Woubie Woubie Doo, Where Are You?

At the beginning of the month the plan was for me to post a new blog at least every other day leading up to the Woubie launch. Clearly a dumb plan. Here we are, 8 days away from D-Day, and this is only my fifth post since the October 1st.

Whoa, hold on a minute...8 days? 8 DAYS?! Do you have any idea how much I still need to do before then? Let's make a list:

1) Make final corrections to the Slam and Woubie sites (Thanks, Mom, for the grammar lessons). :)
2) Get some more of those Rolaid soft chews.
3) Final test of the billing process.
4) Buy some beer.
5) Make sure the duct tape we used on MatStreet is still holding up.
6) Finish writing the press release.
7) Have a beer.
8) Try one more time to break Woubie; click on every button, type something in every space, save, edit, search, filter...this process takes a while because Woubie does a lot of stuff.
9) Chew a Rolaid.
10) Untape MatStreet and let him have a beer just to perk him up a bit and make him create marketing and training videos.
11) Tape him back up again. This is a time consuming process. Our takeaway from this learning experience is that it's much smarter to buy duct tape in bulk.
12) Have the Advisory Board members read the press release (since they need to do something to earn the money they aren't getting).
13) Give each of the advisory board members a beer since we can't pay them. Oh, wait, 2 of them are pregnant. Sweet, more beer for the rest of us.
14) Fix the footer links inside of Woubie so that they open a separate window instead of taking the user away from Woubie.
15) Reassure the Mad Scientist for the thousandth (is that really a word?) time that, "Yes, I really do think that Woubie will make at least enough money for us to buy food and toys".
16) Finish up the Woubie Help file.
17) Chew some more Rolaids.
18) Add the "30 Day Trial" button to a couple of pages, so that people can easily find them.
19) Get ready for the Launch party (which is also going to be a Fall Festival / Halloween / Birthday Party). And by "get ready" I mean meditate, have a beer, lose sleep, stress out and have another beer, because I'm definitely not the hostess-with-the-mostess and the damn party is making me down more Rolaids than the idea of launching "the very first product of our very own company on a tattered shoestring budget".

That last one did me in. I'm outta here. I have stuff to do.

Big pain in the arse…

Mat Street here, resident comedian and expert Woubie user at Slam Industries LLC, according to my description on the site. (Hey Webmaster, why not “expert comedian”, hmm?) I kid, of course, because the webmaster’s bigger than me!

I’m currently inputting years of material in my Woubie database and, as a result, I can access it all with a simple search. However, I’m giving these designers and programmers hell, sending a gaggle of emails to them about changes I’d like them to make. They know this will all benefit future Woubie users, but I have a feeling they’re starting to turn on me. As we get closer to launch date, I fear for my safety. They make the changes, but I detect a little malice in their email responses. Should my correspondence go silent for more than five days, please send help. I might be duct taped to a chair, taking the beatin’ of a lifetime, or, even worse, being forced to watch hours of reality TV. If that’s the case, don’t save me, shoot me

(Guest post by MatStreet)

Why is Woubie only going to be available online?

Several people have asked why Woubie is only going to be available as a web based program and not as desktop software. Apparently 'just because' isn't an acceptable answer; hence this blog post. We decided to go with an SaaS (software as a service; tech speak for software that you access online instead of installing it on your computer) business model because...

...we like to move it, move it, we like to moooooove it!...

If you're lost right now and would like to take a break and be entertained for a minute, watch this video (no worries, its good clean fun):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6Vk183xGQ

...the thought of having to manage multiple versions of the program, constantly send out notices about new upgrades and deal with possible compatibility issues between different versions, gives us nightmares. But it's not all about us. We thought about it from your perspective too.

Picture this:

You're doing research for an article that is due later today. A friend emails you a link to a video on YouTube. You think, "Hey, I'll just take a little break, watch it and then wrap up this research". The video is hilarious, you spit coffee all over your laptop and now it's fried. If you're using a desktop program to store and organize your research material, at this point you're up you know what without one of those doo-hickeys that makes a canoe move. If you're using Woubie, you refill your coffee cup and head over to a friend's house, go to an Internet cafe and get fresh coffee, or stop in at your local library (sans coffee unless you have a really lax librarian), log back on to Woubie and wrap it up.

For those of you who prefer lists to random hypothetical stories, here are the primary reasons we chose to make it web based:

You have secure access to your creative data from any computer anywhere that has Internet access.

You don't have to install anything on your computer, so you don't have to worry about space requirements, program compatibility or keeping up with updates to ensure that you have the latest version.

You get upgrades and new services automatically without paying more.

You don't need to worry about backing up your data.

No annoying pop ups on your computer for updates saying "A new version of blah blah is available".

Mat Street is a big fat wuss

With the exception of Mr. Noseeum, the Slam team is basically a family affair. The things you learn about family members once you become co-workers are interesting. For example, I found out today that Mat (@matstreet) is a big fat wuss. Since I've known him his whole life (okay, fine, he was probably already 15 minutes old the first time I saw him, but you know, 15 minutes isn't a whole lot unless you're holding your breath), it came as a bit of a suprise that I didn't know this about him before now.

The highlight of our Woubie launch party was supposed to be Mat Street jumping out of a plane and landing on the roof of my house. Today, on Facebook, he posted this comment in response to my announcement of our plans:

"Can you park an airplane in your backyard and I jump from your roof onto it instead? Pretty please? Let's think this through. Me no likey freefall!!!"

Damn baby.

Seriously, Mat, you wimp out on this, but still expect me to believe you when you say you would do anything for your family? Does your girlfriend know you're such a wimp? And since when is a feeling like freefall a negative thing for you? Also, you couldn't tell me to my face that you're chicken?

All I have to say now is that you better come up with something awesome to take the place of the plane jumping-falling-landing-splat routine.

If not I'm tellin' Mom.

The time has come the walrus said...

...to speak of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax. Of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot. And whether pigs have wings. (The Walrus and The Carpenter - Lewis Carroll)

As much fun as it would be to discuss pigs, the state of their wings (or lack of) and the many reasons they may have wings, the time hasn't actually come for that yet. But it has come for Woubie. In our previous blog we posted a screen shot of one section of Woubie. And although it's crystal clear to me, I've been informed by The Walrus that it may be about as clear as mud to the rest of the world. So I'll try to smear away a little of the mud.

The primary purpose of Woubie is to organize data. Not just any ol' data though. Woubie focuses on data that would be stored by writers and comedians. Specifically all of the minute details about facts, characters, locations, bibliography, quotes, jokes and several other things that we like to refer to as Objects. The screen shot we posted was of the Comedy section (or Object). Using Woubie, a comedian can take all of his or her material, store it, assign categories & subcategories (with easy to use drop down lists), sort & filter it, assign duration & ratings, flag whether it's "clean" material of not (i.e. rated XXX or not) and then link multiple jokes together to form a set.

The Walrus just informed me that I'm close to exceeding my word limit for this post. So we're off to have some oysters.

First Official Woubie Announcement

Labor will be induced on October 31st at 9:00pm EST.

Here's the most recent sonogram, in which you can clearly see Woubie's sense of humor: