Category: Software & Technology

How to get super rich and never have to work again

(Well, not really. Keep in mind that you’re reading a post by someone who is not rich and works like a dog almost every day.)

Here’s an interesting book if you’re curious about how successful technology companies get started: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston.

Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with 32 people who started, or helped start, super-successful companies like Adobe, TiVo, Blogger, Yahoo!, and more. It also includes interviews with people who founded not-very-successful-but-made-the-founders-super-rich companies, like Hotmail and Lycos. (Yes, I know, some people will disagree with me about those companies not being successful. Hotmail has had serious problems, and I think Lycos’ domain name expired yesterday. Just be glad I didn’t put Apple on that list!)

These types of books always interest me, because I am one of those individualist entrepreneur types. I don’t ever expect to “hit it big,” because my focus is always on narrow niches, but it’s still fun to read about people who, often enough, created extremely successful businesses without really trying to.

For example, PayPal began as a PDA application and initially told customers they didn’t want it to be used to pay for auctions. They eventually abandoned the initial goals of PayPal and now everybody uses it to pay for auctions.

Then there are the companies that almost collapse under their own initial success, like Blogger. Prya Labs didn’t set out to create a new “sphere” (as in blogo-), but when it did, had lots of users and no way to make any money off them. They had to lay off practically the entire company and run on fumes until someone with lots of money (Google) came in and made the one guy who stuck around super wealthy.

There are, of course, several companies represented in the book who did exactly what they set out to do. But that’s boring.

And there’s the occasional founder who was so wrapped up in what was happening to him that he doesn’t know what was going on around him: like Steve Wozniak (aka the Woz) who is still convinced that the Apple II set all sorts of records that it didn’t, and thinks Commodore passed on acquiring Apple when in fact Steve Jobs tried to push Jack Tramiel too hard and lost the chance. But I digress.

I can certainly recommend reading this book. At the very least, you’ll learn that nobody ever got rich because of a book or blog post they read, and most of the ones who do get rich don’t stop working after their bank accounts overflow.

Google hits a speed bump on the road to world domination

Google’s quest to swallow the internet whole has hit a snag.  Google wants to acquire DoubleClick Inc. (an internet ad system company), but Congress may be saying hold on a sec.

In a July 16 letter to the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating the deal, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., who chairs the House subcommittee, wrote there is “growing alarm over the implications for consumer privacy from the practices of these companies, especially if they combine.”

However, Google is confident they will be able to continue buying up everything online. Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said:

“Numerous independent analysts and academics have determined that the online advertising industry is a dynamic and evolving space, and that rich competition in this industry will bring more relevant ads to consumers and more choices for advertisers and Web site publishers”

I’m not opposed to Google acquiring yet another internet company or service — free market at work, I say — and of course, Google promises it isn’t “evil” (it’s even in their company motto!). But it shows some chutzpah for Google to call this “rich competition,” when what they are seeking here is one less competitor.

Software Industry Conference 2007 Mini-Review

Last week, we packed up the family and drove to Denver for SIC 2007. The Software Industry Conference is an annual conference geared towards independent software developers and vendors.

As usual, there were some very helpful sessions. Dave Collins and Thomas Wetzel convinced me to give Google AdWords yet another try with their insights. There were several sessions about blogging, newsletters, and podcasting as marketing vehicles, with Bob Walsh, Phil Schnyder, and Michael Lehman making several appearances on these topics. Nick Bradbury, author of the excellent TopStyle, had a great presentation on effective user interface design and the difficulties of keeping software simple while still satisfying the needs of power users.

David Intersimone of CodeGear had a session on native code development. I have to say I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t make more of a pitch for using Delphi. He showed off some of Delphi’s features, but his session seemed to be more of an overview of the development options for Windows, rather than one really driving home the benefits of native code development with Delphi. But it was great to see CodeGear at SIC, because it shows that they understand the importance of reaching out to independent developers rather than just focusing on enterprise customers like Borland has been doing for the last several years. Spending time talking with David was a highlight of the conference for me.

There are plenty of sessions I didn’t mention simply because there are too many for one person to attend.

SIC isn’t just about sessions, it’s also about networking and schmoozing.  It’s nice to have an opportunity to spend time with people in the same industry, as being an independent software developer often means spending your days behind a computer without “realspace” interaction with your colleagues. I had a great time meeting new people, and especially catching up with people I’ve met at previous conferences.

Industry Awards at SIC

The Shareware Industry Awards Foundation presents several awards each year at SIC during an awards banquet. Last year, my wife and I attended the banquet and decided that we could save some money by skipping it the next time and eating out at a restaurant instead. So this year, a group of us drove out to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse where we enjoyed some good steak and excellent company.

Upon our return, I was informed that I missed my own award presentation! I didn’t believe it at first, because I assumed Bible Software was too much of a niche market to even put me in the running. But nobody was pulling my leg — SwordSearcher received the People’s Choice Award for the Hobby & Personal Interest category. I was stunned — I didn’t ask anyone to vote for me, I didn’t mention it in a single newsletter. I didn’t even vote for myself! The People’s Choice Awards are voted on by thousands of people across the internet on major websites like CNet, Tucows, and PC World. So that was exciting.

SwordSearcher People's Choice AwardHere’s a picture of the award. It’s much heavier than it looks and takes up a good deal of space on a shelf. Always thinking about getting the word out, I promptly wrote a press release announcing the award.

A big thank-you to the folks who put on the conference. I hope to be able to attend again next year in Boston.

Moving from Blogger to WordPress

For more than four years now I’ve been running this blog with Blogger. Today I’ve finished the bulk of the work involved in moving to WordPress. It might be a few days before all the loose ends are tied up.

The limitations of Blogger:

Blogger isn’t a bad blog tool, but it’s simply not advanced enough to run a large, optimized website. I was using Blogger with a custom template to publish via SFTP to brandonstaggs.com. It worked alright, this setup was missing key features:

  • Categories. I wanted categories, and Blogger couldn’t do that for me.
  • On-site installation. I couldn’t run Blogger with PHP and mySQL on my own server for maximum control.
  • Content management. Blogger can’t be used to manage an entire website unless the entire website is just blog posts. This forced me to use a combination of Dreamweaver and custom templates with Blogger, and it was always a pain to update content.

The advantages of WordPress

Besides Blogger not doing enough, WordPress gives me more stuff I want:

  • Content management. WordPress can be used to run an entire website including pages that are not necessarily blog posts.
  • Permalink control.
  • Plugins. WordPress has lots of plugins that appear to be quite useful. I’m already using the All-in-one Search Engine Optimization Pack plugin to fix what I view as deficiencies in WordPress page titles, etc.
  • More options in templates. Yuep, I’m a programmer. I like options. Give me enough rope to hang myself and I’ll see how long I can hold my breath.

Moving from Blogger to WordPress is a pain

At least it was for me. Here were my major problems:

  • Existing site with a boatload of individual pages that aren’t part of a CMS.
  • Blog posts on blogger with no titles. I had over 240 blog entries on Blogger. For whatever reason, be it templates or whatever, I never had the option of adding titles to my posts.
  • Blogger posts were published to website with SFTP, not a Blogspot page. WordPress offers no import function for Blogger entries that aren’t on Blogspot.
  • Blogger posts were only archived by month, not individual post.

What I did

  • Uploaded WordPress to my server in a test subdirectory so as not to disturb my existing site while doing the stuff.
  • Switched Blogger to post on Blogspot.
  • Tried to import. This bombed. As it turns out, WordPress imports by post. So it imported one huge post for each month because I still had Blogger set to archive by month only.
  • After much gnashing of teeth, wondering why my 240 posts imported to just under 50, I deleted my WordPress tables and started over. This time, I had Blogger post individual posts to Blogspot instead of only archiving by month. This worked.
  • Spent a day going through four years of blog posts to 1. Give them titles, 2. categorize them, and 3. Delete really embarrassing ones.
  • Manually “imported” my various non-blog pages (and I’m still not done) into WordPress.
  • Edited the .htaccess WordPress made to add a ton of redirects, so people coming to old page URLs would get forwarded to the new locations. Still not done with this — I need to forward all the old monthly archive pages to the new WordPress monthly archive pages. Oh fun!

So far, so good.