Like the folder tree we’re all familiar with, we get accustomed to dragging and dropping things from one place to another.  Many of these structures, like file folders, don’t care about the order of the contents. They can sort by things like size or name, but don’t store the order of data.

For more complex data structures, like those in CMS, the order of the data is an important part of the information. Thanks to the code we sent to Dojo, data in a tree can easily be moved from anywhere to anywhere. Previously, you could only drag and drop things into a location. Now it is possible to position things before or after other items, allowing users to intuitively manage their data.

We were recently chosen as one of the Spotlight companies using the Dojo toolkit.  We’ve used open source tools in our applications since the start of the company, but we’re particularly excited about technologies like Dojo because they make it a lot easier to write cutting edge web applications.  Considering the fact that companies like Apple, AOL, and IBM use Dojo, this is quite an honor!

We’ll publishing even more updates in the coming weeks, so keep your eye out for even more changes.

Fresh on the heels of our CMS 1.4 product release announcement, we have just put up a new automated product tour showing off the application. Pay special attention to the reporting section – it’s all brand new.

Our customers don’t want to just look at their data, they want to use it. They want to be able to modify, manipulate, and manage their data. The process for doing so shouldn’t be an entirely new process to learn and manage. Working with the data should be as seamless as any other administrative task. That is what CMS is all about. Designed to work just like any other web page, it requires no special training, and users can quickly find, edit, and share data as quickly as doing a Google search.

Some days the sun shines even when it is raining. Reading that post made this such a day. When we started Spider Strategies, the four of us spent a long time writing our Mission and Vision. In particular, it was very important that we make ourselves different in one particular way:

In today’s world of corporate performance management software, we see the customer left out of this equation all too often. The common formula seems to be simply codifying industry theory and delivering that template via outdated technology.”

Over the past four years, we haven’t changed either our Mission or our Vision. Nor, over the past four years, have we made it a particular point to stress them with our employees. Yet, today, I find that our development manager is passing on the spirit of our Mission and Vision through things like Repeat After Me: I Am Not In The Software Business.

When we say that “Our key distinguisher is, and will always be, our customers.”, we are saying to our employees exactly what Christopher Hawkins says to the software developer community:

“You are not an artiste.
You are not even in the software business.
You are in the problem-solving business.
More to the point, you are in the business-problem-solving business.
The technology problems you solve should always be in the context of solving a business problem.
If the solution to a particular business problem offers less benefit than the effort required to solve it, you should be working to solve a different problem.”

It may be a cloudy, dreary April day in Minnesota today, but for me the sun is shining.