Yesterday we launched the alpha version of the cross-platform software. (private beta) I wore my new Ubuntu t-shirt. It went fairly smoothly. On Tuesday night we sent out an email about 10% of the signups, and uncovered and resolved one mission critical bug on OSX. Since then it seems to be working alright for people. The release was very feature sparse. In fact other than collect and display data, and give parameters like width & frequency, it doesn’t do a whole lot. But not to worry. The hard part is out of the way now (I’m SO happy about that let me tell you, holy crap). The beta version (1+ month out?) will have all the features that the current windows-only version has. And then we at Saleae can sit back and just let the money roll in. Not really =) Making some solid software that both works well and looks good cross platform is not particularly a walk in the park in my experience. Actually, knowing what I know now it’s not all that bad. But if it’s the first time… ouch. I think that the result so far is pretty solid as these things go. The beta version will be top notch. Sr. software engineer quality on the inside.
If you haven’t noticed, we’re now up and running in the EU, selling directly to our customers over there. This actually has gone really well, with minimal issues. The IT stuff is pretty ironed out, just a few more things would make it a bit better. Order fulfillment automation is really effective for the first 95% of things you want it to do. Actually automating the last 5% in my view would take x2 as much effort as the first 95%.
Inventory is okay, although we’re cutting it pretty close right now. We’ll be building a massive number of these things within the next month.
My brother came out for about 3 weeks and in addition to putting in 80hrs a week into the company we also managed to get our certification for Basic Keelboat, woo! The school is OCSC at the Berkeley Marina. Highly recommended. It goes Basic Keelboat, then Basic Cruising, the Bareboat Cruising. The latter of which means you can go to the Bahamas and charter yourself a nice 50ft catamaran if you’re so inclined.
We managed to scrap together enough loose change to afford an intern, John. He’s still in school but will be giving us a hand with some odds and ends. Some good stuff is in the pipeline! No new product, but we should be doing some cool stuff with the website in the not too distant future.
A few weeks ago we got another suite here (these suites are tiny, btw) and it’s dedicated to shipping. I can package up a Logic in 15 seconds. =) Actually I haven’t timed it.
I can’t believe it’s already towards the end of August. At some point your hopes and dreams get dragged back a bit by reality. But not to worry, I haven’t lost the spark =)
Thank you to all the heroes out there for trusting Logic with your debugging problem! As always, drop a line if you have a suggestion.
What weights 25lbs and costs significantly more than my car? Why, this box of Logic PCBs ;)
Tool of the trade.
