ThePudding?

Come on now! I thought I was the only Pudding in town?!

;)

http://www.thepudding.com/

Sketchcasting, Neat-o

This is a cool idea. I don't think they'll make money on the existing scope, short of getting purchased and then integrated into an existing blogging app.



The tool for creating the app is running in Flash, I wonder if it's implemented in Flex/OpenLaszlo or just the Flash IDE...

Thump Thump

Thump Thump

Flex sample apps

For those of you wondering what the big deal about Flex is, take a look at the sample apps here: http://flex.org/showcase/

Those are some of the nicest Flex apps I've seen and IMO the best examples of software that is best built for the web, but outside of XHTML/JavaScript.

Future?

READ THE UPDATE
-------------------------

Hello Everyone,

I haven't done much for Ataraxis Software and my darling little application, Pudding, since the birth of my daughter. I was in a mad rush to get Pudding launched before she was born, and I did it!!! I was able to finish a small feature after launch, and I (finally!!!) got up a "tour" video of Pudding.

Unfortunately, Pudding hasn't exactly been as huge of a success as I would have liked.

During the last couple of months of Pudding development I knew it would be a long shot for it to be successful. Pudding is a very basic application, and with competitors like ConceptShare and a host of other photo-sharing-editing-viewing web apps out there, Pudding looks very 2005. Which, oddly enough, was the year it was conceived.

2005 was kind of the birth of the whole microISV/AJAX/web 2.0 era, and if Pudding launched within 3 months of me thinking it up, the product would be in a very different place right now. I could have built out the feature set, came up to speed with the sophisticated UI technologies like Flex, and implemented a totally sick Flash interface sometime in the beginning of 2006.

I tried to play catch-up this year. I convinced a couple of buddies of mine, one amazing artist, and one amazing programmer (Java/Flex - he would have picked up Ruby in about 2 hours), to join me in the development of Pudding 2.0. We came up with some really amazing UI concepts (on paper). I really believe the UI ideas we came up with would really stand up to, and in some ways beat, the current offerings in visual collaboration.

After a year and a half of Pudding development I was completely burned out. But working with these guys got me totally inspired! It was like catching a 5th wind.

Unfortunately, we all have full time jobs, and not everyone is willing to sacrifice every waking moment of their life for a software startup. The three of us have unofficially stopped working on Pudding 2.0. There's no hard feelings, it's just, life got in the way.

I'm now at a very difficult point in this journey. My options are....

1. (by myself) Come up to speed with Flex and implement a completely bad-ass UI/feature-set that will make all competitors bow to the awesomeness that is Pudding. Hopefully launch this mind-blowing/competitor-terrorizing version sometime before 2010.
   
2. Maintain the status quo because I just can't let go of my baby, Pudding. Essentially limp along and continue to run up my business credit card on hosting fees, while spending cash on banking fees.
   
3. Give up and stop. Focus on my day job and the skills I need to learn and enhance to one day work for a software company. (Program Manager anyone??? ;) )
   

This blog has captured a lot of this crazy "Ataraxis Software" story. I've learned so much. I've met some really nice people via this blog (Ian M. Jones, Ian Landsman, John Topley, Mike Rhode, etc...). But I think I've finally run out of steam.

To be continued.....