I guess you aren’t really that excited about the service if you can’t spend a few minutes writing down the specific features that make Tick so great today. What you found to be so wonderful about the paid service that others couldn’t get for less money elsewhere.

The service was lacking and I gave specific reasons in the review written above six months ago. I don’t go back and write updates to reviews very often unless there is some very compelling reasons to do so. Furthermore, just because somebody I don’t know stops by and suggests I should — without giving any specific reasons or details why — isn’t going to compel me to do something I rarely do.

All you’ve done so far is disagree with a six month old review, capiche? That’s cool, you are entitled to your opinion, but it’s a bit unfair to stop by here and slam me for something that has changed and then not tell me what has changed, don’t you think?

If you or somebody else wants to list specific features and functions that significantly alter the review above please do and I’ll consider re-reviewing Tick (tickspot.com). Otherwise, I bet you can dip into the archives that go back 3.5 years and find other reviews I’ve written here at certain points in time that now are not as relevant as they once were. Reviews for sites/software and things that can be altered and updated, especially when we’re talking beta software and services, are a tricky nut to crack. Tick should be happy that I spent time looking at their service — on my own time and dime — the first time.

This is one reason why the comments are left open so that others can stop by and add/update the information as it changes. And since the search engines (you do SEO according to your link so you should understand how this works) are also looking at these comments as part of the weight of the page, this gives a re-review/update space to compliment the original review.

And you are guessing wrong again in your last comment. I typically spend hours, sometimes even days and weeks, not minutes looking at sites/products/services that I review and grade. Check the Hmm Reviews section. I also buy most of the stuff I review (didn’t pay for Tick though) and do not receive free loaner review copies or special treatment without a clear disclaimer.

I don’t just stop by, sniff a site for less than an hour, write that it sucks and move on. Being that I’m a developer too and appreciate honest, detailed feedback I try and share that with others. As I mentioned above — again, your comments suggest to me that you didn’t read my review very carefully, or that you are some sort of PR plant by Tick (which if that’s the case is very dishonest that you aren’t giving proper disclosure) — there are specific things I think would make Tick more useful like some sort of Active Timer like program. Something that would keep track of time spent in other applications working on the project when not online. People do work in the field, do work in places when they don’t have an internet connection like on airplanes, you know?

Finally, I have used several very good project planning tools that cost less than the price of one month of Tick service and work with both PDA and desktop with no internet required. So, specifically why would a small developer shop like ours want to use Tick? How would it benefit us?

My reviews are all written from a “who would use this, what would it be used for, and are there other software/services that can do the job for less money and/or better?” Tick just didn’t live up to these tests six months ago. Do they now? Maybe they have changed and do, I don’t know. If one looks at your comments there is no compelling evidence that they do is all I’m saying and when I challenged you to backup your comment you basically replied that you had more important things to do. Whatever. This page has been here six months and will be here many more months with the comments open. Make the time if this is that important to you or don’t, it’s up to you.

So if you or somebody at Tick won’t use this comment space or contact me direct to show otherwise, no, I’m not going to make any more time for this service that I felt was way overpriced six months ago. Why should I?

For all I know, Tick will be gone within a year or two and that would just be wasted energy. Some of the sites/services I’ve reviewed have gone out of business/sold so hopefully you can see why I’m reluctant and if you step out of your own biased shoes on the subject, you’ll see what I’m asking for and why.

Don’t want to give me any details, that’s fine, then it’s just your opinion and I respect that as long as you don’t hold some sort of affiliation or business relationship with the Tick folks that you aren’t properly disclosing. If you do have an affiliation of any kind with the Tick folks your credibility just went completely out the window.

I assume that you spent about 45 mins testing Tick 6 months ago?

And no “Cat has my Toungue”. I’ve simply got better and more pressing things to spend my time on this evening.

If you have some free time yourself, maybe give Tick another test run, and then write an update to your review?

Just a thought.

-cb

You wrote: “I won’t pick apart the rest of the comments, but they leave much to be desired.”

Why not? Cat got your tongue?

For example the one criticism where you did offer some detail that it would cost a company more than 2-3 years worth of $39/month to produce a Tick clone based on what I saw nearly six months ago? $39 x 12 x 3 years = $1,404 USD.

That buys a fair amount of very skilled programmer time (my third party custom programming rate is $140/hour, so that would get 10 programming hours) or a significant amount of newer/less skilled programmer time. Now do some searching from developers that could produce a clone of what Tick does and I bet $1,400 will entice more than a few interested parties.

Lastly, keep in mind that this review was done in July 2006. This doesn’t cover any changes, upgrades or changes they’ve made since that time. I suspect — hope, in fact — that they’ve made numerous additions.

It isn’t going to do any good telling me how great it is now when there are features I didn’t see or couldn’t test when this review was written almost six months ago.

“Why wouldn’t a company have their development team build an solution like Tick?”

Because it would cost them roughly what they’d pay for Tick over the course of 2-3 years!

I won’t pick apart the rest of the comments, but they leave much to be desired.

I’ve been picking apart Tick and Harvest with real world project and reporting testing and both of them are excellent!

-cb