There is a lot of words to be had right now about the plethora of blog networks in existence. A lot of business models and attention and energy and time and money focused on the content that blogs facilitate the creation of.
But what SWIM has been since the beginning has been a tool inspired by blogging and blogging tools, but focused on the value for the individual creator/blogger him/herself. Specifically, the value that microcontent creation and the linear and nonlinear management thereof can bring to that creative person (read: most everyone, at least in these circles). The latter (the nonlinear management part) being the focus of this blog in particular (and narrative a particularly fequent topic for reasons I’ll perhaps expand upon in the near future).
I still see an untapped sector. There are PIMs coming out of our ears (I would try to make or link to a list, but there are so many, so diverse tools out there, and more every friggin’ day). But none of them help with anything besides email and scheduling, age-old problems (that obviously are still problems or there wouldn’t be a rash of new tools coming out to address them). I’m more interested in what new things can be found out through the intelligent and possibly unorthodox parsing of all this personal detrius we’re throwing out there every darn day.
That has been the driving force behind all the empty promises* of SWIM, and the end-goal that, honestly, I’ve been working towards. It has taken many adjustments. I can’t tell you how many iterative changes have been made to this product since its inception (pretty much just before I started this blog). And so far there has only been one release. We are making another release in a week, and making dramatic changes regarding how we license, manage, and move forward with this project. And it’s breathing the slightest bit of fresh breath into it all.
As does realizing that, still, after years, this piece of the market/problem has yet to be satisfactorily met.
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We don’t make those anymore, but the site used to say: The creative mind –be it in an entrepreneur, artist, writer, software developer, architect, wherever it might express itself–brings a life of constant creative unfolding, the perpetual onslaught of small ideas and big plans. SWIM brings that creative unfolding into focus, helping to preserve the small ideas and connect them to the larger schemes and paradigms in an intuitive and nonlinear way. …It’s still in the plan…We’ll just talk about it publicly when we can actually deliver in the foreseeable future.