So I’ve mentioned that I’ve got 12 days until launch, and a day job. So I’ve got to piece tools together quickly in order to get busy. On the one hand, I don’t want to get bogged down in tools — everyone knows how that can be a time-sink.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things available now since my last start-up began, and I want to benefit from them if possible, particularly given the short timeline. With the “measure twice, cut once” philosophy in mind, I’m trying to find a tool to help design the service interaction in a way that I can easily get feedback from friends and colleagues. I’ve only got time to build it once (pre-launch, anyway), so I want to capture the best ideas quickly so I know what I really want to build when I’m deep in the code.
Tools evaluated tonight, with my wife’s help searching for and pre-screening options:
It’s possible that these tools aren’t all apples-to-apples services — they’re just what came out of an hour or so of looking around.
Winner: ProtoShare
No time for a full breakdown on what made me choose ProtoShare over the others, but influential posts on my decision were at Mashable and JungleG, along with the demos on each site. The demo clearly makes a difference! (Adding “make good demo” to my pre-launch list.)
Estimated cost of ProtoShare for this project between now and launch: $0.00. Free 30 day trial adequately covers the next 12 days. 
Update: Late entry iPlotz gave ProtoShare a run for their money here at the home office, but ultimately decided on ProtoShare.
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[...] up account with ProtoShare. See earlier post about [...]
Pingback by Bring it, Friday « The Bootstrap Chronicles May 16, 2009 @ 12:50 amHey, thanks for the quick review and shoutout for ProtoShare! Were you able to get your project done on time? We actively develop ProtoShare to make it as robust and easy-to-use as possible for web-based collaborative wireframing and prototyping. How was your experience?
Feel free to email me with feedback — andrea [at] protoshare.com.
Comment by Andrea Fidel June 10, 2009 @ 10:24 amAndrea, thanks for stopping by! I love ProtoShare, but unfortunately with such a small team and tight (initial) timeline, we weren’t able to get over the learning curve quickly enough to make use of ProtoShare. I hope we’ll come back to it in the future.
For now our goals have shifted, and we’re targeting a July launch. I’ll post more about that in another update soon.
Thanks again!
Comment by strappy1 June 19, 2009 @ 1:14 am