Roddypod

Wow, I haven’t posted in a while. Nothing has really changed in the last month or so. Jess and I continue to check things off of our wedding TO DO list. Our “Save the date” cards are ready to go out to our guests and we are going to meet with two photographers early next month. We are also going to look at wedding bands the same day. We chose the design for our wedding cake last month and wedding cakes are damn expensive! Next, we need to get an idea of how many rooms to reserve at the resort where our reception is going to be. I think we are making great progress with our wedding plans so I don’t think we’ll be stressing about last minute details. Jess has already tried on several wedding gowns but I don’t know if she’s decided on one. As if she would tell me.

Tomorrow, Jess and I are going to her mom’s and step-dad’s new house to help them move in. In two weeks, Jess’ sister is flying in for a few days and Jess’ dad, step-mom, and half-sister are coming down from Maine to visit for a few days. We’ve been in our house almost eight months and her dad hasn’t been here yet. Oh well…

On a technical note, I have thought of another product idea that I am currently working on. Because I tend to put myself under Non-Disclosure Agreements, I can’t risk giving out too many details. I’m afraid of leaking too much information and someone else copying my idea and releasing it before I can. When I get close to releasing it, I’ll share more details.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking of how I’ll be distributing my software and accepting money for them. There are several solutions out there but choosing one has been very difficult. So, I was able to narrow my search down to two options: Golden%Braeburn and Potion Store.

Golden%Braeburn:

I’ve been waiting almost a year Golden%Braeburn to be released and see what it would offer. G%B is the open source in-app store framework that was created by Wil Shipley for his application Delicious Library. The great thing about the G%B framework is that it will accept credit cards within your application, send them to a server, process them, and return a software license if cleared. Localization for your application for different countries/languages is also a benefit to using the framework. Unfortunately, this is going to be a little pricey.

G%B needs to have a dedicated back-end “server” running Mac OS X “Leopard” that is always connected to the internet to accept orders. I could dust off my old G4 Power Mac and use that at my house to save on hosting costs but my Comcast internet isn’t 100% reliable, especially in the winter. Power outages are also a problem. So the only solution is dedicated Mac hosting. I could the Power Mac in a data center but that costs hundreds of dollars. Then I saw Mac Mini Colo. You can buy a Mac Mini and send it to this company for them to host. You have to pay for the space and the bandwidth and could cost around $60 per month. Add that to the $600 it would take just to buy the machine.

G%B requires PayPal’s PayFlow Pro which will do the credit card processing. This costs $60 per month with a $249 setup fee. On top of that, PayPal takes 10 cents per purchase. Then G%B takes 5% for itself for providing this framework (which I think they should). So in the end, no matter how you look at it, it will cost a LOT of money per month to implement this solution. For me, I can’t afford to do this because, for example, I’d have to sell at least 20 copies of my software just to break even for the month.

Potion Store:

The Potion Store is an open source application that was written in Ruby on Rails by Andy Kim of the Potion Factory. There are no fees to use the store. All I have to do is implement a script to generate licenses and put in my PayPal Website Payments Pro merchant account information and start selling my software. The store can accept credit cards, PayPal, and can also be used with Google Checkout. This will appeal to lot a lot users by saving time with their saved information. The Potion Store comes complete with an admin interface so you can look at sales, history, receipts, and even create coupons for discounts. Also included is a way for customers to find their licenses if they lose them.

I’ve read in the discussion group on Google Code for this project and there are a lot of users on their that have little experience with Ruby on Rails and have had almost no trouble getting the store up and running. The Potion Store is actively being developed and have very few open bugs.

The Potion Store uses PostgreSQL as the database back-end. This will hold all of the customer data used at checkout and keep track of the software licenses produced by the script. The database, however, will not record financial information. This is a HUGE liability if the database is hacked and someone steals credit card numbers. Because PayPal is going to process credit cards, they will hold the credit card information and I won’t see it. All PayPal or Google Checkout tells my store is if the credit card purchase was accepted or denied.

Since I do consulting, I need a way to send invoices to my customers and have them payment directly through my web store. Currently, my customers send money to my PayPal account. I want to be able to send them an email with the invoice attached as well as a link to a payment section of my site where they can log in with an existing account and be presented with their current bill. They can then fill proceed to pay using a credit card, PayPal account, or Gmail Checkout.

So, I’m taking the less expensive route and will implement Potion Store as my means of accepting money for my software and consulting services. Why reinvent the wheel when there is perfectly good solution already out there?

I have no idea how I came up with the idea for CiteScribe. I think it was when I was in the MBA program and had to make a bibliography for a book I used for research in one of my classes. I think it’s safe to say that making bibliographies can be a real pain in the neck. There are so many ways to format a bibliography and I thought there could be a much easier way of making them. I started writing some ideas down and I basically came up with a website where people can enter an ISBN number, title of a book, or author and be presented with a formatted citation for that item. Where does this information come from? For now, Amazon.

Amazon has had an open system for several years now where developers could make their own web store and obtain item information in XML and show that information on their own site. People can purchase items from them and the website makes a commission through Amazon’s Affiliate program.

I’m not really interested in starting a store though. I am however interested in the Affiliate program to monetize the site in some way and perhaps adding Google AdWords later. After choosing the format of their bibliography (MLA or ABA) and they submit their request, the request then gets the required information from Amazon to make a bibliography (i.e. Author, Title, Publisher, etc.). The information for that book is then returned to CiteScribe and formated in the selected format and displayed to the user according. I plan on displaying any cover art that is available and making it an Affiliate link to Amazon. If the user follows through and buys it, I get a 4% commission.

For a while, I thought how I would accomplish getting the XML requests from Amazon and displaying the data to the user. I though I’d make all of this from scratch but it turns out there are several developers who have already done most of the work for me. I can do it using boto written in Python, Amazon Products Feed - Associates Script written in Perl, or Project TinA written in PHP which is derived from the Perl scripts. I’m mostly leaning towards Perl because it’s the most complete solution for what I want to do. I can wrap the Perl scripts into my own site design and create the code that would return a bibliography in MLA or APA format. This is just to get started.

Later on, I’d like to incorporate user accounts where users can store their references that they’ve created and then enable them to share this information with other users. It would also be handy for users to look up others based on the types of research they are doing and collaborate that way and share information. I would also like to enable users to reference all other kinds of media that is used today. Making references for digital media, music, PubMed, journals, newspapers, magazines, etc. This site, however, is not my baby. More of a pet project for fun. I have something else in the works that should be very lucrative if I can pull it off. More on that later…

For about a year, I’ve wanted to make an application that could connect to my Vonage account, play my voicemail, save them to my computer, and delete them from the account when done. I first wanted to make it a Dashboard Widget but would need to incorporate Keychain access for storing the account username and password securely. That would be easy but accessing the local disk for storing the files when downloaded would be very difficult, if not impossible. Scratch that. Then, I thought I’d build it as a Cocoa application. That would work nicely but there’s one tiny problem. There is no way for me to access Vonage’s internal services for authenticating and retrieving account information. In a nutshell, there is no Vonage API to do this.

I sent Vonage Customer Service an email asking them about an API that they may be using internally. I think I got a response later in the day with a completely stupid answer. They first gave me the definition of API (Application Programming Interface) and then tried to convince me to sign up for their affiliate program. WTF?!?! They also managed to include in the email that they didn’t offer an API. Okay, that’s fine. But did they have to include that other crap?

There is, however, a way to initiate calls using your account through web services but that just sounds like a stupid function to me. Phones today can store phone numbers and can be dialed by pressing two buttons. My approach to using the service is a lot more useful but Vonage doesn’t provide the information for anyone to actually build an application to access their services. This also seems to be a trend with most VoIP phone companies. I don’t think there is an API for Comcast Digital Voice and AT&T VoIP. So switching wouldn’t benefit me in any way. So, this screws me out of making an iPhone app as well for this service. I’ll put this on the back shelf and wait and see if API’s are released in the near future. Now, on to my other apps. The first one being “Eject!”.

After months of thinking of a name for my independent Mac development and consulting business, I have finally come up with something I like. Say hello to Kinetic Code, LLC. I thought of this name the other night and it took me about an hour. I registered the domain with (mt) Media Temple which also hosts this blog. The process was quick, easy, and cheap. I own two domains now and will cost $30 a year for both. I got email up an running quickly also. Now, I need to get a website.

I want to do the website myself to save money but I am a terrible designer. I’ve been looking at products such as RapidWeaver and Sandvox. These applications are template-based website generators which have CSS and the graphics already built in. You can customize the pages as much as you want to suit your needs. I’ve been using the demos of both and I’m not too thrilled with the standard templates that come with them. However, there are a lot of 3rd party templates out there that I have looked at and really like. So, I may use one of these apps to make my site and when I start making some money, I can pay a professional to design a site for me later down the road.

Another thing that I would like done is to have a logo designed for my site. I am aware of several graphic artists out there, especially those who specialize in making logos and application icons for other indy Mac developers. I’ve read several reviews for designers and two have really stood out. The first is Bryan Bell who has designed the icons for MarsEdit (which I use to post to this blog) and BBEdit 8.7. The other designer that I really like is Jordan Langille from OneToad Design. He has made the icons for Black Ink and Changes.

I will also need to set up a web store to sell my applications and a way for clients to pay me when I consult for them. I have been looking at Potion Store written by Andy Kim that will enable customers to purchase my apps and distribute serial numbers to them. I will be using PayPal Payments Pro to process credit cards. For now, I will be using Billable made by Clickable Bliss to make invoices for clients. I will implement the online store once my first application is ready for sale.

There are some other things I’d like to do. Setup up a business checking account, maybe a PO box at the post office. It may take a month for my business to be registered with the State of New Hampshire but there’s a lot of stuff I can do in the meantime. After it’s registered, I’ll need to get a tax ID and then buy QuickBooks or some other program to keep track of my expenses for tax purposes. So far, it’s been an amazing ride and I’ve barely gotten started. Stay tuned…

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UPDATE
I ended up purchasing RapidWeaver. Got it for $34 with a discount code.

I started thinking about working for myself for the past two years now. Why does this appeal to me? For starters, I’m very frustrated with where I am in my career. I don’t share the same vision and enthusiasm of my current employer. Right now, I’m just “paying the bills”. I’ve always wanted to be my own boss and work for myself. The thought of calling the shots excites me to no end. My dad was self-employed and has recently retired after running his successful business for 27 years. He didn’t have to answer to no one but himself! How cool is that?!?!

So, what am I going to do about it?. I want to start a software business where I will most likely be the only employee. I don’t want to be just any software developer, I want to be an indie Mac developer! I want to write programs for the Macintosh. I also want to write apps and services for the web. I have so many ideas in my head and on paper, I think that I can really make something that can sustain Jessica and I.

How am I going to do this? Where will I find the time? I have no time! Working full time and being in school leaves little for anything else. Getting an MBA is my “back up plan”. If all else fails, I can still find a management position where I can at least call some of the shots but still have to report to someone. So, I’m thinking of extending my studies to give me more time to work on my ventures. I was planning on taking two classes per term but I feel like I’m stretched too thin. So, I’m going to finish this term and next term and then take one class per term after that. It’ll take me about a year longer to get my MBA but it’ll still be worth it in the long run.

What do I want to start first? I would like to start my indie Mac software business first until it generates enough income to allow me to leave my current job. I have several ideas that I think can generate some income quickly. More on that later. As for my web business(es), I have a few ideas kicking around that are mostly based on ad revenue models. Subscription based models are a little tougher to sustain but I might investigate that later. What I plan on doing first is making a compliment to an existing service from another company and hopefully having them incorporate it into their site. I will put advertising on my pages and share any ad revenue. This will also be applied to other sites at later dates.

So there you have it. Sorry I didn’t go into too much detail but I want to develop the apps a little more before I let the cat out of the bag. I’ll definitely do some previews when it comes close to launching to hopefully drive interest and traffic. When that’ll be, I hope it’s soon. Stay tuned…

“Roddypod” is what my mother called me when I was a kid. She will occasionally let it slip now and then to this day. I didn’t mind her calling me that until she started doing it in public. I don’t even know how she came up with that name. My parents are weird in that way I guess. My sister Andrea also had a nickname. She was called “Andy-Panda” growing up. Don’t know where that came from either. For my oldest sister Amity, I don’t even think she had a nickname.

I feel like I’m getting a late start to this considering my age, almost 26. Why am I even bothering doing this? Well, I want to start a software/internet company and I feel that a blog can help promote my business as well as network with other people/businesses. I am also about to start graduate school at Plymouth State University for an MBA and I will talk about my studies and experience on this blog.

I have always had an interest in software development and running a company. I have been interested in making easy to use applications for the Mac as well as useful tools and services on the web. I already have a CS degree and programming experience, now I need the business knowledge to complete the puzzle and get my ventures started. You can read all about it here.