Category Archives: podcasts

Boostrapped.fm podcast

I was a guest on episode 21 of Bootstrapped.fm, the podcast of Andrey Butov and Ian Landsman. The discussion was very wide-ranging, touching on SAAS vs web, the Qt development environment, the royal wedding, A/B testing, capoeira, Adwords, the history of shareware, my new training course and lots more besides. I really enjoyed it. Boostrapped.fm also has a thriving discussion forum at discuss.bootstrapped.fm.

Interview for Shareware Radio

Mike Dulin has just uploaded an MP3 of an interview we did at SIC 2009 for Sharewareradio.com. In the 15 minutes we discuss marketing, how I got started with PerfectTablePlan, ads, the wedding industry, newsletters, the ASP, this blog and more. There are some problems with the recording levels, but hopefully that doesn’t detract too much.

Interviewed on the Startup Success Podcast

startup-success-podcastI was recently interviewed by Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley for The Startup Success Podcast, episode 25. We cover a wide ange of topics including: microISVs, conversion ratios, being specific, PerfectTablePlan, usability, the global recession, software award scams, ‘works with vista’ certification, stackoverflow.com and twitter. I wonder how much I have to pay them to edit out the ‘ums’?

Download the MP3

The realities of software book publishing

Publishers of technical software books and magazines seem to struggling against the relentless onslaught of the Internet, crushed between the twin rocks of rapidly changing technology and free online content. In a recent .NET Rocks! podcast, accomplished technical author Charles Petzold (of Programming Windows fame) discusses the grim commercial realities of writing technical software books in the 21st century. It doesn’t sound good. His recent 3D programming for Windows book took 8 months to write and has sold less than 4,000 copies worldwide. As he gets royalties of around $3 per copy sold (less when sold outside the US), this equates to less than $12,000 for 8 months work. He could have made around $9,000 flipping burgers for minimum wage over the same period[1]. Ouch.

[1] Assuming 40 hours per week.

Software Podcasts

I have been redecorating the house the last couple of days. Wielding a paintbrush only requires about 5% of my brain cycles, so I have been using the excess capacity to listen to podcasts from Software Engineering Radio and IT Conversations Network.

Currently Software Engineering Radio has 102 podcasts, on topics as diverse as game development , Erlang, static analysis and LISP [1]. IT Conversations is even more diverse. They are a great way to keep up to date, especially if you have a long commute.

[1] Don’t miss the weird bonus song at the end: “God wrote in LISP”.

Stackoverflow.com

Über bloggers Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are joining forces to launch stackoverflow.com .

According to Jeff Atwood:

Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.

According to Joel Spolsky:

We’re starting to build a programming Q&A site that’s free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away. You can register if you want to collect karma and win valuable flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it’s just free.

There is nothing there yet, apart from a podcast. But, with their combined talents and high profiles, it could be a great resource for software developers. I will be watching with interest.

Software audio and video resources

The Internet is a cornucopia of useful resources for software developers and marketers. As well as all the documentation, forums, blogs and wikis there are some great audio and video resources. Here are some of my favourites:

NerdTV – Robert Cringely interviews famous names from the software industry.

Shareware Radio – Mike Dullin interviews shareware authors and microISVs in his inimitable style.

The MicroISV show on channel 9 – Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh interview people of interest to microISVs.

.Net rocks and Hanselminutes – Carl Franklin and Scott Hanselman interview people of interest to .Net/Windows developers. Some of the programs are Microsoft-heavy Silverlight/Orcas/WPF alphabetti spaghetti yawn-athons, but others are of more general interest.

TED talks – The great and the good talk on a wide range of subjects, including technology.

These sites contain hours of great material. Long drives/walks/waits need never be boring again. Please add a comment if I have missed any good ones.