Teare Software Solutions

I know I’m late to the party, but I just recently found a great blog called Rails Envy. Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer have done an excellent job of distilling what Rails is like compared to other languages in a few Apple-inpired ads.

The first ad compares Rails to Java. Anyone who has done any J2EE work and then got saved by Rails will love this. While watching this, remember that the Hibernate/Spring/Tapestry stack was a “best-of-breed” solution that made “standard” J2EE EJB’s seem heavy weight. I especially liked the teddy bear in the jar representing Hibernate :)

After my friend and I started doing our own thing (and paying the bills) we had zero interest in paying the costs associated with Java and searched for alternatives. This second movie shows exactly how we felt when we started using PHP:

Thank-you DHH for freeing us :)

I was reading Don McCalister's blog today and the term "Google Vanity Feed" caught my eye. It seemed like a great idea to configure a Google Alert on your own name so you could participate in conversations and see what people are saying about you — if anything ;)

I've always had alerts for Mac Password Manager and a few competitors, but I always felt alerts on yourself were, well, vain. Thankfully Don taught me it is ok :)

Well we’re signed up and the cheques are in the mail, so it’s almost official: Roustem and I are going to C4[1]!

I’m really looking forward to this conference as it is not really a true “conference”: it’s simply a bunch of really cool people that get together and shoot-the-shit about business, coding, and other stuff that affects Mac software development.

The agenda is fairly relaxed, giving just enough information to wet your palette but not too much to box in the presenter into a specific talk where there is no room for diversions. That should help keep the discussion lively.

Here’s the Full C4[1] Agenda:

I love seeing Pizza and Beer on the agenda. I expect it to be a lively event!

One of the first things you learn from motivational speakers and “Howto gurus” is the importance of setting goals.

Over a year ago I was working full time for The Man, working 60 hour weeks, not including the 2 hours in traffic each day. I worked, ate, and slept. There was no time for anything else.

Thankfully I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and with some help from my best friend I managed to change my perspective on finances and started to understand why it is a bad idea to work for money. I set my goal to quit the Rat Race by my 32nd Birthday, so I could spend more time with my family and friends.

To keep track of this goal I added a Countdown Timer to my Mac’s Dashboard so that every time I checked the weather I would be reminded of my goal. I discussed before that I was successful at reaching this goal and it is so commonplace now that I forget that old life even existed — I am so thankful I no longer need to work for money.

I get a kick out of seeing that old goal, however, so I keep it on my Dashboard of my old laptop. Here it is:

Notice the Quitting the Rat Race is now in the past :)

The original plan was to quit my day job and live on savings while I built the wealth ratio. That is why the second goal is a 0.8 wealth ratio by the fal of 2007. Well I’m happy to say that goal has already been achieved as well! In fact, my Wealth Ratio is closer to 3.0 if I include proceeds from the business.

I love getting emails from "head hunters" looking to fill their client's positions.

I used to work for money and jumped on all these postings and would pray to be accepted. I never understood the phrase "The rich don't work for money" until I spent over a year not working for money and instead used my passion to build something great.

While I'm out of the market now, I do enjoy reading job postings to remind me why I made the decisions I did. Here's one I received today:

Position: Application Developer 
Mandatory Skills: Java/J2EE, VB, SOAP, XML 
Duration: 6 months (possible 6 month extension) 
Job Description: 

Role Specific Competencies: 

1.  Innovation/Creative Thinking, Problem Solving/Judgment, Achievement 
     Orientation and Listening, Understanding and Responding. 
2.  Minimum of 7 years technical experience. 
3.  Excellent organizational, written and verbal skills. 

Anyone who has developed in a language focused on getting things done will have to laugh at the fact that this position wants someone "Creative" and able to "Think", while being forced to use J2EE and SOAP. I guess that is what the "Problem Solving" skill is for! :)

Besides the absurd skills and "competencies", the very idea of having an outside agency find your company qualified people who "match your culture" is so business 1.0. At Agile Web Solutions we much prefer Getting Real and hiring people based on skills and passion.

The day we use a hiring agency is the day I sell all my shares and start a new company.

Today, April 14th, is my birthday!

Just for Sh*ts and Giggles (as Austin Powers would say) I decided to throw together a birthday surprise — check out the macZOT! home page!

Be sure to check out macZOT! today as my Mac Password Manager is being given away for a steal!

We received some wonderful feedback from a user today:

I just wanted to tell you guys… I think this little app/plug-in you’ve made is so f#<K!ñg c%L.

I can’t conprehend that I’m about to say this… but I love changing my password at every opportunity. There I was a moment ago checking out a book on Amazon and I realized I hadn’t changed my pw yet. It’s the twentieth or so pw I’ve changed. Remember what it was like to have to change a password. What a friggin’ drag. Now, dare I say it, it’s fun to change a password. How? B/c at the touch of a button, I create something that is essentially unbreakable — at the touch of a button. Generated. Inputted. Memorized. Logged. Dated. Updated.

God Bless You. I hope you make a fortune off this.

It’s great to see that our Mac password manager has taken something from a “friggin’ drag” to something that is “fun”.

Yeah, I know, how on earth can a Password Manager be fun? Well, I can’t really explain it. Just go watch the movie and try it for yourself to see!

Our new Graphical License Cards for 1Passwd are getting a lot of attention and generating a great discussion. At this moment, there are 70 comments on the main blog article, over 1000 diggs, 99 Digg comments, and hundreds of private emails. TUAW and The Apple Blog also chimed in.

All this discussion has been great and is helping us understand how to make entering license information as easy as possible, or “natural”, if you will allow me to use the word natural for software.

So why mess with something that “works”? Well. the end goal of the these cards is to make registering software more natural and provide the purchaser a high-resolution experience. When you go to a conference, you expect to get a badge; it simply feels natural and is part of your reward for paying for the privilege to attend. While at MacWorld this year, Roustem and I realized that a card like the one around our neck would work great for our users. That is where the concept of this License Card image originated:

With this card, users simply drag-and-drop it from their email onto the 1Passwd:

Here’s some of the feedback we’ve received so far, including the Good, Bad, and downright Ugly. Bad comments don’t mean the author didn’t agree with me; they were simply non-constructive.

The Good

1. Entering in a long sequence of numbers and letters is an unnatural act. That’s why we invented speed dial, cell phone contact lists and so on.
2. That’s a pretty cool idea. It’s much more user-friendly than long, hex license keys that we have to deal with all too frequently.
3. my only problem with this is now 1passwd.app shows up in all of my open as menus for .jpg files
   My thoughts: Good point. This will be fixed in the next revision. We’ll do what FileChute does and accept any type of drop; OS X will then not associate 1Passwd with any file types.
4. Cards look pretty cool, but when you going to add simple essential features like basic authentication?
   My thoughts: A passionate user that wants more features! Basic auth will be available in beta this week.
5. for the record, I think your license cards are pretty cool.
6. No, this idea is bad. Panic has a much better idea. When you buy Transmit, it uses a link to submit the serial number to the program so that you don’t even have to type it in.
   My thoughts: This is a great idea and one we’ve used in the past. The only problem is the CS load it created when a user’s Launch Services got out of whack, the link got truncated, or the user assumed we had a typo and helpfully tried to add a http:// prefix. I expect these cards to reduce CS.
7. I think that the idea of graphical registration is a terrible idea. Granted it may seem more intuitive to beginners, but how hard is it to tell them to “copy and paste the following code into the registration dialog” ? I use the password manager info.xhead, and I back up all of them in paper form. An image makes these tasks impossible.
   My thoughts: Info.xhead is a great program; why do you assume the author (who is obviously talented) would not add attachments and images to his product? After all, AquaticPrime has been using attachments for years. Try contacting him.
8. I don’t see how this would make things much easier for the user compared to just sending the same XML registration data as a file by mail and enabling the registration by double-clicking. However, it sure does look fancy and from a marketing point of view I can see the benefits.
9. There were a lot of people that made a hoopla about switching from the text based DOS to the GUI Windows or from Apple 2 (text) to Mac (GUI).
10. As far as the License cards go, it worked like a charm, very easy (and sexy).
    My thoughts: Very easy and sexy. Seems like the definition of Mac!

The Bad

1. A solution in search of a problem.
2. No, a brilliant and truly Mac-like registration scheme would be the one OS X uses for registration - it doesn’t.
   My thoughts: obviously I would be open to allowing Apple to license our software and include it in the base OS :)
3. One fault though. You can’t copy it to a piece of paper with a pencil.
4. In OS X you can highlight text and then drag it into another window to copy it, functionally being exactly the same as this.
   My thoughts: Ensuring the *entire* string is selected can be a PITA and is a great source of CS issues.
5. This is ridiculous! should serials numbers be sexy? This is what separates common internet fools with people who get some real world interaction. There is absolutely no reason data should be sexy. Lets say im working in Office, when all of a sudden i am just stunned at the beauty of some render of boring data… would that be SFW?
   My thoughts: This is obviously a Windows user who is used to being abused :)
6. anyone too stupid to cut and paste a serial number is TOO ** STUPID TO USE ANY PROGRAM IN THE FIRST PLACE!
   My thoughts: Another abused Windows user
7. yeah… whoopie…. now i can try to find a way to store dozens of graphic files, instead of easily copy/pastable, searchable text strings.
   My thoughts: Text-based license codes are not searchable! They are meaningless codes. Simply store the 1Passwd receipt in GMail and search for 1Passwd; you will find it without issue.

The Ugly

1. DRM sucks in any form, even when it comes with pretty pictures.
2. it makes bootlegging this shit a pain!
3. I wonder if the author realizes that you can drag-n-drop images in windows too?
4. Anyone who uses the vague term “Mac Like” can be described by the more specific term: “Mac Tard.”
5. “What could be more Mac like?” how about make it over priced and shiny?
6. cant wait till i see product keys posted on flickr sites ;)

The most regularly occurring complaint is that license key programs don’t support images. Don’t tell this to Jon Trainer from Outer Level! His LicenseKeeper looks like a darn slick solution for all your needs and handles attachments just fine. Here’s Jon’s tutorial on how to save 1Passwd license cards using LicenseKeeper.

Other developer feedback came from Dave Batton at Mere Mortal Software (cool name BTW!), when he mentioned that he liked the idea but wasn’t convinced he could use it for his new (as-yet unreleased) application. We’ll be open-sourcing all of the source code for generating and reading these license cards, so that might influence his decision.

What do you think?

I saw this avatar today and couldn’t help but laugh:

Who says Mac and Windows can’t live in “Peaceful Co-existence”? :)

My inbox suffered the perfect storm over the last few days. With a new release of 1Passwd, an email to our NewsLetter, and the new License Cards being hit by a Digg Effect, my Inbox Zero dreams have been simply ripped to pieces:

This is after I spent half a day cleaning the inbox!

As painful as this is, I still get a kick out of seeing one of our articles on the Digg home page:

Best of all, the comments on both the Digg and the Switchers’ Blog articles have been quite insightful.