The MicroISV Digest for the week ending April 6th, 2009.

(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• Steve Cholerton, Arten Science, is looking for a few brave alpha/beta testers for his new Mac OS X database query and management too, Orac. (via email)
• Dennis Crane, (aka Dr Explain for True BoxShot), wanted to make sure people know there’s a new version of TBXCoverEditor out sporting better compatibility with Vista, new effects and new free templates. (via email)
• Jerry Weinstock, over at CRM Innovation LLC, wrote in to say they’ve launched Web2CRM a new Silverlight SaaS application that lets a non-programmer create a form for their website that will push visitor inquiries directly into their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. This is one of the first Silverlight commercial apps I’ve heard about. (via email)
• Will, at pindropper.com, is looking for feedback on his new site for PicCard, a new Apple iPhone app that lets you turn any picture you take with your iPhone into a postcard that’s automatically mailed within the U.S. for 99 cents. Cool! (via BOS)
• Todd Gasall, My Productive Meetings, is looking for feedback on his site and app My Productive Meeting. My Productive Meeting creates meeting agendas and minutes.(via BOS)
• In Show #21 of the Startup Success Podcast Pat and I interview Ian Ozsvald, founder of ProCasts on the art and science, mystery and drama of creating great screencasts for your startup’s product or web site. Ian generously shares his expertise about how to target your screencast, techniques that make a huge difference, a range of free and non-free tools, ways to improve your video communication abilities and more. If you want to know how to create a screencasts that shines, this is the show for you!

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• No blog posts this past week caught anyone’s eye.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• The New York Times has a great and ironic story, The iPhone Gold Rush out. Definitely worth the read. The irony is the New York Times iPhone app is a godawful piece of stinking crap that crashes at least 4 times each and every single time I use it. It is easily the most unstable iPhone app I’ve ever seen. Maybe they should hire some of the programmers they profile to redo their app…

The MicroISV Digest for the week ending March 30th, 2009.

(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• Ron Mertens, Metalgrass, is running a Tweet about it and win a $800 OLED Kodak photo frame contest at OLED-Info. (via email)
• Andrey K, Cloudberry Lab, has been a busy guy: he’s just released a new version of his Windows CloudBerry S3 Explorer, and Twitter plugins for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. (via email)
• Vance Lucas, InvoiceMore, has launched his new online billing and invoicing solutions for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, especially those who do a lot of recurring billing. (via email)
• Kevin Moore, Moore Software, is looking for feedback on his new site for MissingLink Project Center, a project management plugin for Microsoft Office. MissingLink provides a single, powerful window into the emails, files and people that comprise a project, from within Microsoft Outlook. (Disclaimer – I wrote the copy.)
• In Show #20 of the Startup Success Podcast Pat and I interview the founders of UserTesting.com, a crowd sourced user testing startup that cuts the price per tester down from hundreds of dollars to $19. Definitely worth a listen: Cheap usability testing changes how development gets done.

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• Micah Elliot, has an interesting post, 15 Roles Every Startup Needs Filled. Warning: there is mention of hats.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• Some people if they woke up one fine day and found a large company had pocketed their revenue would just take it. Not Amy Hoy, Freckle Time Tracking, who wrote up how Google Checkout was anything but Not Evil and after the ensuing online uproar got some attention, got her money back. Her followup post, Google Checkout still unfit for business: I got my money, but would you? is something you should definitely read if you sell software for your living. Way to go Amy!

The MicroISV Digest for the week ending March 23rd, 2009.

(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• Hector Sosa, Jr, PainlessSVN, got his first sale of Subversion Server MMC SnapIn this week. Way to go Hector! (via BOS)
• Vadim Kleyzit, Stimulus Technology, has released a public beta their ASP.NET software accelerator, Web Stimulus, which speeds up web pages 3-8 times with minimal code change. They are inviting beta testers who will receive free licenses. I’ve worked with Vadim on his company’s site and seen Web Stimulus deliver the goods. Definitely check this out if you do ASP.NET development. (via email)
• Mat Conrad, Homeschool Day Book, got his first sale of Homeschool Day Book this week too, and he’s a happy camper. (via BOS)
• Greg Driver, Rellik Software, has released version 1.7 of Portfolio Manager, a Windows stock portfolio management application. (via email)
• David Mytton, www.boxedice.com, is for beta testers of a new server monitoring application: Server Density. You can email him directly at customer.service@boxedice.com. (via email)
• A. Perdereau, Afava, has released his second product, TreeCells, a hierarchical spreadheet, and is looking for feedback on his site and products. (via BOS).
• Show #19 of the Startup Success Podcast featured an interview with user experience consultant and author Lou Carbone, on understanding how your product and site make customers feel, and how you can shape that experience.

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• Dror, 6zap, talks about generating a spike in traffic: How to get a traffic spike to your Web 2.0 App. (via BOS)

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• Scott Carpenter, InvoicePlace, found a twogood ones : Tips for writing marketing material and The Cult of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark. Fair warning: If you don’t like ambiguity, don’t read this last post!

The MicroISV Digest for the week ending March 16th, 2009.

(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• Nico Westerdale, BitsDuJour, has redesigned and relaunched BDJ’s Software Marketing Resource. The site is a very useful combination of articles, features and forum for small software vendors. Check it out. (via email and BOS).
• Alex, Jitbit Software, is looking for beta testers of their new hosted helpdesk software. (via email)
• Steve McLeod, Poker Copilot, is gearing up for version 2 and is looking for some advice on making the jump. (via BOS)
• Betsy Tuma, Tumasoft, is looking for bloggers interested in reviewing Preset Viewer 2.0, a Photoshop brush, shape, pattern & style browser. (via email).
• Bart Park, Janitor programmer, has launched his first product, ImageMark, a Windows image watermarking program and would like some feedback on his site and product. (via BOS)
• EV, Eneset Technology, is looking for feedback and suggestions on his new web site for his product FLV Mate, a cross-platform application for uploading and hosting videos to Amazon S3.(via BOS)
• Show #18 of the Startup Success Podcast featured an interview with Patrick Lightbody, founder of BrowserMob, an web site/service load testing microISV. With BrowserMob, you can spin up actual FireFox browser instances running Selenium to pound your site – by the thousand, via Amazon Web Services.

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• Over at Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen, there’s an interesting guest post: Free to Freemium: 5 lessons learned from YouSendIt.com.
• I did another post for Avangate, The most important startup decision you may forget to make.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• There’s a good post worth mulling over on OnStartups.com, Startup Lessons From The Underpants Gnomes: PROFIT! Funny, but with a very good point.

The MicroISV Digest for the week ending March 9th, 2009.
(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• David Christian, Bright Spark Software, has launched SimpleGlucose, an elegant online diabetes management service.(via email)
• Vijay Patel, Evolving Software Ltd., has released a new version of TrueView for .NET, a rapid prototyping application that uses Domain Driven Design. Free licenses for blogging reviewers. (via email).
• Speaking of free review copies Germán S. Arduino, PasswordsPro, is giving away free licenses to bloggers who want to review their passwords/notes manager, PasswordsPro. (via email)
• Persistence pays off. Jason Abate, Panopta.com, is offering readers of this digest 25% off his burgeoning web site/application monitoring service to mark his first full year in business. Details in the BOS post, but worth quoting: “At this point, we’ve had month-over-month growth in website traffic, customer signups and total revenue every month except for one, and it’s now generating enough revenue to support multiple people. In that time we’ve gone through three complete website redesigns (including the latest that launched last week) and nine major releases of the application.” (via email)
• Aulay Macaulay, Marvel Internet Group, is looking for feedback and suggestions on his new startup, JustRosters. Definitely check out Aulay’s blog posting about how he went successfully from conception to launch in two months.(via email).
• Mike Stokes, Nett 30, wrote in to announce Nett 30 – a small business/contractor/developer invoicing web app is out of beta and available (via email).

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• Scott Carpenter, InvoicePlace, found two good posts for your reading: Starting Up In A Downturn – 10 Reasons To Start A Company In An Economic Downturn and Caffeine addiction? Manage your coffee intake. (Back in college I had a girlfriend who worked her way up to 45 cups a day. It didn’t turn out pretty.)

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• The Collapse of the VC Ecosystem & What It Will Look Like Post Recovery is an excellent post by serial entrepreneur and blogger Furqan Nazeeri is well worth reading if you’re under the impression that the equity funding world has been somehow untouched by recent economic events.

The MicroISV Digest for the week ending March 2nd, 2009.
(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• Steve Cholerton, Arten Science, has released R10Clean Version 2 Professional, a data manipulation and cleaning tool and R10Decrypt, a free R10Cipher encrption tool.(via email)
• Kasper, Tanggaard SoftWare, is currently running a beta on the next version of TSW WebCoder, a robust web editor. TSW WebCoder’s features include HTML, CSS and PHP IntelliSense, integrated mySQL database client, Integrated W3C validation, built-in FTP client and more. (via email).
• James Standen, nModal Solutions Inc, has released a beta of his first product, Datamartist, a desktop data transformation tool for creating data mart data models quickly and simply, using a graphical environment. (via email and BOS)
• Torsten Uhlmann, AGYNAMIX, is giving away free licenses for bloggers who want to review his cross-platform clipboard/file utility, Simidude. (via email)
• Cosmina Stefanache, the Product Marketing Manager for Fanurio, a time tracking/billing application wrote in to let people know they’ve just released version 2.0. (via email).
• Show #17 of the Startup Success Podcast featured an interview with Microsoft UX Architect Evangelist Josh Holmes on Silverlight: its future, what it offers startups and microISVs and more.
• Ian Drake, Notify Wire, had released, Notifywire.com, a cool Craigslist distributed scanning/notification Windows app. (via email and BOS).

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

(not much this week)

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• If you are still puzzling over how the entire world financial system has been brought to its knees, here’s a short, interesting animation that does a great job: The Crisis of Credit Visualized.

The MicroISV Digest for the week ending February 23rd, 2009.
(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• If you’ve been interested in Twitter but not sure how it can increase your microISV’s online reputation, Kristen Nicole’s and I’s Twitter Survival Guide ebook goes on sale for one day via Bits du Jour Tuesday, Feb. 24 ($14.95 instead of $24.95)
• The Business of Software Network is hosting an online chat this week on Twitter and microblogging we me Thursday, Feb. 26th at 5pm GMT/ 9am PT.
• Steve Li, Cellbi Software, just published SvLite Effects 2.0 – a Silverlight dynamic animations library. Steve is looking for feedback on the 2.0 version of his product. (via BOS)
• Show #16 of the Startup Success Podcast featured an interview with Rails developer and Atlantic Dominion Solutions CEO Robert Dempsey on going from development house to startup, pragmatic startup development, rails and more.

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• Ian Landsman, UserScape, has a new post up you should read: How to Sell More Software by Adding 12 Characters to Your Homepage.
• Another story about iPhone developer: from downsized IT professional to iPhone developer making money: Experiences Of A Newbie iPhone Developer.
• Ian Ozsvald, ProCasts.co.uk, a professional screencast maker, has put together a post good resources for microISVS/startups who are ready to tackle putting their app into the movies at Screencaster Interviews and Articles. (via email)

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• If you think you know the future, your future, you’re wrong. Here’s another TED conference presentation that will remind you the future is coming down the tracks: Juan Enriquez: Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis. (if you own an iPhone, get the TED app.)