Whereas the side of the project I work on is focused on dealing with home owners, StepRep is a tool for Online Reputation Management, primarily targeted at the service providers that our system will help you recommend to your friends. Of course, it isn’t just people in the home improvement or real estate industries that have online reputations they need to manage. In fact, software developers and hardcore geeks have online reputations! I have an online reputation! That’s why I signed up for the beta at http://steprep.myfrontsteps.com. I know that I am a little biased by the fact that I work with the people that developed all of this, but I am very impressed with what they have done. From a technical standpoint there is a lot going on that even I find overwhelming and a little “magical”.

The main purpose of StepRep is to allow you to see what people are saying about you and your business on the Internet. This includes anywhere and everywhere that someone might be talking about you. StepRep presents you with this information and allows you to categorize the items as good or bad. The good ones are things that you can use to convince new people that you are the right choice for the work they need done. You can even place these items into a widget that can be slapped on your company website, your personal blog – anywhere you want to trumpet your achievements and build your reputation. As for the items you think reflect poorly on you, well, obviously you wouldn’t want to put them in your widget, but you can see where past customers might not have been completely satisfied and do something to change their mind. Flip them to a positive and then slap them in your widget for all to see.

I won’t even try to discuss anything about how StepRep does what it does so well. Honestly, this is because I don’t understand a lot of it. The team working on it are very smart and very skilled at what they do. Starting with the next development sprint my team is going to be working closely with that team as we bring the two systems together to help service providers reach a wider audience through the friends of their customers and to help home owners find the best service providers through people they trust. It’s going to be very exciting and I am hoping that I’ll be able to learn a few things about how StepRep works.

One last thing I want to mention is how much I love the design work that was done for the StepRep site. I got to see some preliminary designs for the MyFrontSteps site today as well and they blew me away. Marie-Louise has really done an awesome job. This is something I really love about working at VendAsta. I work with people who are very skilled at designing for the web and for maximum usability. The wireframing, mockups and designs that I have seen done in my short time there have amazed me. I came to VendAsta from a company that had plenty of graphic designers in the Marketing department. They were all firmly rooted in the world of print advertising. There were some definite growing pains going on as they started to embrace the new world of web design. Now I am working with people who understand the web and the best practices for developing rich, engaging applications for the web. It’s freaking awesome!

I call this one “Metamorphosis”

And he is swathed in ever-petrified dread;
Appear to lift up from the lake;
Late February, and the air’s so balmy
Partly stone, partly the absence of stone,
Sphinx of questioning substance, or a sort?
Snaps of ice cracking in the hidden air.
And so I gaze avidly
their bellies, they’re out cold, instantaneously!
Hoarfrost is in his bones and on his head,
Is it almost honey, is it snow?
Yes. You’d want that said, (if you,
the form sought for centuries by
Homeward into the howling woods), although
Empty streets I come upon by chance,
XVII. Greenland
there’s a pulpy orange-y smell from juice factories….
Event, the end of the painted road ends up
Beneath a pile of corpses, lying massed…
I’ve drifted somewhat from the distant heart.

And this, “Faith before the blade”

Are muffled into silence that refuses
Shadows keep piling up as surfaces
Are gliding toward me on the ice into
Place of absorbing snow, itself to be.
To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire,
demonstrating their talent for comedy—stroke!
At the end of the road. Even if they are staring
Of too much truth to do much more than lie
Yes. You’d want that said, (if you
and the Splendid Splinter). For a few dreamy dollars,
Lucky the bell—still full and deep of throat,
From which, thanks to symmetry,
High on this surface, guarding the edge of Père,
Beneath the snowflakes I notice façades!
The ordinary, wide scene which begins
As it sits there like an eventual.
The weight of being born into exile is lifted.
Unreadable from behind—they are well down.
That rings, with faithful tongue, its pious note.