Features

Interview: Fresh Perspective Software

February 14, 2003

I was very fortunate to be able to get an exclusive interview with the development team of Fresh Perspective Software. I hope you enjoy getting to know a little be more about the company behind some of the great products I’ve been reviewing this week.

Fresh Perspective Software is a relative newcomer to the handheld software industry. Could you tell me a little bit more about how your company got started?

FPS is not as new as you might think. We were actually one of the first ‘Commercial’ palm developers back in the mid 90’s. At that time we went by Fighter Pilot Software. Fighter Pilot was always a semi-serious part time job for all of us. We all had glamorous dot.com day jobs and FPS was the release from that. As the economy turned up our full-time jobs began to eat all of our time and we allowed Fighter Pilot Software to slip away. In order to secure the care of our customers we sold the products to Handmark.

Fighter Pilot Software wrote a number of great applications; GolfTrac, FPS_Utility and FPS_Clock which are all Handmark applications now. In addition to those we created HandyCap a sailboat racing/timing application and numerous custom software solutions.

As our dot.com jobs started going south, we looked at each other and decided to jump back into the Palm market. We enjoyed FPS in the 90’s as a creative outlet from our dot.com jobs so we thought it better to commit our time and efforts into what we truly enjoy and bring FPS back.

Fresh Perspective Software means a couple of things. 1) We all have a fresh perspective on life, and IT related careers. 2) We do try to take a fresh look at products when we develop them. There may be 20,000 software titles for the Palm platform but a majority are duplicates rehashed with the same problems in usability. When getting back into the market, we looked around and were shocked at how little innovation had happened in our absence.

How does your “Fresh Perspective” affect the way you develop new handheld products?

We try to spend time really focusing on how the user will end up using the product and work towards making that as easy as possible.

Products like Piranha come from using other database products. The Palm market is old enough now that programs shouldn’t be as difficult to utilize as they are. We looked at the database products on the market and took a fresh look at what the consumer needs and wants and developed a database program to fit those needs. That’s why Piranha is simple and easy to use.

Spiral as well. I was looking for a note manager for personal use. I found a number that just didn’t work, and a bunch that were far too hard to use, or overly complicated. The good ones weren’t updated and had issues with the latest versions of Palm OS. We saw that handheld users needed an easy note manager like Spiral and looked to provide that solution.

Piranha is an incredibly robust database program with features that allow it to compete with some of the “big names” in Palm OS software, such as HanDBase and ThinkDB. What else do you have planned in Piranha’s future development?

First, thank you for the kind words. They are very encouraging for FPS as we restart our venture back into the Palm market. From the start Piranha was designed with the idea of competing in the large, upscale Palm OS Database market. After about eight months, we had Piranha version 1.0. This version is very robust for an initial software release, equaling or exceeding that of the current database products on the market. We wanted to be very competitive when we went to market.

With this first framework, and input from current users, we are now starting to develop Piranha Pro. Although we have not completed the entire design specification at this time, I can tell you that we will be enhancing the current feature set as well as adding new features. Some of these include:

- Expanding the calculation field to include many new functions and functionality.

- Redesign of the primary database structure by moving away from a single table design to a more classic database architecture, where you define a database and then create one or more tables within that database. This more closely resembles the traditional relational database model.

- A conduit to sync Piranha databases to a desktop counterpart, including MS Access and SQL Server.

- Support for more file types on import and export, such as Microsoft Access.

- Support for report creation and tabular reports of multiple tables.

There are numerous other enhancements in the design specification, which we expect to be completed early in the first quarter. Our target release date for Piranha Pro is mid-summer 2003.

I noticed on your website something called “Customer Action Center”. Can you tell me >more about this?

Certainly. Customer service is critical in any business and we feel even more so in the development of software. We felt the customer service in the software industry should be better than it has been and so we provide superior service for our customers through our Customer Action Center. In order to address the needs of our customers we wanted a way to service their immediate support issues, to receive their input on our current products, and accept suggestions for new software solutions as well. This is why we created the CAC (Customer Action Center).

Customers don’t want to be held up waiting for a support department to answer an email to get a new key code or serial number for a product. Our CAC allows them to generate these codes immediately, or download the latest upgrades, without having to wait. This also provides a way for us to communicate with our customers concerning any bug reports and they can give us their opinions and suggestions on the products we offer. It enables us to respond in a timely and orderly manner to any issues they may have. We are then able to keep track of what is most important to them and prioritize our upgrade features and new software development according to their needs.

We really want our customers’ input on the products we offer. If the products don’t fit their needs then we aren’t doing our job.

In addition, the CAC provides answers to many common questions about FPS and it’s products and provides some fun. Customers can save some money and earn free FPS stuff with some of our point promotions. It’s not even necessary to be a FPS product user to register. We want to know what all handheld users out there want from their software.

Do you have any plans to start developing applications for the Pocket PC Platform?

We would like to and are watching this market very closely, even more so now that there are some ‘affordable’ Pocket PC devices. The Dell Axiom for example. That is a really, really nice device. Palm is loosing it’s edge somewhat. The new devices are great, but they are slipping in the areas that made them great.

Battery life is not as good as it once was, and it’s getting more complicated to develop for. These are reasons that Palm had the lead in the past. It was small, fast, simple, relatively easy to develop for because it had limited focus and hardware. I think that from a development perspective, Palm has lost any advantage it once had.

Lastly, do you have any “sneak peeks” of upcoming applications or other surprises you’d like to share with my readers?

We have monthly specials and bundle offers that you don’t want to miss and keep checking our website for upgrades to our current products. Be sure to watch for several new products being released this Spring 2003!

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