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:
- Clean HTML
- Multiple themes, selectable from thumbnails (like Wordpress)
- Mobile phone version (just task lists, comments and ability to reply)
- Simple, unobtrusive JavaScript to handle pane refreshes and AJAXy stuff (using Performer)
- Simple time management, with tape-recorder “record, pause, stop” buttons
- Better document management, including page of thumbnails for all images attached to a task/project
- Simple financial management, including ability to set a price for a task/project and record multiple payments against that price
- Plugin system (a bit like Wordpress) so developers can add items to menus to run plugin pages (for reports etc)
- Better configuration and user settings management, storing everything in the database
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.
- Posted on April 14, 2008, 11:43 am
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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.
- Posted on June 11, 2007, 9:32 am
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Making less more
By chris, posted on May 29th 2007
As you know, 37signals are big inspirations to me (hence my 37genies skin for projectGenie). A large part of their manifesto is “a belief in the beauty of less - features, options, employees, meetings, promises” (thanks Brian). Constraints are good, they cut out the clutter.
So I’m setting myself a constraints challenge. I’m limiting myself to just 16 days to get the bulk of the new projectGenie version ready for public use. That’s right, on June 14th (my birthday, by the way) version Brookmeyer will be live for playing with on this very site.
I’m not sure what features will make it, I’ll have to pick the ones that will make the most difference. Wish me luck 
- Posted on May 29, 2007, 1:53 pm
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Pressing words
By chris, posted on May 13th 2007
And as if the recent flurry of excitement on this website wasn’t enough, there’s a lot more changes happening. In essence, projectGenie.org is now running on the lovely Wordpress blogging system. Which means, as it’s now much easier for me to update the site, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me. Possibly.
- Posted on May 13, 2007, 3:52 pm
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Clocking in
By chris, posted on Apr 23rd 2007
Wow, it’s been nearly 5 months since I last wrote on here. What can I say, I’ve been busy. In fact I’ve been more than busy, I’ve been burning ever candle at every end I could find, but loving it (mostly!)
You may well be wondering what’s happening with projectGenie at the moment, and the answer is not much. I’ve added a few little updates to the demo site. In no particular order they are:
- Renaming the ‘Tasks & Bugs’ section to ‘Latest notes’ (which is what it is)
- Making the name of the person who wrote any note bold where the note was not written by yourself (i.e. the currently logged in user). This seemingly little thing makes it much easier to scan down lists of tasks and see which ones need attention.
- Adding the facility to change your and (if you have the right privileges) anyone else’s layout style through their ‘Contact’ admin screen.
Not much, I know, but it’s something. For the ‘Brookmeyer’ version which hopefully I’ll get chance to work on some time this year, I’ll be rewriting the entire system to be much more modular, as well as incorporating my lovely JavaScript library to do all the eye candy stuff. I also want to give the option for clean URLs on servers that support it. And plenty more besides that, including reports, statistics etc. Goody goody. In the meantime please download ‘Anderson’, with the little tweaks mentioned above and watch this space.
To finish off I’ll share an excerpt from a nice email I got from a projectGenie user:
“First, major kudos for projectGenie! It is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for to help me run my web design business.”
- Posted on April 23, 2007, 9:47 pm
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