Balsamiq Mockups is very good.

At my new gig, I spend a good bit of time mocking up wireframes for a new web app. I tried Omnigraffle, Powerpoint, Keynote, and finally settled on Balsamiq Mockups. It really is a great program. It's simple and hyper-focused on one task - software mockups.

The user interface is trivial (you drag and drop screen elements onto the page and move them around). The learning curve is zero. But the best part is that the mockups are styled to look like hand drawings. At first I thought it was an unnecessary gimmick, but as I began to use it, I really appreciate the feature.

Seeing the mockups with their rough, hand-drawn look reinforces that they are mockups, not cast-in-stone specs. That is a very powerful communication tool when dealing with clients or bosses who want progress updates. You don't have to preface everything with "this is a mockup, not real software", or "this is a crude alpha" (how crude?). It's really great - people instinctively understand the stage of development just by looking at the mockups.

Balsamiq is a little buggy, but not in a way that stops you from working. And I wonder if that has more to do with Adobe Air than Balsamiq. In any case, I highly recommend it.

Note: The makers of Balsamiq give a way free copies to bloggers who write honest reviews of the product. I did not take advantage of that program - I paid for my copy and liked it enough to tell the world about it. I also have a selfish interest in that I want to be able to share Balsamiq files with others, which won't be possible until everyone has Balsamiq...

Changes

My free time just took a nose dive.  I've just started working on a new web business - a properly funded one with other people involved. So between that and my current gig in the real estate investment business I won't have much time to muck about with the ins and outs of my beloved web experiments.

The new business is a web company based here in Austin, and hopefully we'll have something to show for it in the coming months.

Onward!

Protect your Online Data

Not a week goes by after my rant about online app security and Twitter gets hacked. Just days after Twitter users were tricked into divulging their passwords to a fake Twitter site, the company's developer tools were breached. Take a second to think about how bad this could have been. Or how bad it could still get.

Another case this week: Journalspace no longer exists. The company is gone forever, along with thousands of blogs. The company hinted that it might have been due to sabotage by a former employee. Obviously, it also took a healthy dose of complacency on the part of the company, but it happened.

Now, nobody is going to lose a whole lot of sleep if Twitter evaporates in a puff of smoke. (Well, most people won't). But losing a 6 year old blog can be pretty painful, especially if the author was using its SEO mojo to drive a consulting business.

What has me really freaked out is what would happen if it wasn't Twitter that got hacked, but Mint or Wesabe.

The interconnection of web apps is a great, but frightening trend. Make sure you protect yourself - and your data. This is an area of tech that is racing ahead, perhaps a little too quickly.