1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary
   surplus or dearth of vowels.
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.
8. Thou shalt be social.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king.

via BusinessWeek

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This article is the last of a three-part series related to technology in the franchise world. It focuses on what franchisors should be doing to react to the trends presented in Part 2.

Franchisors should be doing a number of things to keep up with the Net Generation. Most of these are straightforward once franchisors realize that people expect lots of information, expect it immediately, and expect their opinion to be taken seriously.

Streamline your processes

The more people use software, the more people expect of it and become irritated if a feature requires extra effort when it could be automated. Users don't pay attention when performing a task repeatedly and introduce errors into systems. Therefore, your business processes, including the software portion of it, should be as integrated as possible. Of course, you cannot integrate all at once and have to work on the pain points for which an integrated solution would save the most time or prevent the most errors. Streamlining your business processes is an iterative process which requires constant effort and attention but is very rewarding.

The processes that are easy to streamline vary for each franchise. However, using product-based retail stores as an example, the integration which provides the most value is between the point of sale and the franchise intranet. The goal is to offer automated sales reporting and centralized product line management. Once that is done, you can greatly simplify in-store product ordering by automating recurring orders via the in-stock quantities, for example.

Franchisors should keep in mind that integration that is already built-in built into a software product line is a very valuable asset. BjEmerson covered this, and other valuable questions, in his post on Blue Mau Mau. As a franchisor, it is your responsibility to periodically bring up the subject of integration with various suppliers to ensure you have an efficient process in place. Keep in mind that integration should not intend to cover all special cases and that you should put manual processes in place to double check that all the information in your system is accurate. 

A fine-tuned franchise is much more appealing to a franchise prospect because of the simplicity of its day-to-day management. Furthermore, if you have developed your own software or processes to make everything easier, the value proposition is even clearer.

Franchise Collaboration

The most important thing a small franchisor can do is to stop any unidirectional (waterfall) decision making. Transparency and collaboration help foster trust whereas keeping everyone in the dark before enforcing a big change is simply not a good business practice. Obviously, you won't be able to make everyone happy all the time but when franchisees feel their opinion is appreciated, everyone benefits. Obviously, this involves much more than technology but franchise collaboration software such as forums and polls can help. Thanks to open source software and online tools, you can even set this up for free. The real added-value comes when collaboration becomes a part of every day tasks, such as polling features directly integrated into the point of sale. This promotes collaboration within the franchise since the franchisees are not required to login to a separate tool when they get back home after a long day's work.

If you don't collaborate with your franchisees, you will lose them, period. If a franchisee leaves you because you never listened to their opinion, you can be sure that people reviewing your UFOC will end up hearing it. On the other end of the spectrum, a franchise which pushes strong franchisee collaboration via online tools can be a strong selling point for new prospect. A simple demo of the current issues being discussed will clear up any fears about ongoing support.

Openly discussing issues and possible solutions with your franchisees forces you to write things down in a logical fashion and think about the issues in a rational way. This simple activity often guides the decision making process and leads to the best decision.  

Give out more information

Franchisors should utilize their website and should not feel shy about posting lots of information to attract new franchise prospects. Obviously, organizing this information is very important as to avoid overwhelming the user but franchisors should post lots of information and treat their prospects intelligently. The website should include a high-level executive summary which allows interested prospects to drill down to find relevant information on separate pages.

The classic sales technique of not giving out too much information, having prospects request additional information, and having a salesman call them back to conclude a deal is no longer the best approach in today's online context: these practices must be adapted. Franchisors who don't display basic information such as franchise fees and setup costs are shooting themselves in the foot for numerous reasons.

First, today's visitors expect more information and they expect it now. Your prospects are probably thinking about starting their own business in this same field and it is your job to show them the wide breadth of problems you've already solved and how it is a better business decision to purchase a proven franchise system. You also need to show how your franchise is better than other franchise systems and your website is an ideal place to showcase your distinguishing factors. 

Second, the volume of franchise prospects on the Internet has increased, although we've mentioned franchisors are feeling  the quality has dropped. There is a growing number of people looking for low-cost franchises and if yours is not one of them, stating your requirements explicitly will help reduce low quality prospects.   If you are looking at catering to this growing niche, you might as well clearly define the lower cost options you are offering (kiosk format instead of store format, for example). Once you've formalized your offering and covered the frequently asked questions in detail on your website, you've developed a resource base that can be utilized by your salesforce.

Keep in mind that it is possible to get information about leads via your website, even if you're posting most of your information online. All you need to do is post a bit of exclusive content on your website which is only accessible after filling out a short form (email address, name and phone number). This gives you a way to contact prospects after the fact while still giving your prospects information when they want it (now!). This exclusive content can be as simple as a two-page PDF brochure or as extensive as a virtual tour of your store with pictures and videos.

Spread the word

The first thing you should do as a small/new franchisor is to actively participate in online communities. You should remember that online participation is a give&take relationship and you need to do more than self-promotion or demolish everyone's opinions. You can start by participating online in franchise communities such as Blue Mau Mau and FranMarket and simply writing comments on other people's posts. Everyone has a different background and you can often refer to your past experiences to help clarify posts by other people. You should also look for online communities which specialize in your niche, to raise awareness about your brand but also simply to exchange ideas. If your franchise is a dog kennel, you should look for pet-related online communities.  Finally, don't overlook any local business online communities which may be appealing to you. Hooking up with a local software startup or local artist might put your franchise in a better position to take on the world.

In addition to participating in online communities, you should start your own blog either at Blue Mau Mau or at another free service. There are numerous things you can (and should) blog about:

• A post for each new franchisee with an interview, franchisee profile, store pictures, etc.
• What makes your franchise unique (you should be able to find dozens of cool things that distinguish your franchise from the competition)
• New products or services
• What the franchise is proactively working on
• Your lessons learned as a franchisor
• Partner announcements
• How you or your franchisees gave back to the community
• Trends
• Internal reflections
• Congratulate one of your franchisees for outstanding achievements
• How your franchise is saving people money or saving the planet
• You've got a particular problem and are looking feedback on solutions

Many new bloggers are afraid to reveal the secret sauce if they talk about their lessons learned or what makes them different. They fear the day where their competition will copy their brilliant ideas. In reality, ideas are free and execution is key. Furthermore, if all that distinguishes your franchise is the auto-flushing toilets you installed last year, you've got a problem. You shouldn't reveal every last detail about how you operate, but don't let paranoia overcome you with every little detail. Blogging is a rewarding experience because it puts you in touch with lots of new people which may help you down the road.

More franchisors should blog about the problems they have experienced and how they overcame them as it is an essential subject which will help others. The franchise world is full of people who are looking to make a quick buck and being open about your franchise is a good way to help build a relationship of trust with your service providers, prospects, and franchisees.

Last week, LavaBlast launched Franchise NewsBlast to help franchisors spread the word about their franchise. Our system doesn't focus on franchise opportunities but rather on franchise-related articles that have true value for web visitors. 

Conclusion

Some people find it easier than others to get their head around the new business context in which franchises operate. We've listed a few high level tasks which help clarify the possible ideological differences between franchisors and the Net Generation. Once these base concepts are better understood, franchisors will be in a better position to understand things such as viral marketing and social networks in order to take advantage of these business opportunities for their franchise systems. Take a look at Franchise NewsBlast, Blue Mau Mau, and FranMarket today!

I have been redecorating the house the last couple of days. Wielding a paintbrush only requires about 5% of my brain cycles, so I have been using the excess capacity to listen to podcasts from Software Engineering Radio and IT Conversations Network. Currently Software Engineering Radio has 102 podcasts, on topics as diverse as game development [...]

As I’ve said time and time again, it’s good to air out all your successes AND failures. And today I’ll be airing out another one of my failures, well more like a mistake. In any case, it’s something that should have been done better.

Yesterday I published the post An Easy Shortcut to Successfully Budget Your Finances. On it I stated a “basic rule” to significantly simplify your budgeting, all the while leaving you with a surplus of money if done right. The rule is sound, but for whatever reason there was a mistake in the translation from my head to my written words (my blog post). It wasn’t a late night post when I was really tired type of mistake, it was written in the middle of the day. It was a classic mistake of my brain saying one thing while my words said another slightly different thing.

Even after re-reading it a few times, it was still perfectly clear in my head. I knew what I meant to say and I had said it. It actually wasn’t until Freewheeler (unfortunately the comment was anonymous) commented on the post that I realized the rules I had written down weren’t exactly what I meant to say. They were close, and I can easily see where I went wrong.

What I wrote was:

Where it should have been:

The good news is that the rules I stated would have been even more in your favor, giving you an even bigger surplus. But it would also have made budgeting much harder.

The biggest mistake was on the income, the first digit shouldn’t have been altered, but it made sense in my head. What I meant to say was round down, but what I instead said was round down and then some.

The good news is that my examples showed what I meant to say. The examples are correct, it’s just that the rules weren’t as accurate as they should have been. Good thing they favored the budgeter.

All that to say I apologize for the mistake in yesterday’s post. And it’s been corrected.

I am off to the west tomorrow for a meeting in the morning but then have plenty of time in the afternoon if anyone is around and fancies a coffee. First time in Sligo so i am looking forward to it. Loading up on work to keep me busy on the train over and back.

** Update: The rule below has been updated to reflect a small correction.

Most of us want to budget, we’re just not very good at it. To properly budget means that we need to keep track of all our expenses and all of our income. For most people the income part is simple, it’s the paychecks you get from your job. It’s the expense part that’s difficult because it requires detailed and regular record keeping to be accurate.

Have you ever tried to calculate all your expenses for a month? Generally this involves buying software like Quicken and entering in all your information (as well as downloading all your banking information into the software). Then hopefully at the end of the month the discrepancy between what you entered and what you spent isn’t too big. And have no doubt, there’s always a discrepancy, you always spend more than your budget says somehow. The budget (or software) must obviously be wrong then!

Or could it be that there are lots of cash expenses that just don’t get tracked. Those daily cups of coffee that ad up to $40 a month. Or what about that lunch the other day that was $16? Oh and that popcorn and drink at the theatre last week that cost over $300 after coupons? It all adds up.

So unless your extremely meticulous, which most of us aren’t, your budget will always be underfunded. Or so you might think. But today I’m going to show you a very simple way to minimize this discrepancy, and possibly come out ahead! And best of all, it’s much much simpler and takes almost no effort. The only downside is that it’s not as accurate so you really need to do it right. If you don’t, you can come out behind.

It all comes down to one very basic rule that’s used in software estimations. It’s the rule of padding. However unlike software estimations, we won’t pad as aggressively. The rule is:

* Anything that’s under $10 becomes $10.

Very simple. In other words you downplay how much income you make and you over-estimate how much you spend. This gives you room for error. It also allows you wiggle room for un-budgeted expenses such as going to the coffee shop, the ugly gnome lawn ornament you just had to have.

Let’s look at an example. If you make $1230/month, then you only count it as $1000 revenue a month. If you make $5498/month, then you only count it as $5000. If you make $12,942/month, then you only count it as $10,000. Already we’ve reduced our income by a good amount. That’s already a good padding.

In terms of expenses, an $8 coffee at Starbucks now becomes a $10 coffee. That $1.25 chocolate bar now becomes a $10 chocolate bar. Your $1200/month rent now becomes $2000/month rent. If it’s $825/month, then it now becomes $900. Notice that only the first digit changed in the last two examples. Remember, only the first digit is applied. This is to balance things out and keep everything in scale. If you’re rent is under $1000 then you’re probably dealing with amounts on the scale of hundred of dollars. If it’s over $1000, then you’re probably dealing on a slightly larger scale, in the thousands of dollars. By only looking at the first digit, it allows the padding to be on the right scale for you. To keep going, your car payment of $325/month becomes $400/month. The $175.54 grocery bill becomes a $200 grocery bill. And on it goes.

As you can see, by underestimating how much money you make and overestimating how much money you spend, you give yourself some room to breathe within your budget. You don’t need to be as accurate, you just need to correctly round your numbers. In other words, you’ve just given yourself a margin for error. And as an added bonus, these rounded numbers are also much easier to add up and calculate in your head.

By using just this simple principle of padding I was able to come out ahead financially for years. Every month I had some surplus money. Even today I still actively use this principle on a daily basis! However the main difference now is that I own and run my company (LandlordMax) which has forced me to calculated the detailed numbers at the end of each month. I need this accuracy to report my expenses and income to the government for taxes. When I was an employee, all I needed was an accurate number for my income (taxes), no one ever cared how much I spent. It just didn’t matter. With a company you need to know because you can write off your expenses on your taxes. Otherwise I still use the estimation method for my personal finances.

There you have it. The simplest and easiest shortcut to successfully budget your finances. For every income decrease the first digit by 1 and for every expense increase the first digit by 1. And any amounts under $10 becomes $10.

Remember that blue earth that spun around on its axis in your classroom? Some of them were bumpy with terrains, others smooth, some even glowed from within so you could see the sea-floors.

Ahhh Globes. What excellent educational tools.

We used to spin them as fast as we could, then jab it with our finger, and that's where we would take our pretend vacation.
Or, during class, from way across the room, I'd squint and squish it between my thumb and forefinger.

Welcome to the future:


Holographic Google Earth from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

I am done with “simple”. I say that even considering previous posts here about the virtues of simplicity, my enjoyment of books such as The Laws of Simplicity and Simplexity, and my respect for companies such as 37signals and Google (two companies commonly included in case studies on software simplicity). The word “simple” has several problems.

It is overused

‘Simple’ is a word that has become overused. You can take your pick from over 600,000 books on Amazon relating to ‘simple’. 64,000 in the business category alone. There’s over 46 million results for a Google search of “simple software”. In the CRM world, everyone seems to stake a claim to ‘simple CRM’.

It has no concise meaning

‘Simple’ is a word often used like ‘thing’. It is a good placeholder because it does not surprise people to see it and readers get some idea what you mean. But, like the word ‘thing’, ‘simple’ has too many definitions to provide concise meaning.

It has no impact

Instead of saying ‘simple’, let’s start saying what we really mean in a given context. Because it is overused and provides no concise meaning, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by dropping it from a product’s vocabulary. Instead of a word the readers skip right over because they see it on millions of sites, use a word or phrase that accurately makes your point.

Replace simple with what you really mean

‘Simple’ is sometimes used out of laziness. It is the first word that comes to mind and it is harder to come up with different, descriptive words. Yet, I think it is worth the effort for the reasons mentioned above.

So, I went through the PlaybookIQ website and removed any mention of simple or simplicity that I could find. It was an interesting exercise because it made me really think about what we are trying to communicate. Depending on the context, ‘simple’ got replaced with ‘fast’, ‘easy’, ‘concise’, or with an entirely new wording. Readers now get a much better idea of the product’s power and the benefit of a given feature or design decision. As another example, the application I wrote to try out Google App Engine is called “lightweight” instead of simple crm.

Don’t throw out the concepts

There is great value in the concepts talked about under the topic of ‘simplicity’. I agree with most of those and we continue to look for ways to implement ideas under the topic of ‘simplicity’. Yet when it comes to describing any given idea, product or product improvement it is time to use words that are more descriptive and concise and less overused and vague.

What is it?

RescueTime: A time management and analysis program.

Who makes it?

RescueTime (3 guys rocking it with some YCombinator funding to start)

Why is it the killerest?

Because it achieves the holy grail of being fun to use, and darned useful too.

It consists of two parts. An application (software) you install on your computer (PC or Mac) and a website which reports on your time usage.

The software logs the applications you use (a plain text log). By default it logs in two-second increments to paint a pretty accurate picture. Then every 30 minutes it beams this information up to the mothership. The mothership is a glorious reporting site you can pull up to see how you're using your time. It features all manner of reporting graphs and charts. It shows you how productive you're being, where you spend your time, how you're doing on your goals, and more.

While it's pretty helpful even with zero configuration effort (just install and let it go), you can really make it come alive if you spend a little time telling it about the things you do through simple tagging, and rating for productivity. It's an intuitive process that unfolds as you want it to. The usability is solid.

The first benefit to me was realizing just how much time I was frittering away with useless garbage. It was troubling information. Well, harrowing is more like it. And it has already changed how I use my time. As an entrepreneur, being accountable even if only to RescueTime is proving to be very valuable. The old "what gets measured gets improved" adage once again proves true. I'm rigorous about measuring so many other things, it's a little embarrassing I haven't applied that better to my time until now. I guess I just needed the drop-dead simple "do it for me" solution that RT provides.

In addition to measuring time, RT lets you set up goals, which it then tracks for you. Some example goals might be "spend more than 3 hours per day working on my secret project" or "spend less than 1 hour per day on email." 

They also have some paid features that allow groups to use it together so you can compare how you spend your time versus the average member. I haven't dived into that. Everything I'm using is free.

I've really resisted having a big crush on RT, but have so far failed. I love it.

What could be improved?

This is still immature software, and it's important to know that going in. I sincerely hope they can make their revenue model fly so that they can evolve this to the point where they build on the killer progress they've made so far.

In fact, if they would address the issues I'm about to outline, I would be perfectly happy to pay a modest fee (say, $4/mo) to keep my records indefinitely (right now they only keep a 3 month backlog) and have the following features:

1. I'd like to do intra-application tagging. For example - if I'm writing a poem about my dog in Word, I'd like to tag that differently than a work proposal for a new client. As it is today, they only break things out that way for the web browser.

2. I'd like to be able to manually enter time. Right now it only tracks your time at the computer - which it does spine-tinglingly well. But if I have an off-site meeting, I'd like to enter that in as productive time to gather a more accurate picture.

My other lingering concerns are privacy, and support.

Privacy: You're sending some potentially pretty sensitive information up. They've got some mechanisms in place to limit what you send if you want. For example, they've got a web site whitelist so you can say "only send specifics from this set of websites" so you'd specify the top 20 or so websites you frequent, and everything else would be sent as generic web use. You can also easily turn off logging for a period of time, you can tell it to ignore certain data (which is claims to delete and ignore), and  finally if you have a panic attack, you can delete your account and all data, which presumably deletes it all from their servers.

However, even with all this, the privacy policy still feels a little weak. Essentially stating, "we'll never look at your data, unless we need to" [link]. Mint.com for example says something more like, "we won't ever look at your data, and couldn't if we wanted to" [link]. Obviously Mint.com deals with more sensitive data - but for many users, that doesn't matter.

Support: This is a pretty minor concern, but I'll mention that I ran into some odd logging times, sent an email to support, got an almost instant personal reply (under 1 min) with some information, and a request to send some debugging logging information to them, which I did, but I never heard back (it's been about a week now). It wasn't a critical issue, it's free software, and it actually seems to be behaving properly now (I may have just done something stupid) so I didn't push it.

How much does it cost?

Free for individuals, unlock some groupy/teamy goodness starting at $7.95/mo for the first 6 users, and $7.95/mo more per user after that.

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

One of the more interesting projects in development at Antair right now was originally intended to be a desktop application. But due to technical issues (dynamic IPs and firewalls), we’ve changed the design to implement it as a rich-client application with Antair acting as the middle-man in the cloud.

This required us to put on our big boy pants and go in search of a dedicated server to host the app.

Our current applications are essentially client apps that work with no intervention from Antair servers. This would be the first time Antair puts itself into a foundational role like this. The servers would need to be available 24/7 with minimal downtime.

The preliminary bandwidth number crunch makes me worry a bit. With conservative estimates to usage per user and number of users, we are looking at 80GB of data being transferred per day.

After hearing the numbers, one of my colleagues pointed out that we’re way off, and these are the kind of calculations that brings NASA probes crashing down to Mars.

Either he’s right, or we’re going to have to do some smart engineering to bring that number down.

The Seinfeld fans out there will clearly recognize the reference to "the opposite" episode.  Basically, George tries to change his life by going against his natural instincts and doing the exact opposite.  [For the fanatics out there, I think this is Episode #86, aired May 19, 1994.

Here are a couple of clips from the episode:

George : Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable, I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but ... I was perceptive. I always know when someone's uncomfortable at a party. It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I've ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every of life, be it something to wear, something to eat ... It's all been wrong.

Jerry : If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

George : Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the opposite, and I will do...something.
---

As it turns out, this "do the opposite" strategy works out for George.  Things start working out for him.  By going against his natural instincts, he ends up doing things "right".  He's noticed.  He comes off as being different. 

So, what does this all mean for startups?  Well, I've found that often "doing the opposite" (zigging when others are zagging) can actually work.  Conversely, if you take the tried and true path of others (like your competitors), in your best case scenario, you kind of wind up where most startups wind up -- in an unhappy place.  Why not try to be different?

A few examples to mull over:

A Startup Doing The Opposite

VC funding negotiation:  Tell the VC:  "We don't know what the pre-money valuation should be.  You have a better sense than we do about this.  We're not looking for the highest "price".  We just want a fair deal and a board member that is not a jerk.  You seem like you're smart and not a jerk.."

Recruiting early employees:  If you're just looking to make a lot of money, this is probably not the place.  Sure, we're going to give you some options but nobody knows what those are going to be worth (including the founders and the investors).  We all work our butts-off and make less money than we could likely do otherwise.  We all must have some sort of genetic flaw that makes us do this.  If you have that genetic flaw too, you'd probably enjoy it here. 

Early customer conversation:  Yeah, the software kind of sucks but we use it ourselves and it does do useful things.  Why am I charging you to be a beta tester?  Although your input is priceless, we think it just distorts the relationship for you to get it for free.  If you're a paying customer, we're going to kill ourselves to make you happy. 

The idea is to be honest, direct and surprise people by taking an approach that they're not used to seeing.  A lot of times this may fall flat -- but lots of things fall flat anyways.  Why not try it? 

By the way, each of the examples above are based on reality from my own startup adventure. 

So, next time you're in a situation go against your instincts to "spin" things and be super-sophisticated.  Just do the opposite!

Original Article
Copyright 2005-2008, Dharmesh Shah - OnStartups - Software Startup Blog

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<b>If you want to write your own quality blog articles and get them published at GameProducer.net, <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/forums/blog.php' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>start writing your blog</a> right away</b>. <br />Our goal is to get more professionals on the board to share their opinions. GameProducer.net has an established audience of tens of thousands of monthly readers, and it provides a solid platform to share insight on game production. This is not a paid position, but a chance to get some credentials to your resume and drive some traffic and links towards your site. <br /> <br />From now on, each community member gets their own <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/forums/blog.php' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>Blog</a> where they can write their thoughts. In the beginning we are moderating all blog entries, and those who write the most interesting articles, will get featured at the GameProducer.net front page. In the future we might consider allowing everybody to write their personal blogs, but for now we shall be moderating all articles. <br /> <br /><b>Here are some typical issues which will prevent your blog article from getting published:</b> <ul> <li>Use of Smilies: In casual forums discussion, smilies can be okay, but in articles they are not. I've used couple of times smilies in my articles, and those have been so rare exceptions that it's just better if we forget smilies 100%. Don't use them in your blog articles if you want to get published. <li>Use of slang: try to avoid using slang, and remember there's also beginner game developers reading the site. Remember there's also many readers who don't speak English as their native language (such as me). <li>The article contains too many grammar or spelling errors, is missing dots and commas or doesn't use capital letters properly. We are not language polices, but expect decent grammar. <li>&quot;What I did today...&quot; articles won't get published (unless there's really some really good lessons that you learned). <li>Pure Ads. If you want to promote your services, consider using <a href='http://www.gamerelease.net' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>GameRelease.net</a>. It's okay to leave a portion <i>in italic</i> in the end of your article saying who you are and where you work (with a link), but articles focused solely on promoting your products are not going to get published. <br /></ul> <br /> <br /><b>Here are tips that will help you get your article published:</b> <ul> <li>Write a &quot;How to&quot; type of post. (Such as here: <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/2007/06/20/how-to-trick-customers-to-buy-your-products/' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>How to Trick Customers to Buy Your Product</a>) <li>Write &quot;7 Ways to...&quot; or &quot;10 Best Elements...&quot; type of article with a list (Example: <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/2007/07/07/7-plans-for-getting-further-with-your-game-idea/' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>7 Plans for Getting Further With Your Game Idea</a>) <li>Write an interesting headline: The headline is the most important part of your article, so make it practical. Make it funny. Make it controversial. Make it good: And Write In Capital Letters, please. <li>Use sub-headers if needed. A long article without sub-headers is difficult to read. If you have more than 3 paragraphs, then consider adding a sub-headline that describes what the next 2-4 paragraphs will be about. (Examples: <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/2007/06/15/the-10-worst-game-production-mistakes/' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>The 10 Worst Game Production Mistakes</a> and ) <li>Remember to add a category for your post. We are tweaking the system so that categories will be displayed in blog posts. <li>Get yourself an Avatar. We are placing small pictures next to each article, so it's nice if you get one ready right away. <br /></ul> <br /> <br />As a reminder, here's the earlier requirements for writing articles that still apply: <br /> <ul> <li><b>You need to actually know something about games production:</b> You need to have produced games. I’m not after book-smart people, I want to hear from people who have experience in doing games. You don’t need to have built the first greatest game ever, but you do need to have experience and willingness to share your lessons. <li><b>Write any number of articles you want</b>: If you can write an article that's at least 500 words long (more is fine too) and your article shows quality, it can get published. Anything more than that is fine too as long as the articles show quality. <li><b>No advertisements</b>: If all you want to do is to link to your newly published game, then please ignore this offer. It's okay to have links pointing to your website, but you should share the <b>lessons you have learned</b> during the game production. Shameless ads will not get published. <li><b>You know how to write in English</b>: I don’t expect 100% solid grammar, but you need to be able to write proper English. <li><b>Register at the forums</b>: Just go to the <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/forums/register.php' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>forums and register</a>. After that you can <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/forums/blog.php' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>Post to your blog</a>. We shall review your blog entry and accept it if it's good. <br /></ul> <br /> <br />If your article is accepted, it will be displayed at the front page of <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>GameProducer.net</a> - with your forum username and website link. By submitting your article, you grant 30-day exclusive rights for the article - and can publish the article for example in your own blog after 30 days. <br /> <br />That’s it. <a href='http://www.gameproducer.net/forums/blog.php' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>Start your own Blog</a> and write quality articles there.If you want to write your own quality blog articles and get them published at GameProducer.net, start writing your blog right away.
Our goal is to get more professionals on the board to share their opinions. GameProducer.net has an established audience of tens of thousands of monthly readers, and it provides a solid platform to share insight on game production. This is not a paid position, but a chance to get some credentials to your resume and drive some traffic and links towards your site.

From now on, each community member gets their own Blog where they can write their thoughts. In the beginning we are moderating all blog entries, and those who write the most interesting articles, will get featured at the GameProducer.net front page. In the future we might consider allowing everybody to write their personal blogs, but for now we shall be moderating all articles.

Here are some typical issues which will prevent your blog article from getting published:

• Use of Smilies: In casual forums discussion, smilies can be okay, but in articles they are not. I've used couple of times smilies in my articles, and those have been so rare exceptions that it's just better if we forget smilies 100%. Don't use them in your blog articles if you want to get published.
• Use of slang: try to avoid using slang, and remember there's also beginner game developers reading the site. Remember there's also many readers who don't speak English as their native language (such as me).
• The article contains too many grammar or spelling errors, is missing dots and commas or doesn't use capital letters properly. We are not language polices, but expect decent grammar.
• "What I did today..." articles won't get published (unless there's really some really good lessons that you learned).
• Pure Ads. If you want to promote your services, consider using GameRelease.net. It's okay to leave a portion in italic in the end of your article saying who you are and where you work (with a link), but articles focused solely on promoting your products are not going to get published.
  

Here are tips that will help you get your article published:

• Write a "How to" type of post. (Such as here: How to Trick Customers to Buy Your Product)
• Write "7 Ways to..." or "10 Best Elements..." type of article with a list (Example: 7 Plans for Getting Further With Your Game Idea)
• Write an interesting headline: The headline is the most important part of your article, so make it practical. Make it funny. Make it controversial. Make it good: And Write In Capital Letters, please.
• Use sub-headers if needed. A long article without sub-headers is difficult to read. If you have more than 3 paragraphs, then consider adding a sub-headline that describes what the next 2-4 paragraphs will be about. (Examples: The 10 Worst Game Production Mistakes and )
• Remember to add a category for your post. We are tweaking the system so that categories will be displayed in blog posts.
• Get yourself an Avatar. We are placing small pictures next to each article, so it's nice if you get one ready right away.
  

As a reminder, here's the earlier requirements for writing articles that still apply:

• You need to actually know something about games production: You need to have produced games. I’m not after book-smart people, I want to hear from people who have experience in doing games. You don’t need to have built the first greatest game ever, but you do need to have experience and willingness to share your lessons.
• Write any number of articles you want: If you can write an article that's at least 500 words long (more is fine too) and your article shows quality, it can get published. Anything more than that is fine too as long as the articles show quality.
• No advertisements: If all you want to do is to link to your newly published game, then please ignore this offer. It's okay to have links pointing to your website, but you should share the lessons you have learned during the game production. Shameless ads will not get published.
• You know how to write in English: I don’t expect 100% solid grammar, but you need to be able to write proper English.
• Register at the forums: Just go to the forums and register. After that you can Post to your blog. We shall review your blog entry and accept it if it's good.
  

If your article is accepted, it will be displayed at the front page of GameProducer.net - with your forum username and website link. By submitting your article, you grant 30-day exclusive rights for the article - and can publish the article for example in your own blog after 30 days.

That’s it. Start your own Blog and write quality articles there.

By the time time my family got home, i was no where near completing the list. I did however make some very good progress during my one day sprint.

A long time ago, it became fashionable, even recommended, to disable menu items when they could not be used.

Don't do this. Users see the disabled menu item that they want to click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are supposed to do to get the menu item to work.

Instead, leave the menu item enabled. If there's some reason you can't complete the action, the menu item can display a message telling the user why.

Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Hi. I’m Alan O’Rourke. You might remember me from such blogs as this one, Spoilt and Toddle. Spoiltchild have been working on some pretty cool stuff lately, both for ourselves and for some amazing clients which I will blog about soon. But first Damien has dragged me out of our secret development laboratory / cave for a great initiative of his. There are some amazing web and tech companies coming out of Ireland recently. Our trip over to Silicon Valley last year revealed to me the really smart and passionate people behind them. Over the next few months, every Tuesday, I will introduce a few of them to help attract the attention these guys and their products deserve. First up is Putplace.

Putplace

Putplace is an online backup but with one very important difference. Putplace also allows you to organise, protect and share that data. While other back up solutions out there do half a job and allow you to dump a folder and its contents online, Putplace helps you actually find it again in a way you can understand.

Joe Drumgoole the guy behind Putplace does the Technology hour on Newstalk radio every Monday evening with George Hook. And if you have ever listened, you quickly realise the guy talks a lot of practical straight forward sense and gives realistic advice a person can actually understand. A rare skill in the software industry.
Joe has applied that practicality and straight forward thinking to the common problem, backing up your data, and has gone much further by realising how that data fits into your day to day life.

Backup is one of those things you always put on the long finger and don’t fancy paying a few euro for each month. But as I found out recently when my computer died I was willing to pay just about anything to get a few files back. They have a nice case studies section which show how a few folk use it in their day to day. Which explains things better then ever I could.

They are currently an open Beta and are looking for people to test the service. This means you can try out the service for free and you have no limits on how much data you can back up. Sounds like a good deal to me. And if you like it let others know :)

Yesterday I came across an article on The Register about the anti-virus software AVG. To quote The Register:

In late February, AVG paired its updated anti-virus engine with a real-time malware scanner that vets search engine results before you click on them. If you search Google, for instance, this LinkScanner automatically visits each address that turns up on Google’s results page.

This has two very large implications, especially when you consider that more than 20 million people have downloaded AVG. And as you can imagine, it has to do with the bandwidth.

Let’s take an example of what happens when you go to Google and search for “latest movies”. In the past you would go to Google’s search page, enter in your search, and get some results. Then when you clicked on one of those search results you would go to that page. Simple, and it’s what you would expect.

However if you have the latest version of AVG installed something else happens. You start the same way, go to Google, enter in your search term (”latest movies”) and click on the Search button. However here is where things change for the worse. AVG looks at the search results and behind the scenes starts to download each and every search result webpage. This is without you having to view or visit the webpage, it’s all happening behind the scenes.

Why is this bad? Because most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) limit how much bandwidth you can use per month. It might be very high for some people, but now imagine that for every search you do, you visit 10 webpages (the default number of search results on most search engines). Even if you don’t look at any of the search results. You’ve basically increased your bandwidth consumption by ten times for every Google search!!! And not just Google, for all search engines, including Yahoo, MSN, etc. Your bandwidth usage has just significantly increased, by multiples.

But it gets worse. What if the webpages AVG decides to check out behind the scenes aren’t just simple pages but rather webpages rich in media that include videos, images, and so on? You’re bandwidth will be consumed in no time. And what if you have more than one computer on your network? What if you have 2-3 computers in your home? If everyone is searching at the same time you can imagine that your network will get slower because everyone is trying to load multiple webpages at the same time. And don’t even get me started on corporate networks. I can’t imagine the increased load on a corporate network with 10-1000 users!!! For that reason alone I suspect corporations will stop using AVG, the bandwidth usage is just too expensive.

And right now this is only officially happening for search engine results, but what if one day they decide to continue down this path and do this for every webpage? I’d hate to see the bandwidth usage on that decision! Most websites have more than 10 links on them! The front page of this blog probably has closer to a 100 links than 10 links on it. So instead of 10 times as much bandwidth, you’re looking at 10-100 times! You’ll be eating up your bandwidth cap each month. And corporate networks will crawl to a halt.

But what about the websites themselves? The websites you visit might also significantly slow down. Let’s take an example using the assumption that AVG visited every link on every page to amplify the issue (even without this assumption, on some search terms the increase in traffic can be very significant). When You go to my company’s website LandlordMax, the landing page (the first page) has at least 20 links. The navigation alone is about 10 links. That means our servers now would have to be able to handle 20 times as much capacity to handle the same number of users (assuming they all used AVG). That is, every person who comes to our website would not just download the first webpage, but instead they would download 20 webpages. And each time they clicked on a link, they would get another 20+ pages. We’d have to increase our server capacity by 20 times. That’s very expensive, and where do you think that cost would have to eventually be offset? Into the price.

But assuming it doesn’t get to this level, right now for every search term we get listed on the first page, we’ll basically get hit with a webpage request. So for example, if the search term “latest movies” get 10,000 searches a month (from people using AVG), and we’re listed anywhere on the first page, we’ll have to handle 10,000 webpage requests even though only a percentage of that search traffic will come to our site as shown in the above graph. Who’s going to pay for all that bandwidth? It’s certainly not AVG! It’s both you the user of AVG and the website owner.

It gets even more interesting, assuming bandwidth is free. In the example above, let’s say it’s now your website and you’re the 10th search result listing, at the very bottom of the first page. In this case you can expect to get about 3% of the traffic, or using our example of 10,000, 300 visitors a month. Now, with the new AVG system, you can expect this number to dramatically increase. Instead of just 3% or 300 visitors a month, you’ll get 100% of the traffic, a full 10,000 visitors a month. That will greatly skew your web metrics and webserver needs. In this example you’ve just increased your traffic (and hence server capacity needs) by almost 3 orders of magnitude! This will affect how you run your website/business. If nothing else, it will increase your costs which means it will have to be offset somehow (usually an increase in price for the customer).

Above this, a lot of the decisions for online businesses are derived from the web metrics. With this new system the metrics of your visitors are now completely useless. The 10,000 visitors a month mean nothing. They don’t represent the true scale of traffic. You’ve basically lost the ability to determine what works and what doesn’t. Although I won’t get into the details here, let’s just say that this means you can no longer correctly determine when and why you have a “real” increase in traffic. It’s all masked in a barrage of fake traffic. And because your web metrics are useless, your marketing now becomes guesses in the dark. Which then means more dollars have to be spent to make the same amount of money. Again this will eventually have to be offset into the price of the products/services on your website.

In any case, this appears to be a very good example of a lose-lose scenario. No one wins. Of course it’s not as drastic as I’m making it out to be, AVG only accounts for at most 20 million users. But it’s very important to realize that this is a significant amount of users. It’s enough that not only have consumers begun to take notice, but many websites are also starting to report significant increases in traffic and bandwidth due to this issue.

What’s really irritating about all this is AVG’s Chief of Research (Thompson) response according to the Register:

And if that causes problems for webmasters, Thompson says, so be it. “I don’t want to sound flip about this, but if you want to make omelets, you have to break some eggs.”

Be careful of the implications of your decision. This may result in a very large community backlash, especially when it’s backed by a large number of webmasters. We all remember the Intel processor fiasco of 1993, commonly referred to as one of the biggest technical blunders of all time.

And on that note I’ll leave you with some after-thoughts to ponder.

• What happens if the search result returns another search result (this could be maliciously implemented)?
• You’re now exposed for exploits from every website on the search results, not just the ones you visit.
• What’s your monhtly bandwidth cap?
• What will be the performance impacts on your machine for continually scanning all those extra webpages for viruses, spyware, and malware?

Today we announce the launch of PlaybookIQ, offering a unique combination of small business CRM, plus process best practices. Much more powerful than general-purpose contact managers and address books, PlaybookIQ is built from the ground up for sales teams. Simply stated: PlaybookIQ shows you what was last said to a contact and automatically schedules what needs to happen next.

With PlaybookIQ, sales teams:

• Implement consistent and repeatable sales processes with Playbooks.
• Keep a complete record of all contact touchpoints with Contact Management, including automatic creation of comments with each step completed.
• See upcoming activities on the shared Calendar.
• See what needs to be done today on the Dashboard.
• Gain insight into progress and make sure nothing gets dropped with real-time Reports.
• Control who can do what with permissions management.
• Record contact data to your needs with custom fields.
• Collaborate among multiple users with flexible task assignment
• Include the whole team with affordable pricing.

Initial response and feedback from early users has been promising and very positive. With new features being released every couple of days, we are excited about this product launch and look forward to continued feedback.

To find out more about this new small business CRM and sales team collaboration software, visit these links.

• PlaybookIQ.com – the product site.
• PlaybookIQ.com/tour – a quick overview of the product and small business CRM features.
• AboutPlaybookiq.com – the product blog that includes videos of new features as they become available.
• PlaybookIQ.com/signup – your free, 30-day trial.

You can email comments or questions to info@aboutplaybookiq.com.

Getting the animation to work was MUCH easier! Once i had my views correctly set up the, the window animated flawlessly. Another win for Cocoa! I still have some smoothing to do (which means i need to do some more reading on Core Animation) but i'm going to shift gears for now. The agenda stands at: ...

Not as far along today as i'd like to be, but i did just get over a hurdle. I've changed how the MercuryMoverAgent draws the content inside it's Heads Up Display window. I used to draw right into the window's contentView, but then when i tried to animate the resize of the HUD, the cool looking bezel effect wouldn't redraw. All of the examples i've seen for creating the "bezel window" effect involve using Interface Builder to draw the bezel onto the contentView . I wanted something that acted more like an NSWindow that drew the bezel effect for you. I had this before by just drawing a rounded rectangle when the window loaded (truthfully, i'm not even sure if that was taking place in the contentView), but now i needed the bezel to be drawn in a separate NSView so that i can animate it as the window resizes. After some trial and error (and remembering to reconnect my broken IBOutlets) i have the view drawing working correctly. Next up, the animation.

Previously, i went public with my goal to get the MercuryMover (Don't let your mouse slow you down, use MercuryMover to move and resize your windows from your keyboard) v2.0 public beta out by the end of june. To that end, i took a vacation day from my day job today in order to whip the beta into shape. Unfortunately, i'm going to be late with the public beta, but i'm still hoping to get a beta build out to my friends-and-family private beta group by the end of the day today. As an experiment, i'm going live blog my day. I know, i know this raises two issues: 1) why not just use the twitter, 2) who the hayck cares what i'm doing all day? I'm going to eschew twitter because, well, who they hayck cares what i'm doing? Also, your one day sprint to get your beta finished is not the right day to start playing with a new toy. As for who cares? A few people do read my blog and i'm asking you three loyal readers to keep me honest today. ...

A weekly roundup of Micro ISV news, announcements and relevant blog posts.

News and Announcements

• Norbert Ruessmann launched DevTracer, a trace monitor. Via email.
• Jitesh Patil launched Silo, a project management and collaboration tool. Via BoS.
• Andrew Stewart launched TaskMate a task and project management system. Via BoS.
• Rohan Almeida was looking for feedback on Imsense, an IM management system.
• Nick Hebb interviewed on Startup Something.
• Dave Collins is offering free adwords consultations.

Relevant Blog Posts and Articles

• Government Whore, and My Story, from Building a Software company.
• Postmortem, from Diary of a failed startup.
• Building Youtube, on NewTeeVee.
• Leveraging OSS as a software developer, from Patrick.
• Increasing conversion rates and looking for suggestions, from Software by rob.
• The secret to success is perseverance, from Follow Steph.
• Last day or so for the 30 day challengers. Here's what Phillip, Mike, Rafael, Bracken, Scott, Steve C, Steve M, ProjectIffy, and Patrick have been up to this week.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• How to do well in a recession, from FoundRead.
• No marketing = no sales #1 and #2, from Bruce on Games.
• How to avoid being fan boy, from EfCN.
• Will gas prices bring back desktop software, from bugninja.
• 4 contacts every web worker should have, from WWD.
• How to play the odds game and win with Digg, from Skelliewag.
• Feedback Fail.

Tags: microisv digest entrepreneurship startups shareware

A VPS (Virtual Private Server AKA "Virtual Dedicated Server") is a must-have for a mISV I must say. With shared hosting it was nothing but pain. With a VPS you can host any number of databases, websites and services on it. If you consider yourself more experienced than the average "shared-hosting-support-guy" - why not use your skills?

We've just moved our server that hosts the website, the customers database and other stuff to a new location. Our previous hosting provider - DotNetPark - that we've used for the last two years, has their servers really overloaded, so we decided to move.

Now we have a virtual server in the Atlanta-based datacenter from the VpsLand hosting company. VpsLand's support was quite helpful so far. The connectivity also seem to be fine. We'll see for the rest...

Now, speaking of the website hosting and tech-support,
CHECK THIS OUT: thewebsiteisdown.com.
Awesome hilarious video about the helpdesk everyday work. Must see!

I didn't get as much done over the weekend as I would have liked. But that was almost inevitable. Family and sleep are proving to be two big time sinks. If only I could eliminate one of them......

I think I've settled on the index schema now. I think. I've now got OCR'd documents being added to the index, the next step is to allow for search and navigation. Well, navigation will really be a different kind of search, but no matter. I'd certainly recommend Lucene for any micro ISVers looking to implement information retrieval. It's a pleasure to work with.

Because I have a full time consulting gig, work on Home Document Manager during the week will be limited to a couple of hours per night. Red Bull is hereby appointed to be the official Micro ISV drink.

Repeat after me: "Red Bull is your friend. Red Bull is your friend."

Related articles

• School bans Red Bull drink [via Zemanta]

Earlier this month Andy Brice of Successful Software wrote a review of my ebook How to Generat