Semi-OT: Database for "average" users

[David Mayerlen]

Hey,

 Still laughing that I wrote "C.J. Dent" instead of "C.J. Date".

 Forgot the URL to the The Pointt website: http://www.thepointt.com

 Yep, website ain't clear but I reiterate its hard to explain this thing
to people. Yes our sales team wants to dump all sorts of "bumf" there and
yep we could use some demos and perhaps an application/screen walkthrough
with voice over in flash or whatever....

 This thing is in fact for web, not for general desktop apps. Suffers from
the classic problems of web interfaces <however> we have attempted to make
things useable as best we can. One bigger problem we find with users in
general is the need for "instant gratification". We tell people that the
first time they ever used a spreadsheet they were likely baffled and had
to spend some time learning. Even when we say that people still complain
they are not getting "instant gratification".

 Just about to go into my rant about "instant gratification" and "throw
away society" and ... ok I managed to hold back.

 Yes this thing is "for sale" and we are targetting big US companies so it
is "expensive" and the entry level copy is "$10,000 CDN". We do however
build and deploy apps really quickly and host them on our servers for
reasonable prices.

 Bringing US dollars into this fine country and employing Canadians is
indeed part of our strategy.

 I'm not really posting here for sales reasons but because I'm an absolute
huge fan of the kind of accomplishment that "C.J. Date" achieved. I'm also
a big fan of whomever invented the toaster. The number of times I burned
the hair off my knuckles making toast ... :-) Thats why I have never
posted about this before over the last few years...

=========================================================
| David Mayerlen
| Upstart Associates
| http://www.upstartx.com
| dmz-yBkl/NpmZwtWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org
| 416-424-6739
=========================================================

On Mon, 2 May 2005, phil wrote:

> On May 2, 2005, at 9:12 AM, David Mayerlen wrote:
>
> >  Absolutely classic problem. In the old days your vet sat at home in
> > his
> > basement and built a pet database using Filemaker Pro.
>
> And wasn't stuck with a web browser faking it as a general purpose user
> interface.  Things like phpMyAdmin are clever, but really!
>
> >  We built this thing called "The Pointt" which allows one to create
> > database driven apps whereby most of the common tasks are already
> > sitting
> > and waiting to be used.
>
> Does it exist as a product?  (I tried the web site, but had trouble
> finding actual information amid the marketing stuff.)
> It sounds like you're on the right track where someone can start simply
> and then only need to get into heavy technicalities if the application
> grows.  Seems to me there are two bad outcomes that need to be avoided:
> first, a project never getting started because the ramp-up cost (time,
> money, energy) is too high; second, project evolution being prevented
> by tool constraints (i.e. the "let's keep our contact list in MS Word"
> syndrome).
>
> >  The beginner type can build a
> > database driven web app in minutes!!!
>
> How about non-web...again, going back to your Filemaker Pro example?
>
> ........................
> Phillip Mills
> Multi-platform software development
> (416) 224-0714
>
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