* What mistakes cost shareware developers the most money?

Shareware authors that are too stingy in their restrictions initially or too easy in restrictions later on.  When you make a program, it needs to be usable enough that the potential customer can see what it does and how well it does it.  Some authors will cripple their program so much in fear that people won’t register it if it’s fully usable. But what happens is doing that causes the user to stop evaluating in and kills the network effect (which I’ll talk about more in a second).

But at the other end of the spectrum you have developers who never have any time-outs on their shareware.  At some point, in my view, all unregistered shareware should time out. Even if that time out period is very long (90 days) it will have long since maximized its network effect and the user has certainly had enough time to evaluate it.  Similarly, there needs to be a few “nice to have” features that aren’t core to the product’s usefulness that are restricted.

For example, if I were making a ZIP program, I would have the compressing and uncompressing features be free. But the password protection be disabled in the free version. But other than that be fully functional. On the other hand, after 120 days or so, I would still have it time out. That way, you are able to convert both types of users: The user who needs a certain feature and the user who has standardized on it.

With regards to the network effect, this is very important in shareware – you want people evaluating your product to be the ones who also promote it. If they are using your program, they’re likely to give it to someone else. Even if they don’t ultimately choose to buy it,  the longer they use it (up to a point) the more likely they are to recommend it to someone else who may then recommend it.

* What mistake has cost YOU the most money?

Overestimating the market for something.  One of our most useful and best programs is called Keyboard LaunchPad. It’s only $9.95 to register and it lets users assign pretty much anything they might do on their computer to a hot key (program launching, system commands, remembered clipboard contents, commands for specific programs, you name it).  We thought this would sell very well. But we’ve been very surprised at how low its sales are.  That sort of mistake can be quite costly.

Another mistake we’ve made on occasion is having our demos be too restricted. We’ve done this with WindowFX repeatedly because we haven’t figured out which features are “core” and which ones are not. So users will try it and stop evaluating it early because they’ll find too many features have been disabled from the free version.

The biggest, ongoing mistake we make is not releasing regular updates to our shareware versions.  We tend to believe that shareware versions need to be updated every 90 days on various sites for maximum popularity. But it’s often a pain (especially now) to go around updating those programs. But that effort pays off in increased sales but it’s just so tedious no one wants to do it.

My wife and I had a great time last night. One of my co-workers got married and it was a great night. They had a terrific reception with good music, dancing, etc. My wife and I boogied all night together.

But the guy who got hitched, he's our lead cartoonist on The Political Machine. We realized yesterday that we don't have an image of Dick Cheney in the game. During the reception, they were asking people to sing a song to get them to kiss.

Here's what I came up with: (sung to "Close to you")

Why do betas suddenly seem late
When the image, misses the date.
Just like me, they long to see, Dick Cheney.
La...lal la la....Dick Cheney.

Needless to say, I do not have a good singing voice.

Which Winamp skin do you think, as a user, you would want to use as a power user? The Winamp skin that is totally full of really cool features that makes using it a real joy.

Let us know what you think!

The judges are looking in depth at the entries for the events already up. The next one on the dock is the best pseudo-OS icon package.

Which icon package do you think you could imagine coming with some future version of Windows, or Mac, or some other operating system?

The On-line Community survival guide

(by Brad Wardell)

Going on the Internet and interacting with thousands of people in open forums can be a really wonderful and enlightening experience.  But it is also an experience that has its share of pitfalls and challenges for the unwary. I've spent the better part of the last two decades taking part in on-line communities. From the days of Commodore BBSes to massive web based communities, the faces and names change but the joys and frustrations remain the same. Hopefully this guide will help you get the most out of your on-line experience and also help you avoid some of the gotchas that often strike those who are new to the community.

1) Pretend that the person you are writing to is standing in front of you in person. Much angst on-line comes from people who feel insulated from their actions. Even people who are normally good members of the community can easily forget their "filter" when they write on-line. There are people on the other side of those screens.

2) The Internet is not the government. There is no such thing as "free speech". Every on-line community has its own rules and they have unlimited power to enforce those rules. On some sites, it's against the rules to even disagree with moderators. On other sites, it's pretty much a free for all. And on others you can be banned for using profanity, having bad grammar, or any number of arbitrary reasons. Nothing advertises the inexperience of a user than the complaint "What happened to free speech?"

3) Quantity of correspondence does not equal quality. Some people believe it polite or useful to respond to everyone, no matter what, who comments in a thread/article/blog they've created. Don't. The more often you write things of no substance, the more likely you are to generate a detractor. If you have something interesting or worthwhile to add to a conversation, by all means, do so, but beware of writing "thanks for your comment" to every person who responds to you.

4) Control the inner narcissist. The number of narcissists on-line is much higher than in general society. These are people who are so self-involved that they can only be stimulated by a conversation if it revolves around them. Beware of this trait because it is what leads to people hijacking topics. Don't change the topic of a conversation if you can avoid it. Stick with what the original topic that was originated by the thread creator. If you have a different topic you would like to discuss, start your own thread.

5) Not all people are equal in a community. You may not think it fair but that doesn't matter. Accept it. On-line communities physically exist on someone's computer. Unless you helped pay for that computer, your influence only goes as far as your ability to convince the people who do own that computer of the validity of your position on some issue. Administrators and site owners tend to not be very tolerant of abuse any more than the host of a party tends not to be very tolerant of rude guests. Unless you're helping pay for the party, you're a guest. Many a prolific writer in an on-line community has met their doom by believing that their popularity trumped the will of the site owners.

6) People of principle can disagree.  There is a big difference between disagreeing in principle and a personal attack. Don't let someone's disagreement with you on an issue cause you to lash out at them personally. Most people occasionally forget this but those who repeatedly do this will eventually be ostracized by the community. The key is being able to make the distinction between being "attacked" versus being disagreed with.

7) Don't fight "the man". If you don't like the way a community you are part of is run, your best option is to find a different community. No one community is the end all, be all community. If you think the admins are "jerks" (or fascists) it's pointless to try to change them. Just find a different place to hang out.

8) Avoid excessive quoting. Not to quote netiquette (there are guides for good on-line netiquette elsewhere). If you are involved in an on-line discussion about some issue, heavily quoting some other source is annoying to others. No one cares what some stranger thinks, if they want that, they could just read Newsweek. People want to know what you think. Regurgitation is heavily frowned upon as it wastes other people's time and makes you look like a sheep.

9) Avoid using charged words such as: Racist, Fascist, ignorant, childish, Nazi. These add nothing to a conversation and usually have the effect of ending any sort of meaningful dialogue.

10) Remember the golden rule: It's supposed to be fun. Hanging out on-line is a hobby to be enjoyed. If you're finding yourself getting angry, stressed out, upset, or worried, you need to re-evaluate your goals. Often times that just means taking a little break and returning with a different attitude towards it.  Don't let people upset you. If someone makes you angry, try to avoid them. Some sites, like JoeUser.com, allow you to actually filter out who can comment on your articles. There is nothing noble about letting someone piss you off or abuse you: It's supposed to be FUN.

Hopefully this little guide will help you have a much more enjoyable and smooth experience in whatever on-line communities you participate in. Have fun!

The On-line Community survival guide

Going on the Internet and interacting with thousands of people in open forums can be a really wonderful and enlightening experience.  But it is also an experience that has its share of pitfalls and challenges for the unwary. I've spent the better part of the last two decades taking part in on-line communities. From the days of Commodore BBSes to massive web based communities, the faces and names change but the joys and frustrations remain the same. Hopefully this guide will help you get the most out of your on-line experience and also help you avoid some of the gotchas that often strike those who are new to the community.

1) Pretend that the person you are writing to is standing in front of you in person. Much angst on-line comes from people who feel insulated from their actions. Even people who are normally good members of the community can easily forget their "filter" when they write on-line. There are people on the other side of those screens.

2) The Internet is not the government. There is no such thing as "free speech". Every on-line community has its own rules and they have unlimited power to enforce those rules. On some sites, it's against the rules to even disagree with moderators. On other sites, it's pretty much a free for all. And on others you can be banned for using profanity, having bad grammar, or any number of arbitrary reasons. Nothing advertises the inexperience of a user than the complaint "What happened to free speech?"

3) Quantity of correspondence does not equal quality. Some people believe it polite or useful to respond to everyone, no matter what, who comments in a thread/article/blog they've created. Don't. The more often you write things of no substance, the more likely you are to generate a detractor. If you have something interesting or worthwhile to add to a conversation, by all means, do so, but beware of writing "thanks for your comment" to every person who responds to you.

4) Control the inner narcissist. The number of narcissists on-line is much higher than in general society. These are people who are so self-involved that they can only be stimulated by a conversation if it revolves around them. Beware of this trait because it is what leads to people hijacking topics. Don't change the topic of a conversation if you can avoid it. Stick with what the original topic that was originated by the thread creator. If you have a different topic you would like to discuss, start your own thread.

5) Not all people are equal in a community. You may not think it fair but that doesn't matter. Accept it. On-line communities physically exist on someone's computer. Unless you helped pay for that computer, your influence only goes as far as your ability to convince the people who do own that computer of the validity of your position on some issue. Administrators and site owners tend to not be very tolerant of abuse any more than the host of a party tends not to be very tolerant of rude guests. Unless you're helping pay for the party, you're a guest. Many a prolific writer in an on-line community has met their doom by believing that their popularity trumped the will of the site owners.

6) People of principle can disagree.  There is a big difference between disagreeing in principle and a personal attack. Don't let someone's disagreement with you on an issue cause you to lash out at them personally. Most people occasionally forget this but those who repeatedly do this will eventually be ostracized by the community. The key is being able to make the distinction between being "attacked" versus being disagreed with.

7) Don't fight "the man". If you don't like the way a community you are part of is run, your best option is to find a different community. No one community is the end all, be all community. If you think the admins are "jerks" (or fascists) it's pointless to try to change them. Just find a different place to hang out.

8) Avoid excessive quoting. Not to quote netiquette (there are guides for good on-line netiquette elsewhere). If you are involved in an on-line discussion about some issue, heavily quoting some other source is annoying to others. No one cares what some stranger thinks, if they want that, they could just read Newsweek. People want to know what you think. Regurgitation is heavily frowned upon as it wastes other people's time and makes you look like a sheep.

9) Avoid using charged words such as: Racist, Fascist, ignorant, childish, Nazi. These add nothing to a conversation and usually have the effect of ending any sort of meaningful dialogue.

10) Remember the golden rule: It's supposed to be fun. Hanging out on-line is a hobby to be enjoyed. If you're finding yourself getting angry, stressed out, upset, or worried, you need to re-evaluate your goals. Often times that just means taking a little break and returning with a different attitude towards it.  Don't let people upset you. If someone makes you angry, try to avoid them. Some sites, like JoeUser.com, allow you to actually filter out who can comment on your articles. There is nothing noble about letting someone piss you off or abuse you: It's supposed to be FUN.

Hopefully this little guide will help you have a much more enjoyable and smooth experience in whatever on-line communities you participate in. Have fun!

The next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn has incredible possibilties.

The desktop, as you know it, dies with Longhorn. Instead, it will be a fully composited desktop. Or, to put it another way, it will have the same kind of performance one would expect from a full screen Direct3D game. That means all kinds of things will become possible.

But will Microsoft keep the door open for third parties to extend and customize Windows? With all this new power, the potential for incredible innovation in the Windows market by third party developers is immense. But only if Microsoft also adds in hooks for third parties to get in there and do things to the system that no one in Redmond has considered.

This article at JoeUser.com talks about this in more depth and has a few never before seen screenshots of Longhorn in action.

I'm not sure what to think about Longhorn yet. On the one hand, it looks like it will potentially be a truly revolutionary new version of Windows that has all kinds of new potential built into it. On the other hand, it looks like it could be made into the most proprietary operating system ever. One in which only Microsoft can extend or do anything meaningful to it.

Windows has historically been pretty good about letting developers mold it.  If you didn't like something in the way Windows ran or if Microsoft didn't think of some feature, you could add it in. Windows OSes have always had all kinds of hooks in there for developers to tap into to add features to the base operating system.  Without these "holes", anti-virus programs would be virtually impossible to do and we would never have had instant messaging (which hooks into the mouse and keyboard to see if you're active).

But Longhorn could go either way. Microsoft has made occasional noises that "nearly half of reported crashes are caused by third party programs". As if that is a bad thing.  One would hope that all crashes on Windows were the result of third party programs and not bugs in the OS itself. But this leads me to worry that maybe Longhorn will be Microsoft's way of closing the door on everyone. Longhorn could be simply an application launcher with a "take it or leave it" philosophy behind it.  I suspect the Linux advocates of the world hope very much that Microsoft's "security" initiatives end up killing extensibility since they would be the primary beneficiary of such a move.

The new compositor is the source of much of our excitement but also a lot of my fear.  If the Windows desktop is rendered much like a game is today in DirectX, all kinds of things become doable. Fears that customization might "slow down your computer" become moot.  But customization requires openings in the OS at a sufficiently low level where developers can extend the feature set of the operating system. And that's where I worry. Will Microsoft take the time to put this kind of thing in there.

For example, in Longhorn's alpha, when you hit Alt-Tab the open windows actually show up shrunk and rotated and you can quickly pick your way through it. That's pretty cool. But imagine if I, as a developer, want to have hot keys that do other visually appealing things to the windows. Say I want to have a mode where inactive windows are gray scaled. Or maybe have Windows key-I scale the inactive windows by 50%.  I'm just making things up here but I, as a developer, want to be able to add that kind of functionality into the OS.  We can do this on Windows XP (but it's not practical from a performance point of view - no compositor).

The same is true on skinning. Will Longhorn be as visually customizable as Windows XP and before? It's way too early to tell but hopefully Microsoft will keep the door open to those who want to put in the work to make Windows look and feel however they want. With the compositor, third parties could potentially create entirely new ways of doing the user interface. I'm not talking XAML, we're talking ways where companies or individuals can customize the entire OS at once (I have mixed feelings about XAML, I don't want my apps as poorly designed as many websites I visit!).

I think XAML and other technologies are good, but I want users to have the ability to control the overall look and feel of their own computers. That's why I'm into skinning in the first place - I want to be able to decide how my computer works because I know how I work.

And for those who thinking skinning is some toy or some hobby, don't kid yourself. Next time you buy a new computer or a new piece of hardware that comes with custom software, notice how much of it is "skinned" with its own custom UI.  Make no mistake, without programs like WindowBlinds and DesktopX and Litestep and Winamp, I am quite certain that this whole move to programs with their own branded customized interface design would never have happened. One of the major innovations in computer software over the past year can find its roots in the whole customization "niche" (a niche of millions of active users).

So that's where I stand with Longhorn. On the one hand, I'm very excited about its possibilities. But on the other hand, I worry that I'm going to be locked into having to use it exactly as Microsoft decides I can use it. I want to be able to use alternative shells, have desktop objects and widgets, skinned windows, integrate more functionality into my Start bar or Longhorn dock, etc.  I suspect all these things will become possible. I just want to make sure that it doesn't require massive effort to do it and that on day 1 when Longhorn is released, I am able to do all sorts of neat new things with Longhorn that didn't necessarily originate out of Redmond Washington.

I worry about my kids.  I want to teach the 7 year old how to ride his bike. But he just has no interest. His friends are all riding their bikes and yet my son just seems to have no interest at all. He'd rather draw or play. Or if we let him, watch TV or play video games.

I'm not sure how much I should be pushing them. I don't want to be an ogre forcing them to go outside and play all the time but at the same time I don't want them just laying around the house on a beautiful warm day.

Ah the good old days. In 2002, the date of the last GUI Olympics, skinning was not nearly as mainstream at it is today. Though at the time, we thought it was really mainstream.

What does that have to do with judging? Well, for one thing, so many of the skins are of such high quality that the judges are having to look very very closely at them. Having icons to boot makes things much tougher.

The skins of the 2002 GUI Olympics were first rate. There were some very creative skins and in some ways one might argue that creativity has lost a bit to science. For one of the things the judges are noticing is that many of the entries are so good that skinning is more science -- it's as if the evolution of skinning has moved to the point where designers have a pretty firm idea of exactly what people want in a skin which makes judging skin A and B much tougher.

Consider this list of the 2002 entries in order of most downloaded from 2002. Speaking as a non-judge of that contest, I definitely have some favorites (besides the obvious ones):

SETI green

Z

LOS

Olympics OS

These are just some that really stood out from the time (and is just a sampling).  But in many ways, this time around, the quality of the skins is just so fine. Those who look fondly back at the "good old days" should look carefully at the link I provide above and judge for yourself how things are going this time versus last time. The art of skinning, which was outstanding in 2002, seems to keep progressing forward.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand: The judges are really struggling with judging the skins. In 2002 it was pretty obvious often which skin should win a given event. I remember in 2002 judges saying "It's pretty obvious Mindless Puppet is going to win event X and Grayhaze event Y and Treetog event Z" and so forth.  Whereas this time it's been very close.  So stay tuned, the judges are looking very close at these skins.

For those people who disagree with the judges -- beware of making your decisions based on screenshots. The judges are using these skins over periods of days at a time. The quality is just that high that it's taking a lot more effort. Congratulations really to all the skinners. Again check out the 2002 skins and tell us what you think.