SuperHappyDevHouse

Mark at Valuecruncher has recently been publishing a lot of valuations for NZX listed companies on the Valuecruncher blog.  

Each post contains a brief description of the assumptions that he’s using and a link to the valuation on the Valuecruncher site, where you can interactively change some of these assumptions and see how it changes the underlying valuation.

For example, see what he thinks about these companies:

• Fletcher Building 
• Michael Hill International 
• Air NZ (remember, if you’re a NZ taxpayer you’re an Air NZ shareholder) 
• Vector 
• Sky TV 

This week he’s trying something a bit different. 

He’s nominated Rakon as the stock of the week, and rather than just publishing his own valuation he’s asking: what do you think it’s worth?

At the start of September a share in Rakon was worth about $3.  Today, just a few weeks later, the same share is worth just slightly above $1.

See: Google Finance Chart for Rakon Limited

Obviously it’s a pretty volitile time for all stocks at the moment, but Rakon has also announced that sales are slowing and their expected profit this year will be much lower than previously expected as a result. 

So, how does that feed into the valuation? 

At $1 per share, is that cheap, or a fair price, or still too expensive?

Valuecruncher provides a starting point for a valuation by automatically generating estimates for each of the key inputs. 

As I type this is calculating a valuation of $1.82, and the current market price is $1.04, suggesting that the shares are 75% undervalued (i.e. cheap!) 

But, when you look at some of the inputs it’s using to come up with this valuation there are some things that look a bit optimistic given the recent announcements.

So, let’s play with some of those assumptions …

In my valuation I’ve assumed slightly lower revenues and profit margins (the grey lines show the starting assumptions, the blue bars show my values).  

I’ve also assumed a lower terminal growth rate (which is the amount of growth beyond the initial three years), at 7% rather than 8.5%. 

This leaves me with a valuation of $1.02, which is more-or-less the current market price.

So, if you’re comfortable with my assumptions then you could say that the current price is about fair value.

What do you think Rakon is worth?  

Start with the Valuecruncher valuation, just like I did, follow these simple instructions, if you need some help, and let us know what you think.

Disclaimers:

This is not intended to be a detailed analysis, and anyway I’m no expert and am mostly following my nose, so I’ve used round numbers. 

In case it’s not blindingly obvious, please don’t buy or sell on the basis of what I’m saying here - this is not investment advice.

I have some Valuecruncher shares but no Rakon shares.  

Posted in Business, Ventures      

Via the O’Reilly Radar, this article from The Boston Globe is well worth a read:

Depression 2009: What would it look like?

“Instead of dusty farm families, the icon of a modern-day depression might be something as subtle as the flickering glow of millions of televisions glimpsed through living room windows, as the nation’s unemployed sit at home filling their days with the cheapest form of distraction available.”

Now, that really is depressing!

Surely there is a lean-forward alternative to that bleak scenario?  

We might be drowning in financial deficits, but there is still a cognitive surplus, isn’t there?

Posted in General      

I’m back in New Zealand after a couple of crazy weeks in Nepal.

I realised this was no holiday when I got to the airport in Auckland and saw some of the stuff the rest of the guys in the group I was travelling with were taking - their check-in luggage overflowing with tools and equipment.  

Everybody had a job - to install electrical systems, or air quality systems, or to lay vinyl floors etc.  It took me a while to work out my role.  

I initially thought that I would just help by being a grunt, but of course there is no shortage of volunteers for that job in the third world!  

In fact, when one of the senior local guys spotted me trying to help out with unloading the truck of equipment at the factory he got quite grumpy, and I was promptly whisked off to have a guided tour of his onion patch (seriously - they were nice onions!)

I eventually worked out that the best way I could help was by soaking up some of the endless hospitality the locals were so keen to arrange for us all, and in the process leave the other guys some space to actually get on with their jobs.

So, I ended up being more tourist than anything else.  

In the process I covered quite a bit of distance on rough roads and on foot and got to see some amazing parts of the country. 

Outside of the busy-ness of the Kathmandu valley it’s a really beautiful place.

Unfortunately photos really don’t do it justice.  The experience is multi-dimensional.  Without the heat, and the bustle, and the noise, and the dust, and the smell, and the tooting, and the taste, and the looming mountains at a height where you only expect clouds, you miss just about everything that makes it interesting.

Just driving through town is exhausting - there is so much to take in and all of your senses are in overdrive.  Your life flashes before your eyes so frequently - as your driver lurches out into the opposite lane, one hand on the steering wheel and one hand permanently on the horn, at a speed that is much faster than the designer of the tiny little car you’re sitting in would have dreamed possible, only to discover that heading in the other direction is a public bus packed so full that people have overflowed onto the roof, while all sorts of livestock block the side of the road  - it starts to become mundane.

It’s also amazing how quickly you become accustomed to things not working.

Especially in the smaller towns the roads are in a permanent state of disrepair, with massive potholes only making them seem even more narrow than they are.  Although they do create some good opportunities for the local kids who put up ad-hoc road blocks - provided they position themselves just past a rough section of road then traffic is already slowed enough to allow them to stop cars and extract a few rupees.

In Kathmandu there is so much traffic - cars, buses, bikes, cows, as well as people on foot - that during the day it’s a permanent jam.  On more than one occasion we left our driver to it and got out and walked.  There are traffic police at the main intersections - they blow their whistle and point and wave their arms, but they are really on a hiding to nothing.  

Out on the highway we passed one gang of guys hauling up a bus which has come off the road and crashed into the river valley below killing 30 people onboard.  I’m not sure how many of those were inside the vehicle and how many were on the roof.  

Around town every driver seems to know the width of their car/bike to the nearest millimetre, and to people familiar with “only a fool breaks the two second rule” it seems astounding that there are not more prangs.  Or, maybe not … I’m told that if you injure someone in an accident you need to pay all their treatment, but if you kill them it’s a flat rate of 5000 rupees (approx NZ $100), so anybody who causes an accident is incented to make the extra effort to ensure they are not left with an ongoing bill for care (in other words: if you do get run over watch out for the car that just hit you switching into reverse!).

Technology is a bit of a mixed bag.  Just about everybody carries a mobile phone, and calls are ridiculously cheap - about 4 rupees (or 8c) per call.  But, on the other hand I was blissfully without an internet connection for most of the trip.  When I asked at one of the places we stayed if they had access I was told it would be available tomorrow.  This turned out to be an optimistic estimate (perhaps tomorrow as in tomorrow never comes), as I later discovered they were still waiting for trenches to be dug and wires to be laid so they could get connected.

Despite having so much hydro potential, there is not enough electricity to go around, forcing the country into a system of “load sharing” where one region at a time is disconnected for an hour or two on a rotational basis.  Apparently there is a schedule, but even so the locals still seem surprised when it happens.  Everybody scrambles into action, torches are found, candles are lit and generators are fired up, and everything quickly gets back to normal (apart from the tourists stuck in their room with no idea what is happening).

Despite the impact this sort of stuff has on their lives, everybody is so tolerant. 

At the check-in desk at the airport on the way out they have a professionally printed sign which reads “System Down”.  When that gets put up the waiting queue quickly sorts itself out - the Europeans and Americans get seriously agitated with the delay, while the locals just stand patiently hoping that it will soon be fixed.

Just like everywhere else in the world, it’s the people who make the place special.  

While I was there they were celebrating Tihar, which is the local equivalent of Diwali and marks the start of the new year (I’ve seen in 2065 already!).  All of the main streets and buildings were lit up for the occasion.  Because there were a few days with less traffic even the smog took a holiday, and there were some nice clear views over the Kathmandu valley.

Sanjeev, who is the adminstrator at the cancer hospital in Bhaktapur, devoted himself to looking after me throughout the trip.  He invited me around to his house for the Bhai Tika ceremony on the final day of the festival.  It ended up being the highlight of the trip.  They live as an extended family - his grandmother is 77 and his son is 3.  Their place is about an hour out of Kathmandu, along some roads that the average kiwi SUV driver would probably feel a bit anxious about.  But, they made me feel very welcome, and were obviously keen to let me experience a bit of what their lives are like.  They seemed a little nervous about how I would react to the food, but it was fine - although I was pleased to have a knife and fork to eat with as I’m not nearly as efficient eating rice with my fingers as they are.  

Maybe one day I’ll have the chance to return the favour.  Who knows what they would make of my place?  They would no doubt find it just as foreign and odd.

What about Nepal generally?  

As you travel around there is not much evidence of wealth.  In fact they make a mockery of what we call poor.  

This graph from GapMinder shows the progress they have made since 1950:

Back then the average income was less than $500 per person, and the average life expectancy was only 36.  The blue trail shows the change since then. The red trail shows NZ over the same time frame.  For Nepal, both statistics have doubled in the last 60 years, but even so still they live shorter lives than New Zealanders did in 1948 and earn on average about 1/17th as much as we do now.  Outside of Africa only Butan, Haiti and Timor-Leste are below them.

Overall I was left feeling pretty small and quite selfish. 

It’s so easy to go on this sort of trip thinking that you are doing something good, but you soon realise that actually says more about you than anything.   The amount of need is so overwhelming, that it’s very easy to feel completely hopeless.  I certainly didn’t come away with a sense that anything I could do, or indeed anything that anybody could do, will make much of a dent.  And I was depressed to meet a few locals who have started to become immune to people like me promising to help but following up with little, or nothing.

But, despite that, I did get to see a few examples of good stuff happening.  Most, it seems, are where outside people with skills or resources that don’t exist there are supporting and pushing along the locals who are already trying to help themselves.  This is obviously not a new model - Sir Ed did much the same thing, and even today a NZ $5 note is a popular present in Nepal.

Ray took me to Tilganga, which is a facility in Kathmandu that he was involved in setting up in the early 90s when he was working with the Fred Hollows Foundation.  They manufacture world class lenses, which are sold around the world and provide a source of income to subsidise the cataract surgery and eye clinic that they run for the locals.  

It’s not necessarily a free service as some of the patients who need treatment can afford to pay.  So they have come up with a nice pragmatic system for determining how much to charge based on some simple things they can observe - for example, is the patient wearing shoes, do they have jewellery, have they come by themselves or with family members, etc.  They still have a final subjective check, as some people will borrow clothes (and relatives!) from their neighbours for the occasion, but this at least makes the initial assessment objective, which is easier for the nurses who are reluctant to be making those sort of decisions.

When I was there there was a big crowd of people waiting patiently to be seen that day.  Some, I suppose, left later that day with a much better life as a result.

It’s yet another example of an overnight success, which actually took 10 years.

Luckily there are some people willing to help who have that sort of patience required to see projects like that through.  Most people, I suspect, are like me and would need a much faster pay-back.

If you’ve travelled to these sort of places yourself, then I doubt anything I’ve described here will be much of a revelation.  If not, then I would strongly encourage you to, when you can.  It will change the way you think, at least, and maybe the way you act too.

I reckon there is probably a bit of untapped demand for this sort of trip, where you can actually try and leave something a bit more substantial than footprints during your travels.  That’s an idea that will bubble away in the back of my mind.

In the meantime, some photos (click for full size versions) …

Sunrise Over Kathmandu

Collecting Water For The Day

Phil & Bill At The Factory

Mother

Sanjeev & Grandmother

Lunch

Sushant, The Ghost

No Helmet?

Connected?

Mourning Monkey

Joogi

System Down

Lots more on Flickr, if you’re interested.

Posted in Social Ventures, Travel      

I’m currently in Nepal with a group from Medicine Mondiale.  

One of the places we’ve visited is the factory they are currently building, where they will produce an infant protein formula.

This is a crazy part of the world, so there are some interesting stories I will talk more about here once I’m back to a more reliable internet connection.

In the meantime, here is a short video they have put together as part of their entry in Google’s Project 10100…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHTmUcTzZFI

From the voice over…

“Every year, more than five million infants die of protein energy malnutrition, because their bodies don’t have the energy to digest essential protein-rich food.

ProteinForte is a revolutionary pre-digested high energy chicken protein formula.

Made from unwanted by-products from the developed world, it costs only 20 cents and fits in a sachet.

And it could reduce global infant deaths by up to 75%.

The world can’t march forward with an empty stomach.”

Some very simple things you can do to be part of this:

• Watch the video
• Add your comments of support on YouTube
• Vote for this project (okay, this only applies if you’re a Google employee at the moment - the rest of us: if you know somebody who works at Google, tell them to vote for this project)
• Send the link to your friends
• Blog about it

Easy!

I’m sure all of your help will be much appreciated.

Related posts:

• Medicine Mondiale’s sexy science

Posted in Social Ventures      

Another Wordle.

This time using the text from the Trade Me Manifesto that I published here last year:

I think that sums it up nicely!

Posted in Business, Software Development, Technology, Trade Me, Usability      

Question:

Why does the Powerball Jackpot max out at $30 million?

On a normal week they sell 1.5 million tickets.  Last week, when the jackpot was $24 million, they sold 2.5 million tickets.  This week they sold 3.5 million tickets, worth $33 million.  

So, it seems that a big jackpot is good for sales. 

Why not let the fun continue if nobody wins? Let the amount get REALLY BIG!

Also, for what it’s worth, and appreciating that maths is the LAST thing people think about when they buy a Lotto ticket, a quick calculation…

No doubt there were lots of people who don’t normally buy a Lotto ticket, but did this week.

However, the prize this week was 25% more than last week, but there were 40% more tickets sold, so the already low odds were actually much lower this week than last!

:-)

Related posts:

• What would you do?
• Never compare you inside with somebody else’s outside
• On having something to be excited about

Posted in New Zealand      

Slightly old news, but anyway …

Motion Charts are now available in Google Spreadsheets.

These were originally made famous by Hans Rosling.  If you haven’t seen his TED talks please start here:

This seems like a solution itching for a good problem.  

These charts can easily handle five dimensions of data: x-axis, y-axis, bubble size and bubble colour + time scale.

Does anybody have an interesting and available data set like that which we could all use to play with?

Bonus points for NZ data. :-)

Posted in Technology      

As a country, what do we reward?

Take a look at the list of the current members of the Order of New Zealand, which is our country’s highest public honour:

There are plenty of politicians: two former Prime Ministers, three other former Members of Parliament, and two former Governors General.  

There are artists, including an author, a poet, a potter, and an opera singer.

There are those who have been involved in community work.

There is a trade unionist, a doctor, an architect, a lawyer and a judge, a church minister and a theologian.

There is even an All Black and an Olympic gold medalist.

But nobody who is recognised as a business leader.  Nada.

Is there nobody who has made a worthy contribution?  Or are we just not including those who have?

Either way, it’s pretty telling isn’t it?

Posted in Business, New Zealand      

I was quick to complain about Contact Energy when I found their online billing frustrating.

How about something more positive …

Here is an email I got recently from Telecom:

The best thing about this? 

I don’t have to visit the website because the email contains all of the information I’m most likely interested in - the amount I owe and the date that the payment is due. 

As long as that looks right, I’ll delete the email and move on.  If not, the most prominent link takes me straight to the online bill, rather than dumping me in a maze of a marketing site.

The email is also signed by a real person, which is nice.

If I wanted to be really picky:

• They could use fewer words - i.e. the first sentence only needs to say “Your latest online bill has arrived”. 
• The URL for the link to the bill could be more human-readable - interestingly the link they provide direct to the bill at the bottom of the message is much nicer, so why not use that I wonder?
• They could include the standard text that appears on the bill to explain that a direct debit is setup for this payment.

But, those are all small things. 

This is a much nicer user experience.  Full credit!

And, what’s really interesting about this … I’m now much more likely to be receptive to appropriate marketing messages that might be included in the future in this sort of email, or on the associated web site.

Posted in Technology, Usability      

Earlier this week I found myself in the Koru lounge at Wellington airport waiting for a delayed flight.

I was using the time to arrange an upcoming trip, and was quite surprised to see this brick wall when I tried to access TripIt.com:

 

The “Your organisation…” is a bit misleading. I was just using the free wifi point.

If anybody from Air NZ is reading … what?

I realise it’s been a few years since I worked in a big corporate, so I might just be unaccustomed to being treated like a little kid by an IT department, but seriously what are you trying to prohibit here. You don’t want me to visit travel related websites while I’m in the Koru lounge?

What’s worse, you actually allow me to do it, but you want to make me feel naughty in the process? As it was I just clicked the “Use Quota” button and it let me straight through. What other sites you don’t think are acceptable, I wonder?

Quite weird.

By the way, speaking of Air NZ and TripIt…

Has anybody else run into problems with the new format e-tickets emails that Air NZ have introduced recently? I’m using Mail.app on OS X and am having a problem with the attachments:

The item in the inbox has 9 attachments, but the message itself has only 6. The 3 that are missing are the PDFs with the booking details.

When I forward to TripIt it is no longer able to automatically add the booking as it has in the past.

When I look at the same message through gmail.com it has all 9 attachments and works fine when I forward to TripIt, so it would seem to be a Mail.app problem.

Is this just me, or have others seen this too?

UPDATE (13-Oct): 

Kim from AirNZ added this comment.  Good news!

“Air NZ recently updated the design of its e-tickets, at the same time upgrading the system which generates the email and attached documents. The PDF and calendar appointment missing from the email when viewed in the Apple Mail client is a teething problem which is being actively closed down. We hope to have a fix in place later in the week.”

Posted in Technology, Usability      

Thanks to everybody who took time to comment on my Fairy Tale Pricing post from last week.

I asked what other pricing techniques have you seen or used.

There were lots of great suggestions, including:

• Paul’s cash back offer
• Ben’s “give away the razor/printer, then skin ‘em alive on the blades/ink”
• Julian’s product bundling (there is a whole ‘nother post for me to write at some point about Trade Me’s very effective “Feature Combo” bundle); and
• Andrew’s “3 for the price of 2″, last but not least.

But, the winner of the book, by majority decision, is MikeE with this:

“Back when I worked at a paintball field (I was like 14), we firmly believed that if the customers weren’t complaining about price, you obviously weren’t charging enough.

Seems to work pretty well, if customers are happy with the price, keep uping it untill you get complaints.. you’ve now got the optimum price point ;-)”

Evil … but exactly what I was after.

Thanks to Fishpond.co.nz for supplying the prize. :-)

Posted in General      

The newspapers are full of stories about bank failures.

And, then this morning, I get this…

(click for full size)

(click for full size)

Sheesh, that’s a bit close to home! :-)

Posted in Technology      

I’ve had these for a while, and have been meaning to post a pic here:

I love them!

Next time you see me ask me for one of my moo cards. 

All of the background pics come from Flickr.  It’s always interesting to me to see which design people choose when I let them pick.

:-)

Posted in Design      

I also have some $10 vouchers to give away to anybody who is new to Fishpond.

If you’d like one just drop me an email (my address is in the right hand sidebar).

Valid today and tomorrow only. :-)

Posted in Ventures      

One of the hardest things to get right when you have a new product or service is pricing.

It requires a beautiful mix of art and science. And, even when you think you have it right something changes and it’s probably all wrong again.

I’m no expert. Far from it. But there are a few tips I’ve picked up over the last few years of watching people who are much better at it than me.

1. Experiment

When you stick to one price you only find out about one point on the demand curve. So, don’t be scared to change the price.

There are lots of ways that you can do this. You don’t have to pick just one.

Some examples:

• Offer limited time specials - a.k.a. “Cinderella” pricing (be quick … offer expires at midnight tonight!) If it works you can always extend the offer and even make the change permanent, but if it doesn’t you can revert to the normal prices without feeling bad about it.
• Offer discounts to certain groups of people. Student discounts are one common example. But, you can be even broader - e.g. special prices for everybody who is not already a customer.
• If you have a subscription price offer people the chance to pay more up-front - for example, 15 months for the price of 12, or an annual price to compliment your monthly price.
• Put the price up! This last one can be terrifying, but if you have a successful product there is every chance that people would pay more for the same thing. At least you should do the maths and understand the impact that different price points have on your total revenue.

2. Step away from your rational brain

Look around and see that most prices end in a 9. The reason this works is not rational, and can often be difficult for smart technical people to get their heads around, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing

3. Remember “Goldilocks” 

You know the fairy tale - the little bear’s porridge is too cold, and the big bear’s porridge is too hot, but the middle bear’s porridge is just right.

Seth Godin calls this “triangulation“.

Think about how you can provide different price points. If you currently have only one price point think about how you can introduce a new variation of your product at a cheaper price, and another (with additional features or benefits) at a higher price. The idea is to use these new options to make your existing price look “just right”, so it doesn’t necessarily matter if not many people actually choose them or not.

Obviously this is not a full list.

What other evil tricks pricing techniques have you seen or used?

If you’re interested in the behavioural economics of pricing I recommend a book called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. I have a free copy to give away courtesy of Fishpond.  To go in the draw just add a comment below - the best pricing suggestion wins. 

Related links:

• Joel Spolsky: Camels and Rubber Duckies
• The Economist: Pricing and the brain - hitting the spot
• Josh Koppleman: The Penny Gap

Posted in Business      

I’ve signed up to receive our power bill via email.

So, I get an email telling me our latest bill is now available online.

Here is the page I’m redirected to.

It’s not the bill.  

It’s a landing page full of noise.  

See how long it takes you to find the link to the bill.

(click for larger size)

There are actually two links.  Neither of them exactly jump out at you.  

I never even noticed the link in the top-right until I took this screen shot.  This is not especially surprising as this position is so often used for advertising that people will just block it out.

It’s reasonable to assume that the link would be somewhere in the body of the page, but as you scan that area everything which looks vaguely like a link says “Find out more >”.  More about what, exactly?  

Why don’t they link directly to the bill, I wonder?  

Or even better simply include the important information (e.g. total amount owed and due date?) in the email itself and let me avoid this hassle altogether.

Is online billing about making things easier for customers or creating opportunities for the marketing department?

Posted in Usability      

From Wordle, via the Ponoko blog, here is a visualisation of the tags I’ve used in the last 5 months of using del.icio.us:  

The latest bookmarked pages are shown on the right hand side of this page (for those of you reading on rowansimpson.com).  

If you want to follow me on del.icio.us, my user name is rowan.simpson.

PS: does anybody know of a nice way to sync between starred items in Google Reader and bookmarks in del.icio.us?

Posted in General      

As mentioned on The Panel this afternoon …

Art

John Bird and John Fortune on market sentiment, market salaries, structured investment vehicles (a.k.a. dodgy debts) and rewarding greed and stupidity:

Life

US Treasury chief makes case for bailout

“US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has taken his case for an unprecedented US$700 billion bailout of financial markets to the American people, saying it was needed to prevent further damage to an already fragile economy.”

They picked it!

It’s over four years now since we got back from living in the UK and I still miss their show.

Posted in General      

How often do you floss? 

Honestly!

For me it’s one of those things that I know I should do, but which I don’t actually do nearly as often as I could.

Validating HTML is the same. 

We web developers all know we should, but so often don’t.  

Why?

Is it because we don’t think standards are important?  I know this is true for a small minority, but I don’t think this is the reason for most, because I think smart developers and testers understand how having valid code makes life easier for both them and the people using their sites.

Is it just too hard?

When we were migrating Trade Me to .NET we decided we would take the opportunity to improve the quality of the underlying HTML as we touched each page.  The intention was to validate all pages using the free tools provided by the W3C.

But, as we quickly discovered, this is no trivial undertaking.  

It’s fine when you’re working with a mostly static page. But, as soon as you’re working with a dynamic data driven page the number of different variations of the page can quickly become overwhelming.

If you have pages which require authentication (either on the server or in the application), or requires a user to post information into a form, it becomes more or less impossible.  If the validator can’t reach the page directly you have to save a local copy of the HTML and upload this manually to the validator.

Who has time for that?

Even when you do make the effort the results often confuse more than they help.

Validators are (almost by definition) pedantic, and as a result do a generally poor job of differentiating between things that make a real difference to users and things that, while strictly and correctly identified as errors, are not so critical.

And, there is no easy way to keep track of the errors that exist on a page over time.  So, when you’re presented with results it’s difficult to identify those errors which are new or to easily exclude results you’ve seen before.

This is not so bad if you have a page that is normally fully compliant, but a much more common scenario, unfortunately, is working on improving a page that is full of invalid code.  In that case it’s a nightmare.

The tools really don’t make it easy.

So, what do we do? Continue on wishing we could be more diligent, but lacking time and tools?

I think we can do better!

A while back I wrote about an idea I had for solving some of these problems.

I was stoked when one of the smartest developers I know put his hand up.  Over the last couple of months we’ve been working on turning this idea into a real working tool.  And now we have something to show you all…

We’re calling it Wingman.

It’s a Firefox browser plug-in, which automatically sends the exact pages you visit to the server, making it trivial to validate.

And, it’s a website which organises the results, making it easy to identify the errors you’re interested in, and to spot trends so you can fix things as soon as they occur.

Plus, it’s designed to get smarter as more people use it, by aggregating information about what types of errors are commonly ignored across all users.

In time we imagine a system which runs various different types of validation, including potentially hooking into validations services which are hosted outside of Wingman itself.  But, for starters, we have implemented a simple HTML validator, based on the service created by validator.nu.  CSS and Javascript validation are the next obvious candidates, but we’re really interested to hear your ideas for what other things we could include in this mix - for example, a spell checker, a test for basic SEO rules, or an outbound link checker are three ideas that have been suggested to us already. 

Today we’re opening up a free invite-only preview of the service, so we can start to see how people might use a tool like this.  

If you’d like to have a play please register on the site.  We’ll be sending out the first group of invite codes shortly.

I’ll look forward to hearing what you think!

Wingman

Hmmm?