Cool Tools from iRise®

I ran across this company at one of my clients, who've been using the iRise toolset for some time to streamline the prototyping process for web development. Although my initial reaction was "Great, yet another wireframing tool," I was blown away as I began digging into what they had to offer.

In addition to just providing capability to rapidly assemble visual application prototypes, they have created a suite of tools that support the design process -- from workflow definition through simulation. Key features, such as process whiteboarding and embedded requirements traceability, really make this a must-have for user experience and web designers.

There are three main components to their offering:

iRise Studio™ -- This is the core product for designing web applications. It consists of a series of tools that map to specific activities in the design process. For example, the previously mentioned whiteboarding tool enables real-time definition of site flow (see screenshot). It also allows the designer to represent external systems or processes as 'clouds', allowing the design session to focus on relevant details. Another neat feature, more common with other wireframing tools, is the layout tool. Components can be pre-created and reused, encouragingadherencee to design standards. Also, components such as log-ins and combo boxes are fully functional, giving a rich simulation of the final application.

They also claim the tool can be used by business experts, though based on previous experience with allowing business users to actually do design work, that's rarely a good idea (no offense to non-tech folks, but it does take training and experience to design usable, robust applications).

iRise Reader™ -- Once a simulation has been created, it can be shared with anyone who has the iRise Reader application (free for download here). Files called iDocs can be emailed anywhere and contain helpful items such as walkthrough notes and requirements traceability.

iRise Manager™ -- This is a tool that's solely intended for business users. iRise Manager is in its simplest form a requirements repository. It has some nice (but expected) features for traceability, audit control, and reporting; but, of course, the real power comes in the tie-back to iRise Studio™. Requirements can be visually linked to the relevant pages of the simulation and displayed dynamically during a walkthrough. This provides a strong level of traceability, helping to ensure the final application meets the needs of the business.

Overall, I really like what iRise is doing. The development tools space is a tough place to succeed, largely because they rarely live up to their promise. These guys, I think, are an exception.

Cool Resource

Okay, so I probably won't be destealthing any Web 2.0 startups like the big kids at TechCrunch or Mashable, but I have no shame in posting about sites that have been around for a while. In fact, it's more interesting in some ways to check in every so often to see who's surviving the "really, it's not a bubble!" Web 2.0 bubble.

Categoriz is a site that can't be making a ton of money (see this), but is nontheless a cool resource for finding Web 2.0 resources. It actually reminds me a lot of Yahoo! in the good old days of the mid-90's -- not a bad thing, in my book.

It seems to be kept relatively up-to-date and the categories are logically organized. I find myself visiting the site at least once a week to either find a site I've lost or to see what's new.

Social News Controversy

Wow, digg and reddit are getting a lot of heat recently. One great example is a series of posts by Marc Fawzi over at Evolving Trends, which you can read here. His rant is one of many that have surfaced over the last couple of months calling in to question both the reliability of hive-mind news filtering and, worse, the actual credibility of the people running the sites.

I've used both, as well as a handful of smaller but similar services, and I've got to say that I'm not sure I necessarily care how perfect or imperfect they are. To me, they provide an easy conduit into a broad set of mostly interesting posts and websites. I doubt seriously I'd ever use such a service as a sole or even primary source of news and info.

Heck, either way, they're no worse than pretty much every online news site -- what, do you think they present an unbiased view of the news? Hah!