Thank you for Neosense

Written by Dmitri Luchtmeijer, posted on Friday 9 May 2014

Today is a very special day. It’s not so different from any other day, except for the fact that today we are making our dream come true. With lots of support from our loved ones we have managed to release our software product. Our loved ones inspired us, believed in us, gave us the strength to persevere, and lent us a hand when needed. Without them we couldn’t have finished and released this product. Thank you for that! And now, it is with great excitement that we present our software to the world. We would very much like to share it with you and all the other Online Superheroes.

"Hello Neosense!"

Our brand new software product is called Neosense. Neosense goes back a very long way. The first release of Neosense was in 2001. Although then, it did not have the shape and options of this new 2014 release.

At that time we were all connecting to the Internet using land lines. One of the biggest failures of handling lots of data over land lines was losing data due to the instable connection. That’s why we built a desktop application that prepared all data by shrinking and converting it, before sending it to web servers. This solved the problem and it strongly strengthened our belief in Native Desktop Software.

Users were able to easily manage series of products, like cars, furniture and houses, on their website. Our focus at the time being on car dealers, furniture dealers and real estate agents. It was a fine piece of software, however, after meeting up with some highly experienced IT professionals we dropped the product completely. Sure, it had potential but it was not unique enough and our target group was to narrow. Competitors could easily copy the product and crush us in the market. Still, it was difficult to swallow that our product didn’t meet the mark yet.

So, we took the whole idea back to the drawing table. First of all, we widened our focus on a bigger target group of users and made a whole new list of features. It was our belief more users should be able to work with our software, instead of a specific target audience. As a result, we came up with software specially designed for Desktop PCs running on Windows. This new software was able to manage websites, and was easy to use because of the Microsoft Office look and feel, and the wide range of options. We sold licenses to our clients, who started asking for solutions. We listened to them and created solutions to meet their needs. So in fact, our clients reinvented our product.

Client research

In July 2009 we carried out research among our clients about their experience with Neosense. We asked them: “What do you like?” “What don’t you like?” “Is there a future for Neosense?” “And if so, what does this future look like?” We received some great feedback, with which we were able to evaluate Neosense, and we came to a conclusion. One of Neosense’s biggest disadvantages was storing data, and in addition clients expressed their need for more options. All data was stored in a local network that was not flexible enough to provide for people working outside of the office. This second bit of feedback concerning more options was surprising to us, because, from our point of view, Neosense users had all the options they needed. What they really meant, however, was that they wanted to do more in the same environment.

Doing some testing

After our research and several brainstorming sessions, we were ready to do some testing before deciding on developing a new product. In November 2009 we started testing some technical challenges. Our main focus was rebuilding the connection between Desktop PC’s and Web Servers outside local networks, and handling data. After Christmas all tests were successfully completed. A couple of days later in January 2010, we decided to rebuild parts of the software. This was expected to take 3 to 6 months. During this short period of time we became very excited about the opportunities the changes in our software could bring about.

As we mentioned earlier in this post, we strongly believe in Desktop Software. During development, we combined our Desktop Software with a Web Application to make our software more dynamic. For, we were often asked why we chose Desktop Software instead of a web browser. The answer is simple really, Desktop Software provides more possibilities, more power, better data handling, and is not dependent on other software – whereas a browser is. Besides, it’s so much cooler. :) Also, we are very much inspired by the game industry, which has been using the technique of combining Desktop Software with a Web Application for many years now. World of Warcraft, for example, installs Desktop Software on your PC and connects to their servers. World of Warcraft was released in 2004 has up to 7.5 million subscribers, so the technique has been well-proven. Many other successful games use this technique as well.

Taking risks

It turned out we were too excited, and as our dreams became bigger, the list of features started to grow. We saw the potential in interconnecting all kinds of software, so we focused on creating one type of software for managing websites, blogs, social media, email marketing and more, all in one. Also, we preferred software with a unique user experience and we needed the flexibility to expand and improve our software in the future, which was in line with one of the main conclusions in our customer research.

Our drive to excel led us to make a major decision: rebuild our software from scratch. Which is what we did. From that moment on we constantly faced challenges. It was a race against the clock and other work related priorities. We preferred doing everything ourselves, which was a huge risk because it increased the risk of failure. The highest risks being: lack of experience, financial resources and dwindling personal energy resources.

Our company’s core business is still building custom made software for different types of Desktops, Servers and Mobile Devices. We therefore needed to find a balance between providing our clients with software solutions and finding time to completely rebuild Neosense. Frankly, we still don’t know how we managed this, but we did!

Everything came together well. Our experience and knowledge grew to a much higher level, our financial resources shrank to almost zero (ouch!) and our energy level was going up and down like an excited puppy dog with a tennis ball. Yet, writing this blog post fills us with energy again because we are finally able to share our product with you.

About Neosense

Phew, that sure was a lot of information about our past. You’re probably curious about the Neosense software. So, let’s start to describe how it feels when you are about to use Neosense.

“A faint smile appears on your face as you focus on your computer screen. Then it all starts. Thoughts, feelings, concepts take shape. Your heart begins to beat faster and you sense excitement taking hold of you. Then, subconsciously your fingers find their way to the keyboard and your hand randomly controls the mouse. Everything in heart and mind is transformed into words, images and film. Now you sense your heart pounding in your head as stories move across your screen to be absorbed by your website or blog. A sigh of satisfaction later you let go to view the result of your imagination.“

Neosense brings content to life.

Bringing content to life is what Neosense is all about. Posting styled text, well-formed tables, sparkling images and inspiring videos on your website or blog without a hassle. The result is automatically presented in a responsive design for desktop computers and mobile devices.

While managing your website or blog, you may be in need of some inspiration. You can find inspiration, simply by connecting to other websites and web applications by using Channels inside Neosense. In fact, you can even subscribe to RSS feeds to keep posted about the latest developments in your area of expertise.

Neosense Features

•Rich content like images, videos, tables, text formatting and web fonts

•Cloud availability

•Multilingual

•Web forms

•Smart image handling

•Professional graphic file format support like TIFF and PSD

•Image editor

•Asset management

•Gallery boxes

•Blogging

•Commenting

•Blog taxonomy

•Option for connecting to other online tools like Open Graph and Gravatar

•Scheduling

•Channels for connecting to other software like social media, ecommerce and emarketing

•Social media support for posting messages, blog posts and web pages

•RSS Reader

•Build for HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, PHP5 and MySQL5

•Frameworks like Bootstrap 3 and jQuery

The future

Today, after 1,500 days of developing, 75 million rows of code, countless brainstorming sessions and release preparations, we have finally released Neosense RE. However, our work doesn’t end here, actually we’re just getting started. We have new dreams to fulfill. But first, we will set about building a community of happy Neosense users. We offer desktop software, server software, our knowledge and an online environment for the Neosense Community, so members can ask questions, answer questions, discuss Content Marketing, Web Development and Web Design, and so they can get the most out of Neosense. We strive to be the best in what we do.

Secondly, we will continue developing and designing Neosense. For this purpose, we will let ourselves be inspired by information from our current user base and we will listen to our upcoming Neosense Community. So, when you decide to be part of our Neosense Community, please feel free to speak your heart, for we would love to hear your ideas.