While our E-mail Marketing product Toddle is being reviewed and rated today as part of the Tuesday Push it gives us a chance to catch up on the last one…

As part of the Tuesday Push initiated by Damien, I am delighted to introduce Pix.ie. It is a fantastic service where you can upload, share and save your photos. It is such a great way to have all your photos in one place. By inviting family and friends, all occasions are safely stored and tagged forever. If like me you never remember to fix the date setting after you recharge the batteries on your camera this function is a godsend. The overall design of the site is friendly and welcoming and really inviting. At this rate everyone I know will have signed up the end of the week! Lovely site, great usability, well done Pix.ie. Flickr had better watch out this stylish brat is fast on its heels!

Posted by Mary Carty

| | 12/08/08 12:52 PM

Continuing on the Tuesday push initiative.
Managing designers is like herding cats, you can lead them… ooh! that’s shiny… sorry where was I?
As designers we tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes to do something. I believe it is because we love what we do and as the saying goes time flies when you are having fun. I am sure if we were filling forms for a living we would be counting the minutes.

On a personal level that is fine. But professionally it will not do. It effects how long you think a job will take. Which has a knock on effect to delivery times and client relations. Cash flow gets hurt as well as what you are invoicing for at the end of the month. Your first instinct is that you must work harder to deliver on time and bring in more money. What you should be doing is working smarter.

This year Spoiltchild has been on a mission to focus and become better and more efficient at what we do. For the last six months we have been looking closely at our time and ways to track it better. We have tried paper, excel sheets, web apps and big sticks all to varying levels of success. What we have recently settled on is 1Time Tracking, a web based time tracking system.

I was pretty amazed at what I found when I began tracking my own time. As a manager of the team I got to see a realistic report of how much actual design time I have each week. A figure which was much less then I expected. Which would explain all the late evenings I was having to put in to complete the workload I was taking on.
But perhaps even more scary was what the team as a whole began to see. We were loosing out on a large hunk of money each month for work we were just not charging for. You got to see just how much little jobs and tweaks and were adding up to.

How it works is simple. You add in your clients and projects (or simply import all these from Basecamp as we did). Keep a browser window open through out the day with 1time open and record all your activity throughout the day. The big stick comes into play at the end of each day as 1time automatically send out an email reminder to each of the team if they forgot to record their time.

It sounds simple and it is however not every application out there manages to do it right. And trust me we tried a lot. 1time succeed in not getting in your way and providing you the information and options when you need them. It’s not perfect by any means. Having tried a few of the competing applications in this space there are some features I would very much love in 1time. First of those would be a desktop widget/timer. But overall 1time offers a fuller set of functionality then any I have tried and it better suited us as a design and development company. And Derek Organ, the main man behind 1time was nice enough to listen to my feature requests and let me know they are coming soon.

So thanks to 1time we are now:
Charging properly for the work we are doing.
Estimating our time better.
Getting a better overview of what we are all working on.
Have happier clients.
And a happier team as we can all manage to get home on time.

We stated off on the free plan to try it out. When we liked what we found we upgraded to a paid plan to give the entire team access.

Comment [1] | Business | 15/07/08 11:25 PM

Toddle and the Spoiltchild team got a nice mention in the Irish Independent newspaper and Silicon Republic today.
The piece focuses on the Irish tech start up scene and how they find finance for their business.

You can read it here.

| Business | 10/07/08 09:52 AM

I am off to the west tomorrow for a meeting in the morning but then have plenty of time in the afternoon if anyone is around and fancies a coffee. First time in Sligo so i am looking forward to it. Loading up on work to keep me busy on the train over and back.

| | 03/07/08 02:56 PM

Hi. I’m Alan O’Rourke. You might remember me from such blogs as this one, Spoilt and Toddle. Spoiltchild have been working on some pretty cool stuff lately, both for ourselves and for some amazing clients which I will blog about soon. But first Damien has dragged me out of our secret development laboratory / cave for a great initiative of his. There are some amazing web and tech companies coming out of Ireland recently. Our trip over to Silicon Valley last year revealed to me the really smart and passionate people behind them. Over the next few months, every Tuesday, I will introduce a few of them to help attract the attention these guys and their products deserve. First up is Putplace.

Putplace

Putplace is an online backup but with one very important difference. Putplace also allows you to organise, protect and share that data. While other back up solutions out there do half a job and allow you to dump a folder and its contents online, Putplace helps you actually find it again in a way you can understand.

Joe Drumgoole the guy behind Putplace does the Technology hour on Newstalk radio every Monday evening with George Hook. And if you have ever listened, you quickly realise the guy talks a lot of practical straight forward sense and gives realistic advice a person can actually understand. A rare skill in the software industry.
Joe has applied that practicality and straight forward thinking to the common problem, backing up your data, and has gone much further by realising how that data fits into your day to day life.

Backup is one of those things you always put on the long finger and don’t fancy paying a few euro for each month. But as I found out recently when my computer died I was willing to pay just about anything to get a few files back. They have a nice case studies section which show how a few folk use it in their day to day. Which explains things better then ever I could.

They are currently an open Beta and are looking for people to test the service. This means you can try out the service for free and you have no limits on how much data you can back up. Sounds like a good deal to me. And if you like it let others know :)

Comment [1] | | 01/07/08 04:08 PM

As the title says we have move office into a larger space here in Drogheda.
You will now find us in Units 1 & 2 in the new Chamber of Commerce building on the Dublin road. It’s directly across the road from our favourite eatery The Black bull but I am not sure that is a good idea :)

Our new contact details are as follows.

Phone: 041 9830152
Skype: spoiltchilddesign

Address:
Units 1 & 2, Broughton house
Dublin Road, Drogheda
Co. Louth, Ireland

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Comment [3] | Spoiltchild | 29/04/08 10:40 AM

Does anyone happen to have an old or spare eircom.net email account they would be willing to donate? We are looking to test Toddle with their web based mail client.

And as a long shot we are looking do some tests on the Zimbra email client. Before we install it we are doing a quick shout to see if anyone already it up and running and can donate an account.

Thanks

| Toddle | 04/01/08 11:38 AM

I am in the process of writing a beginners guide to simple email marketing and i am looking for some personal practical experiences of people trying it in the real world. If you have any stories that you think might inspire others to try it, warn them what not to do or just a simple tip that you find works for you i would love you to share. I cant promise i can include everything in this article but there are many more due over the next year. Every story will be fully attributed (or you can be anonymous if you wish, just email me).

A great example is Jim Brady of Brady wines. He put a small ad in the local paper and front window offering a free wine course by email. He sent out a short email every couple of weeks to each subscriber telling them about wine. He simply used the information cards provided by the wine dealers about what each type of wine and how to identify them. The cards were normally on display in the shop and Jim added a little of his own opinion also. So when the subscribers wanted a good bottle of wine to bring to a friend’s house they knew to go to Jim. Subscribers were armed with the right knowledge to talk about wine over dinner which in turn helped to attract new customers.

An example of what not to do was demonstrated by the The Goldenspider awards who were fined €500 last month for spamming Maryrose of Brightspark.

So what works for you?

Comment [1] | Toddle | 02/01/08 11:39 AM

Have a very Merry Christmas and happy new year.
The team are taking a well deserved break and the office will re open again on January 3rd. See you then.

| | 24/12/07 03:41 PM

Anyone who has tried designing an email newsletter knows what a nightmare it is. Standard support in email clients is almost non existent. Think back to when you had to design two different web pages for Netscape and Internet Explorer and then realise that instead of two browsers you have to contend with numerous web and desktop email clients. Each one has different requirements. It is one of the reasons why we built Toddle. Small businesses should not have to worry about this technical issue and be able to get on with talking to their customers instead.
Thankfully the guys over at Freshview, who make the excellent Campaign Monitor and Mailbuild, have started a fantastic campaign to make the job of designers and marketers easier. The Email Standards Project. Read more about it here.

Comment [3] | Toddle | 16/12/07 02:56 PM