February 2012
2 posts
Need > Program > Product > Business
Because of my job, friends and technical background, I happen to discuss quite often about software ideas, web products, mobile apps & internet startups.
Most of the time, I talk about entrepreneurship with software developers that want to start their own company, creating their own product.
I’m a software developer myself, and I know how thrilling it is to start from an idea and...
October 2011
1 post
A Pragmatic Way To Record Screencasts
In the past few days I’ve been recording a few screencasts for NiftySchool.
They’re not too fancy (they don’t really need to be), but still require quite a lot of work.
I came up with a process that allows me to be reasonably quick at creating them.
So here it is, my seven step process to create a screencast:
Step #1: Record a raw demo version
I open up my browser and...
September 2011
2 posts
“There are always plenty of reasons for not doing something. You just need to...”
A Printout Of Your Daily Room Allocation For Your... →
This morning we released a small feature that a few customers have been requesting for a long while.
NiftySchool provides a clear representation of how the rooms in your school are used during the…
August 2011
3 posts
Easily Print Teacher's Monthly Lessons →
NiftySchool provides a timetable module that lets you see how your lessons are organised during the week.
The timetable can be filtered by teacher so that you can check and manage lessons for…
On Running a Marathon, Barefoot.
I would love to run a marathon, it’s been a dream of mine for many years now.
Not only running a marathon, but actually becoming a regular runner, and make physical activity a habit in my life.
Over the years I’ve tried to become a runner multiple times and always failed due mainly to these two reasons:
Awfully painful shin splints (at some point I could barely walk and had to...
July 2011
4 posts
How to Generate Student Reports →
Most language schools produce documents of some sort for their students/clients, outlining classes taken and general progress.
They may be called ‘progress reports’ or ‘student reports’ and usually…
Automatically Close Classes →
For a long time NiftySchool had the concept of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ classes.
We had an internal flag that marked classes as ‘closed’ (meaning they were no longer taught), and you could close and…
You will not believe me
Okay. Today was one of those crazy days that I haven’t had in a looooooong while.
I worked from home in the morning, all business as usual.
Around 2pm someone knocks on the door. I open the door and see a guy quickly running away. What the hell, I think, while taking a few steps up the street to see who this guy was.
It turns out he was one of those charity guys that go door to door...
The Glamour Of Being An Entrepreneur
When I tell people that I’m running an online business they get all “oooh” and “aaah”.
I’ve got to admit, it may sound really cool.
When I put it nicely, it sounds like this:
Hi I’m Paolo. I have an online, subscription based, business. I work from wherever I want. From my home in London, from shared office space (hubculture), from my house in the...
June 2011
5 posts
How To Cancel A Lesson →
Following the recent release of the new timetable, we’re adding a tiny but useful feature: ability to cancel arbitrary lessons without changing the default class schedule.
From the room planner or…
New Weekly Timetable →
Hello everyone, today we’re happy to announce a new timetable module that will make it easy to see how your weeks look like, and will allow you to quickly reschedule and change individual lessons in…
Database Upgrade: What Has Changed →
This morning we released the first upgrade to the NiftySchool database, as specified in NiftySchool: Transition To More Flexible Scheduling.
Let’s take a look at what the ‘surface’ changes are:
NiftySchool: Transition To More Flexible... →
In the past few weeks we’ve been working hard on a internal infrastructure upgrade. This post explains what we have been doing and why.
NiftySchool it’s always been a schedule-based system, in…
May 2011
5 posts
Switching Back to Tumblr etc
After running my blog on jekyll for a couple of years I switched back to tumblr.
I made the switch because I’m about to invest a lot more time & money on my NiftySchool.com business and I’m tempted to share a bit more about this adventure. What I do, the decision that are taken during its promotion and development and so on.
Tumblr is easy and quick to use, it removes the...
“What people want and what people are willing to work their ass off to get are...”
– Hugh McLeod - gapinvoid.com
March 2008
1 post
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”