All right so Shazzle’s marketing team has hit the road pretty hard. The tour started Monday, and we’ve already hit Duke and the University of Central Florida. We had some good feedback from some interested parties. I’ll touch on two points here:

Community-Based Sharing

The use-case I’m continually pushing is what I feel is the most powerful way that Shazzle works at this point: community sharing and communication. Public communities and private communities let you share files, share links, chat live…see who’s on-line and browse profiles. You can do all this in private. Private communities, for me, are the most interesting thing about Shazzle. Collaborative projects you might be working on with co-workers or classmates are really strong Shazzle use-cases, too. People seemed to respond pretty well to the potential of this functionality.

Mac Compatibility

The feedback wasn’t all rose-colored. Shazzle isn’t yet compatible with Macs. Unfortunately, Shazzle is built in the Java language, and with the way that we currently implement things and the current version of Java, Shazzle can’t be made compatible with Macs. As soon as there’s a new Java version, I’m told this will be rectified. Until then we’re at the mercy of Sun. We realize a lot of people use Macs. We clearly value every download, particularly as we’re in our infancy and trying to grow the program; it’s not that Mac compatibility and/or Mac users aren’t a priority. It’s simply not in our power, at this point, to create that reality.

The Rub

Thanks to all who gave us some of their time and tried out the app. We really do know that you have a lot of options, and that your time is valuable, and we greatly appreciate you donating some of it to try our product and help us make it better. Feedback’s great: we love any and all kinds of feedback (except criticism of me, personally, or anything I’m responsible for. We hate that kind of feedback).

Thanks for reading, and thanks for downloading Shazzle (if you did, that is…if you didn’t: go here. Now. Seriously: hurry).

Tom Demers

Addressing Some Concerns…

All right so I was over in the forum and we got a real-live question from a real-live person (thanks to Bumble).  The questions posed over there were about encryption and whether or not Shazzle has any “backdoors.”  I thought these were pretty interesting concerns, and I figured I’d address them here.

You guys encrypt? If not: you plan to?

No and yes.  As I mentioned over there, basically: we don’t have encryption yet.  The development team has been…um…I’ll call it clear on the point that they don’t want us to stick features next to dates, but encryption really is high on our feature list, and we hope to have it “soon.”  As soon as it’s in, I’ll announce it on the blog: promise.

What about backdoors? Will you guys broadcast my activities or install any spyware on my computer?

Definitely NOT.  Shazzle is affiliated with Landmark Technology Partners, and Landmark CEO Bob McGill is a major part of Shazzle’s management team.  Landmark produces a sales automation tool called BankBroker.  The tool’s used by a number of very reputable businesses.  We want Shazzle to be used by businesses.  We want it to be a free E-learning tool.  As Bob (McGill) stated “we don’t need a backdoor, because we have a frontdoor.”  It’s a little misleading, because we aren’t streaming any ads right now. 

We will be. 

We’re trying to gain adoption and get some feedback and ideas as to how best to make money, without taking away from YOUR user experience.  We want to give you relevant ads that won’t annoy you.  If we make money, advertisers make money, and you get a product you like, then we have something we scale and sustain.

Thanks for reading, and if you used Shazzle and have questions, post ‘em in the forum, post ‘em in the comments, or shoot me an Email (my first name at Shazzle dot com),

 Tom Demers