I've been overly busy with my consulting work for that last week and 1/2 so I have not commented on a post by Joel Marcy about his product ideas. He had a teaser post a few days before describing his goals for the first year of his uISV. He also posted over at BoS announcing his ideas as well. As usual there was some good feedback from the group.
His three ideas are RSS Desktop Reader, Fantasy Football website, and tools/utilities for windows. He breaks down the tools that will be in the grab bag. The one that jumped out at me was the Outlook add on that makes sure you have an attachment on the email before you send it. I've always thought this would be a great tool. It turns out there are some like this anyway, but Joel is going to make his tools free. I'm using web clients for most of my email currently, but I will recommend the tools to some people I know once they are ready.
He is going to focus on the Fantasy Football site first. The business model is advertising. I have mixed feelings about it. With the advertisement model, you need lots of users to make any money. But the costs should be pretty minimal which is very important when using the advertisement business model. The odds are it will take a while to build up the user base to get to a point where you are making any money off the advertisements. So you need to bootstrap for quite a while until you reach the break even point. But if you have very low expenses, you can afford to keep things running while you build up the user base.
With a subscription model (like Web Work Schedules) I only need 2-4 customers to pay for all my monthly expenses. That said getting people to pay directly to you is a lot more difficult than having them use your information site for free.
So congratulations to Joel for letting the world know about his ideas. As I had predicted, no one crushed him for saying what his ideas were. No comes the more difficult part, the execution. I'll be following his progress on his blog and hope he is successful.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Usability - trimming excess white space
I've noticed one thing with applications and it is beginning to annoy me. If you send me an email with a string that I need to paste into a form (on the web or in a desktop application) you should know by now that there is going to be an extra space at the end of it. I don't know the point in history when applications started including that space when you try to highlight a word, but you know it is going to happen, so check for it and remove it.
Actually for any input you should do this. For example if you ask the user for a URL, where you know that it is not valid for the extra space to be there, simply check for it and remove it. Don't tell me that the URL in invalid and make me paste the same string again and then delete the space myself.
This small usability issue will make the overall user experience better and it is one line of code to trim off the excess white space.
Actually for any input you should do this. For example if you ask the user for a URL, where you know that it is not valid for the extra space to be there, simply check for it and remove it. Don't tell me that the URL in invalid and make me paste the same string again and then delete the space myself.
This small usability issue will make the overall user experience better and it is one line of code to trim off the excess white space.
uISV Class 07 - December Grades
I'm going to run WebsiteGrader each month to do a status check on us and see how we are doing. Here's how were were doing when I initially ran it last month.
Here are the results for this month:
I noticed a major issue of using www in the urls. In particular catchthebest.com vs. www.catchthebest.com and twistedwave.com vs www.twistedwave.com. I know google treats those as different sites, which is why you need to have a redirect in place. I also noticed that WebsiteGrader also treats them differently. For Catch The Best, the score difference is 76 vs 58 and 73 vs 51 for Twisted Wave. To keep it consistent, I'm using the URL that I get directed to if I go to the site. So the URL in the table is the URL I used in WebSiteGrader. This also affected the reported PR score. Also the following warning is displayed for the Google Page Rank scores on the report page:
The highest ranking was Lokad with a 95 still, second month in a row. The best improvement was joelmarcey.com with an 8 point jump.
Gentle nudge to Jon of SendAlong to update his meta-keywords and description tags and I think we would see his score jump 10-20 points based on my own experience.
So that's it for this month. I'll run them again next month.
Note 1: WebSiteGrader was unable to run on
www.sportavista.com. There was no errors when I ran the report, but I'm able to browse to the page, so I'm not sure what the issue is. The big concern here is that Google and others may be having a similar problem that WebSiteGrader is.
Updated 12/10 - Aded Ian Howson's blog from www.sixproducts.com
Here are the results for this month:
| Site | Score | Page Rank |
|---|---|---|
| chatspring.com (was steplively.com) | 31 | 0 |
| http://www.thinklife.co.uk/ | 40 | 3 |
| joelmarcey.com | 48 | 4 |
| http://www.smallfarmcentral.com/ | 76 | 4 |
| http://www.sportavista.com/ note1 | N/A | N/A |
| http://www.sendalong.com/ | 12 | 0 |
| catchthebest.com | 76 | 0 |
| http://www.heliumfoot.com/ | 39 | 0 |
| http://www.lokad.com/ | 95 | 4 |
| twistedwave.com | 73 | 5 |
| http://www.omnicustomersupport.com/ | 35 | 0 |
| http://www.webworkschedules.com/ | 28 | 0 |
| http://www.sixproducts.com/ | 30 | 0 |
I noticed a major issue of using www in the urls. In particular catchthebest.com vs. www.catchthebest.com and twistedwave.com vs www.twistedwave.com. I know google treats those as different sites, which is why you need to have a redirect in place. I also noticed that WebsiteGrader also treats them differently. For Catch The Best, the score difference is 76 vs 58 and 73 vs 51 for Twisted Wave. To keep it consistent, I'm using the URL that I get directed to if I go to the site. So the URL in the table is the URL I used in WebSiteGrader. This also affected the reported PR score. Also the following warning is displayed for the Google Page Rank scores on the report page:
Note: The Google Page Rank is dependent on external sources and may not be reported correctly. If you receive a Page Rank of 0, the rank may not be accurate.
The highest ranking was Lokad with a 95 still, second month in a row. The best improvement was joelmarcey.com with an 8 point jump.
Gentle nudge to Jon of SendAlong to update his meta-keywords and description tags and I think we would see his score jump 10-20 points based on my own experience.
So that's it for this month. I'll run them again next month.
Note 1: WebSiteGrader was unable to run on
www.sportavista.com. There was no errors when I ran the report, but I'm able to browse to the page, so I'm not sure what the issue is. The big concern here is that Google and others may be having a similar problem that WebSiteGrader is.
Updated 12/10 - Aded Ian Howson's blog from www.sixproducts.com
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Scrum progress
Apparently I forgot to post this entry. I was searching for it to link to, and I couldn't find it. So a bit late but still relevant.
I posted about using Scrum as a uISV and wanted to follow up on the progress. At the time I said
I have found that I'm a lot more focused now because of the daily scrum. I'm actually writing down my answers to the three questions which makes it me more accountable. I tend to keep that document open on my second monitor and I glance at it to remind my self a) What I'm working on b) What blocked me yesterday. I'm very honest with myself on what is blocking me. I've listed procrastination, my consulting work, and Omni blocking the scheduling app. It was painful to write down that I procrastinated instead of doing what had to be done. I've only had to write that once but I can still see it on the list. That's motivating.
Having a short sprint cycle is working well. I've only had the one sprint, so it is really to early to tell. The two weeks is a short enough window that I can feel the deadline and I can keep everything fresh in my mind that I'm working on. This has been increasingly important as I switch gears back and forth with the consulting.
I posted about using Scrum as a uISV and wanted to follow up on the progress. At the time I said
Right now I plan on trying the following principals: a product backlog, a springI'm still working on the product backlog for both Omni Customer Support and Web Work Schedules. The product backlog is an ongoing progress as I think of new features or find bugs in the software. I need to break the tasks down into smaller pieces. For the first sprint, I was focusing on getting Omni Customer Support finished and out the door. I released version 1.0 and the sprint ends tomorrow. So my estimation of the work effort was accurate.
backlog, the sprint and the daily scrum. I don't think I have to worry about
anyone being late to the daily meeting :) Also I might reduce the sprint
time to 2 weeks instead of 1 month. Maybe even 1 week, but that might be to
short.
I have found that I'm a lot more focused now because of the daily scrum. I'm actually writing down my answers to the three questions which makes it me more accountable. I tend to keep that document open on my second monitor and I glance at it to remind my self a) What I'm working on b) What blocked me yesterday. I'm very honest with myself on what is blocking me. I've listed procrastination, my consulting work, and Omni blocking the scheduling app. It was painful to write down that I procrastinated instead of doing what had to be done. I've only had to write that once but I can still see it on the list. That's motivating.
Having a short sprint cycle is working well. I've only had the one sprint, so it is really to early to tell. The two weeks is a short enough window that I can feel the deadline and I can keep everything fresh in my mind that I'm working on. This has been increasingly important as I switch gears back and forth with the consulting.
My experience of the software awards scam
A few months back Andy Brice wrote an excellent post about an experiment he did of submitting a fake application to all the download sites. If you have not read it, I recommend that you do. It is real enlightening. This is post is my experience.
Today I published Omni Customer Support 1.0 to several hundred download sites using RoboSoft. In response I received just shy of 100 emails, most of them minutes after my software was uploaded. Most of the emails asked for a link to their site. Some of them would not accept my upload until I did so. Probably half of them gave me an award "after they reviewed it and it passed their rating guidelines." I was ready for this after reading Andy's post.
There was also a number of the sites that wanted me to register my software with RegNow and provided a link with their affiliate number in it to sign up right now. I'm guessing they get some sort of kickback if I were to sign up. The hook is that "Software products that are registered with RegNow that have higher page view count will be ranked higher on our site." So sign up and I will have a better listing on their site.
This same concept of "raking higher on their site" is also used if you link to them. And if I wanted them to process my upload faster, linking to them will speed up the process. I understand why they would want the link from me, SEO and some extra traffic, but it does feel a little like a bit like extortion.
But the kicker was this one: Please download a copy of your award at http://-----site-----/images/star5Award.gif and display it on your website. We encourage you to place a hyperlink on the award logo and link it to your software page at http://----site-----/OmniCustomerSupport_software37707.htm This will increase Internet traffic to your page and it will receive higher placement by search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
I'm curious to know how having the award on my site will increase my traffic. I would really like to know how it would increase my ranking in Google. Perhaps they know something I don't know.
I ran WebSiteGrader on Omni Customer Support and saved off the overall score and the number of both Google and Yahoo inbound links. I'll report back on how it changes after having been on the download sites for a while.
Today I published Omni Customer Support 1.0 to several hundred download sites using RoboSoft. In response I received just shy of 100 emails, most of them minutes after my software was uploaded. Most of the emails asked for a link to their site. Some of them would not accept my upload until I did so. Probably half of them gave me an award "after they reviewed it and it passed their rating guidelines." I was ready for this after reading Andy's post.
There was also a number of the sites that wanted me to register my software with RegNow and provided a link with their affiliate number in it to sign up right now. I'm guessing they get some sort of kickback if I were to sign up. The hook is that "Software products that are registered with RegNow that have higher page view count will be ranked higher on our site." So sign up and I will have a better listing on their site.
This same concept of "raking higher on their site" is also used if you link to them. And if I wanted them to process my upload faster, linking to them will speed up the process. I understand why they would want the link from me, SEO and some extra traffic, but it does feel a little like a bit like extortion.
But the kicker was this one: Please download a copy of your award at http://-----site-----/images/star5Award.gif and display it on your website. We encourage you to place a hyperlink on the award logo and link it to your software page at http://----site-----/OmniCustomerSupport_software37707.htm This will increase Internet traffic to your page and it will receive higher placement by search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
I'm curious to know how having the award on my site will increase my traffic. I would really like to know how it would increase my ranking in Google. Perhaps they know something I don't know.
I ran WebSiteGrader on Omni Customer Support and saved off the overall score and the number of both Google and Yahoo inbound links. I'll report back on how it changes after having been on the download sites for a while.
Omni Customer Support 1.0 released
I released Omni Customer Support. The code has been complete for over a week, but I was cleaning up the lose ends up in the purchase process. I'm using e-junkie with PayPal and Google Checkout. Setting all that up was pretty easy to do and the process works smoothly. It feels good to get it out the door, but I'm holding off any celebrating until I make my first sale.
I published it to the download sites, I've got a separate post about that. I need to start my Adwords campaign. I'd like to bang out the multi user capability, but I need to return my focus to Web Work Schedules. My consulting work is picking up and keeping me busy. I can't complain about that since that is paying the bills, which is important, especially with Christmas just around the corner.
I published it to the download sites, I've got a separate post about that. I need to start my Adwords campaign. I'd like to bang out the multi user capability, but I need to return my focus to Web Work Schedules. My consulting work is picking up and keeping me busy. I can't complain about that since that is paying the bills, which is important, especially with Christmas just around the corner.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
new web app developer forums -- seeed
Paul Farnell launched seeed yesterday. According to the home page "Seeed is a place to discuss the business of web applications." There is a BoS entry announcing the launch. It is just getting off the ground and I created one of the early accounts (user #11). There are about 50 users now. I recognize a lot of people from BoS.
The goal is to be like BoS but with the focus on web applications. BoS is not limited to desktop development, but I would say that the majority of the applications there are desktop applications. It has RSS feeds and a weekly human edited digest of the best discussions on the forums.
I mentioned it on the BoS post, the key thing is achieving a critical mass of users. I don't know what that number is. There is not a lot of content yet, but what is there has been good. I hope it is successful.
The goal is to be like BoS but with the focus on web applications. BoS is not limited to desktop development, but I would say that the majority of the applications there are desktop applications. It has RSS feeds and a weekly human edited digest of the best discussions on the forums.
I mentioned it on the BoS post, the key thing is achieving a critical mass of users. I don't know what that number is. There is not a lot of content yet, but what is there has been good. I hope it is successful.
Leveraging Lucene & POI to index Excel Documents
I wrote my first piece of link bait today. Based on recent discussions on BoS about link bait and several great posts by Patrick McKenzie on the subject, I figured I should spend a little time and get it done. I wrote a small code tutorial on using Lucene with the Apache POI project to intelligently index Excel documents. While the readers of this kind of content are not my target customers, any inbound links are sure to help.
There is also some truth to me wanting to give back to the larger software development community. I know Google has saved me countless hours of work but finding a little piece of information that solved my problem. Hopefully my tutorials will do the same for someone else.
Since it is technical by nature, I submitted it to programming.reddit.com and see if I can get any traction. If you have a reddit account, and like it, I would appreciate a vote for it. I added the reddit button on the bottom of the tutorial. I have a few other tutorials that I plan to write and see how they work.
Ideally I should have a blog under Omni Customer Support to host the tutorials, but I don't have one installed. I've been meaning to install WordPress, but haven't gotten around to it. Rather than wait for that, I posted the first tutorial and I'll move it (with the proper redirects) once I have a blog set up there. I'm pulling the trigger on this, rather than waiting for it to be perfect.
There is also some truth to me wanting to give back to the larger software development community. I know Google has saved me countless hours of work but finding a little piece of information that solved my problem. Hopefully my tutorials will do the same for someone else.
Since it is technical by nature, I submitted it to programming.reddit.com and see if I can get any traction. If you have a reddit account, and like it, I would appreciate a vote for it. I added the reddit button on the bottom of the tutorial. I have a few other tutorials that I plan to write and see how they work.
Ideally I should have a blog under Omni Customer Support to host the tutorials, but I don't have one installed. I've been meaning to install WordPress, but haven't gotten around to it. Rather than wait for that, I posted the first tutorial and I'll move it (with the proper redirects) once I have a blog set up there. I'm pulling the trigger on this, rather than waiting for it to be perfect.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Post Holiday Review
A quick update on my activity over the holidays. I had a great holiday and I hope everyone else did as well.
Text2go worked well. Listening to white paper went well, except for a few issues. At first I was concerned about the voice, but it turns out you get use to it after a while. Nothing like a real person in my opinion, but not to bad. It did have a few "glitches" that I also got used to. For example it would read "M" as meters when the author was using it for millions. The white paper had its copyright and url on the bottom of every page which got very annoying. I should have removed it. That is not Text2Go's issue, it was reading the text that was there.
I only had one 5 hour track which is a pain if you accidentally skip to the beginning of the track. In the future, I would split it up by chapter to make it easier to jump into it. About 68 pages into it (of 105), it stopped. I'm not sure why this is. I have not looked at the text to see if I missed one of the '<' or if it was something with the IPod. Before it only showed up as 6:40 minutes long so I'm thinking this might be the IPod because it was showing that it was still in the middle of the track. But I was driving, which is not a good time to try to debug the issue.
My retention of the white paper is fair at best. I think I do better reading vs listening. Part of the issue is the material, a good portion was aimed at much larger ISVs which did not hold my attention as well. I plan on reading the new version when is released.
On the Scrum front, I found a topic that is of some interest to readers. That's a pretty cool feeling. I'll have a follow up post soon discussing my progress.
Text2go worked well. Listening to white paper went well, except for a few issues. At first I was concerned about the voice, but it turns out you get use to it after a while. Nothing like a real person in my opinion, but not to bad. It did have a few "glitches" that I also got used to. For example it would read "M" as meters when the author was using it for millions. The white paper had its copyright and url on the bottom of every page which got very annoying. I should have removed it. That is not Text2Go's issue, it was reading the text that was there.
I only had one 5 hour track which is a pain if you accidentally skip to the beginning of the track. In the future, I would split it up by chapter to make it easier to jump into it. About 68 pages into it (of 105), it stopped. I'm not sure why this is. I have not looked at the text to see if I missed one of the '<' or if it was something with the IPod. Before it only showed up as 6:40 minutes long so I'm thinking this might be the IPod because it was showing that it was still in the middle of the track. But I was driving, which is not a good time to try to debug the issue.
My retention of the white paper is fair at best. I think I do better reading vs listening. Part of the issue is the material, a good portion was aimed at much larger ISVs which did not hold my attention as well. I plan on reading the new version when is released.
On the Scrum front, I found a topic that is of some interest to readers. That's a pretty cool feeling. I'll have a follow up post soon discussing my progress.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Traveling
Like a lot of people, I'll be traveling to see family on Thanksgiving. For me its a 5 hour drive in the middle of the night so the kids will sleep all the way through. Combine a 5 hour drive with the need to stay awake, wanting to pass the time and the desire to possibly learning something is a problem in need of a solution. I've used audio books (fiction) in the past, but the selection is thin if you are concerned about what your kids will hear. The solution for this trip is Text2Go. If you follow TJ Etherton's blog, you will know he has been using Text2Go and is very happy with it.
I've always thought it was a great product, but I didn't have a need for it. Working from home eliminates my commute and I can't listen to any talking when I'm developing. Give credit to Mark Gladding who blogged about using Text2Go to listen to books from project Gutenberg last month and got me thinking about the idea. Instead of an audio book, I thought I'd try to learn something useful to my uISV. So I downloaded The Emerging ISV Handbook: Sales Is Not Rocket Science (www.isvprime.com.)
There was a slight snag with it. The PDF is 105 pages long, but the audio was only 6:40 minutes long. After trying a few things I pinged Mark asking for help. He quickly responded and said to look for any <> in the text as well as a lot of < when talking about numbers. A simple search and replace cleaned up the text and now I have 5 hours of audio ready for my trip.
The voice takes a bit to get use to so I'll have to see if I can stand it for 5 hours. I'll give an update after the trip and let you know how it went.
I've always thought it was a great product, but I didn't have a need for it. Working from home eliminates my commute and I can't listen to any talking when I'm developing. Give credit to Mark Gladding who blogged about using Text2Go to listen to books from project Gutenberg last month and got me thinking about the idea. Instead of an audio book, I thought I'd try to learn something useful to my uISV. So I downloaded The Emerging ISV Handbook: Sales Is Not Rocket Science (www.isvprime.com.)
There was a slight snag with it. The PDF is 105 pages long, but the audio was only 6:40 minutes long. After trying a few things I pinged Mark asking for help. He quickly responded and said to look for any <> in the text as well as a lot of < when talking about numbers. A simple search and replace cleaned up the text and now I have 5 hours of audio ready for my trip.
The voice takes a bit to get use to so I'll have to see if I can stand it for 5 hours. I'll give an update after the trip and let you know how it went.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Pull The Trigger
I read a great post for over at Self Made Chick by Christine OKelly. In it she describes how she made $100K by spending 25 minutes and $0 in marking. She runs a SEO copywriting firm and this describes how she made the jump from searching for jobs on Craigslist to having 100K worth of work.
The key thing I got out of the post (and it is her first words of advice) was that you have to pull the trigger. She had a formula on how to build her business but she stalled. There was a list of things she had to do before she could execute. In reality, the list came from the fear of execution. In the end, she pulled the trigger and executed her plan and was very successful.
So how does this relate to my uISV. In both Web Work Schedules and Omni Customer Support, I have my own list of things I have to do before I execute. I know the list partially is based on fear and it is holding me back. Fear that I don't have as many features as my competitors, fear that there are bugs, fear that it will not sell, fear that I'm going after the wrong market, fear that I will not be successful.
Another factor that can make it difficult to execute is my consulting. It is a known quantity that is successfully paying my bills. I need to do the consulting work, but it can act like a crutch at times. The fact that I can fall back on that if I had to is great mental relief but I have to watch that I maintain my focus on my business and support it with the consulting vs. being a consultant that has a hobby project on the side.
The key thing I got out of the post (and it is her first words of advice) was that you have to pull the trigger. She had a formula on how to build her business but she stalled. There was a list of things she had to do before she could execute. In reality, the list came from the fear of execution. In the end, she pulled the trigger and executed her plan and was very successful.
So how does this relate to my uISV. In both Web Work Schedules and Omni Customer Support, I have my own list of things I have to do before I execute. I know the list partially is based on fear and it is holding me back. Fear that I don't have as many features as my competitors, fear that there are bugs, fear that it will not sell, fear that I'm going after the wrong market, fear that I will not be successful.
Another factor that can make it difficult to execute is my consulting. It is a known quantity that is successfully paying my bills. I need to do the consulting work, but it can act like a crutch at times. The fact that I can fall back on that if I had to is great mental relief but I have to watch that I maintain my focus on my business and support it with the consulting vs. being a consultant that has a hobby project on the side.
Friday, November 16, 2007
uISV Class 07 update
I ran WebSiteGrader on each member of the class of 07 to see how we stacked up.
Here are the high level results:
If you have not run WebSiteGrader on your site yourself, I would encourage it. It only takes a few minutes and there is no cost and no signup. Just enter your url and hit go. One thing that I noticed is that some people still don't have the redirect from yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com which is important from the SEO perspective because those are treated as two different sites to google. You are potentially splitting your links between them and thus reducing your incoming links.
The highest ranking for our class was a 95 by Lokad and the highest page rank was a 5 for Catch the Best.
UPDATE: For the life of me I can't figure out why the big space is above the table.
UPDATE 2: After seeing a 10 for Omni Customer Support, I looked at the detailed report and fixed a few EASY things (meta tags, descriptions, improved title) and bumped the score up to a 29. It took all of 10 minutes to do.
Here are the high level results:
| Site | Score | Page Rank |
|---|---|---|
| steplivelynow.com | 69 | 4 |
| www.thinklife.co.uk | 40 | 3 |
| joelmarcey.com | 36 | 4 |
| www.smallfarmcentral.com | 76 | 4 |
| www.sportavista.com | 13 | 4 |
| www.sendalong.com | 9 | 0 |
| catchthebest.com | 89 | 5 |
| www.heliumfoot.com | 37 | 0 |
| www.lokad.com | 95 | 4 |
| twistedwave.com | 70 | 0 |
| www.omnicustomersupport.com | 29 | 0 |
| www.webworkschedules.com | 28 | 0 |
If you have not run WebSiteGrader on your site yourself, I would encourage it. It only takes a few minutes and there is no cost and no signup. Just enter your url and hit go. One thing that I noticed is that some people still don't have the redirect from yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com which is important from the SEO perspective because those are treated as two different sites to google. You are potentially splitting your links between them and thus reducing your incoming links.
The highest ranking for our class was a 95 by Lokad and the highest page rank was a 5 for Catch the Best.
UPDATE: For the life of me I can't figure out why the big space is above the table.
UPDATE 2: After seeing a 10 for Omni Customer Support, I looked at the detailed report and fixed a few EASY things (meta tags, descriptions, improved title) and bumped the score up to a 29. It took all of 10 minutes to do.
Scrum for One
I was talking with a friend who has found himself as a project lead on a large project where is is doing mostly managerial stuff. In an effort to avoid that work he has turned to Scrum project manament. If you have not heard about Scrum, you can google it, or read the wikipedia link here . I'll try to give you a quick description for those who don't want to go read about it.
There is a product backlog which is a list of all the requirements and issues for the product. You have a "Sprint Planning Meeting" in which you pick the items from the product back log fro the sprint backlog, which is the list of tasks you are working on during the sprint (typically 30 days). Each task is given a time estimate. As you work on a task you track how much time you spent on it. You graph these using a burndown chart which helps you monitor your progress, lack of progress, over estimating, under estimating, etc. Each day that is a "Daily Scrum" which is only 15 minutes long and you are not allowed to sit down, helps limit it to 15 minutes. There are 3 questions
It was asked of me how I keep my self on track and monitor my progress by Bob Walsh. At the time I was using Basecamp, but I've been slacking on it a bit. Mostly because I switched gears to work on OmniCustomerSupport, which I have to admit now has been more of a detour than I originally planned. I just created an account at Code Spaces which I plan to use instead of Basecamp.
At the same time I plan to incorporate the Scrum approach. Now since there is only one of me, it is a bit overkill, so I'm only going to take bits and pieces. Right now I plan on trying the following principals: a product backlog, a spring backlog, the sprint and the daily scrum. I don't think I have to worry about anyone being late to the daily meeting :) Also I might reduce the sprint time to 2 weeks instead of 1 month. Maybe even 1 week, but that might be to short. I'll experiment and let you know how it goes.
I want to credit TJ Etherton over at IKollect for the idea of this post. He has been posting about his productivity experiments. I will continue to share my results of using Scrum as a uISV.
There is a product backlog which is a list of all the requirements and issues for the product. You have a "Sprint Planning Meeting" in which you pick the items from the product back log fro the sprint backlog, which is the list of tasks you are working on during the sprint (typically 30 days). Each task is given a time estimate. As you work on a task you track how much time you spent on it. You graph these using a burndown chart which helps you monitor your progress, lack of progress, over estimating, under estimating, etc. Each day that is a "Daily Scrum" which is only 15 minutes long and you are not allowed to sit down, helps limit it to 15 minutes. There are 3 questions
- What did you do yesterday
- What did you do today
- What is blocking your progress.
It was asked of me how I keep my self on track and monitor my progress by Bob Walsh. At the time I was using Basecamp, but I've been slacking on it a bit. Mostly because I switched gears to work on OmniCustomerSupport, which I have to admit now has been more of a detour than I originally planned. I just created an account at Code Spaces which I plan to use instead of Basecamp.
At the same time I plan to incorporate the Scrum approach. Now since there is only one of me, it is a bit overkill, so I'm only going to take bits and pieces. Right now I plan on trying the following principals: a product backlog, a spring backlog, the sprint and the daily scrum. I don't think I have to worry about anyone being late to the daily meeting :) Also I might reduce the sprint time to 2 weeks instead of 1 month. Maybe even 1 week, but that might be to short. I'll experiment and let you know how it goes.
I want to credit TJ Etherton over at IKollect for the idea of this post. He has been posting about his productivity experiments. I will continue to share my results of using Scrum as a uISV.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Website update and review
I added content to the Omni Customer Support website and asked for feedback on the BoS forum. It was unanimous that the header had to go. I never really liked it, but my focus was on other things so I left it there. So I cleaned it up which also took care of a color issue that I was having. As Ken Kaczmarek said I GotTheOmniCustomerSupportBlues. I had several different shades of blue, Ken counted 6. Another issue was the lack of "Download Now" button. I had the "Buy Now" but not the download. I don't know how I missed this. So I created new buttons (the old ones were pixelated) and used new colors to make them stand out a bit more.
There was a lot of little things I was doing wrong that were easy to fix. I spent far to much time using GIMP to make the new buttons, tweak the logo, tweak the header, etc. But the new version is up and I think it is a lot better.
I'd like to thank Ken who I already mentioned, Goran Burcevski who helped debug a problem with running with Java 1.4.0_03, Nicholas Hebb, and Floyd Price. Floyd is a Mac user and last night I found a Maven plugin for creating the Mac Application Bundle, so I hope to have a version for him to test soon. There were also a few anonymous posters who provided feedback as well, but I can't give them proper credit because I don't know who they are.
Stats from posting:
There was a lot of little things I was doing wrong that were easy to fix. I spent far to much time using GIMP to make the new buttons, tweak the logo, tweak the header, etc. But the new version is up and I think it is a lot better.
I'd like to thank Ken who I already mentioned, Goran Burcevski who helped debug a problem with running with Java 1.4.0_03, Nicholas Hebb, and Floyd Price. Floyd is a Mac user and last night I found a Maven plugin for creating the Mac Application Bundle, so I hope to have a version for him to test soon. There were also a few anonymous posters who provided feedback as well, but I can't give them proper credit because I don't know who they are.
Stats from posting:
- 161 Visitors
- 10 downloads of the app -- This was a lot less than the first time I posted. Law of dimension returns on posting for feedback? Not sure. I am a little disappointed in this because I made quite a few improvements to the app and was hoping for feedback on the features.
- 493 Pageviews
- 2.88 Pages/Visit
- 00:01:59 Avg. Time on Site
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Omni update and website update
I pushed out some changes to the Omni Customer Support website tonight. The biggest part was adding some screenshots. I think they came out OK. Of course after you have your images, you think of what should be different, so you do edit the data, layout, etc. and take a new screen capture. Then the process repeats itself. I'm trying to do a little bit each night on the website to help flush it out. It's starting to get there.
On the product, I got several major changes out yesterday (and one minor bug fix in tonight.) The major changes were creating tags on issues, adding balloon hints on startup, adding the concepts of data sets, adding a sample data set and started the beginning of the Help Data set. Data sets are independent, and you can only search in the active data set. This allows you to have one data set for product A and another one for product B. It also allows me to have a Help data set and the sample data set.
I modified the search ranking algorithm a bit with the introduction of tags. As it stands now, the title is the heaviest, then tags, then description and solution. This has resulted in relevant rankings in my testing so far. It might be something that I open up to allow the user to modify.
I tried to make a flash movie tonight to put up on the web. I always want to see one and I think it will actually show off the product well. But it just about killed my machine. I had to many programs up when I tried it. It came out OK, but I need to rehearse it a few times. I'm going to opt for call outs vs. using audio. I'm trying to use CamStudio, I've used it before in the past but never with the screen annotations, It is going to take a bit to get a version I'm happy with.
On the product, I got several major changes out yesterday (and one minor bug fix in tonight.) The major changes were creating tags on issues, adding balloon hints on startup, adding the concepts of data sets, adding a sample data set and started the beginning of the Help Data set. Data sets are independent, and you can only search in the active data set. This allows you to have one data set for product A and another one for product B. It also allows me to have a Help data set and the sample data set.
I modified the search ranking algorithm a bit with the introduction of tags. As it stands now, the title is the heaviest, then tags, then description and solution. This has resulted in relevant rankings in my testing so far. It might be something that I open up to allow the user to modify.
I tried to make a flash movie tonight to put up on the web. I always want to see one and I think it will actually show off the product well. But it just about killed my machine. I had to many programs up when I tried it. It came out OK, but I need to rehearse it a few times. I'm going to opt for call outs vs. using audio. I'm trying to use CamStudio, I've used it before in the past but never with the screen annotations, It is going to take a bit to get a version I'm happy with.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Beta 2
It looks like I'm going to miss my schedule. I got side tracked for part of last week with consulting work. That's good for the immediate needs of my bank account, but frustrating that I'm going to miss my self imposed deadline. Good news is that I silently pushed out the second beta of Omni Customer Support with several new features. I'll provide more details after I get a full nights sleep. I think its really feature complete now. I said that last time, but it turns out I was not quite there yet. Things left to do to get this out the door is set up the licensing script on the server, tie that in with e-junkie, finalize the payment processing, flush out the help and the website. So still quite a bit of work, but nothing technically difficult, but each item takes time.
I'm going to start splitting time on these tasks and the scheduling software. I'm in ramp up mode on the consulting with the new contract that started last week. This will be a time and energy drain until I'm up and running.
I'm going to start splitting time on these tasks and the scheduling software. I'm in ramp up mode on the consulting with the new contract that started last week. This will be a time and energy drain until I'm up and running.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
A Downside to Desktop applications
One major downside to desktop applications is that you don't know if users are actually using the applications. With web applications, you control their access since they have to go through your web server. Even if you don't have logins, you can use a number of tools to track users, or at least know that X people are using my software.
I know I can add a calling home feature, but as a user I don't really like those. I have a fire wall that only allows certain software to access the internet and I get very suspicious when software that has no business getting online asks for permission to do so. Unless I know why it needs it (i.e. its an SFTP client) then I deny the request. I don't like the idea of software reporting on me.
One way around this is to have a check for updates function. That is pretty widely accepted and I'll think I do that. It's still not quite the same because you never know for sure if they are using it.
The real issue is I'm close to having several major changes wrapped up and I want to know if anyone downloaded the app is actually using it. I'm guessing not, because the trial was limited to 25 issues and I have not received any requests to a real key yet. If no one is using it, then I don't have to worry about saying that data in the last version will be lost. I could write a converter tool, but that is time that I don't want to waste. In the future I will either ensure the data format is backwards compatible, or have an import tool that will be able to import the old data.
I know I can add a calling home feature, but as a user I don't really like those. I have a fire wall that only allows certain software to access the internet and I get very suspicious when software that has no business getting online asks for permission to do so. Unless I know why it needs it (i.e. its an SFTP client) then I deny the request. I don't like the idea of software reporting on me.
One way around this is to have a check for updates function. That is pretty widely accepted and I'll think I do that. It's still not quite the same because you never know for sure if they are using it.
The real issue is I'm close to having several major changes wrapped up and I want to know if anyone downloaded the app is actually using it. I'm guessing not, because the trial was limited to 25 issues and I have not received any requests to a real key yet. If no one is using it, then I don't have to worry about saying that data in the last version will be lost. I could write a converter tool, but that is time that I don't want to waste. In the future I will either ensure the data format is backwards compatible, or have an import tool that will be able to import the old data.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Google Reader update
A while back I posted that I was going to try Google Reader. After using it for a while I highly recommend it. It has cut down on my start time in the morning by seeing what is new in the blogs I'm interested in. I feel like I'm more up to date on what's happening around me. Before I used it, I had just about reached my limit of the number of blogs I could look at. Now if there is one good article that I catches my attention, I will subscribe to the blog to see if more come out. It saves me a lot of time not having to see if something has updated, instead I get told. In fact I can see just now that Patrick updated his blog with a new entry. I love that. I'm not sure how it compares to the other tools out there, but right now it does everything I need so I'm not looking at other tools.
One thing I really don't like is when people use the summary function and I have to click through to their blog. I've completely switched on this issue. I use to prefer being on their page, but now, it just slows me down. There are only a few blogs that are using this function and I rarely go to those blogs. Is almost to the point where I want to unsubscribe. The issue is that the 2-5 sentences is not enough to grab my attention. There could be a great article behind it, but I will not find out because you are interrupting my work flow. So you are using this function, either hit a home run with your summary or you may want to reconsider using the feature.
One thing I really don't like is when people use the summary function and I have to click through to their blog. I've completely switched on this issue. I use to prefer being on their page, but now, it just slows me down. There are only a few blogs that are using this function and I rarely go to those blogs. Is almost to the point where I want to unsubscribe. The issue is that the 2-5 sentences is not enough to grab my attention. There could be a great article behind it, but I will not find out because you are interrupting my work flow. So you are using this function, either hit a home run with your summary or you may want to reconsider using the feature.
Product Review
I asked for a product review over at the BoS forums (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.558734.23) and got a lot of responses. According to Google Analytics, I have had 207 unique visitors visit the site and 45 people download the beta (44 really because 1 was me testing it.) Not to bad. The feedback was great as usual from the BoS crowd. They pointed out some minor issues that needed to be fixed (and could be fixed quickly.) I've got quite a few of those done already. I want to thank Joel Rein and Patrick McKenzie for their input. There was a host of others, but they didn't provide site that I could reference.
There were three major issues that came up.
The first one was something I knew about. Patrick pointed out that it really needs to have some sample data. I had been meaning to do this, but it is tedious work. I'm going to try to find a trouble shooting guide on the web and ask if I can use it if I give credit to the author. Related to this is the fact that the app is not really useful until you enter all your data into it. This is very true, but true of a lot of other applications in general. But his point is that it will hurt the conversion rate. I'm not sure what I can do about that.
The second was the limited use of single user app. I knew that going in and I already have the design to make it multi user. But that is a big effort.
The last issue is was from Doug. T who provided some great feedback. He was trying to figure out what the app is trying to be. It is not a issue tracker (it lacks to many of the tools required for it.) Perhaps I overshot with the name a bit. But it was available.
Right now if I had to define Omni Customer Service, I have to define it as a customer service knowledge base tool. Now that might limit the market quite a bit. But right now I don't have the resources to try to make it more than it currently is.
For now I'm staying the course. I'm updating the software to catch the low hanging items. I think have just about all of those. Then I need to flush out the website and take off the beta tag. It will be tight getting it all done before my deadline runs out, but I think I can do it.
There were three major issues that came up.
The first one was something I knew about. Patrick pointed out that it really needs to have some sample data. I had been meaning to do this, but it is tedious work. I'm going to try to find a trouble shooting guide on the web and ask if I can use it if I give credit to the author. Related to this is the fact that the app is not really useful until you enter all your data into it. This is very true, but true of a lot of other applications in general. But his point is that it will hurt the conversion rate. I'm not sure what I can do about that.
The second was the limited use of single user app. I knew that going in and I already have the design to make it multi user. But that is a big effort.
The last issue is was from Doug. T who provided some great feedback. He was trying to figure out what the app is trying to be. It is not a issue tracker (it lacks to many of the tools required for it.) Perhaps I overshot with the name a bit. But it was available.
Right now if I had to define Omni Customer Service, I have to define it as a customer service knowledge base tool. Now that might limit the market quite a bit. But right now I don't have the resources to try to make it more than it currently is.
For now I'm staying the course. I'm updating the software to catch the low hanging items. I think have just about all of those. Then I need to flush out the website and take off the beta tag. It will be tight getting it all done before my deadline runs out, but I think I can do it.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Omni Customer Support
I decided on a name. Naming products and companies is always difficult, especially when you want to get the matching domain name. For products, this can be avoided a little bit by doing http://companyname/product. But I wanted a independent URL.
I'll post more details after some sleep. I'm a little late on my release. I was hoping to post it earlier and get some feedback from BoS today, but it took a bit longer than I wanted. But in the end I was able to released the beta tonight (this morning actually.) You can find my skeleton website at http://www.omnicustomersupport.com, including a link to download the trial. It is windows only for now, but since I wrote it in java, I will make it available for Mac and Linux soon.
But for now it is feature complete for 1.0 unless I get some have to have requests. Although I did find one bug tonight, well, more of a counting feature that I have to fix. The bug is technical correct, but not to the user. So take a look and give it a try. I hope you like what you see.
I've got a rare meeting for my contracting tomorrow morning, so I will not be able to watch the site and see if I get any downloads, but I know that will be the first thing I check when I get back.
I'll post more details after some sleep. I'm a little late on my release. I was hoping to post it earlier and get some feedback from BoS today, but it took a bit longer than I wanted. But in the end I was able to released the beta tonight (this morning actually.) You can find my skeleton website at http://www.omnicustomersupport.com, including a link to download the trial. It is windows only for now, but since I wrote it in java, I will make it available for Mac and Linux soon.
But for now it is feature complete for 1.0 unless I get some have to have requests. Although I did find one bug tonight, well, more of a counting feature that I have to fix. The bug is technical correct, but not to the user. So take a look and give it a try. I hope you like what you see.
I've got a rare meeting for my contracting tomorrow morning, so I will not be able to watch the site and see if I get any downloads, but I know that will be the first thing I check when I get back.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Vacation - BIG problem for mISV
There is a post over at BoS http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.557731.24 from a uISV'er about how to deal with vacations. So far I have not had this issue since I'm still doing contracting and do not live and die by my uISV. But I hope that one day that will be the case. But I was excited to read this post because it is validating my customer sevice app. This was one of the use cases I came up with when I thought of turning it into a product.
Lets say you have my app and have all the support issues documented, and you just need someone respond to the customers while you are gone. You hand them the app with your index and let them search the index of issues and respond with the templated responses. Granted you can do this with a word document or a bug tracker, but the key is that search.
My product is built entirely on a search engine. Search is what it does. If you had handed your support person a word document or bug tracker, they will be less likely to find the correct issue. This will lead to more questions/responses with the customer and overall poorer customer service. The reason they did not find the correct problem is because they are doing keyword searching only. It does not take into account fuzzy queries, wild card queries etc. And no weighting is done according to the quality of the match to order the results.
On the progress front, the app is 90% done. I've got one thing I need to change and I think it will be feature complete for version 1.0. I still need to put up a simple web site. I hope to have that done tomorrow so I can post on BoS and get some feedback.
Lets say you have my app and have all the support issues documented, and you just need someone respond to the customers while you are gone. You hand them the app with your index and let them search the index of issues and respond with the templated responses. Granted you can do this with a word document or a bug tracker, but the key is that search.
My product is built entirely on a search engine. Search is what it does. If you had handed your support person a word document or bug tracker, they will be less likely to find the correct issue. This will lead to more questions/responses with the customer and overall poorer customer service. The reason they did not find the correct problem is because they are doing keyword searching only. It does not take into account fuzzy queries, wild card queries etc. And no weighting is done according to the quality of the match to order the results.
On the progress front, the app is 90% done. I've got one thing I need to change and I think it will be feature complete for version 1.0. I still need to put up a simple web site. I hope to have that done tomorrow so I can post on BoS and get some feedback.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Customer Service App
A lot of progess on my second project the last few days. I created my own icon from a free icon set. I had to modify it a little. But I like the way it came out. But it was only 16x16 and would not scale very well. So I went looking for a larger image. I ended buying one from BigStockPhoto and then modifying it as well. I'm pleased with the outcome. What do you think?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Naming Contest
I'm in working like crazy to get my second product completed in two weeks but I don't have a name for it yet. So I thought I'd ask my readers if they have any idea. If I pick your name, you will get a free copy of the product. Let me describe what the product is.
I created the program to help with customer support. I have a strong background in search engines having worked with Lucene a lot. So I wrote a small app that allows me to enter issues/problems, the solution and a template response. When you get a customer service call, you can search your index for the matching or similar issue. Since it is based on a search engine, it ranks the results based on how relevant the results are so that the odds are the one you want will be on top. This is a big advantage of using the search engine over a database query.
I have both the solution and the template because the solution is for internal consumption. It can have things in it that you don't want to tell the customer, possibly a rant about the product, or links to bug reports, etc. The template is designed to be used in the response to the customer.
I also keep track of how many times that issue has come up so you can see if you need to improve the usability, add a feature, add inline help, etc. There will be some basic reporting features to view this data. At first it will be a single user solution, but I plan on making a multi user solution where they share the same index.
I hope to have a few screen shots up soon. Now that you have an idea of what it does, what would you name this product?
I created the program to help with customer support. I have a strong background in search engines having worked with Lucene a lot. So I wrote a small app that allows me to enter issues/problems, the solution and a template response. When you get a customer service call, you can search your index for the matching or similar issue. Since it is based on a search engine, it ranks the results based on how relevant the results are so that the odds are the one you want will be on top. This is a big advantage of using the search engine over a database query.
I have both the solution and the template because the solution is for internal consumption. It can have things in it that you don't want to tell the customer, possibly a rant about the product, or links to bug reports, etc. The template is designed to be used in the response to the customer.
I also keep track of how many times that issue has come up so you can see if you need to improve the usability, add a feature, add inline help, etc. There will be some basic reporting features to view this data. At first it will be a single user solution, but I plan on making a multi user solution where they share the same index.
I hope to have a few screen shots up soon. Now that you have an idea of what it does, what would you name this product?
Burning the candle at both ends
First things first, the fires in San Diego county are in a much better state then when I last posted. My house has been in the clear since late Monday. With wild fires, that is not 100% true since you can't predict them, but I couldn't see any flames, glow or smoke and I was not in a mandatory evacuation zone. They are still burning but the tide is turning now.
So I went against most of the advice on a recent post on the BoS forum about working on two products at the same time. At that time I didn't think it would be a smart thing to do. Then a few days later I asked if I had a potential second product. I only had a few responses, but they were positive. I took the advice and decided to develop it in java. My goal is to have it wrapped up in two weeks. So far I'm on schedule to hit that deadline, but it has pushed back Web Work Schedules by at least two weeks.
If you are developing a java desktop app, do yourself a favor and go read Patrick McKenzie's blog from the beginning. It has saved me a whole lot of time and has improved the quality of my product.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Extreme Programming (Fires in San Diego)
This brings a whole new definition to the term Extreme Programming. I've been awake since 4:00 this morning since my neighbor called to say they were evacuating. Fires are burning all over San Diego county, including Escondido where I live. We packed up our things and my wife took the kids to her parents house near Irvine, CA, about an hour and 20 minutes north of where we live. I've got the second car packed with the few other things ready to leave if I have to. There have been several homes burned withing a few miles of my house.
I live in a canyon so I don't have very good visibility but I have not seen any flames. A lot of smoke and ash. There has been no mandatory evacuations yet, but I've had the TV on all day monitoring it. At this point it is the best source of information. I can't seem to find anything up to date on the internet. If you know of any sites that have maps of the current evacuation areas and the current fire locations, please let me know. The last one I saw that was any good is over 12 hours old and that is meaningless at this time.
For the most part I feel pretty safe where I'm at. I've got no landscaping (new house) so I have 30-150 feet clearance around my house and no tall trees anywhere on my property. My neighbors and I are setting up a watch cycle to get us through the night. Most of the fire has moved to the south and west of me (downwind), but there is still some of it to the north and east that is of a concern.
I don't plan to get much if any development done in the next few days, but hopefully I'll still have a home office when it is all said and done. My heart goes out to those families that have lost their homes today. I've lived through a house fire when I was a kid, so I know it can all be replaced, but that will not stop the pain and suffering they will be going through.
I live in a canyon so I don't have very good visibility but I have not seen any flames. A lot of smoke and ash. There has been no mandatory evacuations yet, but I've had the TV on all day monitoring it. At this point it is the best source of information. I can't seem to find anything up to date on the internet. If you know of any sites that have maps of the current evacuation areas and the current fire locations, please let me know. The last one I saw that was any good is over 12 hours old and that is meaningless at this time.
For the most part I feel pretty safe where I'm at. I've got no landscaping (new house) so I have 30-150 feet clearance around my house and no tall trees anywhere on my property. My neighbors and I are setting up a watch cycle to get us through the night. Most of the fire has moved to the south and west of me (downwind), but there is still some of it to the north and east that is of a concern.
I don't plan to get much if any development done in the next few days, but hopefully I'll still have a home office when it is all said and done. My heart goes out to those families that have lost their homes today. I've lived through a house fire when I was a kid, so I know it can all be replaced, but that will not stop the pain and suffering they will be going through.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Linkerati
Patrick over at MicroISV on a Shoestring has a great post about the Linkerati and his new marketing/SEO experiment at Daily Bingo Cards. There is an amazing amount of details on the how, what, where and why he is doing the new site. For anyone selling to a non technical customers, it is a must read on how to get those precious inbound links. The amazing thing to me is that all of this is for software that makes bingo cards. I think that is about as non technical as you can get. Maybe something for knitting might less technical, but not by much.
He also ties it back to an earlier blog about snowflake queries which I have already mentioned before. I'm running late on getting my own snowflakes up and running. But I should have it in a few days if I don't get side tracked.
So go read the blog entry and learn how Patrick earns over $1000 a month selling Bingo Card Creator to teachers.
He also ties it back to an earlier blog about snowflake queries which I have already mentioned before. I'm running late on getting my own snowflakes up and running. But I should have it in a few days if I don't get side tracked.
So go read the blog entry and learn how Patrick earns over $1000 a month selling Bingo Card Creator to teachers.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Successful Bootstrapping
A big concern with starting my uISV is still paying the bills. At first I was living of savings and was comfortable doing that. If the uISV failed, I was prepared to go back to a regular job. A few months later my old company approached me to do some consulting work for them. I can't stress how important it is to leave your job on good terms. Not only did they approach me for consulting but I knew that I could go back and get my job back at any time. This and several other standing job offers from former coworkers at new companies took a lot of stress away from starting out on my own.
The consulting has been going well, not enough to pay all the bills, but it stretched my savings out by 4-6 months. My current contract is ending and they have told me that they have more work and are willing to give me as much as I want. As a bonus I also gave myself a raise. Now I think I can work less than 30 hours a week consulting, and that leaves me at least 20 hours a week on my uISV and start rebuilding my savings. Since it is consulting work, it will not last forever, so I want to rebuild my savings to have a cushion to fall back on.
One thing I have learned from journey is that I really love working from home. The lack of commute, savings on gas and insurance, less damage to the enviromnent, hot lunches, and very causual dress code are all nice advantages of working at home. But the single best thing is spending more time with my family. My two kids are 3 and 1 1/2 and I get to see them more than ever. Even if my uISV doesn't take off, this time spent with them has been worth it.
So heres to my continued success at bootstrapping my uISV.
The consulting has been going well, not enough to pay all the bills, but it stretched my savings out by 4-6 months. My current contract is ending and they have told me that they have more work and are willing to give me as much as I want. As a bonus I also gave myself a raise. Now I think I can work less than 30 hours a week consulting, and that leaves me at least 20 hours a week on my uISV and start rebuilding my savings. Since it is consulting work, it will not last forever, so I want to rebuild my savings to have a cushion to fall back on.
One thing I have learned from journey is that I really love working from home. The lack of commute, savings on gas and insurance, less damage to the enviromnent, hot lunches, and very causual dress code are all nice advantages of working at home. But the single best thing is spending more time with my family. My two kids are 3 and 1 1/2 and I get to see them more than ever. Even if my uISV doesn't take off, this time spent with them has been worth it.
So heres to my continued success at bootstrapping my uISV.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Update your car insurance policy
It is something I should have done a few months ago, but it was pretty far from my mind. I just got my renewal notice (I pay for one full year at a time) and called up and changed my yearly mileage from 15K to 2K. We take my wife's car for trips with the family and I use my car very little now. This is going to save me several hundred dollars a year. So if you are a uISV and working from your house, make sure to update your car insurance policy.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The downside of web application
Every browser is slightly different and will do different things. With the slew of javascript libraries and CSS tricks, you can avoid a lot of problems if you stick with the major browsers. But even then you are not safe. I am currently using PopBox, a javascript library for expanding thumbnail images to larger images. It is easy to use and provides a little flash to my site. I thought it was working perfectly, but it turns out, there are problems with the Safari browser, not Beta 3 for windows which I am able to test with. I want to give thanks to Tobin Schwaiger-Hastanan from Cupid's Lab who tested out several versions until I got it working with Safari. I also like to give credit to John Reid, the creator of PopBox. If you need a nice simple java script api to make your screen shots (or any images) pop, check out PopBox. John looked over my page and found out that Safari was having issues with the layout I was using and told me how to fix it. Now I need to get these and a few other changes wrapped up to so I can post it the server.
And then there is IE6. What a fun couple of days this has been. What I thought would be a simple fix has turned into a lot of pain. I've put it on hold while I work on other issues. It almost makes me wish I was making a desktop app instead of a webapp. Oh well. Back to work.
And then there is IE6. What a fun couple of days this has been. What I thought would be a simple fix has turned into a lot of pain. I've put it on hold while I work on other issues. It almost makes me wish I was making a desktop app instead of a webapp. Oh well. Back to work.
Monday, October 15, 2007
uISV Class of '07
I created a Wiki Page on Business of Software forums (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?W231) to try to establish a small community of people who have started their own uISV in 07. I figure most of us are going though the same or similar issues and being able to talk with each other, track each others progress, provide feedback, etc. would be useful. So add your name to the page and lets enjoy our journey.
Update:
The wiki page has been updated a few times including:
Simon Huntley from Small Farm Central
Boris Rogge from Sporta Vista
Jon Chase from Send Along
Benjamin Curtis from Catch the Best
Update:
The wiki page has been updated a few times including:
Simon Huntley from Small Farm Central
Boris Rogge from Sporta Vista
Jon Chase from Send Along
Benjamin Curtis from Catch the Best
Broken Chain
Last month Nick Hebb posted a list of Seven Motivational Techniques for MicroISV’s. I had heard of the Jerry Seinfeld approach of using a calendar and placing an X on each day that you work on the project. I commented that I was going to try this technique and I did. I was going to go buy a wall sized year at a glance calendar at OfficeDepot or the like, but instead I remembered CalendarsThatWork.com and printed out exactly what I needed. A great easy service to use if you need any sort of calendar.
I started on October 1 and had a nice long string of X's going. But then I had to break the string. My family took a road trip to visit both my family and my in laws so I lost 4 days of work. Really 2 full days and a 2 partial days since I typically don't do a lot of work on the weekends. But it was not entirely wasted because I was showing my dad the application and noticed a bug with his browser. When I started his computer, I almost updated his browser (IE6 to IE7) but didn't and I'm glad. For some reason there was some rendering issues on a few of the screens. Its on my list to test more with other browsers besides IE7 and FF, I guess I need to start this sooner rather than later. There was a post on the BoS forums about testing with virtual servers and a few links to services that provided it. I can't find it now, if you remember it, could you post it in the comments. Is it just me or does the search function at BoS terrible? I have a background with search engines (Lucene) and it seems like this should be a slam dunk these days to implement. Someone needs to tell FogCreek about Lucene.NET.
A new week has started and a new chain of X's has begun.
I started on October 1 and had a nice long string of X's going. But then I had to break the string. My family took a road trip to visit both my family and my in laws so I lost 4 days of work. Really 2 full days and a 2 partial days since I typically don't do a lot of work on the weekends. But it was not entirely wasted because I was showing my dad the application and noticed a bug with his browser. When I started his computer, I almost updated his browser (IE6 to IE7) but didn't and I'm glad. For some reason there was some rendering issues on a few of the screens. Its on my list to test more with other browsers besides IE7 and FF, I guess I need to start this sooner rather than later. There was a post on the BoS forums about testing with virtual servers and a few links to services that provided it. I can't find it now, if you remember it, could you post it in the comments. Is it just me or does the search function at BoS terrible? I have a background with search engines (Lucene) and it seems like this should be a slam dunk these days to implement. Someone needs to tell FogCreek about Lucene.NET.
A new week has started and a new chain of X's has begun.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Google Reader
I had a former coworker mention Google Reader to me and I've been meaning to take a look at it. I've finally got a round to it this weekend. My list of blogs and sites I read has increased in the last few months. I started by having a separate folder in FireFox that I would open all tabs and look for new content over my morning caffeine. I know this is not optimal and there are RSS Readers (like Google Reader), but I like the idea of being on the site. Being on the site helps establish in my mind what I'm reader and for what purpose. But this was beginning to take a while, and felt a little wasteful with some blogs that don't update frequently. This morning is my first dry run at using the reader, and so far I like it. The one thing I don't like is it does not show how many comments there are on blog entries. So if I post a comment on a blog, if they have the feature, I have them email when a comment is added, but now I have to check two places for updates and that does not seem optimal. Not sure if there is a better solution. I'm going to keep using Google Reader for the next few weeks to see how I like it.
Google Reader also has a "Share" function which puts the link on your public reader share page, which from the SEO perspective should give a tiny little boost to those links.
Google Reader also has a "Share" function which puts the link on your public reader share page, which from the SEO perspective should give a tiny little boost to those links.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Snowflake Queries
I read Patrick's post about snowflake queries again. If you have not read this post (and many more by on his blog) you are missing out on a ton of great information. I've been thinking about this and wondering how to leverage this on my site. I have an idea. One of the things I have on the list of things to do is create a demo account for people to try out the application without having to input data into it. Some of the feedback I got last week was that for new user, the site is a little empty and they were not quite sure what to do. This is a big issue because if a potential customer takes the trouble of setting up a trial account, and when they get into the application if it is empty, they might simply leave not realizing everything they can do.
So my thought is to create a trial account that is fully populated with data and allow anyone to log into as a manager or employee and see what they can do. Now this opens up some issues. I'll have to turn off some features (email notifications, changing passwords, etc. ) One problem I've seen when people do have trail accounts is that a lot of the time, the data is so bad because people enter random stuff into, and it affects the "realness" of the application. Its hard to image you using scheduling software if the names are foobar and schedules have 18 hour shifts and working 7 days a week. It just doesn't feel right. So I'll need to reset the data every couple of hours or days. Not quite sure which. I'll also need to populate it with realistic sample data. This should increase the number of potential customers who take a more in depth look at my product and the number who will get a chance to see it in action.
And now the snowflake portion. There are few key markets I'm targeting including restaurants. So for each market, I will create a unique URL and page for that market which will be my snowflake query. Its a no brainer now, but before Patrick's post, I probably would created a /demo page and a link for each market. Now I know better.
So my thought is to create a trial account that is fully populated with data and allow anyone to log into as a manager or employee and see what they can do. Now this opens up some issues. I'll have to turn off some features (email notifications, changing passwords, etc. ) One problem I've seen when people do have trail accounts is that a lot of the time, the data is so bad because people enter random stuff into, and it affects the "realness" of the application. Its hard to image you using scheduling software if the names are foobar and schedules have 18 hour shifts and working 7 days a week. It just doesn't feel right. So I'll need to reset the data every couple of hours or days. Not quite sure which. I'll also need to populate it with realistic sample data. This should increase the number of potential customers who take a more in depth look at my product and the number who will get a chance to see it in action.
And now the snowflake portion. There are few key markets I'm targeting including restaurants. So for each market, I will create a unique URL and page for that market which will be my snowflake query. Its a no brainer now, but before Patrick's post, I probably would created a /demo page and a link for each market. Now I know better.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Sail Ho!
As a MicroISV, it can feel like you are a small boat in a big ocean. You keep busy trying to sail to your destination and suddenly you spot a spec on the horizon. Sail Ho! Its another ship.
I what to give thanks to Starr at The Startup Lowdown who mentioned my blog and uISV yesterday. While I was on her site I found her reference to Tony Yates at Thinklife. Tony's blog is about his attempt to build a uISV from scratch. As I was reading through his blog trying to figure out what he is doing and where in his journey he is, I found this entry which is about a blog by Ian Landsman at http://www.userscape.com/blog/. A wealth of information. I'm not sure how I missed all the references to Ian in the BoS forums.
I've added these two blogs to my reading list, you might want to do the same.
I what to give thanks to Starr at The Startup Lowdown who mentioned my blog and uISV yesterday. While I was on her site I found her reference to Tony Yates at Thinklife. Tony's blog is about his attempt to build a uISV from scratch. As I was reading through his blog trying to figure out what he is doing and where in his journey he is, I found this entry which is about a blog by Ian Landsman at http://www.userscape.com/blog/. A wealth of information. I'm not sure how I missed all the references to Ian in the BoS forums.
I've added these two blogs to my reading list, you might want to do the same.
Friday, October 5, 2007
What I know about SEO
This will be a short post :)
I'm learning as I go. There is a lot of information if you google on SEO or anything like it. You can't go to Digg, Reddit or any other aggregator and not find at least one post on the front page about how to improve your SEO. The trouble is figuring what things are going to return the biggest return for you.
So far I'm relying on two sources of data to help me with starting my SEO. The first is a blog, MicroISV on a Shoestring by Patrick McKenzie. While he has lots of information, I'm starting with a single entry (On-page SEO for Small Companies)and working on that. This gives me a finite list of things that I can work on. I've already started on #1. The changes are not live yet. The source is called WebSite Grader. This gives you a basic run down of things you should be doing and gives you a score on how well you did. I ran it today and got score of 39/100. So now I have a baseline to work with.
The big problem I have is inbound links. I'm not sure how to get them. This blog created my first inbound link! 1 down many to go :)
I'm learning as I go. There is a lot of information if you google on SEO or anything like it. You can't go to Digg, Reddit or any other aggregator and not find at least one post on the front page about how to improve your SEO. The trouble is figuring what things are going to return the biggest return for you.
So far I'm relying on two sources of data to help me with starting my SEO. The first is a blog, MicroISV on a Shoestring by Patrick McKenzie. While he has lots of information, I'm starting with a single entry (On-page SEO for Small Companies)and working on that. This gives me a finite list of things that I can work on. I've already started on #1. The changes are not live yet. The source is called WebSite Grader. This gives you a basic run down of things you should be doing and gives you a score on how well you did. I ran it today and got score of 39/100. So now I have a baseline to work with.
The big problem I have is inbound links. I'm not sure how to get them. This blog created my first inbound link! 1 down many to go :)
Thursday, October 4, 2007
In the Middle
This is not the beginning. This is the middle. Eventually I'd like to go back to the beginning and tell the whole story, but for now I'll start here. Here is an almost version 1.0 release of my software, Web Work Schedules. It is an online application for creating employee/staff/labor schedules. I just took the covers off it officially for the first time today when I asked the readers of the Business of Software forum (of Joel on Software) to review it for me. Its amazing what you don't see after looking at software for months on end. Some very big missing pieces on the website. For example, no where did I actually say that it was an online application for creating employee schedules. So I've got some work to do. Some of the issues are pretty minor and I can clean up quickly. Some are are going to take a bit more time to think about. The biggest issue is that at the heart of things I write code. That's what I'm good at. But to make this endeavor succesful, I'm going to need to improve my business, marketing and sales skills.
Luckily there is a lot on the web to learn from. I'm learning a lot from fellow MicroISVers. I read their blogs regularly and have read enough that I have a long task list of things I need to do based on their experiences.
Luckily there is a lot on the web to learn from. I'm learning a lot from fellow MicroISVers. I read their blogs regularly and have read enough that I have a long task list of things I need to do based on their experiences.
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