Banana Pudding…Yum!!!

I just want to make a quick and dirty post congratulating a co-worker of mine on the launch of his first independent project. The project is Ataraxis Pudding and it is:

“Pudding is a simple visual collaboration tool. You upload images and invite people to review, comment on, and approve your work.”

I helped Michael with some of his initial beta testing, although, I don’t think I was his target audience as I am not a design or graphical person. The software works very intuitively and is a solid 1.0 release. Basically, the designer uploads his graphic then allows his client to see the content. As each party looks at the piece they can comment back and forth until a final product is created. Once the client is happy with the piece the approve button should be selected and a record of the approval is documented for the designers records. Each image is versioned as the process moves forward so if you ever need to go back and see why you made a comment or change you can easily click back through the history of the piece.

The product seems to be geared towards smaller independent designers, but I could see this as a package-able product that Michael could bundle and sell to enterprise who don’t feel comfortable uploading there copyrighted or trademarked images to an independent third party. Overall the feel of pudding is straight forward, Michael has put a lot of time and energy into making sure the user experience is as good as he can make it. I know this because just two weeks ago he decided to completely change the level of control each user has, and completely shift the paradigm of designer/client to a much more collaborative model.

The application is written in rails, which is always exciting and written her in my home town of Orlando, FL. Go East Coast Developers, the West Coast gets all the attention when it comes to web 2.0 and cool development shops, it is exciting to see something coming out of this side of the country where the VC isn’t flowing like water.

I will stop rambling about stuff I probably can’t articulate as well as Michael has already done on his marketing site so go checkout Project Pudding to get the scoop.