Threeplicate Blog

Threeplicate is the Startup Of The Day (Again)

August 3rd, 2010 by Dario Solera | No Comments | Filed in Startup

For the second time this year, we’re pleased to announce that we’re the BizSpark Startup of the Day for August 2nd. This time the award comes as a result of being one of the 18 European startups selected to pitch in Paris back in May.

I was skeptical, but I must say that the BizSpark program has been really helpful, not only to get software for free (MSDN Subscriptions tend to be quite expensive for a startup), but also to get connections and be able to participate in important international events.

Integrated Translation Service

July 11th, 2010 by Dario Solera | 1 Comment | Filed in Amanuens, Strategy

When we first started working on Amanuens as a commercial product, we thought that having a way to simplify the translation process was enough. We though that the point was managing translations and updates. Well, we were wrong. It turned out that every single mISV owner we talked to, told us that of course, the localization process is hard and complex, however finding high-quality translation professionals is at least as hard.

Doing the aftermath tells us that offering infrastructure without the translation service does not make a lot of sense. People were like “And how many languages do you offer?” “How much do translations cost?” and so on. It’s such an obvious problem that they simply expect we offer translations too.

That’s why we’ll integrate a high-quality, human-powered translation service later this year. The roadmap for the technological platform is still the same and we’ll exit the beta stage in August.

We are designing the workflow in a way that reduces the overhead to a minimum for both the customer and the translators, and getting quotes and estimates is quick and easy.

We’ll not be hiring translators ourselves, but instead we’ll rely on partners whose business is translating content. At the moment of launch of the service, we’ll cover about 50 languages, that should be enough for everyone (like 640KB of memory).

We Won the Innovate!100 Milan Pitch Slam

June 5th, 2010 by Dario Solera | 2 Comments | Filed in Amanuens, Strategy

As I mentioned in the previous post, last week we pitched about Amanuens at the local Pitch Slam event organized by Innovate!100. It’s been a nice evening, we met some other Italian entrepreneurs and it was funny to see that we were both the youngest company founded by the youngest guys.

It has come quite unexpected that we won the pitch slam (Mike, thanks for all the help). The judges told us that we’ve been able to identify and explain a real problem that real companies have, and how we plan to solve it. The pitch took us many hours of work and rehearsal, so it’s very nice to have won for the very best reason I can imagine.

All the pitches have been filmed and the videos are available on Vimeo. Here is my pitch.

These two pitch events (the one in Paris on May 25th and the one in Milan on May 28th) greatly helped us understand what people like, don’t like and would like in Amanuens. It’s something that we didn’t advertise much so far, but with Amanuens we want to build a one-stop solution for software localization, so that software companies just come to us to get infrastructure that simplifies the localization process as well as high-quality translation services. The plan is to release Amanuens 1.0 this August, with just the infrastructure, and then work to add the translation services. I’m confident we’ll be able to start offering the integrated infrastructure+translation service by the end of this year.

Threeplicate at Microsoft European BizSpark Summit 2010

May 26th, 2010 by Dario Solera | 1 Comment | Filed in Amanuens, Startup

Yesterday has been a long, eventful day. We have been presenting Amanuens at the 6th Microsoft European BizSpark Summit in Paris. Among other 17 European startups, we had a chance to pitch in front of an audience of more than 300 people, composed by press, media and investors.

It’s been a a great event, we met quite a lot of bright entrepreneurs and we also talked to some potential investors. We even found a handful of potential customers, which is really great.

Last but not least, we met Guy Kawasaki. Besides giving interesting food for thought, he’s a very funny person. You just can’t avoid to like him. Tagline: “Half a million is too small! Just say half a billion!”

I snapped a few pictures and they’re on my Flickr photostream. The event was available as a live webcast, however there should be some video edits available soon. I just hope to get the video of my pitch.

In two days we’ll be pitching at the Innovate!100 Milan event.

These two events are very important to us, so stay tuned for updates on our strategy for Amanuens. We’ve learned a lot already and we should be able to elaborate a more precise plan on what our product should ultimately be. Just feel free to post your own comments and opinions.

Amanuens Pricing

May 20th, 2010 by Dario Solera | 1 Comment | Filed in Amanuens, Strategy

I’m very excited to announce that earlier this week we published the prices for Amanuens.

The rationale behind our pricing is a real pay-as-you-go model. Unlike those services that are allegedly pay-as-you-go but ask you a fixed monthly fee, we charge you for what you actually use. Everything comes down to key-days, that is the number of days a key (which is a translation entry, such as the text in a button or an error message) is stored within our system.

We believe the pricing is very competitive, also given that you don’t have to worry about number of users or projects. Basically, it’s all about the amount of your data that resides in our system.

Payments are handled with a top-up scheme. Basically, you top-up your account with an amount of money and we’ll charge your account daily, based on the actual service usage.

For all beta users, depending on the size of the top-up, we have set up a discount in the form of a credit bonus, that is added to the nominal amount of the top-up. Open-source projects get Amanuens for free.

Pricing will be effective after we launch commercially, that should be in August, this year. Until then, Amanuens Beta continues to be totally free.

As usual, we’d like to hear your opinions and thoughts.

ColorBlind Suite for iPhone

March 31st, 2010 by Dario Solera | 1 Comment | Filed in iPhone

I already mentioned that we were working on a mobile application for the iPhone, so here it is: ColorBlind Suite for iPhone.

It happens that 8% of Caucasian males are color-blind. 5% of Asian males is color-blind. 4% of African males are color-blind. That is a lot of people, I bet you know or met someone who is color-blind.

ColorBlind Suite (CBS) is supposed to be a full-featured application that helps people with color vision deficiencies to survive tasks such as purchasing and matching clothes or identifying colors in financial charts.

I admit that we had different plans for this application. It should have been much more grandiose, ground-breaking, but in the end we had to cut some features due to technical limitations of the iPhone platform. Even so, and although there is some room for improvements in the UI area, the result is pretty good in my opinion, especially if we consider that this is our very first iPhone app.

So, what can CBS do for you?

It can help you identify colors in pictures, as well as directly from the camera’s live video stream. Just tap the screen and you’re done.
It can also highlight a given color in a picture, or again in the live stream coming from the camera.
Last but not least, CBS is even able to highlight an area in real-time, telling you what color it is (see the picture).

It’s a nice app after all, but we’d like to hear your suggestions and critiques. In case you’re interested, here is our press release.

Why Continuous Localization Matters

March 19th, 2010 by Dario Solera | No Comments | Filed in Amanuens, Continuous Localization, Startup

Continuous localization is not a new concept, it just needs the attention it deserves. Localizing an application is a relatively simple task turned complex because of the tools we developers like to use.

After all, what’s wrong with Microsoft Visual Studio’s RESX editor? Nothing, from a programmer’s perspective. The point is that it’s simply unusable if your work is to translate an application UI. Plus, it costs a lot of money, and it’s quite invasive with its several-gigabyte footprint. In other words, it’s not up to the task for translators. There are several free tools for editing RESX files, but for the most part they’re just surrogates of the editor available in Visual Studio.

With ScrewTurn Wiki, most of our volunteer translators are also software developers, yet the localization process is very hard. Firstly, they don’t have enough context to get the translation right, and they end up firing up the application (or even looking at the source code) just to see how a translation will fit. That’s just not possible for translators.

What is really needed is a toolset that is specifically targeted at UI localization, that makes life easier for translators, software developers and project managers. The key points of such a toolset are:

user interface designed for translators, not programmers
integration with current source code management systems, such as Subversion, Git, Hg, Team Foundation Server
support for the most widely-used resource file formats, such as .NET’s RESX, Java’s .properties, etc.
integration with existing software development cycle
zero pain in updating translations as developers update the application’s UI
availability of context information (for example, UI screenshots and hints) so that the translator knows what she’s working on
no need for expensive desktop applications.

That is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish with Amanuens. Translators do not even have to know how your application is built, or what resource file formats it uses: they just use a simple and clean web-based interface that lets them focus on their job.

Why a Service?

The toolset I described above tends to be quite complex and needs to be continuously updated and improved. Deploying and managing such application is time-consuming, and we believe that adding additional burden on software development teams is not the right thing to do. A Software as a Service model is the best way to provide a complex application at a competitive price with zero maintenance efforts. If you’re worried for your data privacy, keep in mind that it’s one of our top priorities. Amanuens only stores the minimum data required for its operations and all the other information, most importantly your source code, is completely ignored and never stored.

We have a long way to go, but I believe that continuous localization is something that is here to stay.

Launching Amanuens Beta

March 10th, 2010 by Dario Solera | 5 Comments | Filed in Amanuens, Startup

I am very happy to announce the beginning of the beta stage of our new Amanuens SaaS offering.

What is Amanuens?

Amanuens is a web application that allows you, or your translators, to translate RESX files. The peculiarity of our approach is that the application talks directly with your Subversion repository. Moreover, translations are done entirely in the web browser, without the need of any desktop application such as Microsoft Visual Studio. On the Amanuens website there is a 2-minute introductory video that will help you understand how it works and how it can help you and your team.

Amanuens was born to simplify the localization process of ScrewTurn Wiki. You know, sending RESX files via email, waiting weeks, and then (trying) to merge the translated resources is just plain ugly and error prone. We refined the application a bit, and we received good feedback from some STW contributors, so we decided to build a service for everyone.

I have to admit that I did not realize the potential of such approach until Joannes Vermorel, founder of Lokad, mentioned the need for a continuous localization process. He described the process in a slightly different context, but I think that we, as software developers, are used to continuous* processes (most notably continuous integration). Why not strive for continuous localization of software UIs too?

About the Beta Period

The beta period will last for at least three months. During this time, we’ll collect feedback, polish rough edges, and add some features that are still missing. Getting this kind of applications right is difficult, so we decided to hold back some of the more complex parts to first see how the overall approach works.

For the entire duration of the beta, the service can be used free of charge, without any obligation. We’ve just set a limit on the number of projects you can create (just one for now). If you really need more resources, just drop us a line and we’ll be happy to increase your limit.

Open-Source Projects

We use a lot of open-source applications on a daily basis, and they’re of great help for our work. For this reason, we’re committed to make Amanuens totally free for open-source projects.

Tech Stuff

And now a few juicy technical details for all the geeks who might come across this post.

Amanuens is built entirely in ASP.NET MVC 1.0, with C# code. It runs on Windows Azure and makes use of both SQL Azure and Blob Storage. I am personally very happy with ASP.NET MVC 1.0, as it feels like fresh air compared to Web Forms. As for Windows Azure, it still has quite some rough edges, but I think Microsoft is going in the right direction. After all, it’s a 1.0 product, so we can expect a lot of improvements in the near future.

Windows Azure is an infinitely-scalable Platform as a Service, but what about the application? Well, Amanuens is built in a totally stateless way and we do not even use ASP.NET’s SessionState. This means that the application can scale horizontally very well. The first probable bottleneck will be the SQL database (as usual), but I expect that SQL Azure can handle loads of traffic without problems. At any rate, we constantly monitor the response time of the application, and we’ll be able to migrate data off the database in case it will be necessary.

We Want You!

So, we would be really glad if you could spend some minutes signing up and evaluating the service. We’ll only be able to accept a limited number of new registrations each week, so please be patient if you’re account does not get activated very quickly.

If you have any question or suggestion, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at support@amanuens.com.

iPhone, Windows Azure and Whatnot – or – On Changing Strategies

March 1st, 2010 by Dario Solera | 7 Comments | Filed in Startup, Strategy, iPhone

The main problem in founding a software startup with just two developers and a marketing guy is building and enforcing a strategy. It’s very easy to start banging out code without keeping in mind the overall goals you’ve set. We like to think about ourselves as engineers rather than entrepreneurs. I believe that as long as you don’t make your mind about your dual identity, it’s very hard to build a product that helps people (the easier part) and that allows you to make a living out of it. I guess we’ve learning that the hard way (who doesn’t?).

We started back in January with one main product in mind: a consumer mobile application. The strategy was to build the application for the iPhone and Windows Mobile and see if it made sense to port it to other mobile platforms, while developing our secret Next Big Thing, codenamed Amanuens. The iPhone was sort of a must, as it’s the most widely known smartphone that integrates an app marketplace. Windows Mobile was an obvious choice for us as .NET developers.

We were starting with a limited number of competitors, and we ere absolutely sure to be able to produce something totally better. Our “official”, safe predictions were to spend roughly 6 months to build the product with two devs (me and Matteo), summing up to 12 man months. We knew by heart that we would only have needed one third of that time (which turned out to be true, for once).

While we struggled with business plans and bureaucracy, our existing competitors basically destroyed the market: they started giving away their applications for free, or at a very low price, most probably because they had few customers. Mind you, this happened something like in mid January, after less than two weeks of operations. Also, some figures about app piracy emerged, and we learned that roughly 30% of iPhone owners run pirated applications, after jailbroking their device.

Even so, we had a unique feature in mind that no one else had, so we decided to go on, but with a big change in our strategy. We started focusing at least half of our time on Amanuens and we decided to cut off the Windows Mobile version of the application.

Now, back to today.

iPhone development sucks. There, I’ve said it. It’s totally inferior to both Windows Mobile and Android (which is the best in our opinion) and yet I’m ignorant about Symbian (apps are based on Qt, which is open-source) and Blackberry, but I suspect they’re superior too. Basically, you have to fight against Apple’s byzantine idea of a programming language and API. We ended up submitting a dummy application to probe their approval process and see if they would allow some key API usages we need (still waiting).

We knew that the mobile apps market was hard, but we did not see such absurd technical problems coming. Anyway, I’m confident that, even if limited in functionality compared to what we had in mind, the application will pay itself off in little or no time (I like being optimistic sometimes).

Now, on to Amanuens. We’re not ready to disclose any details on it, but I’d like to share a few words. Firstly, it’s supposed to be a SaaS solution, it’s built with ASP.NET MVC 1.0 and will be hosted on Windows Azure. One thing that makes me very happy is that I am satisfied with the quality of the code and the user interface. We’re testing the application against some relatives and we’ve learned a lot on how people expect to use it. The last thing you might be interest in is that we’ll start a free beta very soon.

Joining Microsoft BizSpark

February 2nd, 2010 by Dario Solera | No Comments | Filed in Startup

We’ve been working for one month now, and quite a lot of things happened already.

Since the announcement of the acquisition of ScrewTurn Wiki, two weeks ago, we received a few requests for commercial licenses, which is great. We’re a bit overwhelmed with sales-related work, but it’s a nice problem to have. I don’t expect this to continue over time, I believe it’s a one-time spike in sales due to the announcement. At any rate it’s generating an unexpected revenue that will surely be useful.

In the meantime, we’ve been accepted in the Microsoft BizSpark program. If you’re working in a startup and need Microsoft software, that’s the way to go. You will also get some visibility. Well, sort of, as there are thousands of startups already enlisted, so it feels a bit crowded. If you want to stand out, you have to build quality software that solves people’s problems and market it well: there’s no shortcut.

Joining BizSpark is quite easy, I would say a no-brainer. Unless you try to access the program via the wrong partner. All the three of us have graduated in the same university. This same university drives a startup incubator, which shall remain nameless, registered as a BizSpark Network Partner, so I thought it would have been easy to join the program as former students and founders of a software startup. I hate saying or writing bad things about people I don’t know, but I would say that the guys running the incubator are incompetent or, worse, they do not care about what they do. Basically, there has been no way to contact them. They do not answer emails. They do not even answer the phone. I was sure to incur in some kind of inefficiency or delay when dealing with them, but reality has gone way beyond my worst expectations. We have no time to waste, so off to plan B. There are a lot of widely-known companies that happen to be BizSpark Network Partners. Just to name a couple, there are Rackspace UK and GoGrid/ServePath. I submitted a request to the latter and in less than 24 hours we were set up and ready to go. Now that’s the way to go.

Besides handling this kind of havoc generated by bureaucrats, banks, accountants et al., we also did a lot of work. I don’t want to reveal an detail yet, but we’ll soon be announcing a private beta of a new product, so stay tuned.

I have to confess that I’m not very tired. I fear it’s because I don’t work enough, but after all I’m writing this at 7am. Or maybe I’m not tired because it’s just the first month. At any rate, we’ve logged roughly 300 hours of real work in the last three weeks. It’s a good number, considering the outrageous amount of time we wasted spent running around the city for setting things up.

And now, off to month #2.