You might have read about our 100% Fearless support. But let me assure you - we are more than fearless. We are both unstoppable and unbreakable!

This morning we had our weekly sum up meeting; a breakfast were we talk about new stuff, new customers, problems solved, et cetera et cetera. For this specific session we even had one of our customers coming in and tell us a bit about his experience with Headlight (he was pleased by the way, thanks for asking).

Well, there was one odd thing though. One of our guys was missing. None of us would miss this fantastic brunch, I mean just so.

So here is the story: It turns out that on his way to work our lost guy was hit by a bus!

Even though the accident was serious enough for the police to turn up, it didn’t stop him from getting his coffee and eggs before while they were still warm.

Sure, his right hand still hurts but nevertheless we can’t make the man stop working – he wants to realize his ideas.

When we say we are dedicated, we mean it!

Little Helper, the interactive help system for Headlight is now live and almost finished. It is build much like a Wiki so Headlight users can contribute and ask questions. I like to call it a good mix of a blog and an article base, because it works like a blog but without the chronology. The whole thing will be available for free download sometime in the near future.

The vision

We envisioned a community driven help system where people actively participated to create a better and more complete knowledge base. The application had to use best practices from Web 2.0 and .NET.

The technique

Little Helper is build entirely in C# and ASP.NET 2.0 after the principle of KISS. Everything is kept in a single Visual Studio website with no included class libraries, so it’s very easy to approach, extend and maintain. All the posts and comments are kept in XML files, so no database is needed. To summarize: it is plug n’ play.

Feature list

ASP.NET

• URL rewriting
• HTTP compression (HttpModule)
• Whitespace removal (HttpModule)
• ASP.NET 2.0 native themes support
• Intelligent caching
• Breadcrumb
• Onsite search engine
• Unlimited number of posts
• Unlimited number of post sublevels (see the menu)
• Multi language support

Web 2.0

• Microsummary support
• OpenSearch support
• Micro formats (hCard) support
• RSS anywhere (search, comments and site)
• Cross-browser support

Standards

• WAI triple A (the highest accessibility standard)
• Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional
• Valid CSS
• PICS label
• P3P policy

Near future features

• Social bookmarking support (Digg, del.icio.us etc.) - Done
• Accesskey attribute for the menu - Done
• Web service endpoints
• Trackback and pingback support
• Ping Technorati, PubSub etc.
• Post organizer (drag n’ drop AJAX stuff)
• Implement site configuration page
• Google Sitemap
• Multi user support - Done
• Custom plug-in support

Stuff to improve

• Better search algorithm - Done
• Use ASP.NET 2.0 membership provider - Done
• Use ASP.NET 2.0 profiles for user storage - Dismissed
• Move all strings to resource files - Done
• More microformats

It’s quite a big feature list, but as you can see, we still have things to do before we are completely done with the first version.

I think we did a good job in the process of building Headlight by always respecting the core values defined early on. We even printed the values on a few hundred T-Shirts and shipped them to friends and customers - because we really meant it.

It is important to us because we HATE bad and too complex software. Headlight is quality, simplicity, and beauty.

If you work in an agency, you’ll know what we mean. Everyday tasks such as creating campaigns and forwarding marketing material to media partners aren’t the greatest fun you’ve ever had. Knowing that, we’ve designed Headlight™ to make things much easier.

We’re still working on fine tuning the whole process even further … more to come - soon.

A friend of mine just forwarded me this picture from “New Media Days 2006″ (cool conference in Copenhagen about - well, new media) saying:

“I think the MSN brand might just suffer from this picture …”

He’s probably right about that; I shouldn’t have shaved that morning. Damn!

One of my old friends and former boss, Henrik Lykkesteen (former chief honcho for online marketing at Saxo Bank, now at Bluecom) is looking for talented sales people. Location: Denmark. 

I don’t know much about Bluecom but Lykkesteen is one of the most energetic, motivating, and fun leaders I’ve ever worked with. So if you want to learn from the best then maybe you should contact Lykkesteen and hear what the hell he has to offer … Check out www.bluecom.com, call the company and ask for DJ Lykkesteen.

Our very good friends Morten Lund and Søren Kenner of Lundkenner have just launched something which is amazing - it’s called Zecco.com.

This business idea is fascinating and quite disruptive: Free online trading. Stiil, what I’m mostly fascinated with is these guys’ exceptional marketing talents. Check this out at Youtube (now Google): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sO6NxLCIZY.

They speak Buzz. They speak Viral.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Small Is The New Big by Seth Godin

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

The Solution Centric Organization by Keith M. Eades

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

Getting Real by “37 signals“

Did I miss any???

It’s been a while (three weeks!!!) since the last post about new Headlight features. To make it up to you here’s one about something you can’t even see; our brand new API.

So what’s this about, you might ask?

Most of the things you can do in Headlight is actually API oriented - creating banners, making campaigns on Google and so on. Now we just decided to provide our own so you can enrich the data in Headlight or simply export them to other systems like your CRM system or anything similar.

It’s probably not the first thing you’ll start using, when you fire up Headlight for the first time, but I promise you in a year or so, you’ll start wondering how you managed without it!