Dear Airset,
I’ve been a longtime Airset user. I beta-tested the mobile application on my Motorola V551 back in the day, and I still use the calendar feature.
Periodically, I explore the other features of the site, but I only actively use the calendar since I can access it from anywhere and subscribe to its iCal feeds and receive SMS notifications. It’s a great solution.
Unfortunately for Airset, it’s also one that is duplicated by Google Calendar. I’ve continued to use Airset because I find its interface attractive and find its service more reliable (anecdotally, I think Google Calendar is less consistent than Airset in sending timely SMS notifications). I’m sure Google Calendar has a much larger user base simply because they tap into Google’s existing user base from Gmail and other Google web applications, but Airset’s calendar remains a good product.
The problem is that it remains the same product it was when I began using it in 2006. Since then, the pace of development in the web application space has increased exponentially. The core features, e.g. the calendar, have not seen any major improvements.
Interestingly, Airset has continued to grow its feature set, but in ways that absolutely baffle me. Music playlists? File management? Photo albums? Website publishing? Yes, these features are useful to group administrators who don’t have the time or inclination to use other services, but they are mediocre at best compared to what’s available elsewhere. One-stop-shopping might keep users on board, but it will not make your service catch on virally the way a must-have tool like Remember the Milk did.
My advice, then, is to stop adding new applications that will be useful to relatively few of your users. Focus on your core offering, and rather than making your service bigger, make it better. Add features, not new products. Increase usability, and stop adding mediocre features that no one will use. Offer an API and connect to other platforms such as Ning, Facebook, and Netvibes. Stop the widget junk in the dashboard before it gets worse.
I like Airset and want to see it thrive. The SMS and group management offerings are some of the best out there, and position Airset will to lead innovation in the web groupware space (but for the love of geek, stop calling it “webtop computing”).
Warm regards,
Geektronica
Good response from Airset engineers. Note to self: As usual, I am not the target user. Airset says customers requested all of these features, which makes sense if I’m not the target user.
I guess I’d prefer to have my cake and eat it too - an integrated suite of all the best webapps. Google is in the best position to create such a suite, since they can devote the resources to creating or acquiring everything they need.
Hi Justin,
First, thanks for using the service and thanks for taking the time to provide the feedback. I’m the chief cook and bottle washer here at AirSet (sometimes referred to as the CEO) let me try to give you some perspective on what we are trying to do. It may not be obvious if you are just using the calendar what we have really built over the past 3 years. Most of our work has not gone into any one application, but rather into a distributed OS on which all of our applications are built. The front end of this operating system is a javascript OS that runs in your browser and communicates with a back end written in java on tomcat (I figure with a blog title like Geektronica you don’t mind my going into this level of detail :-). The team here has a lot of experience with the design and development of graphical operating systems. Back in the late 80’s early 90s’ we built a graphical OS called PC GEOS before Windows was the standard, it was much better than Windows and MS even tried to buy us - we should have sold. The goal of our new distributed web OS is to allow us to give users as many virtual computers as they want or need that live in the internet, are always on, and run a suite of useful applications. Where PC operating system are largely implemented around supporting the development of personal applications, this OS has rich support for the creating of group applications. Each AirSet tab is really a virtual computer. The first tab is your personal virtual computer and the subsequent tabs are shared virtual computers you set up to use with co-workers, family, or friends. In developing applications for these virtual computers we see 3 major opportunities: group collaboration (the shared contacts, calendar, lists, and links apps); web publishing (website design & hosting, wikis & online documents, blogs); and finally media access (photo albums and music playlists). The reason we picked these three areas is that these are applications where a superior solution can be delivered BECAUSE the VC is running in the web. All of these applications sit on top of a file system that provides secure triple redundant storage of anything you create or upload to one of your virtual computers.
On Tuesday of this week, we put out our first press release in 2 years to explain what we have been working on. We view this last release as version 1.0 of our virtual computer solution. Rest assured we will go back and continue to refine the calendar (and other applications in the suite) but up until this release, we were more focused on implementing the overall infrastructure of the system.
Are we crazy? Is this too big an ambition for a startup company? Perhaps, but I’m convinced that the concept we are pursuing is where the world is headed. Just as you have a PC today, we envision every user having multiple virtual computers that live in the cloud, are accessible from all sorts of browser enabled devices, and run the applications that make sense on a computer that lives in the internet. We don’t see PCs being replaced, for as far out as I can see, personal productivity apps will continue to be better when delivered as dedicated packages that run on your PC, but a new class of applications will emerge that are simply better when delivered running on a virtual computer because it lives in the web. Calendar software is an example of that, it’s better as a web app because you can create a shared calendar that let’s the set of people who need access get to it from anywhere, but there are also other important apps that can better be done on a virtual computer living in the web. Web publishing for example can better be done here because you don’t have to worry about how to get your content from your PC to the web. Your virtual computer, where you are creating the content IS a web server.
In regards to the Google apps, while fine applications individually, they are a cobbled together set of acquisitions that do not run with a consistent user interface on common software platform, they may have wider use today due to the aura of the Google brand, but as we continue to refine our offerings, I think it will be clear that we offer a superior solution due to all of the apps being written on an integrated platform.
In any event, sorry for the long post, but hopefully this will give you some perspective on what we are trying to accomplish.
Brian
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the perspective - I hadn’t picked up on that along the way, just saw that the list of apps was getting longer, without really solving any problems for me.
Last time I checked, Airset’s business model was to create a solid web calendar/contacts application and monetize it by charging for mobile access. Airset had a decent mobile app (I beta tested it), but phones at that time were just not very good for inputting text or doing anything more than look at a single screen. It was very slow to use the Airset mobile app - not something I’d pay for. Again, this wasn’t Airset’s fault; it was a limitation of phone hardware at the time.
I certainly agree with you on the shift of computing from the desktop to “the cloud” and think this is a good thing. However, I think it’s important for Airset to clearly define who they’re doing this for.
Zimbra and Google Apps are already dominant in the office productivity suite sphere, and will probably remain so. Clearly Airset is not trying to offer that type of product, though. So what is it?
Airset’s strength has always been for semi-informal groups - groups that need to be organized to communicate with their members, but not so organized that they’d hire a web developer and start their own site. For a soccer team, a church, a church small group, or a small office, what Airset offers is awesome, specifically:
-SMS messaging from the web (hard to find, but a big timesaver for organizers - “We’re playing on field 4 at 8pm” sent to 10 people can really help a soccer team)
-Outlook sync for calendar and contacts
-Basic file sharing
I’m playing with the photo album feature, and impressed, so I’ll probably do a full review of the new features one of these days.
My question remains: what do users in this niche really need? Not another MS Word clone, certainly. The features that are hard to pull off manually - and are killer in Airset - are:
-Calendar
-Contacts
-SMS communication
-Mailing lists
These let users communicate and coordinate their schedules. That’s the main thing groups need to do. A public website is a logical extension. Based on my 30-second trial, it looks like this tool will do the trick for most groups.
Moving out from there, it’s useful for groups to be able to collaborate. Now, the collaboration they do will depend on the type of group. Actual work will probably get done on a dedicated platform that’s tailored to the specific industry. A wiki would be the next logical thing, since it allows for basic text-based collaboration. Gaming groups may find wikis useful.
The rest, in my book, is simply for fun - photos, music/mp3 sharing, etc. I guess after the basic needs have been met, this is a logical next step.
I’d really like to see more people embrace Airset, because it’d save so many headaches with people trying to do this stuff (like setting up Mailman in Python for mailing lists) manually.
One final comment: Never listen to geeks for business advice. We always want things that’ll cost you an arm and a leg to develop, and then we won’t pay. We often forget that we’re not the mainstream!
Thanks for your openness to feedback, as always.
Oh, and I should point out I’m using Airset solo, rather than as part of a group. Obviously, that leaves some things out.
It raises a question, though - how is Airset similar to and different from Ning? I’m part of two Ning groups, and I can see how Airset has certain advantages over them since it’s designed to be more of a platform and less of a MySpace clone.
Hi Justin,
In regards to positioning AirSet vs Zimbra and Google apps, those offerings are trying to do something different and in my opinion slightly misguided. While they are having a measure of success, the web, at least today, is not the best platform for personal productivity. We see the web as a new software platform in the same way the PC was a new software platform. When the PC was emerging some people looked to port mainframe and mini-computer apps like inventory management systems to the PC, but this missed the real opportunity the PC presented. The software programs that made the PC were personal productivity applications like word processing and spreadsheets - applications designed for one person interacting with one dedicated machine. So it is a bit ironic that companies like Google and Zimbra are trying to do personal productivity applications as web apps, with today’s level of web technology it is nearly impossible to do as good a job at personal productivity with a web app as you can do in a dedicated PC application. Google’s Writely and Spreadsheet products don’t hold a candle to Word and Excel. While Zimbra does a slightly better job, they still fall woefully short of the dedicated, written to the native PC personal productivity applications.
So what can the web do better as a platform? We see three major application areas: 1) group coordination and collaboration; 2) web publishing (websites, wikis/webdocs, blogs); and 3) universal file & media access. That’s where we are focused as I discussed above.
In regards to Ning, as you pointed out, they are providing custom social networks, i.e. start your own MySpace. It’s interesting but very different than what we are doing. There are similiar technical aspects, we both let people put up websites, but the design focus is very different. Social networks are largely about meeting new people, AirSet is more about providing tools to help you manage the people you already know.
Finally, we have designed this system to be robust enough for any use. We already have a number of large corporations using the service. For example, Ericsson, the mobile phone giant is using AirSet to coordinate a world wide team that is competing in the Vovlo Ocean racing series. They have multiple groups in AirSet for coordinating everything from the 4 boats and crews they are sponsoring in the race to their marketing activities in each port. At George Washington University’s Medical School AirSet groups are set up for all first and second year medical students to coordinate class schedules and share files. Just as Microsoft’s original goal was “A PC on every desktop and in every home”, we envision every person having multiple Internet computers or servers that they use to store both personal information and collaborate with the important groups in their lives.
Brian
Hi Brian,
Very well said. I like the idea of a desktop-replacement productivity app living in the cloud, but as you said, none of them are there yet.
I’m very impressed with Ning for what it does, but - and this is why I don’t use Facebook - you can spend plenty of time on it and not actually do anything. The work done by groups that accomplish things (such as manage a project or a competition) require tools that only Airset offers.
Keep up the good work!