Hi All

Well the last couple of days have been exciting.

All our beta testers should now have their login details.

Last night Sydney time was the busiest time yet for spellr.us with lots of beta testers scanning away.

If you have not received your login details or are having problems please email admin@spellr.us and we can get one set-up for you.

If you are not yet a beta tester - please register on http://spellr.us as we will be registering round  2 of beta testers this Monday.

We have read and replied to every bit of feedback and we thank everyone for their time and effort in giving us feedback.

Everyone is begging us for custom dictionaries and printable versions and also asking us to tweak formatting and a couple of other bits and pieces. 

We hear you - custom dictionaries are not too far off (thanks Adam and Charl).

We had a request to add Swedish - which has now been added (thanks Charl).

Some selective feedback:

• “Wow! I’ve just received the invite, and just tried out my (under construction) website. One word; “Wow”. this is great! Ok, it’s a bit scary to see my website plastered with orange and red, but you guys are onto something truly useful.Indeed, I’d say it’s essential! Spelling mistakes make things look unprofessional, shoddy and quite frankly rubbish, so helps get the detail (which is as critical as the design or colour scheme) on a website spot on.Great job, and keep up the hard work! ” William
• “Fantastic little tool that found a few mistakes on blog posts, keep up the good work this is an awesome tool.” Azzam www.socialprofilr.com
• “Very very nice. It actually caught a few errors that even our editors did not catch. I like the fact that it looks like at some point you will be able to customize things such as “add to my words” etc. I like what I see.” Brandon http://www.LateralLineCo.com

And we scored a nice video review at http://blogs.tech-recipes.com/podcasts/2008/05/20/spellrus-beta-review-screencast/ (click on play).

So over the next week or so keep an eye out for custom dictionaries, account configuration (password change) and ongoing formatting tweaks.

Kevin

Well we continue to roll out our beta accounts.

Some feedback already in:

• “Make it easy to give feedback!” - we have added a super easy feedback form in the spellr.us account so users can make feedback
• “Custom dictionaries” - we hear all of you! This is definitely the most requested feature and we are rolling it out soon - hang in there for a while.
• “Would be great to have a print to PDF” -we are looking at the best way of printing to PDF for what sometimes is a long report.
• “What is with the time zone?” - currently the time zone reported is on our server at Rackspace.  We will eventually be adding a time zone setting so you can see when your reports were run in your time zone.

And thank you for all the positive feedback too.

We read every single bit of feedback so please drop us a line with any thoughts.

All beta accounts should be active be active by Tuesday night Sydney Australia time - approximately Tuesday morning US time.

Kevin

We will be upgrading the FAQ on the site over the next few days.

We will be providing a little more detail on the product and service - including limitations and hints for best usage.

Kevin

We have started activating beta accounts.

We are activating accounts in stages so as to ensure that our infrastructure hums along as planned.

Once you receive your login details please login and use to your heart’s content.

Please also register on the discussion board and give us your feedback.

The link to the discussion board is in your email.

The team will be hanging out at the discussion board and we look forward to sharing ideas.

Please email us with any problems to admin@spellr.us .

The spellr.us team.

Our offices are in the CBD of Sydney.

We love the buzz, convenience, vibe, diversity and multitude of lunch choices.

Not to mention it allows me to take the ferry to work - the only form of public transport where you arrive in a better mood than when you got on.

A couple of years back around the corner of us I noticed a hole in the ground.

When I went back a few months later there was an entire skyscraper there!

I remember thinking - “Gosh, they put up an entire skyscraper with glass lifts etc in what felt like a few months.”

The last few weeks have reminded me of this story.

A month ago we had a very raw spell check engine spitting out email reports.

Today we have officially finalised spellr.us beta version 1.0.

I always knew that the team was smart and good - but even I am impressed - which actually takes quite a lot.

It has been quite something to see - “extreme agile development” - at its best - with design and usability thrown in along the way.

There is only one person who external to Melon Media that has access to spellr.us so far - and that is the folk at one of our favourite blogs Techcrunch.

We are all holding out to see what they think of it.

We will be testing testing testing today and tomorrow and if all goes according to plan the beta testers will have access to the system.

Then the real fun begins and I think Charl and Adam will have the fun task of ensuring the system can handle the loads and optimise and scale if need be.

As an entrepreneur who loves the start-up phase of business - the creation of web businesses certainly allow for fast momentum - a fun roller coaster ride for all involved.

Kevin

All of the spellr.us team except for Charl (backend developer extraordinaire) are based onsite.

However co-ordinating this project has been interesting and a few tools and techniques have helped us a long the way.

• Forum: we have set-up a forum, created a bundle of categories.  We post ideas, tasks etc.  Works a treat and cuts down dramatically on the number of emails flying around.  Emails have never been a good tool in projects involving more than 2 people. HIGHLY recommended as a project management tool. This “old school” web tool has streamlined our project very well.
• Very limited face to face meetings. We really are highly selective when we decide to meet.  We are aware that “meeting” for every little thing will kill momentum - and we are very focussed on momentum. Our face to face meetings stay very focussed.
• On the technical side  - the developers Adam and Charl seem to still like using 1-1 email - that is as most of the heavy technical stuff is dealt only between them. They will have to comment more about how they have managed the separation of tasks etc.
• Skype- even for inter office communications and great to bring Charl in from offsite.

Moving forward I think we could maybe use a Wiki to create documentation - other than that I think it is all working well.

I would be very interested to hear how other people manage the development of internal projects.

Kevin

spellr.us fans are welcome to join the spellr.us Facebook group.