Apollo wins every software award in the world. Really!
The title of this blog entry is obviously sarcastic: we released Apollo at the end of July, and enjoyed talking to our early users. Since launching Apollo, we have received a lot of positive feedback, and... no negative comments. People told us about missing features they were missing, but that's been it: nobody ever said that Apollo was bad in any way. In fact, nobody said anything bad about it!
Then we decided that it was time to enter some software awards. And discovered the "world of software awards".
We frankly expected to find a bunch of people who loved the industry and organised awards to reward the best and most inspiring project. What we found instead, was a world we didn't expect.
Basically, most of the software awards out there work like this: you pay a sum of money to enter the award. If you pay (a lot) more, you win the competition for that category. If your software doesn't fit any categories, then you pay another sum of money and create that category -- and win for that category. Basically you pay some money, you enter the award, and you win the award -- presto!
I have to say that there are real awards out there. Few of them. In general, the real ones tend to be the ones connected to conferences and book publishers. At the moment, I am the judge for an award myself and I know that nobody can buy a victory.
I was surprised to see that a lot of well-known companies had entered several of these awards and bought... I meant, won them. They were mostly companies with big budgets, that used those awards as PR: lay people will tend to think that there is at least some merit in winning one of those awards, since buying them outright seems and feels just so wrong.
So, please don't expect us to buy any awards: for us, we win an award every time we receive an email from you telling us how much you love Apollo; how much faster it is compared to anything else; how much more organised you are with your work. We win an award every time somebody tweets that they love Apollo.
You can buy most awards out there. But, comments like the ones we are receiving every day are priceless.
5 comments so far
edouard
Wed, 09/22/2010 - 10:10
Your app is great. We are live testing it right now on a project.
One thing missing so far:
I like to give an enveloppe of time to my team members so they know how much time they have (according to the estimate we did) to do something.
Even greater, would be the possibility for the project manager to enter the total project budget and the rates of every team member so we could have an overview of the project remaining budget.
I'd call you gods if this features could run within APIs such as FreshBooks. Getting Freshbooks estimates to set-up a project and getting project logged hours to generate invoices.
I know, I'm asking too much here. But still. This would save time. And time is like water. It has to be saved.
Steven M Hambleton
Wed, 11/03/2010 - 08:36
You mentioned in an email that Highrise and Basecamp import will be on the way but what about a basic vCard or CSV import for contacts?
I don't really feel like manually adding 300 contacts and companies, notes, deals and tags across.
Tony Mobily
Fri, 11/05/2010 - 08:38
Hi,
Yep we will be working on that as well!
Merc.
Daniel Salazar
Wed, 04/13/2011 - 07:23
I signed up for apollo since web.appstorm.net post was released. I was already using basecamp, I love the interface and how it works.
I just got the email for the my beta tester discount on new plans. So I began researching a bit more on the tool to see if I should change my project management software. I ended up, researching more on your blog.
Not only do you have a great App, software or site. For what I am reading in your blog, you have attitude! That is how we like to work, attitude towards a great service and compromise with customers, this is what you are projecting.
If there is anything you need, translation, or any of www.mobkii.com services, feel free to contact us.
Congratz!!
Tony Mobily
Wed, 04/13/2011 - 09:44
Hi,
Thanks Daniel!
I saw your email as well -- I sent it to Andrea, who will definitely let you know.
I am glad to know you like Apollo!
Bye,
Merc.