August 28th, 2008

GoBootstrap: simplifying SME accounting

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 5:00 am

Categories: Office productivity

Tags: Accounting, Small And Medium Enterprise, Advisor, GoBootstrap, GoBootstrap.com, Tax Estimate, General Usability, Taxes, Free Trade, Operational Accounting

I’m keen to see startups in the accounting for small business space. Part of that is because I spent more years than I care to remember in finance roles, part is in the belief that accounting systems that reflect a 600 year old methodology are well past their sell by date. There has to be a better way. GoBootstrap.com makes a valiant effort in that direction and while I like their general approach, they have a long way to go.

First the good stuff. Offering just four tabs from which to choose keeps things really simple. These are income, expenses, taxes and reports. Each is self explanatory and recording the data is simple. There is an assumption that the user is operating on a cash basis so the only thing a user needs to enter are amounts received. On the expense side, GoBootstrap offers a selection of tax deductible categories drawn from the IRS Schedule C. As you enter more data, the system ‘learns’ what you have entered in the past and offers type ahead style suggestion to save time entering data. The taxes tab provides an estimate of your quarterly federal tax bill based on the figures you’ve entered. According to the site, it will offer state tax estimates ’soon.’ Finally, a graphical report shows your income and expenses as a stacked bar chart with profit as a line chart. It is complemented by a summarized list of income and expenses which you can export to a spreadsheet via the CSV format. That means your tax accountant should be able to pick up the file and easily work with it. General usability is good and it should require almost zero training for a newbie to understand what they’re doing. So far so good. But there are real limitations:

• All entries are manual. This is one of the most common sources of error by people entering their own accounting data and the one place where automation is critically important. It is said GoBootstrap will include links from billing software like Freshbooks and Blinksale but no word about automatically pulling in data from banks and credit card operators.
• The federal tax estimate  is good enough but it doesn’t take into account deductions for capital purchases for example. Similarly, the omission of state taxes for the 41 states that impose a state income tax might give the user a false impression about how much they owe. For that, users will definitely have to consult their tax accountant.
• The spreadsheet export works well and just for giggles, I imported it to Google Docs. Unfortunately it only provides a summary. None of the detail is imported. That could well be a limitation because it does not provide the external advisor with any way to check the underlying data for accuracy.
• Following on from the above, GoBootstrap is currently a single user style application. It means there is no access for business and tax advisors. Real time access by any nominated user is one of the key benefits of online systems. It means for example that a user could ping an advisor when they’re not sure about which expense bucket they need allocate an expense. The adviser then logs in, check out the ‘Not Sure’ bucket and pings back a note explaining how to handle the item.
• I could not see any obvious help. This is a simple system and should be close to self evident. However users will always have questions and a bit of contextual assistance makes a great deal of difference.

I’m sure these issues will be resolved once GoBootstrap moves out of its beta period but for now, users should realize that limitations exist. Given this is being developed by a couple of ex-Intuit people, it’s reasonable to assume they understand the challenges ahead.

Commentators like to think that all new web applications need to have some sort of social flavor. I’m not sure that necessarily applies to accounting style applications though I would always welcome the addition of a password protected RSS feed and the item tagging accompanied by a tag cloud. Why? If I’m an advisor, an RSS feed allows me to dip into a client without having to login to the service and view a snapshot of activity. If I’m using something like GoogleReader I don’t have to ‘know’ who is active, I can tell by the entries it shows me. Tag clouds provide a visually attractive way of drawing attention to important items. In the accounting context, tag clouds that illustrate major customers and major expenses would be useful.

Developing accounting applications is never easy. They are complex but are ripe for overhaul. GoBootstrap is definitely on the right track and has targeted a good niche but it does need to address key issues before offering a paid for service.

August 28th, 2008

Hero of the week: Mike McDerment

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 3:59 am

Categories: Office productivity

Tags: Start-up, Hero, Enterprise Software, Software, Dennis Howlett

It’s rare for me to pick out individuals but Mike McDerment CEO of FreshBooks deserves attention by anyone in the startup game and especially those trying to develop business applications. I first came across Mike some two years ago when FreshBooks had about 70,000 registrants. That number is now over 400,000. That’s some growth.

Running a startup isn’t easy, there’s often a lot of incumbent competition and as for word of mouth/viral growth - ferget it. At least right now. For as much as we talk about the consumerization of business applications, it takes a LOT of persuading business people there is a different, disruptive and ultimately better way to do things. Heck - getting our attention here is bad enough. So why is Mike a hero?

Check his post entitled 7 ways I’ve almost killed FreshBooks. Some choice cuts:

…whatever numbers come out of your Excel jockeying, they’re wrong.

We like to try things and look for “signs of life” with our marketing before we increase our spend in any medium. It’s always the right approach because there is no silver bullets, so don’t kid yourself into thinking there are.

Nobody cares about your business as much as you do, and frankly people who are smart - consultant/MBA smart - don’t know your business as well as you do despite the fancy words and references to past success.

It takes *years* to generate word of mouth - it’s a slow build, but slow burning fires burn the hottest.

I’ve learned to spend 80% of my time thinking about what not to do, instead of all of my time thinking about what we can do.

Doubt is born out of fatigue and loneliness, and there is a lot of both when you are running a start up. Hang in there and keep your feet moving - there’s still a lot of time for you to change the world.

I’ve advised many startups over the years so fall into Mike’s ‘consultants’ camp. I’ve offered some (but not all) of these points in one way or another. The problem I find is that even when startups are seeking advice they’re often so wrapped up in their belief in what they’re doing, they develop a form of tunnel vision that prevents them from seeing what’s in front of them. The obvious is often the thing to do but somehow innovation breeds a need to see the whole world differently.

Mike will be on one of the panels at the upcoming Office 2.0 gig. If you’re attending then say hello. A person who has enough humility to realize the mistakes that can be made and is prepared to share them deserves your attention.

August 27th, 2008

Tweetrush for enterprise?

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 4:39 pm

Categories: Office productivity

Tags: Analytics, Twitter, Tweetrush, Financial Planning, Finance, Dennis Howlett

Much has already been said about Tweetrush, the service that allows you to get statistics on your personal Twitter usage. I particularly liked Bernie Goldbach’s commentary where, among other things, he says:

Tweetrush is Sweet Infoporn. I like stats. I like comparing like to like. And that means I like the infoporn hit that I get when clicking through Tweetstats. Tweetrush is powered by a real analytics engine using PHP and the Zend Framework. It’s displaying only the tip of an iceberg of live data.

That got me thinking. Using Tweetrush, I can look at pretty much anyone’s Twitter usage (except those who are so unsocial as to protect their Tweets to a select audience.)  If that’s the case then as an enterprisey person, I’ve got an instant monitoring tool. Now that’s what I call a good idea although I’m not so sure the free thinkers in the Twitterverse would agree. It also reminded me that when looking at my own Twitter usage, the rumor that I don’t sleep could well be true. (see image above.)

August 25th, 2008

Get those ToS sorted

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 4:31 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Terms Of Service, Ning, E-mail, Online Communications, Dennis Howlett

The spat between WidgetLaboratory and Ning highlights one of the running sores in the current rush to all things 2.0: no-one and I mean no-one has given enough thought to how Terms of Service (ToS) are going to operate in the real world once cloud based services start to scale and third parties tangle with each other.

On this occasion, I agree with Mike Arrington that the WidgetLaboratory folk have behaved in an asinine manner. Regardless of the rights or wrongs, behaving like school children in email is guaranteed to get anyone’s back up. But then in the testosterone driven world of Silicon Valley, one shouldn’t be surprised when tempers flare. But I see a deeper malaise and it starts with Google.

I’ve written on a number of occasions that Google’s inconsistent terms of service make it really difficult for end users to be 100% certain what their rights to data really are across all their services. In the WL-Ning  email trail, Ning invokes its blanket service kill clause. In email dated August 22nd, Ning’s general counsel Bob Ghoorah says:

…our Terms of Service clearly state that “Ning has the right (at its sole discretion) to delete or deactivate your account, block your email or IP address, or otherwise terminate your access to or use of the Ning Platform or any Network, or remove and discard any Code or Content within any Network, without notice and for any reason.”

WL can kick and scream as much as it likes but that’s about as plain English as it gets.

Whether Ning is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is irrelevant to the WL case but has implications for anyone using the platform and APIs to add in services. Dare Obasanjo offers a practical way to solve these types of problem but sadly, it doesn’t address the ToS issues.  I can see why Ning needs to protect itself in the face of unknown pressures on its network. But in the Enterprise 2.0 world of tomorrow where code might be running here there and everywhere, developers of new servicves have got to think more clearly about what they’re doing. Network owners also need do their due diligence. In this case, it seems Ning didn’t know that WL was harvesting user information. Why not?

I am currently working on a Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 style project that involves all sorts of licensing implications and risks based on where code is run. We’ve been attempting to iron these out for nearly three months and every turn seems to involve either a tussle with legal (where the default position is almost certainly ‘no’) or a short term workaround. I understand the situation from all sides but finding a satisfactory answer is far from straightforward. The lesson?

Anyone engaged in the current wave of services ‘running anywhere’ needs to ensure that the ToS and other broad legal questions are understood, articulated and resolved as early as possible. That is particulary important in freemium models because whenever money gets involved, people can get very tetchy.

It may seem like an un-necessary waste of time and a thundering irritation when developers are mad keen to throw code over the wall or where takeup hockey sticks. But as the WL-Ning situation demonstrates, a failure to understand what’s going on can have unwelcome consequences.

August 24th, 2008

Web archiving enterprises: keep trying

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 7:41 am

Categories: Office productivity, Social computing

Tags: Web, Page, Archiving, CSS, Microsoft Windows, Web Browsers, Productivity, Business Intelligence, Scripting Languages, Software/Web Development

Through my keen observations, deep procrastination and occasional drunken ramblings, there are three things which annoy me about a service or product before I even use them. These three things, from a consumer’s point of view, are the following:

1. having a product with a stupid name;
2. a blatant disregard to standard English and not capitalising the first letter of their product or company name - a noun;
3. having a company which uses a ccTLD which magically incorporates the product name: del.icio.us and last.fm, par exemple.

When I first saw iterasi, it hit two accounts of which trigger my hormonal psychosis, turning me from a lucid, gentle character, to a foaming-at-the-mouth nutter.

Their thoughts were, with all these dynamically and automatically created pages, with all these technologies and advancements with the web, with all these languages floating around the world keeping the Internet afloat, how can we bookmark a page exactly as it is?

One thing I don’t like is you have to download yet another plugin, addin, tool, whatever you want to call it. With our ever filled computers, with our many subscribed services, with God knows how many services and products out there aiming to make our lives easier, why another bloody download? If they wanted to make lives easier, you should just be able to add it to the cloud without any faffing around or installing anything.

Even on that rant, it does have good integration into your system. It’ll work on Windows with Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 with IE7 emulation turned on, Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 on Windows, but Mac as well which is just “groovy”.

When you get everything started, sorted, plugged in and raring to go, you’ve been given a big space to hold your “notarized” pages; a public page where you can show your notarized pages and an RSS feed for one and all. Not only is it a great tool for you, it throws in social relationship and networking aspects as well.

So, to see this in action, take this page you’re reading now. There’s Javascript on every corner of this page, there’s CSS and iFrames, and there’s backend PHP and server side scripts pulling information from all over. Normally when saving a page like this, it’ll come out as an array of absolute mess and formatting turns out looking like my mother’s cooking. I notarized the page; it saved it to my cloud archive on iterasi’s website. An excited me went to click on the snapshot to see the results.

Terrible.

Anyone who knows ZDNet, especially us who work here, knows what a nightmare the site can be. I know there’s a lot of code behind the scenes, I know it takes a lot of people just to keep it maintained, but it’s a good site which looks inviting and doesn’t crash (often). I thought, maybe this is just a blip in the service? I ran through my Firefox bookmarks and opened up my favourite technology sites to see what other sites saved as.

Bink didn’t render the top header properly, A Welsh View didn’t display some of the Flash elements, and Lifehacker didn’t display all the images properly either.

LiveSide was a major exception, where when I tried it, actually seemed to render the page better than the live version. istartedsomething looked absolutely fine, except Long’s right sidebar CSS tweaks failed to work, and when I tried Winsupersite, that seemed to work fine as well.

You can see the results for yourself here on my iterasi public page; another good feature, being able to show your saved pages to the world. Although there are some good features, interesting to say the least, it’s not always what you’d expect or hope for. One of the key things they boast about is the ability to notarize maps and directions. I tried using Google Maps and Live Search Maps, and both work surprisingly well, even though it literally saves a snapshot of the page, rather than the functional elements behind the services.

Overall, it’s a good research tool to have. It can schedule pages to be notarized (but only if your computer from which you set it from is on or logged in), the pages notarized are usually perfect in rendering, saving and retrieving, and the ability to share and save archived pages would be highly useful for some… but it’s not for me.

I’m stuck in the dark ages with this sort of thing. I’ll either print a page off and show it someone, send a link via Facebook or Windows Live Messenger, or print it to CutePDF and email it manually. But hey, that’s just me.

*hits uninstall*

August 21st, 2008

Zoho Share(point?)

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 3:30 pm

Categories: Office productivity

Tags: People Area, Bookmarks, RSS, Collaboration, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Internet, Software, Dennis Howlett

If there’s one thing I really like it is what I term ’self evident’ applications. These are apps that have a clear purpose and which are blindingly simple to use. Zoho Share falls squarely in that category.

The company prefers to think of Share as ‘Sharepoint meets YouTube,’ but I’m not sure that’s a message that will resonate very well with business. Many people think the consumerisation of enterprise apps will have a profound impact on how businesses organize and use applications. That may happen, but not now. Business worries about employees using YouTube on company time while Sharepoint is one of those technologies you either love or hate.

When I first saw the service, I thought it was more like an early Jive Clearspace version but with an emphasis on documents and around half the ‘people’ functionality.Zoho’s Raju Vegesna replied in email saying: “Yes, there is some overlap initially. But given the roadmap, I think it’ll evolve into something unique. Especially when it improves on the business side. For example, it’ll act as a central document repository (like NDAs etc) for your organization based on department. When you publish your sales related documents, they’ll automatically appear in CRM.”

What can you do today? In summary you can:

• Upload most commonly formatted documents and presentations along with HTML documents and PDF into a central store.
• Share publicly if your Zoho Writer, Sheet or Show documents are public and/or with ‘friends.’ Business users can use Share as a central repository that is protected from external viewing.
• In the Content area, users can rate and comment upon documents, bookmark them to external services like Delicious, Furl etc and embed them in web pages.
• The people area allows you to discover ‘friends’ and collaborate through the integrated Zoho Chat.
• Finally, there is a comprehensive search plus RSS feeds.

I like most of what I see because Share provides functionality you’d expect in a separate application like VersionOne but with the promise of ties directly back to the operational applications like Writer. As a value proposition, this is much better than wrangling separate applications.

Bookmarks are becoming an increasingly important part of a knowledge worker’s life so having this ability is a plus. I wish they’d included Diigo which I personally find much more satisfying than Delicious and perhaps cut back or integrated say Diigo’s commenting into Zoho Share.

However, some parts are a bit too consumery for my taste. The notion of ‘friends’ doesn’t fly in a corporate context. Business users need a way to define the term in  a way that works for them. It could be something like ‘colleague’ or ‘business partner.’ Rating is useful but can be subject to abuse. Zoho might wish to consider how they use ratings to minimize the level of gaming that might occur.

Overall, this is a huge step forward for Zoho and one that should give potential users a firm nudge towards adoption.

August 20th, 2008

ModelSheet: good in theory, needs more work

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 1:35 pm

Categories: Development tools, Office productivity

Tags: Mozilla Firefox, Theory, Spreadsheet, ModelSheet, Productivity, Microsoft Excel, Web Browsers, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software

Modelsheet is pitched as a product that is supposed to make the development of complex models much easier than the default ‘Excel way.’ In theory it removes a number of the steps necessary to ensure data accuracy and template integrity. However, there are usability issues that need urgent attention.

This is a saas service so I was surprised that it only works with Windows machines. While having to use Internet Explorer because of Firefox incompatibility, it crashed the browser twice. The user interface is not particularly friendly and it uses Times New Roman as a font face, which as far as I know, only the IMDB has successfully pulled off. Since Internet Explorer was crashing, I tried Firefox, with the IETab plugin, as this makes the software work in Firefox.

The software is bulky, buttons are abbreviated and at first glance it is difficult to understand what they do. There are inline frames with scrollbars. I was never quite certain where I was in the program and equally unclear as to what I was meant to be doing. Maybe it’s because I’m ‘just a kid’ who knows Excel pretty well, but I’m happy with Excel. I know where things are, I know what they do, I know how to make pretty little pie-charts and 3D graphs. Any new product based on a spreadsheet metaphor is going to present challenges but this product should only be put in the hands of power users prepreaed to invest in learning the solution.

One bright spot is the version tracker. All too often, spreadsheets end up in a mess because someone messed up the template and it didn’t get spotted until the next revision. With model sheet you can get back to the previous version to figure out the model inconsistency. Consider this feature a “shadow copy” of a spreadsheet - being able to go back and forth through edits and updates.

At this stage, I’m not sure Modelsheet makes life easier. After wrestling with it for 24 hours I found myself bemused. While the software is meant to make tasks like budgeting and forecasting easier, I found it too hard to understand without expending a significant effort. In today’s consumery world, that’s not going to stand up well to scrutiny. Today’s users expect intuitive interfaces and right now, I don’t see that. You can argue that serious software demands serioius attention but all the talk I hear is of intuitive working. After all, who has time?

I hoped the video introduction might help. But it was so dull, I found myself dreaming of an intensive tour of a cardboard box factory followed by pampering in a day long Chinese water torture experiment. In fairness, Modelsheet is at an early stage of development and I’m sure will improve over time. Right now however, I find it difficult to see how it will find its place in the world.

August 18th, 2008

Zoho's future in Google's hands?

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 6:45 pm

Categories: Office productivity

Tags: Software, Revenue, Google Inc., Zoho, Tools & Techniques, Operational Accounting, Management, Finance, Dennis Howlett

Earlier today, Zoho sent over an intriguing email with a whole bunch of numbers and spreadsheet demonstrating why Google in particular is not likely to be a threat to the company. It makes interesting reading. The argument goes something like this: Google’s revenue and profit per employee, almost wholly derived from advertising, is so far ahead of application providers like Microsoft and SAP that it simply isn’t worth Google’s time or money to invest heavily in the applications part of its business. Here is how Sridhar Vembu, CEO of AdventNet, Zoho’s part company describes the position:

We simply don’t believe Google has the rational business incentive to go deep into the business/IT software category. The lower revenue and profit per employee figures would be tolerable if there were huge growth opportunities there; but when very successful companies like Adobe and Intuit pull in revenues well shy of a Yahoo, when even the enterprise software leader SAP is only a little over half the size of Google (Google makes more in profit per employee than SAP makes in revenue per employee), it is fairly clear this market is not going to make a material contribution to Google’s growth and profitability objectives.

Vembu has a good point. When I think about the history of Google Apps development, once they get past the initial launch, upgrades and new feature additions are released at a glacial pace. But is it that simple? Over on Outside the Lines, Dan Farber is far from convinced:

The problem with Vembu’s logic is that Google has an enormous pool of cash to invest in improving the economics of business and consumer productivity software suites. And, part of being a software company is having multiple and adjacent revenue and user data streams. Microsoft is a highly profitable software company with many adjacent divisions. Google Apps won’t be as profitable as search, but it will be profitable and ties users into the Google platform and monetization engine.

The part about Google having a stack of cash is perfectly true but I have yet to see firm evidence that Google is truly serious about the applications space. Sure, it has a lot of users and claims an on ramp rate of some 2,000 new customers per day. But that pales into insignificance when compared - for example - with the 500 million that Microsoft claims for its Office suite. Love it or hate it, Microsoft is the 800lb gorilla, not Google. And given the economics that Vembu identifies, his incentive contention, as it relates to Google, seems perfectly sound. Similarly, I see no appetite for contextual ads in business applications. It’s simply a model that doesn’t fly. Everyone I speak with tunes ads out - I can’t remember the last time I noticed one, even though I’m an extensive Google Apps user.

According to Dan, Zoho estimates its revenue per employee will climb form its current low levels to $200,000 to $250,000 per employee once they get into full ramp mode. On current employee numbers, that equates to $48-60 million per annum. That’s a piffling amount in the context of the global office applications market. However, the per employee number is way above where Google or Microsoft is today. That gets attention. How Zoho expects to get there remains something of a mystery. I’d speculate that Zoho believes its current ‘freemium’ model which doesn’t consume huge marketing resource will carry it through. I’d like to think the company can deliver on this because that would indicate the emergence of a startup business model that can be successful, when the funding is coming from established resources and not thos eo fht eVC community.

It is interesting to note that after years of pretty much having the office market to itself Microsoft is facing all sorts of competition, especially in the specialist forms of spreadsheet and database applications area. EditGrid, ModelSheet, DabbleDB and blist are names that immediately spring to mind. While they may be no threat today - and may never be a serious threat - it is telling that they all have products going into the market. It may be years before any of these companies achieves commercial success but I believe that in a world starved of innovation, they serve as pointers to the direction office software might go. In that sense, the world and market is big enough for many players to get a piece of the action. At least for the time being.

August 13th, 2008

Video commenting hitting the information highway

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 8:12 pm

Categories: Social computing, Video

Tags: Video, Web Site, Bubble, Corporate Communications, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Marketing, Internet, Zack Whittaker

Bubble Comment is exactly that, a way to comment on a website in your own little bubble. It’s hardly new in terms of allowing people to leave comments, but as I’ve previously written, webcams do seem to be the social tool of the modern generation.

This new start up company which created Bubble Comment, privately held by kShermanStudios LLC., have provided services for some big names, including Yahoo! and Verizon. They claim to be “pioneers in video interaction techniques and continually strive to create useful video solutions that help improve the world of web-based communications.”

There have of course been video commenting solutions, start ups, enterprises and dreams, but there hasn’t been one that’s particularly kicked off. The interesting thing about Bubble Comment is you don’t subscribe to the service as a “dedicated service”; it acts independently and remains independent of the websites it supports.

Developers can take a day off if need be, as it relies on the user to open up the Bubble Comment and leave a message. It’s then up to the person leaving a video message to pass on the links to their friends or colleagues. When that person opens that link, they see the website as it was (whether they use any caching, I’m not too clear about), with their recording in a bubble in the top right of the screen.

However, developers can easily share this method of recording comments by adding a small button to the end of each post; easy for those using Wordpress or another blogging platform, which takes them to their destination.

It’s free, easy to use, very user friendly for those not confident with computers, but comments left in the bubble are limited to 90 seconds, and/or 200 playbacks, whichever comes first, and expire and vanish into the ether after 30 days.

One major setback they may have not considered: not everybody has a webcam. Simple as it may seem, many still fear it to be a “security risk”, especially if there are kiddly-winks running around the house. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting service and for a new product, its already got it’s name on many high-ranking websites.

Obviously (the more boring side to this article, yawn) is the business advantages. Clearly stating on the website, this provides a more personalised approach to business sales. Seeing someone describe the product openly and (not often) honestly makes a sales purchase more likely. It could also be a key tool in directing people to a new part of a corporate web page; marketing essentially just got easier.

With this in mind though, neither of these things would work properly on a large scale yet. The restrictions imposed on the video bubble still limits how much it can be viewed. Perhaps this is something short term to help stabilise the service? Get the product working on a small scale as a proof-of-concept and build it up?

Only time will tell. Feel free to use and abuse me like you normally do by using Bubble Comment. If anything, it’ll keep you busy for a good two minutes.

August 11th, 2008

Flypaper: flash presentations for the rest of us

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 6:30 am

Categories: Office productivity

Tags: co-founder, programmer, programming, flypaper pro, development tools, financial planning, customer relationship management (crm), enterprise software, software development, software/web development

Last week I took a peek at the unfortunately named Flypaper Pro, a product that allows the creation of high quality Flash content but without all the programming skills that are normally associated with this kind of thing. I say unfortunately named because for me, it has connotations of fly splattered bits of sticky paper hanging from various rooms when I lived in the French countryside. For the company it’s about the idea of creating ’stories that stick.’

Building a story is easy. Using a drag and drop interface, select royalty free or own created images from Flickr, Google Images and Yahoo Images, blend in YouTube content, add in contact forms and you’re pretty much done. But that’s not where the power lays. Tracking campaigns (as an example) is critical for marketers wishing to discover the people who are not only grazing content but exhibiting behavior that suggests they may be ready to buy. Flypaper includes a set of comprehensive analytics that allows marketers to get an understanding about the things people find most interesting.

The company sees many different uses for the service beyond marketing such as in training and education. At the moment, they are targeting pharmaceutical, financial services and healthcare markets as those most likely to benefit from this way of working. Co-founder Don Pierson said: “Flypaper puts easy to use tooks into the front line people’s hands so that they’re not reliant on programmers, with all the latency issues that implies.”

As a way of helping companies get off the ground, Flypaper comes with pre-programmed templates. In the later to be released enterprise version, the company will integrate the service to Microsoft CRM and Salesforce.com.

Co-founder Pat Sullivan (he of ACT! and SalesLogix fame) added: “This will not necessarily put Flash programmers out of work. Far from it. Instead it does provide the Flash developer with a platform for re-use. It solves a lot of the maintenance problems associated with Flash content and allows us to develop a network of content producers who can help smaller businesses develop quality, creative content.”

Flypaper is available at $195 per user per annum.