The Art of Software

It takes a lot more than code to make software.

New Link: Lessons Learned by Eric Reis

Jan 23

Posted by Bryan Smith in Art of Software, Links | Comments off

I’ve added a new link under my Art of Software category. It’s to Eric Ries’s Lessons Learned blog. It’s really a must read now in my mind. I’ve been reading through his past posts. A couple of gem’s worth reading are:

Anyhow, his blog is well worth the read. I found this site looking  for a way to more coherently explain what I mean by Bootstrapping a company. I’ve always meant to do it in an efficient manner, not just out-of-pocket. This led me to the first link above which really explains quite well the direction I’ve been wanting to follow in my own ventures.

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Hello from Windows 7 an OS with “iPhone Moments”

Jan 10

Posted by Bryan Smith in Uncategorized | Comments off

I’ve been using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 RS (modified to look almost identical to Windows 7) during the day for a few months now and I’ve been loving it. At home though I’ve been using Vista on my main computer, where I do most of my design work and I’ve been hating it.

It’s not that Vista was out right horrible. It was just kinda horrible. And any bit of horrible in a software product really is too much of it.  Seems obvious but it’s actually hard to get rid of horrible at times. It shouldn’t be, but whenever you have lots of people working on something you have lots of ideas. Things get fractured communication and development wise, let alone “vision”. It’s sad but true. Not inevitable mind you.

But I digress.

I like Windows 7. In fact I have to say I like it enough that I no longer really care about Mac OSX. Mac OSX is nice, it has a few quirks that I don’t care for (where’s the maximize window button!), but with how incomplete Vista was feeling and how old XP was feeling I was seriously looking to give it a shot.

Then Windows 7 came along, and for the first time since the beta of XP I actually cared about Windows. With 7 I’ve had many “iPhone Moments”. These are moments I’ve termed from my initial few months with my iPhone, when I’d think of something and try it and it just worked. Windows 7 has provided many of these. Something Vista never did.

It really comes down to “iPhone Moments” for me and many other users. To get what you expect but to deliver it in a new manner. When I started thinking about this and my waning interest in Mac OSX I started to realize half of the appeal of Apple was the entire package, not just the OS. This is what Apple really gets, and what Microsoft only seems to get with the XBox and its development tools. The package deal is what really matters, the entire user experience.

So in the end what I really want right now is Macbook Pro hardware with Windows 7. An OS that supports all the apps I use and love and has those great moments delivering me what I expect in a new manner.

2010 Goals

Jan 6

Posted by Bryan Smith in Uncategorized | Comments off

Slightly late to the party in doing this post, but never-the-less, here it is. In many ways I started this blog to increase my professional endeavors as well as to share things I find interesting about the Art of Software. Given the former reason here are my goals I plan to complete on this front this year (along with a couple of personal goals as well). In no particular order:

Finish my Thesis: I’m a thesis away from finishing my Masters Degree in Computer Science and Business Administration. My thesis focuses on entrepreneurism involving cloud storage. I’d really like to launch the product I’m creating along with finishing my thesis, so this could be a double whammy.

Blog Twice a Week: I’d like this blog to be consistent. Life does happen, as it did this previous year, but I’d like to set a goal of at least posting twice a week.

More Social Networking: These are pretty low goals really, I’d like to get my LinkedIn connections up to 50 and Twitter followers up to 50. Both should be easily attainable.

Certify in SQL Server 2008: I wrote previously about how I’m working on my first certification and this is the year I plan on getting it.

This next one is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and looking at the first and fourth goals I’ve set above I’m really putting myself in over my head I think, but still, if you don’t just try to do it, it’ll never get done:

Write a Book: I’ve always wanted to write a book. And lately I’ve wanted to write a technical book. I’m not going for an 800+ page tome. But setting my goal on 200 or so pages and will either publish it as a free or paid for eBook. I feel that’s a good place to cut my teeth on writing a book. I’ve done technical writing as a profession so I know what’s involved, but I’ve never been published and I’ll have to be my own editor. Hopefully, I can find a few people to review it for me before I release it. Likely subjects are something on SQL Server 2008, though on what I’m not sure, or what I’m a bit more interested in at the moment is writing a book on Mono’s implementation of MVC.

To finish things off here are a couple of personal goals to add to the list.

To spend more time with my family: Losing my Dad this year really brought that into focus. I’ve already been pretty good at this, but I don’t want to let time slip by, so set it as a goal.

Trim 20% off my time for Bloomsday, a local short race in Spokane, WA my family does each year. Last year was our first year where we were not at the back of the pack pushing our kids in joggers. So I think this year I’ll actually train a bit and push my time down. That’s only 12 minute miles, so I think I can do that.

Well there’s my year, I think my theme this year is to “Finish and Improve”

Not So Great Moments in UI

Dec 30

Posted by Bryan Smith in User Experience | 1 Comment

The text says the operation is complete, the Finish button is now enabled, but the progress bar doesn’t agree.

The text says it's done, but the progress bar says otherwise.

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Things of Interest for December 21st, 2009

Dec 21

Posted by Bryan Smith in Business, Things of Interest | 1 Comment

The Six Twitter Types by Guy Kawasaki.

I suppose I’m in the Newbie category heading toward the Maven category. I still haven’t found my exact niche for Twitter yet, but do like following others on it.

There Is No Page Fold via Signal vs Noise.

Not too long ago a coworker pointed me toward an article I wish I could find stating that the concept of “Above the Fold” was a moot point. That since users were now familiar with a scroll bar trying to push everything above the fold doesn’t matter for web design. I hope this continues to take off.

Startup Therapy: 10 Question to Ask Yourself Every Month by Jason on A Start Bear

These are great questions that every startup should be asking. To go with #2 and #3 I’d toss in “Why would someone go with somebody else?”. I think it’s good to look at who else is in the business you’re in and honestly ask yourself if you could do business with you or somebody else, what would make you pick them over you. If you’re really honest with yourself #3 would probably highlight this.

Is your Disaster Recovery Plan Complete?

Dec 16

Posted by Bryan Smith in Disaster Recovery, SQL Server | Comments off

There has been much talk lately about backups. Thankfully I have not had to face this too.

Since backups are on a lot of people’s minds lately, and more importantly as Joel restates it’s not really the backup that’s important, but the restore which is!

Do you have everything backed up you’ll need? Have you actually tried to restore from your backups lately?

Or how about this? Is your DR Plan actually up to date? Sure you just did a full restore of your DR Plan two months ago, but what’s changed since then? Optimally you should be updating your DR Plan whenever there are any system changes. But quite likely something was forgotten, that something won’t be pointed out till the next attempt to do a test restore or the real deal hits.

That’s why I suggest doing a review of your DR Plan monthly. I personally set a reminder for the last Monday of every month. I haven’t always been perfect in this. But I have noticed that when I do a scan through it that’s not related to a specific new update that I tend to flesh out the DR Plan more. So that after a few months not only do I have the basics in, but a lot of extra stuff that might be really helpful to standup the system should the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Asking Too Much of Customers

Dec 13

Posted by Bryan Smith in Business | 4 Comments

While out shopping today I made a small purchase at Sears for my youngest daughter. Upon arrival at the cash register I was bombarded with questions which quickly had me mentally checking out of the transaction. The beginning of the conversation started like this:

Customer Service Rep: Did you find everything sir?

Me: Yes thank you.

Customer Service Rep: Would you like a gift receipt?

Me: No that’s not necessary.

Customer Service Rep: Are you a member of “some sort of kid clothing shopping program”?

Me: No, no thanks.

Customer Service Rep: Would you like to signup for a Sears Mastercard?

Me: No.

Customer Service Rep: If approved you could receive $15 off this purchase. Are you sure?

Me: No thanks.

All of these questions came before my item was scanned into the register. Once my item was scanned:

Customer Service Rep: Would you like to donate a dollar to Home Town Hero’s?

Me: No thanks.

Then, with my transaction now complete I was then asked:

Customer Service Rep: Would you like your receipt with your on in the bag?

Me: The bag is fine.

Customer Service Rep: Okay, also on the receipt is a web site I’m highlighting. It’s for a customer satisfaction survey about this transaction. If you do the survey you could win a $4,000 gift card.

The $4,000 was also highlighted.

Walking away from the register I stopped and made a note in my phone about playing 20 questions with the cashier. It occurred to me that in that deluge of questions were missed opportunities and over used opportunities.

Overused Opportunity 1 – Detract from the Sales Experience

The biggest over used opportunity to me is how many times do I have to say no to the in store credit card? I’m sure somewhere is a spreadsheet within Sears corporate management, or perhaps at Mastercard headquarters, that shows if you keep asking you will get 1 in 1,000 gullible customers to signup for the horrible deal they’re trying to sell. All to save $15 or to get some horrible piece of tchotchke. By getting the 1 in 1,000 customers they annoy 999 other customers asking the same question over and over.

Overused Opportunity 2 – Depersonalize the Sales Experience

Did I find everything? Yes, sometimes this question is helpful, but generally it feels like they are trying to maximize my purchase for them and not me. What happened to, “Hi, how has your day been?” or “What a lovely beard you’re growing sir!”. Well maybe not a comment about my new beard, but anything to make it not seem like yet another way for them to maximize the money coming out of my wallet.

Overused Opportunity 3 – Securing My Loyalty

Loyalty programs. I’m for them and against them. I like saving money, but often I don’t like the hassle. And sometimes they’re just poorly veiled attempts to garner more information out of me.

All of these overused opportunities simply lead to information overload and the customer checking out from the conversation while they simply try to purchase the goods YOU ALREADY SOLD THEM.

Overused Opportunity 5 – Trying to Sell Yet More “Stuff”, When You Already Sold Them Some!

Really, that’s what much of the above boils down to. And what is the cost of this?

Missed Opportunities

In the middle of the transaction what a quick blurb asking me if I would like to donate a dollar to Hometown Hero’s. I did a quick look around when the cashier asked this question. I didn’t see a single sign about what the program was, nor was I offered even a quick blurb about what it is. Later, further in the mall I saw a big sign about it and thought, gee, that’s a nice idea. In the cashiers defense the name is pretty descriptive.

But by this point I had been asked a bunch of questions with one of them being my biggest pet peeve (the credit card). I had checked out from the transaction, the only brain cells I was willing to put into the deal at this point were to make sure I was being charged correctly.

They missed the opportunity for me to care about my transaction. And that can be dangerous.

Are You Overusing Opportunities?

It’s often tempting to attempt to get as much information from a captive audience as you can. When they’re actually giving you money you know they’re interested in something you offer. Since they’re interested perhaps they’ll be interested in something else, that’s an opportunity to up sell. Or perhaps you’re desperately in need of information about some other area of your business, you can ask them then too!

But should you?

No. And especially no with online sales. The ability to mentally check out of a transaction online, or even stop the purchase altogether, is even easier than in the store. And in today’s information age, where when you call customer service and you’re always selected to answer a customer satisfaction survey, simply being happy that someone wants to exchange money for your services might be asking enough.

Because in the end, if your customer is happy there will be other opportunities. Opportunities you can make use of, but not overuse, and not cheapen your customers sales experience.

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SQL Server Build Links

Dec 9

Posted by Bryan Smith in Links, SQL Server | Comments off

I’m always trying to find out what the latest build, cumulative update, hot-fix is available for SQL Server. Unfortunately the SQL Server TechCenter page never seems to stay up to date on what the latest Cumulative Update is. There are however support pages that do stay up to date. In the effort to help save you and me from having to search for the latest build, cumulative update, or hot-fix for SQL Server here are the links to the relevant support pages.

SQL Server 2008 SP1 Builds: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970365/en-us

SQL Server 2008 Builds: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956909/en-us

SQL Server 2005 SP3 Builds: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960598

SQL Server 2005 SP2 Builds: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937137

I don’t have any links for anything prior to 2005 SP2, if you’re not on SP2 though yet you really should be, it was a great service pack.

SQL Server 2000 SP4 Builds: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894905

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Followup: DBCC CHECKFILEGROUP Bug Fixed!

Dec 9

Posted by Bryan Smith in SQL Server | Comments off

In November I was quite disappointed. The DBCC CHECKFILEGROUP bugI had come across in September had made it into the Cumulative Update 8 for SQL Server 2008, but not in the Cumulative Update 5 for SQL 2008 SP1 branch. Being that I prefer to keep up on the service packs I was out of luck. Apparently it had not passed quality control for the SP1 branch.

However, I was told at the time that it would be a forth coming commulative update in January. Not wanting to wait another two months I put forth my business need for it and now a Hotfix is available for it!

If you’ve been stuck without being able to do DBCC CHECKFILEGROUP’s I hope you go grab this and get back to having that warm feeling inside knowing your data files are in good shape.

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“C. Profit” or “What’s a Facebook User Worth?”

Nov 30

Posted by Bryan Smith in Business | 2 Comments

On a small project I’m involved with, we’ve recently decided on what platform we want to roll out with, or rather how we wanted to deliver our application. We could have picked quite a few different delivery methods, it could have been a web app, downloadable software, an iPhone app, a Facebook app or a few others.

Ultimately we chose to roll out a Facebook app using Silverlight. Nice combo right? I’ll probably talk about that later, but the real focus of this article is about what happens after you do step “A. Make the Gizmo”, skip past part “B. ???” and onto “C. Profit!”.

How much can you “expect” to make with a Facebook app?

Well if you read the news on Bloomberg that Zynga could be valued over $1 billion then this is just a stupid question because you’re going to make a lot of money. Well if ethics are not a problem. Of course there is also the valid point that not everyone is a Microsoft, Google, Apple, or *cough* Zynga. There are a lot of happy Joe’s in the middle between $0 and $1 billion. If you’re a happy Joe with the potential to be something great, then again I ask, how much can you “expect” to make with a Facebook app?

With that question in mind I was pointed to an interesting article on Mashable asking a similiar question about how much Facebook apps are making. Which led to an even more interesting article which estimated the value of a Facebook application user.

The article suggested back in January 2008 that such a user was worth $1.40 (using a 5x valuation). It’s actually an interesting way to go about answering the question. Find a company that is publicly traded that pretty much does nothing but make Facebook apps. Turns out Snap Interactive, Inc.is exactly what you’re looking for. Its a publicly traded company, thus it is required to produce SEC filings which are packed with a lot of information.

In January of 2008 it was surmised a Facebook user install was worth $1.40.

The article goes on to calculate the value of a Facebook application user by looking at Snap, how much it made in a quarter and how many Facebook user installs they have and seeing how much revenue each install brought in. It found that over a year the actual worth is a whopping 28 cents. That’s $388,000 in quarterly revenue / 5.5 million user installs * 4 quarters. Yup, 28 cents. That’s not a lot of money, but with 5,500,000 users it scales just nicely.

But that was almost two years ago you say! Well I said that.

So off to Yahoo! Finance I went and delved into Snap’s SEC recent filings. What I found was interesting.

1. Facebook installs are worth less then they used to be.

2. SEC Filings are boring.

But even boring material can be fun to decode. In November of 2009’s quarterly SEC filings Snap stated it has now delved into iPhone apps and a paid apps as well. So it is no longer trying to live on “freevertised” app only. But reading between the lines I don’t think these accounted to much of their profits. So with that out of the way Snap has grown its Facebook install base to over 18,000,000. That’s almost a 328% increase in less than 2 years. Good for them.

While their quarterly profits have dropped since the last quarter in 2008 they have remained stable for all of 2009 with an uptick in this last quarter.

Period Ending 9/30/2009 6/30/2009 3/31/2009 12/31/2008
Profit $ 801,000.00 $ 784,000.00 $ 769,000.00 $ 1,087,000.00

For the last four quarters that’s an average of $860,250 / quarter.

Using the same calculation that makes a Facebook user install worth: $860,250 in quarterly revenue / 18 million user installs * 4 quarters = $0.19 / year. Only 68% of their previous worth.

Using a 3 to 4x valuation, which is what EA used for buying Playfish, that makes the current worth of a Facebook user install $0.57 to $0.76. That is half to a third of what it was at two years ago.

Facebook user installs two years later may be worth only $0.57 to $0.76.

There are many possible reasons why the value apparently has dropped. First off, this is using data from only one company. Second, perhaps Snap’s apps are stale, after all we are talking installs not active users. Third, maybe Snap has a lousy ad deal. Either way 18,000,000 installs means they’ve done something right at one point or another. Fourth, ad revenue is simply down because of the recession. The list of possibilities goes on.

Personally, I am not expecting to make a truck load of money with our Facebook app; I’ll settle for a nice spoon of money and a lot of experience thank you. Clearly when you look around the many apps on Facebook it is apparent Snap and Zynga (and it’s ilk) are the exception. While my cohorts and I are going to put our best foot forward with our app, we have no glamorous visions, we’re in this as much for the experience as anything else.

And at $0.57 per user I think most Facebook apps developers are more in for the experience rather than the glamorous lifestyle ahead of them.

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