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

I share Mike’s enthusiasm for this little discovery because, as Mike points out, it means you target a subset of the rather huge .Net 3.5 SP1 and only have to be concerned with 26 Megabytes of .Net instead of the couple hundred previously (technically possible for some time, though tricky).

In 2009 26 Megabytes isn’t that big a download for an end user, unless they are on dial-up and I sincerely doubt folks on dial-up, with some exceptions, are in the market for new software – at least in most “Western” nations.

Coupled with this is Microsoft’s intention to add .Net 3.5 SP1 to Windows update in the next month or two piping it through to all users who have .Net 2.0 or above which equates to anybody on XP upwards with an older version of .Net.

Now, on the surface this is good news for developers such as Mike and myself.  We’re both using .Net. I recently published here some stat’s from my server showing .Net adoption from visitors arriving at the MixAction website.  The folks visiting, clearly a majority of my visitors, have .Net 2.0 installed.  It was rather nice to be able to see this and publish those stat’s.

However….

There’s a little issue with the forced upgrade and in turn adoption of .Net that I did not discuss in that article.  It’s related to Windows Genuine Validation and the sheer volume of stolen Windows XP licenses in use around the world.  In addition, though I suspect to a lesser extent, there’s those people who turn off Windows Updates and then never get around to updating anything at all.

Both of these groups remain a stumbling point for ISV’s working in .Net.  Yep – the pirates in particular – are cut off from installing .Net legitimately because it requires Windows Genuine Validation from version 2.0 upwards. 

I’m not disparaging Microsoft’s decision to do this.  As far as I’m concerned kicking a software pirate, a person using an illegal copy of Windows, in the digital teeth  is right up there with “what goes around comes around.”  But it remains an issue for the ISV.  The smaller you are in fact the more of an issue.

Now it could be argued that these criminals with their illegal Windows installs aren’t likely to buy new software.   It could be argued – but you’d be entirely incorrect in this instance.  Such is the prevalence of stolen copies of Windows.

One of the most common search terms for this blog in fact is “Windows Validation” and how to get around it, or bypass the last license violation trap Microsoft set for these losers last year.  Not a few search terms, but hundreds of the bloody things repeated month after month.

Here’s the joke in all these stolen Windows versions though.  There’s a bunch of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) spread around like ethereal BS across the Internet by consumers, developers and pundits about the evils of desktop software using server side license validation.  It’s this.  These scummy low life’s who steal Windows licenses (and anything else in their kleptomaniac byte addiction) are literally forcing server side validation upon themselves – especially in this economy.

That’s a topic for an article coming in the next week or so that I’ve been writing – why I think it’s a good thing, why developers are at fault for “selling it wrong” and why it’s not evil to expose thieving trash for what they really are.

Scott Kane

My reasoning isn’t as daft as he tried to make out.  It’s simple.  I’ve looked at my market, he hasn’t.  My product is semi-pro audio software for theater.  Research showed in the target I’m aiming for (and people in the pro and semi-pro area of the market would recognize it anecdotally anyway) that the users who buy in that market tend to be technical and early adopters.  Sure there is indeed an element of risk involved in pushing a large runtime, like .Net, onto those who do not fall into that category.

Or is there?

None of my Windows competitors are running Win 32 applications, they’re .Net based too.  So there’s not anything lost there, though I suppose one could make the argument that developing in Win32 would give one an edge over them in terms of flexibility.  Except – folks not prepared to install .Net are unlikely to want to install WMP 11 which the application calls upon for some routines related to audio (although not core functionality), the WMA engine which does make up a part of core functionality and which is not part of XP out of the box, DirectX 9 + and of course SP 2 on Win XP which is essential in order to install WMA and Direct-X 9 + anyway.

Note that the product is not yet released however the website is up and established in terms of basic search engine spidering and receiving a good start towards regular daily traffic as well as enquiries to beta test and/or download.

I stated in the  thread concerned on BOS that early adopters are worth more money to me than tyre kickers and higher maintenance customers who refuse to install what is, it has to be stated, part of present and future core Windows functionality – aka .Net.

So have I goofed?  Was the “Rich ISV” right in being speechless and I’m a clueless twit mouthing rubbish, or, is it possible I might actually be right?

Here’s a chart from my server logs for operating system hits for the month of February:

Yup.  That’s 72% Vista.  The traffic is not huge, to be sure it has a way to go.  But so far the right people are visiting and the site itself isn’t designed to just attract folks using Vista – indeed there’s a Win 3.xx visitor in there (who’s going to be disappointed I suspect).  It’s not until you go to the requirements page that I start talking about technical requirements (to be augmented on the download page when the download is ready) so they are arriving without preconceptions or direct OS targeting.

Now, in deference to accuracy across the board since the site went up the majority of visitors average out to using XP.  But what I’m seeing is a huge rise in Vista visitors since December 2008 coinciding with a higher number of overall visitors.

OK.  What about about those XP users?  How many have a version or versions of .Net installed?  It’s a fair question.  It’s not as easy to get data on that as the above chart showing OS stat’s – but if they’re using a Microsoft browser from IE6 upwards or a recent version of Firefox then the CLR (Common Language Runtime – the correct reference for .Net)  version is reported in the server logs.  So lets take a look at the chart for that excluding results from Vista, Win 7 or Win 2008 Server:

Note, Mac and Nix and Unknown OS’ are removed from the stat’s in the chart above as well as Vista, Win 7 and Win 2008 Server.

OK.  I can hear some folks saying – “Yeah, it’s developers visiting your site via your blog.”  It’s true some of these visits are from developers clicking links from this blog – but most of the visitors are in fact coming from Google via search terms related to theater audio software (which is what the site is optimized for).  Here’s a chart for that:

I’m acutely aware that I can seem like I’m mouthing off sometimes in forums, it’s also true that I love a good verbal rumble and that I’m inclined to “practice” for future political career aspirations on unsuspecting folks in those same forums (OK, it’s a hobby, I like to argue    ).  But on this particular topic I’ve done an enormous amount of homework.  I don’t know everything there is to know, I will make many big juicy mistakes without question and if I don’t I’m doing something wrong – but whether you’re a “Rich ISV” as per our friend in that thread or not one has to be very careful about lending categorical statements to domains for which you are not equipped or have no knowledge sufficient to comment on.

There’s a large gap between Business to Consumer Software and Business to Business Software.  Equally there’s a large gap between both of those and semi-pro and pro audio applications.  Folks willing to spend money on such applications, much like developers, are willing usually to expend reasonable amounts on the newest hardware and with it software they can afford.  Consider that these folks often pay over a thousand dollars for a soundcard and that many purchase single microphones in sets individually worth more than your IDE and development machine combined.

For the record, as much as I’d like to target .Net 3.x at this time I’m building for .Net 2.0 for reasons that the charts above vindicate.

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people. – Lucille S. Harper

History is full of people who aren’t heroes, they don’t do heroic things, they just do boring things for years and years so that others can enjoy their lives free from problems certain other people wish to inflict upon them.  I think that about sums about the content of this article.

Ten years ago this month a group of Usenet newsgroups were formed.  The groups were created for the software industry as a moderated solution to stem the bickering and vicious flame wars that broke out daily on the parallel “alt” newsgroups.

In those days, 1998, there were no blogs, forums were in their infancy and Google was a search engine player that barely anybody bothered to use – or considered worth worrying about.

Usenet was the communication method of consequence then and previously.  It was not perfect, far from it, but it was the best we had at the time.

People coming into the software world since the .com bust will probably not appreciate just how important and pervasive Usenet was – how much it was relied upon and how busy it was before it’s subsequent tumble into spam chaos and eventually – where it lays now, in it’s final twitches of death with the RIAA hammering in the last nails into it’s coffin.

Click To Zoom Into Picture

Download sites were the premium distribution method – for once I’m not going to rail on about those at all in this post. 

“Blue Sky Usenet” – something you read about a lot back in 1999, in the admin and moderator discussion groups – never materialized.

People often ask me privately, and I’m sure many more wonder silently, why I can go from mild mannered to a verbal hurricane of abuse in a forum.  Read on.  This post will explain at least some of the reasons.  Part of it is to do with being so bloody tired and having seen so much BS on forums from anon posters before…

ISV and MISV Not In Currency

The term ISV was rarely heard outside the hallowed halls of Redmond and mISV wasn’t even coined yet.

For mISV’s and many ISV’s the word was Shareware.  An established word, in many ways a good word and a totally misunderstood word both within this industry and without.

Even by the people involved in writing software that was released under it’s auspices.

A word I admit even I myself cringe from now, mostly because the word, but not necessarily the products, has been hijacked, as surely as the word “hacker” was hijacked by a clueless media and masses to describe a criminal element where once it referred to nothing more sinister than a programmer.

Hijacked

Hijacked by the same people, media and masses in many instances, and used to describe software in a negative light, even though it does not and never did represent this.

It never ceases to amaze me how desperately the media and masses embrace the idea of misappropriating the words and acronyms of the computer industry and software in particular.

If one called a football Quarterback a 25%Back they’d be outraged – fighting words! -and wouldn’t stand for it.  But misuse and change the meaning of an industry they participate in as consumers and not as professionals with little if any true understanding and they jump in without a care in the world and either re-assign or invent definitions.

Besides – why would they let truth get in the way of a good yarn, eh?

A distribution method, not a type of software.

A message that was never heeded and a message that falls on empty ears.  But also an ethos, in many ways, an ethos that puts a huge number of people who adhere to it in a position where they remain transfixed in the last century and an ethos that seems to require some to direct their ire and ridicule upon anybody daring to state this.

It is because of the public definition and the application of the ethos, by some, that I reject using the word and don’t want anything to do with it.  That the moderator of three newsgroups dedicated to the word and an industry advocate and volunteer for so many years should say it will no doubt direct fire in some quarters and has to be considered quite an irony.

In fact a handful, most don’t read blogs or have one, followed me to this blog and from time to time you may spot their “comments” to posts if you’re quick enough and I haven’t gotten to deleting them.  Deleted not because they expressed opinions that differ from mine, but because they are generally of the same caliber and character they exhibit on Usenet – albeit, there, they have tended to use their real names but post anon here – foul, vulgar and full of abuse and viciousness.  You’ll recognize the posts, they are usually malformed, parochial and full of cuss words.  The only comments I do actually delete.

But the wonder of IP addresses links them easily enough and names can be put to their comments.

Small Think

I also reject the name “shareware” now because it defines the worst of what I have come to see as “Small Think”.  Small Think surrounds one with a set of walls, beyond which one can’t venture by definition of thinking small.

To some extent the phrase “mISV” has the same potential – of smallness.  I prefer ISV, but if one must then mISV is a huge step-up from defining oneself as a “shareware author” in 2008.

Just like the term “SOHO” that was big in the 90′s (Small Office Home Office) and full of hype and buzz and now irrelevant, dated and “small” thinking, so is the word “shareware” as it is generally applied.

Knowing the correct definition of the word doesn’t change this.

Knowing better doesn’t change this.

The ethos behind shareware, coming from somebody who’s met the who’s who of that realm, worked beside them and calls some of them friends even now, limits ones expansion.  Mentally and business wise.   That’s the ethos – not the friends. 

Some people, it’s true, only want a small business and that’s a healthy enough thing, but most of us would prefer to expand our minds I should think…

There is simply to much baggage, to many hangers on with a vested interest in keeping things locked into the “Good Old Days” and to many miscreants determined to prey upon those adhering to some of it’s philosophies.

I promised I wouldn’t mention download sites – didn’t I?  

You may argue at this point – but why is a definition needed at all?

That’s a good question.  It’s basic human psychology.  To belong to something one must apply a name.  It’s what we do.  The adherence to the word “shareware” and the irritation statements like those I’ve made here creates, characterizes this.

If you don’t need to define yourself – more power to you.  But most people do – and most people will define you, or at least try to do so as a “something”.

In my book it’s better to give them a name to use that has a more positive connotation than “shareware” has.

It’s also important, in order to evolve ourselves and our businesses, that we look beyond the traditional fountains of wisdom.  The traditional sources and organizations and clubs and forums and see the wood for the trees.

Very few “shareware” authors have grasped the “Web 2.0″ movement and very few have tried to understand that the world has moved on from 2000/2001 and it’s a different, mind numbingly different, world to the one we knew.

Many, no most, start out with the actual goal of becoming “shareware authors”, instead of the goal of becoming a software business.  This is a critical failing point.  It’s the true definition of “Small Think”.

Meanwhile – Back To Usenet

Back to the three newsgroups created  -

comp.software.shareware.users,

comp.software.shareware.authors and

comp.software.shareware.announce

went through the RFC’s and votes were collated, a moderator elected, that being myself, etc as required to create a newsgroup in the “Big  8 Hierarchy” – a more complex process when they are “moderated.”

The tricky thing with Usenet moderators on the Big 8 groups in particular is that they are benevolent (some malevolent and some a combination of both) dictators – for life.

Short of the moderator retiring there is no method by which to sack or replace them.

As far as the newsgroups go they become the last word.  The charter that binds a newsgroups applies to every person bar one.  The moderator is free to do as they please, add or take away from the charter and so on.

In those days a moderator could (and did) pull Usenet feeds from recalcitrant ISP’s who supported spamming, through the network of other moderators and participating servers – known as “uplines”. Literally depriving the downline ISP of their upline feed.

As Usenet was then part of an ISP’s business model this was a big deal then that pulled recalcitrant ISP’s into line – even big ones – whether it be because they supported spamming in the name of “free speech” or allowed their customers to bypass the moderation process on a given group.

Now days it has zero impact and indeed is no longer possible to do.

A moderator could, and did, cancel posts, drop email addresses of spammers and abusers into anti-spam engines and bot’s and in some instances have a persons account pulled by an ISP for NetAbuse.

Hated, despised, loved and respected and combinations in between.

The idea is that the moderator you elect is beyond reproach and saves the readers and posters bacon by being the final word on riff-raff, trolls and flame wars.  Cross posts, spamming and being on topic.

It’s a tricky balance because folks will always either agree or disagree with a moderators decision.  It’s not a popularity contest and a moderator in a busy newsgroup suffers personally to a large degree because of this, something most people never consider.

So why were these three groups created?

War…

I’m going to mention events in this post, but will change the names to protect the ingrates innocent.

In the alt hierarchy there was a war going on.   A nasty perpetual war.  Mainly between one protagonist and the ASP.  For the purposes of this article I’m going to refer to the person as Darren Rosethorn.

Rosethorn was at one stage an ASP member.  What made him unique was that he wrote viruses and distributed them.

Now – it’s fair and correct to say here that these were harmless viruses for the purposes of evaluating anti-virus software.  His intent, in this regard, was not to cause harm – at least not via the actual “product” he pedaled.

When the ASP was getting set to release a CD of “shareware” distributed software products Rosethorn wanted to be on it.  I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty details of what transpired in relation to that beyond stating the primary point…

“Shareware”, wrongly, had a reputation amongst the public and media as being a sure fire way to “get a virus”.  Whole erroneous articles were written in computer mags, computer “Experts” and “Whizzes” (man I hate that noun) spouted nonsensical claptrap about this over and over as only the clueless can.

The ASP, rightly, fought and was fighting to clean up this image.  So putting a virus on a CD, harmless or not, clearly wasn’t the way to get there…

To do it would have been a publicity failure on an epic scale.

So they didn’t, had their own internal war with Rosethorn and this “house mate Rosethorn” was evicted due to his ill behavior within their private forums.

That’s when the wars erupted in public.

Nursing his anger and in possession of a nasty tongue and typing hands (who’s spelling and expression was at middle Elementary school level it seemed) he exploded into the public newsgroups not just daily – but all day – and night.  His objective was to cause as much collateral damage to the organization and individual members as possible.

The problem was that newbie readers took him at his word.  So others would try and point out what was actually transpiring.  Resulting in a type written guerilla campaign from Rosethorn.

It got pretty ugly.  The pubic newsgroup was rendered useless as he entered every discussion and fired salvos.  Ignoring him made it worse.  He just got nastier and created his own posts – en masse.

He’d “evolve” quotes from people that were wrong or frequently fabricated and, as is common on the Internet, say it enough times so that it appeared real to newbs.

DejaNews (spelling correct for site name) – the forerunner of GoogleGroups indexed this stuff and it bled into the search engines.  It looked pretty horrible and caused potential reputation damage to anybody he “misquoted” or fabricated.

The problem with Rosethorn was that he liked to argue but was not terribly good at it.

• Long words confused him.
• Spelling eluded him
• Logic escaped him.

So when your’s truly entered the fray – though many other notables did a sterling and truly excellent job in those battles – he met somebody who didn’t care what Rosethorn called him, threatened him with or otherwise – and for the first time met somebody who would monitor and reply in the group to him for as many hours – and longer – as he did.

Previous attempts to create a moderated group in the comp hierarchy had failed.  The votes weren’t there.  But as Rosethorn went on, and to some extent myself and others like me, it became clear that the comp groups were needed and they needed to be moderated.

The problem was – getting a moderator is not easy.

Cutting a long story very short I volunteered, was nominated and elected as primary moderator, with Tim Skipper a co-moderator, though Tim disappeared some time later.

The groups were endorsed by vote, overwhelmingly – no matter how many times Rosethorn tried to duplicate his vote, poor guy just couldn’t understand the idea behind what an IP address did.

The first order of business was to work out a mechanism to approve or reject and even cancel posts.  Canceling was necessary as some deviants used to “approve” themselves by adding moderator headers to their posts.  In those days most news servers honored canceled posts.

To use the likes of RoboMod then  you needed a server that could interface with Usenet.  At that time this was not an affordable option for me.  So I wrote a desktop client that could do all of the needed actions with a single mouse click.

Basically when somebody posts to a Usenet moderated newsgroup it goes to the moderator’s email account.  Whether it be spam or a genuine post.  At that time server space was measured in tens of megabytes or in my case a hundred – and that was just short of a premium account for most shared hosting.  So receiving hundreds of messages was expensive, time consuming and a pain in the ass.  Made worse by a flood of spam.

So it needed to be simple and quick.  Basically it received the email, stored it and allowed me to read the message and approve it by inserting a header into the message and then injecting it into my local news server.  Rejections would send an automated reply – if I wished, or a detailed hand typed reply should that be more appropriate – and for the spam it just deleted them.

Today the groups are run on RoboMod and the spam is mostly handled automatically through Bayesian filters.

But not then.  I had to wade through the lot.  Moderation often took hours each day.  That you had to do it several times a day to keep the immediacy up (essential for the life of the groups as people quickly lose interest if there are delays) compounded this.

Rosethorn’s First Order Of Action Was To Be Banned.

On the day the new newsgroups went live Rosethorn posted hundreds of messages – cross posted – to each and every one of the three newsgroups.  Cross posting was not allowed  under the charter.  His messages were rejected.  Imagine your first experience as a Usenet moderator and being met by this?

It was my first experience of battling spam submission software – that’s what Rosethorn was using.  Type it once, submit it many times automatically.  Except in this instance to a limited number of groups, the one’s I moderated, rather than every group on Usenet.

If got better – or worse as the case may be.  He sent hundreds more, many decrying my “censorship” and the fact that I was ‘biased” against him and an all round Mr Meany when it came down to it.

I rejected them.  The guys was a nutter without question, but a clever nutter…

He’d worked out that if he sent a few hundred messages and cross posted them I’d have to reject them for each newsgroup.  Three newsgroups = 600 separate messages each time.  By adding the alt groups this became more complicated.  But then I realized something.

He added the alt groups last on the list of newsgroups.  By doing so he effectively handed me a method to moderate him on the alt groups simply by rejecting his messages sent to the Big 8 three that I did moderate.

If I rejected the first of each message he’d cross posted I rejected it for each of the three groups I moderated and the alt groups.  It’s a flow on effect.

He never did manage to work that one out and very few others have either…

What he’d also handed me was the ability to cancel his garbage in the alt groups – legitimately in the interests of “Usenet” which we could get away with back then, especially, if as these did, they were slanderous or advocated criminal behavior.  So while he could see his messages nobody else did and they stayed out of DejaNews and thus the search engines.

I applied this sparingly and only on the worst of his messages.  My hypocrisy does have some bounds. 

It took twenty four hours and Rosethorn was in my “Twit Filter”.  Basically a black hole in my little moderation software client that rejected his messages without me ever seeing them.  In my time as moderator only four people, other than serial spammers, ever made it into that filter.

Why didn’t I just put him there from the start?  It was always my goal to be fair.  Behave yourself and anybody could post.  Arguments were fine, flame wars were off the agenda.  In fact flaming was specifically banned by the charter from implementation of the groups.

Every person who wound up in the “Twit Filter” was given multiple opportunities to amend their behavior.  Frequently I would not reject a flame, but chide the poster and ask them to keep it nice.  Only serial offenders wound up there.

It has to be said that a lot of people hated that I would ban a person completely like this.  But then – they didn’t have to deal with this stuff and what they actually saw in the newsgroups was only a fraction of what I received by email – either personally or via the admin address.

I had a life too.  Dealing with this kind of tripe daily quickly makes it impossible to do anything else.

It was a requirement that people use their real names (even if that meant typing “John Smith” instead of “Bike Boy” or some other stupid anon name).  It was to protect the regulars from being slammed by trolls.  It worked, but for some folks it was an unbearable requirement.

Rosethorn also had his ISP pull his access, the details of how that transpired are something I’m not prepared to detail.

Mail Bombing Moderators

As I’ve said moderators were largely despised.  In 1999 I was “mail bombed”.  Mail bombing is an email with an attachment sent to the moderators admin address. At that time none of the webhosts I hosted with or could find had a mechanism to limit the size of an email message.

If you were hit, as I was, by a 100 megabyte email and given we were using dial-up connections (broadband was rare in Australia at that time and incredibly expensive) your server was effectively hosed for email sending and receiving and the whole server if your email account exceeded your hosting allocation.

That meant you paid more dollars to the webhost and if, as it did, happen on more than one occasion then you had problems keeping your hosting account.  A little war broke out between me and my then webhost because of this.

As I had clients who hosted their accounts through my accounts it affected them too when the webhost pulled the plug.  The plug being pulled because I refused to pay the $750 AU hosting cost per month that they were demanding to cover their “admin” costs for the mail bombings.  $750 AU for 100 megabytes?  Needless to say I moved and I’m not ashamed to say never paid them their retrospective new monthly charges.

It was a huge mess.  I learnt a heck of a lot about servers and how they ran in this period, including those we don’t give much thought too like POP3, SMTP and NNTP.

Spyware Raises It’s Ugly Head

Around 1999 a new idea swept the small software business industry.  An idea for getting paid.  An idea that was so “pre dot com bust” as to be laughable today.  The idea of embedding adverts into software and making the software free to use, the advertiser footing the bill through impressions and clicks.

What a fantastic idea!

Developers big and small rushed in and embraced it.  They raved, they ranted, they recommended and they didn’t see it coming.  To be fair here – neither did I, so no kudos to me.

The ads gave the company serving the ad inside the poor old developers product the opportunity to spy on the user.  The developer didn’t know.  Honest.  Who examined outgoing packets in those days?  Even firewalls were far less common than now.  So all that lovely data was streamed out from users around the world keen to use a freebie product.

From download software (the days of dialups so  anything that helped download a file without falling over half way through due to dropouts was a great tool), FTP clients, email clients, newsreaders, archiving tools – hell – anybody could join in on this merry- go-round.

Not everybody did.  But a heck of a lot did.  I was, I’m glad to say, somebody who didn’t. But not because I have amazing prescience, it’s just to my mind this.  If something looks to good to be true then it probably is…

When some people began to discover that what was being transmitted back allowed the ad companies to track their use around the web and more – all hell broke lose.

Reputations were destroyed overnight, software products were destroyed overnight.

Some developers recovered, others never did.

From my perspective as moderator of these shareware newsgroups it was another set of flamewars to contain and sadly another person to drop into the “Twit Filter”.

This person was all about “exposing” the evil software developers using the adware  in their products.  That the developer was also a victim in this debacle escaped those on their crusade – and one lady in particular, queen of the nutter’s, became so vile I plonked her permanently.

Her pet theory was that “shareware” was actually doing this all the long.  That it wasn’t viruses it was now spying.  That we were truly, truly ever so evil.  She even had a website naming names.

That website lasted two days before her host pulled it.  Probably the easiest take down I ever participated in.  

The TPA Attempts A Takeover

Around the turn of this century and for several years later a character appeared in the alt groups and then on the groups I moderated called, for the purposes of this article, Mr Fullohimself.  Sometimes posting under the name “Mike The Canadian”.  Yessir, this Canuck was one Mounty who’d fallen off every horse he’d ever ridden – right onto his head.

The TPA (Trialware Pontification Association if my memory serves…    ) was the brainchild of this Einstein of the tundra.  Never a dull moment, he did everything in his power to discredit people who liked to use the word “shareware”, banned his sheep, I mean members, from posting in any newsgroup that contained the word “shareware” (though it never stopped him from doing so) and kicked them out of his sandpit organization if they had badges on their site or links to download sites that even so much as contained the word “shareware”.

Oh yeah!

Further, he appointed himself as the arbitrator of what constituted the correct development tools, IDE and compiler (which was summed up in the word Delphi for the record) and declared all else “junk” and the software created with them as “junk”.

VisualBasic?  Junk says Mr Fullohimself.

C++?  Junk says Mr Fullohimself.

Java?  Junk says Mr Fullohimself.

Yep.  Junk.  Except he used terms and phrases that were, shall we say, more colorful.  Not content with this he would name software products that used these languages and label them junk.  Yep.  Sheer class he was, all the way.

I’ve always been good at picking the right button to push.  When I called him a “waste of space” he took it pretty hard.  Compete meltdown.  Then disappeared for a while.

Where it ties in to the groups I moderated is that he became the third person to be placed in the twit filter when he insisted on pursuing his pogroms there.

I asked nicely, demanded, warned, then plonk.

Maybe you’re starting to get a faint inkling about what I mean when I say I’m tired.

The Kooks Arrive

There’s a group of fruitcakes on Usenet called the “Kooks”.  These folks spend all their days and nights hijacking newsgroups by replying to threads saying “kooky things”.

To join them you have to be a certifiable kook.  They even have their own newsgroups, vigorously defended, as a base of operations.  From time to time they dropped by and tried to kook-ify the newsgroups I moderated.  What I’ve failed to mention is that stupidity is also a requirement of a Kook and so they have never quite “gotten it” as far as moderation goes and eventually give up.

All the same – more unnecessary and unseen work.   Haven’t seen the Kooks active in my own newsgroups (or trying to be active rather) for years, maybe they finally worked out that “moderated” thingo…

Enter Mr Charm And Personality

Sal Plankton.  The ultimate purveyor of bovine excrement.   His name changed here to protect the men in white coats charged with his treatment.

Plankton was a “journalist”, so he assured everybody he corresponded with.  His was also a wanna-be “shareware author” and an ASP member.

Plankton delighted in making others feel wretched about themselves – any which way he could.  Within the ASP he raised many controversial issues, he wasn’t always entirely wrong, but he was rarely eloquent or restrained.  Every minute, every word typed was an opportunity for Plankton to twist and turn every thread into his own personal war zone.  Most people ducked for cover.  Some of us refused.

It was after one industry event that he labeled some ladies in the industry, also members, as “babes” repetitively and to this day, having known the man, purposefully I believe for his own amusement, and described them in what they felt, and I felt, to be unsavory ways..  When asked not to so by those ladies he accelerated his descriptions, leading to a huge war inside the ASP newsgroups and I admit I swore I’d not let him off the hook as this guy wasn’t prepared to let it go.

It concluded, whether it was to shut me up or because it was just time we’ll never know, in me being made Vice President.  I didn’t succeed in getting Plankton booted, though I sure tried.  But I made bloody sure he was suspended – or more specifically stayed up all night the day his suspension letter was sent as some folks in the board room were getting the jitters in respect of sending it.

In anger Plankton quit the ASP and erupted in the pubic alt groups.

A whole new war – except this one could argue, had command of a vocabulary and was a bit harder to press buttons on.

He made lots of threats, emailed officials with threats and succeeded in getting more lawyer letters to cease and desist.  He’s probably framed them or something, he’s that kind of guy.

Even as a, now, sworn enemy of the man I tried to maintain fairness as moderator in the comp groups and had an exception placed in the legal letter he was sent that allowed me to communicate with him if necessary in respect of the comp newsgroup operations should he post there.

He did, gently at first and then the cycle repeated and he became obnoxious and nasty and ignored warning and entreaties and finally he met the “Twit Filter” as only serial offenders did.  Becoming number four.

He was certainly gifted with a turn of phrase the old Plankton.  Labeling me, laughably as “Osama Bin Software” and “The Most Powerful Man In Shareware” as well as a host of other rather clever, but pointless titles.

To this day he still comes to the newsgroups and posts – at least the alt groups, stirs the pot, slanders people and post occasionally on the newsgroups I’ve moderated due to an amnesty granted three years ago.

Though I’ve written little about it this was probably the most exhaustive and detrimental of all the battles waged on Usenet for the newsgroups – and the one that coincided with me becoming extremely ill – though not due to it, it was just more stuff to heap on top of an existing and growing illness I had.

Illness

By 2003 until around 2005 I was sporadic in running the groups.  I was in hospital in 2003 eight times, for three weeks each time approximately, within twelve months.

Kathy Morgan, a long time reader and Usenet enthusiast and moderator, inspired me to kick things over again, did a lot of running around to get RoboMod running and hosted and basically gave me the kick in the backside I needed, Kathy becoming the Assistant Moderator.

The groups returned, but the momentum was lost and posts rose a little for a while then finally slowed to a trickle as the Usenet exodus began in earnest.

The Worm Has Turned And I Resign Today

Times have changed, Usenet is history and I’m dog tired of the whole thing.  This article only brushes on the surface of what was, for me, a job that was for many years harrowing and an enormous time sap.

Today their are few posts to moderate, much of it is rubbish and I find myself resenting every post that comes in as I have done my bit.  To my mind it’s time to concentrate on getting my own business together, some altruism for my own customers and the role of police officer, peace keeper and dictator is not compatible with this.

Ultimately, if I remain, I’ll have to reject a post from somebody making a software announcement that potentially competes with my own products.  I never have and never would allow myself to do this for any other reason than such a post violating the charter for some reason – but the accusation would be made as it’s the accusation of the moronic inept and frankly I don’t need it.

This wasn’t a problem in the past because:

1. There were fewer “developers”.
2. My products were so vertical that most people simply ignored or didn’t know of the market.

I’ve seen a lot during my time as moderator.

• I’ve seen the rise and fall of download sites (at least as far a ethics go).
• The rise and fall of many search engines
• The rise and fall of more software companies and products than most people see in a lifetime.
• The rise and fall of “this is the new thing, the old thing is gone, you’re all gone, look at me I’m the future.”

I’ve seen PAD invented and PAD abused, software associations spring up and wither and die on the vine.

I’ve seen newbs come in with bright eyes and expectations.  Asking the same questions year in year out and making the same mistakes year in and year out and those same people getting mad when it’s pointed out to them – even though they’ve asked folks for advice.

I’ve seen “experts” come and go, some spouting true pearls of wisdom and others spouting claptrap and mumbo-jumbo as only a shaman can.

I’ve seen flame wars on SAS becoming “the only way” for a decade, yet it never has become so.

That Linux would replace Windows going back to the mid nineties (actually mid eighties if you count Unix being said to take over DOS).

I’ve seen people claim web app’s would kill desktop software by 2002, yet here we are in 2008 and this hasn’t happened.

The boring and gut wrenching, at least for me, part is that these same claims, these same arguments, the same type of “newbie” hasn’t changed in a decade.  It remains what it always was.  A pointless, infantile outpouring of ill conceived typed diarrhea.

The concept of “Web 2.0″ is rejected by most adhering to the “Shareware Ethos”.

And frankly I don’t care anymore.  I’m content to divorce myself from those who cling to it, knowing that irrelevancy and time have their own mechanisms of change.

If there truly is a “Web 2.0″ ethos then there needs to be a “Software 2.0″ ethos too.  Many are doing exactly that.  I link to them in my blog roll for a reason – and it’s precisely this reason.  They get it…

In conclusion, I hope I managed to help some people over the last decade.  The newsgroups are quiet now, very few posts compared to their heyday.  I do know I have made many fine friends over the years, people inside the ASP, people on Usenet, people all around the world for whom I have the utmost respect.

It’s been an epic year for me

The last twelve months have seen me do more than I’ve done in the last six or seven.

• I ran as a candidate in a Federal election here in Australia November 2007.
• I swore off ever writing software again and decided to concentrate on audio.
• I quit the ASP as a member, and I admit as a protest on a specific issue I felt strongly about – and still do.   As an ex Vice President and ex Board Member and a volunteer there for many things in that organization it was a difficult, but timely decision.
• I discovered the meaning behind the idea of “Web 2.0″
• I realized what I’d been missing.
• I read books and articles by people, some of whom are in the blog roll of this blog.
• I realized, in no small part thanks to Bob Walsh that I could believe again in building a software company – though I doubt Bob realized exactly how life changing and the kind of thoughts that emerged from my own study of his works.
• I made a decision to write MixAction.
• I decided to do it right – build a company and not just a product.
• I paced myself during June 2008 for 30 Days to build a product and came up with a neat prototype for MixAction that is now being fleshed out to become a more rounded product.
• I launched this blog as an experiment and rediscovered what I’d forgotten.  That content is a more powerful tool for search engine ranking than any number of SEO tips, tricks, tweaks and download site submissions.
• That my family and my business were and are more important than anything else. with the possible exception of politics in respect of my business – but never instead of my family.
• I’ve gotten a handle on a major life changing and truthfully life ending illness – and won.
• I’ve stopped adhering to the old ethos’, examined new ones and decided the best ethos – for me, not necessarily for you – was the one I developed for myself based on what I thought I knew, what I learnt and am learning and what might be most likely to transpire.

Do I regret being a Usenet Moderator for ten years?

No.  I learnt a lot.  I saw a lot and I learnt to respect a lot of people and I hope earnt their respect too.  Sure I made some enemies, but overall most people were great people and to those people I say thanks for the opportunity!

An EPIC FAIL became an EPIC GAIN and it is also with some mixed feelings, it’s true, that I resign today as moderator of the comp.software.shareware.* (css.*) newsgroups – and yet an incredible sigh of relief escapes me and I don’t regret the decision one bit.

I’ve done my part for this industry – at my cost, financially and personally – for ten years.  Enough is enough.

Thank you to each and everyone that supported me over the years – you will not be forgotten by me.

A big thank you to Kathy Morgan – previously my co-moderator and now the primary moderator of the newsgroups.  Kathy is a wonderful person who did a fantastic job in getting me off my butt and the groups moving again at one point when I was experiencing some of the darkest days of my life.

Thanks to my wife for sacrificing so much of herself, and without wanting to her own life indirectly, through putting up with having a husband who was a Usenet moderator.

Scott Kane

Ex Moderator comp.software.shareware.*

Quote of the day:
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia. – Charles M. Schulz

There’s no doubt that a video presentation is an essential tool on an ISV’s website.  Both as a sales tool and an educational tool.  Nor is there any doubt that most people are a little lazy and would prefer to watch and listen than read.

This year I decided to launch an ISV, which if you follow this blog you’ll be well aware of by now.  What I’ve not revealed, and the in depth reasons for this will become apparent on October 1st 2008, is that I’d sworn off writing software and building a business based on it as a product in March 2005 through to December 2007.

In a nutshell I was seriously peeved.  As I said I’ll expand on this on October 1st 2008, there are reasons why I’m holding off on this and that will become clear then.

What I can say is that some people are responsible entirely for getting me started on this journey again and helping me realize it was possible.  Those people aren’t aware of their contribution, I don’t necessarily subscribe to everything they say all the time, but much of it is pretty good stuff.  The good stuff was and is compelling enough for me to decide and execute a return in January this year.

Those people include Bob Walsh, Andy Bryce and many others that you’ll find as regulars on the BOS forums.

So what does this have to do with audio and video?

I’ve always been a person who tended to work multiple jobs.  Day job as a programmer and night job(s) doing a variety of things.  From playing in bands, amateur theater, a club DJ (15 years in Melbourne nightclubs), working in recording studios (small bands needing demo tapes mostly) and doing voice overs for radio station adverts (3AW Melbourne, the now defunct 3XY and others), as well as corporate video voice over and Internet videos for companies including ISV’s.

I’ll be honest, I love audio, I don’t mind doing voice over, but I’m a programmer and no matter how hard I try it’s my first love.  Has been since I was a kid.

I tend to do things a bit back to front it seems.

You see, while reading people like Bob writing online, buying his e-book on Micro ISV site design – which I recommend highly – I didn’t buy until recently his original book “Micro ISV From Vision To Reality” even though it came highly recommended.

Why was I so slow?

Because of cost and lethargy.  Not that the book is priced expensively.  At least not if you’re buying in the states, but here in Australia the cost of the book is more than two and a half times the cost in the USA.   That was even when there was a 6 cent difference between the AU dollar and US dollar.  That meant buying it from Amazon which in turn meant it’d take 6 weeks to get here via Hong Kong and Noumea or someplace else unexpected.   I wanted to read it, but the tyranny of distance made it unattractive.

Cutting a long story short I finally bought it in May and received it in late June.  That’s not Amazon’s fault, or Bob’s, it’s just how things are done.  There is no Amazon.com.au so I buy via the US site.

It’s quite a good book.  A lot of good stuff in it.  But one thing struck me as not sitting.  Not that Bob, to be fair, is directing anybody to do this specifically, but in a sense it’s implied.  I’m going to expand on that now.

One of the things Bob encourages people to do in all his books, rightly, is to outsource the things we have neither the time, talent or tools to do properly.  Website, icons and other things.

He’s right here.  Right on the money, based on my own previous “running an ISV” experience and from what I’ve learnt in various roles in this industry over the years.

However Bob talks about screencasts in the book, sales and training videos, on your website.  Again these are great tools and are, I believe, truly essential.

What Bob doesn’t do is warn here that an ISV, barring exceptional circumstances I’ll come to in a moment, should never do these themselves.

You might get a good video up in terms of screen action, though many I’ve seen are sloppy, unplanned and full of clicks on the wrong object.  To click the wrong thing in your own program and include it in the video is simply amateur hour.

If you’re going to do the video right then at least get it right.  The signal being sent to the viewer is – “even I have trouble using this software.”

But it’s voice I’m more focused on here.  When I did voice overs for ISV’s the mISV’s balked at my ridiculously low $170 package I put together for them.  $170 for two minutes.  Why?  “It’s expensive”.

The logic here is that it’s only two minutes and all you need is a microphone and a script.

When doing voice for commercials I was paid that for 10 – 15 seconds,   four times that amount for sessions of two minute blocks and accumulatively more per session for documentary and training videos.  Considerably more for corporate videos.  The reason is multifold, and I’m going to attempt to explain some of those reasons.

A “real” voice over artist doesn’t offer their services on a bidding site for $20.  I’ve heard some incredible trash produced by these amateurs who do.  People have said “see, I got that for $20 – almost an 8th of the prices you charge.”

Their right.  They did.

They also got a voice production worth less than a 10th of the price I was charging and others like me.  What they “hear” and what others hear are two different things.

Programmers tend to have cool things like cool speakers on their systems. most users don’t.  For those that have poor systems the audio they get sounds like crap.  For those who have excellent systems they get sheer and utter unadulterated rubbish.  The two extremes – but they exist and are not uncommon.

A voice microphone suitable for this job costs at least $500.  The mic’s I use cost upwards of a thousand dollars,  the Neumann U87′s.

There’s a reason for this.  They sound fantastic, are built to last, are very precise, tend to not emphasize bass or treble – in a word they are natural.

But don’t expect to get one of these baby’s to play nice next to your computer monitor… 

BZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

(That’s why pros have isolation booths and their computers are in isolated boxes too!)

A heck of a long way from the less than $200 mic you bought on eBay – or shock horror – the $20 or $30 job the advert or auction told you was “equivalent to…”  They never are because these are precision instruments and audio is a “captive” medium.  Precision is necessary, it can’t be escaped.

To get this job right of course you’d have to know about what it is that makes the U87 so darn nice.  I’m not going to go into the tech here behind it.  Suffice to say that the amateurs charging $20 are using cheapo dynamic microphones notorious for the “proximity effect” which unless you’re on stage or are after a certain effect isn’t going to deliver the goods.  They aren’t accurate and sound like audio sludge.

Side Note.  The “proximity effect” is an emphasis of bass making the sound very “close up” but also unnatural and boomy.   If you’re singing softly on stage or screaming, the two extremes, this can be an asset and is why the dynamic mic works well, beyond it’s robust build (the Shure SM series being a classic example).  But recorded audio is not stage.  They are listening to your voice, emphasis on certain frequencies will mean tweaking of EQ and compression at least to clarify it.  The problem is that you start with this “effect” and then have to remove it.  You might think that voice of the XYZ FM guy sounds cool, deep and bassy – but that’s generally psycho-acoustics at work, not how the voice was recorded.  Certain frequencies are carefully chosen from what is known to work and that doesn’t include the proximity effect, indeed a whole set of different frequencies are in play and most of them are in the middle to upper midrange on, say, a 64 band equalizer or more commonly a parametric equalizer and tuned.  In addition frequency based compression is a major player here, along with reverb that you can’t always perceive and something called a “chorus” effect.  Couple this with microphone modeling software – yes there is such a thing – and you can quickly see how involved this becomes.  A “pro” knows these settings and tunes by ear, but it’s a trained ear.

What’s more cheap condenser mic’s are even worse!  They sound brittle and thin.

These factors become worse after the digital signal is compressed the way it is on the Internet.  The MP3 format, for example, achieves it’s compression ratios by removing frequencies you “can’t hear.”  Problem is nobody bothered to look at the frequencies from the perspective of those frequencies that aren’t perceived – not “heard” but part of the overall character of the sound.  Sound is multi-layered and subtle.  What you think you “hear” is not what you really “hear”.  The theory of psychoacoustics relies heavily on this and formats like MP3 rely heavily on removing them.  In a very real sense MP3 kills the “life” of a sound and the higher the compression ratio you choose the worse it gets in this respect.  This has to be compensated for.

So there’s a cost factor the cheapo’s can’t deliver on.  One quality factor not delivered and it has to be said, not even known about by the amateurs doing the job.

But it doesn’t stop there.  A nice sounding voice can be rendered El-Crapo by the medium it’s played back on and computer speakers in use by most people are the worst of the worst.  A soft and enhancing reverb on a normal hi-fi stereo sound great and becomes Vincent Price laughing in the Bat Cave when played back streamed to crappy PC speakers.

A good set of studio monitors – just basics, sets you back $500 each (not a pair) minimum.  To do it right – and this is only for stereo, (it gets worse for surround and other technologies) – you need at least four pairs of different brands.  It’s called comparative listening. You need to know how it sounds on the top end and the bottom end systems. You can bet the $20 bargain basement voice over dude doesn’t have a single pair of essential, professional monitors or in many cases that they even exist or the theory behind them.  A proven “theory” I might add that’s proved itself since the 1950′s.

I could go on about that fact that you also need power amplifiers and not tinny little K-Mart jobs to drive your system.  Low noise and of the variety that needs a fan to keep them cool.  But I think you’re getting the point, so I won’t.

There is then the whole issue of mixing down.  Special effects, how to EQ.  EQ’ing is an art that’s learnt and it’s never done the way most people think it is.  Boosting frequencies is rare when done by a pro, pro’s incline towards cutting.  It takes more work and experience, but it sounds better and that’s who these little guys are competing against.

Compression’s another factor (the waveform, not the file format), as is gating and editing.  Do you cut that breath, can I edit that tongue click, how much “space” is natural between words, sentences, paragraphs. What about that saliva swallow?  A person working at pro level can make these decisions in minutes.  Not half an hour, minutes - and they get it right every time.

None of these tools are cheap, either.  You can get cheap stuff – and it sounds cheap.  I love surprising people by listening to a recording and almost every time being able to pick the exact microphone model used (if pro or defining it as “crap” if it’s clearly not) to make the recording of the instrument or voice.  That’s why there is “listening” and “listening”.

Another issue is time.

Time to write the script, time to record it, time to get it “right”, we haven’t mentioned “rehearsing here” and that’s not optional unless you do voice overs everyday.  There’s reflection and intonation.  The reason pro voice over people sound believable is that they are trained to do these things.  The amateur, unless a rare natural, does not.  Then there’s accent.  If you’re marketing to folks living in the USA and you have a USA accent then your accent needs to be US neutral so that folks from Alabama to Zabcikville Texas understand you.  More critical if you have an international audience.  This is a problem I also faced.  While I’m an Australian and sound nothing like Paul Hogan or Steve Irwin, in fact many people mistake me for English as I’m not “broad” in my pronunciation (a thing that has taken many years of practice)  there are some folks state side who’ll only listen to a US accent.  Yes, it’s true.  CDRoo, my talking book store, taught me this painful lesson.  Yes, I can do a US accent, most voice over people can do “characters”, but it’s not fun, is unnatural to do and if you look at Hollywood actors who are Australian (Gibson, Brown, Ledger and others) they are not using real US accents, but a kind of hybrid.

How much time have you got to get pronunciation, accent, script, delivery, inflection and accent right?

But there are indeed other “time factors” too.

The time to learn the audio software.  The time to learn microphone placement, the time to learn the video software, the time to learn how to edit both.  All time sinks.

We also have to consider the time to make sure next doors dog or the kid down the halls boom box aren’t bleeding into our audio.

Sound Booths

They’ll set you back thousands – and no egg cartons are not going to work.  If egg cartons do anything at all, beyond being handy dandy places to store eggs, they’re going to reflect sound – not absorb it.  Just because you see those egg carton looking things in pro studios doesn’t mean an real egg carton is going to do the job, it’s not.  In fact that “egg carton” shape has nothing to do with sound absorption as such, but rather reflecting sound, or directing it.

Sound is energy.  It passes through objects, even concrete.  The best sound absorber is space.  Studios use fake walls (traps) to achieve isolation.  The rest pretty much shapes and directs the sound.  Part of the solution but not the solution on it’s own.  To be honest a bloody great double bed mattress with springs, or even a suspended blanket, is a better sound absorber than any egg carton or even those lumps of foam your local foam shop wants to sell you as a “solution”.

Sound booths are expensive because they are expensive and complex to build.  Acoustics is an art, it’s like architecture or even programming.

Pro voice overs are never done in front of the keyboard.  They are read from a script and are a separate process.  They mesh well with the video because the person knows what they are doing – it’s what they do!

The Sound Of Not So Silence

Tap, tap, click, click, the sound of most mISV software video “productions”.  The keyboard, the mouse, the tongue, the teeth, the saliva.  They find their way in and you don’t want them there.  They sound utterly crap.

A pro overdubs a video with a separately recorded, and paced, audio track.  They have total control of the sound, what makes it in and what doesn’t.  Breaths are part of the sound, some breaths should be there, it helps us perceive flow and inflection.  But great big gaspers, and even softer air intakes can sound big on a mic, are usually removed.  Not so when the average mISV or $20 voice over guy does it.

Dogs yapping, kids crying, the sound of your fan on your computer, your hard drive spinning up and down and the “ding!” as Windows informs you of something or other – don’t laugh as I’ve heard this on videos.

You can’t engage you listener with this stuff present.  You’re creating a presentation.  These noises detract and distract the listener.  As ISV’s we know that problems and pain are areas for developing products.  Audio is no different.  That’s why there’s an “audio industry“, “voice over artists“  and professional equipment.  How could we think Joe or Jill developer, short of having the knowledge and equipment, could wing it?

Delivery, Inflection and Preparation

There’s nothing worse than listening to a monotone.  A flat boring voice is a flat boring voice.  It’s not because the person speaking is flat or boring, but they don’t have the experience, confidence or even understanding of what it requires to sound exciting, clear, informative, non condescending, knowledgeable, happy, serious, dramatic or even playful.

All of these things take time, and in many instances money, to develop.  Delivery takes preparation and experience.  Long scripts are rarely read in one take – there are exceptional voice over artists who can do it – but most scripts longer than 30 to 60 seconds are done in pieces and edited together, a sentence here is inserted because it sounds better, a tongue click chopped here, a playful tone added there (you can see in your minds eye the body language and facial expressions of a good voice over artist – the voice “paints it” in you mind).

One exception to this is talking books, but then the best talking books have the best voice over artists, fewer mistakes, true craft persons.

The words come easy, the style is appropriate, characters are adopted.  Yes, characters.  Characters aren’t just about changing into wacky voices.  Characters are tone, delivery and inflection too.  The tone of “I need you to understand this part” is different to “this part really unleashes you creativity in our software”.  The character can include a teacherly tone, a soft confidential tone or an authorative tone.

Every listened to a “podcast” and thought “interesting subject, pity the guy can’t speak properly?”  Well, the “guy” or girl probably can speak fine day to day.  But on a “captive” medium they lack the skills to engage the listener.  Their only mistake is that they don’t realize this.

Voice acting is truly the art of the “right voice for the right job”.  That means character.

Sound Copy Is Not Web Copy

It takes a different approach, different words and even different tone to write web copy compared to audio copy.  This has to be allowed for.  If web copy needs to be succinct, audio copy needs to be warm and inviting – not the same as waffling on, we shouldn’t do that either, no time for that.  But the voice must speak to the listener.  When you hear a radio DJ, a TV voice over man or news presenter they are talking to you.  It’s not generic.  Web copy tends to be more generic.  Tends…  Voice needs to sound as if the person is sitting next to them and speaking.  Another reason for clear, professional recordings in the quality sense of the actual audio too.  Combine a crisp recording with a warm voice giving this “I’m next to you talking to you” tone and you have the makings of a winning video with voice over.

Outsource It

You wouldn’t skimp on compilers, web hosting or other outsourced tools, video and voice are no different.  First impressions count and for instruction videos and sales videos amateur makes you sound, well, amateur.  Hire a pro.  Just like in programming, the ones who charge $20 are not going to deliver a product worth $200 or more.

Ever wondered about radio adds and how long they take to produce?  No?  Well you’re not alone there.  Most people never wonder.  But it must be easy right?  There are so many of them and they sound easy.

Five minutes is two minutes to long when writing the script for most radio adds.  You don’t have the time to take any longer.  Often the writer is the voice over artist.  You’ve got to get it recorded too.  My most notable radio advert was in 1986.  The one most people in Melbourne are likely to remember if they remember it at all.  It was about a master builder, a rental tenant who had so little room he couldn’t swing a cat.  Around three minutes to write, five minutes to record and ten minutes to edit/mix down with special effects.  Finding the cat “meow” as it was “swung” was probably the trickiest part. 

My point is that people do this for a living and are paid to do it because they do it well.  Just like developers are paid to program – they do something other people simply can’t do.

ISV’s make good software, at least that’s our goal.  Voice Over Artists generally do not make good software – they lack the skills.  This applies in reverse.  Don’t believe me still?  Compare carefully an ISV’s home made, or office made, voice over video and then watch a pro one.  The difference is painfully clear.  Pain is something to avoid in life, outsource your pain!!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. – Bertolt Brecht

“OK, I add content but what about my competition adding content?”

The simple truth is, and this is probably more applicable to smaller niche markets (vertical) than to broader horizontal markets, is that most of your competition will never do it.

By and large most of us compete with people who are either 100% programmers or 100% hobbyists.  Generally speaking neither is terribly good at writing content, neither is terribly interested in trying and neither bothers to consider why they should.

It’s about what motivates their/our thought processes.  Most dev’s and hobbyists have the perspective that  “if I build it they will come.”

That they won’t and don’t never seems to enter their heads.  As you’re reading this I’m assuming it’s entered your head.  The fact that you read blogs, whether you agree with me or not, or anybody else you read, sets you apart from the rest and it’s probable – apart from your own competition.

Newsflash: The idea of content on the net for marketing purposes is not new.

It’s been with us since the mid/late nineties at least.  But very few developers have actually done anything about it.  That’s because most look for automated solutions.  They firmly believe the “easiest way” is always the best way – it’s a developer thing.  It’s what makes us tick.  We automate to solve others problems and look for automation to solve our own.

While I personally advocate giving the download sites in general a miss, with the exceptions of CNet, Tucows and a handful of others, I don’t for a moment expect wide spread agreement with me on this particular blasphemy amongst developers… 

But – even if you do decide download sites and submission software is important to you, and I acknowledge there are arguments in favor of this – I just dispute them – your job is far from over.

Your competition is going to be using PAD files, download sites and possibly automated submission.  There is no silver bullet here.  Your use of these tools is not unique, it does not set you apart and it does not do much more than scrape the surface for the possible combinations of search terms people are going to type into a search engine.

You’re goal is to gain as many clicks from as many of those search terms as you can – at least for the important ones.  Your product name and the solution it addresses may not always be the important one a potential customer is looking for.

Google Adwords gets a lot of text written about it.  From genuine marketing gurus to the insidious wanker’s looking to scam by producing “Secrets of Google Adwords Revealed” type claptrap.

It’s a great tool, Adwords, I’m not about to argue otherwise.  The statistics are against trying to claim anything other than use Adwords as far as you can afford to do so.

But – the very keywords ISV’s pain over for their products – and it has to be said – at times pay through the nose for – in many instances can be obtained free just by using content for the search engines.  Google, and to a lesser extent some of the other engines, seem to place a site as authorative based on content.

If your site details and provides content related to the keywords you need, logically, you’re going to be more authorative.

According to Google presently, at least from the engine here in Oz, this blog is the most authorative in relation to the keywords “Starting an mISV” and sixth most authorative for “Starting an ISV”.  Some guys called Eric Sink, Joel and Ian are in front of me on the latter- whoever they are… 

Google Have Improved Search And It Works In Our Favor…

I personally admire the way Google works.  Despite the many criticisms of Google they have improved the quality of search.  Going back to the days of 90′s search engine spamtopia is evidence of that.

We can use this to our advantage, legitimately, properly and cleanly.  You will not read anything here – ever - suggesting you try to game the search engines.  I view such tactics along the same lines as I view download sites.  Bottom feeding parasites intent on offering no value to others but value to themselves using any scam way possible.

Don’t try to scam or game the engines.  Instead be a contributor of value, not a purveyor of SEO perversity – and hold your head high.

Be wary of Gurus Sprouting Yesterday’s Wisdom…

As I’ve said here before, what used to be true does not always hold.  The “wisdom” of download site submission as the most effective tool for search engine clicks is flawed.  It’s flawed because the download sites increasingly offer little or no value to their visitors and increasingly push them to click on Adsense sprayed all over the “page” dedicated to your product – almost in an overwhelming number of cases burying it.  Frequently removing direct links to you and if the link is there using redirects and no follow tags.

With content you not only provide relevant value but you reach beyond the meager PAD file descriptions that these sites invariably repeat.  A thousand submissions all to often equals a thousand PAD description duplications.  There is no value in this.

But content you write that relates to your product – information people are looking to find out – is unique.  It’s your’s and prepared properly (practice) it lasts and ties in well with your objectives of leading your potential customers to a place where they can more easily access your product.

Altruistically speaking you’re potentially helping them twice.  To my mind that’s a powerful concept.

The cost is your time.  If you can afford not to expend your time on writing your own content and can afford to pay somebody to write it – more power to you.  But don’t shrug it off with the usual old developer BS of “I have better things to do than write stuff like content – I’m a programmer not a bloody writer.” Because if you do you are wrong on both counts…

You are first and foremost a business person.  Programmers work for “other” people.  Writers work generally for “other people” – but business people – ISV’s – work for themselves and do things that provide benefit to their businesses.

Watch the doughnut, not the hole…

Watching the download sites and not the hole seems to be a developer trait we need to shed.  I’ve seen so much text typed over and over again about “what’s the best tool for maximum download sites submission” and “which are the best download sites” and then little sprinkles of reality like “very few of my clicks come from download sites…”

Hang on….  That last one.  “…very few clicks”  ??

What’s going on here?

The prevailing logic is that the links on the download sites (which invariably do not point directly to you or are redirected or have no follow links) feed back into the SEO loop.  The more the better right?

Vitamin C helps us avoid getting colds so I’ll swallow the whole bottle I’ll never get a cold - ever!!

Ya think?

I know I’m belaboring this point.  But honestly, it’s illogical to think that thousands or even hundreds of submissions is going to offer long term assistance.  Google and the others, over time and increasingly as algorithms are tweaked are going to strip this repetitive PAD induced vomit out of their listings leaving you back at square one.  It’s happening now and it’s going to become increasingly common because Google has never made any secret of the fact that they strive to optmize quality search and remove garbage and duplication.

I’m going to put my money where my mouth is though, because I know that no matter how many paragraphs I write here a good many of readers aren’t going to buy into the idea that content is superior to download site submissions as an SEO tool.  I might be arrogant but I’m not that dumb!! 

MixAction, my own product, will be released sometime this year.  Hopefully sooner than later.  Here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to run a commentary here on what I’m doing and then map that back to SEO results as they happen.  Real results and not just some guy on a blog poking holes in the air with his fingers…

I’m also going to review a great little book (e-book) that’s very affordable, cuts to the chase and I believe will help set some ISV’s in the right direction.  It’s written by fellow blogger and ISV Steph.  Stay tuned!

Have a great day!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. – Unknown

Well.  Actually no.  Kind of, but not exactly.  I am but I’m not.  I could be but I’m not really… 

At least in the sense that I have here previously.  Instead what this article attempts to address is a link between “download sites” and “domain knowledge” and how they have utterly nothing to do with each other and why you should care.

Now that I’ve totally confused you – let me follow it up with:

It’s not hard to influence search engine rankings for your business/product with a sprinkling of common sense and some good old fashioned hard work and never use a PAD file or a download site again.

Better than that – that influence is done using your own information, your own controls and your own time and it does not involve any stupid (or clever for that matter) – pick your colour hat -  “SEO’ techniques at all.

It’s simply common sense and most of the search engines (including Google) welcome it.  It’s pretty powerful and people without any experience can apply it providing they follow some basic common sense – and -  are consistent and diligent and use a plan….

Oh.  A Couple of more things:

You’ll need to either have solid domain knowledge about your product or at least know (or at least try to find and learn about) how to access information that will enhance that knowledge.

You’ll need to stop saying you ‘can’t write” and understand and accept that practice will improve what you do over time – as in all things – and hence how and what you write.

There is no “can’t” if you are bootstrapping.  Instead you compromise, learn and adapt.

You need to consider that people reading your content are not going to be critics considering it for the next Pulitzer prize or expect you to provide a thesis.

Blogs, for example, are best served raw.  Warts and all – and people actually seem to prefer it, even if they disagree with your contention – because it’s coming from the heart. Your heart.

The psychology for this, as far as I can tell, lies somewhere with the popularity of TV soap operas and reality shows.  If they can relate to you then you have a leg up on the competition and for them to relate you’re better off sounding like an average person writing than, say, a professional journalist.

If you can write like a journo then more power to you – but it’s not essential.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I pretty much equate download sites on the level of somewhere between slugs crawling around in the dirt – or gentiles feasting on exposed flesh.

I don’t think they do us any favors.

I don’t think we need them.

I’d love to see them shrivel up and kick the bucket.

There are exceptions like the CNet sites, Tucows and a handful of others – but the rest are total Google spam.

Yet ISV’s and more particularly mISV’s cling to them in desperation and honestly believe they’ll help them in their quest for, well, whatever your personal quest is for your product and business…

Most mISV’s and a good many ISV’s are very much like the kittenpreneur above.  They think this is the key to the kingdom.  Total Google domination that will out click their competitors.  They tend to forget their competitors are probably using PAD files with similar descriptions listed on the same download sites.  From page 1 to page infinity of just about every search engine.

I firmly believe there is a better way.  But as a statement that’s not going to cut it, right?

OK.  An act of faith to a limited extent is needed here.

I’m going to use this blog as a limited example.  It’s early days for this blog.  I’m not Bob Walsh or Seth or Joel.  I don’t get anywhere near their level of traffic – though it’s growing.  So I’m not going to actually state what keywords I’ve used to work my way up onto page one (and higher) for certain ISV and mISV related terms that older more established blogs dominate.

But I will explain the reason – the real reason – for why I started the blog and what it proved to me.  Something I will be taking away to use on my business product website’s.  Having said that – the blog has grown beyond the experiment and it has many more purposes now, including the fact I like to write, people seem to get some value out if it, even if it’s just disagreement, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun! 

I started this blog – and admit I came late to this game – as an experiment only a few months ago in March 2008, to see if content really could influence the search engine results we see.  The blog uses no Adwords, it doesn’t do anything else except consistently discuss issues related to my own mISV business in the making and general ISV issues or subjects of interest.

It uses various tools to enhance those keywords, the very ones we’ve been using for years like meta tags etc.  Because it’s possible to automate this in tools such as WordPress the task is made a lot easier to be sure.

But…  It’s the content that is critical.  The content is relevant to the keywords and it’s paying off in terms of results when it comes to the subject of starting an ISV or mISV.

If you look at the articles I post here they pretty much all have something in common.  The most obvious might not actually be obvious to all.  The subject line for each post.

In most instances they have been chosen for the purpose of testing their impact on search engine results.  You might be surprised to learn that I get around 50 – 100 hits in the logs for “cracks, hacks, keygen’s and torrents” each month due to one article alone.  That I get currently twenty hits a day for “secret herbs and spices” even though this blog has nothing to do with chicken… 

This would be utterly stupid for a product site where you want relevant eyes on relevant content.  But in the nature of an experiment anything goes – OK?  

OK – the point is that the subject plays a critical part and it’s so easy to do.  That the subject is also a meta tag in WordPress by default certainly assists in this.

But  to really make a difference you have to have posts that relate to the subject, my “secret herbs and spices” hits will ultimately wither and die, I have no interest in maintaining those keywords.  I just wanted to see if I could. 

The other, for this blog, more important keywords however are used in blog posts time and time again.  In the subject, in the articles, in the meta tags, in the blog tags, in the categories and so on.  They are more durable, though do require maintenance – frequent posts with content.

I see, in various forums, at times folks asking how often Google spiders a site.  They don’t believe me when I tell them that Google comes into this blog several times a day (other blogger’s will understand this and why it is so), and articles go up within hours and often right to the top of Google (and Yahoo and Microsoft’s various search engine flavors like Live).

The trick is the XML sitemap and  the fact that you can set Google (via a free account from Google) to come at a certain frequency.  That and a WordPress plugin that notifies Google of a new post when it’s posted… 

But without frequent posts Google has nothing new to get (same goes for the other engines).  So clearly if you want to play this game, and I believe firmly you should, you’re going to need information that updates frequently.

There are several ways you could handle this.

1. A blog.
2. A website that incorporates a blog type engine.
3. A CMS like Joomla or similar.
4. Hand written HTML pages (a major PITA – I used to do it this way in the 90′s and trust me, you don’t want to have to do that when the other tools do it so much better).

You don’t have to have a blog, at least not in the sense we think of them.  You can use blog software simply as an article manager.  The idea is to get people to visit.  Information has more “stickiness” than a product page.  The idea is to become a resource.

Alas Usenet is Dead…

Many years back now the accepted wisdom was to join Usenet groups and offer information to people and become a helpful regular using your signature in each post as a sales tool.  Alas Usenet is Dead.

What’s needed, and has been lacking, is a clear alternative.  People are not subscribing to Usenet.  Heck, most these days don’t know what it is, let alone how to use an NNTP client.

Articles are that alternative.

• People use Google as if it is the Internet.  We need to grasp that average people are typing URL’s into Google instead of the address bar and clicking the Google result to go to a specific site.
• People use Google as an encyclopedia.  Why not be the source of information they are looking for?
• People are hungry for information.  The mISV and ISV can fulfill that hunger and in the process expose these people to their product.  Tactfully of course.  One has to resist the urge to blast them with marketing rhetoric in articles unless the product clearly addresses their quest.  Tact…

There are rules here…

Yep, there are rules.  The objective is not to try or succeed in spamming a search engine.  The objective is to become a valid, readable, content rich place that adds value to the search engines themselves, potential customers and as a neat side effect, your business.  The rules are:

If you write crap you’ll be crapped on.

You have to write information with the intent of contributing something of value.  Your opinion is valid, your perspective is valid, your knowledge is valid.  However a half hearted attempt to scam the search engine with unfulfilled keyword stuffing and rubbish will hurt you, not help you.

This is the virtual world and not the physical world.

The same rules do not apply. You can build up your content over time, and get pretty quick results as you go.

Google, for example, can be inexplicable at times.

This is not a get rich quick scheme.  This is about hard work, planning, rolling up your sleeves, analysis and it must be said – sheer determination.

It’s true the Google-dance, the sandboxes and other weird stuff impact on us all.  But content – valid content – can greatly assist.  None of my sites have been sandboxed, for example, ever and I have numerous domain names.  All of them have been indexed and visible within 3 weeks of registration and putting something up.

The old truisms are no longer true…

At least as far as marketing ISV wise goes.  What I’m talking about here is the old “truisms” that were dead set true yesterday are no longer true.  Download sites were essential to our businesses.  Usenet and forum posting was the only way to get the message out.  But the new mitigating factors such as the emergence of Google, blogs, PHP driven content technology (like WordPress, Joomla and similar tools to name but a few) are more effective, within reach of any ISV and have an incredibly low cost.

I’m no soothsayer and I’m not trying to say a sooth.  Waking up and smelling the coffee brewing is part of evolving our business, products and minds however.  There is no doubt we need to wake up and start inhaling those vapors.  Way past time.

I do know, understand and appreciate that many reading will not feel comfortable with what I’m suggesting here.  It does require, for many, the pain of overcoming comfort zones.  But a decision has to be made – do you control your destiny or are you happy to let it meander along with the likes of download sites and your competition controlling it for you?

Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.  But it needs to be asked because time and time again the same objections come up with ISV’s.

“I can’t write.”

You couldn’t program once either – how did that change?

“It’s OK for you.”

No it isn’t.  That’s presumptuous of you.  We all have nagging doubts about ourselves and we all have the capacity to address them.  You are no different to me or anybody else in this regard.

“You’ve had a lot of practice.”

So have you – you’ve just got to change your perspective on how you consider what you’ve written.

“There’s nothing to be said about my product.”

Respectfully – look at the logic of that statement.  Either you don’t know your subject matter (domain knowledge which you can fix) or you wouldn’t say that – or you’re backing the wrong horse and need a different product that you do know something about.

The bouncing cueball…

Steve Ballmer bounced around the stage and yelled “Developers, developers, developers…” and forever made an impression on programmers.  I still haven’t worked out why this is so.  I simply can’t fathom any sincerity out of Steve’s repetitive bouncing athletics in this case.  However – I do believe there is a more important bouncing chant for ISV’s  and it’s this:

“Content, content, content, content, content…”

If you take anything at all away from this article – or even this blog – I’m hoping it will be that. Content.

Thanks for reading!!

Scott Kane

Quote of the day:
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain