 5-6 cracks in it. Brought it to the Genius Bar at the Apple store and they gave replaced the entire unit for me on the spot without any hassles. Above and beyond customer service to say the least, good job Apple!

MoFuse is doing great too. We launched a new homepage last week that is much more clear than before. We’re working on two very major projects that I can’t really talk about at this time but I’m excited about them to say the least.

I’ve been very limited past few weeks. It all started with terrible allergies and then I got walking Pneumonia. It’s terrible and I don’t recommend anyone get it (as if you have a choice). Anyways, I’m just starting to feel a little better (as if you care). In the future, if you ever think you might have it, immediately goto the doctor’s office and get antibiotics — they took 5 days to work but they do make a huge difference.

Mowser is dead – so the mobile web must be dead to. If you’re a reader of Read Write Web, TechCrunch and the others you would be lead to believe this as true. It’s the furthest thing from the truth.

Russell Beattie, CEO and Founder of Mowser, is in a tough spot financially. It’s not easy being an entrepreneur. His financial situation seems to have placed him in a rough patch and that frustration has come out and it was inaccurately aimed at the mobile web. He’s in a bad spot right now and I understand his frustrations, but I disagree with the reasons he felt Mowser failed.

There are a variety of reasons Mowser seems to have failed that have nothing to do with the mobile web being dead, see Mike Rowehl’s (co-founder of Mowser) take on why it failed. Mike sums everything up pretty nicely.

The blogosphere, going on Russ’s post, was quick to claim the mobile web dead, and in place of it the full web will emerge. They are all flat wrong.

Those people who are quick to jump to the conclusion that the mobile web is dead and that the iPhone pulled the trigger are wrong. The iPhone planted the seed. Apple has spent millions of dollars marketing the web on your mobile phone, creating awareness that you can access the internet from the device in your pocket.

Detractors will say, why do you need a mobile web when these mobile browsers can browse the desktop web? They are right to an extent. The iPhone lets you to browse the desktop web, yes. And the radio lets you pick up a television signal. Following me?

What I’m trying to say is that, yes, you can view the desktop web on the iPhone and it’s the best mobile browser out there. But visiting an iPhone specific website is a much better experience than visiting that same site’s full-desktop-version.

Facebook is a great example of this. I much rather use Facebook’s iPhone version on my iPhone rather than trying to navigate their desktop version through the periscope that is the Safari mobile. Same goes for Digg, Bank of America, LinkedIn and Google.

Websites of the future will be designed for three screens. The larger smart phone screens(iPhone), smaller mobile phone screens(RAZR, etc) and the desktop screens. You fit the content to the media it’s designed for. You can’t take something designed for a 19” screen or larger and then simple zoom-it-out so that it fits on a tiny screen. Nobody wants to look at the web through a periscope and you wouldn’t put a YouTube video on a matchbook cover (thank you David Harper).

My final take, the mobile web isn’t dead, far from it. Ask the other founder of Mowser, ask the guys at AdMob, ask David Harper, ask myself. Here at MoFuse we’ve seen consistent mobile pageview growth of at least 40% month over month.

Things have been buzzing with MoFuse lately, bringing on a team, getting our first office and some even more exciting things that I haven’t talked about yet but will in the near future.

Here is what’s new and I can talk about:

• MoFuse is no longer a subsidiary of  Swift Blue, LLC, it has grown up and is now MoFuse Incorporated.
• I am no longer the CEO of MoFuse, Inc. — I willfully stepped aside and asked Annette Tonti to take the reigns!
• Moving into our first office in Providence, RI tomorrow — it’s small but will suffice for the short-term.

Other than that there is one other big development that I’ve been hush-hush on. We’ve got some great new features in the roadmap that our users are going to absolutely love and I can’t wait to get those rolled out.

Next few months are going to be exciting to say the least!