2011 May 11 - Announcing The Literarium
Write Again's chrysalis has opened to reveal The Literarium
It's taken years to find our feet, but we're finally at the stage where we feel we understand where Submission and Project management needs to go - online.
Building a community of writers that works together to source markets and services is only the first step. With everyone connected to a central hub, you can access your projects on your mobile devices, or any internet-connected computer. Even better, every market or service you enter contributes to the communal directory.
When you start using Literarium you might not even have to enter any markets yourself.
Check out the site and let us know your thoughts. An online platform lets us
provide the same service to all computer platforms, be it Windows, Mac or Linux,
and we can update, improve and support the system easily and efficiently.
2011 April 2 - Coming up for Air
Oh. HAI!
It's 2011. Lucas and I haven't said much here lately, but we've been busy developing, redeveloping, designing and also networking. With real, actual people.
We've cleaned the site up a little bit, adjusting it to our coming vision for
Write Again, or rather, the chrysalis around Write Again, which will soon crack
open to reveal what we've been incubating for the last year or so.
Write Again is transforming, maintaining its roots but stretching its muscles to take on broader swathes of the literary industry. We've identified how we want this submissions management program to expand, and we're very excited about making it a reality.
We're starting this by creating a new website and a new identity, to be revealed early May, 2011.
Keep an eye out.
There's a bit of a cognitive shift happening around here.
Tom Dullemond & Lucas Martin
2010 Jan 17 - The Way Forward
We mentioned a few days ago that certain modern web technologies have advanced to the point were we can no longer disregard them as the development solution for Write Again. These web technologies bring a lot of interesting and useful features to the table, which will come together to create a product that is simple to use, pleasing to the eye and
packed with features to help you with your craft. It's our hope that with this change, Write Again will continue to forge its way as the best submission management software in the industry.
Having said all that, the web technologies we've chosen to develop Write Again are Microsoft Silverlight and the .NET Framework. Previously, developing with Microsoft technologies meant that our Mac OSX friends had to sit on the bench while the Windows users scored all the runs. Well, since the introduction of Silverlight, it is
possible to develop web applications with the .NET framework that run on both OSX and Windows systems (and Linux, although this is not natively supported by Silverlight).
The benefits of using Silverlight and .NET over our previous choice of technology (Java) are:
- They require less effort to develop with; hence we are able to develop and maintain Write Again in a much shorter timeframe.
- They are much more modern technologies then Java, capable of stunning feature rich user interfaces.
- Sliverlight is a web based technology, which means you can access Write Again anywhere in the world from your favourite web browser.
- Silverlight has an added feature called
'Out of Browser' mode, which allows you to install a copy of Write Again on your local computer so you can continue to use the application
while disconnected from the Internet.
We understand that you can't wait to use Write Again, and we apologise for the delay in the release of the product.
We see this change as essential to the long term success of Write Again, and we believe that this approach will bring a much better user experience to the many writers out there frustrated by the lack of a decent submission management solution.
Tom Dullemond & Lucas Martin
2010 Jan 13 - 2010 is the Year of Getting Things Done
Over the past year, a number of web-based technologies have matured to the point where they now present a very tempting option for use in the development of Write Again. Up until now we have been developing Write Again using a language called Java, mainly because it operates cross-platform (on Windows, OSX, and other operating systems).
Over the past months, however, we have found it to be quite painful to develop with and the applications it produces aren't exactly visually stunning. Now that technologies such as Silverlight have reached a stage where they present quite a rich platform to write web applications on, we believe it's worth reconsidering the technology we are using to develop Write Again.
Stay tuned for further updates this Sunday, January 17th!
Tom Dullemond & Lucas Martin
2009 Aug 11 - Hello, Internet? It's me, Write Again...
It's been a rough few months.
As I mentioned in the last post, we lost half our team due to work priorities (they changed jobs and didn't have enough free time to commit to the project). In addition, just over two-and-a-half months ago, my (still young) mother suffered a tragic brain haemorrhage and ended up in hospital. Luckily, she's
back on her feet and in rehabilitation now - a medical miracle considering she
might never have woken up.
All this good news means I am finally able to focus back on this project. Poor Lucas has been carrying the weight of
your expectations all this time, which means I owe him significant amounts of beer.
This is not a 'Good Thing™'.
We're clearing up the road map a little, to try to give you better feedback on the progress of this project, rather than just pushing deadlines out as we fail to meet them. Hopefully this will keep you all a little more comfortable as the days tick by.
I know it's been a long haul but we are definitely getting there!
Tom Dullemond
2009 May 2 - In the Current Economic Climate...
An update has been overdue, but this is as good a time as any to correct that oversight.
Due to real life interference, James and Leon have had to focus most of their energy and time on external projects, meaning that Write Again has fallen behind schedule a little bit.
Lucas and myself are still hard at work - I'm doing user interface 'stuff' (always fun using the development language we've chosen) while he is tightening up the logic and libraries behind the scenes.
I've updated the Road Map to update our current estimates for staged completion... Sorry folks, but it will be worth the wait, I promise!
Tom Dullemond
2009 Feb 16 - Minor Adjustments
We've made some minor adjustments over the last few days, from feedback and our
own personal experiences.
Everything seems to be moving smoothly, however - feedback on the new design has
been universally positive so far. Of course, this could just mean that the people
who can't stand it, hate it so much that they don't even bother to leave feedback.
But that's ok, too.
Our Twitter channel and facebook group are slowly coming together, and we're meeting
new and exciting people in the industry, which is great. Our RSS feed, which simply
lists these posts, is now also available.
Tom Dullemond
2009 Feb 13 - The Relaunch
What an auspicious day, ladies and gentlemen of the internet.
After several years of running around trying to organise ourselves, we've finally
done it. Write Again is back with a new
development roadmap and a full team of dedicated
software developers!
Write Again is returning, and this time we are committed to cross-platform
support for what we hope to make the world's best Writing and Submission Management
suite. We're taking on internet services and integration on platforms from Facebook
through to the iPhone.
Please browse through our new site. We'll update with news items each week counting
down our major milestones and sharing our various successes and failures with you.
As we're beginning again, please feel free to send us as much
feedback as you like on our new site, with suggestions, complaints or compliments.
Tom Dullemond