Better tools

Two links this morning about improved tools:-

• Seth Godin talks about the removal of "access to good tools" as a barrier to entry. I can certainly identify with that... I've posted a few links to free tools or resources, and I'm constantly surprised by how little you need to invest to start producing quality websites or software.
• Scott Bilas of Oberon asks if Flash can be used for commercial games, and it certainly sounds like it can. It's a long and very thorough article, and it really got me excited about learning to use Flash all over again. Thanks for the link go to Li-fan Chen on the JoS forums.

My New Product Idea

For those of you who don't know, my company's primary product is Oriador Rota, a staff scheduling package. It's what I spend all my time working on, and I think it's really moving in the right direction.

One of the things I especially like about the product is the timeline presentation, the grouped view, and the way you can get a real idea of what's happening from little graphs or colour codings.

A little while ago, I started thinking that it would be cool if I could use the same views to look at time sensitive data from other software. A little more time went by, another idea came along; to have some kind of low cost viewer license to let more people access rota files. Then it hit me, what if as well as reading our rota files, the viewer was able to read some kind of standard XML format. The XML schema could include support for all kinds of customisation and settings, and if I wanted to make any other data compatible with Oriador, all I would have to do is export the data in an appropriate XML file. And, everyone else could use it too, as the schema will be publicly available.

I've put together a basic website to explain the concept (it probably does it better than I have here!):-

http://www.oriador.com/viewer

There's a forum and a mailing list on the site, and I'll be trying to do a better job of explaining the idea on this blog over the coming days and weeks. All feedback would be welcomed, especially if you think you might be interested in using the product, or if you're just confused by the whole thing and think I need to do a much better job of explaining it.

More Free Stuff - Wink

It's amazing what you can do online without spending any money, so many tools and resources to help us little guys get our ideas off the ground. If you haven't already, take a look at Wink, a free tool for building tutorial videos for your product. The tutorials are created as Flash movies, and you can overlay callouts and notes on the captured screenshots.

Free Stock Images

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to Open Source Web Design, hailing it as the most useful link I'd come across in a long time. By some strange coincidence, the site went down later that same day, and has yet to re-appear...

To make good on my promise of a useful (and working) site, I'm passing on a link I found long, long ago on Jim Logan's blog. Stock.xchng is a vast repository of free, royalty free, stock images. The next time you find yourself in need of an image for a website, you know where to look. I think the randomizer button is especially cool.

If that's too free for you, or if you want something more specialised, or if you want to sell your own photos, there's now a paid version of the site: stockxpert.

In the meantime, I'll be watching the web templates site, and I'll let you know if it comes back online.

Viral by incentive?

I've been watching VistaDB for a little while now, the author sometimes posts on JoS, and from a quick scan over the site it looks like it could be a good option for us.

Now for the interesting part: for posting this announcement here on my blog, Vista Software will give me a free copy of Vista DB. Clearly, I can't resist an offer like that when I've been giving the product the eye for a while. But what if I hadn't? I think I'd feel a bit unclean if I posted an announcement about something I wasn't really into just for a freebie...

VistaDB 2.1 database for .NET has been released

This 2.1 update includes over 60 improvements, including new support for .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio .NET 2005. VistaDB is a small-footprint, embedded SQL database alternative to Jet/Access, MSDE and SQL Server Express 2005 that enables developers to build .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 applications. Features SQL-92 support, small 500KB embedded footprint, free 2-User VistaDB Server for remote TCP/IP data access, royalty free distribution for both embedded and server, Copy 'n Go! deployment, managed ADO.NET Provider, data management and data migration tools. Free trial is available for download.
- Learn more about VistaDB
- Repost this to your blog and receive a FREE copy of VistaDB 2.1!

Hmm... see, now I don't know how to feel. This is a product I feel like I would have eventually posted about, just regular viral word of mouth after I'd tried it or chosen it for one of my products. I'm genuinely interested in it, and I'm genuinely excited to get a free copy, but I don't seem to have the same warm fuzzy feeling as I normally have when I post a blog link to an interesting site or product.

If you're interested in a cool looking embedded database, I'd certainly suggest you take a look at VistaDB (if you have a blog, you might even want to get a free copy). We've embedded SQLite in the past, but have been wanting to replace it for a while. When I started searching for a more .NET centric replacement, VistaDB was the only one I found that I took the time to bookmark.

As for Viral-by-Incentive, colour me conflicted. I really hope that Vista publish some results somewhere (even on JoS, please?), or let us know how this experiment turns out.

No Hurry

A couple of extra links survived this weekend's autumnal spring clean.

• Is procrastination a problem? Maybe you're just doing it wrong. Structured Procrastination, funny because it's true.
• 24 hours, 7 days, 21 days? If you listened to Sams and the Dummies books, you'd be amazed by what you could learn in such a short period of time. This guide to teaching yourself programming suggests a much more generous schedule.

Finally, if you're struggling for distractions today, take a quick look at GreedyMe, a great new wishlist site.

On Studio 8

My latest Codesnipers post is a mini-review/first impressions write up of Macromedia Studio 8. I've been using Dreamweaver and Fireworks 4 for about 5 years, and finally stumped up the funds for an upgrade. You can find out what I think so far in Catching up with Macromedia.

I had something completely different planned for this week: it was called "Wing it", and it was supposed to be a slight challenge to friday's Avoid Winging it. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite seem to say what I wanted to say without sounding like a reckless moron. I left it on the backburner.

Spring Cleaning

Whenever I see something online that I think I should mention on my blog, I save the link, and I write a little note of it somewhere. The theory behind it is that I always have something to write about, but this backlog of ideas has become too distracting, and links can quickly become old news.

To tie up this loose end, I've gone through my notes, picked out the good, relevant ones, and I'm going to ditch the rest. Along with this, I've refreshed my blog roll. A special mention has to go to Planet MicroISV, a great new site which aggregates all things MicroISV; I'm grateful for my inclusion.

So, apologies if you've seen any of these links before, but I think they're all worth posting in case anyone missed them:-

• This Inc Magazine article, Start With Nothing, is an absolute must read for anyone thinking of starting an ISV.
• An awesome design resource, I really want to spend some time thoroughly reading the Mandership articles.
• Maybe the talk of massive startup costs mean it has little relevance to us MicroISVs, but this Forbes article about starting up in the games industry, Ordinary Hero, is a good read.
• It's swimming with promotions and sponsor links, but when I was looking for help with a web problem I found SitePoint, and was blown away by the amount of useful tutorials on there.
• The Stanford Educators Corner has some great videos of business tips from the likes of Google's Larry Page.
• Stephane Grenier is a regular over on the JoS forums, and in July he wrote a very thorough article about his website re-design. A great read for anyone trying to get the best out of their product site.

That's it, I feel better already.

New Blog Launched

I've launched a new blog for company announcements:-

http://v4-software-updates.blogspot.com/

I'm going to use it just to announce product news and software releases, so that anyone who just wants to follow our software updates can do so by following one feed. I think it's a better solution than me just mentioning them here, I don't want to force every user who just wants to keep up with our releases to wade through everything I write here to find out about them.

Strangely enough, within minutes of posting up the new blog, it's first post got 2 spam comments... I don't think I've ever had one on this blog in over six months.

If all goes to plan, I'll be announcing an Oriador Rota release there later today or over the weekend, and announcing a new product idea some time next week.

Craftsmanship

My Grandfather used to make boats. For fun. It blows my mind to see the attention to detail (that wheel turns!), but when I got my hands on a couple this last weekend it also made me think about how I work.

I remember watching him when I was younger, after he retired he spent almost every hour he had couped up in his little woodworking shed, always whittling or sanding something. Almost everything that looks like it might be an individual piece of wood, is. From the panelling on the deck and the hull, to the cannons and the pulleys. Underneath the panelling is a perfectly formed skeleton hull, although no-one could ever hope to see it without destroying the boat.

My dad used to bring him scrap wood, anything that he found, it didn't need to be high quality, it just went into the shed when it came back out it had been crafted into something beautiful. The first boat weighs no more than a few ounces, it feels insanely fragile, and unsurprisingly, there are a few places where it looks a bit worse for wear. But there's nothing a little bit of care couldn't fix.

Time has been kinder to this second one, it had pride of place in my grandmother's living room for as long as I can remember, and is practically as good as new. It's about the same size as the first (about 18" tall and long), though a little less intricate, and much heavier... probably just because of the type of wood.

These boats took weeks or months to put together, but he never hurried. He could probably have cut corners, but that was never the point.

This was about craft, pure and simple, he enjoyed it and wanted to perfect it. I've got to get myself better connected with that craftsman gene.

Software is my craft, and I don't think I've always done it the justice it deserves. The perception of market speed that the internet gives, the desire for success, and just lazy impatience, can all warp my attitude towards my work. I know I have to be on guard, the best work I've done has been carefully crafted and cultivated... things that get rushed through tend to come back to haunt me later.

There are obviously differences between running a business and craft for fun, in a business there are always times when something just really needs to get done. There are times when you need to be involved early, there are opportunities that go away if you're not paying attention. I just have to make sure I don't let that sense of urgency suppress my craftsmanship.

It's probably easier said than done, but so is everthing important.

Thar be Consultingware

My Codesnipers post this week is really just me thinking out loud, about the slippery slope that leads from shrinkwrap to consultingware.

It's online now: Take it or Leave it.

Huh, and more Squidoo

No matter how good or bad Squidoo ends up being, or no matter what your personal opinion is, you have to hand it to Seth Godin. Squidoo has certainly got people talking, and it's clearly polarised opinion. Polarising is a good thing, if some people really like you, and some people hate you, you're onto a winner. In fact, the existence of the people who don't get it or who hate you seems to make the people who like you even more passionate. The important thing is that you're getting a reaction... you have sharp edges.

If you're still trying to figure out what Squidoo is, Jeff Jarvis's attempted explanation might help. I think everything will be clear when the beta site launches next week.

Finally, for that light Friday feeling, the spoof consultancy company website Huhcorp.com is good for a few laughs.

Excel HTML

My codesniper's post this week is about creating Microsoft Excel compatible HTML files. That's the end of my mini Excel export series, which means I need a new topic for next week.

In other Codesnipers news, fellow sniper Ben Bryant has quietly started his own blog. He started out with some good posts on discarded software and software designers as antropologists.

Finally, Alex Bendig's blog introduced me to Treehouse, a great new PDF magazine about web design. My favorite link from the book was to this Cheatsheet roundup, the ones from I Love Jack Daniels are especially cool.

Nailbiting times, or Deja-vu

Bea and I have been talking for some time about how when we finally move back into our home, the first night of heavy rain will be nerve-wracking. We imagine ourselves sitting up all night watching the street, waiting for the onslaught of water to come rushing over the barriers, watching for leaks, and moving anything valuable out of harms way.

My brother and our other neighbours who've been lucky enough to move back in already had that very experience last night. We heard from them yesterday evening, and when we awoke to news of widespread flooding in the city, feared the worst. So far they (and our still-in-progress home) are safe, but more heavy rain is forecast for the rest of the day and overnight. Fingers firmly crossed.

In other home related news, our city council is still planning to buy up and demolish our homes in the next few years to make way for new flats and offices... they can expect a fight.

Web Site Templates

Buried in a forum thread over on Joel on Software is one of those links that is just so useful that you have to share it right away.

Open Source Web Design is a community site dedicated to sharing free to use web site templates and designs. As someone who's been meaning to change my blog template for months, and trying to find the time to do a major overhaul of my product sites, when I found this I felt like I'd struck gold.

A million thanks to Denis P for posting the link.

Everyone's an Expert

Seth Godin has unveiled the big product he's been working on. Squidoo plans to bring Less to the web, by focusing information and bringing out our inner experts. It certainly sounds interesting, I just read Seth's new free ebook, Everyone's an Expert, which gives away a lot more clues to what Squidoo is going to do. It still left me wanting more, but in a good way.

Read: The next free ebook (Squidoo!)

We have walls and floors

We've just got back from checking-in with the repairs to our home. Things are really starting to move, we have some kind of floor, and the first layer of plaster has been added to the walls.

If you want to see how that room looked over the course of the year since the flood, click here. Still no stairs though:-

Home for Christmas? It might happen, but it wouldn't surprise me if we weren't. It would have been nice to start 2006 exactly where 2004 left off, so we could just draw a line under 2005 and move on. Regardless, if we don't get moved in by the end of the year we should at least be back there by the end of January.

Writeboard

I mentioned Writeboard briefly in my catch up post on Tuesday, but I just have to link to today's 37signals post.

Read: Using Writeboard to collaborate on the text for our new book

I just think it's a perfect piece of educational promotion. It got me excited about Writeboard, while at the same time making me green with envy that I don't have a tutorial or sample or case study that's anything like as compelling.

It's dogfooding and customer evangelism fused into a tutorial, and I think it's genius.

Now, if only I could hire a few staff so I'd need to use Oriador Rota to organize them...

Reverse Shoplifting

From Reveries today, Shop Dropping: the emerging trend of substituting hand-made goods on supermarket shelves in place of the original merchandise. There's no theft going on here, the substituters are buying from the store, then replacing the item later, sometimes even with the original barcode and tags attached.

Maybe I'm a little bit too left brain, or maybe there's no specific agenda behind it, but I'm in the "Huh?" camp on this one. Trying to figure it out I'm reminded of Bob Dylan in No Direction Home. He seemed to get a kick out the fact that people would spend years trying to figure out exactly what he meant by every word, but never seemed to give it too much thought himself, he just wrote.

An interesting read, and you can find more information at shopdropping.net.

Web 2.0

After linking to 37signals' list of what web 2.0 isn't in my last post, here's a new link to Tim O'Reilly's slide showing what it is. I found my way there via Seth Godin's summary, which is well worth a look.

There's an interesting thread running on the JoS Business of Software forum, discussing the business models of web 2.0.

Catching Up

There were a few things I wanted to blog about over the last couple of days that I never got around to, so I'm just going to summarize:-

• I blogged about Protopage a couple of weeks ago, it's a great example of how the web is evolving. Now, thanks to my fellow CodeSniper Alex Bendig, I've found another one... NetVibes is another awesome start page replacement. To borrow Alex's sentiment, when even start pages are exciting, you know there's something big going on.
• While I'm in Web 2.0 territory, 37signals posted a list of things that Web 2.0 isn't.
• Sticking with 37signals, they've launched a whole new product. WriteBoard looks like a cool idea. I like the way they've stuck to their idea of letting people collaborate on text. They didn't hold it up until they had a Microsoft Word killer, they didn't bother with real-time collaboration or anything too wiz-bang trendy. They just picked a problem and built a solution. I can really see the potential, I'm sure it'll be useful if I need to collaborate on a blog post or letter.
• My latest Codesnipers post, Excel From C#: What I did, is online now. It's an explanation of how I added Microsoft Excel export support to the latest version of Oriador Rota, including an honest assessment of the decision making process and the lessons learned.
• In a recent post I mentioned that I'd be introducing a forum for Oriador in the coming weeks. There's still some customization to be done, but it's online and it's working: Oriador Support Forums.

From the Horse's Mouth

Midway games have a nice section on their website where you can play some of their classic games.

Midway Classic Games online (requires Shockwave player)

These are games they're still selling as part of retro collections, and which are no doubt already available to play somewhere online on unofficial sites. I think it's great that they're trusting enough and in touch enough with the web to just put them out there.

I hope it catches on, I want to be able to do the same when I go to Nintendo.com. I'm sure there are plenty of unofficial sites out there which will let you play a classic Nintendo game in a browser, why not take away the tempation and host them on their own site. They obviously know the value of their classic games, as they've shown by re-issuing some old games on the Gameboy Advance and including classics in Gamecube games. On top of that, the download service for their next console will feature games from all of their previous consoles, so they obviously get the whole retro thing. Making some classic games available on the site seems like a harmless step, and one that would bring extra traffic and goodwill to their site.

The link to Midway came from XGaming, who make great joysticks.

Livestats

Do I have any Livestats experts reading?

The host for this site recently updated to Livestats XSP 8.0. I can't remember what the previous version was, but when I used to log in it gave me a nice little chart showing how many visitors I'd had for each day in that week. It was perfect, I could find out everything I wanted to know. I clicked Visitors, it told me how many visitors I'd had that week, Referrals told me where the visitors came from. I was happy.

Lately they started showing me a lot of completely useless trend analysis and averages information. I really didn't care how many visitors Livestats thought I was going to get for the next 7 days, I just wanted to know how many visitors there were in the last 7. But it was innocuous, I could ignore it. I was still happy.

This latest update changed all that. I'm sure the developers are happy, it looks a lot prettier, it gives me so much more information, there are more options in the new tree style menu. It's just that it's completely confusing, rather than show me the last 7 days, it shows me the last few "Like Days", eg, if I look at wednesday I see it compared to the last few wednesdays. The scope of the default graphs have changed too, now I see a big stupid graph by month, a slightly more useful one by week, and a third by day. But they all seem to show the data since time began, so the columns on the day graph are tiny. Not to mention that it seems to take a lot longer to prepare the page, probably due to all the extra information. I don't want to spend too much time looking at my stats, I just like to see roughly what's been going on over the last few days. With the old version I could log in and check 3 or 4 different pages and I would know exactly what was going on... now I've tried a bunch of the new options, they all take longer to load, and they're all harder to read, and I no longer have any idea what's been happening on my site.

I don't want to whine too much, I'm sure someone out there needs all the new data, I just want to know how to get a nice simple summary of the week for Visitors, Page Views, Search Engine spiders, and Referrals. Just like I used to have... when I was happy... before they improved it.

Basically, if anyone reading knows anything at all about Livestats I'd love to hear from you... and if you know how to disable the "Like Days" (maybe even change it to last few days?) feature, and change the scope of the graphs in the top panel, you'll make me a very happy man.