Guiffy SureMerge review
I just finished a review of Guiffy SureMerge v7.2 for CM Crossroads. I don’t have a URL for the review, since it hasn’t been published yet. But I wanted to write about the review, and the product, and the company.
First, the review. I’ve been contributing articles to CM Crossroads for a few years now, and I’ll likely keep doing it for more. I started out to do a couple of things simultaneously: practice writing, get my name in the public eye, generate some buzz for my consulting work, maybe write enough to collect into a book. I expect these are all the usual reasons that people contribute regularly to any industry forum, especially on the web.
Recently I asked Patrick Egan, the owner/operator of CM Crossroads and the CMC Media supporting company, what I could do to help. He asked me to review Guiffy’s SureMerge product. I figured that I owed it to him, since I had asked, but I wasn’t thrilled at writing a review. Too many reviews, IMO, are clueless reporters shuffling paragraphs taken from the company’s media kit. To me, a review needs to be thorough and it needs to cover as much of the product as is reasonably possible: a review means getting married to whatever you’re reviewing.
With that said, I figured that I’d jump on the bandwagon and get some glossy literature and push out a standard review, a la Software Development magazine (or just about any other trade rag: I’m only singling them out because I can remember their name). But I couldn’t do it. I started poking at Guiffy, and mapping out what I’d have to say about the various features, and then I got side-tracked.
A few weeks later, my eval license was expired and Patrick was prodding me about whether I was doing the review or not. I talked to my buddy Jesse (a smart guy, but not involved in the CM business—perhaps a doubly smart guy) about the product, and the press releases I had gathered. He pointed out that since the press releases were focusing on i18n stuff, maybe I should do the review in a foreign language or something.
That’s a great hook. Here’s a review of Guiffy SureMerge for CM Crossroads. Enjoy, folks, but be careful: ???????? ?? ??????? ?????! (“It’s written in Russian,” according to Babelfish.)
I decided to at least do some testing using foreign language files: I’d placate my conscience by checking the character-encoding claims in the press releases. That was my downfall. I got interested in the product, and in doing the tests, and the next thing you know I’ve got fourteen pages of text, diagrams, and screenshots, plus a list of bugs.
I wound up talking to Bill Ritcher, the owner/developer of Guiffy, via email. I don’t think that guy ever sleeps: I was up at three or four in the morning, so I’d send off a question in email. Then I’d have a response half an hour later.
Bill was very patient, and very knowledgeable about his product. It’s obvious that SureMerge is his product: he’s devoted to it the way that most companies want to make you believe they are devoted to whatever they’re doing.