So if there's no catch, why give it away?

In case you missed my previous post, we're giving away copies of one of our products, Web Helper Browser, until further notice. If you've been following my recent CodeSnipers posts, you might have guessed that I'm in an introspective mood, and one mistake I know we made with Web Helper Browser is that we didn't try hard enough to pin down exactly what it was or who it was for. We had a general concept, saving web pages, and a repository for notes, links and web fragments. We also had a few cool features, the multi searching, the automatic link following and the floating drag and drop window. What we lacked was a target user, aside from ourselves.

Internally we've been using some version of Web Helper Browser every day for at least 6 months, and I know that I miss it when I don't have access to it, so I know we're onto something. But, I also know that you need to have more than just features and concepts to make a successful, marketable product.

Giving copies away seems like a reasonable way to effectively step the product back into a beta phase. I don't know if it will work, but right now I don't see what harm it can do. We need to get more radical with the product development, find it a place or niche in the market, and connect with more potential users. It seems like it should be easier to do that if we're open about it, rather than trying to do it silently through incremental updates.

I'll be posting more on our plans for the product over the next few days.