Off to Search Engine Strategies NYC

Search Engine Strategies NYC

I'll blog what I can, but you can definitely expect an in depth article on everything I learn upon my return. This is the first conference I'm going to where I'm footing the bill myself. It definitely changes your perspective on things. I'm alot more motivated to make sure I get my monies worth.

OSX 10.3.8 Turned my Mac into an Airplane

I just updated to OSX 10.3.8 and now my fan comes on really loud at very odd times. I'm running a Dual 2ghz G5 with 1.5gb of ram and the fan is coming on when I'm just typing in this text box. Arghhhh. :-(

ALA Follow Up

A quick follow up to the thing I posted the other day about the ALA president who doesn't get the digital revolution. There's a great response to him from Karen Schneider, a librarian, on the ALA mailing list.

Thanks to Kevin for the link to the mailing list.
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The Old World

Dave points to this guy from the "old world". There are so many quotable pieces, but here's a few just to wet your appetite:

"In the eyes of bloggers, my sin lay in suggesting that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the substance of scholarly books. I went further and came up with the unoriginal idea that the thing to do with a scholarly book is to read it, preferably not on a screen. It turns out that the Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief."

"The Luddite label is because my mild remarks have been portrayed as those of someone worried about the job security of librarians (I am not) rather than one who has a different point of view on the usefulness of this latest expression of Google hubris and vast expenditure of money involved.

I'm no Antidigitalist

If a fraction of the latter were devoted to buying books and providing librarians for the library-starved children of California, the effort would be of far more use to humanity and society."

I'm actually not a huge Google fan, but to think that the world would be better if the only way you could access scholarly information is in Libraries is really insane. What about people who don't have access to libraries? What about the fact that most libraries have only a tiny portion of all knowledge even if you only consider "scholarly work"? What's wrong with reading on a screen if that is your preferred method? Why would Google want to spend money buying books for only the children of California when by digitizing them they can reach HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of children around the world?


Here is the entire article

Cheese and Pants!

Found this in my referrer logs today. When a site is called www.cheeseandpants.com you're compelled to visit.
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Stealing Your Design

Must be something in the air. This is why you cough up the few bucks for a designer, the bad press just isn't worth stealing it.

"And now they think it's clearly different, clearly theirs. That is clearly ridiculous. There's a difference between influence and theft, and to me it's clear which side they come down on." (AGILECOpy: The ultimate home page rip-off)

"After reading a pretty amusing post over at 37signals about someone copying their home page and content I decided to check out if I had any impostors.

Using a site mentioned in their comments I found this site which is not only a blatant rip off of my past copy, but a total rip off of our design and style sheet!" (Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery?)

"Well, I've entered a logo design contest recently, being voted upon by registered members of a community. As it turns out, the leading logo candidate may have been done with the use of a cookie-cutter logo from a logo-off-the-shelf website. I was amazed that someone would copy a logomark, verbatim, and try to pass it off as a unique submission!" (Just Good Business)

Designer Redesign

I'm not sure how I missed this, but my designer has just redesigned his weblog. A nice clean look to it. I especially like the thin orange line at the top. He's also at 2 years blogging. Congrats Mike!

Jason Kottke Goes MicroISV with Himself

Jason keeps a very nice blog over at Kottke.org. He talks alot about NYC, Blogging, the world, web development, etc. He's the guy who got in a bunch of trouble for posting audio of the final Ken Jennings match on Jeopardy.

Anyway, he's quit his web design gig and is now attempting to blog full time as a career. He's currently doing a 3 week fund raising drive and hopes to raise 1/3 to 1/2 half his previous salary. He's really taking this seriously as anyone starting a business should, he has moved out of his expensive apartment, stopped eating out, and generally cut back on spending.

If your starting a business or thinking of starting one, I suggest you go give it a read. There's lots to learn from in there.


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MS Office Should Come With Free Hosting

Ross has an interesting post based on one by Scoble, about how MS Office needs a "save to web" feature.

I couldn't agree more, but I would go a bit farther than he does. I've worked with literally thousands of technology challenged folks in my previous jobs. As Ross says even basic web pub tools like frontpage are just too hard. The challenge is that even a new reworked "save to web" feature in Office would require a question that basically says this:


How would you like to publish your page? MetaWeblog API, FTP, SFTP, SOAP. Please enter your hostname and login information below.

Uh oh. That's a deal breaker right there.

I think Microsoft needs to go farther. I believe that every registered copy of Office should come with 100 mb of web space. Maybe it's part of spaces or maybe it's somewhere else, it doesn't matter.

Microsoft can move the file however it wants and the user doesn't need to know a thing. No questions to answer at all. You click "save to web" and presto your document is online. MSN takes care of the organizing features. This would allow alot of very cool things like easy synchronization, document permalinks, and so on.

It would have to be free to really work but that's OK because MS wins in 2 ways. First this might drive some more corporate sales of Sharepoint. Sharepoint could become the big brother to the free hosting. More importantly though is that the service would only be available to licensed Office users. This gives users a real reason to purchase Office as opposed to just copying the disk they use at work.

If MS wanted to be really cool about it, they could use an existing spec for the publishing or make their custom spec open. This would allow other hosting services to use the spec and they could have a simple preference that let you change your publishing location from MS servers to Blogger for instance.

More Proof That Blogs Equal Good Business

I just heard from my designer tonight that the article I wrote up about the design process for my companies logo has gotten him several logo design gigs already. A little more proof that some of what I talk about here works. Encouraging blogging about your product equals sales. It's that simple.

Mike was enthusiastic to let me show off his work and now that's paying off for him. Do you encourage your clients to blog about you?

Starting a Micro ISV, In The Beginning … there was nothing

This essay is inspired by a post by Kevin Dangoor, which in turn was inspired by a post on MicroISV.com, which was inspired by an article by Eric Sink!

The current hub bub in the ISV (independent software vendor) world right now is transparency and Kevin paid me a very nice complement by noting my attempts to be fairly transparent in the startup of my company, UserScape.

This then got me thinking a bit about what I'm doing and if I might be able to codify some of it for the benefit of all. I don't think I'm doing anything special per se, but in my short time going at this I've picked up a few items which may be useful to others. Let me disclaim myself here by saying that none of this is really proven to work! What I have is anecdotal evidence and if you stick around awhile I plan to write up some updates as time goes along.


In the beginning there was nothing: aka where to start

A big question I've already emailed with a few folks about is where to start. The answer to this is always start before you think you need to. Huh? What I mean is that I "started" almost 2 years ago by reading everything I could about starting a small software company. Reading as many ISV weblogs as you can is extremely important. It's just about the only place you can get a good in the trenches view on things. Back then there was no microisv.com, technorati, feedster etc. so I foraged for what I wanted. You have those tools now so use them effectively.

Some of the stronger influences on me include Joel Spolsky, Brent Simmons, Dave Winer, and Eric Sink among others. I also think it's very important to note Seth Godin as well. His books have had a huge influence on me. If you've never read Purple Cow run to amazon right now and get it.

Don't just read them, understand them. Think about how it's going to relate to you. See where they've made errors and learn from them. Make sure to note the things which have worked for them. Try as hard as you can not to reinvent the wheel. These people are out there giving you in depth details on their experiences, use that to your advantage. It means you may be able to avoid a few of the unavoidable pitfalls.

Pick your poison

How to choose a market to enter could be an essay all it's own. To keep it short here are a few things that led me into the help desk software market.

1. I've managed help desks for both software products and services. Having strong knowledge of the domain is extremely important. That doesn't necessarily mean you've worked in the area, but you definitely need to be sure you know your stuff or you are going to build something people don't want.


2. I didn't want to invent a new type of product. I think this is where alot of ISV's go wrong. It takes alot of money to explain to someone why they need something they have never heard of. Sure you could get lucky and create something very viral that takes off, but you're stacking the odds against yourself.

JotSpot comes to mind here. I'm sure it's a fine product but hardly anyone knows what a wiki is much less an application wiki. Search Google for wiki and you get 4 ads. Try application wiki and you get 0, not even JotSpot themselves. They have some $ so they'll probably be ok but most small ISV's don't. You don't want to start behind the 8 ball.

On the other hand, help desk software is a very established market. People know what it is and why they want it. Do a Google search for it and you get 10+ pages of ads. That companies are advertising heavily for it is strong evidence that people are buying it.

(of course I've oversimplified things with these searches but you get the idea)


3. Joel didn't invent bug tracking software
37Signals didn't invent project management software
Eric Sink didn't invent source control software
Microsoft didn't invent the word processor or the spreadsheet

The question is do you have fresh ideas you can bring to the table. Pick a market with stagnation. Take a look at the help desk software market and you'll see a bunch of websites and products that for the most part haven't been updated in years.

When it comes to innovation you can probably move faster than the current market leaders. In most cases their slower pace and existing customer base preclude them from making radical changes in their products. That's your big advantage as the newcomer to the market. Keep what works from the old models and innovate on that.

Get your money straight

Every situation is different so advice on money can be hard to give. All I would say is be realistic. Thinking you can do everything on the cheap and startup for $500 is not the case.

So you've started thinking about starting. What next?

Get a blog. It's that simple. I really can't express how much this simple act has done for me. It's opened up many doors and is already providing me leads on a software product that won't even be released for at least 3-4 months.

It's scary I know. You're going to make a fool of yourself. You're going to post things with misspellings. You're going to create sentences that sound like a 7th grader wrote them, and your readers will love you for it. Be open, be honest, be real.

Blogs are all about amplification. You can only reach X people, no matter how hard you try (well with your budget anyway ). Bloggers help you amplify your message. If you write good stuff (interesting, useful, etc) other people are going to point to you and those "old time" bloggers have alot of readers. That gets your message out and those readers they drive to you post on their own blogs and on and on. Basically if you are starting a small ISV you can't afford to not blog.

Blog early. Don't start a blog the day your product launches. You need to be building interest in your blog and your product long before it launches otherwise you'll be spending the first 6 months after your products out trying to build those connections.

Don't be scared that you have nothing to sell yet. It's not about that. It's about building relationships with the sneezers, it's about building relationships with other bloggers in your market, it's about learning how to effectively communicate with the market you are trying to reach. If you have people contacting you about how to get your product then you know you are on the right path. It's going to pay off later.

OK I'm signed up with Typepad, now what?

So you've got your blog up and running several months ahead of your launch. You're building interest, people are starting to occasionally link back to you and comment on your blog. You need a mailing list.

You need one because right now you have no idea about how many of your readers are simply interested parties (remember these people are very important don't discount them!) and how many are potential customers (super duper important). A mailing list helps you understand how many people are interested enough in your product to give you permission to contact them further about it.

I know what you're thinking. You can't remember the last time you signed up for a mailing list on a product. Me either! But I can tell you from experience that other people do, A shocking number of them. These folks are very important for a number of reasons.

1. If you can keep even a fraction of them interested in your product, then you might have a nice little group of purchasers right at your product launch. That's a very nice thing.


2. They are a great indicator of how well what you're writing is doing and what types of postings/articles drive the most potential customers to you. Once you have this information it makes targeting that market much easier.


3. They provide what I call "little bits of encouragement". You'll find yourself refreshing your mailing list subscriber page several times a day and every time that number jumps up by one or two it really really lifts you up. Somebody is interested in what you are working on. This really helps through the low points when you're working on that really terrible administrative page that's boring you to death.

Don't be cheap! You probably need to use a hosted mailing list service. It's not just about sending out emails. You want reporting on how many people received the mailing, how many opened it, how many bounced back, how many clicked a link in the mailing, etc. This reporting is vital in gauging the success of your campaign.

Get designed

I already wrote one article on logo design and I'll have another shortly on website template design so I won't harp on it too much here, but you need a professional designer. You need to get your logo's, website templates, and interface designed by a professional who understands color combinations, fonts, etc. If you don't look professional you aren't professional.


Wrap Up

So that's where I'm at right now. Hopefully you've found some of it useful. If you have your own experiences or questions, I'd love to hear them in the comments below.

What I thought I'd leave you with is information on some of the applications and services I have found useful throughout this process.

• MicroISV.com - A great place to find information on the ISV industry


• StatCounter.com - I do have my own log analysis software but StatCounter is great for quickly checking out where people are coming from. It's real time and free!


• CampaignMonitor - Makes it easy to run a mailing list. Very good reporting and very good pricing compared to other hosted mailing list services.


• WordPress - Good self hosted weblog tool



• TypePad - Nice hosted weblog tool


• Everyone.net - Email hosting service. I've used them for about 3 years with 0 down time.

XMLHttpRequest

There's an interesting article over on XML.com about XMLHttpRequest. That's the javascript object which makes it possible to communicate with the server from a webpage without the page refreshing.

Its most prominent use currently is with Google Suggest. There are several places in HelpSpot where this technology would be a great use. It could potentially make parts of the system like the inbound request queue extremely dynamic and completely real time.

My hesitation in using this is that unlike Google's use of the technology, mine is part of a larger system. In Google's case the technology is used on the one form the site has. In HelpSpot there are many many forms, data tables, etc. In most parts of the system using XMLHttpRequest would make no sense. So the question is does the benefits of using it in a few parts of HelpSpot outweigh the significant downside of creating alternate user experiences in different parts of the same application?

I don't know.

Functional Specs, To Do or Not To Do

OK I really have an entire essay I'd like to write on this, but I'm already working on another and don't have time so I'll just throw this out there. I read this on the Signal vs Noise blog yesterday and it kinda blew my mind:


"Don't write a functional specifications document. Why? Well, there is nothing functional about a functional specifications document.

Functional specifications documents lead to an illusion of agreement. A bunch of people agreeing on paragraphs of text is not real agreement. Everyone is reading the same thing, but they're often thinking something different. This inevitably comes out in the future when it's too late. "Wait, that's not what I had in mind..." "Huh? That's not how we described it." "Yes it was and we all agreed on it - you even signed off on it." You know the drill.

Functional specifications document are "yes documents." They're political. They're all about getting to "yes" and we think the goal up front should be getting to "no." Functional specs lead to scope creep from the very start. There's very little cost in saying "yeah, ok, let's add that" to a Word document."

The main part I find striking about this is how much it contrasts with the Joel Spolsky method, which I've used in the past:

"Software engineers who dive into code without writing a spec tend to think they're cool gunslingers, shooting from the hip. They're not. They are terribly unproductive. They write bad code and produce shoddy software, and they threaten their projects by taking giant risks which are completely uncalled for."



Doesn't really get more far apart than that. Since the SvN guys seem to be more in the design realm and Joel is a Microsoft guy perhaps there vastly different viewpoints make sense? I'm going to have to think about this a bit more.

Personally I tend to write short specs. I exclusively use an outliner for this process. I think it's much more productive to be able to open and close parts of the spec than have a big scrolling Word doc to deal with.

HelpSpot Mailing List

Last night I sent out the latest edition of the HelpSpot mailing list newsletter. Features I covered in the newsletter included:

• Our innovative customer satisfaction survey


• Private help desk communication tools


• Web services integration in HelpSpot

If your interested in HelpSpot and want to learn more you can sign up here. I plan to send out a newsletter about once a month over the next few months. As we approach the beta test period I'll send them a bit more frequently.

Update to Alan’s Bad Help Desk Experience

Yesterday I posted about Alan's bad help desk experience. Today Alan posts an update, whereby the help desk now looks like total buffoons. Apparently the site was hacked and he had to send out a flurry of emails to upper management to get the request resolved.


Read his update here

Transparency

Another great article by Eric Sink over on MSDN: Tenets of Transparency

I think UserScape should score pretty high on this checklist. Your reading #1 right now

HelpSpot will be able to help other ISV's with #2 and #3

Great stuff. I'm excited to get our demo rolling. I think having a timed demo is going to be a big key to our success. Once potential customers see how easy managing their support requests are and the power of the integrated self service features they'll be won over.
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A Bad Help Desk Experience Gets Blogged About

It's so important to have good help desk interactions with your customers. Why? Because the bad ones get blogged about. Alan has a typical post about a poor experience with his corporate help desk.

Many of the frustrating aspects of his experience are directly related to his organizations help desk software. Let's break it down point by point and see how HelpSpot handles these situations.

1. No part of the customer facing help desk should have any "weird" requirements that may interfere with the customer experience. In this case odd javascript which prevented him from entering his request from a Mac. I would also say there was a second problem here because the reason for the javascript is to do an LDAP lookup and fill in the rest of the users information. None of that system integration should be on the customer facing end of the software. Simply ask for a name and email or an employee id if available. That's it! You can do additional lookups later if necessary behind the scenes.


HelpSpot makes it easy to enter requests via the web or by integrating with one or multiple email accounts. All your customers need to do is email in a support request and a ticket is created automatically.

2. If you need to ask for browser information ask it in a drop down select list of browser types, don't get fancy and try to figure it out by the browser the user is currently using. Maybe they're using a different computer, perhaps the error is with their main browser, in any event don't try and guess just ask.

Provide a good user interface for the user. They are reporting their problems here, having a tiny little text box implies that you don't care and you just want them to keep it short.

HelpSpot lets you create custom fields so you can ask any type of information you need to that's specific to your desk. We've spent countless hours working on our user interface to make sure your customers don't feel frustrated with the experience.

3. Make a special category for security issues and have them route directly to the person who needs to know. The user shouldn't have to know who this is and go out of their way to notify them.

HelpSpot lets you automatically assign incoming requests for a category to a particular user so that it's routed to them as fast as possible without even stopping at the help desk.

4. OK this is good! The user should get an email with the ticket number and in HelpSpot's case they'll also get a one time use, unique password they can use to check the status of their request on the web.

Look for a future article I'm writing about how we handle customer access to request information

5,6,7,8. Here we have the standard breakdown in communication. Most likely the help desk didn't know the right person to contact or had to work outside the help desk software to contact them. Since that puts the help desk out of the loop nobody follows up with the customer and frustration sets in.

HelpSpot addresses this issue by encouraging every "level 2" support person to be part of the system. Licenses in HelpSpot for level 2 support people will be cheap so their's no excuse not to include every user who needs to be in the system, in the system.

In a HelpSpot installation the request should go something like this:

1. Customer fills out simple web based form or sends an email to


2. If the category of inquiry has a user assigned to it the request gets assigned directly to them (skip down to #4) if not the request goes into the help desk queue.


3. A help desk team member assigns the request to the correct level 2 user. In this case someone who can change the Unix permissions.


4. That user is notified automatically by the system since they have an account in HelpSpot.


5. The level 2 user sees the request come in and makes the change in 2 minutes. Marks the request as resolved and closed and the customer is notified.

Jeeves Purchases Bloglines: A Different Take

For those unaware, the news broke today about Ask Jeeves purchasing Bloglines. There are some good posts by Mary Hodder and Russell Beattie on it.

What nobody has really talked much about though is what's going to happen to Mark Fletcher, the creator of Bloglines. Mary assumes he'll be an Ask employee "Mark Fletcher will be their newest employee starting Monday". I hope he isn't.

I've had some personal experience as a member of a very small company that was purchased by a large one. It's great of course for the owner and it's basically "the dream" of most people who start a small web business. I'm all for it.

What I'm really talking about is that once you sell your company, especially a small one, it's not yours anymore (duh). That leads to big problems because all those great features you added in an afternoon before now go through 15 committees and take 6 months to implement. All the personal relationships you built with the community by being open about your business ... gone behind a shield of NDA's. The nice simple interface .... replaced by giant "search Jeeves" buttons everywhere. It goes on and on.

So for Mark's sake I hope he took a little less money and hands the keys over to The Man and walks away.
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