I'm going to date myself when I tell you that the first computer I ever worked on was a Commodore PET with a whopping 4K of memory and a cassette tape used for data storage. That of course was the early 80's and I've been hooked on technology ever since. Over the last 30 years, what has amazed me most about technology is not the dizzying rate of technological progress, what has amazed me most is the seemingly limitless number of really cool little programs, add-on, and services that ordinary people have created in their spare time, usually motivated by little more than the desire to share the cool tool that they built with others. 

Let me tell you something else about myself. I absolutely hate grocery shopping. I especially hate getting to Aisle 15 only to discover that I forgot an item located back on Aisle 3. And worst of all, I hate getting home only to have my wife innocently ask "Where are the juice and fruit cups I asked you to get which I promised to take to preschool for snack time tomorrow?" One look at my face and my wife knowingly frowns followed by an affectionate what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you shake of her head while I grab the keys and head back to the store.

Being the nerd that I am, I naturally looked for a technological solution to lessen the pain of grocery shopping. Thus SpeedyShoppingList was born. SpeedyShoppingList 1.0 was a Microsoft Access database that sat on my home desktop. The problem with this of course was that in order to use it I had to be at home sitting at my desk. This is rarely where I was when I remembered that we were down to our last roll of toilet paper. Therefore, several years ago I decided to move my application to the Internet to make it more accessible.

It was then that I had a little epiphany. Perhaps SpeedyShoppingList could be my Cool Tool. With a little more work, I could make SpeedyShoppingList available to others and maybe even generate enough revenue to pay for hosting. A "little more work" has turned out to take several years and has given me a whole new respect for all the work that goes behind even simple programs and web sites. Even though I have quite a long list of ideas for features to add and thoughts about ways to smooth some of SpeedyShoppingList's rough edges, I think I have included the most important things so it is time to launch SpeedyShoppingList.

I truly hope that SpeedyShoppingList will make grocery shopping (or any type of shopping you use it for) a little less painful for you as it has for me :)

November, 2009