Phil's Development Journal

2009-06-09T12:05:00.002Z

New AdWords Interface

I'm pretty unimpressed with the new interface, I don't really understand how to use it, and it's so AJAX to the max that when my connection was running slow everything started breaking. How do others feel about this new interface?

2009-06-01T04:14:00.003Z

Changing Business Models

It's as usual been a long time since I've posted so I figured I was due for an update. I'm still around and working hard on two main projects. The first is BudgetSimple, which has continued to grow as one of the most popular free online budgets in the net. Since the big 2.0 upgrade that made the project "AJAX to the max!" I've been working on a 2.5 version that should monetize some of the interest in the project, while still keeping my goal of providing a useful free budget.

Besides that, Used Cars On-Line is undergoing a slight change in business models. Since it's inception as one of the first sites for used cars on the Internet in 1995, it's been exclusively for cars "for sale by owner". While I always thought this was a great little niche, Craigslist pretty much cannibalized what small market segment there existed for people who didn't want to buy from dealers. I know many people don't mind buying from dealer and in fact some people only buy from dealerships, so in the coming weeks I'll be offering dealer feeds in addition to FSBO ads in hopes of growing interest in the site. There is always considerably more dealer inventory out there then private owners, so this requires a pretty substantial update in terms of search on the site. I'll post again when it's live to get the software business community's feedback.

2009-02-05T13:06:00.002Z

New Version, bad dreams

After about a month and a half of beta testing, I did a violent switcheroo for users of BudgetSimple on Sunday. I love the new version of the site, and there has been positive feedback as well as some negative feedback for the dramatic change. I wish there was a way to ease people into the new version, but the difference between the original one I wrote in a weekend, and this one which I spent months on is dramatic.

Oddly, I had a dream last night that Google was making an online budget app... it's interesting to subconsciously worry about competition for something I make no money on.

Used Cars On-Line is also experiencing a large uptick in traffic, I guess I specialize in sites that are popular in a down economy!

2008-10-16T12:17:00.003Z

I decided to enter back into the world of Apple yesterday, by purchasing one of the new MacBooks (I was the biggest Mac lover from 1992-2000). It was basically my first time in the Apple store as a consumer, and I had brought 3 other friends in with me that wanted to buy MacBooks. Let me say I was a little underwhelmed.

Apple basically had $8k in sales right there ready to be purchased, but we were told that they would't sell any MacBooks without a personal shopping appointment. I was pretty much ready to give up right then and there because the whole idea of needing an appointment for them to scan a box at the register is ridiculous. Especially since there were plenty of "geniuses" around that could help you buy anything else. So reluctantly I made an appointment for later in the day.

And when I came back for my appointment....they were sold out of the model I wanted.

I think that pretty much ends my short time as an Apple Store customer.

2008-04-08T11:52:00.002Z

From the "You Gotta Be Able to Take Hate Mail If You're On the Internet Dept"...

For some reason this email cracked me up this morning. I get things like this every now and then:

So far as I can see, this is the most miserable site on the internet. How would I go about looking for ads for Toyota Siennas within, say 1200 miles of New Mexico?

Most miserable site on the Internet! That's pretty impressive IMO!

2008-03-28T01:59:00.002Z

Lesson Learned? + New Employee!

Ok, so like a year ago, I announced that ChimSoft was finished...but I still left the website up, and heck, I wouldn't turn down someone that wanted it. But I did zero marketing, and zero development during that time. People however, kept inquiring about it and purchasing it. So far this year I've sold more of ChimSoft then ever. Up until now, I'd even been turning down tons of sales because people insisted on talking on the phone, and it just wasn't worth it to me to deal with phone sales and support.

So...I've decided to start supporting and selling it again, with a twist. First, my partners in SearTech wanted to shut the company down, they had no interest in continuing with ChimSoft or putting the time in. So we agreed that my mISV would buy the intellectual property and SearTech would go away. So sometime this month ChimSoft will officially be a 2see Technology product.

Ok...but these people want phone sales? Yeah. So now I have 3 products to support, and it seems like phone sales and support would be useful for all of them. So my wife is officially a 2see Technology employee now! I'll be launching the 800 number by the end of the week, and hope this will help all business grow and provide better support for customers, as she will also take on email support.

This blog address is not really relevant anymore, so I'll probably be moving it, and lets face it, I haven't been the best blogger as of late. I saw something about the mISV "class of 2007" recently, and it's hard to believe this blog has been around since 2005, time really flies!

2008-03-04T03:41:00.002Z

New House/Corporate Headquarters

On an un-mISV related note (but hey Real Estate is business), I recently purchased a pretty house in my new home of Pittsburgh

A positive for my mISV, this SFH in the hip part of the city cost much less then my small townhouse I had in the suburbs of DC :)

2008-02-03T17:33:00.000Z

Walking down the cost of AdWords

So January was my first experiment into the mISV world of advertising through AdWords. Technically I had used these previously for ChimSoft, but clicks for "chimney sweep software" cost me almost nothing, and I was already number one for all of my search terms.

I began the month somewhat confounded by AdWords. I put in 5 and 10 cent bids, which Google estimated would give me some clicks for, and yet never would I get any clicks or impressions. Google told me to up my bid. So I upped it to 20 cents a click, and still they told me to up my bid. It was looking like AdWords would not be a feasible source of advertising for budget software.

So just to see it work, I upped my price per click to 50 cents! Sure enough, this got the clicks rolling in, but obviously I was hitting my meager daily budget by about 9am each day.

I then tried some new keywords, but kept the original ones running at 50 cents a click for a while until my click through ratio was quite high. Then I decided to start lowering the cost per click. 45 cents got me around the same amount of clicks. 40 cents started getting more more clicks for my budget... I kept this up, each day lowering the price I was paying per click. Until I was finally down to 10 cents per click, which was basically my original bid. The difference now however, is that I was receiving tons of clicks. My overall position was slightly lower then when I was at 50 cents a click, but my impressions and total clicks were significantly more.

I believe what happened here is that Google had assigned me a high quality score based on the CTR at the higher price. Since my ad was "valuable" I've then been able to take the price down significantly. This may be a helpful tip for those who are continually told by Google to raise their bids. We'll see how it does this month.

2008-01-20T21:23:00.000Z

Vista

I finally upgraded my primary development PC. I decided to get the most expandable PC that would last me quite a while, so I opted for a Dell XPS. The only problem with XPS is that they only come with Vista. That's fine I thought, I could use a Vista system to test with... this is the future of Windows.

Overall Vista isn't as bad as people have made out. It is EXTREMELY frustrating to use out of the box, for those that are long time Windows Power Users. Just getting it to find a WinXP share on the network from my old PC took forever. Everyone whines about the parade of warnings, but with one click UAC is easily turned off.

The biggest problem I had with Vista is that Visual Studio 2003 (my primary dev environment) does not run on Vista. I think I had heard this, but didn't remember. So this weekend was spent upgrading to 2005 (which I preferred as a dev environment anyway), and changing my installers to check for .NET 2.0. I think .NET 2.0 now is at least as installed as .NET 1.1 was when I started ChimSoft, so I'm reasonably comfortable requiring it. Also 2.0 comes pre-installed with Vista.

So my planned 1.1 release is a little delayed, but I hope to have it out by the end of the week. It's the first release that had some "tricky" problems to solve.

I've also been playing with AdWords, and see why people obsess about this so much. Is it better to have 11% CTR on a cheap keyword, or 3% CTR on an expensive keyword? I'm trying to find the right balance of clicks to money spent, with conversions being the major factor.

2007-12-29T02:27:00.000Z

First Sale!

I'm not sure I really expected a sale until after New Years because:

a) Version 1.0 doesn't do that much
b) No marketing yet besides some small AdWords tests.
c) I just noticed some bugs that could really put off new users
d) It's Christmas time, so no one is buying.

But on Christmas Eve someone bought the first copy. I'll take that as a promising sign given the above facts.

I'll be working hard all weekend to try to market the New Years Resolution angle and fix some of the small problems, and hopefully get out a major feature or two.

2007-12-15T17:06:00.001Z

Released!

Well, technically I released version 1.0 of BudgetSimple for Windows last Sunday night. But being the bad blogger that I am, I haven't found the time to post about it. I decided to just release early. It didn't have quite all the features I wanted, but it seemed pretty bug free and functional, so I figured I might as well get the search engine juice flowing, and start getting feedback.

I started by just adding a link from BudgetSimple.com, and then sent an email to the top 20 most frequent users of the online version. From there I gathered my list of over 5,000 BudgetSimple users, and emailed some of those that stopped using it a long time ago.

To get feedback/bug testing, I approached it like this. Everyone can download the trial, and if you want a free copy, just write back with any feedback at all. I figured only people who like the software will bother writing back, and plus they would give me hopefully valuable feedback.

I've emailed about 2% of my users to far and I have to admit the results couldn't be better. Quite a few people took me up on my offer, and had great things to say about the new version. A few people reported bugs, and did a really great job about helping me track them down. Compared to Chimney Sweeps, this group of users is much easier to work with. It seems most of BudgetSimple's users are mothers, people with debt, and housewives. Which is a pretty broad spectrum of people, but it's a group you might stereotype as being computer illiterate, but so far every user has been very savvy and helpful. I've ended up releases 4 minor bug fix releases. I plan a minor feature release in two weeks.

I also started an AdWords campaign, just to test the water. As I posted over at BoS, it didn't seem like it was working at all, but now I think Google's display is just broken. I can see that I am getting impressions and clicks from my Account Snapshot, but the campaign pages still show zero impressions. This weekend I hope to get the BudgetSimple blog back up and maybe have a nice post written.

I also put out a PAD file. I found this to be fairly useless in the past, but I have a feeling I just need to play with it more. And yes, I've already won many awards from the download sites ;P.

If you want to try this early version, and get some free budget software, you are welcome to download it yourself, and feedback gets a free license! :)

2007-12-05T12:40:00.000Z

Update

I've began what I like to call "friends and family beta testing" on the desktop edition of BudgetSimple. That means it's pretty much ready to go to a general audience, but I want to make sure there's nothing horribly wrong with the program, so I have people I know, but who may not be interested in the software, install it. A couple of bugs and suggestions have been found so far, but it looks like I'll be ready for a first round of beta testers this weekend.

Those of you following the schedule may notice that's about two weeks beyond my original goal. Luckily there was no real reason for my goal except a month seemed interesting. I do find that software projects are usually easy to complete the first 80%, and then the last 20% drags on for a while. I think this is probably because developers do the easy or fun things first, and then take on the big challenges at the end. I've made sure to drop anything for this version that I thought isn't absolutely essential for version 1.0. It kills me to hear the stories of people taking YEARS to write their 1.0 product, but then again they are usually writing much more complicated software.

This week I added the least important "Must have" feature to the app, the license key system. I spent about an hour on it, so obviously I'm not too concerned about cracks, I just want to motivate people to buy the software. I don't believe most people are capable of finding cracked software, and if they do, I'm happy they can balance their budget and maybe be able to buy something in the future ;).

I expect the beta test to take about a week, during which I should start on the website, and e-commerce portion of things. My absolute drop dead goal for this to all be working is Christmas. I have a feeling a lot of people make New Years resolutions about having a balanced budget.

2007-11-28T04:39:00.000Z

Micosoft and UI Standards

In my last post I talked about how school doesn't really teach "How to make a Windows Program". Microsoft has however done extensive usability testing over the years, and has laid down many documents explaining how to make Windows programs use those standards, so that anyone who uses a Windows application has a familiar feel.

Oddly, Microsoft's latest app, the Zune player, seems to copy a little too much from Apple. When Apple first started creating iTunes for Windows, they made it look and act like a Mac app (but not in a good way), and it was absolutely horrible and confusing to use on Windows. The first Zune player that came out was refreshingly easier to use then the early versions of iTunes. However, the latest incarnation, while pretty, doesn't seem to adhere to many standards of Windows:

Where's the title bar to click and drag here?

And don't get me started on IE7 with it's "Menu in the middle".

The point of this post is when it comes to Windows applications, don't put beauty over function. If you want your app to be accessable to all users, keep it simple, make it feel familiar, and then gussy up the things around it.

Here's the latest dev shot of BudgetSimple btw:

Hopefully it's starting to look a little better. The positioning isn't final at this point. The main screen is very specific in it's purpose. I don't expect to make help files for version 1.0, so I'm trying to make everything easy beyond explanation.

I've started using FogBugz OnDemand for this project. It's much easier to keep track of your thoughts and have a sense of accomplishment if you write down something in FogBugz as soon as you think it, and resolve the issue when you take care of it. My only complaint is FogBugz runs a little slow (don't know if its the connection or my slow old laptop choking on the ajax).

2007-11-25T22:34:00.000Z

Tools I'm Using

Well the mISV challenge is chugging along. It did get derailed by the Thanksgiving holiday, so I'm a little behind schedule. I still plan on starting the beta test this week.

To keep this interesting though, I thought I'd detail what I'm using for this project.

First, I'm using C# with Visual Studio 2003. Which kind of contradicts some earlier posts of mine that suggest using VB.NET for speed of development, and the latest version of .NET, because people don't mind updating. While I mostly still agree with those points, I'm semi limited in my current dev environment until I move, and I only have VS 2003 on this computer. I don't really need any of the .NET 2.0 features for this project, so using 1.1 will result in less downloads for my users. However, C# is much more fun in VS 2005.

To keep things simple, I decided to use Patrick's idea for Drop-Dead Simple Updating for my updates. In ChimSoft, I used a nifty Web service I made that determined if an update was needed, but I decided to get even more simple for this one. Although I probably will eventually make the updater more complicated.

Although it's just me developing by myself, I am using Subversion for source control. It's amazing to me how some people still don't quite get how important the concept of source control is.

I'll probably be using the Infragistics graphics package I bought for ChimSoft, as well as the pretty nice icon pack I received as well.

Stay tuned, hopefully tommorow I'll have a beta out there!

2007-11-20T04:33:00.000Z

How do you design a Windows App?

Ever since I was in high school, all I really wanted to know how to do was write the programs I use on my computer (back then it was games). So I went to school for Computer Science, and you know what, not a single class showed me how to write a Windows program.

Eventually, after a lot of searching I found some stuff online and some books that showed me how to write programs for Windows in C++ and MFC. I remember spending a whole weekend or two cranking out C++ to produce a crappy Blackjack program. Well now, I could probably make that same program in about 3 hours with C#, but still at no point in my professional career was I ever shown "how" one should make a Windows app.

So here I am making my third windows app (second that I'd be putting for sale), and although I've become better aquainted with the standards and ways of Windows apps, I still probably don't do things "the right way". So here is how I set about making my app.

First, I think about the design. What's going to power the app? Will it need a database? What's the general look and feel? Once I have a general idea about that, I start dragging controls onto a blank form to get a basic feel for the app. This is what I had around Tuesday of last week:

Ugly as all heck, but most of the functionality is actually there. It probably even looks worse then your typical windows app because I am trying to maintain a consistent UI to the current website my users are used to. Keep that ugly look in mind on Friday when I show the screenshots with the UI prettyfied.

So once I have the basic layout, I start throwing down all the code. I get the app doing all the features I want for version 1.0. I'll make sure to add in some basic error checking, but its still pretty much bug filled.

Once the program basically works, I go back and make it look pretty. Now it's starting to feel like a real application. At that point, I'm motivated enough to really starting hitting it hard for bugs. The last two paragraphs should all come together this week.

2007-11-19T04:22:00.000Z

Back in Action

Well the Internet is all happy and working again here, so I'll try to post regularly this coming week. As I mentioned in my last post, I've got the basics working in BudgetSimple - Desktop (still need a good name for this). I didn't do any developing from Thursday-Sunday, so it hasn't progressed much from there, however since I was ahead of schedule I don't think that will hurt my goal of a beta by this weekend any. Thanksgiving may hurt it being a successful beta, since many people may be away from their computers, but hey it's also that time of year that people realize Christmas shopping is making them broke! I'll post some screenshots of my progress tomorrow, and hopefully get some serious developing in tomorrow night. Unless Maryland upsets UCLA...

In other business news, it appears AdSense is finally taking it's Winter hibernation. Perhaps due to Global Warming, I was continuing to get my summer month eCPM on my used cars site into November, and was making record profits for this time of year, however it appears to be going back down again. Also, sometime back I spent considerable time reworking the site to be more search engine friendly. I added a site map and started using mod-rewrite to make every page have it's on URL. Turns out it was only working this way when you searched via form, which of course Google doesn't do. And every page had the same title.... so I fixed all that this weekend, and hopefully PageRank will jump up a little.

2007-11-13T22:29:00.000Z

Slight Road Bump

There is a little problem I encountered with my "MicroISV Challenge 2007", my Internet at my new place stopped working. I almost wrote a post about how awesome Verizon is for UPS'ing me a DSL modem in 2 days, and I plugged it in and it worked. I was on the Internet all weekend, and then Monday evening I came home to no DSL. I called Verizon and because my "official date" is Nov 16th, they can't do anything to help...I'm like "clearly it physically works, just turn it on and bill me!". But whatever.

Luckily this project isn't a web app, and I am still well on schedule if not ahead of schedule in my development of BudgetSimple's desktop edition. It doesn't look pretty yet (and probably won't til week 2), but it does almost everything the online version of BudgetSimple does already! So unfortunately I probably won't be providing the daily updates THIS week (I'm at a Panera currently...glorious Panera with their free Internet).

2007-11-11T22:39:00.000Z

The Great MicroISV Challenge 2007

I recently mentioned my move to Pittsburgh to begin a new job. I also recently mentioned that I plan on developing a desktop version of my popular free online budgeting program. I've decided to combine the two events into something I'd like to call "The Great mISV Challenge".

Similar to short time table Patrick had when he created his Bingo software, I decided to use the situation I'm in currently for some hard core developing.

The challenge is this: Starting tonight, I will begin developing version 1.0 of BudgetSimple - Desktop (coming up with a better name may be part of this). I'm literally staring at a blank Visual Studio window now with nothing written. My goal is to have version 1.0 out and selling in exactly one month. I'll lay out my schedule in a little more detail later in this post.

Why do this now and in this way?

One of the caveats with moving to Pittsburgh is that I still have a house to sell in the DC area, so I'm temporarily renting in the city. This means a couple of things, first my wife and friends are not here, so my time is my own, I'm currently living a spartan bachelor life, so if I stay up until 2am eating Potato chips and drinking Jack Daniels to get this done, no one will care. I also have no chores for the most part since I'm in a bare little apartment. My only current time sink is playing soccer once a week. Another nice thing about my new job is that it's a 10 minute WALK to work, so even if I put in a 10 hour day, I still have tons of time to work on this project.

All of this will of course change as I get into the thick of things at work, our house sells, etc... So I think this is a great time to bang out this project, while at the same time hopefully providing some more interesting blog posts to this recently sedentary blog.

How exactly do you plan on doing this in a month?

Well actually I plan on doing it in two weeks. One nice thing about this mISV is it's not entirely from the ground up. I already have over 5,000 users of BudgetSimple that can potentially be beta testers. I hope to have a beta in their hands within two weeks, leaving the other two weeks for bug fixes and marketing. I also have a general idea of the functionality and a lot of the code to make it happen. I also have lots of tools left over from my other mISV project (which took a year to develop if you're looking for a good comparison), so the expenses should be minimal as I already have icons, IDE, obfuscators, etc...

What are the biggest stumbling blocks you see?

Well, the biggest is the actual selling of the program. Sure BudgetSimple is the #1 search result for a popular term on Google, but unfortunately that term is "free online budget". This program is neither free nor online. There are lots of people making budgeting software that cost money already. I hope to draw in users of the free BudgetSimple with a more powerful offline version (that will also integrate with the online one).

Another big stumbling block is my current development environment. I'm going to do this almost entirely on my laptop. While that laptop is awesome for travel (being a 3lb tablet PC), it's specs are really weak (the laptop is the first gen tablet pc from like 5 years ago), so I could see myself being able to run a few laps around the block waiting for a build.

OK so what should we expect here?

Tonight I will work almost entirely on the design of the program, by Monday the basic look and structure should be there, by Wednesday it should have at least the functionality of the current BudgetSimple. And by the end of the week it should contain some of the newer features that people have requested. The following week I'll work on upgrading the online version, and get the synchronization of the two versions worked out.

Any questions, doubt, etc? I hope to post at least once a day to update the status of everything, wish me luck!

2007-11-08T01:17:00.000Z

.NET Download Size

I'm surprised I still hear this as such an issue on the software boards. It is of course not ideal that most Windows PCs are not running the latest version of .NET, and that your 3MB app will require a 25MB download for someone to use it.

But when I sell/sold software to Chimney Sweeps, despite sweeps being one of the least tech savvy audiences, I never once heard a complaint about this.

iTunes, arguably one of the most popular pieces of software out there, feels the need to update with a 60MB install every two weeks.

.NET in my opinion, is one the things Microsoft actually got right. It does stink that half the people who download your product will get a larger download, but 25MB is really nothing these days. Especially when given the productivity gains.

I bring this up because I am going to begin work on the desktop version of BudgetSimple in the coming weeks. I again evaluated other potential development platforms, but wanted to learn from my own past and go with what I know.

Whatever framework you want to use will make little difference to your customer. Just make sure you make it seamless. So make your installer automatically download .NET or Java.

2007-10-29T17:54:00.000Z

It's been a while since posting! A large reason for that is I recently took a job with a very cool tech startup in Pittsburgh. So with all that going on, and getting ready to move from DC, etc... I haven't had a great deal of time to dedicate to my mISV besides regular maintenance. However, once the move is complete, I think I'll find myself in a much better position to dedicate more time to my mISV.

Real quick, why Pittsburgh? Well DC has a smoking hot tech scene, but unfortunately 98% of the companies out there do government contract work. Living in DC all my life, I've had way more then my share of work relating to the government, and even though they all pay really well, the work is boring. Pittsburgh isn't famous for it's tech market, but what tech is happening there is very exciting. With Carnegie Mellon University fighting MIT for the crown of best tech school, there are a lot of interesting startups in the area. Google and Microsoft are both recruiting hard core. But after four years of government work, I wanted to work somewhere without a huge bureaucracy.

One of the other cool things about Pittsburgh, is it's one of the few cities (if not the only one) on the east coast to feature all the "special" features of Google maps, including the street view, where you can virtually walk the streets of the city. And the public transportation mapping mode, which takes all the mysteries out of traveling by bus.

So the corporate headquarters for my business is relocating! But there are some exciting things on the horizon. First, I will finally market Tripzard and polish it off some. Next, I plan on expanding on the success of BudgetSimple by making a cheap downloadable version. It won't be free like the web version, but I still plan to make it reasonable. Also, although I've argued in the past about going fulltime on my mISV, the super low cost of living in Pittsburgh certainly makes that all the more a reality if I decide to do that.

2007-09-14T13:40:00.000Z

Tripzard Logo

Once again, I can't recommend enough www.logodesigncreation.com's work. They turn around ideas quickly, and make modifications with no hassle. Since Tripzard is my fun hobby, I wanted the logo to be fun too, and not professional looking at all.

Here's the final one I decided on:

I think it goes with the color theme I wanted, and it implies the travel/wizard idea I was going for. The semi-subtle lizard shape in the globe comes from the fact that some people were hearing "Lizard" when I said TripZard. So I think it's funny to keep the confusion going ;).

2007-09-10T15:12:00.000Z

Preview of My Pet/Hobby Project

Well, I keep stalling on the release of this project I've been devoting a few hours to a week for the past few months. It definitely still needs some work, but I thought maybe giving a preview of the idea here will motivate me to finish it up.

Not listening to my own advice, I decided to work on this project using PHP, which I've used maybe a 10th as much as .NET languages. The thing I love about PHP is that it's lightweight. The laptop I typically travel with is one of those 3 pound tablet PCs, which is great to travel with, but not so great to compile a program with. Visual Studio barely runs on the thing. The thing I don't like about PHP is that it's not as organized/readable as C#. It's much more natural to be object oriented with C# since the code is removed from the design. But I love that it's lightweight, and all you need is a text editor.

Ok, so onto the project. I love to travel. I love Geography/Geopolitics (I even double majored Geography in college). After ChimSoft, I really wanted to work on something I enjoyed and understood thoroughly. Sometime last spring my wife and I were trying to figure out somewhere we could go on vacation. Oddly enough, there is nothing/almost nothing out there on the web that will recommend a place for you in an unbiased way. Almost every site assumes you know where you want to go first. Well, most American's knowledge of world geography is limited to "The Iraq", Cancun, and Punta Cana. So there are all these really great places to vacation that no one even considers.

Well that was the idea I had going into this project. I would dig up a bunch of potential vacation spots from around the world, and make a wizard to help you figure out where you should go. I was particularly inspired by a site called FindYourSpot.com, that I stumbled across a few years ago and thought was neat.

By far, the hardest thing to do was research all these places, get unbiased opinions, and make some sort of rating for that place. I'd say the research behind this took about 80% of the time, and the creation of the site took the other 20%.

So please check out the site, http://www.Tripzard.com, and let me know if the results "feel" right.

I've found the results from family members have been pretty good so far. Adding more content is the next step. Right now almost all of the text content is a excerpt from Wikitravel, which isn't the most reliable of travel sites. Most of the pictures are actually photos I or someone I know have taken, and any other ones were from stock photo sites with the author's permission.

How does this idea make money? Currently, the only way it does is via the Flight/Hotel referrer links on each page. It may never add up to more then chump change, but entire companies run off these type of referrals (kayak.com and tripadvisor.com).

Version 2 will allow users to suggest their own destinations and the site will then provide my recommendations vs user's recommendations. Feel free to let me know any other ideas you may have to improve the site, and what you think of it in general!

2007-08-08T01:40:00.000Z

Launch Pending!

Well I've been MIA, because of my previously discussed travel this summer. Also I'm the captain of my soccer (football) team this season, so our quest for the DC cup has detoured what little time I do have on weekends and evenings.

As I mentioned a few months ago, I'm currently working on two products. One is super fun for me, but has iffy money making opportunities. The second one is a serious business product that I am working on with a partner. This second one I may never mention here, because I know it is of no use to anyone that reads this blog. That idea is the one I feel more confident about making money. But the pending launch this post about is about the fun first idea!

I'll give you a few teaser hints about the idea.

1) It's a website, not a downloadable product... and thus is free to use

2) It's related to travel. Ideally this should have been launched before the summer travel season, but I just didn't have time. Version 2 should be in time for next summer, and we all know that's when the real magic happens.

3) This isn't just an AdSense based site, I feel it has some real money making potential.

4) As far as I can tell, nothing like it currently exists, but I'd bet almost anyone who travels could use it at some time.

It's currently "feature complete", and I'm just cleaning it up. I'm shooting for the end of the month, so wish me luck!

2007-06-26T02:06:00.000Z

Wikipedia is the Internet Take 2

Lately I've come to a realization. Wikipedia is what the Internet originally was back in 1994 when I got onto it. Lots of nerds with too much time writing about things they care about. I've had that same feeling I had back then when I "surf" Wikipedia. I find all sorts of useful information, and follow link after link (despite not always having the best way to search the information) going down all sorts of trails of interesting information.

Google is absolutely useless for finding useful information these days. There is no way to search on a product or brand name without getting a million results trying to sell or review something. You have to be a real Google kung fu wizard to find out non-biased research information.

Wikipedia is the exact opposite. You search for something, ANYTHING, and there is more content then you could ever imagine about the subject. And despite all the bad publicity and criticism (I used to be it's biggest critic) the data is almost always accurate and not defaced! A coworker has a plugin for Firefox that split screen's Wikipedia with Google whenever you search, because let's face it, lately the most relevant link on a subject is almost always it's Wikipedia article.

More then research though, Wikipedia has gone on to become a tome of information about anything trivial, my favorite being sports. During the recent CONCACAF Gold Cup Soccer (Football) competition, due to the complete lack of interest of soccer in America, it was impossible to find good English language results. Even the Gold Cup's "Web Site" had "Coming Soon" type stuff instead of results and brackets. But not Wikipedia. Wikipedia had every score of every match, updated instantly after the game ended (who are these people editing this stuff??). It also link to the controversy, and every team name linked to it's own Wikipedia article where you can find out when the Canadian national team got to the World Cup (Round 1 in '86), and all sorts of other sports trivia that's literally impossible to dig up on the Internet. I even recently found a schedule of pick-up soccer games in the DC area on Wikipedia!

From Wikipedia, all sorts of other Wiki's have popped up...my second favorite being Wikitravel. Again, I find the data I'm looking for a lot more handy then Foder's or Travel Advisor or any other commercial site. What does this mean for the future of the Internet? Well, just as Google's plain, effective search engine stole the thunder from the big ad-covered boys, I think Wikipedia and other non-advertising Wiki type data could easily replace Google. Although this is probably a long way from happening.

The reason I say this is that just the other day I was having a conversation with some coworkers (non-programmers, but people in IT who should know better) about Wikipedia, and they said "Oh i saw something on dateline about that, isn't that the site where people make stuff up?". Which I guess is better then their complete lack of awareness of Flickr.... It's unfortunate there has been such a disinformation campaign against Wikipedia.

Try making it your primary source of information for anything over the next week (Medical symptoms? Forget WebMD, try Wikipedia. Breaking news? Screw CNN, try Wikipedia). It's amazing how it can basically replace any other informational site.

2007-06-21T21:35:00.000Z

How Not to Use AJAX

Yahoo! Weather used to be my go-to place for weather information. Even though it gets it's data from Weather.com, I like the speed and simplicity over Weather.com's ad filled interface.

Well the tides have turned. Yahoo! decided to implement AJAX on it's search bar for weather. It looks like this:

The whole point of AJAX is that it SAVES you time. But there are two things to notice here. First, you have to type in the city and THEN click "Go" (it doesn't just come up like intellisense). Next, you'll notice that it orders the results by country. So even though more people searching for "Rome" are probably looking for the one in Italy, I get all the Rome's in the USA first (there's like 10) and then the one in Italy, which is provided with a cryptic Italian state and country code. THEN I can click on the one I want and it brings me my weather. In Theory. For some reason though, the AJAX list kept giving me the wrong city. I'd click Buenos Aires, and it brings up San Cristobal. Don't even think about just typing in an area. Unless you have the exact city it doesn't work.

The other annoying thing about Yahoo weather is it doesn't keep the weather search bar at the top...instead it has the news(??) search bar. So even though typically I'd check the weather for where I am, and then where I'm going, I have to use the (gasp) back button to get back to a search.

Ironically, now Weather.com by NOT using AJAX is a dream to use:

You use an old school form to just type in the word Rome...it brings the most likely result up and you click it. Bing bam boom. Takes about a third of the time of the Yahoo AJAX nonsense.

Don't use technology for the sake of technology!