tom_rath

He was with me until he started bringing earthquakes and volcanoes into the mix. What's bringing that about? Too many fat people pressing on the Earth?

Sure, there's a lot of crap going on right now but sometimes it comes in bunches. When that happens, folks start noticing the old plaster crack over the sofa and the basement sink that's leaked for years, and everything starts looking like a disaster.

It sounds like Roger just sat down to write on an 'off' day. That would have been me about a week ago. Things are bad (they're _always_ bad to someone) but they're not '100 years' bad.

Pour yourself another eggnog and add a bit more rum to it than usual. We'll resume tackling our difficulties tomorrow.

For now, we could all use a moment's pause to collect our wits. Let's pull our way out of this in 2009.

If you were a recent graduate looking for work at that time, you might view those figures a little differently. We're also on the downward (rather than recovering) side of that particular data slope, with worse to come.

Looking at the tech-sector alone, those in most (all?) industrialized nations have slid from a world of "Yay! We can live on page views and happy thoughts!" to "How can I scrape together enough to either eat or pay rent?" in just a few months.

That many economies have suddenly seized up in a halt is not a typical thing. As historical data goes, the current situation is remarkably bad.

It worked for me!

Not having to answer to investors saved a ton of hassle (and having all the equity and control at the end is really spiffy) but (to echo some of the other comments here) there are a few pitfalls:

- Don't be a tightwad. In my first year, I would avoid spending wherever possible and often made do with free tools rather than spend cash to buy a perfectly good commercial solution. I quickly learned that's almost always stupid: If you can make a problem disappear for good by buying the solution, reach into your wallet and pay the cash.

- You should be marketing before you've even started development. Marketing isn't just advertising -- it's the social component of design. Where you're 'making something people want', marketing identifies both the 'people' and the 'something' (that is, the market for your product). If you don't have those, you'll end up with a spiffy 'make' that nobody wants.

Erik Sink provides a great summary of the topic under his "Marketing for Geeks" articles (at http://www.ericsink.com/Marketing_for_Geeks.html ). I'd call it a 'must read' for any software entrepreneur.

Because it provides a straight-forward way to let you find local people interested in dating. It's ugly (at least it was when I was using it two years back -- before I happily found my s.o. through the site) but it's fast, simple and works.

For those of you using dating sites who only find people interested in e-mailing, here's an unsolicited tip: Ask the person you're interested in out for drinks right after receiving a response to your initial 'Hi'.

Just cut through the crap and get to the point. You'll easily weed out the flirts and chatters and meet many more people in the process. That's why you're on the site in the first place, right?

The price charged for our own product is now quadruple the "OMG! Nobody will pay this!" price I introduced the software at a few years ago. Every time the price has increased, sales and revenue have increased as well.

The best suggestion I've read (some time ago on the BOS forum) is to keep raising prices until you start receiving complaints about the cost. If nobody is complaining (not even the cheapskates), you're not charging enough.

Another bonus from higher prices: You no longer get those nickle-squeezers whose only criteria was finding the cheapest option. To generalize from my own experience, those folks are colossal pain to deal with.

If we can get to the point where we're reversing aging, I think we can safely assume reversible sterilization.

Use an economic solution (really simplified here): When you receive anti-aging treatment, you're temporarily sterilized. Each person then gets 1 credit for a child. 3 credits are required to bear a child. One can purchase or sell their credit for children as one would like.

For the first time in human history, if one wants children, they'll have to put conscious effort into it. Only those who _really_ want children will have them.

...unless you don't want anti-aging treatment, then you can have as many kids as you'd like and become 'immortal' the old fashioned way.

For here: Networked desktop software for businesses sold at a per-user charge. Distribution is direct download through the Internet and sales are quite spiffy, thanks.

You can sometimes live on eyeballs with a web app but, in desktop land, you need to make something people are willing to pay cash for. If you get to that point, you're golden.

Then why not use the free option rather than pirate?

If someone prefers the commercial version, they should be willing to pay for that added value.

If a pirate is using a program, they're deriving value from it. They are not 'doing without' even though that option is available.

If the pirated option was not available, they would have made a purchase (yours or a competitors) or made do with freeware. That they've not chosen the free option indicates that they prefer your product -- one which they would have paid for.

How much did the otherwise empty computer and operating system cost?

Value doesn't materialize out of good thoughts. Actual work has to go into it.

Sure, if the pirate just stored the file in their collection as a trophy (as many do). However, if the pirate is actively using the product and deriving value from it in their work, they would have paid for the product (or another like it) to receive the same value.

Having a thief (sorry, 'copyright infringer') take your software rather than pay for it may eventually provide some word-of-mouth advertising, but they're likely to tell other pirates and repeat the cycle of revenue loss rather than become vocal advocates for a purchase.

Outside of edge-cases like Microsoft (whose Windows dominance was arguably helped by piracy) it seems that 'piracy is good advertising' is a fallacy used by pirates to make themselves feel better about denying income to people they otherwise like.

Can you name three small software producers whose revenue grew stronger as a result of piracy?

Damn, that's condescending.

If it were delivered in person, I'd expect a lollypop and a pat upon the head after hearing it.

Yahoo already has content and search properties. They would do well to focus laser-sharp on how to properly monetize them.

You can speak to any advertiser who has used both Yahoo's and Google's ad management systems. Yahoo's is awkward and unreliable to the point of uselessness and many advertisers have completely abandoned Yahoo until that company gets purchased by someone who knows how to do the job right.

We're not asking much, Yahoo: Just provide an ad-management system which is as good as Google's was five years ago.

I just spent my afternoon adding a boatload of targeted search advertising to Google for a new campaign. I'd would have happily shoveled some of that cash Yahoo's way, but it would be a complete waste of time and money to do that today.

I didn't start my first business until my early 30s and found the mix of energy and experience just perfect (much easier, in my case, than it likely would have been in my 20s). Try to avoid the "wasting the prime of my life" argument -- one way or another, that time is going to pass.

If you want to start a business and are ready for it, start it. If you'd rather do something else, do that instead.

You're not wasting time if you genuinely enjoy how it is being spent.

Are employees encouraged to display "flair" or is that honestly spontaneous?

People paid for the cars but, according to Mr. Musk's "it's all the preceding CEO's fault" shtick, they were each sold at a substantial loss.

Let me guess: They'll make it up on volume, right?

Monetizing a large user base is proving to be more difficult than some had assumed.

...but if it's a free service with no revenue model and you tell everyone about it, doesn't that speed its demise by increasing costs?

If you have thousands of cars from hundreds of car companies your local garage will have parts for a dozen of them.

There are products which lend themselves to 'the long tail'. The repeated failure of niche brands like DeLorean and Bricklin may indicate that cars are not among them.

It's not just Java. Apple's been awful with backward compatibility for years.

Every time Apple upgrades their Mac OS a frantic application re-write is often required from third-party developers just to get things working on the new platform. In contrast, I can pull out an application written 15 years ago for DOS and fire it up under Windows without a problem. Microsoft realizes how important it is to keep third-party software working on their platform and bends over backwards to provide that backward compatibility.

For our own software, we've not had to tinker with the base code (written on Win 98) at all under Windows.

Building desktop apps for Mac is a (lucrative) pain.

No, I mean customer base.

You cannot deploy Java 6 applications to Mac (except 64-bit Intel Mac OS X 10.5 after September, as mentioned above). You can build Java 6 for all other platforms (back to Windows 98, FFS), but to work for Mac customers you have to adjust your build to create a Java 1.5 version.

You also have to add in special Java upgrade instructions for those using OS X 10.4 (since the 1.5 upgrade isn't included in automatic updates), and tell anyone with a Mac earlier than that to piss off, because Java 1.5 (released over FOUR years ago, in 2004) won't work on OS X 10.3 or earlier.

That is an exceptional pain which isn't present on Windows or Linux.

Apple makes wonderful hardware but they treat their third-party developers like crap. Microsoft is absolutely awesome in comparison and realizes that "Developers, Developers, Developers" are the secret to their OS's success.

Restricting your customer base to those who purchased a new computer in the past year will greatly harm your income (particularly if you're selling business apps).

As for the feel: Don't get bogged down by the implementation technology. The vast majority of your customers (presuming you're not targeting the rabid fanboy subset of Mac) will not notice nor care about the language you've implemented your application in.

If your software does what a business needs and looks reasonably good while doing it, you'll make a killing.

You'd think that, but digging a little deeper shows: "Java SE 6 is available on 64-bit, Intel-based Macs only." Unless your customers are running 64-bit machines (and even they would have waited until this September for compatibility), you're SOL and have to compile a separate Java 1.5 release for Mac.

So, Windows 2000/XP: No problem! 1.6 compatibility in 2006.

OS X 10.5: Whoa! This Java thing is too new-fangled for us!

As for the GUI: You can get around that with a Synth theme. Ugly and slow Java on the desktop is a thing of the past (even on Mac).

>Java development on the Mac is also very popular

Yeah, right.

Get back to me when Apple arrives in 2006 and releases a version 1.6 JVM, or at least provides an automatic update to Java 1.5 on OS X 10.4!

Perhaps more succinctly: The second mouse gets the cheese.

His easily missed link about the troll BIFF is a nifty read too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIFF

I miss Usenet.

The only tasks which I find stop me from working on my product are various administration and customer support chores. The one-time items like incorporation are trivial in terms of time-cost.

Being forced to step away from development has actually saved me more trouble that it's taken away. Being forced to take a breather to tally up expenses or polish up some documentation takes my mind away from the development task at hand and helps give me a better perspective on things when I return. On far more occasions than I'd care to admit, I'll find myself thinking about the 'absolutely essential' work I was intently doing to improve my product and realize it was either completely unnecessary or else could be done in a better manner.

Those insights would not likely be gained if I had been focused entirely on development. Mix it up.

When Clinton _started_ his Presidency.

I'm guessing you're too young to remember the whole "It's The Economy, Stupid" theme behind Clinton's first-term campaign.

A piece of paper with boxes printed beside the names of those running for office -- we’ll call this paper a ‘ballot’.

The voter receives a ballot from those managing their place of voting (after showing identification or a registration card of some sort), has their name physically crossed off a printed list and then, after moving behind a screen or other mechanism to allow for privacy, places an 'x' in the box beside the name of the individual they are voting for. The voter then folds the ballot and places it anonymously into a box used to collect the votes for their district. A ‘ballot box’, if you will.

Once the polls close, volunteers for the place of voting manually count the paper ballots for the individuals running for office and report the count to a central election office. This manual count rarely takes more than an hour or so to complete.

Simple enough? Votes remain anonymous, the paper ballots create a permanent audit trail and, as long as the ballot boxes are supervised by reliable third-parties minimally affiliated with those running for office, the voter will be assured their vote is counted towards their intended result.

This is how most of the developed world handles elections. It saves us a ton of trouble in close races.

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil -- Donald Knuth"

There are some things which should not be optimized. An extremely important, easily manipulated event prone to corruption which occurs once every few years (and only takes two hours to complete manually) might be considered one of them.

If only 5% of your Facebook network existed, would you use (let alone pay for) Facebook?