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Anthony Welgemoed joins ProofHQ as CTO

I would like to announce a big change at ProofHQ.

Anthony Welgemoed has joined us as CTO.   Anthony is a super-sharp technologist with terrific experience with both marketing workflow and SaaS software products.  He joins us from Mtivity (the last company I founded) and before that he ran a 25 person development team at Lastminute.com.

It’s perfect timing having someone of Anthony’s calibre step into the CTO role:

  • Our development team is growing quickly.  We have 10 people split between Poland, the UK and shortly the USA.  This requires more sophisticated product road map planning and better management of day-to-day product development.
  • Our core client base is growing massively.  This puts pressure on us to scale our infrastructure and keep it scaleable.
  • We are doing more “consulting and integration” work for Fortune 100 clients.  That work needs to be completed in parallel with our core product development.  This is a discipline that most SaaS companies need to manage.
  • Our architecture is split between quite different technologies (Flex, PHP/MySQL, Java, Windows).  That complexity needs to be managed efficiently so that the pace of product development is maintained.
  • Finally, we have more partner relationships to support at a technical level.

This is a great step forward for ProofHQ.  we are delighted to have Anthony join us.

How we roll at ProofHQ

ProofHQ people are spread around the world.  I am based in the UK and travel a lot to the US.  Many of the development team are based in Poland.  We are on Skype all day every day - it’s our virtual water cooler. Sometimes I sit here in the UK itching with excitement about new features.

[06:48:18] Kamil Szafranek: darag&drop proof to workspaces is almost ready
[06:48:30] Mat Atkinson: Great
[06:48:40] Mat Atkinson: The workspace to workspace?
[06:48:47] Kamil Szafranek: is the next
[06:48:55] Kamil Szafranek: will be
[06:49:08] Mat Atkinson: How are you finding drag and drop to implement?
[06:50:21] Irek Kubicki: Is it difficuilt?
[06:50:58] Mat Atkinson: Only when he is interrupted by me asking stupid questions :D
[06:51:08] Kamil Szafranek: no, it isn’t difficult :)
[06:51:12 | Edited 06:51:18] Irek Kubicki: he’s not the only one :P
[06:51:24] Mat Atkinson: I know
[06:51:41] Mat Atkinson: I was always the kid in the back of the car asking “Are we there yet?”

How your career in advertising evolves

Thanks to Diego Zambrano

Your business card is crap!

Good design is…

From the great folks at Flywheel Design…

Good design is the quickest, most cost-effective form of marketing.

Good design is the process of problem solving, not decoration.

Good design is always grounded in knowledge of the client’s needs.

What are your “Good design is…” quotes?

When clients become designers!!

Enough said…


Cliente designer from Mauricio Campos - COMMO design on Vimeo.

ProofHQ Tutorial Movies

We wanted to provide an easy to access list of our tutorial movies:

New ProofHQ Release

We just released a new version of ProofHQ. Here’s a summary of the main features.

New Dashboard

We have introduced a brand new Dashboard that will give you a much clearer view of all of the activities on your proofs.

There is a new Overview section, which helps filter quickly to the proofs that you have to either review or manage.

We have created a new Stats section, so you can keep up to date with the proof and storage that you are using.

We have also added filters to the Recent Activity section so that you can filter to view New Comments, New Proofs and Decisions.

Additional options for proofs

We have added some additional controls to the Create Proof and New Version:

Proof Owner. When you create a proof you can now make someone else in your organization the owner of the proof. For example, a designer may create a proof, but make an account manager the owner.

Activate passcode. You can quickly add a passcode to your proof for additional security.

Block download of the original file. You can now prevent reviewers downloading the original file.

Block the embed code. You can now block the embed code being used so that reviewers are not able to embed a miniproof.

Block the public URL. You can now block the public URL being used so reviewers can only access the proof via the personal URL that they receive in the New Proof emails.

New Miniproof design

We have created a new design for the miniproof. The main change is that we have moved the comments from a side bar to a proof list. This makes it easier to navigate from comment to comment. We have also added a zoom menu so that reviewers can zoom to specific zoom levels. You can see a movie about the miniproof here http://www.proofhq.com/html/miniproofmovie.htm.


ProofHQ API

We have launched the ProofHQ API in private Beta. This let’s you create proofs remotely from your own applications, and get information about existing proofs to display in your applications.

If you are interested in joining the Beta for the API, please contact us at support@proofhq.com.

Can design save the world?

Put’s our self-obsessed “designy” lives in perspective.

Designed by Frank Chimero.  Spotted by Swiss Miss and Joanna Goddard.

New release

We pushed out a new release yesterday.

We have introduced icons in the proofs list tab to show you the status of proofs.

We have added Workspace selection to the desktop Uploadr. This is the desktop tool that lets you drag and drop files for proofing directly from your desktop. Now, when you upload proofs from your desktop, you can add proofs to a Workspace.

You can get the Uploadr here http://www.proofhq.com/html/uploadr.html

There have been numerous other small improvements.

As always, comments and feedback most welcome.