Blue Sky On Mars

I have just recorded a screencast version of my php|works/PyWorks 2008 opening keynote: Beyond the Source: Growing Your Community. They gave me the option to talk about anything I wanted to, and so I decided to do a talk on marketing of open source projects.

Al over the place, there was news of Obama and McCain moving into a dead heat in the polls. Earlier in the summer, Obama had more than 320 electoral votes according to the polls (270 are required to win). Now, Obama and McCain both have less than 270. If you check out the graphs at electoral-vote.com, you can see that 2008 looks suspiciously like 2004, with the Democrat leading and then losing ground after the negative ads kicked in. (Not coincidentally, McCain has placed a Karl Rove protégé in power in his campaign, so we can expect more Rovian behavior from that camp.)

Of course, Obama is a very different candidate from Kerry, and I think there’s still plenty of time in the election for the trends to shift back.

I was struck by an interesting parallel in the software world:

The new ad effort is expected to use some variation of the slogan “Windows, Not Walls,” according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people say the point is to stress breaking down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting.

[From Microsoft Hiring Seinfeld for Major Ad Campaign - Mac Rumors]

Apple’s “Get A Mac” ads were basically negative advertising, playing up the strength of Macs relative to the annoyance of Windows. (Contrast with the iPhone ads, which just show the overall goodness of the iPhone.)

As noted in the MacRumors article, Microsoft sees the Get A Mac ads as having been effective (and how could they not, with Apple’s market share, revenue, unit sales and profits all surging?). Microsoft is taking the “high road” in their response. I tend to think that stressing the “openness” of Windows is not a good approach. For one, Windows is hardly the king of openness. Secondly, Microsoft tried a similar approach with their various media playing attempts, but people still preferred the experience of the iPod. And finally, it seems that the negative, yet still entertaining, spin of the Get A Mac ads is likely to resonate much better.

As with anything, time will tell. But how many people really think this kind of campaign with stop the Mac’s rising tide?

(Update: I should note that the MacRumors article is really about Seinfeld starring in the new Microsoft ads. I presume that they’re going for a humorous slant to the ads, which I do think is a good move. I just still think that the “openness” theme is one that won’t resonate as well.)

Apparently, it’s Mac software bundle time again. MacHeist has “retail bundle” deal going that is entirely uninteresting to me. I first read about it a few days ago, and it’s since only sold 980 bundles… far less than has been typical for one of their deals.

MacUpdate has just released a new bundle that is far more interesting. The Parallels Bundle. They’re being a bit sneaky calling it that, because Parallels is the last app that will be unlocked. They don’t even tell you how many they have to sell before Parallels is unlocked. The bundle costs $65. For people that don’t own Parallels, this could be a steal because Parallels itself retails for $80.

Even so, the collection of apps that you know you will get is pretty decent as it is. I’ve always thought Leap looked interesting, and that’s $59 regularly. Typinator is a useful sort of tool once you get using it. I don’t have time to write a novel right now, but if I did StoryMill looks like a fun way to do it. Art Text looks useful for presentations and such. The other apps I could do without, personally. DVDRemaster might be nice, but is it really better than Handbrake?

I buy my fair share (at least!) of indie Mac software, and bundles like this are a good way to try out and really get into a bunch of new tools. (And, yes, that is an affiliate link up there. I wouldn’t be posting this if it wasn’t interesting, though. After all, the MacHeist bundle has been up for days and I wouldn’t have even mentioned that one if it weren’t for the more interesting MacUpdate bundle appearing.)

eWeek has just posted an article about SitePen: SitePen: Passing the Open-Source Torch

Open-source participation helps SitePen amass an all-star team of Web developers.

SitePen is full of fantastic people, really. It’s a great example of a business built on the success of open source project leadership and contribution.

A few days ago I posted a brief blog entry about what I’ve been working on: SitePen Support (Dojo, DWR, Cometd)

We finished the work for the initial launch of this service immediately before I left for PyCon, so I didn’t have a chance to properly blog about it. Getting SitePen Support going has been my primary task in the time since I joined SitePen, so I’m anxious to write about it now that it’s public.

I’m going to start with some of the rationale for the service, and in another post at a later time I’ll talk about how the service is put together.

Imagine that you’re a developer who is facing a deadline or you’re a manager with a team that’s about to become stalled because of an unexpected problem. When working with most open source projects, you’ve got three mighty tools at your disposal:

1. the documentation
2. the source
3. the community

I don’t know how many open source projects you’ve looked at, but #1 is almost always not quite where you want it to be. The unusual situations that are likely to trip you up the most are also the least likely to be documented… so, there’s always #2. Dive into the source directly and check it out for yourself. Of course, Dojo is more than 100,000 lines of JavaScript. Even though it’s nicely organized, there are some tricky concepts being applied and it can definitely take some time to get to your answers.

Which leaves the community. Generally, community support is pretty good at helping you find an answer via forums, mailing lists and IRC. Unfortunately, though, you never know for sure that you’ll get a response from the community, and if you toss a really tricky problem out, project developers might not go after it if they’re in the middle of other big projects.

Now, for Dojo, DWR and Cometd, there is a definite place you can turn for help: the SitePen Support service. SitePen Support is a way for you to bring core project people into your development process when you need them most. All of the plans give you hours of assistance to track down the tricky issues or fix bugs that are important to your projects. They all have a guaranteed initial response, so that you know we’re there keeping an eye out for you. Many of our plans have a feature called “Ask the Experts”. If you can’t find something in the docs, Ask the Experts is a way to find the answer, and we’re even likely to update the docs if need be. For some of the plans, we’ll even troubleshoot and fix your application’s code in addition to the project code.

We’ve also been working on making the service as easy to use as possible. In addition to being able to exchange information via email, we’ve got a Dojo-powered interface for keeping track of what’s going on with all of your support requests.

It’s this interface that I’ll be writing more about later.

If you’re using Dojo, DWR or Cometd and would like some expert help for your projects, check out:
http://www.sitepen.com/services/support.php?packages

This morning, Microsoft offered $44 billion to buy Yahoo!. Years ago, Microsoft bought HotMail. At the time, HotMail’s servers were all running FreeBSD. Somewhere along the way, the transitioned all of HotMail’s servers over to Windows.

What would it do to Yahoo!’s tech culture to make a complete shift to Windows? I can’t imagine it would be good.

MacHeist has caught some flak in the past for selling indie Mac developer wares at a price that’s too low (by some reckonings, see below). On the other hand, those developers are choosing to become part of the promotion and MacHeist raises money for charity. This go around, they’ve raised more than $320,000.

I bought the heist primarily for PixelMator and 1password, though I’ve also found that I enjoy CoverSutra. There are a lot of other apps in the $49 bundle that make it a good deal for many (Snapz Pro X!)

Update: I can’t believe I missed noticing this. The bundle now includes Vector Designer as well. That means that you get a vector drawing program (imagine Adobe Illustrator Lite) and a bitmap editor (Adobe Photoshop Lite). Plus everything else in the bundle. It really is a great deal for the buyer.

I’m mentioning the heist again here on my blog because they’ve opened up more apps and they’ve added a referral program that delivers even more cool software. So, if you’re thinking of buying the heist, time is running out… and please use my link.

Update (1/23/08): Thanks to everyone who bought the Heist through my link. I did indeed get a copy of NoteBook. I hope you enjoy the software bundle! It’s working out nicely for me so far.

Would I be a part of the Heist?

With all of that said, I think it is an interesting question: would I want software I create to be a part of something like MacHeist?

During the first Heist, Gus Mueller broke down the numbers and decided it wasn’t a good deal. I don’t think it’s so clear cut.

First of all, I think it’s better to focus business decisions on absolute measures rather than relative measures. Consider stock market investing. Many mutual funds will compare themselves to the S&P 500 (if they’re lucky enough to be beating it). Let’s say that they beat the S&P 500 by 1% over the past 3 months. That’s pretty darn good performance. Except for the fact that you just lost 10% (for the past 3 months, the S&P 500 is down 11.69%).

Yes, I know that you can’t time the market and all of that. My point is that by relative measures that mutual fund was a winner. Absolutely, though, it was a dog. You could’ve just left your money in a mattress.

So, for a second let’s remove the relative earnings of the MacHeist guys from the equation.

Users cost money in terms of support, but have the potential to bring in word-of-mouth (or word-of-blog) advertising. A micro ISV could get absolutely swamped by a sudden influx of thousands of new users, unless their product was absolutely rock solid, super easy to use and/or had a good, active set of forums to which people could turn for support.

The reason to go for a MacHeist would be the advertising you get from the heist itself, word-of-mouth from people who buy the heist, and upgrade revenue later on. All of that comes at a cost of lower (tiny, even) initial sale revenue and a likely deluge of support work.

If I was just getting a cool, but little known product off the ground (PixelMator?), it may very well be worthwhile. If I had a major upgrade coming in a few months (Notebook?), then I might be a participant. Acquiring users for the sake of having users is a bad goal. But, getting a product off the ground or building up a reasonable expectation of upgrade revenue is a good goal.

As for the MacHeist share of the pie: I’d focus first on whether my needs in the deal are getting met. Once that’s true, then I’d try to push for what I think is a fair balance between my share and that of MacHeist. But, that is definitely a secondary concern. If MacHeist is providing the best avenue for meeting my business needs, it’s worth the cost. Companies pay $1 million+ for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl, because they feel that it fits their business needs. The same goes for a marketing opportunity like MacHeist.

That was the long answer. The short answer to whether I would participate in such a promotion is likely “no”, because the cost is too great. Only under the fairly limited set of circumstances above (new unknown product or coming upgrades) would I consider it.

Somewhere along the way, Apple mentioned that iPhone sales are accounted for on a subscription basis. Apparently, their lawyers believe that they have to charge for new features if something is not sold on a subscription basis. Besides, Apple reportedly makes $18 per month per iPhone (that’s up to $72 million per month… not a bad little revenue stream!)

OK, so that explains why Apple continues and will continue to push out new features for the iPhone for free.

That’s also the rationale presented for the $20 upgrade charge for the new iPod touch software. In my opinion, the iPod touch should have been closer to parity with the iPhone from day one, so it’s nice to see them fill in the gaps. But, the $20 charge seems like a cash extraction ploy rather than something being done for legal/accounting reasons.

This seems especially true given the free update to the “Take 2″ release of AppleTV. From the whole legal/accounting perspective (IANALOCPA), the only difference I can see between the iPod touch upgrade and the AppleTV upgrade is that the AppleTV upgrade can result in new, direct revenue based on movie rentals and music sales. Arguably, the new iPod touch software also can help lead to more revenue because it supports the rented movies.

From a business perspective, charging $20 to previously happy iPod touch owners seems like a way to bring in some cash. The AppleTV move is happening to bolster a product that is performing below expectations.

Personally, I don’t mind paying for software updates that bring new features and all that, but usually such updates come after a reasonable amount of time and bring features that go beyond what you would’ve expected from the product in the first place. I don’t think the iPod touch update warrants a $20 price tag.

Update: I must’ve been tired or something last night when I posted this. A quick Google search reveals many sites talking about how AppleTV is indeed accounted for on a subscription basis. CNet has some background about the accounting nonsense.

This would seem to have implications for anyone that creates software and provides a free update that includes new features. Something to keep an eye on.

37signals doesn’t want to do installable software, Ask 37signals: Installable software?:

If we built installable software we’d have to spend a lot more of our time on technical support, write a lot more documentation, slow down our development process, and lose a fair bit of control over our customer experience. For some companies this wouldn’t be a big deal, but for us it would be a real drag.

Of course, I recommend you read all of Jason’s commentary before continuing. Done? Okay…

I think that Jason is overestimating how hard it can be to produce an installable version of a hosted product. I say “can be”, because how an application is built can certainly make it harder. Many small companies (too many to name!) are building nice, installable web-based apps.

Offering a hosted webapp is a great business model for the reasons Jason cites. It’s also good for customers, because they can be up and running in an instant. I wanted to try out FogBugz and had my own instance within minutes. And, of course, 37signals doesn’t have to worry about Basecamp showing up on warez sites. Or the fact that everyone can read their uncompiled Ruby code.

However, I think for a many apps, quite a few potential customers will be left behind by only offering a hosted version. One criticism of Google Apps that I’ve seen mentioned is that not everyone wants to entrust all of their private documents to Google. I think Campfire looks like an interesting product, but I wouldn’t want to store company confidential exchanges in there.

I’ve seen a number of products start off with one approach and then add the other. I can name two off the top of my head that started off installable and added a hosted option. In some ways, that’s easier because you don’t have to worry about supporting the service 24×7. There are always tradeoffs in product management, aren’t there?

I should also mention the middle ground: selling an appliance. This is what Arbor Networks does. Ship a computer, preconfigured and ready to run, to the customer. They plug that in, do a small bit of configuration (IP address setting, for example) and they’re up and running! I’ve predicted before that Google Apps will eventually be offered this way. We’ll see…

Also, you can be just as agile with an installable app if you wish to be… There has been an update to OmniFocus just about every day (including weekends!) since I installed it. If you make it easy for people to install and upgrade, there’s no reason you can’t ship minor updates as frequently as you wish.

This past Tuesday, I had the pleasure of attending Seth Godin’s The Dip talk at the Michigan Theater. Here’s a photo from Seth’s blog:

It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had a chance to write about this until now.

The first thing I want to say is this: if you’re still doing presentations with bullet points, you need to see someone like Seth Godin speak. It will give you a whole new appreciation for how best to present material. Bullet points ain’t it. If you’ve ever seen me present, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t use bullet points. I’m definitely still honing my technique, but Seth has achieved master level. If you can’t catch Seth live, I’d recommend checking out An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore’s presentation in that movie is bigger budget and less readily attainable than Seth’s technique, but it will still give you an idea of what to shoot for.

I’d imagine that Seth would consider himself a failure if I just wrote about his presentation style and not the content he was presenting. After all, it’s not a very effective presentation if the flash gets ahead of the substance. I read The Dip before seeing the talk, and the talk was a nice companion to the book. The Dip is a small book (under 100 pages), which I appreciate. Many business books have an idea that can be readily condensed into a 5 page summary, but they carry on for 200, 300 or more pages just repeating the same idea over and over in slightly different styles with or without actual supporting evidence. I often get the feeling from business books that they’re trying to perform “proof by repeated assertion”. At 100 pages, The Dip felt about right in terms of size. The one thing that I felt was missing was personal anecdotes. It’s the perfect kind of book for stories about how Seth himself has tackled “The Dip”, but instead we get stories about how well-known others have successfully tackled The Dip.

So, what is “The Dip”? Don’t worry, I’ll get there. This is one of the other interesting aspects to Seth Godin in general: he likes for his ideas and terminology to spread. Whether it’s a purple cow or an ideavirus, Seth wants people to learn and use these terms. To that end, everyone who attended The Dip (live!) received 5 copies of The Dip (book), to pass around. Each copy of the book includes a page in the back where you can put a list of names to try to get a group of people to pass it around. I have no idea if that technique works, but the 5 copies per person idea certainly does. People will inevitably think of friends and colleagues who might benefit from The Dip and pass it on. Thus, Seth’s ideas and terminology claim some more vic—-, I mean supporters. If you Google “The Dip” or just “dip”, Seth has the #2 link. The idea has spread.

At last we get to the point where I contribute to the spread of the idea. “The Dip” is the point in an endeavor where the going gets rough. Seth makes the point that quitting in The Dip is what most people do, and it’s exactly the wrong thing to do. You should anticipate the Dip. If you’re not going to put forth the effort to get through it, you shouldn’t even start the undertaking. But once you make it through the Dip, you’ll be among the best in the world. And that is what the book “The Dip” is truly about: quitting the things that you aren’t going to master and becoming the best in the world at the thing that matters most.

For me, personally, The Dip’s message about quitting excess things is timely and relevant. I’ve had so many things going on and so many things vying for my time outside of work, that maintaining focus is important. Some post-The Dip reflection has identified a couple of things that I’ve been able to quit. And it feels good.

While Purple Cow remains my favorite among the Godin books that I have read, The Dip is a potentially more broadly useful quick read for stories and thoughts about being the very best. Your investment in time in reading the book will be well worth it. I’d also highly recommend seeing the live show if Seth will be coming to you. (And a big “thanks!” to the folks who organized the Ann Arbor event!)