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Web freelancer conference

July 21st, 2010

indieconf – the conference for independent web professionals – is now open for registation.

What is indieconf? It’s a conference that brings together the topics that affect freelance web people with experts who’ve been there and done that.  I’ve attended a number of tech/web conferences over the past 12 years or so, and while they’ve all been ‘good’, there’s usually very little in the way of information that helps me in the business side of my work.  As an independent, there’s questions about bookkeeping, outsourcing, legal issues, time management, billing, sales and marketing, and more that don’t typically get addressed at the typical tech conference.  And at ‘small business’ events (conferences, networking meetings, etc), there tend to be very few ‘web geeks’ who speak my own language and understand the particular challenges that I face.

So, from that quandary, indieconf was born.

I’ve been contemplating this for a while, focused the idea some, and have been working for the past 6 weeks organizing a core set of speakers/sessions, location, paperwork, and more ‘stuff’ that goes on with a conference.  I’m not even half done, but have been having a great time so far.  I think we’ve got a pretty solid line up of speakers and sessions so far, although we’ve got room for a few more (planning between 15 and 18, and we’ve got about 9 or 10 nailed down).

One of the things I’ve tried to do with this is to get speakers from outside the Raleigh area.  Right now we’ve got speakers from California, Texas and Pennsylvania as well as the Raleigh area and the Carolina coast.  Even people who’ve been to many local or regional events in the NC area likely won’t have crossed paths with all of these speakers, which I hope is seen as a good thing (I think it is!).

So whether you’re a PHP guru just starting out freelancing, a PSD master who’s been at it for years, or someone just considering getting in to the world of freelance web work, I think indieconf will have something for you.  With that said, what are some other types of sessions/info you’d like to get out of a conference like this?  I’ve got some more topics planned based on early feedback from people, and would like to take on a bit more before making more decisions.

I look forward to seeing you in Raleigh this November at indieconf!

1 comment »

Posted in Business, Conferences, Design, Job, PHP, Web

cancelling landline

July 21st, 2010

I’ve had landline phone service all my life.  I’ve had cell phones for a long time, and Vonage for about 6 years.  Even with Vonage and cell pones, I’d never brought myself to get rid of the landline.  Rationalizing it was not too hard – we occasionally get power outages as well as internet outages, so having a stable line would be at least moderately useful for these minor occasions.  However, the monthly bill got landline service seemed to go up continually each month, regardless of how little we used it each month.

A few months ago the bill started going over $50/month, and this is for *nearly* no bells and whistles – no voicemail, no ‘warranty’ on the line.  Wait, I tell a lie – we had an ‘international calling plan’ package, so that when we called my wife’s family overseas it would only cost 10 cents per minute instead of $1.25 (approx).  That said, we still rarely used the thing.  The base rate was a bit over $30/month, and taxes/fees – even if we made no calls at all, added another $16/month – > 50% tax/fee rate, basically.  So keeping a solid phone connection to the house was $46/month before *using* the stupid thing.

A few years back the taxes seemed lower – I would swear total fees before making any calls was below $40 back in 2006.  I may fish out an old bill and compare if I can find one.  In any event, when bills for minimal usage started creeping over $50, I’d had enough.  We already have a Vonage line, so I looked to port over the existing number (which many of my wife’s customers have used for years) to our Vonage box, and – great! – it was possible. The process took almost two weeks, and the service was working before we were actually notified by email that it was working, but it was fairly seamless all in all.

So, now I’ve come kicking and screaming in to the ‘no land line’ age, and it feels a bit odd.  What was funny, though, is when I called to cancel service.  The *2nd* option on the provider’s phone tree was ‘If you’re calling to cancel your service, press 2′.  *2*!  They must be losing customers right and left.  While I’m paying some taxes via Vonage, I suspect it’s only a few years before we start seeing punishing taxes applied to VOIP systems to make up for lost revenue from land lines.  If the govt was recouping $192/year from me via landlines, and might only be collecting half that from Vonage tax collection.

Scratch that – nope.  They’re still collecting around $16/month from me in taxes already.  My minimum monthly Vonage bill is now $42.94.  Hrmm…. So… I’ve sort of traded one price point for another.  And actually, there’s another $5 on top of that because we have an incoming virtual number from the UK.  So… $47.93 minimum.  About the same as the CenturyLink line we had before.  So why cancel?

Vonage is giving us much more.  Unlimited calling, which many US-based VOIP providers also offer, but *every single ad* I hear/see from TWC, CenturyLink, etc – all focused on ‘unlimited calling in the US!’.  I couldn’t care less, as half my family is overseas – UK and Australia – as are many of my wife’s customers.  Vonage gives free calling to Australia and most of Europe in that $24.99.  We pay $5 month for a UK line which rings in to us for that flat $5, and allows most of her UK customers to call for the price of a local call in the UK.  Voicemail calls transcribed and sent to email for free.  And… a web interface to manage it all.  CenturyLink and other traditional landline monopolies have a long way to go to catch up to the value provided by Vonage.  If we got a Vonage program *just* for the amount of calls we make in the US, and didn’t have international needs, we’d at least $20 off that $47, so, we’d probably be paying $25/month.  And the ability to physically take the phone number (via the physical box) with you around wherever you travel is pretty nice (though I’ve only done it once).

Before Vonage, even using landline ‘calling plans’ to get international calls down to a few cents per minute, our bills were easily over $100/month, sometimes $150.  Now with Vonage, two lines, a third incoming number, and *more* calling than we used to do, $55/month is about average.  *Huge* savings, and more convenience.  Can’t ask for much more, can you?

That’s my rant.  Glad I did those numbers.  It wasn’t specifically the $50/month that was necessarily upsetting, but given how little value we were getting for that $50, that was the breaking point.

2 comments »

Posted in Business, Family, Society, Web

How do you say “do not buy from me”?

May 31st, 2010

My wife occasionally gets orders from people for her miniature foods but they somtimes want to split up payments.

We will get emails from people saying things like “I’ve not worked in 3 months, money is really tight, can you split up the payments?” Reread that – this is a person wanting to buy *dollhouse food* of all things – about the furthest thing from a necessity as you’ll find out there (up there with telephones shaped like Mary Worth). In my view, that’s what a credit card is for, yet I imagine many people may be struggling with lowered credit limits, missed payments, etc. But really, at the end of the day, it shouldn’t be our problem.

Is it right to take an “I know what’s best for you” attitude and refuse to sell to someone who really can not afford these luxuries/toys? I realize some of you reading might think this is someone trying to scam us, and I have thought that in the past, but after having lived in this world for many years, I can spot a scammer, and it’s not people like this (just trust me on this). Getting preachy on someone about how to handle their money isn’t really good business, but might be better for everyone involved over the long haul, no?

Do any of you face this with your businesses?

4 comments »

Posted in Business

Palm on the ropes? Here’s what they can do to survive (and thrive)

March 19th, 2010

Screen shot 2010-03-19 at 10.55.59 AMJust read some bad news for Palm over here.

The company shipped a total of 960,000 smartphones during the third quarter ended February 26, but sell-through — which reflects how many devices actually end up in consumers’ hands — totaled 408,000 units, lagging the 600,000 units or more many analysts expected.

Sounds bad.  While I don’t have a Palm Pre myself (lack of GSM made me go to iPhone), I’ve loved the concept of webOS, and the freedom to write native apps using JavaScript.  The problem as I see it is an ever-increasing one in the smartphone market – the carriers themselves.

Many people flocked to the iPhone *despite* the lock-in to AT&T.  Personally, I’ve not found AT&T service to be any *worse* than Sprint or earlier Cingular or other companies I’ve been with in the past.  They all are crappy in their own way, all have draconian lock-in contracts, and overcharge for basic services.  That’s a given, and with only a handful of competitors, and service available in many regional areas by only one or two companies, there’s no effective competition.

BUT.. that’s not the reason for the post.  I first owned a Palm VII back in 1999, and have been a moderate Palm user or follower on and off for years since then.  Others in my family were avid Palm users for many years, and I’ve known other people who loved theirs.  The internet functionality over the past several years was an added bonus, but people loved the functionality of the Palm first and foremost.  So Palm, here’s what you can do to start making money.

Sell and Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus *without phone functionality*.  Sell it for $199, push your app store and start making money from that.  For some reason you felt it was OK to launch the original Pixi *without wifi* but included phone support – you got it backwards.  I’ve been dying to get a Palm Pre, but I’m not giving up my current phone.  Sorry.  I want the device for a PDA and developer device, not for a phone.  Keep wifi in it and you’ve got a killer device to rival the iPod touch.  Get out of your relationships with the carrier, get in to bed with Skype and start pushing the limits on wifi-enabled apps.

I’d get people low-end Pixis as gifts if it didn’t require getting people to sign up for phone service as well just to get a ‘discount’ on the outrageous ‘retail’ prices of several hundred dollars.

Yes, location-based stuff is pretty slick, and ‘go anywhere’ web service without wifi is nice too, but they’re not requirements.  iPod Touch sales should show that.  Get on the ball – get this device in to as many people’s hands as possible.  You can’t go head to head with the iPhone – it just ain’t happening.  But it also doesn’t need to happen.

  • Cut the price to $99 for a Pixi Plus
  • quit the phone service requirement
  • get back to making killer PDAs first and foremost, with the ability to distribute via a first rate appstore experience.

In the short term this will get the inventory off the books, help spur demand for new inventory, and get more devices in people’s hands and get the experiencing a revitalized ‘new’ Palm.  The phone stuff can come later.  Or wifi-service will become more ubiquitous and Palm can take advantage of full-on VOIP without carriers demanding they disable this functionality consumers demand.

Get with it Palm.  I’d like to see you around for a lot longer.

1 comment »

Posted in Business, Software, Web

Thoughts on successful companies and their leaders

March 14th, 2010

This is a response to a recent TechCrunch post on leadership qualities and my own experiences working with startups and small businesses.

Well, less of a response, and more just some observations.  I’m no expert on the specific of the people involved – Jobs, Grove and Campbell – but I think they all shared something with respect to the businesses they founded or ran.  The businesses were, in large part, self-directed.  Obviously no company exists on its own.  However, the companies and people listed here were more interested in creating a new area or field than in trying to build something which would put them in a position of reliance on other parties.

The obvious example here is the recent iPhone App Store changes.  Being an iPhone developer means you’re totally reliant on Apple’s good graces to get your app to the public.  You have no other way to reach that audience.  Similar issues arise with the Kindle.  However, I got to thinking about this not because of the Kindle or iPhone, but another startup I’m working with here in the area.

Actually, they’re not a startup as such – they’ve been around for almost a decade.  But… they’re trying to break in to a new area, and that new area is largely controlled by hardware and network vendors (trying to not say too much here).  We’ve looked at several players in this field (there aren’t *that* many, to be honest) and because there’s a limited number and the cost to entry is pretty high, we’re basically stuck with trying to choose the least bad option.

These guys have been able to succeed for the past several years by employing a very DIY approach to their business, which doesn’t have any reliance on hardware or existing networks or vendors or anything else – it’s completely self-built, and they’ve been pretty successful.  Successful enough for me to spend time working with them.  But this reliance on an external vendor hasn’t sit well with me thus far, and seeing this TechCrunch article really drove that home, by comparing the current situation with that of the examples in the article.

To a degree, yes, Apple has always been reliant on existing hardware manufacturers to be able to supply chips and such, but even from an early stage (or because it was done at an early stage), Apple’s managed to be able to call the shots.  Few companies can do that, especially when coming in to an established market.

The article talks about being able to inspire and articulate a vision and execute.  The guys I’ve been talking to have a vision, have been able to articulate it, and have a track record of execution.  However, their execution has up to this point been on the ‘self-reliant’ side of things – rolling up the sleeves and getting things done.  That approach doesn’t work when others are suddenly in charge and control access to the ultimate customer (again, see iPhone apps).  All the ‘work’ in the world won’t get your iPhone app installed on someone’s iPhone if Apple doesn’t agree.  Likewise, we’re in a similar situation and having to agree to play by the rules of others to use their network.  I think the vision of this organization is solid, but I do question the reliance aspect – it just goes against my independent nature I guess.

Your thoughts?

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Posted in Business

Who I use for domain name registrations

January 21st, 2010

I get asked this on a fairly regular basis, often by people new to the domain and hosting scene.  I’ve got a lot of domains at GoDaddy that I’ve purchased over the years, but for most new domain purchases I’ve found omnis.com, and I’ve been very happy with them so far (just over a year).  (yes, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll make a bit o’ cash if you click that and purchase something from them).

I don’t recommend their hosting plan, nor godaddy’s, nor anyone else’s for that matter.  I’ve managed my own dedicated servers for 10 years, and would have a hard time recommending any shared hosting plan for anyone, mostly because of the restrictions of freedoms I’ve found.  Many people may not need it, but I do, so I can’t specifically tell you to use omnis.com for domain *hosting*.  However, purchasing domains through them and pointing the name servers anywhere else (which they let you do easily) is fine (and what I do).  To be fair, I’ve not tried their hosting plan, so I can’t comment on it, which is why I don’t recommend it.

Why do I like omnis?  Price.  GoDaddy has lower initial pricing, assuming you can find a coupon code (and they’re all over the place if you look for them).  This can often get a .com domain name down to $7 from GoDaddy for the initial registration period.  Yes, if you buy 5 years up front, you’ll get the $7 price for 5 years.  However, most people don’t do that (I don’t – I try too many domain names every year).  So, purchasing for one year at GoDaddy is $7 (with coupon) and $8.95 from omnis.com.  Almost a $2 difference!  However, come renewal time, GoDaddy has steadily gone *up* for me year after year, and omnis.com hasn’t (so far).  Renewing that $7 .com for me at GoDaddy jumps to $10.69 plus some ICANN fee.  So, for 2 years, I’m at almost $18 with GoDaddy, and pretty much the same at omnis.com.  Following year, I’ll be saving money.

Is is worth it to try to save money on a 2-3 year time horizon?  Strictly by the numbers, no.  However, I’ve felt GoDaddy has become a bait/switch operation with respect to the higher domain name renewal fees.  Coupons or special deals might help in some cases, but I’d prefer to give my domain business to someone who doesn’t bait/switch or need to rely on massive promotions.  Yes, omnis are smaller, and yes, I might have problems with them at some point, but I haven’t in over a year, I don’t get upsold a huge amount of junk trying to check out, and the support I’ve had for the few questions I’ve sent in has been reasonable (typically answered by a human via email within a few hours max).

So, if you’re looking to help support a smaller domain registrar with decent service and decent prices, give omnis.com a spin.

2 comments »

Posted in Business, Development, Software, Tools, Web

Magazines targeting JRuby and Jython

January 17th, 2010

Are you interested?  I’m looking at bringing the same style product that we’ve been delivering to the Groovy community to the JRuby and Jython communities, respectively.  If there’s enough interest, we’ll move forward.  Care to register interest?  Sign up at http://jrubymag.com and/or http://jythonmag.com and let me know what you’d like to see covered.

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Posted in Business, Development, Java

One sided agreements

January 9th, 2010

I signed a business agreement with someone about 2 years ago, and was looking forward to the arrangement being smooth.  It hasn’t been so far – the other party simply hasn’t fulfilled their end of the agreement.  The more I looked at the original language, I realized it was fairly one-sided (probably typical in this case), and there’s very little the other party can do which would actually terminate the agreement (relative to the restrictions placed on me_).

The other day I had to take one of the few recourses left to me:  I had to send a registered letter outlining the agreement violations.  The other party now has *30 days* (from receipt of the letter!) to rectify the situation (which really shouldn’t be hard at all).   I’m really sad it’s come to this, and would much rather the agreement simply be terminated at this point, but I suspect the letter of the agreement will be fulfilled and I’ll be ‘stuck’ continuing to carry on.

I’ve had another situation a couple years ago where I wasn’t paid.  I was sorely tempted to “name and shame” that company I dealt with, but many blog readers here commented that I shouldn’t, as it was ‘unprofessional’ to do so (as if not paying your bills and continually screwing over a string of outside contractors and lying to clients and contractors alike *is* professional somehow).  ”Take the high road, don’t name”, etc.  I didn’t name names then, but I did file a lawsuit (which 18 months later is still not even on the docket yet!).  Someone searching for me could put the 2 together and figure out who the other party is in that case, but I didn’t explicitly name.  However, by not naming in that case, I feel like I’ve been complicit in allowing other contractors to potentially get duped by the same operation, and probably get bilked out of tens of thousands of dollars.

In this case, I faced the same question – “name and shame” or “take the high road”.  I’ve found out that, again, I’m not the only one who is being treated the same way.  From what I can tell, it’s almost as if the other party thinks of the business side of things as something that just happens by accident, instead of something that takes systemic, repeatable operations.  However, as frustrated as I’ve been with missed deadlines and ignored emails, I’m not going to name names here either, at least yet.  I do know that other people are continuing to be hurt by the lack of professionalism, but from my standpoint, I’ve not gone through the ‘official resolution’ procedure (the only one available to me short of a general lawsuit).  So, if the matter is resolved, I may end up saying nothing more on the matter, albeit grudgingly so.

Do you have any horror stories you’d care to share (with or without naming names?)

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Posted in Business

Airport security idea

December 26th, 2009

My recent thoughts turned to airline security last night after learning of the flight coming in to Detroit in which a man tried to blow up the plane. (link and link, though I’m sure there’s thousands more now).

I’ve never subscribed to the theory that our US airport security did all that much in terms of preventing actual threats.  I’m old enough to remember pre 9/11 flying, and the security measures don’t seem to be doing that much better at stopping potential violent threats.  In the past two years I’ve flown to San Francisco, Miami, London, Copenhagen, Sydney, Shanghai and probably a couple other places I can’t recall right now.  Most of these trips had several layovers, so I’ve seen security measures at many more airports than just these.  A few things initially surprised me soon after 9/11, but fail to surprise me now:

1.  How differently my carry-on bags are treated during screening every single time I travel, even at the same airports.  I travel with a wide variety of stuff – often a laptop, ipod, chargers, cables, headphones, microphones, video camera, small microphone and other assorted electronic goodies.  Sometimes I pack them in checked luggage, but often there’s not room (or I don’t quite trust TSA bag handlers to not take something of value).  So it comes on as hand-luggage.  A couple of times the cabled mess has triggered a thorough hand search of all the bag contents.  While annoying, I understand their need – it’s not clear what the materials are, and if something’s unknown, it’s better to check it out.  Annoying, but reasonable.  Why that particular mess of cables and such doesn’t trigger the same response at different airports is what’s troubling to me.  Each checkpoint area seems to be having their own guidelines as to what is ‘suspicious’ and what isn’t.  To be certain, it may be the experience and judgement level of those involved, but based on the behaviour I witness of security checkpoint personnel (see below), I’m not convinced that’s the reason.

2.  How lax the staff appear at various screening areas.  I don’t particularly want hard-nosed drill sergeants barking orders at me, but I also don’t want people falling asleep.  It seems I generally find both extremes at security checkpoints, which annoys me.  I’m not saying these are the *only* people – there’s also typically a mix of seemingly decent, diligent people staffing these areas.  But that’s not enough.  I’ve watched my bags going through x-ray machines, showing a vast array of weird cables and devices (I travel with a lot of weird stuff!) and watched as the person sitting at the x-ray machine simply let it pass right through *without looking at the screen*, either with their head turned while talking to a colleague, or eating.

I’ve observed that behaviour at least 4 times over the last 12-18 months of travel.  Coming up with extremely conservative numbers, those particular screeners might be letting 3-5% of the baggage go by essentially unchecked.  If 5% of the bags can get by unchecked at a checkpoint, what’s the purpose of having it?  The only substantive answer I can arrive at is “theater for the masses”.

My idea centers on this carry-on bag checkpoint process.  Specifically, my idea would be to have the bag images be fed to an internet site and allow multiple people to judge whether something was ‘suspicious’ enough to warrant a hand investigation.  However, the speed of this might not be enough to work in real time.  So, the next step would be to associate a passenger picture with the bags specifically at the checkpoint, and if it’s determined through the ‘crowdsourced’ site that a particular bag should be inspected, the bag’s owner could more easily be tracked down in the airport.

While this seems like it might be a lot more work, personally, I’d trust the accuracy of dozens or hundreds of people of varying backgrounds giving their votes on a bag rather than one person who might not even be *looking* at the bag to pass judgement.

Lastly, is there a way to *report* on TSA or security staff who appear to be negligent at their post?  I’d try to take pictures, but I suspect I’d be labelled a terrorist rather than someone who’s simply trying to report on someone not doing their job (which, incidentally, is supposed to be about securing my life and safety).

3 comments »

Posted in Business, Ideas, Society, Travel

Next magazine topic survey – winner announced

December 23rd, 2009

A few weeks ago, I posted a survey asking for input on the next magazine topic for Web Dev Publishing to pursue.  The results were interesting, but unfortunately the results were not definitive, and I’m left with the same quandry as before – which topic to choose.

The winner of the survey, selected at random, was Mark McDonnell.  Congrats Mark, I’ll be sending your Amazon Gift Card over today.

The top vote getters were (in no particular order)

  • MySQL
  • NoSQL
  • JVM Languages (jruby, jython, scala, clojure, etc)
  • Zend Framework
  • Database technologies

The votes were pretty evenly split between all of these topics, which leaves me with no clear direction as to which, if any, of these topics would make sense to pursue (from a demand standpoint).   There already was a MySQL PDF magazine, which has transitioned in to a “open source database magazine”, covering more technologies than just MySQL.  NoSQL, while interesting, has been criticized as just a ‘flavor of the month’ (though the interest shown in this survey was significant).  Zend Framework and JVM Languages are the two that seem the most promising.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

6 comments »

Posted in Business, Development, Ideas, Java, PHP, Software, Web