Here ye... Hear me

KC scooped me over on Codesnipers, but my interview with Michael Lehman for the Channel 9 Micro ISV Show is now online.

Micro ISV Digest

A round up of the week's Micro ISV news and announcements, with some relevant blog posts and articles.

Product News and Announcements

• Magna CRM, a customer relationship management system for small businesses, was released. Congratulations to Dimitris for making it to 1.0, and thanks for the post-mortem.
• Hosting for Helpspot is live.
• Jotzel is a cool new Carnival of the Capitalists project. It's kind of like Digg, but just for business articles.
• BlogBeat is a web statistics service specifically for bloggers.
• SmileTag was announced on the JoS forum. It's an interesting looking product with a nice web site, but I agree with the majority of the JoS posters: the open source business model might not have been the best choice.
• Erik at Overview software announced his first product, a tool to help business teams build quick web applications.
• ReminderFeed lets you build a personal reminder RSS feed.
• There's a big Google algorithm change coming in February... if you want to check out the results in advance try http://66.249.93.104/
• Paul Edmondson is blogging the start of Hubpages.com.
• Mark L wants some feedback on his new Buzz monitoring service Hypetracker.

Relevant Links and Blog Posts

• Ian Landsman had some tips on cultivating your audience, and Steve Pavlina has advice for building a high traffic site. It might also be helpful to learn how to write well for the web, or even just learn how to write.
• A nice piece from Gamasutra on Iterative Development Techniques.
• Joe Indie has good advice in Accumulation is Required for Investment.
• WorkHappy reviewed the Google Adwords Jumpstart program, summary: the emphasis should be on start.
• I should probably give Guy Kawasaki his own section; Hindsights 2 and the art of Bootstrapping were both great this week.
• Nola shared her cool tools on codesnipers; some good resources for code snippets.
• I linked to a review of Byterun's PHP encoder last week, so I thought I should also include Ben's tip on the small business program for the Zend encoder.
• Joel Spolsky started a new series on Great Design. Read his first drafts of the Introduction, and What is Design?
• I found an old-but-great-but-long post on gapingvoid, how to be creative.
• PicoBusiness were on fire this week, the links to Startup Exchange, Practical Marketing tips for Entrepreneurs, and AlacraWiki were all appreciated. As was their post on the similarities between agile development and entrepreneurship.

From the Forums

• An enquiry from Andy Brice on the impulse buy threshold generated a good discussion and a lot of great advice.
• Some advice on Reseller/Sales rates and percentages.
• How to look big, while Microsoft are reportedly spending millions to look small. I'll let you make up your own mind, but there is a lot of useful information in that forum thread.

Tags: micro isv blogs links

Still Rolling

When I took a look back over my recent posts yesterday, I noticed that I haven't blogged about what I'm doing with my software for quite some time.

I did manage to claw myself out of that festive slump, and I've been hard at work on the next Oriador release for a while now. It's shaping up nicely, and as it will be my first update of 2006, I'm looking forward to seeing it out the door. It suffered a little from a constantly expanding to-do list, but just this week I managed to persuade myself to postpone a few features; keeping this version more inline with my original intentions. As a result, it might still manage a January release.

200-UP

I've just hit 200 posts here on this blog, so I wanted to thank you all for reading. Roll on the next 200!

As it ties in with my latest codesnipers post (Micro ISV Blogging: What and When?), I thought I'd also take a minute to re-visit and maybe update my "What kind of blog is this?" post. It turns out that it still does a pretty good job of summing up what this blog is all about, the only significant change since then has been the addition of the weekly Micro ISV Digest posts. They've given some meaning to my otherwise aimless web browsing, and I hope you find them useful. As long as all the Micro ISVs out there keep making news, I'll keep putting them together.

One of the goals I had for the last 100 posts was to reduce the amount of personal ranting and moaning. 2005 was a crazy year for me, and I had been using this blog as an outlet to write about everything that was happening to me outside of the business. I think I've managed to stay more on topic, and I'm happier with the results. For any long term readers who are wondering how everything turned out, I'm still waiting to go home, but hopefully not too much longer.

Overall, I'm really happy to be blogging and I'm looking forward to the future.

Notes: I do my best to keep up, but if you ever spot new Micro ISVs, blog posts, or announcements that you think should make the next Micro ISV Digest, feel free to email me. Regarding the post count, I'm not keeping score, but Blogger shows a counter each time I login to start a new post.

Tags: micro isv blogging

Micro ISV Digest

Wow, that was a busy week. Here's my jam-packed round up of the best Micro ISV related news and links.

Product news and announcements

• BugNinja reviewed ByteRun's PHP Protector, which I'm sure will be of great interest to anyone building PHP applications for resale or redistribution. BugNinja also linked us to a free PHP PDF generator.
• Gurock software released a new version of SmartInspect.
• Incenteus are looking for beta testers for their NTest .Net unit testing system.
• Dave is looking for beta testers for Bright Car, his software to help you keep track of your car's maintenance scheduling.
• Ian found a new ISV blog, it's not clear what pluralvision is all about, but let's wish Kyle luck all the same.
• I found a couple of new services based around annotating the web. Wizlite works like a highlighter, so you can highlight sections of web pages. MyStickies is post-it notes for the web.
• Microsoft are doing a Micro ISV Show. Here's what the JoS crowd thought.

Relevant links and blog posts

• Paul Graham's How to do what you love?
• Bob Walsh had a disappointing experience with Movable type and Yahoo, he's looking for a new platform. The review of his book on A Shareware Life came in a little late for last weeks round up.
• Sticking with A Shareware Life, Bob might also like Exploding Traffic, where Thomas shared his experiences since moving from Blogger to Typepad. This week he also wrote about a shareware game developer featured in the wall street journal, and continued his series on small software companies.
• BugNinja again, the first part of his stop, analyze, correct and proceed series made for a great read. As did his post on innovation and piggy backing.
• The myth of the great idea on Pico Business.
• Micro ISV posted a follow up interview with a Micro ISVer who went to work for microsoft instead.
• From gapingvoid, the two immutable laws of blogging, and 10 reasons why no-one is reading your blog. They also led me to Why it's impossible to start a new blog in 2006.
• Via Codesnipers this week, Ben Bryant's IT Death March tells of the slow death of a large IT development project, KC blogged about flavor of the month syndrome, and I started a Micro ISV blogging series.
• Joe Indie asks, why doesn't everyone go indie?
• I've been following Casual Game Blogs, an aggregation service in the style of Planet Micro ISV, but with blogs from game developers. We share a lot of ground.
• This first part of IBM's AJAX tutorial turned up a couple of months ago, here's the second.
• Guy Kawasaki keeps raising the bar: his Venture Capital wishlist and Art of Branding are just two of his highlights from this week.

Anything else?

• A list of the highest paying Adsense terms from CyberWire.
• Take a tour of Google HQ in this ABC news video. If that doesn't satisfy you, there's also a recent BBC program about Google available to watch online.

Tags: micro isv blogs links

Flash Earth

Okay, I must have been sleeping whenever this came online, because it's just too cool to escape a mention.

Flash Earth is a working version of Google Earth that runs in a browser window via the Flash player. It shows satellite images from Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth.

Having spent a little time trying to get to grips with Flash lately, I'm even more blown away by this. It certainly puts the little bouncy ball sample projects I was tinkering with into perspective!

Found via jayisgames.com.

Tags: links maps flash earth

Free Simple Forums

I wish I'd found this a few months ago.

I came across a link to PunBB in a post on the 37signals blog. It has everything I was looking for in a forum: Simple, Fast, Lightweight. It sounds like it's been developed exactly the way I'd want my forum software: less graphical, less features, uncluttered, easier to administer. All the other forums I've tried or seen (except the JoS forums) are packed with features a small ISV board is never likely to need.

Next time I need a forum for a website, I'll be giving this one a try.

Tags: micro isv web design forum software

The Best Productivity Tip

Last week I mentioned cutting down on email and web browsing to improve productivity. Well, Bob Walsh has blogged a little test to see whether email is getting the better of you.

Based on Bob's test, a few other little suggestions here and there, and what I've been doing, I'm amazed by how much impact just closing Outlook can have on productivity. If you don't use Outlook, close whatever email client you do use, and make sure you close any of the little taskbar notifiers or noise-makers that let you know when you've got new email. You won't be disappointed.

Allocate periods of time during the day for catching up with email, or set a timer each time you start working and try to resist the temptation to check your email until the time runs out. Welcome back to the Zone!

Castles Burning

Jeffrey Zeldman skips a generation in his latest article on A List Apart: Web 3.0.

A well written and entertaining take on the recent web, reflections on mass media reporting of the web in general, and recollections of the dot-com era.

Well worth reading.

Micro ISV Digest

The best of the week's Micro ISV news and blog links.

Product News and Announcements

• This was a big week for Bob Walsh. His book Micro ISV: From Vision to Reality was released, and then he launched a new Micro ISV resource site: MyMicroISV.com. You can read Joel Spolsky's introduction to the book here, and you can find the book in ebook form here. MicroISV.com interviewed Bob too.
• Rapid Signal started beta testing of Magna CRM. Sign up here.
• New MicroISV, new blog: Overview will develop re-usable components for PHP developers.
• Andrea Nagar is looking for Beta testers for a new product. Direct Access is an application launcher.
• Ian announced that ValiantHost would soon become the first hosted Helpspot providers.

Relevant Links and Blog Posts

• In the last New Year posting of the season, J from NGEdit outlines his plans and hopes for 2006.
• Ian Landsman posted about staying focused on your mission and avoiding distractions in The Discipline. He was also interviewed by Redscowl Bluesingky.
• An interesting post on A Shareware Life about price points and trial conversions. And another on the failure of a startup in Why Pyrogon Failed.
• Techcrunch have some beta planning tips: Don't blow your beta.
• Phil from Seartech on Customer Service.
• Bob Walsh posted an introduction to The Long Tail, with some great links.
• SpoiltChild talks business plans and jumping through hoops for funding.
• Guy Kawasaki's Hindsights. Great stuff, but he made a few great posts this week, if you haven't already I recommend you read them all.
• The Overture inventory system is a great tool for Search Engine Optimization.

Anything else?

• RandsInRepose's welcome to management: What to do when you're screwed.
• The world's best quotes in 1-10 words.
• Dave Child of IloveJackDaniels.com posted another of his beautiful cheat sheets, this time for Ruby on Rails.
• Wesner Moise is giving away a cool little tool, it was created as a scrabble word finder, but I'm sure someone will be able to think up some other uses.

Tags: micro isv links blogs

Hey, it works!

Today, I tried to filter out some of the usual distractions and see if I could get more done. It was much more effective than I expected.

Basically, all I did today was put a limit on how often I checked my email, and waited until mid-afternoon before checking my usual round of websites. I'd already felt a productivity boost this week just by closing Outlook (I can't believe I didn't think of it before, but in the past I usually left it running the background; it's amazing how much difference just closing it has made). Not checking forums and blogs until later in the day had a similar effect.

I suppose it's all no-brainer stuff when you think about it, but it's easy to pick up bad habits. I'm hoping to keep this up for a while and see how it goes. In summary: I'm quickly scanning over my emails in the mornings, and only dealing with customer issues. After that, I'm not flicking around the web, or checking my email again until later in the day.

Bob Walsh has been blogging a regular series of productivity tips almost every day this year, so if you're also hoping to get more done this year, you might want to check it out.

First Things First

After all of last week's talk about being more productive this year by trying to focus on working in the mornings, I'm giving it a try today.

I don't believe it's appropriate to completely ignore email, so I've scanned over my support channels, but I don't have anything I need to take care of urgently. No more browsing or email checking for me for at least a few hours... I'll let you know how it goes.

Guy's Innovation

Guy Kawasaki's latest is The Art of Innovation.

It's good, inspiring, get-on-with-it style advice. I found another link today via SpoiltChild, Don't Blow Your Beta. It covers similar ground, but the advice there is more towards caution and a good first impression.

I get the feeling that someone with enough time on their hands could sit down with those two posts and pit them against each other. The end result could be an inspiring yet measured manifesto for the Micro ISV startup. In the meantime, it's easier to just read both.

More Lies

After posting about the top lies of venture capitalists last week, Guy balanced the books with a similar post on the top lies of entrepreneurs. Great posts.

Jason Fried posted a nice follow-up to the entrepreneur lies post on the 37signals blog.

Tags: micro isv links blogging

Micro ISV Digest

New Year wishes, resolutions and plans were plentiful in blog posts this week, and it brought some great advice for Micro ISVs.

Product News and Announcements

• An update to Turbo Gears.
• A new version of Surfulator has some interesting looking features for building up composite articles.
• Splashpool is a solution based search engine for business software. It's an interesting concept, but I think it needs to be clearer on the site how solution providers can participate.

Blogging on the New Year

• Joe Indie's Simple Plan for 2006.
• BugNinja had a busy new year period, but this year will be different.
• Thomas of A Shareware Life is planning a massive overhaul this year, Reboot 2006. 1o years down, congratulations!
• Ian M Jones wants to get to grips with the structure of his days.
• Ben at BRK Studio also wants to get his schedule under control, What I'd like from 2006.
• I also wrote about what I'd like from 2006 on Codesnipers.

It sounds like if we all had our way, there wouldn't be many email replies going out in the mornings in 2006. No doubt reality will interfere with all of our plans.

Relevant Blog Posts and Links

• 10 steps to a hugely successful web 2.0 company: Great tips for planning and choosing how to get started.
• Why I quit entrepreneurship and got a real job: Lessons learned and the reasons for going back to the other side.
• 7 ways to get to the top of the del.icio.us popular list: A guide from ProBlogger for writing and titling popular topics for your blog posts.
• A guide to increasing sales in the 37signals blog small business 101 series.
• One of the longest blog posts I've ever seen, A Crash Course in Learning Theory, from Creating Passionate Users.
• Buzz monitoring tools: Bob Walsh linked to IceSpy, one of those time-suckers that lets you sit and watch what other people are searching for. LiveMarks is a similar service for watching what's being bookmarked on del.icio.us. The Google news tag cloud on Newzingo might also be helpful.
• I found this massive collection of search engine optimization tools.
• Boris Yankov blogs last years profits and his progress towards a full time Micro ISV.

Tags: micro isv blogging links

How Low Can We Go?

I thought a Micro ISV would be small enough for most, but apparently not. PicoBusiness is a new blog dedicated to businesses two whole orders of magnitude smaller. Are there any Pico ISVs out there?

Maybe I should jump in now and start a femto ISV or an atto ISV blog... in two or three years time I could be seen as a visionary in the sub-atomic business world.

Tags: micro isv blogs yocto isv

Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists

Guy Kawasaki just started his blog last week, and it's already a must read.

The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists is just one of the half-dozen or so great posts so far. If you dream of turning your cozy little startup into a VC funded behemoth, maybe you'll get to hear one of these lies someday.

Update: A great, relevant post from Seth Godin, How to be lied to.

Tags: blogs venture capital micro isv

A couple of best of 2005 links

I picked up a couple of great, best of 2005 links this week:-

• 25 Sites You Shouldn't Have Missed in 2005 is a great list of web design/CSS links.
• Next time you want to play a game, the Top 20 games of 2005 from jayisgames would be a good place to start. There are some real gems there.

Tags: flash games web design

Second Chances

Any UK readers unlucky enough to have missed Ricky Gervais chatting with Larry David on Channel 4 last night, make sure you catch the re-run on Saturday. It's on More 4 at 10:15pm. It's a must see for any Curb Your Enthusiasm fans, a very natural, human, and funny interview.

Also, the first series of Curb Your Enthusiasm starts running again on Sunday at 9:30pm, again on More 4. Even as a re-run, it's the only 40mins of TV I'm looking forward to next week. Hopefully it's the start of a complete run of the show, I missed most of season 3.

Tags: curb your enthusiasm tv

Staff Scheduling update

Even though I probably introduced the Oriador staff scheduling site at the worst time of the year, the traffic logs are already confirming something.

I directed all the scheduling/roster ad traffic to the new site, and kept all the rota/staff rota traffic on the existing site. Already, virtually no visitors from outside the UK are hitting the original staff rota pages. I guess that confirms that Rota was a poor choice of keyword, and that it isn't really used globally.

So far, I'm seeing roughly a 50/50 split between downloads from UK traffic on the rota site and the rest of the world traffic on the scheduling site. The overall traffic has been a bit erratic because of the holiday period, so this might all change when I get a month of stable logs to look at.

Tags: seo staff scheduling oriador

Micro ISV Digest

A round-up of the Micro ISV related news from the last few days of 2005. The product news section was a bit of a stretch this week; if there was a lot going on, I missed it.

Product News and Announcements

• Eric Sink's Winnable Solitaire experiment came to an end.
• Yahoo are selling domain names for $2.99.
• Foxit Software have a free lightwieght alternative to Acrobat Reader for viewing PDF files. A great find courtesy of BugNinja.

Relevant Links and Blog Posts

• I found a couple of interesting new blogs this week, the first was Rajesh Setty's Life Beyond Code. I liked his First Time Entrepreneurs post.
• The second was Who has time for this, a VC/Entrepreneurial blog. I don't have a specific post to link to, but it looks like it might be worth following.
• Work Happy had a bumper Happy Links post, with a lot of great items.
• My favorite article of the week was Bitter Brew, the story of a small startup coffee shop. I saw a lot of parallels with starting a Micro ISV, even if we don't usually have to worry about rent, staff, and materials.
• Gus Mueller explains how to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days.
• Phil does a great job of explaining that it's not really about the programmers. This is something I really wish I'd known 3 years ago.
• A great series of posts from Seth Godin on Squid Soup (about product adoption, nothing to do with Squidoo). Part 1, 2 & 3.

Anything Else

• I liked this Steve Jobs Photoshop contest (via Creating Passionate Users).

Happy New Year.

Tag: micro isv