0 to 60 in 1.6 Gigaseconds

In the early 90’s, many software companies and IT departments were struggling trying to create user friendly systems on a Windows platform that performed. The experience of applications development on mainframes or in MS DOS was not always helpful in many attempts to create a Windows version of an application. The keyboard-driven navigation styles were not exactly the same as the promise of “point-and-click”. Developers of the time were so enamored with Windows they created as many windows as they could and many, many early Windows-based systems suffered in performance and general usability.

Then along came Quicken for Windows.

Don’t get me started on Intuit, I will rant on them in subsequent posts. Few remember the Anakin Skywalker that Quicken for Windows was before Intuit turned to the “Dark Side”. But for those of us who do, we remember Quicken for Windows as the standard-bearer that all other Windows applications were measured against. It was incredibly easy, incredibly fast, and never broke. Many a requirements document written in the early 90’s had the words, “as good as Quicken for Windows” in them somewhere.

Which brings me to yet another “0 to 60 in 1.6 Gigaseconds” moment. We are seeing a new kind of application emerge now. The new platform is the Web and the applications are offered on-demand as services. Software-as-a-service, or SaaS, is the buzz today just as Windows was the buzz in the early 90’s. Amazingly, many, many Services seem to suffer in performance and general usability just like early Windows applications. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I recently tried to use the projectplace project management service. The functionality is pretty rich and uses much of the task-based WBS approaches of MS Project. But I gave up after a few hours of trial. The latency time waiting for the system to respond was just too aggravating for anything resembling a full-sized project plan. I could only see using it if I created the plan in MS Project and then imported it into ProjectPlace. I get the sense that the design of ProjectPlace was based on thick-client experience and was focused on feature over usability. Sorry, projectplace, I’ll check you out again in a few years.

In contrast, I’m digging MindMeister big time! This may be the Quicken for Windows for the SaaS era, in other words, the SaaS standard-bearer. First of all, I own MindJet and know what a mind map is, but I’ve only been a casual MindJet user. But MindMeister brings collaboration to bear on the brainstorming process like a thick application never could. It is literally like brainstorming with other people in a room where each of you have a marker and access to the same white board, even though you are miles away. You would think you would step all over each other, but you don’t for some reason I don’t yet understand. You just keep fleshing out ideas, across space and time. These guys have it figured out. Even though the tool is very graphical, it is fast enough. They didn’t try to reinvent-the-wheel in places they didn’t have to. They brilliantly partnered with Skype to offer an easy way to IM, chat, or talk with any or all the people collaborating on the same model. They got some clever widgets to drop into other platforms that allow you to never lose another idea. There is room for improvement, but it has already provided me great value and the small monthly fee will be well worth the expense.

The scope of MindMeister is brainstorming   which certainly is a favorable domain for SaaS because of its natural affinity to collaboration. So while direct comparisons between MindMeister and other services like projectplace may be unfair, I don’t care. MindMeister is incredibly easy, reasonably fast, and I haven’t broken it yet (but I’m still trying). Sometimes it takes a little thing like this to show others what is possible and to force others to re-examine their concepts of development as platforms change.

That is what Quicken for Windows did!