My name is Alex Hardy and I’m a web designer / developer from Manchester, UK. By day, I happily work for a design agency called The Foundry where I build sites for clients of all shapes and sizes.

I started a blog on my personal website back in October 2006 with these words:

I look around and find that the people I admire professionally are the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Ryan Carson and Shaun Inman. So I think to myself, can I use the ideas and skills that I have, and do something of my own?

In May 2007 I released simpleContact 1.0 for free onto an unsuspecting world. The reaction from users was fantastic and at the time of writing the app (now renamed simpleContact Lite) has notched up over 3,000 downloads. It currently stands at version 1.2.

After many more late nights I released simpleContact Pro 2.0 in October 2008. The reaction to Pro was even better. Until now both apps have remained “soft launched” on my personal site. I’ve spent that time learning about my customers, what they want and solving the early support issues on the forums.

It’s now time to take these apps to the next level with their own website, which is why I’m here! This blog will house all the news about simpleContact, be an open channel for feedback, as well as airing my views on marketing and web development in general.

By the way, if you like the site design you should know that it was created by Stephen Meehan of d3creative.