Despite the Atlantic ocean and 7 hours separating us, I had the pleasure of talking to Dominique of MEGE-SERVICES about his new RapidTable plug-in. Dominique lives in France so the interview was conducted via instant message and despite a bump in the road or two (both of us typing at the same time) it was a fun and enlightening experience.
I started the interview out by asking what the reason was behind developing RapidTable. Dominique explained that he wanted a way to list all of the wines he has in his personal collection on a website. He already had a MySQL table of his collection on his Mac and just needed a way to list them on a webpage. He also wanted to develop for fun. Being a wine lover myself, I expressed my envy of all the wines listed on the RapidTable demo pages. Dominique confided that he doesn’t actually own all those wines listed. It’s just part of the demo.
Back on topic, I then asked him who he thought the target audience for a plug-in like RapidTable would be. He thought that in addition to using it for displaying things like the contents of a wine cellar, anyone needing to display a list of things like events, addresses, and links, would find RapidTable useful.
“RapidTable is a simple thing. It’s not very powerful but it’s doing the job.” says Dominique.
He then went on to say that he developed the plug-in for himself but thought that others might be able to use it.
I asked Dominique how long, from inception to official release, did it take to develop RapidTable. He wasn’t able to give me an exact answer since the process consisted of many stages and was a culmination of many other technologies, all of which Dominique had to learn in the process. He started out wanting to learn MySQL and SQL, then learned to develop in PHP using the CakePHP framework, PHPMyEdit and PHPBuilder. Finally, he turned to the RapidWeaver SDK (Software Development Kit).
“I’m still learning and it’s hard for me because I don’t like Cocoa ;-).”
Ultimately, Dominique estimated that it took him about a month to create the actual plugin.
With all of his recent plug-in releases, RapidTable, RapidGuestbook, RapidMap, I was surprised to find out that Dominique doesn’t develop software for a living. When I asked him what kind of response RapidTable was receiving, Dominique stated that this was the first time he’d developed software for sale but is happy so far.
Finally, I asked him if there was anything else he was working on that he’d be able to give us a hint about. He stated that he's working on something that would integrate existing internet software like forums into a RapidWeaver site. He’s also exploring CMS (Content Management System) as well as RapidWeaver themes.RapidTable is available from MEGE-SERVICES for €11.
I want to express my thanks to Dominique for taking time to talk to me about RapidTable. This was the first time I’d ever done an interview via instant message and it was an interesting experience. I learned a lot about his great new RapidWeaver plug-in, RapidTable. I also learned that even a short interview takes a long time when you’re instant messaging.
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