Balsamiq Blog

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/

Balsamiq Blog logoFounded in March 2008, Balsamiq Studios creates rich, elegant, high quality plugins for Web Office applications. Balsamiq is a Micro-ISV, which in English means "a tiny software company". We like to compete on usability and customer service.

Our first product is Balsamiq Mockups. Launched in June 2008, Mockups helps software designers and developers build great software by letting them easily sketch out their ideas, then quickly collaborate and iterate over them. Balsamiq Mockups has netted over $800,000 in sales in its first year of business and is gathering rave reviews.

At Balsamiq, Everyone Blogs. Join Us.

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2010/02/03/everyone-blogs/

The Balsamiq Blog is my third blog.
I started in 2003 with Peldi’s Little Blog in which I shared sample applications and things that I learned at work about Flash Communication Server, and ran it for about 3 years.
In 2004 I started PatataMonkey, a pregnancy/daddy blog, which also ran for about 3 years.

08:52

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Luis Arias Joins Balsamiq

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2010/01/25/luis-arias-joins-balsamiq/

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you the newest member of the Balsamiq team, monsieur Luis Arias, Web Programmer Extraordinaire.

If you’ve been following us for a while you’ll know that Luis and I have been working together since pretty early in the Balsamiq adventure...

03:58

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A look back at 2009

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2010/01/03/a-look-back-at-2009/

Wow. Just wow.
It’s hard for me to believe how much has happened in Balsamiq-land in 2009.
I feel like a completely different person than when I wrote the “A Look back at 2008” post, just 12 months ago. In a way, I am a different person, and Balsamiq is a completely different company as well.
In this two-part [...]

23:40

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Tracking your Company’s Mentions with Del.icio.us

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/12/20/delicious/

Hello friends!
Today I’d like to share a little Del.icio.us trick that might be useful for your company. It’s something I saw used at Atlassian and that I’ve been using extensively ever since starting Balsamiq.
An intro to del.icio.us
Most everyone knows what delicious (or del.icio.us) is by now (Wikipedia entry).

10:37

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Holiday Reading: Free eBooks and Good Blogs

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/12/19/holiday-ebooks-and-blogs/

‘Tis the season of giving, and hopefully most of you will have a little more time to do some reading, so I thought this would be a good time to share the following links with you.

02:31

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An apology

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/12/17/an-apology/

Hi friends.
So I made a big mistake today. No, I made a few. I was so excited about the new pan feature that I decided to release it without testing it properly.
Not only, I also ran out the door right after the build was live to run some errands

02:35

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Tools we use for running our startup

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/10/30/tools/

Hi there. I've been wanting to write this post for a long time, but things were still evolving too much for me to come up with a definite list.
Now that we've been in business for a whole 15 months, the dust has settled a bit on the tools we use in our day-to-day operations.

23:31

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Donating your Software: A Whole Lot of WIN!

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/08/13/donating/

I was shown the value of volunteering from my friend and former boss Robert Tatsumi back at Macromedia: he and his wife Sharon often organized volunteering outings: sorting items at the San Francisco food bank, packing sandwiches for the homeless at the Glide Memorial Church, etc.
I had never done anything like that before, and I remember being amazed at how much a group of motivated people could achieve in just a few hours, and how easy it was to make a difference in someone else’s life.

17:30

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Why I haven't been blogging as much

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/05/09/why-i-havent-been-blogging-as-much/

Hi there. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you already know that lately I haven’t been sharing as much as I used to. It’s true and it pains me, so I want to try and figure out the reasons for this change by writing about them below.

05:33

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My thoughts on software piracy

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/10/19/my-views-on-software-piracy/

A fellow software entrepreneur emailed me today with this question:

My question is, as I am trying to get an application of mine built in AIR, and it is commercial software, with features disabled that I want enabled after entering a license key…. since AIR sends out your whole SWF file that can easily be decompiled, what do you recommend doing to protect your IP since it’s basically being given away free with every download? It could also be easily cracked I assume.

13:17

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Personal: What's your story? Why start Balsamiq?

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/10/14/personal-whats-your-story-why-start-balsamiq/

The following is a story that I told many people already, but didn’t think was interesting enough to put on my blog until a certain Tamales Princess I know practically forced me to write to so here it is.

10:09

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Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studio

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from-balsamiq-studios/

First off, the title of this post is a bit pretentious for my taste, but I wanted to pay homage to Mike Speiser’s excellent post on A/B testing using AdWords, and take advantage of his $10.87 investment while I was at it! . Mike is one of the brightest people I have ever met, and I highly encourage everyone to read his Laserlike blog.

13:21

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