ianmjones

Always developing

  • I’ve Quit My Job

    Call me brave or call me stupid, but I’ve just told my current client that I’ll not be taking any further extensions to my contract with them.

    Come December 2nd 2005 I’ll be free to work on my own software, all day every day, and boy am I excited!

    Since I started thinking about and then developing CaseDetective well over a year ago now, I’ve always had to struggle with finding the time to actually get any work done on the project. When I look back upon the year, I think I’ve managed on average to maybe get 4 or 5 hours of development in per week, and that would be a good week.

    Then along come people like Ian Landsman and countless others who give up there full time jobs and concentrate on their dreams, and the difference in their development speed is plain to see. Ian has been able to produce a very feature packed product and fire out betas one after the other within a week of each other, while I’ve struggled to get one release out per month, and I’m way behind where I want to be in releasing v1.0.

    With time to work on my software during the day I expect to see a huge improvement in the quality and speed of design, development and marketing. I’ll have time to focus on my project(s) during the day while I’m awake, not while half asleep at 11pm after having got up at 6am, sat in traffic for an hour or so, done a long days work for someone else and then sat in traffic for another hour to get home, completely shattered before sitting down to work on CaseDetective late into the night.

    Maybe now I can have a life. Maybe I’ll be a little (read as a lot) lighter in the pocket, I’m sure going to miss a contractor’s wage. But just maybe I’ll be better off mentally and physically now that I can spend my most productive hours working on something I love, and more importantly also spend much more time with the people I love with the time freed up in the evenings and weekends.

    We’ve got enough money in the bank to see us through about a year of normal spending, as long as nothing major comes along to upset the balance. Hopefully by the end of next year I’ll have some income from the software I write, especially as I have a few ideas for other applications that may help bring in a little money. But if things start to get a little sticky money-wise towards the end of next year then I’ll look at a few short-term contracts, or maybe custom apps for small businesses in the area, but the plan is to concentrate solely on CaseDetective and its stable mates for the foreseeable future.

    Finally, I’m going to be following my dream to be an ISV, wish me luck!

    ianmjones
    , ,

  • All Marketers Are Liars

    Jon over at Outer Level (also of Make Mac Games) has found the joys of Seth Godin and is reading Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.

    I’m reading my first Seth Godin book at the moment too, actually I’m listening to it on my daily commute home (I listen to podcasts on the way to work).

    I’ve grabbed “All Marketers Are Liars” from audible.com, it is fairly short, weighing in at only 4 hours 18 mins, but seems to be packed with good examples that reinforce it’s main message, tell stories that consumers are ready to believe, do not lie. A story is much more attractive than pure facts, appeal to the consumers “World View”.

    I’m about 3 hours in now, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, I think I’ll pick another Seth Godin book for next month’s audible download, but I’ll probably re-listen to this one first to make sure I’ve got it down to pat, sometimes actually having to drive gets in the way of listening properly.

    ianmjones
    ,

  • Why the UK iTunes Music Store rip-off?

    A recent email reply to a friend by me on the subject of the new iMacs and iPods with video capability, with a couple of little corrections…

    On Wed, October 12, 2005 22:48, Gordon Robertson wrote:
    > 1. Can you load that Front Row thing on your ( living room ) iMac?

    Couldn’t find the software for download last night, so I assume it’s a bundle-only thing at the moment. Maybe it comes with the remote, which you can buy individually?

    > 2. When are you buying another new iPod?

    Next year, when the 80Gb version comes out!

    >
    > Gotta hand it to them. They haven’t lost it. And how the hell do they manage
    > to keep it under wraps so well?
    >

    It’s been a rumour for ages, and some noticed the new video icon used in the playlist panel in v5.0 and sudden lack of new music videos being posted to iTunes store, so rumours really started flying then.

    <rant>
    The price is a little high for those videos though, in the UK anyway. In the US it’s $1.99, which ain’t bad, just twice the price of a song. But in the UK it’s £1.89, which is:

    a) 2.4 times the normal UK price for a song (£0.79).

    b) equivallent to $3.30 (yes, that’s 3.3 times the price of a US music purchase, not twice). Even factoring in VAT, $1.99 * 1.175 = $2.34 = £1.34 <> £1.89.

    In the same vein, music should really only be £0.66 ($0.99 * 1.175 = $1.16 = £0.66).

    All calcs based on today’s exchange rates of 1 USD = 0.571951 GBP or 1 GBP = 1.74840 USD.

    This pisses me off, why do us UK peeps have to pay extra over and above our sales tax, it’s not like data bits have a hard time travelling over the Atlantic or anything.

    It’s just not on! And that’s why I’ll not be buying any music videos or TV episodes from the UK iTunes music store, not until the price comes down to below £1.50 anyway (£1.39 would be great, but I’d live with £1.49).
    </rant>

    I’ve bought a lot of music from iTunes, even at that rip-off £0.79 price, simply because it’s cheaper than buying a CD, which typically cost £11.99+ new. So I figure I can live without the case etc and save a couple of quid by buying the music from iTunes (albums are usually £7.99) and backing up to a cheap CD-R. I only listen to music via my iPod or computer these days anyway, so it makes sense.

    But that price for videos is just too much, it’s way out of step with the USA, and I just don’t need them that much that I’ll pay that kind of money.

    Maybe when we get a proper Apple “iMedia” in the shape of an Intel based Mac mini with TV tuner (although I’ve got an Elgato Eye TV which would do), Front Row software and remote for tucking under the living room TV, I might find the downloadable videos a little more interesting.

    It’s early days I suppose.

    ianmjones

  • REAL World 2006

    This weekend I registered for REAL World 2006, so next February I’m off to Austin, Texas for a few days to learn lots of stuff about RealBasic and hang out with like-minded geeks.

    Should be fun, some of the sessions already posted look very interesting, and I’m really looking forward to meeting the RB staff and other developers in the RB community.

    I haven’t booked my flights and hotel yet though, mainly because the wife and I haven’t decided whether she’s coming along or not. Thought it might be nice to extend the trip a little to see the sights (and sounds) of Austin as it looks like a nice place to be for a few days. Then again, Mandy won’t see me for a good three whole days while I’m at the conference as there’s evening socials as well as daytime sessions. But apparently there’s some good shopping to be had in Austin, so Mandy says she should be able to keep herself occupied for a few days, as long as the credit card holds out! 🙂

    ianmjones
    , ,

  • Corey Redlien has started blogging

    Corey Redlien has started blogging his experiences as a developer of business software for the Mac, starting with a couple of great articles (part 1, part 2) about the just released Redlien Account Executive v1.5.

    I’m going to keep a close eye on his blog, I’m sure I could learn a lot from him as he also develops in RealBasic and from the look of things knows what he’s doing. Hope he keeps his blog up to date as I’m really interested in how things progress with Redlien Account Executive, especially as he’s now using OpenBase as the backend.

    Although I probably don’t have a need for Account Executive, I’m going to download the trial and give it a whirl, just to see what kind of stuff can really be done with RealBasic when it comes to what I expect is quite complex data management and UI design challenges.

    ianmjones
    ,

  • NewsGator acquires NetNewsWire

    The price of bacon has just gone up!

    NewsGator acquires NetNewsWire

    I never ever thought I’d see this, but I guess after the same thing happened to FeedDemon, I shouldn’t be as shocked as I am.

    ianmjones
    , ,

  • 1 Year Old Today!

    The current incarnation of this website is one year old today, happy birthday ianmjones.net!

    Although ianmjones.net has been around for a few years with a blog like appearance, it wasn’t until September 30th 2004 that I started to properly “blog”.

    Since last September I’ve always intended this site to stay on track, to talk about how things were going with my quest to become an independent software vendor (ISV). I’m not sure I’ve managed that very well, I seem to have strayed quite a bit, really haven’t written a lot about what I’ve learnt along the way and haven’t written as often I hoped I would.

    What have I achieved in my first year?

    • I’ve read and listened to tonnes of marketing and business material in many different forms of media and from many sources (which I’ve failed to talk about here when I really should have, slap my wrist).
    • I’ve researched and picked suitable tools to develop, source control, package and sell my software.
    • I have designed and developed a software application in a programming language and with other tools that I hadn’t used before.
    • I’ve learnt a lot about the FogBugz database schema and data usage and installed it way too many times on far too many platforms!
    • I’ve registered something like 35 separate domains and set up the websites.
    • I’ve set up an online store to sell my software (visited a few times by people, but never used the way it should be).
    • I’ve set up a few channels for public communication, such as the Newsletter and Yahoo! group (there’s a proper forum waiting in the wings).
    • I’ve released three public betas of my software, with the second and third showing a lot of improvement over the first!
    • I’ve even released some open source code as a by-product of my software development.
    • I’ve met (in a virtual way) a lot of really nice people from all over the world.
    • I’ve had very little sleep compared to the year before, and seen a lot less of my family too (this isn’t a good one).
    • And tonnes of other bits and bobs that escape me just now.

    Some of this stuff I’m very proud of, some not so. But having a real direction in my life and being able to continuously step closer towards my goal of becoming an ISV while having lots of support from my family and friends, and new friends too, has made this a fabulous year.

    Really looking forward to the next year, it should be good.

    ianmjones
    , , ,

  • Quick Update / FogBugz & LDAP / Selling Beta Software

    Working hard on getting the final few things sorted for CaseDetective 1.0.

    Just got to learn about and write some LDAP code for Active Directory and OpenLDAP authentication now that FB4SP1 has it, add automatic version update checks, and update all my Help Docs and I’ll be all set 😉

    I’ve already knocked off a few other little bits and bobs, but still have quite a bit to go by the looks of things!

    The final beta has proven to be a real non-event, which is great! Eh? Well, no one has raised any bugs at all on this version, there’s only been a couple of questions about how things may go in the future and some really nice comments. So I’m very happy.

    I’m obviously going to be taking a little bit of a risk by adding the LDAP stuff to v1.0 without having a public beta, but before going live I’ll seed it out to a few current testers that I know use domains etc and might be using this new FogBugz feature.

    The thing is, I doubt a huge number of FogBugz users will start using this LDAP authentication straight away, it does take a little bit of planning to make sure existing users are correctly configured for when you switch. I found this out the hard way, locking myself out of FogBugz in the process. It was easy to get back in by updating a couple of records directly in the database though. Second attempt worked much better once I’d sorted out how the user names should be set. I guess a network professional would have no problems, but I’m not one of those by any stretch of the imagination.

    One disappointing but expected thing about the betas is that I’ve made no sales. Well, I say no sales, I know of plenty beta users who have said they’ll be buying it, but none have yet.

    I kind of expected this, it won’t be until v1.0 is out the door before I actually start to get sales. As I see it there are two primary reasons:

    Firstly, people don’t like to pay for something which is in Beta as that label means “not quite finished” and who knows when it actually will be finished? Paying up is a risk.

    Secondly, I gave the beta users way too much trial time to play with. 60 usage days of trial time is a very long time, I should have kept it at the default of 30 days. But it’s too late now, the deal was done and I promised 60 days, and a further 30 once v1.0 was out there, so that’s what I’ll do.

    If someone uses CaseDetective only once every month they’ll be able to use the v1.0 trial for over two and a half years! It’s a very unlikely scenario, but is possible. I’ll just have to work hard to make CaseDetective irresistible and so useful that people will feel like paying for it just to say thank you 🙂

    ianmjones
    ,

  • Yay! Free alcohol!

    I got a delivery today of a nice little box with the word “fragile” written down it’s sides, it could only be one thing … Yay! Free alcohol!

    yay_free_alcohol_cartoon.jpg

    Thanks to Hugh Macleod at gapingvoid.com bloggers in the UK and Ireland are getting the chance to sample some Stormhoek wine supplied by Orbital Wines. Each bottle comes with a little booklet and a personalised label:

    stormhoek_wine.jpg

    Ordinarily I’m a red wine drinker, it has to be pretty good and plenty chilled before I’ll usually enjoy a white.

    I’ve just returned from a hard game of squash and we’ve just had our first glass of Stormhoek with dinner, with the bottle having been thoroughly chilled in the fridge since lunch time. What a lovely wine, it really does taste very fresh and fruity. Mandy (my wife) says “it’s alright”, which believe me is quite a compliment!

    So it’s a thumbs up from the Jones household, we’ll be keeping our eyes out for Stormhoek when next shopping for wine.

    ianmjones
    ,

  • CaseDetective Beta 3 Released

    As well as releasing my UNIXCrypt RealBasic module, I’ve also released the latest, and hopefully last beta of CaseDetective.

    This one doesn’t look like much on the outside, but has a few fixes on the inside, and a bit of mutli-threading chucked in to make things a little more responsive in the GUI while grabbing data from the database.

    ALso, I’ve put in the framework for the Help system. It’s a little sparse at the moment, but should be improved plenty in time for the 1.0 release.

    I had seriously considered making some big changes in this version (as discussed in an earlier post), but decided that they ought to wait until 1.0 is out the door. I’ve got users who are pretty happy with the way CaseDetective works at the moment, so I don’t want to rock the boat just yet, I’ll leave that until 1.1, giving me plenty of time to make sure I get it right. This release is made with RelBasic 2005r2, but doesn’t include any of the stuff I need to do to support MS Access databases.

    I’m chomping at the bit to get onto v1.1, but I know I should finish off the docs and final polish of 1.0 first, and make sure this final beta is as solid as I hope.

    ianmjones
    ,