Mark Roseman's Blog

New organization for indie software vendors.

AISIP is a new organization providing a set of private forums for smaller software vendors to discuss marketing-oriented topics. It's come recommended by a few people already who we've done some work with. Just signed up, so should get access and have a browse tomorrow. Some strong overlap with the ASP (which I haven't joined), but I think more marketing focused, even cheaper, and doesn't refer to itself as talking about "shareware" which is a bonus (yes I know its a marketing method, but it still has connotations).

Ship it!

Got the first notification emails being spit out of CF/PF today, which means the end of this piece is near... well, getting closer anyway. Still have a boatload of tests to get written for the scheduler (and associated fixes), but the bulk of the work for all of this was more up front in terms of code (and testing) infrastructure. Had to do way too many pieces of this from scratch for my liking, but sometimes that's unavoidable. Probably not too far from getting an initial test version out (unless other things get added first...).

Cough.

34 degrees out (39 factoring in humidity). Poor air quality. Yech. My home office is also about the worst place in the house when it gets really hot out (relatively weak circulation from the air conditioning, too many computers, and big, big windows).

Summer Slogging.

Always get those periods of time during the summer when its hard to get through work. Happening a bit now, getting through a major update to the CF/PF notification support, to add page-specific RSS feeds and email notifications. Boring code to write at the best of times... so while its going forward, not going to win any awards for speed of development. But that's ok.

It's of course nice outside these days so lots of reasons to do stuff outside (though starting to get enough of the crappy hot days that you want to stay inside many days), local farmers markets are going full-swing, etc. Also getting up earlier in the mornings, what with Pauline actually working full days now, some changes to the exercise schedule, etc. Still adjusting.

Mac Software Biz Motivation Talk.

Slides from a WWDC student talk by Wil Shipley.

AJAX Libraries.

Ruby on Rails takes the best advantage of these of course. The base Prototype library, and script.aculo.us on top of it. DHH talks about how they used those to put drag'n'drop in Backpack. This stuff is still all a horrid foundation to design interactive apps on (whine whine), but if there's nothing better than a pig in sight, it may as well be wearing lipstick.

Open Source in Education - something has got to change. But will it?

A comment on James Farmer's (ongoing) rant against commercial software in education.

Despite efforts by James and others (who have often bit the bullet and become experts at system administration despite probably just wanting to use the damn technology), I think most institutions are in the situation where it's probably cheaper (factoring in necessary staffing) and less risky to go commercial much of the time, rather than go the open source route, hiring the right people to support/extend it, etc.

This is again because the open source projects are more difficult than they need be, and the perception (and often the reality) is that it is rare to find people to turn to for help, compared with the help you'd get from a company you bought software from.

Imagine if you could actually get the right people and resources together to improve those open source projects (with or without the consent of the developers of those projects), flesh them out in terms of documentation, add some support channels, etc. Build out these projects into products in essence. This could help nudge these open source tools into the realm of possibility for many institutions: reduce the resources required (which are now needlessly duplicated in every place trying to get rough tools working) and risk globally.

Here's I think the underlying reality that probably infuriates James and people in similar positions. The cost to do this is fairly small, probably miniscule compared with the cost of all these different insitutions paying hefty license fees for commercial alternatives. However, and here's the sticking point, that cost is still way more than any individual institution would be paying for commercial choices.

See the problem?

I can't of course let this go without a comment on the (in)ability of academics to work together in a constructive manner, to get organized across institutional boundaries, raise the needed funds to get such a collaboration going, manage it appropriately, and so on. You know, all those skills that businesses are supposed to have.

Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak.

via Creating Passionate Users.

Over the top kudos.

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried... don't think it's going on the official testimonials page though. "Based on how easily your program totally empowers people, it is my humble opinion that you deserve a Nobel Prize. If this should seem extreme to any reader, show me the better tool so easy to use."

Ross Mayfield and Doug Englebart.

Great discussion with/about Doug Englebart by Ross. Englebart of course pioneered tons of stuff we use today, and was a pioneer in areas like CSCW (long before it was called that). Interesting putting the vision in context today and how cultural and societal influences have affected it.