Moving forward, Open Source-ward

By chris, posted on Apr 14th 2008

OK, cards on the table time. I have very little time with which to work on projectGenie, although I have many ideas I’d like to see happen. While I’ve made some progress with the next version of ‘Genie (”Brookmeyer”) it’s not happening fast enough. I think there’s a market, if that’s the right word, for a system like projectGenie so I’m going to be making it an open source project.

However even that isn’t a two-minute job. I haven’t decided on which project hosting system to use (any recommendations between SourceForge and Google?) although Jon has been extremely helpful. And before it’s opened I’d like to get a framework ready so that developers can build easily on top.

In a nutshell here’s what I want for ‘Genie:

Plus a lot of cleaning up of the interface so projectGenie is even easier to use. It’s a lot to ask, but I hope by opening the source to the good citizens of the web we’ll be able to make something really good and useful for us all.

Alternatives to projectGenie

By chris, posted on Mar 12th 2008

It’s been so long since I posted anything here I’m embarrassed. However work on the next version of projectGenie (Brookmeyer) continues - albeit at glacial pace. I’ve been speaking with a couple of people recently about making it properly open-source, so that anyone can contribute to the project. I’m currently investigating options for that and will hopefully have some time to do something about it.

In the meantime the world still needs project management, so here’s a long list of both web and desktop software that may help you to organise your projects and tasks: http://tutorialblog.org/freelancers-manage-your-projects/

The devil in the details

By chris, posted on Aug 16th 2007

One of the main reasons for rewriting projectGenie (you knew I was doing that, right?) is to clean up a lot of the little things. After all, an application is just a collection of tiny details so it makes sense to get those details right.

So here’s a quick preview of part of the old interface:

Old interface

And it’s new counterpart:

New interface

Much better, I think.

The mountain keeps growing

By chris, posted on Jul 18th 2007

You know that lack of time I was talking about? It’s now even more lacking. However despite that I have had chance to spend some time on the upcoming Brookmeyer release, and have finally nailed three important parts.

So from that you can tell I’ve made quite a bit of progress. There’s a long way to go, I still have almost every page to shuffle round so it looks better and is easier to use, but progress has been made.

In the meantime I have a bit of technical know-how that might help you out. A couple of projectGenie users have complained that they get SQL errors after installing the current version. If that’s you then don’t panic, it’s a problem to do with the configuration file (fixed in the new version to come). Going to ‘Configuration’ and clicking the update button (you don’t need to change anything, just click the button) will re-jig your installation and sort it right out.

Time, and the lack thereof

By chris, posted on Jun 11th 2007

Hmm. Things didn’t go according to plan this weekend. There was such a lot of client work to do I didn’t get time to do anything on Brookmeyer, the new version of projectGenie Which means I’m badly behind schedule, which means I won’t meet the (self-imposed) deadline on Thursday.

It’s a shame, but then I did set myself an almost impossible task. The good news is I’ve made loads of progress by giving myself a really short amount of time to Get Something Done, and I’m fired up to get even more done very soon. So, hopefully, it won’t be long before I’m cutting the digital ribbon on a whole new version.

Until then, if you’re one of the people looking forward to trying out Brookmeyer, then sorry. You’ll have to wait a little bit longer.

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