Behind BigNumbr

I just spent half an hour adding numbrs found on the french national statistics bureau. The CLONE feature that we have designed proved to be an amazing way to post a lot of data. THIS IS A KILLER FEATURE.

Now that the Alpha runs quite smoothly, we are going to spend July on so-called “content” by adding numbrs to our existing database. As expected, the interweb is filled with sources for digital data but they will have to be carefully selected because they will “shape” the style of the full service. Did I say “boring”?. The number of ambulances registered in Albania from 2000 to 2005 is a good example: we all have fun with Albania (or Elbonia, depending on your comics references) but will those value prove to be useful? We are not exactly targetted to ambulance specialists. Let’s balance between the land area of Bolivia and the duration of the sexual intercourse of slugs. BTW, we are going to promote the alpha from July 15…

This blog is a great place to talk about our development strategy. Our objective was to produce the app very quickly. Since we’re both have day jobs, time is a constraint. So we had to find a way to go forward very quickly.

A couple of month ago I read the e-book Getting Real from the folks at 37signals. It summarize perfectly the good way of working on that kind of projects. And if I was already applying most of their recommendation that was a great reading that gave me the will to do the project.

Needless to say that BigNumbr is written with Ruby on Rails — the productive framework. And it’s not a myth, according to my time tracking sheet, the cumulated time I’ve already spent on the app is… just 31 hours.

That’s just incredible.

What a month… It’s the first time I’m writing an entry to the BigNumbr blog. Actually, I’ve been quite busy to work on the app so the other Fred had more opportunities to write something here.

But anyway, the app is going well and we’re slowly getting close to a public beta version. The alpha version is running quite well and I’m happy to show you one of the first screenshots of the app.

I’m sure the design will evolve in the future and not all feature we have in mind will be release for the beta. We want to be public as soon as possible to get feedback from users.

With 60 numbrs in and an effective user profile managment running, the Alpha of our fact blender rapidly turns to a near-beta in need for some rude treatment. We slashed so much out of the original plans that it took a while to figure what the Alpha really needed. FredB took the lead on this one. When day jobs turn to stressed timelines, it is not that easy to be a fresh “web 2″ team. But we are out now and the milestones should fly by. Our biggie will be available this summer. Sure.