fbFund delay

My heart sunk this morning when I checked my email and didn't find one from the fbFund. Then, I looked into who the winners are and found that they are not announcing the winners for round I until Oct. 10th. This means that we have another 17 days to make Kountr a killer application. When the fbFund team reviews Kountr they will notice that we are continuing to enhance Kountr and add features.



We are celebrating Kountr's first visitor birthday by hosting a feature party for the Facebook Kountr application. I am very excited to hear the new ideas and to see them come life on the Kountr application. Just wait fbFund, Kountr will continue to be a unique application that satisfies friends needs and requests!

There is no rest here. We are plowing on to make Kountr a huge success.

I'm back!

It has been way to long since my last post. We have been busy... from sickness to an out-of-town visitor. Kountr was put on the back bench for couple of weeks but we are now back in full force. Michael and I are working towards a developer competition at Facebook. We were already in the process of making a FB application from feedback so this competition is a bonus. It also adds a lot more to the list of things to do. I am working hard at our Business Plan. It is going to be a lot of hard work! I have lots of more to blog about, both personal and Kountr related, but so little time. I'm back!

To Do July 13-20

This week was busy. Migraines, tons of cleaning, kids not sleeping etc. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish everything on my list. I got 7 things done out of 13. Half is not bad. I need to work more consistently though. I am going to skim down how much I expect to do a week. Reality is that I don't have enough time... My goal this week is to complete the list that I started last week.

Here is my Kountr to do list for the week:
- research writing our business plan
- start fleshing out the bones of our business plan
- go through my to do cue cards
- catch up with what Michael has completed
- order books
- learn how to change the text on Kountr

To do list

Life has been crazy. Summer usually is the busiest time in our lives. I feel compelled to be out when it warms up so, when I am home I am busy cleaning. Then, I head out again. It's a little hectic. This week hasn't been great though. The humidity has given me migraines. Two days with migraines is not fun with 2 young children. They are too young to understand that I am out of commission. Unfortunately, this means that I have been dropping the ball when it comes to Kountr. I have lots of catching up to do.

Here is my Kountr to do list for the week:
- research writing our business plan
- start fleshing out the bones of our business plan
- update my kounts (Done. I like to multi-task.)
- start contacting people again
- email my cousin
- go through my to do cue cards
- catch up with what Michael has completed
- order books
- clean so that we can set up a dedicated office
- read blogs
- test the new features
- learn how to change the text on Kountr
- edit the features section of existing features that are now only available to members
- write the features section of all of our new features



I considered adding my personal to do list here too but it would be too daunting for me to look at both lists in one post. What is on your to do list this week?

Michael has been working hard during my "time-off." He managed to get our record high of visitors in one day. We also got our first visitors from Mexico and Ukraine today. Wow! Kudos to my wonderful partner. We are on track to have the highest number of visitors this week.

Twitter Love

We subscribed to lockerhaxor's Twitter Feed because he needed another person to get him over the 50 followers mark. He checked out Kountr and loved the site. Then, to thank us he wrote "I kount, do you?" and created YouTube video called "I kount for fun. How about you?" Wow! We were practically jumping in excitement when we read his blog post and watched the video.

In his blog post he introduced Kountr, provided examples of kounts that he has created and "recommend[s] that you check it out, as [he has] found it to be immensely fun." It is neat to see how he uses and explains Kountr in the video. I like how he discusses Kountr as a community. On the video he promotes Kountr and our Twitter Feed.

We are very grateful for his support! It is very exciting to see others loving Kountr.

Up and up

It's all about numbers going up...

1. Yippee! We have been watching the number of visitors improve over the last three days. It appears that the broken home page attributed to the crash in visitors/users. We are very happy to see the improvement. Thank you to all of you who have been counting on www.kountr.com.

2. Another number that is on the rise is our number of members. It is great to see people join and create kounts. I love to see if I know the person who created the kount. There will be features that are available only to members who join. Joining is free and easy to do.

3. The number of kounts created has increased too. It is fun to check out the Newest kounts.

4. We are trying to get our first kount 'first to a million' to a million. I have been keeping an eye on this kount and enjoyed watching people click away. It was last clicked today. Click, click, click...

This is starting to sound like a promotion but it is just my excitement! I hope that it is contagious...

Numbers crashed

Our visitor numbers have crashed again. Yikes! We couldn't understand what happened... A few days ago Michael noticed (at work) that Kountr's home page was not loading. We figured that this was the cause of the low numbers including a big fat ZERO one day. When he came home it was loading fine. So, we figured that the problem was a server error that had solved itself. Unfortunately, our numbers didn't improve then on Friday, a user emailed us to let us know that there was a problem and guess what? It was not loading on some computers. The mysterious non loading home page... Michael just solved the problem. It was an error on the server side. That is as much as I am able to explain. If you are more interested in the details visit Michael's blog "Unhandled Exception ." I hope that this is the reason for our low numbers. It's all about numbers... counting... fun... Use Kountr and tell anybody who will listen about the counting fun!

I don't...

Is there such a thing as negative feedback? I don't think so. Feedback, in all shapes and forms, is good feedback. Positive feedback is great to hear and we love reading them but in order for Kountr to continue growing we need to hear what needs to be added, improved or changed.

In reply to our question: "What do you think of Kountr?" we have had some people say "I don't get it" or "I don't have anything to kount." In some instances, these statements were followed with an apology. No apology needed! We know that Kountr is in the early stages and not everybody is wants to be part of the early stages of a website. Finding something that is worth kounting can be difficult.

If you fall into the category that doesn't currently use Kountr, what would sway you to kount on Kountr?

Email Problems

We were using SquirrelMail version 1.4.5 but it did not satisfy our needs. Mail that was sent looked unprofessional. It is text based instead of HTML. For us laypersons, it looked old school... it used the old school typewriter font and a new line would start part way through sentences.

I had two problems with SquirrelMail in the last 24 hours which forced me to look at alternatives. The first problem was my own fault. I forgot to insert a subject line in a very important email and SquirrelMail didn't point out my mistake. I also noticed that it does not have a spellcheck. Spellcheck is important to me because I tend to send email in the wee hours. Then, when I followed up with a subject line SquirrelMail sent the email twice. Needless to say, I am concerned that the recipient of the email will be unhappy with my correspondence. I hope that this person is understanding and uses Kountr.

My first attempt to fix the problem was to send mail through my personal Gmail account. This looked fine in Gmail however, in Hotmail it says @mykountremail on behalf of @mypersonalemail. This is not sufficient for us. So, I decided to ditch SquirrelMail and create a Gmail account instead.

In my excitement, I changed my email address for this blog to the new kountr email address and removed my personal email address. Now, my profile says that I have been blogging since June 2008 even though I have posts from April 2008. Oops... I didn't realize that this would occur. Fortunately, I don't foresee this being a problem.

Features

I have come up with features that I would love to use on Kountr. When I mention them to Michael he gives me a look. This looks says, "You are not technically a user!" So, I smile and say that it is just an idea. Wonderfully many of these ideas have been requested and implemented. I can only thank our users for giving us feedback and to humbly request that you keep providing us with feedback. I have a number of other features that I would love to see implemented... if only I could give you a hint.

I am not taking the credit for these great features rather, I am grateful that there are others out there who use Kountr like I do. One of the amazing things about feedback is how it can spawn new uses that I would not have imagined by myself. Kountr is reinforcing the idea that a community is much more imaginative than an individual. My, my... brainstorming does work.

Implementing feedback

When we implement feedback Michael and I sometimes disagree on what the user has requested or on how polished the feature should look. These are not huge disagreements but rather require some discussion. At the end of it all, I am always amazed at how two people can see things so differently. We both want to implement what we think the user wants but it all comes down to how we personally would use the feature if we were the user. I hope that we have and continue to implement the users request as close as possible to what they had in mind. As we are experiencing, everybody has a different picture in their head of the same website.

For polishing the feature it is an ongoing debate. I would like it to look polished and work perfectly. This includes the functionality and appearance. Michael prefers to keep it as basic as possible. Michael doesn't want to spend a lot of time on a feature and then find out that it is not what the user requested. I agree with his sentiment however, I would like him to spend a little more time on things so that it is a little more polished. A good example is the iGoogle Widget. It looks and works great on Firefox but the appearance is not polished on IE7. The user who requested it is satisfied since he uses Firefox so, it has been put on the back burner. In fairness to Michael, he has a lot of work to do on limited time. If only I knew how to program and was able to take on more of the programming load...

KalendarKountUp

This is a perfect example of our users genius. Our newest feature is KalendarKountUp. It automatically kounts up daily until you click Reset. It can be used to follow the Jerry Seinfeld's Goal Chain. The theory states that you need to repeat the same behaviour daily to create a new habit.

My current goal is to get more sleep. This means getting to bed earlier. I will work on getting to bed by 12:30am. Hopefully, this gives me enough time to work on Kountr and get sufficient sleep. KalendarKountUp is great because I have to be accountable to myself and the Kountr community. Unfortunately, I will already have to reset it to zero. Tomorrow night I WILL be in bed by 12:30am!

What habits are you trying to break or start?

Blogger Widget

I love the widgets. Now, you can watch the kounts that I am tracking or using. My latest kount is 'things to do.' It is an iKount so that I can keep track of things that need to be completed. I plan on treating myself whenever it hits zero! Hmm... treats will include chocolate, a manicure and scrapbooking. I will determine what treat I deserve based on how much and how difficult the tasks were. Let's see how often I can get this kount to ZERO!

Perception

Michael wrote a reply to a post and asked me to proof read it. In his post he mentions the idea that we were originally going to implement our features but it changed to feedback features instead. My understanding is that we always had the intention to only implement feedback features. We had features written down to motivate ourselves and discuss whether Kountr was a viable site. Isn't it interesting how two people working together for months can have different realities to Kountr's history?

Update on a Blast from the Past

Well, she didn't contact me directly. So, I took the initiative, found her email address and contacted her. I let her know about my post and that I was hoping we could become friends again. She reciprocated. I must say, I really did miss having her in my life.



Kountr has created a lot of changes in me and my life. I thought we were just starting a website that would hopefully become popular. I didn't realize that in the process it would enhance my life. It has found lost friends and family and helped me grow. I feel a lot more confident from this experience and I can only imagine what will happen next.

This is what work is all about... It's about loving what you are doing and enjoying your work!

Blogs

I spend hours on the computer reading blogs. The topic of the blogs range from parenting tips to entrepreneur blogs. The amount of information that is out there is amazing. It is hard to sort through all of it. I am constantly looking for another blog that I want to follow. I post replies to blogs that I can relate to, whether it is regarding Kountr or home life in general.

A couple of days ago I posted a reply to The Entrepreneur’s Life - Does Reality Bite? Amazingly Aliza visited Kountr and provided us with feedback. The network that the Internet provides continues to surprise me. I am thankful that she visited and provided us with feedback. It is nice to know that bloggers' are reading their comments. The Internet may be faceless but it is becoming less daunting to face.

Excitement

We are getting tons of feedback on Kountr. We are working all hours of the night. Jasmine has contributed a lot to the growth through feedback. Her latest comment on has really gotten me excited.

"Wohoo! Glad you like my ideas. You know what's funny? Last night I lay awake for awhile with my mind reeling on what other sort of things I'd like to see on Kountr LOL. More feedback soon to come! And I'll keep telling people :)"

When Michael and I first started working on Kountr I just sort of tagged along. Then, the idea really started forming in my head. It started with short conversations about how it will work then, I started thinking about new features and the site layout all the time. There is one incident that sticks out in my mind. I was taking a shower and thought of a potential feature. (I can't remember what the feature was...) I didn't want to forget so, I yelled for Michael and told him my idea right away. He was on the phone. After he left the bathroom I heard him tell the person on the phone how wonderful and excited he is about Kountr. Especially now that I, too, am just as excited. It's true. I became invested, even obsessed. I was glad that Michael loved my ideas but didn't understand why he was so stoked that I was thinking about Kountr so much. Now, I understand. While reading Jasmines feedback and post I could feel my excitement bubbling inside. It's a wonderful feeling!

User drop on Kountr

The number of users visiting Kountr has dropped. I am trying to figure out how to get more users to Kountr. How do I get the attention of people who are not personal friends or family? I read blogs and comment on those of interest but that does not seem to bring new, consistent users.

Any ideas? I'm at a loss...

Icon

Michael, Sakro and I worked on Kountr's icon tonight. Earlier in the day I sketched a couple of ideas but didn't show them to Michael. Later in the evening, Sakro showed Michael his idea. I entered the conversation late and showed them one of the icons I thought of earlier. Ironically, it was identical to Sakro's! We decided that it was not sufficient and continued to brainstorm other ideas. Michael's ideas, of course, were far fetched at first but then he hit upon a great icon. We added to his original idea and Sakro, with his visual genius, created the icon. I love it! We are going to sleep on it and talk again tomorrow. So, you are going to have to wait for the unveil of Kountr's icon.

Any guesses on what it will be?

Feedback

We have been getting lots of great feedback for Kountr lately. What an adrenaline rush! It's amazing to watch Kountr unfold. Michael has been working crazy hours to get the ideas functioning and loving every second of it. At the beginning of Kountr, we brainstormed features that we thought Kountr would eventually include and yet we didn't think of half of the wonderful ideas that have been implemented. It just goes to show that the user knows best!

What do you think of Kountr's enhancements? Do you have feedback that will make Kountr better?