The traveling Star Wars exhibit “Star Wars — Where Science Meets Imagination” has finally come to Minnesota. I had the opportunity to check it out, and I can say it certainly lives up to the hype.

Patrons are invited to view original movie costumes and props, examine the incredible detail of model ships, watch exclusive behind the scenes clips, meet storm troopers, and even climb into the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit for the jump to light speed.

To get a small glimpse of what’s in store for you, see my photos above. I used Wonderfile’s tag sharing feature to create the interactive slide show. To start making and sharing your own slide shows for free, sign up for Wonderfile.

Birth is a messy operation. The creative process is messy. A software application that is gonna scale better not be messy.

Giving birth to a new software application puts you in the very zen-like place of being both messy / not messy.

Does anyone hear the sound of one hand clapping?

ArcStone is in the final pangs of the Wonderfile birth process. We have our first paying Wonderfile customers - yeah! We have a number of consulting projects that leverage Wonderfile’s SOA (Service Oriented Architecture - in plain English: using web services to access Wonderfile functionality from any web site). And we find ourselves in the unique position of having developed a really useful tool - a fantastic, shiny Swiss army knife for tagging and file management.

We love it, we understand it - the tool works for us - but we’re finding that those who jump into Wonderfile just don’t get it.

I have come to realize, that most of our clients aren’t ready for Wonderfile as a general tool. They just don’t have the time or inclination to fully grok it - there’s no way there gonna buy it.

I know that our customers (and people in general) will buy a solution to a specific problem. People will visit Google and look for solutions to ease their pain / scratch that itch.

What is more likely to happen? Xavier has to manage leases for his company - keeping track of all the docs, expirations, etc. He goes to Google - does he search on “file management keyword search tagging reminders” or “lease management systems”? My money is on “lease management systems” - he has an itch that needs scratching in specific terms, not general. The more specific we can be with Wonderfile driven apps and Wonderfile marketing - the more successful we’ll be.

That’s our charter and the next round of work for us - tailoring Wonderfile and marketing it to solve specific problems in specific markets.

The product development folks call this “development to commercialization” - I call it ArcStone’s biggest marketing challenge for 2008.

Wonderfile driven apps - coming soon to a web site near you.

Today Wonderfile rolled out an exciting new feature which makes sharing groups of photos a snap. Simply upload photos, tag them, and share the tag.

You can also embed the share in a web page or blog, as I have done above with my “Fun With Photo Booth” series.

To learn more about our revolutionary file sharing tool, visit Wonderfile.net and sign up to be a beta tester.

There has been a lot of talk about Wonderfile lately. For those of you in the dark, Wonderfile is our answer to the problem of organizing, sharing, searching, filtering, archiving, and distributing digital information.

To accomplish all the amazing things you can do with Wonderfile, we give you three tools: Libraries, Categories, and Tags. This trio of tools allows for unparalleled flexibility, organization, and searching capabilities.

To further illustrate how these tools can be put to use I have prepared a list of my top 10 ways to use Wonderfile:

Keep Track of all the PDFs I Download
Library: PDF Stash - Tags: Documentation, White Paper, How-To

Organize My Source Code
Library: Secret Sauces - Tags: Open Source, PHP, Security

Store Scans of Take Out Menus
Library: Munchies - Tags: Chinese, Free Delivery, Fast

Archive My Digital Artwork
Library: My Artwork - Tags: Anime, Flash, Black and White

Share Photos of the Kids
Library: My Two Sons - Tags: Candid, Halloween, Sports

Backup My Important Software
Library: Tools Of The Trade - Tags: Utilities, Drivers, Shareware

Capture Important Emails
Library: Transmissions - Tags: From Me, Receipts, See Attachment

Store Bookmarks
Library: World Wide Wonders - Tags: Funny, Useful, Blog

Play Photoshop Tennis
Library: 40 Love - Tags: My Serve, Completed, Draw

Sort Candid Celebrity Photos
Library: Celebrity Snaps - Tags: Vacation, Britney, Red Carpet

Wonderfile works very much like your brain when it comes to retrieving information. Most people think – “Ahh let’s see, I need to find that file - I was working with Charlie on the Frederickson project, it was last summer, and we were using an Excel spreadsheet.” Most people don’t think in terms of a file location in some obscure path on their hard drive.

So I’ve learned the trick to making Wonderfile work well is to organize your libraries like you think. Neuroscience has shown us that the neocortex organizes around a seven level hierarchy. Certain brain areas then specialize for processing smaller and smaller chunks of the same kinds of information and store them in those areas for later retrieval.

Wonderfile is built around a three level hierarchy. With libraries set-up for certain areas in your life where the information will not typically overlap – the same kinds of information, like a library for your music, your designs, your research. Within that library you set-up categories, and then tags.

We figure if your brain needs seven levels – three levels ought to be enough to handle your files.

Well we did our first public demo of Wonderfile last night at Minnedemo. I think a good time was had by all. Our demo went fairly smoothly with no significant hiccups. A heartfelt thanks to the ArcStone contingent and some friends who came to show their support.

If you’re into web tech and you live in the Twin Cities you really should go check out the Minnedemo community - it seems to be vibrant, interesting group of folks. I know I’ll keep going to their events.

We’re dialing down our initial Wonderfile beta to just five external customers this next week on the 15th. I think I was a little over ambitious on my earlier blog post. We’re going to take a couple weeks to make a few refinements and do video tutorials so users can better understand how to set-up their libraries and get the most out of the system. We want to be truly well prepared for the bigger beta - we’ve been so focused on developing the app itself we haven’t gotten to some of these other essential niceties. We’ll get it tidied up and then off to the beta test. I’ll post more as things develop.

Tags:Wonderfile

We’re getting soooo close to our Wonderfile beta launch….

An old salty dog programmer (also very successful money-wise) once told me. “A software application isn’t really done until it’s been rewritten from scratch at least five times.”

We’re on our fourth rewrite of Wonderfile. It doesn’t encapsulate our complete vision for the app, but we feel that it’s quite useful as it is, and definitely good enough to publically beta test.

What is Wonderfile? It is a completely new way to think about organizing electronic files. We’re done with the nested folders of the 80’s and have created a hierarchical tag-based framework for managing files. This is really different stuff - a paradigm shift. Comments from experienced IT pros we’ve shown early demos to…

* “Why hasn’t anyone else done this?”

* “I can use this in a ton of different ways.”

* “How can I invest?”

We’ll be posting the access code for our limited beta on this blog October 15th. We’ll let 250 testers in to the system - first come first serve. They’ll be given privileged account status (i.e. less expensive after the test is over) and will be able to influence future development of the system.

For a sneak preview, come see us demo Wonderfile to our peers at Minnedemo Oct. 11 (free beer for the first 200 attendees). Minnedemo is held at O’Gara’s in St. Paul - the demo’s start at 7:30 and we’re the fourth company on stage…

Visit - http://minnedemo.org to register.