High Royalty Rates Could Kill Web Radio
High royalty rates could kill web radio including Pandora. This is very disturbing news for me because I listen to a lot of web radio especially Pandora. I rarely if ever listen to AM/FM radio these days and web radio is my only insight to new music. Web radio influences me to buy new music.
PHP Development in Linux or Mac OS X?
I’m planning to move a web site from ASP.NET to PHP. My primary development machine is a MacBook Pro. I use VMware Fusion for hosting a number of different OSes including Windows and Linux (mostly Ubuntu). So now I’m wondering what type of development environment I should setup for working with this new PHP based web site.
Should I develop directly within OS X? It’s definitely convenient. But I don’t need services such as Apache, Postgres, etc running on my laptop all the time. Also, I’m concerned that it might introduce my laptop to additional security risks.
Should I develop within a Linux guest OS? This is not as convenient as doing development within my host OS but it does mean my LAMP development environment is not running all the time wasting system resources when I’m not doing development work. And it is also more secure because I can restrict access to the guest OS.
So my latest thinking is to use a hybrid approach. I’ll setup a Ubuntu LAMP server as a guest OS using VMware Fusion. Then use a file share so I can edit the web site files within the host OS. It seems like this approach gives me the best of both worlds. I can edit files in OS X using an editor like TextMate while hosting and testing the web site on a LAMP server. Hmmm, I think maybe this is the right approach for me.
My First Software Industry Conference 2008
I attended my first Software Industry Conference this year and overall it was a great experience. I learned some good tips from the sessions I tended and from the people I met. I got to meet a number of people who, like me, are indie developers and or run small software companies. And I got to put faces on names of individuals from the ASP newsgroups and BoS forum. And of course I picked up a couple of new t-shirts too. Now if vendors exhibiting at conferences like SIC would hand out jeans and boxers I could have a new wardrobe each year.
The sessions covered a variety topics related to the business of selling software. There were sessions on distribution channels, alternative revenue models such as subscriptions and rentals, marketing, web site designs, the impact of social networks and more. I really liked the variety of topics covered. However, one thing I did not like was the lack of depth in many of the sessions.
Most of the sessions had multiple speakers providing different points of views on a topic. For example, the session on distribution channels had 3 speakers. The first speaker talked about breaking into the China marketplace. The second speaker talked about OEM distribution, and the final speaker talked about distribution through publishers and retail channels. With this particular topic the three speakers and the different points of view format worked well and was helpful and insightful. But the multi-speaker approach did not work for all sessions.
The session on web site analytics and metrics was one such session that I wish had been broken out into two separate sessions. The first speaker talked about monitoring your competitors, and the second speaker talked about tools and options for understanding what is happening with your own web site. What I would have liked to see was more in depth discussions and how tos on the two areas. For example, the talk about the tools and options for understanding what is happening with your own web site was good but it could have been even better if the speaker had time to drill into a sample web log using a tool of choice and explain in detail how to look for and understand the meaning of the data and how to uncover and find trends within the data.
It also felt as if each speaker was rushed to get through the information he or she wanted to share so that there would be enough time for the next speaker within the session.
Despite the lack of depth in many of the session talks, the Q&A; that typically followed was great. In many cases the Q&A; was more useful for me that the actual talk.
Another aspect of SIC that I really like is meeting a wide range of people who, like me, are producing and selling software products. Not only was it fun to share war stories and talk shop, I also learned a lot from the more seasoned veterans. For instance, Dan from TopoGrafix gave me some great feedback on my web site and suggested ways to improve my SEO with landing pages covering topics I had not thought of before. Not only did I learn a thing or two from others, but the conversations I had with various individuals gave me the kick in the ass I needed to re-motivated and come up with fresh, new ideas for growing my company and taking it to the next level.
So was the conference worth it? Absolutely. Granted my cost was low because the conference was held in the Boston metro area which is local for me and meant I didn’t not have to pay travel experiences (no airfare or hotel). But I do plan to return next year and I will be staying in the hotel so I can have more fun at the party-like receptions held each evening.
Run Killink CSV Under Linux
For grins I decided to see if Killink CSV will run under Linux using the latest version of Wine. I tried a few months ago and it didn’t work. So imagine my surprise today when I upgraded the version of Wine installed on my Ubuntu machine, installed Killink CSV, and saw it run under Linux for the very first time. All functionality works as expected. I’ll post more about this soon.
Pictures from Recent Trips
While my travel schedule is not like it was last year, we are finally traveling again. And I have finally posted pictures from recent trips. Enjoy.<ul>
<li>
East Durham Irish Festival</li>
<li>
Southern France</li>
<li>
Camp Turner 08</li>
<li>
NASCAR Weekend - Loudon NH</li>
</ul>
High-Tech Capital in the U.S.?
The high-tech capital in the U.S. is…New York City. I’m not surprised.
Recommended Software for Mac
A good friend of mine, who just bought an iMac, asked what Mac software I use regularly and recommend. Instead of emailing a reply to him, I decided to post my list of recommended software here for all to see.
<ul>
<li>VMware Fusion - Although I spend less time in Windows these days, I still have to use it for various development projects. So when I need to use Windows, I rely on VMware Fusion, which allows me to run an instance of Windows from within OS X.</li>
<li>Mail.app - This is the email program that comes with OS X. I use it to manage all my emails.</li>
<li>iCal - This also comes with OS X and I use it daily.</li>
<li>Spanning Sync - I used this gem to synch my iCal calendars to Google calendars. I currently synch 5 different calendars, a birthday calendar that I share with my wife, my personal calendar, my wife’s calendar, a calendar for trips, and my work calendar.</li>
<li>YAI (You Are Invited) - This is a Mail.app plug-in that translates and transfers calendar invites from Outlook, Google, and others to iCal.</li>
<li>Address Book - Another piece of software that comes with OS X.</li>
<li>TextMate - Damn fine text editor.</li>
<li>Evernote - For tracking various notes.</li>
<li>Open Office - For word processing, spreadsheet, etc. I’m using the beta for version 3.0, which support the Aqua interface and does not require X11.</li>
<li>Adium - My IM client of choice. Adium supports different IM services including Messenger, Yahoo!, AIM, and Google Talk.</li>
<li>iPhoto - From the iLife suite. I store all my photos in iPhoto libraries.</li>
<li>Aperture - While I store all my master images in iPhoto, I do all my editing, rating, etc in Aperture.</li>
<li>iMoive - From the iLife suite. iMovie makes publishing to YouTube a snap.</li>
<li>iDVD - From the iLife suite. Easy way to record movies for family members who can’t view my movies online.</li>
<li>GarageBand - From the iLife suite. I don’t use this much. Typically I only use it to lay down background sound tracks to movies I create.</li>
<li>VLC - For view various media files.</li>
<li>Unison - For reading newsgroups.</li>
<li>NetNewsWire - For reading RSS feeds.</li>
<li>SuperDuper! - For making back ups of my MBP.</li>
<li>Skitch - For capturing screen shots and sharing images with others.</li>
<li>FireFox - Safari is nice, but I prefer FireFox. I use it the majority of the time, and Safari only once in a while.</li>
<li>CoRD - Enables me to remote desktop into my various Windows servers.</li>
</ul>That’s my list of Mac software that I use regularly.
Follow Me
I know I don’t blog as much any more. There just never seems to be enough time. But I’m still around. You can follow me at:
http://twitter.com/kirbyt
and
http://friendfeed.com/kirbyt
It Finally Happened
It was announced yesterday that Embarcadero will acquire CodeGear from Borland. Details about the announcement are already over the net, here, here, and here for starters, so I will not recap the details.
I have been saying for a long time that CodeGear needs to separate from Borland, and now it is finally going to happen. I’m excited to see what will happen next. Embarcadero seems like a fine suitor for CodeGear. I just hope small software companies, aka microISV, without a focus on databases, such as White Peak Software, are not forgotten about.
Update: Michael Swindell of CodeGear says CodeGear will still be the go to company ISV and microISV. This is good to hear.
A Computer Crash of a Different Color
My tweet from Saturday night deserves a follow up response, especially since a few folks have asked “What happened?”