Posted on August 31, 2009 - by J Lane

Thinking about new projects

Maybe it’s because summer’s almost over, or maybe it’s because I haven’t started something new in a while, but I’ve been thinking about starting a new project.  I thought that I’d post about it here just to get the idea off my chest and see if there’s any neat ideas/feedback out there.

The gist of the project is to offer an local, online farmer’s market.

One of the things I enjoy most about the summer is the farmer’s markets here on Mayne.  It’s easy to find fresh, seasonal, local produce on Mayne Island.  Besides the farmer’s market every Saturday, a lot of the local farms will also do sales right at their gate.

In the winter months, it can be difficult to get fresh produce.  The stuff that the grocery store brings in is at best not so fresh, and at worst decomposing on the shelf (seriously).  I’ve heard that because we’re a small island and a small store, that we usually get the leftovers when it comes to produce distribution.

The first winter we lived here, one of the local farms offered a box program.  Weekly produce boxes full of fresh greens, kale, radishes and other tasty treats were a godsend.  Why can’t we have that year-round?  What do local growers do to sell their stuff in the off season?

Even during the summer months, I heard some local growers saying that they had huge amounts of certain things, with nowhere to sell it.  They could only move so many cucumbers every Saturday morning.

So the idea is this:

1. Local growers set up a profile page with contact info and a map showing their location on the island.
2. They select from (or add to) a list of products that they have available.  They can indicate whether they have “Lots”, “Some”, or “Little” of any particular item.
3. People can then log on and see what’s in season, where they can get it, and get in contact with growers to arrange to buy some.  I’d love to work in some type of electronic payment setup too so that cash wasn’t so important, but I’m not sure that this particular market is ready for that.

Down the line (version 1.5), I’d also like to build in a recipe tie in so that if you’ve never had (for example) kale before in your life, and you have no idea how to prepare it, you can get some ideas.  I don’t think that building yet another epicurious.com is called for, but maybe a short note/link database for recipes.

A key to this will be marketing it locally.  It’s the same story as with any online marketplace — you have to hit a critical mass of buyers and sellers before it’s useful to anyone.  It will be free to list and free to search (I haven’t figured out whether there’ll be any sort of revenue model to this site – I can’t see advertising being that big?)

Posted on August 9, 2009 - by J Lane

Apple Mail’s Handling of Attachments

When Apple said “Think Different”, they weren’t kidding.  Especially as it relates to their handling of certain types of attachments in Apple Mail.

The Background:

My company, Industry Interactive, produces Mailmanagr.  Mailmanagr lets people post messages, todos, milestones and files directly to Basecamp from their e-mail.  Among other uses, if you’ve got a client that just can’t get used to logging into Basecamp and posting stuff there, you can just forward the messages they send you through Mailmanagr.  Works great, unless you’re using Apple Mail.

While most mail clients (like Gmail, or Outlook) will handle files as attachments, Apple has decided to include them inline in the message.  This is true for any type of file that Apple things is an image — so JPGs, GIFs, PNGs, PDFs — anything that displays within Apple Mail and doesn’t require a third party application to view.  There are ways to get around it, and to force Apple Mail to deal with them as attachments, but that’s messy.  As far as I can figure, it all comes down to this:

–Apple-Mail-14-963253153
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename=image004.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
x-unix-mode=0644;
name=”image004.jpg”

Instead of the standard:

Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=”image001.jpg”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
X-Attachment-Id: 0.0.1

The problem here is that certain types of clients can’t figure out that there is an attachment on the message.  Mailmanagr suffers this problem and so “image” attachments forwarded from Apple Mail don’t get sent through to Basecamp.

The Solution:

There is a workaround, but it’s extremely messy.  In Mailmanagr’s case, I have to write a completely different way of dealing with file attachments for Apple Mail than for any other e-mail client.  It’s a pain – I’ll have to sniff the “X-Mailer” and then handle accordingly.  So far, only one customer has had this problem so I’ve been putting off developing the fix.

Posted on May 27, 2009 - by J Lane

Expansion anxiety

I’m at a funny place right now, but I’m sure that I’m not the first to be here. Industry Interactive has enough client work for more than one person (me). Timelines are starting to stretch out, Mailmanagr is waiting in the wings. I’ve flirted with hiring before, and had even announced that an old high school friend of mine was going to join in part time (that didn’t end up happening though, he became tied up in another project). The truth is, however, that I’m one step short of terrified.

My biggest hang up at the moment is with being responsible for another person’s livelihood. If a client is late to pay, I can survive and coast on savings for a month or two. If I have to pay someone else, that arrangement becomes complicated. I’m building a case reserve to try to buffer that problem, but I don’t have a ton of cash saved yet.

So where to I go from here? Is this just a “gut check” moment, where I’m going to have to take the plunge? Or is my hesitation rooted in an overall sense of instability? Do I wait a little longer and build up that reserve?