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Posted by Gavin Bowman on Monday, June 26, 2006 at 8:04 AM
A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts. News and AnnouncementsRelevant Blog Posts and ArticlesFurther (mostly relevant) ReadingTags: micro isv links microisv digest
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Tuesday, June 20, 2006 at 9:28 AM
Half of the World Cup games are over, and what a great tournament it's been. Now, over the next eight days, the deciding final group games and the first knock-out round will eliminate 24 of the 32 teams. Eight teams are already safely through the group stage, but there could be some surprising qualifiers, and some of the groups are still wide open. It's going to be exciting to see the final standings in the groups, they could lead to some massive games in the first knock-out round: England v Germany? Argentina v Portugal? Italy v Brazil? France v Spain? No matter what, it looks likely that at least some big name teams will be going home by next Tuesday... Oh, and the kick off times are now slightly later in the day, with a 2-3 hour break between games... that should make it easier to get other things done.
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Monday, June 19, 2006 at 8:00 AM
A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts. News and AnnouncementsRelevant Blog Posts and ArticlesFurther (mostly relevant) ReadingTags: micro isv links microisv digest
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Friday, June 16, 2006 at 7:52 PM
Here's an amazing local story. A restaurant had to close for 2 weeks because the staff were suffering from mysterious burns:- When we were finishing work our skin was red and inflamed. I would go to bed and about two hours later it would start.
It was a pain in the back of my eyes. It was awful. After checking all their chemicals etc, they found out that they were mistakenly sold sunbed bulbs for their fly killer:- What we had wasn’t fly killer lights, they were sunbed lights. Twenty-four hours a day we had sunbed light in the kitchen. Every time we were going in front of it we were frying. I had no idea something like that could happen. Read the full story here.
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Monday, June 12, 2006 at 8:00 AM
A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts. News and AnnouncementsRelevant Blog Posts and ArticlesFurther (mostly relevant) ReadingTags: micro isv links microisv digest
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Friday, June 09, 2006 at 2:08 PM
So the time has come, the World Cup gets underway in a couple of hours, and after today we get ten glorious days of 2pm (UK time) starts with 3 games in a row. Fantastic. As I mentioned on Codesnipers on Monday, I'll be trying to move my working day back a couple of hours to get finished on time. Obviously I'll have no control over when support and enquiries come in, but I'm going to try to fit a development day in somewhere between 6am and 2pm. I'm fairly optimistic about it at the moment. In any case, as long as I try hard enough I won't feel too guilty planting myself on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon, it's only once every four years. How's the World Cup fever in your part of the world? Is your country there, and if not who are you rooting for (or against)? Will you be watching, and how will you fit it into your schedule? By the way, when I am working, there's a good chance I'll also be tuning into Radio Deliro. If you missed it or overlooked it on Doc Searls' blog, go check it out now. I usually work in silence, but this seems to be a great source of exactly the kind of music I want to hear when I'm working.
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Wednesday, June 07, 2006 at 3:48 PM
Interesting post on Escape from Cubicle Nation yesterday: Is a soloist or small business owner really an entrepreneur?Interesting partly because the Micro ISV model doesn't really fit into the soloist/self-employed/small business model discussed. The Micro ISV model is completely different. Contractors, Free-lancers, and many self-employed or small businesses are based around the provision of a service closely followed by the issue of an invoice. They can focus on getting business right from the start, and although there's always a risk that it won't take off, when the work is getting done there will usually be some income coming in. Then, if they aren't around or if they stop working, the income stops too. When we start a Micro ISV, there's a significant period which involves a lot of work with no possibility of returns. Whether we achieve that by saving beforehand, extreme frugality, credit, or by keeping a day job, we're making a substantial investment, and not just of our time. The end result, we hope, is that our Micro ISVs won't suffer from the traditional soloist problems. It won't last forever, if we want to keep earning, we know we need to keep working to improve our software and create new products, but at least the model is based around the chance of some "passive revenue". The post also made me think about risk. Whatever anyone says, if you're out there trying to make it on your own, you're taking a huge risk. It might not feel like that big a step at first, and your Micro ISV might feel like less of a risk than a multi-million VC funded start-up, but if you factor in all the cost factors over the course of the business, along with the possibility of failure, you might be surprised. Dharmesh posted about Start-up founder compensation a couple of weeks ago. Takeaway from that piece for Micro ISV founders: funded start-up founders will usually have a salary, how does your risk picture compare now? Aside from the financial investment (bigger than you think, factor in opportunity costs over and above your salary: lost career development, bonuses, perks, zapped savings, credibility or negative exposure, benefits and retirement security, youth!) and the time investment, you're making a big emotional investment. The extra work is hard, having to cut back when things get rough is hard, and the hardest thing of all can be the fact that you won't be the only person effected. The people around you, partners, friends and family, will all be effected in some way by your business venture. You can try to prepare them for what's ahead, and you can try to prepare yourself for the impact your decision is going to have on your loved ones, but the chances are it'll still be a bumpy ride. I think it's worth it, and all the sites dedicated to going it alone, entrepreneurship, and start-ups seem to show I'm not alone. While I find it interesting now to consider and acknowledge the cost, I don't know how much being prepared and understanding the risk and investments involved helps when you're just thinking about getting started. I know I didn't have a clue what I was getting myself into, it's hard to say whether or not that was a good thing... the answer that depends on too many factors in your own life: tell a college kid that it might be hard and they might just go out to prove you wrong (having a lot of fun and learning a lot of valuable lessons along the way), tell a married 40-something with kids that it might be hard and you might end up saving a marriage and a family's security. Oh, and as far as I'm concerned if you're running a Micro ISV the answer to the question "Are you an entrepreneur?" is yes, and I'd be reluctant to tell anyone trying to start a business of any kind that I didn't think they qualified as an entrepreneur. Bonus Links: Philipp Schumann's I'm working for the best boss in the world, Nina Casey's Wife of the mISV, Helaine Iris's Behind every business is a life. Tag: micro isv
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Tuesday, June 06, 2006 at 3:18 PM
I read on a blog somewhere that you can tell how much a company cares about their products when you try to peel off stickers or labels. If you care about what you're selling, it's possible to attach a label to any surface and have it peel of easily without leaving any residue, or you can just use any old sticker you have lying around and let the customer figure out how to remove it. I completely agree, careless labelling can really affect my view of a company or store. I've had to replace a lot of stuff lately, so I've seen a massive amount of variation in a very condensed period. This morning I found out how much Gaggia care about their filter coffee makers. Plastered onto a stainless steel jug was a warning label (one of those pointless warnings, like "this won't work if you connect it properly"). Rather than use a suitable residue free label, it was just a bog standard label that had obviously instantly bonded to the jug, leaving a huge sticky imprint and ultimately a (presumably permanent?) mark. I wonder how much more it would have cost them to use the right label, a few cents? I might not have noticed that they spent the extra, but I sure noticed that they didn't... Would I have had the same experience if I'd spent a few hundred on one of their premium espresso makers? I doubt that I'll ever try to find out.
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Monday, June 05, 2006 at 9:15 AM
A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts. News and AnnouncementsRelevant Blog Posts and ArticlesFurther ReadingTags: micro isv links microisv digest
Posted by Gavin Bowman on Thursday, June 01, 2006 at 9:38 AM
Back in the day (last November), I decided to learn Ruby on Rails. I got myself some hosting, posted a couple of pieces on Codesnipers, and that was about it. In my first Rails post on Codesnipers ( Riding the Rails), I mentioned the hosting from Dreamhost. I complained about their CPU usage limits, which I didn't find out about until after I signed up. Having just read their latest newsletter and blog, I think I should clear that up. Apparently, they don't have any specific limits on CPU usage, they've quoted arbitrary figures in the past, but deal with heavy CPU usage on an individual basis. Basically, if you use their hosting for your site and don't constantly crash their servers, you should be in the clear. The hosting deal's numbers are amazing. Back in November for the Codesnipers article 5GB disk space and 120GB bandwidth seemed impressive, but now it's 20GB disk space and 1TB bandwidth per month on the basic package. Including MySQL and Ruby on Rails support. It's about $8 per month, but I paid annually with a discount code and it cost me about $30 for the year. I haven't really put the service through it's paces, but I haven't had any problems either. If you're looking for a good hosting deal, or just want somewhere to play with Ruby on Rails, it's worth a look. If you want to pay about $30 for a year too, use the discount code 'gavinsentme' (it should save you $90 on the annual plan). Dreamhost
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