a glob of nerdishness

June 27, 2009

Year in review

written by natevw @ 3:57 pm

It’s been a little over a year since Calf Trail Software, LLC was formed, and a nearly a year and a half since I started working at it full time. I must have learned a lot in those months, even though it always seems I’ve barely scratched the surface of writing software and running a small business.

Mercatalog was my first project, and its biggest lesson was the cost of too much research. I spent a year working out solutions to dozens of problems, in the scope of just one release. Before I had barely begun to succeed, the application became largely unneeded.

From that experience, and from that code, another app was born. Geotagalog is already the easiest tracklog-based geotagging utility on the market, and will only get better through its next major version. Watching Geotagalog gradually gain fans has been teaching us patience and persistence.

…”us” being me and Calf Trail co-founder Jon Hjelle. (And my wife Hannah, who has been helping us with our artwork, and learning patience while we try to make something resembling a living off of this calling!) While I’ve been focusing on the desktop apps and the website, Hjon has been busy developing Resistulator, Cheap GPS and Inbugz, as well as keeping our store and servers running.

It’s been a good year in many ways, though we have yet to even recoup all of our initial expenses. We’ve learned enough to make some good products available, but are still learning how to let people know about them. Besides continuing to grow as programmers and marketers, it’s quite likely we will also offer our iPhone and Mac programming skills as contractors in the coming year.

So there’s a lot of excitement in just my job these days, but that’s not all. I hope to share details regarding another source of excitement and responsibility here soon!