A number of things have changed these last few months.  I somehow ended up elected a State Executive member of the Australian Democrats and a National Deputy President of the party as well.  There’s some pre-selection things going on there I won’t go into presently in respect of the next Federal Election – which is going to be anywhere between March and November next year, with a decided possibility of middle of August – unless the Conservatives (Liberals) and the Socialists (Labor) magically come to some kind of agreement over climate change legislation.  That the Greens are playing “my way or the highway” is pretty sad.  Negotiate?  Yer doin’ it wrong!

MixAction is still being coded.  Ironically I released another application a few weeks ago that would have taken a little over a quarter of the time allocated to write MixAction last year in the June 30 day stint.  More on that, which relates to the topic of this post, in a moment.

At the end of last month we bit the bullet and moved from sole trader status and incorporated.  We have a nice shiny new company called “MixAction Software And Audio Pty Ltd”.  For readers not from Australia that’s the approximate equivalent to an LLC.

There are distinct advantages and distinct disadvantages to this move.  I won’t go into those here right now.

BoomerApp And Klik ‘n Mix

Klik n’ Mix is a little “party” mixing package aimed squarely at the non “disco” and “dance” crowd.  It’s a B2C application, which goes against my own business principles quite a bit.  It retails at two price points.  The dreaded $29.99 that I’ve maligned so frequently and $49.99, an upsell that adds a range of audio tools.  I wrote it because I was asked to write it by a person who does entertainment at parties and functions.  This particular person is more entertainer than “DJ” and from experience there’s quite a few of those out there.  It doesn’t beat mix and that’s reflected directly by the price.  I’m saving my beat mixing algorithm for later – and a higer price point. 

Once written I figured I might as well market it and created the brand name and product site accordingly.  You can visit the product site here:  http://www.kliknmix.com

I’m pretty sure it’s currently the only party music mixing package to feature the Microsoft Fluent UI – AKA “The Ribbon”.  I suspect that particular differentiation is short lived. 

As I said, I’ve been pretty full on time wise, so I’ve done very little marketing of the application.  A few weeks ago however a new service was launched from the people who brought the world Bits du Jour.  That service is BoomerApp.  While Bits du Jour hands out full licences daily BoomerApp is instead a rebate system where-by the customer purchases in the normal way and recieves a rebate form which they return to FastSpring Ecommerce or a local representive.

FastSpring have a blog article on BoomerApp here:

Customers pay the retail price up-front, and then print out the special rebate form to claim their discount.  The site’s model is based on the fact that a certain percentage of customers will not redeem their rebate despite that we make it easy to do so and that a certain percentage will accept an alternate offer in lieu of redeeming their rebate.

Take a look at BoomerApp.com and contact them if you’d like to be considered for a promotion (not all products will fit the offer profile, but mention you’re a FastSpring client and they will review your product right away for a potential promotion).

The developer sets the rate of rebate for the offer.  Given some interesting data on rebate return rates, which I will discuss later, the application is live right now and therefore probably best not to advertise business data to passing clients, I decided to go with the full 100% rebate.  That is the client pays the full price and then can send in the rebate form to recieve the whole lot back.  By my calculations I have little to lose by treating this as a promotional exercise and getting the application “out there”.

It’ll be interesting to see how it goes – and I will report back on it at the end of the promotion – it runs seven days, from today.  The report I give will probably be percentage based and not dollar based – we’ll see… 

Cheers!

Scott Kane

Rather we’re talking about the logo to the left of this article.

Andy writes:

“Am I the only one being totally bombarded with ‘Give your application the green light’ and related emails from Microsoft and its minions? I must have had at least 30 so far. I took a few minutes to list my product in the Windows 7 compatibility guide (beware, cheesy audio). But that is all I intend to do.“

First I can answer Andy directly.  Yes, I started receiving marcom (marketing communications) from Microsoft well before the Windows 7 launch and long before the RTM was released to MSDN subscribers.

However…

I have made use of the logo, but more importantly I’ve made use of the press release too, for a couple of reasons that I view as important.  Your mileage may vary.

1. The logo is a massive improvement over Microsoft’s previous logos.  It’s not to bad at all.
2. The press release that is a requirement to show the logo contains lots of juicy keywords.  Perfect material for blogs – and all of my product sites have blogs thirsty for keyword rich material.  At no time did I or do I expect the press to snap to attention on the reciept of one of these press releases and say “By George!  MixAction Software And Audio Pty Ltd products are fully Windows 7 compatible – STOP THE PRESSES!”  
3. I’m weary of writing two sets of code for multimedia support between XP and Vista/Windows 7.  If only a handfull of people viewing my sites get the twitch to upgrade to Windows 7 it’ll make my life a hell of a lot easier.  For that reason I’m content to assist Microsoft in their marketing.

So each of our products have a Windows 7 Compatible logo and accompanying press release.  After release of the press release I saw – and still see – poeple searching and coming into the sites with keywords related to the products but specifying “Windows 7″.  That was my intent.  It’s worked.  It’s not a huge number mind – but it’s probably more than my competitors are getting because they aren’t talking about Windows 7 at all!

At the end of the day – as Micro ISV’s – even a handfull of visitors for the ten minutes it took to rework Microsoft’s press release template are worth coaxing.

Will post soon on new product releases and a restructure of our company.

Scott Kane

I may appear, due to the dearth of posts recently here, to have expired, kicked the bucket, dropped off the face of the Earth or vanished.  Truth is I’ve been performing a balancing act between family, political involvement and a plethora of blogs.

A few months ago I was appointed an interim member of the Victorian State Executive of the Australian Democrats.  Subsequent to that I’m nominated for the same role in the forthcoming election they are holding as well as a role as Deputy President of the National Executive.  Being a work-a-holic I’m also running their Victorian state blog now, which I also host, doing family things and trying to squeeze in coding time on MixAction as and where I can.

So much for the excuses.

Today – for those in the Northern Hemisphere (yesterday almost for the rest of us) Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 officially to RTM (Release To Manufacturing).  Which means, the Microsoft MSDN server gods willing, I’ll be able to download my own release licenses sometime in the small hours after midnight (my time).  Of course if indeed I can get a connection, given the amount of traffic they are likely to get, it’ll probably take a while to download.

Looking forward to it immensely.  I’ve been very impressed with the Beta, which I’ve run in Virtual Machines and live machines as well as the release candidate.  I’ll be installing the RTM onto my main machines over the course of the weekend – all going well.  A slow process even with imaged backups, data backups etc as that playful Irishman “Murphy” usually executes his “law” right around the time of a full systems upgrade.

Will let you know how it goes!

Scott Kane

CDROO has been around awhile, previously selling talking books and offering voice over’s.   As we found ourselves moving back across to software development as our main focus we decided to turn it into a resource to support our main products, such as MixAction. CDROO is a store that sells royalty free music and sound effects.  This basically means that when you need a piece of music or special effect for a video, podcast, voice over or training tool you are able to buy professionally recorded music without having to worry about the complexities of obtaining performance rights.

One payment and you’ve got usage.  The content is produced either directly by us in our studio or specifically licensed directly from the artist with the negotiated royalty free licence being extended to you.  The thrust of the site is certainly related to theater sound producers, podcasters and video producers, but in a sense ISV’s are a combination of these, hence the relevance here.

Now, because it’s the internet and because we know so many people are, like us, boot strapping, we’ve kept the prices low.  Just enough to cover processing fees, server bandwidth and still make it worth both your and our while.

Limited Offer To Readers Of This Blog

We’re offering readers of this blog, until the 31st of July 2009, a 35% discount on anything in the CDROO store for use in their videos, podcasts and multi media productions.  All the audio is 100% Royalty Free, as already stated.  That means you can include it in a “significant* production of your own”.  To take advantage of it simply use the voucher “RecursiveISV” without the quotes when you fill out the checkout cart – hint – it’s the last textbox item on the form. The website URL is: http://www.cdroo.com or click the logo above.

*Significant is a term indicating you can’t resell the content on it’s own, the license doesn’t cover that.  However you can incorporate it freely as background music, title themes, audio punctuation etc in videos, podcasts etc.

Presently, as one might expect for such a new service, the catalogue is small, but it’s fair to say the focus is presently on quality and not quantity.  However there are a number of packages waiting in the background to be published there in the coming weeks and months.  Our goal is at least one audio package a month.  Later down the track, after we establish an appropriate method of payment that makes it worth our while to offer it, we’ll add the ability to purchase single tracks.  Right now we’ve bundled them into collections.

You’re not going to be able to purchase “Britney’s Bipolar Blather” there or “Pink’s Popular Platitudes” or other “known artists”.  The content is original, which at the end of the day is exactly what’s needed, the last thing you want in a video or podcast is somebody bopping and not paying attention to your message!

“But Music Is Subjective, It’s Not Good In Product Videos”

Yeah – I’ve heard that too, mostly from programmers strangely – but never from people who produce audio and adverts for a living.  Hmmmm?

It depends, to be honest.  For starters it’s supposed to be used as “spice” not ketchup.  There’s a reason the pro’s stand out when they use it – they grasp this.

Flooding your viewer or listeners ears with a stream of audio anarchy is not going to help you win anything.  But used as an introduction and then either pulled back – or out – of the mix is a technique you hear on radio and television everyday. The idea is to use it to focus on your message – not become Radio ISV1234.

It’s true enough that some people can be turned off something because they “don’t like the music”. No amount of salesman talk from me or anybody alters that.  So how come it works on radio, pro internet broadcasts and other places so damn effectively?

Because it’s used as spice – to reiterate.  Intro’s – extro’s (the word for the end of a multi media piece) and for punctuation where needed.  For Podcasts it’s absolutely essential but sad to say 99% of the time it’s done by either:

1. Using illegally a commercial artist’s work from the Top 40 – Epic Fail!
2. Using a terrible midi file with equally terrible sound fonts – Epic Fail!
3. It’s played full bore right through the whole piece.

Now, there are times it works when played through the whole piece – for example when what you’re demonstrating is in itself a multi media software tool, people expect it there.  But with your average video or podcast a little bit goes a long way and in turn lifts your work beyond the average, boring and ho-hum we’re exposed to in so many “rich media” productions in the Web.

Web 2.0 Is More Than Graphics And Social Networking

Web 2.0 is also about engaging the visitor – or customer.  Engaging them requires standing out from the crowd and doing something subtle but noticeably different.  In fact, I think, if we wanted a phrase to describe Web 2.0 for mISV’s it’d have to be something like “Subtle, but rich” which when you think about it covers the presentation, content and ethos of the most successful “Web 2.0″ sites.

It’s the age of wide spread broadband usage, the age of the “something else shiny just caught my attention” and frankly we need all the tools we can get.

OK.  This was the first time this blog has pitched a product.  Largely I don’t pitch here – even my own.  CDROO is primarily aimed at theater audio and podcasters, it’s not primarily aimed at ISV’s and I’m not pretending for a moment that it is.  But – this blog is focussed on starting up, it is focussed on web issues, ISV issues in general and to some extent my own business and discussion about it.  I’ve said here before, and it’s on the About page of the blog, that I don’t like Google adverts on blogs, that I prefer to sell product over clicks.  I also said that at some point I’d look at placing product where it was directly relevant.  Hence this post.

If you’re looking for a really good resource for ISV’s on the how to for creating product videos and voice over’s of your own for your company then you really should check out the folks across at ProCasts http://blog.procasts.co.uk/ and their blog.

If you’ve got any questions, concerns, issues or anything else in relation to CDROO, this post etc please feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly using the Contact Me link above.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. – James Branch Cabell

I’ve actually been pretty busy on it, amongst many other things.

Some time back I blogged about the file format for storing data.  I was unsure at that point after switching to .Net from Delphi, what format to use.  I finally settled on XML combined with a mysterious something else.  So here’s the skinny on that “something else”.

The “project file” is in fact an XML file.  It controls the basic layout and elements inside a production.  Basic being the operative word.  Let me explain.

For those of you familiar with Sony Acid Pro, originally called “ACID pH1″ by it’s creators at SonicFoundry, you’ll probably be familiar with the Acid variation of Riff/Wave format  and it’s incredible ability to “know” what key it is, what tempo and the nature of its’ playback in respect of being a clip or more commonly a “loop”.  It’s the core of the product and what allows the short audio clip to be so darn powerful for people creating loop based music.

It achieves it’s magic by writing “chunks” (yes, that’s the “technical term”) of data to the audio file, which is Riff/Wave because of it’s sonic superiority over MPMud MP3and probably just as well too as Thomson Consumer Electronics and other “patent” holders would be having a field day!

I looked at this technique when first considering the spec’s for MixAction in late 2007/early 2008.  What concerned me then was the size of Riff/Wave files and the need for MixAction projects to be portable as a user requirement.  To illustrate an average sized MP3 at around 4 minutes long is 4 megabytes in size compared to an equivalent Riff/Wave of 40 – 60 Megabytes.  Things get real big real fast…

However there was no denying the attractiveness of the idea.  One XML file and the related media files and nothing else.  Less to lose, less to corrupt and less headaches for the user and the programmer.

MixAction of course is not a loop based solution in the intention or method in the way that Acid Pro and similar tools work.  In fact looping, while possible and a feature, is not the primary function in MixAction’s usage.  But it does have heaps of “properties” to deal with at runtime – during a theatrical performance – from volume envelopes, channel envelopes, delayed starts, soundcard switching, special effects – including DirectX, DSP and VST – and much more.

Back in February I started working on a solution that would allow me to use the concept of “Chunks” on an audio file format for MixAction that didn’t necessarily lock the user to huge Wave files, avoided the whole Thompson and cohorts patent debacle and was not too painful to implement.

The result is an audio file format based entirely upon “****” file technology.  Now “****” is patented but “YYYY” company who allow ISV’s to use the format freely, after signing some doc’s on their site and agreeing to terms including not using their DRM API on the files – which does require paid licensing.

The end result is a file format that not only allows me to specify standard “tags” that we’ve all become familiar with, like Song Name, Artist etc, but also specify my own “chunks”, including images – which comes in handy for storing waveform image snapshots to speed interface loading – as well as user definable bit rates so they can specify to use the less than sonically great MP3 style files size right up to studio grade bit rates equivalent to Riff/Wave (not 64 bit Riff/Wave mind, such files really belong in the studio at the present level of technology available to most people).

What this means is that MixAction reads the playback “properties” directly from the audio file when it loads it.  The “chunks” are specified specifically inside the library I’ve written which MixAction uses, but they can be updated without creating an unreadable file in earlier versions of the program – and still allowing older project files to be loaded in newer versions.  Leaving the file effectively playable in any other player capable of playing “****” and letting MixAction know the difference between a MixAction project audio file and a “regular” untreated one.

It also opens up the possibility of end users producing audio files for each other with preset “MixAction automation chunks”, as well as tying in beautifully with the more advanced features offering multi-tracking planned for MixAction later in a later release.

I know a lot of purists are going to be aghast at the idea of creating a non standard, or at least partially non standard, audio file.  But in this instance the benefits out-weight the disadvantages.  The file, while assigned a new extension, is still playable by 99% of audio file software programs available today while at the same time offering a slight enhancement of branding for the product, something in which I’m a firm believer.  Over at MixAction’s own website – it has a blog – I’ve detailed the reasons as they pertain to the end user of MixAction – which at the end of the day is the most important consideration for a decision of this type.  You can read it by Clicking Here.

So what audio file specification is “****” based upon ?????

I’m not saying until after release. 

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
The purpose of life is to fight maturity. – Dick Werthimer

MixAction is close, that’s all I can say for the present.  Close but not ready.  However PerforMixer is ready and was released today.

Here’s a measure of irony.  15 days to write and produce.  A week or so messing with the website.  I guess I could have released this within that “30 Day” period last year! 

Then again I’m glad I didn’t.  I’d be now maintaining two code bases in disparate programming languages, Delphi and .Net, instead of just .Net which for my purposes would be self defeating.

So, what is it?

It’s multi room audio.  Basically aimed towards reception and convention centres, hotels, pubs, basically anywhere you need to be able to manage different audio into different rooms with the convenience and cost savings of using one computer as the source or “player”.  To do it you need more than one soundcard (up to four supported) or a dedicated multi room soundcard.  For folks with only one soundcard the PerforMixer website has a page with recommended  soundcards, for a variety of budgets, suitable to the purpose.

In a very fundamental sense it’s a test bed for part of the MixAction series product’s  audio engine with a few other things provided as per the nature of the program.

It’s 100% .Net 2.0 code for the UI, while the underlying audio engine framework is C++ and assembly.  It’s released on the “release early and iterate often” formula and to be perfectly fair it’s has a relatively tiny marketplace, so it’s not expected to be a huge earner.  I’ve stated plainly many times here I don’t believe in writing something and releasing it just because you can.  I maintain this line, in this instance PerforMixer is more a minor product in our series of more specialized products and serves as a proof of concept product for the technology inside our more expensive and complex solutions.

The website is themed according to the final theming we have settled on for all our product websites including the company website (yet to be released) that will feature all our software.  Each product has it’s own domain, each product uses Amazon S3 for delivery of executables, which I’m yet to CName correctly (hopefully get around to that tomorrow).

There’s a lot of work to be done on PerforMixer over time.  Some tweaks as to how things work, certainly the odd wrinkle to iron out here and there (some known, some no doubt unknown) but stress tests had it running all audio players non stop for a week with no glitches in a Vista guest virtual machine located on our Windows Server 2007 installation (VM across the local network).  At the time of writing it’s still running happily there.

Retail price is US $99.99 with a 6 month payment scheme to take the bite off the price for those who need it but can’t commit to the full price all at once.  Given it’s mostly aimed at B2B I don’t see the payment plan option being that common a choice, but I think it makes marketing sense to offer it.

Screenshot

To left is a screenshot of the main UI.  PerforMixer makes extensive use of my favourite .Net visual component suite – the Krypton Suite including the Krypton Toolkit,  Krypton Ribbon and the Krypton Navigator.

It uses reflection extensively for both the UI and the audio engine functionality.

For the record – we’ll be replacing this screenshot with one showing the program in full operation.  Presently the radio station streaming consoles present in the screenshot are showing the spinning progress wheel as they are still loading content.  Once the content from a station is loaded the progress wheels disappear and the tags for the current song are retrieved and displayed.  This is due to how audio streams work, the meta data is transmitted first so when you “tune in” you do not receive that tags until the server sends the next songs meta tags.

Basically you can choose to play a playlist of local songs from your computer, or CD, stream a radio station or send different combinations of those two into your rooms.

Full details can be found on the website http://www.PerforMixer.com

Our first website video has been produced (see below), aimed to be a brief sales overview, tutorials will be added in the coming weeks.

Introductory Sales Video

Not entirely happy with the video yet, am having some issues with Sony Vegas on Vista 64 bit – time to upgrade Vegas I suspect, so this was rendered using another product that is not quite up to the same level in my opinion.  Anyway, its’ a starting point, unlike software videos are relatively easy to update.

Get A Complimentary License

We’re offering complimentary licenses to two groups of people.  If you have an established blog (i.e. a blog you post to regularly) we’ll provide you with a complimentary license in return for a review on your blog or an article.  Alternatively if  you’re a reader of this blog and report a reproducible show stopper we’ll send you a license with our compliments.

Platforms

We’re only supporting Windows XP service pack 2 (SP2) and upwards with .Net 2.0 installed, Windows Vista (all editions) and Windows 7.  It’s been tested on Windows 7 betas extensively, including RC1,  and shows no issues outside of some virtual machine issues that disappear on a full install of Windows 7 in a non “virtual” environment.  The installer retrieves all required libraries if they are not already present including .Net 2.0, DirectX 8 or 9, MS SQL Compact and Windows Media Format for WMA support.  Most users should have these already with the exception of SQL Compact which is physically bundled with the installer.  Folks who don’t have .Net 2.0 installed of course are going to need to allow the installer to grab it should they wish to use the program.

While the program is 32 bit it was developed and runs on 64 bit editions of Windows, as unlike some of it’s competition it’s not compiled for “Any CPU” which invariably causes 32 bit libraries to spit the proverbial dummy. 

Win 9X, 2000 etc are not supported and the installer will not install on these platforms.  Seriously I doubt this to be a consideration in purchasing at all, people using these archaic and unsupported (by Microsoft) operating systems are extremely unlikely to be purchasing products in this price range.  Not to mention the amount of available CPU crunching power and RAM would not be adequate for consistently running four soundcards.

Competition

There is certainly existing competition for this product, including a soundcard manufacturer and a micro-ISV.  But not a great deal and none seem to be up to targeting specific sectors of business which is what I’m doing and for which we are already on page 1 if not number 1 in many instances in most search engines including Google (still subject to Google dances as this is a new product) .  As I stated at the beginning the target is vertical and relatively small, but people are searching using the keywords and those that are seem to be exploring the website.

In Summary

It’s nice to “release” something.  My only real regret right now is that it’s not MixAction, but as Ned Kelly said “Such is life.”

Next stop, apart from iterations as needed on PerforMixer is MixAction.  Hmmm.  Maybe I could aim for June 30th 2009? 

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them. – Anatole France