Hello Everyone,

I realize it has been awhile since I last posted. I also know our time table for launch is off. Some major things have been happening here. Clever Tools parent company, Clever Technology LLC, received outside funding from an investor. This new influx of capital allowed us to do some new and cool things with Clever Tools. We did a lot of experiential and strategic research to determine why the current project management solutions fail to meet our needs and the needs of others. We identified some key aspect and have modified Clever Tools to fill those gaps. Along with that, we developed a new business process for online applications that we are in the process of patenting. We also have changed the Clever Tools business plan a tad. I hope to have more information soon. Suffice to say, we are here and working hard. We are EXTREMELY excited about the new direction and ideas Clever Tools has taken. We really think you will like it a lot!

Also, our investor, brings a lot of great experience to the table. With over 10 years of experience being the CEO of a major online business, we are very happy to have him on board.

I want to thank all of those who have signed up over the months who are interested in Clever Tools. Thank you also for your patience. Please stay tuned for more information! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or use the ‘Contact Us’ tab up top. I will respond personally to all inquiries.

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Hello Everybody,

There has been a lot of things happening around Clever Technology and our product Clever Tools recently. Some great press and insight over at Read/Write Web among other things. But the most exciting news is our private beta will start in one week exactly. That is October 1st.

We will invite 50 users from our beta invite list to begin testing Clever Tools to help us iron out the big bugs like sign up issues, compatibility issues with browsers, ect. Once we have worked through those, we will invite a larger number of people, see how our server handles them, and then invite more. So, those of you who who expressed interest in testing Clever Tools all those months ago will get to use it first.

As the article at Read/Write Web states, we will be releasing two tools to begin with- Project Management and Time Tracking. These tools will have no restrictions as of now and will be fully functional. There are still a few features we would like to add to them, but they will work great for what they are trying to accomplish.

I look forward to hearing your feedback and working with you. Thanks for signing up and I will see you in the beta!

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One of the best things about developing Clever Tools is listening to user problems and finding ways to help solve them. There is a local company here in San Diego that does web hosting, domains, VOIP, and other things. I am friends with the owners as I used to work for the company. They have a programming department and this department is assigned to different projects at one time. They were having trouble tracking where programmers were spending time and having issues trying to assign them to do xx hours here and xx hours on this project each week. So, basically they wanted the programmers to work a set amount of hours on this project and a certain on this task. So, we created a solution for this and also for users who want to reach goals.

Clever Tool’s time tracking tool now supports goal tracking. Project managers can assign goals to a user and track how well they are reaching these goals. For example, the project manager can set two goals for a user: work at least 10 hours on task a and 4 on task b in a time period of a week. These goals now show up in their account and each time they record time against a task, the goal is updated to reflect the status. This goal is showed graphically depicting how many hours they have completed toward the goal and how much time is left in the period to complete those goals. Project Managers can run reports to see who is reaching their goals and what percentage of these goals are they reaching. Goals can also be assigned to groups. Users can also create their own goals to help themselves to track time and goals. User generated goals are not shown to project managers. You can also look at the history for that goal and see how have you done in the past.

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It’s always fun to look in your referrer logs and see where your traffic is coming from. Recently we were added to Mashables Online Tools for businesses. This is a huge honor to us, as we are big Mashable Fans! Also, we got some coverage at CSS Juice (site links currently not working), which I had never heard of before. But, it is a really great blog and we have subscribed to their RSS feed.

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I thought I would take some time to show you how our file management system in Clever Tools works. Instead of using words, I have uploaded a screencast. The file manager is such a breeze to use and I think, very functional. Watch the video and judge for yourself. Note: It has audio.

Watch the video - Click Here

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I know our about page is pretty bare right now- I’m working on getting Andrew to write about himself- he’s shy. But, here is some information about Clever Tools, myself, and about being an entrepreneur. Here is the link.

P.S. I love the line in the interview where they say “A web application that might become the productivity Swiss Army Knife for freelance programmers”. Dead on.

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So, I used to think Open ID was not worth all the hype there is around it. But, I realized that atleast 2 times a day I am recovering a username or password from a site. Everyone has different requirements for usernames and passwords, so I sometimes forget what I signed up with. If all these sites supported Open ID, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Open ID is not going to be forced upon users as the only way to sign up and login. It is an option in congruence or instead of a standard username and password. Also, if you login to Clever Tools using Open ID, that tab will be defaulted on the sign in page anytime you come back. This should make it convenient for everyone.

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Occasionally, we will be posting previews of Clever Tools. We will highlight specific features, show you sketches, mockups, and final products. We thought we would kick this off by showing you the general look of the GUI for Clever Tools. The preview we are showing has no content to fill it. It looks much better with content. We will show you more along those lines soon.

The original mockup:

Now, I did this mockup. I have very limited Photoshop skills as I am more the ideas guy. This was based off another application I had developed for myself. The icons were borrowed from an open source groupware application.

The intermediate mockup:

A graphic designer took my mockup and we improved on it some more. This was a great step up, but I was still not exactly happy.

The final result:

The intermediate mockup was given to Andrew and he enhanced and tweaked it until we got something we absolutely loved. There are some noticeable changes and some some minor ones as well. Probably one of the best additions is the project selector which you can see at the top of this screenshot. We will cover that in more depth later.

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We debated over how to implement Clever Tools for quite some time. Should it be software users download and install on their own servers? Should it be a hosted service? Should we offer both? We decided that for at least the initial release to make it a service only. The reason for this decision came down to convenience and support. Convenience for the user, to have an account up and running in just minutes. We also figured not all our customers would have web hosting. The other factor was convenience for us as developers. When we use our own servers to host the service, we can use any module or technology we want. If we offered it as an installable option, we would have to use technology that was more mainstream and available on most servers. This would make development more difficult and require more time. We want to get this released to you guys as soon as possible. The second biggest issue was support. When we can control the environment our software will run on, then we will have less issues and problems. In order to offer the prices we are going to offer (below competition), we need to keep support issues as low as possible. Also, when it was time for new features and upgrades, it makes it much easier to handle.

However, while this is going to be a hosted service, we are offering a unique solution to those who want to use Clever Tools on their own domain. Similar to Google Apps, we will be implementing a sophisticated cname aliasing system to allow you to access and portray Clever Tools on your own domain. All you will have to do is add a simple DNS entry- we will take care of the rest! We hope this is a good compromise and offer the benefits of both a hosted service and the desire to host it yourself.

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So, what is CleverTools exactly? It is an online suite of business web tools aimed at small business, especially the web design/web development/artistic communities. There are currently 6 tools in development: Project Management, Invoicing/Estimates, Bug Tracking, Timesheets/Time Clock, Leads Management, and a collaborative Whiteboard. One of the innovative and truly beautiful things about the system, is the fact that you don’t have to use every single tool. You only pick and chose what tools you need and they then work together. For example, from within the timesheets tool, if you have the invoice tool enabled as well, you can create an invoice with the click on a link and all the necessary data is automatically filled in.

So, why are we building CleverTools? We are ultimately building it for ourselves. As a virtual team with members in California, Iowa, and South Dakota, we depend on web tools to successfully run our consulting business. There were 6 different, core, web apps we used to manage our business. Some are things we built specifically for us and some are commercial products. We just got sick of having 6 different sites, 6 different logins, 6 different GUIs and learning curves, 6 different bills (or theoretically), and 6 different companies to get support from. Not to mention, transferring data between the services became a pain and our customers were getting frustrated with the having to go to xyz to pay a bill, abc to post bugs, ect.

We believe centralizing the cores tools into one place and having them interact together will be a huge help to us and also you! This will save time, frustration, and in the end, money. We believe organization and communication are keys to success and having one centralized place will help foster those needs. Plenty of companies do one tool here and there, but this fragmentation, while it does help to improve organization and communication, fails to fully utilize your ability to improve your business.

We look forward to meeting you guys and hearing your thoughts! We will be using this blog to communicate to you, to offer your glimpses, and hopefully to get you excited!

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