It’s make or break time for PageFour. Version 1.2 went live at half past midnight.

One of the prevailing opinions in software development circles is to release early and release often. By doing this, you develop your product in line with your customers. Features being added to the next release should always be features existing users have asked for, or potential users have queried before deciding not to buy.

Releasing against a six monthly or even worse, a yearly development plan is catastrophic. The software market, and the IT industry in general changes too fast for such long term plans. And one year is a very, very, long time.

Small software companies have one huge advantage over the giants, and that is their ability to do things quickly. For Microsoft to release a new version of MS Word is probably a two year undertaking - for a company of one or two programmers, two or three months is not unrealistic.

I’ve been following this maxim with PageFour since day one. Version 1 was released on October 8th this year. The world did not shake, but the feedback and suggestions were inspiring. Two months later and I’m feeling very confident about the new release.

The only question now is: will the world shake? And if not, can I make it shake?