As Rails Rumble (and Node Knockout) veterans, we knew that there’s basically no such thing as too simple a product for these competitions — no matter how little you think you have to do, you’re always sweating bullets with half an hour left to go. With that in mind, we kept I Dig Durham as simple as possible, leaving us plenty of time to really polish the site.

Though basically feature complete, we’ve got a few tweaks we plan to make to the site, and we’d like to expand the underlying app to support I Dig sites for more of our favorite cities.

(1) the core of any software project team is a software developer.  Without a developer, you won’t get much software development done.  (2) Having an awesome designer on hand is great for results and team morale.  (3). Having a disproportionate number of people who can neither design nor code will result in a lot of time spent on product naming.

We also linked to our set of photos. Enjoy!

1. I Dig Durham
2. Lunnnch
3. Tofu Engine

We’ll share more about the weekend and these projects in the coming weeks both here at on the Viget blog.  Thanks for keeping up with our Pointless endeavors!

1. We made some updates yesterday to get it working again, which happily included some moderate speed improvements.
2. We’re planning for some additional enhancements to HeyCraig that we think you’ll like.  The schedule for release is … undermined at present.

Thanks for using HeyCraig and our other pointless stuff.

I just got a peek at the new design for this site and it is sweet. We’ll be building it out over the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for an all new pointlesscorp.com launching soon.

We’re also cooking up some new Pointless Projects to share with everyone, so look for 2011 to be a lot more Pointless, if you know what I mean.

Breaking news! We have removed the invitation system from Connect-A-Sketch. The application — in all its alpha glory — is now open to the public! Here are three key points to keep in mind:

1. While C-A-S is dear to us and we think it’s a valuable tool, we want to be very clear that at this point, it is not guaranteed to be fully operational and bug-free all the time.  You have been warned!
2. New features have been added, including the ability to share your project with others. When you share with a friend, she will receive an email with a URL to your project. She will be able to click through (but not edit) your project.
3. The future of C-A-S is promising and bright. Seriously, we see a ton of potential with this app. But you can help shape how the future unfolds by using C-A-S and sharing your feedback and feature requests.

If you’re new to the application, you might want to read our first post about it. If you’re new to Pointless Corp, here’s a little history. If you want to know who is behind all this genius, the answer rhymes with “dig it.”

Happy sketching!

This is not your typical MBA internship.  Know someone who should apply?  Please tell them about the opportunity or apply yourself!

After a brief discussion, an idea was fully born into our hearts. We’d let users upload their design docs and quickly turn them into clickable prototypes! It would be just like paper prototyping… Without the paper, the scissors, or the glue sticks. Ok, so it wouldn’t be all that much like paper prototyping. We liked the idea anyways. Also, we thought it would be easy.

It wasn’t quite as easy as we thought it would be, turns out we’ve got high standards for this kind of thing. So, our talented team has been putting in extra hours ever since to breathe life into the idea, polish it up, and test it out. We just couldn’t wait any longer to share our baby with the world. Behold: Connect-A-Sketch.

Here at Pointless Corp (which, we remind you, is neither Pointless nor a Corporation), we have a soft spot for fun and games (a round of Tweets of Fury, anyone?), but nothing compares to our love of usefulness. We hope you’ll find the utility of this little gem as endless and satisfying as we do.

Here is the gist:

1. Load up some sketches (drawings, wireframes, comps, whatever you’ve got).
2. Create links to connect them together.
3. BOOM. Click around, test your design, share it, edit it, go nuts.

It could not be more simple, but if you are confused, then you should watch the intro.

Like its namesake, Etch-A-Sketch, we wanted Connect-A-Sketch to be highly satisfying to use. It does a very simple thing, but it does it well and using it to make something come together is pleasurable and — dare we say — fun.

Connect-A-Sketch is brought to you by people who build complex web stuff every day, all day long, and know the value of a simple sketch. We also know that being able to connect that sketch to another one is freaking awesome.

Use it. Love it. Tell us how to make it better.

We’re still working out the kinks, but if you want to give Connect-A-Sketch a spin, you can request an invitation. You can also follow us on Twitter if you want to see what we’re up to.

“Simple but useful — just how we like ‘em.”

Good thing, since that’s how we like to build them.