Ian Landsman's Weblog v2.0 http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/index/ Starting from Scratch en Ian Copyright 2008 2008-05-12T17:57:00-05:00 Follow me on Twitter http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/follow_me_on_twitter/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/follow_me_on_twitter/#When:17:57:00Z Just an FYI, if you haven’t subscribed to me on Twitter please do. I still write here from time to time, but it’s hard to find the time for full blog posts these days. The low commitment level of Twitter allows me to normally post several times a day. You’ll also get more details about ongoing HelpSpot development than here as I sometimes Twit about what I’m working on right then.

]]> General 2008-05-12T17:57:00-05:00 Talking to the Owner http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/talking_to_the_owner/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/talking_to_the_owner/#When:13:45:00Z There’s something really great when you can talk directly to the owner of a business. It’s a feeling you don’t get a lot in the virtual world I mostly deal in unfortunately. What’s got me thinking about this is that we’re building a patio around our pool (previously it was incomplete and just dirt!) and most of the companies I’ve gone with for the various components are small. The owner is on site at least part of the day here. It’s great to be able to talk directly to the guy making the decisions, the one who’s name is on the line.

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Being able to talk to me is one of the main reasons for HelpSpot’s success in my opinion. Customers love having direct access to the decision maker. Of course, as a company grows the founder can’t answer the phone forever, but it’s an element I plan to always retain in some capacity as UserScape continues to grow.

]]> General 2008-04-30T13:45:00-05:00 Refreshing Post http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/refreshing_post/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/refreshing_post/#When:13:31:00Z Dennis Forbes with (as usual) a refreshing post. http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/Be_Bad_Or_The_Startup_Lottery_Ticket/. If you’re thinking of starting a business I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for you to read this post and take it to heart.

]]> General 2008-04-22T13:31:00-05:00 New Computer Setup http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/new_computer_setup/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/new_computer_setup/#When:13:53:00Z As usual I haven’t posted in a while. Since it’s Friday I’m not in the mood for anything too heavy so I thought I’d post about my new computer setup. So far it’s been amazingly productive for me.

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First a little history.

The first setup I had when I started UserScape was a Apple G5 Tower with a couple gigs of ram (some may recall how a bad drive almost ended UserScape before it began). This setup had 2 Samsung 17” monitors.

That was OK for a while, but I got tired of being stuck in one location all day. So then I moved to a MacBook Pro, 3GB ram. I also purchased an Apple Cinema 23” display along the way for when I worked at the desk. That’s what I’ve been using up until last month, but the truth is I’m mostly at my desk these days. When I’m not at the desk I’m only doing coding, never really support or other business that requires the horsepower of the MB pro.

Given all this I decided to move to a high end desktop and a new laptop optimized for portability.

The new desktop setup is an Apple Mac Pro tower with 16GB ram (cheap from www.macsales.com), 3 hard drives (more in a moment on that), the same 23” Apple Cinema display as before. For portable computing I got a MacBook Air.

So far this setup is fantastic!!!

The desktop is great as I can easily run multiple VM setups for different Windows/Linux installations, Photoshop, BBEdit with 8 million documents open, multiple browsers with dozens of tabs and all without the system showing any signs at all of being loaded down. I’m also one of these people who never turns their computer off and so far the Mac Pro hasn’t broke a sweat.

The MacBook Air (MBA) is turning out to be the perfect compliment to this setup. It seems that I’m the ideal candidate for the MBA. It could never be a primary computer for a serious business person, but it’s a great second computer. It’s insanely light, powerful enough for coding PHP applications, and handles a single browser with many tabs no problem. I don’t bother with any VM’s or heavy apps like Photoshop on it since all that is on the Mac Pro. I couldn’t be happier with this little sucker. Battery life also seems very good so far and the screen is great.

As the link above indicates I’ve learned my backup lessons the hard way. So the Mac Pro is setup with 2 350 Gb drives in RAID 1 for mirroring. If one fails the other has all the data. I have a 3rd 750GB drive being used as a Time Machine backup drive for versioned backups of all the files on the raid disk. I also have an external hard drive which I use with Super Duper so that I always have a bootable version of the raid disk available.

I’m also using Jungle Disk to backup selected items to Amazon Web Services which is working out great. I haven’t cleared out my account from the backups of the MacBook Pro yet so up there I basically have duplicates of everything. With 50GB+ of data up there and lots of requests for the initial upload my bill was $30!!

Overall, if you have some money to spend on your computer setup I can’t imagine a better setup than this. My productivity has dramatically increased with the Mac Pro (and full time use of the big monitor).

]]> General 2008-04-04T13:53:00-05:00 HelpSpot 2.4.0 Beta http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/helpspot_240_beta/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/helpspot_240_beta/#When:20:27:00Z Development on HelpSpot 2.4.0 is finally starting to wrap up. This release contains more than I originally intended, but I think there’s a lot of important improvements especially as I plan on hunkering down to focus on version 3 development for the rest of the year.

This is one of those releases that won’t have a lot of flash on the surface, but adds or improves on many things which are day to day pains or potential issues for certain types of installations.

So if you’re interested in participating in the beta please post on our forums and I’ll get an email to you when we’re ready to get rolling.

http://tinyurl.com/38nonu

]]> General 2008-03-19T20:27:00-05:00 Expression Engine 2.0 Preview http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/expression_engine_20_preview/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/expression_engine_20_preview/#When:18:42:00Z The guys at EllisLab have released a preview of EE 2.0. It’s fantastic, I love it. The UI is really nicely done. I especially like how it’s catered to their market so well. You can tell it’s going to be really easy for non-tech folks who have to maintain websites to get around and use the system.

http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/74102/

]]> General 2008-03-13T18:42:00-05:00 Ebook on Generating Web Traffic http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/ebook_on_generating_web_traffic/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/ebook_on_generating_web_traffic/#When:16:47:00Z Stephane yesterday released an interesting book on generating traffic to your site. It’s remarkably in depth. I’ve only read some of it so far, but what I’m most impressed with is the breadth of the coverage. It pretty much hits on everything someone starting a commercial website needs to think about. 

]]> General 2008-03-12T16:47:00-05:00 Competitive Advantage http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/competitive_advantage/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/competitive_advantage/#When:23:32:00Z Great post by Rick about competitive advantage among other things. I agree with this 100%. I’ve found that fast and great service are the easiest (in a certain sense) way to outperform your competitors. This is especially true of MicroISV’s and small ISV"s. It sounds counter intuitive, but it’s not really.

As you get bigger the service gets farther away from YOU and generally service gets worse. When you’re small it’s easier to provide great service and control the service environment. That’s something Rick has done a great job with as his company has grown and it relates directly to what he mentions about controlling growth.

My #1 advice to new ISV’s when they email in is to provide great (and fast) service.

]]> General 2008-03-11T23:32:00-05:00 Winter http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/winter/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/winter/#When:20:10:00Z It’s snowing like crazy here today.

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Doesn’t this look like my wife and son are walking into a photo from the 1850’s

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That’s an old rail bridge that runs next to our house. It’s pretty interesting. At one time it was the longest bridge in the world.

]]> General 2008-02-22T20:10:00-05:00 Sites that Sell! http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/sites_that_sell/ http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/sites_that_sell/#When:15:23:00Z Bob Walsh has released his eBook MicroISV Sites that Sell! - Creating and Marketing your Unique Selling Proposition. HelpSpot is one of the apps featured in it. For $19 it’s worth checking out if you’re planning to start a software business.

]]> General 2008-02-18T15:23:00-05:00