Jan

30

New tag line, simpler theme.

Filed Under Website | Leave a Comment

“A developer, in so many ways”, that’s my new tag line for this here blog.

Seeing as my microISV endeavor is currently on hold, I figured the old “So, now I’m an ISV…” didn’t cut it any longer, even though technically I still have one foot in the game, and have even had a very good month of sales since I put CaseDetective on hold. How weird is that?

What does the new tag line mean exactly? I’m a software developer for one thing, but I’m also developing as a person in so many other ways. When I look at how Abi is developing day by day (in the last two weeks she’s gone from barely commando crawling to super fast crawling, blink and she’s gone, pulling herself up to stand against chairs and other props, and in the last couple of days she’s even taken to climbing the stairs, supervised of course) it reminds me of all the little things that I experience and learn daily that contribute to my own personal development, we never stop developing.

Also, I grew tired of the heavily graphical and very Mac like theme on the ianmjones.net website, it was fairly slow to load, which irked me quite a bit. I’m now using a much nippier theme from Brian Gardener. It’s a far simpler theme, which frankly is much more my style, I like the clean uncluttered look, and although I prefer navigation etc to be on the right hand side, I’ll live with it on the left as I’m way too lazy to got to the bother of switching it as I have before.

“In pursuit of simplicity”, maybe that should have been my new tag line!

Aug

20

The IMiJ Software forums are now closed

Filed Under MicroISV, Website | Comments Off

I’ve had enough, SPAM on my company’s forum has got way out of control.

Day and night SPAMers are registering new users and attempting to post to the forum, meaning I’m having to do heaps more admin than I should, banning users and deleting the odd post that gets through the Akismet filtering. Not fun.

So, considering the forums haven’t really been a success anyway, I’ve stopped new user registration or any new posts. I’ve also deleted all users with no posts, which may have caught the odd genuine lurker in the cross-fire, but seeing as no one can post anymore, this can’t be much of an issue.

Forums are one of those topics often discussed in the world of the microISV, as they have many pros and cons.

Some of the pros being the potential for reduced support costs as common questions will be answered via a quick search of the forum, users can support each other in many cases, and a thriving community centred around your software can be a wonderful thing.

But there are of course negatives, the chief of them being that if the forums are quiet it can reflect badly on your products, people can get the impression that the product isn’t doing well, whether it is or not.

My forums have been very quiet, and the users of the forums haven’t really got into any kind of discussions, so there isn’t even a fledgling community there. Closing them seems like the most sensible thing to do at this moment in time.

The forums are going to remain up for the time being, simply because there are a couple of links to content in them from external sources as well as my own sites. But come the release of CaseDetective 2.0 I expect I’ll be removing them. I may replace them with a FogBugz style discussion group in the future, but there’s a good chance I’ll wait until I have too many requests for forums that I can’t ignore it, and am reasonably sure they are going to be used. That may be once I have more than just CaseDetective as an offering.

And yes, I’m very aware that I haven’t linked to the IMiJ Software forums from within this post, that’s totally intentional! :-)

Jul

19

Awsome new theme for this here blog.

Filed Under Website | Comments Off

Thank you N.Design Studio.

Mar

5

WordPress 2.1.1 Dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2

Filed Under Technology, Website | Comments Off

Matthew Mullenweg:

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Thanks to John Gruber for pointing this out.

Feb

27

Ha! I’m keeping up with the Joneses!

Filed Under Website | Comments Off

I’ve just updated this blog to Wordpress 2.1.1, and also updated all my Mint bits and bobs to the latest versions.

When I hit the “Check for Updates” button in the Mint preferences to make sure I got everything, this is what I got…

mintupdate400.png

Well, would you expect anything less from a Jonesy! :-)

Anyway, if you do notice anything fishy about the new setup, please let me know!

Jan

2

Happy New Year!

Filed Under Blogroll, MicroISV, Website | Comments Off

Happy New Year!

Yeah I know, not the most original of titles, but it is timely (almost)!

I’m really looking forward to the coming year, primarily as it’s the make or break period for CaseDetective for FogBugz and anything else my company might produce.

I’ve been away for the Christmas period visiting my family “Down South” but kept an eye on my email and forums. As expected there wasn’t much in the way of support requests for CaseDetective as most people interested in CaseDetective were enjoying Christmas too, but there was a very nice volume license sale just a couple of days before Christmas, which was very nice and timely of itself.

Before releasing CaseDetective I set some sales goals that I hoped to achieve before the end of the year, in the paltry 6 weeks I had to do so. I had a “realistic goal” and an “optimistic goal”. The realistic goal was accomplished within a week of release and by the end of the year I’d more than doubled my optimistic goal. So things are looking good for this year, as long as I continue to improve CaseDetective to attract more users.

As I’ve actually made a few sales I thought it a bit silly to keep my blogs tag line as “So, I want to be an ISV…”, as technically I now am an ISV, with real customers and all that. Hence I’ve changed my tag line to “So, now I’m an ISV…”. I know, sheer genius!

I had been thinking about launching another product (or ten, my mind’s racing with ideas at the moment), but having the time to think about things over the last couple of weeks and the initial sales success I’ve since decided to work only on CaseDetective for the next couple of months.

I was going to accomplish development of these new products by splitting up my day to allow for a couple of hours “spiking” in the afternoon, but the following post will explain how I’m now going to structure my day.

Once again, Happy New Year to you all, here’s hoping we all accomplish our dreams this year!

Dec

22

Recent additions to feed list

Filed Under MicroISV, Website | 1 Comment

The following blogs have found there way onto my permanent feed list in the last few months, and as normal I thought I’d share them with you here.

Normally I’d write a little about each one to introduce it, but frankly I haven’t got the time just now, so I’ll leave it to you to explore them and discover for yourself why I took a shine to these. All have gone into my “Business Of Software” category, but a couple could have maybe gone into “Apple” or even “Design”, but all are related to small software related businesses.

Haja Weblog

LookLater Blog

My Cantina

Phil’s Development Journal

Random Thoughts from Tifty Croft

Shirt Pocket Watch

The Obligatory Blog

[ThinkMac blog];

Ripples: post-corporate adventures

Yeadon Group Projects

YourHead Blog

Nov

17

CaseDetective 1.0 Released!

Filed Under Blogroll, MicroISV, Website | 3 Comments

CaseDetective.jpg

CaseDetective for FogBugz version 1.0 has been released unto the World!

There’s a new logo for IMiJ Software too.

I’m very happy, and very very tired, need I say any more? Well, yes, I’ve got lots to say, but it’ll have to wait until I’ve had some sleep and sent out the proper emails tomorrow today.

Oct

23

Planet MicroISV / Recent Additions To Blogroll

Filed Under MicroISV, Website | 3 Comments

Just noticed that I’ve been included in the Planet MicroISV aggregated blog.

Smart.

Works quite well in NetNewsWire as the feeds that I already subscribe to and and have read posts from are set as read automatically, mostly. One or two aren’t being recognized, so I probably just need to use the correct feed or something. I’ll look into that when I get a chance.

The following feeds have just made it from my “new feeds” category to their own place in my regular feed list, all going into my “Business Of Software” category:

Antonio Fontes: Antonio is trying his hand at selling blogging software, will be interesting to see how he gets on, there’s a lot of competition these days but he feels he has a niche to fill.

Ataraxis Software (Company Blog): This is a new blog from Michael Sica and his cohort Jeff Marder, they’re working together to get some software out to market as quickly as they can.

Jeff Marder: Mentioned above already, this is his personal blog.

Business On The Mac: Corey Redlien’s blog about his and other’s business software on the Mac.

CaseySoftware.com, CodeSnipers.com & Project Management Blog: Lots of thoughts on software development and marketing.

Loud Thinking: David Heinemeier Hansson is a partner in 37signals and the creator of the Rails framework for Ruby.

Mike Morris: Mike Morris has recently released RecDesk Director, and is sharing his experiences as a new MicroISV.

Outer Level: Jon Trainer of Make Mac Games has decided to spread his wings and write general software for the Mac as well as Games, he’s going to blog about it here.

Signal vs. Noise: Used to read this one but dropped it during a clean-up, but recently have seen enough good stuff coming from it that I’ve put it back on my list.

Sep

30

1 Year Old Today!

Filed Under Blogroll, Friends & Family, MicroISV, Website | 3 Comments

The current incarnation of this website is one year old today, happy birthday ianmjones.net!

Although ianmjones.net has been around for a few years with a blog like appearance, it wasn’t until September 30th 2004 that I started to properly “blog”.

Since last September I’ve always intended this site to stay on track, to talk about how things were going with my quest to become an independent software vendor (ISV). I’m not sure I’ve managed that very well, I seem to have strayed quite a bit, really haven’t written a lot about what I’ve learnt along the way and haven’t written as often I hoped I would.

What have I achieved in my first year?

  • I’ve read and listened to tonnes of marketing and business material in many different forms of media and from many sources (which I’ve failed to talk about here when I really should have, slap my wrist).
  • I’ve researched and picked suitable tools to develop, source control, package and sell my software.
  • I have designed and developed a software application in a programming language and with other tools that I hadn’t used before.
  • I’ve learnt a lot about the FogBugz database schema and data usage and installed it way too many times on far too many platforms!
  • I’ve registered something like 35 separate domains and set up the websites.
  • I’ve set up an online store to sell my software (visited a few times by people, but never used the way it should be).
  • I’ve set up a few channels for public communication, such as the Newsletter and Yahoo! group (there’s a proper forum waiting in the wings).
  • I’ve released three public betas of my software, with the second and third showing a lot of improvement over the first!
  • I’ve even released some open source code as a by-product of my software development.
  • I’ve met (in a virtual way) a lot of really nice people from all over the world.
  • I’ve had very little sleep compared to the year before, and seen a lot less of my family too (this isn’t a good one).
  • And tonnes of other bits and bobs that escape me just now.

Some of this stuff I’m very proud of, some not so. But having a real direction in my life and being able to continuously step closer towards my goal of becoming an ISV while having lots of support from my family and friends, and new friends too, has made this a fabulous year.

Really looking forward to the next year, it should be good.

Next Page →