• Ryan Singer over at 37signals writes about how to manage long breaks in personal projects. I’m currently using Basecamp to manage this project (which is largely the same method as Ryan describes with Backpack), but I need to settle on a GTD management system that suits the way I work.
• And via Ajaxian comes news of a Flash/GWT charting engine that looks like a prime candidate for generating the interactive charts that will be needed for Add It Up’s reporting system.

Cart45 is a simple and easy-to-install ecommerce application developed by Phil Thompson with Soapy Co and Richard Morton. They’ve launched with a demo site quite literally selling itself, and some screencasts (sans sound, but that might just be me that is experiencing that).

And Olive is a “web app for web designers” by Sarah Parmenter for handling client requests, communication, and payment. Another one to keep an eye on (although in my experience some clients simply cannot be convinced to use anything other than the telephone and the occasional email to communicate).

As a complete novice at WordPress it probably took longer than it should to get it all set up properly, but I’m impressed at how simple applying themes and plugins is on WP.

When it comes to managing a project on which you’re the sole writer, designer, developer, and tester - is a commercial project management solution really necessary?

The answer, of course, is ‘yes’. Without a consistent workflow for identifying, prioritising, and managing all your tasks across multiple areas, it would be far too easy to get overwhelmed by the enormous nature of the task. By breaking the project down into ever smaller tasks (yes, this is GTD I’m talking about) progress seems attainable.

Basecamp is a perfect fit for the way I work, making it easy to make notes, jot down ideas, and quickly add new tasks as they occur to me. Even with just the first few items recorded I’m feeling more focused and have a clearer idea what to do first.

I had a preview/beta copy of Silverback sent to me, but unfortunately I didn’t find an opportunity to use it (aside from filming myself browsing the web for a few seconds) before the beta version expired. I’ll definitely be pushing to use it at work if we ever get permission to carry out any more usability tests, though.

Garrett looks to have been using it to test the Sifter website; I haven’t really thought that far ahead, but it will certainly be an option for AddItUp.

App development seems to have become the de facto next step in the evolution of a web designer. Shaun Inman led the way with the phenomenal Mint, but since then we’ve seen an explosion in freelancers moving into the application development arena. Garrett Dimon’s bug-tracking app, Sifter, has been accompanied by beautifully detailed posts on interface design; Clearleft took a slightly different path and built Silverback as an OS X app; and the Carsonified camp built Amigo, and then failed to sell Dropsend, all the while chronicling their progress on the Bare Naked App blog. Drew and Rachel at edgeofmyseat are setting up their own project even as I type.

Time to throw my own hat in the ring.

Add It Up

I’m a strong believer in 37signals‘ notion of “scratching your own itch”. My itch, in this case, is financial management.

Our finances, like many other families, are spread over several different accounts. I have a business account and a couple of credit cards; we have joint current and savings accounts; and the children have their own savings accounts that we never dip into when we have a tight month. (Ahem.) Gaining an overview of our entire financial position is fairly difficult, then - if I want to compare how much we’re spending on food over the last few months, it’s virtually impossible to do manually.

So of course there are programs to do that sort of thing for me. Microsoft Money and Quicken are probably the most well-known, but there are also others, and there are a few web applications as well, Mint and Wesabe being the biggest (that I’m aware of). I’ve also tried Money, Cha-Ching, and a few other Mac-only applications - and, so far, nothing has met my specific requirements.

Data capture

The most critical part of any finance application (IMHO) is the data capture stage. Most apps offer two ways to do this: Either by exporting data from your online bank in the correct format (MS Money or Quicken both have their own proprietary formats), or by entering each transaction by hand. In either case, your transactions then have to be categorised by you.

My problem is that my bank doesn’t offer downloadable data, so I have no choice but to enter everything manually. One day it occurred to me that it would almost certainly be possible to automate this process by copying+pasting the data from the browser and running a simple PHP script on it. So that - with a plethora of Ajax-powered bells-and-whistles - is what I’ll be building. A way to copy+paste your online statement, categorise any new payees, and generate reports from your saved data.

Personal development

The chances of wresting market share away from the existing personal finance applications is slim to non-existent, so of course there has to be another reason for doing this. In my case, I’ve suddenly found myself at somewhat of a loose end recently; I tried spending the weekend sprawled in front of the TV or playing games, but apparently I need something more stimulating to occupy my time. I also wanted an opportunity to flex my coding muscles, after spending most of my freelance time writing nothing but HTML and CSS. Add It Up will be built on top of my favourite PHP framework, CodeIgniter, and this development blog will in all likelihood be more about coding than interface design. (Not that I could even do justice to the topic - I’m no Garrett.)

So, there you have it. I’ll be posting thoughts, questions, and code examples here as I work on the application - I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens.