To begin – this is NOT a negative rant.  It has a positive bent, but it is self analytical and brutally honest.

Regular readers will remember June 2008 where a bunch of software developers elected to “build a product in 30 days”.  Kind of the bungee jumping of rapid release and marketing. Those that followed will also be aware that only a handful of developers actually made it to the end in the sense that they actually released a product.

Sane commentary on the lack of value in the exercise for business building aside for now – yours truly was NOT one of those who made it.  In terms of 30 days it was an unequivocal FAIL for our products release.  The launch never happened because the product wasn’t completed – and still is not completed.  It gets close and then I find myself drawing back.  I’m going to cover some of these reasons over time.

During the course of 2008 I switched audio libraries from my own engine, to an expensive commercial engine and midstream during the 30 days to another commercial product which I still use but which has at times brought me mega pain due to a variety of “undocumented features” and downright agony with documented features that simply were not there or failed to operate reliably if at all.  The value of the latter has improved a great deal since my submission of bug reports.  However submitting bug reports on every other feature almost weekly for an expensive development library is counter productive over the longer term for a variety of mega obvious reasons.  The first and foremost one being the reason for using a custom library – to simplify and prevent wheel reinvention is utterly negated.

By December 2008, as documented in this blog, I switched from Delphi after 13 years to Microsoft .Net.  From a technical standpoint this was a sane move.  However, there is a tapering FAIL attached to that sanity in that the paradigm shift after 13 years is massive.  During my 30 years association with programming I have been forced to learn and apply, last time I bothered to count, twenty three programming languages.  Most of those are almost and in some cases entirely extinct now.  It’s true I figured Microsoft’s .Net was just another language to add to my belt – “three months, she’ll be right mate.”   FAIL.  Superficially three months is adequate, but not for complexity and not for truly commercial grade products.

But Wait – There’s More!

With all this on your plate award yourself a cigar if you figured you’d not take on anything extra.   I’ll forgo the cigar as I did the opposite.

Politics.   I’m here to tell you it’s impossible, if not utterly ludicrous to immerse yourself in politics while developing any business, let alone a software business.   Impossible if you’re serious about either and impossible if the political party you’re involved with is in serious “gasping for air” barely surviving mode.  Utterly bloody pointless if the factions to the far left, and ostensibly the far right, are united against the “centre” in an exercise of $%^^&&& (click the link for the definition and explanation of that omitted expletive in the political context – it’s point 1 of the list on the definition page, an ugly phrase but sadly very apt)  for their own ends.   This week the Australian people go to the polls and this time I have to decide whom I vote for, because this time I can’t vote for myself as I’m not running.  To be an endorsed candidate for the senate and then not run is a difficult conundrum.   It is a bit of a FAIL even though the reasons for not are damn good ones.  One tends to feel like a football player on the benches with a broken leg.  You can only watch but you can’t do anything.

Over on his blog Andy Bryce recently wrote an article providing commentary from ISV’s who, for a variety of reasons and a variety of levels, failed.  They are honest and there’s a lot to learn from them.  I seriously contemplated submitting something when Andy asked for ISV’s to volunteer stories.  It’s worth the read and it’s in context with what I intend to do here on this blog for a while.  In short I’m going to document the FAILS – my own.  The intention is to motivate me to do something about it and if that documentation assists even one other aspiring or existing Micro or larger ISV then the FAILS become worthwhile.

Andy’s article opens with:

“No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients.” – Proverb

Read his article, the ISV’s are brutally honest.  My intention is to document my own over time in a little more detail.

Scott Kane

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”

Benjamin Franklin

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Allegedly this piece of malware does the following:

It checks registry to see if there are any Delphi installed (it checks only for Delphi 4-7).

For each found instance of Delphi:

It makes a copy of SysConst.pas file and inject itself into it.

It compiles new SysConst.pas and places new infected dcu-file into Lib folder.

In theory what this means is that when you compile using Delphi with this on the system, the dcu will now have virus code which in turn makes your application a host for the virus.  Infected applications will hunt for un-infected Delphi installations, infect them, and those so infected will compile infected applications, which will look for another installation of Delphi when installed and so on…

The potential for a bot/Trojan using this technique, if not now then later, is quite real as you may appreciate;  if it is indeed the case.

You can read the full post on this by Clicking Here.

If  you know this to be a false positive or have any additional information, please use the contact form or comments section below and let me know so that I can update this post to reflect that information.

Two upcoming posts:

A review of a rather nice and affordable web logs analysis tool developed by a fellow Micro ISV

Some Micro ISV history put together from the perspective of a fellow Micro ISV who built a very successful business which he sold part of.

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A notable exception to this is Steve McLeod and his Poker Co-pilot who did go to release and who has managed to create a pretty successful product and business as reward for his efforts.  Congrat’s to Steve!

You may also remember that in November last year, after struggling with the terrible and bug ridden implementation of COM inside Delphi I switched to .Net and Visual Studio.  Since then CodeGear have a .Net version of Delphi that looks reasonably good, but I’ve decided to stick with VB.Net and C#.  Yes, both and yes it works very well for me.

Since November 2007 we’ve had a lot of issues with nature (bushfires), a bit of surgery that made my right hand temporarily useless and of course recoding everything into .Net takes a lot of time, given I was a .Net newbie at the time I started.  On the upside I released PerforMixer which I might add is yet to make a sale on the internet, as predicted by me so no surprise there, but encouragingly it’s now had 17 separate IP addresses searching for serials, working codes and torrents.  That’s encouraging because 17 people feel strongly enough about it to steal it and so far, at least for those 17, it’s resisted attempts at tampering.  Will be interesting to see how the Partial Key Verification system survives in the less than opaque environment of .Net compiled code.  In addition to this we put CDROO online this week and while it’s still working it’s way up in the search engines we have had several sales to date – and thank you to those ISV’s who purchased so early on in the sites career!!

In the meantime we’ve been doing a heck of a lot of background work in MixAction.  To say it is an altogether different product to the one shown here last June is an understatement.  It’s even undergone some changes since earlier this year.  But I’m pleased to be able to say I’m now confident I can get it out into full beta (again!!) by the end of July 2009.

To Keep Me On Track

Because I found the whole June 2007 thing enjoyable and the regular daily blog posts a great tool for staying focussed I’ve decided to try to do the same thing starting Monday 15th of June 2009 through to July 29th 2009.  If I fail to do so this time, given the enormous lead up I’ve had, I’m going to be pretty peeved and invite one and all to let me have it in the comments section of this blog! 

No, I still honestly believe time periods of 30 days etc are generally bad news for development cycles.  In this instance I’m literally bringing the pieces together into the UI and connecting them with glue and code.  So I’m not reversing my stand on this.  Rather I’m simply forcing myself to stop iterating without a release.  It’s way past time I did that. So here goes… 

So, barring hospitalization for Swine Flu, or something equally bizarre, my goal is July 29th which was the day I hatched out some, almost, 46 years ago.  A present to me, in a sense I guess.

Let’s see if I can do it.

On a final note, Automatic have released WordPress 2.8 update.  So far I’ve updated all my sites, except this one.  Sunday evening I’ve set aside an hour to ensure I get the update done, experience so far has shown it’s fairly painless with one or two recalcitrant plug-ins here or there.  I’ve left this blog till last as it’s my busiest site and for some reason weekends have been more busy on it recently than weekdays.  So Sunday night (early morning in the USA, arfternoon in Eurpope) this blog will be offline for a short time, hopefully no longer than around five minutes, if the other sites are anything to go by.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Never judge a book by its movie. – J. W. Eagan

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After signing with Microsoft’s BizSpark ISV program last November and switching across to VisualStudio .Net after 13 years with Delphi I’ve been delighted with the productivity VisualStudio has afforded me.  VisualStudio 2010 has a bunch of new features so while the hand is healing I’m going to fiddle with a few of them inside a Virtual Machine.  I’m expecting a few bits and pieces that will target Windows 7 features and some expansion on Vista features.  Hopefully in the UI stakes too.

With any luck in the coming days I’ll be able to share some of those new features here.

From what I’ve been able to tell the feature set to be included is:

• An “enhanced user experience” – a shiny new IDE design
• Tools for Windows 7 development
• .Net 4.0
• SharePoint development inside Visual Studio
• Enhanced Web development capabilities
• One-click deployment and support for poor old Silverlight
• Cloud development support, with Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio
• Updated database support for a variety of MS and non MS databases.
• Parallel programming
• Enhanced support for ALM (Application Lifecycle Management)

Jason Zander, general manager for Visual Studio in Microsoft’s Developer Division, posted on his blog (see previous link) in detail about some of the changes they’ve made, particularly in relation to user feedback.

Note the public beta is probably going to become available sometime following the MSDN release.

Scott Kane
Quote of the day:
I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks. – Groucho Marx

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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

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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

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Last year, around December, Steph published his first paperback book called “Blog Blazers”.  He was kind enough to send me a review copy at that time, which I’ve been reading.  Normally I go through a book in a few days, like most developers seem to do.  However this time it’s been different.  I’ve been slack mostly because I’ve been flat out with learning .Net after switching from 13 years with Delphi, building three websites of my own, maintaining this blog and working up another site for an Australian political party. Not forgetting family and coding three software projects – and losing nearly all of February and part of March due to the impact of bushfires, a shoulder wound and, well, you get the picture!

OK.  I thought it best to establish the above first off the bat – that I did receive the book as a review copy.  Only fair I point that out, the links here like all the links on this blog however are not loaded with any affiliate mumbo jumbo so if you click them you can rest assured that if you purchase something I’m not making a cent if that makes you feel better. 

Basically Blog Blazers is a series of insightful and a frequently illuminating glimpses into the minds, practices and methods of some of the Internets savviest bloggers.  I gained quite a bit from the book for myself, in some cases affirmation of some of the things I do and as always a few things I’m not so sure of, with a plethora of things I’m now trying out. 

Some bloggers in there truly are exemplar in terms of how to go about blogging.  In fact the chapters for each interview are literally the who’s who of the blog world in many respects, in itself a major achievement for Steph.

It’s an easy read and it paces well.  I enjoy reading books where I feel I’m part of the conversation while learning new things.  Steph captured this beautifully.  The questions are specific enough to illicit the relevant answers while retaining enough scope to pull in some extra juicy bits.

If you’ve never done an interview you might not appreciate how difficult that is to achieve.  So I was impressed with this.

Rather than go step by step through each chapter or review the details of the book in depth, as there really are some great reviews already written both on the Blog Blazers website and on Amazon (search for it there it’s available), I’m going to offer a slightly different take. It’s this. 

Blogging may not be for you as a Micro ISV, which most folks who read this blog are.  While I think you’re making a mistake not having a blog – and missing out on a lot of fun and satisfaction, not to mention free search engine traffic  I can understand many of the reasons that some Micro ISV’s are uncomfortable with having one.  Understand mind, but I can not condone. 

Having said that.

I’m a huge proponent of content based websites for driving search engine traffic.  I’ve blogged about it here time and time again.  Frankly if you’re not serving content, articles, from your site you really aren’t serious about doing business.  I mean that.

A brochure and nothing but the brochure style website of so many Micro ISV’s is like having a billboard on the road to nowhere.

This is not 1995.  The Internet is now full of people – read your customers –who are decidedly non tech savvy folks that don’t know an NNTP based Usenet group from NCC-1701. 

In other words unless you create it, maintain it and publish it yourself you’re business might as well be made of electricity, as it’s a virtual blackout from an SEO perspective!

Don’t hand me that forlorn excuse of “I can’t write” either.  It doesn’t cut the mustard unless you’re illiterate which is highly unlikely as you’re reading this blog and developing software.  If you know your market then you have something to say that people (potential customers) want to hear.  If you don’t know your market then I suggest gently that you’re in the wrong game.

This is the thrust of why, I believe, as a Micro ISV, you need to read this book.  Here it from the horses mouth as it were.  The folks in this book know their onions, they consistently achieve results and the psychology used by them for their blog is no different than the psychology you need – must – apply to generating content for your site.  I’d go further in fact and say: Whether you have a blog or not.

It’s an easy read, it really is, providing your local area doesn’t get hit by 47 degrees Centigrade heat-waves and 5,000 sq kilometre fire-storms you’ll finish it in a few days.

You’ll come to understand why content truly is king, in case you’re one of those mISV’s who’s still resisting this reality,  and some of the ways you can carve out a piece of that kingdom for your own Micro, or not so Micro, ISV.

Then again – you could not read the book and keep wondering lamely or posting ineffectually on forums asking why you’re business never seems to grow.

Your choice.  Hint – I’m not recommending the last course of action above.  Buy the book already!

http://www.blogblazers.com/

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. – Jeff Valdez

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At the time I meant to mention, having kept tropical fish since I was a kid, the image on the default desktop wallpaper of a Siamese Fighting fish.  Non fish keepers might not grasp the significance of this selection of imagery.  Though it’s certainly not a secret as a quick Google search reveals.

The significance is this.  The Siamese Fighting fish has the scientific name of “Betta”.  The image displayed on the Windows 7 desktop is that of a morph of Betta splendens which is the result of careful hybridization from the relatively drab colours of the wild species within the Betta fanciers circle. 

Now, there’s also a rather interesting fact about the Betta species as a whole.  The males do the nesting and egg care, they will fight any male (of the same or related species) on sight and will kill any female not prepared to mate with them.

Did Microsoft intend that with the imagery as well?

Perhaps not, but the aquarist in me has got to ask! 

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
You talk to God, you’re religious. God talks to you, you’re psychotic. – Doris Egan

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So it came as a surprise to read across at the 37Signals blog about GetSatisfaction.  Please Click Here in order to read the full details as to how the company GetSatisfaction affected their company, and no, I’m not a 37Signals customer or even a regular reader of their blog.

Not to be outdone as a regular arrogant and destructive SOB I figured what the hey – this is certainly a good example of what not to do for ISV’s.

OK.  Read the 37Signals post?  I don’t want to rehash the details here.  They are covered well enough in the blog post linked above.  The point I want to make is this.  Businesses used to deliver to their customers a modicum of respect through something known as a “Gentleman’s Agreement.”  Basically this meant it was taboo to directly do anything that negatively impacted on another business, such as disparaging a competitor, using their logo or brand (Trademark anybody?) in a manner that would give a member of the public or another business the impression they were dealing with that company when in actual fact they weren’t.

What this means is that the rare company that did engage in these tactics flopped.  You felt that if they had no respect for anybody else they’d not respect you or your property either.  So you ditched them if you were their customer or you avoided them for the future if you were not.

That’s what I’ll be doing with the company GetSatisfaction.  I don’t deal with people who are not “gentlemanly” – read – “ethical”.  To pretend that you are some kind of official outlet for another, plagiarise their logo and mention their name everywhere – and then – demonise them in the sense that you accuse them of:

“Company XYZ has not yet committed to an open conversation about its products and services.” 

Hang on – say what?  GetSatisfaction is acting like some kind of “open community” here on some kind of ideological social crusade but GetSatisfaction is first and foremost a commercial entity that sells it’s service to companies as a venue for offering customer support on the internet.  This is qualifies for dirty, scammy and downright unethical in my book.  Dirty because it’s a low blow to the very companies they seek to make their clients by popping the quote above in small text by way of disclaimer.  Scammy because they are indirectly implying they represent the companies in question when they do not through the use of logos and company name repetition (the target company, not their own company name) and unethical because it’s looks like a chapter out of an episode from Bastards Inc –

Ewen at 37Signals states:

“The problem is that GS pages look, act, read, and feel official. And for some companies they are. GS is a useful tool for companies that choose to use it. But check out the difference between a page for a company that chooses to use GS and a page for a company that has no idea what GS is. Tiny tiny differences I bet 9 out of 10 of people hitting that page would never notice.”

Now that’s unethical on the part of GetSatisfaction.  Indeed it qualifies as downright “bastard” in my book.

SHAME on GetSatisfaction.

Don’t resort to this technique folks.  It’s pathetic and low.  Believe it or not some people (many people) do have a moral sense and do comport themselves with dignity.  My suggestion to GetSatisfaction founders is this:

1. Attend some classes on the basic principles of business ethics.
2. Familiarize yourself with trademark law.
3. Study customer and consumer reaction beyond seeing how you can take advantage of it.
4. Get a bloody clue!

I urge ISVs – micro and beyond – not to resort to this in their marketing.  Shine because you are ethical.  Offering an open community for the purposes of support and indeed to shine a light if needed on a lack of support from companies is a worthwhile goal – but to utilize it in a manner that gives the direct impression that the consumer is dealing with the company when they are not, to use that companies logos and business name over and over (Google food?) to support that suggestion is crappy, cruddy, scammy and unethical.

Don’t be a bastard!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. – Al Capp

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Anyway.  I use Tortoise for one single reason.  It stores my source as physical files and folders.  Years of using source control has made me leery if not down right adverse to storing source inside, for example, a database.  It’s Murphy’s law when it comes to storing data of the magnitude of software source code.  For the Micro ISV the available tools are more akin to maintain control of reams of “source” spaghetti than “control”.

But beyond this I actually don’t enjoy using Tortoise that much at all as it doesn’t fit well, in keeping IMHO, with most source control systems, for the needs of a single operator or small software shop. 

Yes – there are other tools like Perforce, Eric Sinks  Source Gear and others.  These are indeed fine tools.  But they tend to be over and above my needs if not indeed making me run through hoops a small ISV honestly can’t justify running through.  Don’t get me wrong here.  I’ve worked (and led) teams using source control.  In teams I’m 100% behind how these tools work.  They are necessary and a God send IMHO.  But for a developer working solo they are over kill if not downright frustrating and time consuming.

But there’s a gap here.  A light footprint GUI based, directory based source control system that plugs into Visual Studio or Borland Delphi etc is to my mind needed.  I’ve looked at dozens of solutions, for many years I used FreeVCS written in Delphi until the fools across at Project Jedi (the “masters” of including commercial code inside their “free” open source libraries it would seem) turned it into an unreliable piece of nonsense.

What’s needed is a tool aimed at the Micro ISV to my mind.  Something that starts at around $100 US dollars.  Took at least 12 months to write (yeah – no 30 Day sprint stuff for this kind of stuff), stores source in physical locations (server or local) and “virtually” checks source in and out.  Yep – you read that right.  Virtually checks it in and out.  Read only directories are a pain in the posterior on local and even local server systems with solo developers in mind.  How many solo developers are going to “accidently” delete their source repository (which for a solo is about the only reason for actually marking a file read only at the operating system level) and if they do (after all the Windows prompts) then they should probably be looking at a different career anyway!

A tool like this would require extensive consultation.

Yep.  You’d have to ask numerous ISV’s about their thoughts.  You’re going to have to harden yourself to many saying another tool like this is not needed.  Some are not going to see the benefit of it being aimed at small shops.  Some are not going to see the benefit of source control at all! 

If you ask on the BOS forums you’ll be crucified for your “stupidity in even considering it.”  Take heart though – most of the anonymous replies you’ll get along these lines are from idiots who’ve either never released a product as ISV’s or if they have it’s a total flop.  The emptiest vessels make the most noise.

You’d have to think “flexible” options to meet the basics required as no two developers are going to want quite the same thing.  I said I believed the tool was needed, I never said it was going to be easy.

Finally – it’d better look shiny and not a relict of 1998.  GUI design has come forward light years since then.  You’re competing against FOS here (in particular), you’re going to get cloned if you pull this off so you’d better raise the bar in as many places you can – GUI is one place where FOS suffers an Epic Fail time and time again (and I love it!!) and it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

It should support Amazon EC3 or Azure as a location for a repositry and archived zips or similar would make an huge amount of sense (safer than databases too) for storage.

Skip using a database.  XML is probably an option worth exploring here IMHO.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever. – Anatole France

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