Plain Text - The blog of Plain

Hi. Although our team is just getting started we thought we'd take a short break to jot down a few details about what it is that we're up to.

We're building three things at once; a company, a space, and a product.

Plain

The name of our company is Plain and we're focused on building deliberately simple products that get out of the way and allow us to focus on the task at hand. If you glanced at the apps we use on our Macs, iPhones and iPads you'd notice a trend - most of the apps we use serve a single purpose, they are generally easy to learn and use, are affordable, and can be used by anyone in the world. We are focusing on building products just like the ones we love the most.

Today we are a small team of four; Colin (that's me), Kyle, Jeff and Carla. We'll introduce you to each of our team members, share about how we work, our philosophies, the tools we use, and much more here on our blog; Plain Text. You can follow along by subscribing to our RSS feed or following @plainmade on Twitter.

Plain Space

We needed a great space for our team to get work done. But we also want to collaborate and learn by working next to people that walk, talk, and think like we do. And to share what we've learned with others in our community. We call our space Plain Space and we're opening it up to anyone that would like to work alongside of us. Drawing inspiration from fantastic communities like Indy Hall and well managed spaces like P'unk Avenue in Philadelphia we hope to build our own community of coworkers that love to share ideas and better the local community.

We know that the tech and business scene in Carbondale, PA isn't what it should be. Plain Space is our way of beginning to help make it better. We know we can't do it alone so we hope you'll help us.

We plan on opening Plain Space up for public events in the very near future. If you'd like to help us make this happen please get in touch with us, follow @Plain_Space on Twitter, or save Plain_Space on Foursquare. If you're observing from afar feel free to be a fly on the wall and join the Plain Space Flickr Group.

Barley

Have you ever wondered why you need to log into a complex administrative area with forms, modules, buttons, plugins, pages, posts, links, software updates, stats, linkbacks and much more just to edit a single line of text on your web site? Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could just tap on any content on your site, whether you're on your phone, tablet, or computer, and edit your web site without ever having any knowledge of HTML, CSS, FTP or feature-packed and complex Content Management Systems?

Yes. It would be. And we think it is time for something new, something different, something easy, something better. That is why we're building Barley.

Barley is our first product and it is a doozy. We've already fallen in love with it. We think everyone that has or needs a web site is going to love it too. In fact, the page you're reading right now is running on Barley. Our entire web site is. We couldn't be more anxious to give the power of this simple product to everyone that needs it. It isn't quite ready for public use yet but we'll be giving it out on a first-come, first-served basis. So please sign up to be notified as soon as you can!

Also, be sure to follow @getbarley on Twitter if you'd like to keep up-to-date with development of Barley. Yes. We know. We have a lot of Twitter accounts. Deal.

We know posts like this are always thin on details and full of promises but we have to start somewhere, right? Thanks for taking the time to read about what we're up to. Now that you know we hope you'll stick with us as we work really hard to build products that you'll love and use every day.