rooSwitch has become part of my development process, especially when testing out new features. It’s a lot easier to test from a clean slate than with my current collection of 5000+ webnotes. Plus I won’t mess any of my personal webnotes up. I wrote about rooSwitch a few weeks ago while I was testing it. My personal nickname for rooSwitch is “Fast Data Switching”…

Big congrats to Brian! Take it from me, it is tough to get out the 1.0 of your first for-pay product.

WebnoteHappy had actually existed for quite a while in private before the 1.0 release in May. While it was private, I tried a lot of different things to make it easy to use and integrated with your workflow. I got quite a bit of feedback too. That’s really important for making a good app I think. Because you need to consider how people actually use something not how you think they will use it.

I think one of the things that makes WebnoteHappy easy to use is the hot key dialog that lets you quickly add new webnotes (which I’m thinking of calling “Quick Add hot key” or maybe “Quick Add shortcut” instead of “global hot key”). It works when you’re in Camino, OmniWeb, NetNewsWire, and Safari. But what about Firefox users?

I didn’t think it was possible, but it turns out that you can get the necessary information from Firefox and into WebnoteHappy without using a bookmarklet. mph blogged the solution in WebNoteFoxy. I love it when users contribute to an app. Its always a pleasant surprise and makes things better for everyone. I’ll look into leveraging this solution into one that works with the Quick Add feature of WebnoteHappy. Thanks mph!

Matt Gemmell wrote in Losing Direction:

One of my dreams is of course to do the shareware thing; start a little software company and get some well-focused, beautiful little apps out there, targeting niche markets and filling those needs as perfectly as I can engineer them to.

That’s exactly my dream with Happy Apps and WebnoteHappy, my well-focused (on bookmarking the web), beautiful little app. The trouble is, and I think Matt is trying to come to terms with this, is that this is not easy. Its also not what society wants you to do. And unlike college, your parents (or anyone else for that matter) are not going to pay for it. If you were to start the next wbtwo.oh company, then _maybe_ you would have a slim chance of getting VC money. And health insurance in the US isn’t cheap. So its a big struggle to live out this dream.

At least you have to give it a shot. I watched the movie Dodgeball recently and the main character was in the process of giving up his dream. Then Lance Armstrong, the man who singlehandedly popularized colored wrist bands, shows up and basically tells him “look I was diagnosed with brain, liver and testicular cancer” and says that even with all that he managed to live out his dream and something like “I’m sure you have a good reason for quitting your dream but you’ll probably regret this for the rest of your life.”

So to Matt and others out there, I say go for it. But do some planning first to maximize your chances before you take the leap. Maybe I should write about that more.

If you crash and burn, then try again. Or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. But you have to try. Otherwise, you’ll never know, probably after a year or two of difficulty in starting up, if you would have succeeded.

I just released WebnoteHappy 1.1 which adds support for secure communication over SSL to del.icio.us and uses the new del.icio.us API which will be required in July. Also I’m now support private del.icio.us bookmarks via a “Save privately to del.icio.us” command. I added importing of existing bookmarks for Firefox and OmniWeb users.

WebnoteHappy also plays much more nicely with Mail.app. First, its default hot key for adding new webnotes quickly, Command-Shift-D, is only enabled in Camino, Firefox, NetNewsWire, OmniWeb, and Safari. So it won’t conflict with Mail.app’s Send mail hot key anymore. Second, you can now use Command-C to copy any webnote’s link to send it via email.

Read more in the release notes or download WebnoteHappy 1.1 now. It’s a free upgrade for existing customers and you can get your very own license for $24.95. The download includes a 30 day trial. Enjoy!

[Update: Oops – I linked to the 1.0.1 download. That’s fixed now. Thanks to FredB for pointing that out. I need to get some more sleep. :)]

One of the problems of developing a non document-oriented app (like TextEdit or VoodooPad) is that it can be hard to test. You can’t just start with fresh new documents with File | New Document. A lot of times you want to test out new features like Import into a fresh environment so you can see clearly if the Import worked or not.

I used to just go into my Application Support directory, do a File | Duplicate in Finder, then delete, then restart. Then when I was done testing, I would go back with a copy and rename. It gets to be a pain.

rooSwitch by Brian Cooke of roobaSoft solves this problem nicely. Brian released it into public beta (beta 3) today but I’ve been using it in private beta for the past few weeks and it works well. The screencast is well worth watching because it shows how to use rooSwitch and also nicely demonstrates WebnoteHappy at the same time.

With rooSwitch, I can have my regular data. Then I can create a fresh new profile of my data and then switch to it. When I start up WebnoteHappy, I have the equivalent of “New Document”. Now I can test my Import code. Then when I’m done, I switch back to my regular data. Anyways check out rooSwitch, watch the video, and send Brian some feedback.

I’m trying to coordinate a CocoaDevHouse in Washington DC in July. It looks like the 15th is the best, although the 22nd is appealing since it would coincide with the next Iron Coder contest. You can’t beat two for one. :)

If you’re interested in getting together with some fellow Cocoa programmers, either comment on this post or add yourself to the CocoaDevHouseWashingtonDC page.

About two years ago, my family and I put up a bird feeder so we could watch birds in our backyard. At first we had no birds. Zip. Nada. We hoped and prayed and did a little marketing by putting seeds all around it on the ground with aluminum foil. Birds are attracted by aluminum foil they say because it is shiny. Eventually a bird came after a few weeks. We were so excited! Then another bird came a few days later. And then another. At some point, the birds chirping after getting some yummy bird food alerted other birds in the area. You might call it Word of Beak. Then we had lots of birds coming (and one hungry and crafty squirrel who later tired of climbing the house I think.) So everyone’s happy – the birds are eating and we’re getting to watch birds up close. It was one of those clear, see-through bird feeders that you attach to your window.

Then we accidentally hit it and it fell and broke. No more birds.

Good news though: we recently bought a new one just like it, but better. It’s clearer and stronger. I thought, ok we’re in for another long period before we see a lot of birds again. But actually a few birds showed up the first day we put it up even though it had been gone for a few weeks. That was surprising! It seems that the bird feeder had earned a reputation! Within a week, we’re back up to full capacity and having to replace the bird food every few days.

So what does that have to do with anything? Well, I think this is a good analogy for how a software business works. The birdseed is your software product. The birds are the users.

At first, most people won’t know you exist no matter how good your marketing may be. But the early adopters (the early birds) will find you and eat your BirdSeed 1.0. If it’s good, they’ll tell people about it either on VersionTracker or MacUpdate or on their blog. That’s as sweet as a bird song. Because then other people will eventually notice and then try your app. But it can take a long time, so you have to have patience. Everyone is busy and you’re competing with a thousand other things to do on their schedule.

The new and improved bird feeder? That’s your 2.0. If you make it to 2.0, then your bird feeder will have been around for a while and people will know that this has got some quality bird seed in it. At this point, I think marketing gets a little easier. All due to a lot of Word of Beak.

Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post is one of my favorite journalists. He covers personal technology for the Post and usually has good insights on Apple products. His latest column raving about the MacBook contained something that surprised me: the folks that make Parallels is in Herndon, VA. (You know, Parallels, that thing that lets you run Windows or Linux or FreeBSD on your Intel Mac.)

That’s only about 25 minutes away. How very cool! I will have to track someone from Parallels down and chat them up. Maybe I should start with the guy who runs the Parallels Virtualization Blog.

I booked my WWDC 2006 travel plans this weekend. I’m flying my favorite airline JetBlue which is cheap, has in-flight personal satellite TV, and flies direct from Dulles (which is about 30 minutes west of me) to Oakland (which is about 30 minutes outside of San Francisco.) I’m going to have a roommate to share the cost of the hotel – they’re really pricey in August!

This got me thinking… there’s a difference when you’re booking travel as an Indie trying to live The Life and as a Corporate Programmer (hereafter “Corporate”):

1. When you’re Corporate, you try to save money because you’re trying to help the corporation make more profit. When you’re an Indie, you try to save money because you’re trying to stay Indie by not running out of money.

2. When you’re Corporate, you have to deal with some travel policies which might actually cost the corporation more for travel. When you’re Indie, you’re free to shop around for the lowest deals.

3. When you’re Corporate, you try to rack up frequent flyer miles on business travel. When you’re Indie, you try to use your frequent flyer miles on business travel.

P.S. If you want WWDC Hotel recommendations, email me.

Something that kids have to learn is to share. And one way to this with computer time is to set a timer to limit each kids time. But a plain kitchen timer is sort of boring.

On vacation, I decided to try out Voice Candy and it was a hit with the kids. For those who don’t know, Voice Candy is like Photo Booth for audio. It works great with the built-in microphone of my PowerBook although for good results, talk close to the keyboard.

What I did was record a reminder using the Vader voice saying “Your turn is over.” Then I set it for 15 minutes and let my oldest son play. After 15 minutes, he sort of got startled but then asked what that was. I showed him Voice Candy and we had fun recording with all the different voices. He was amused by all of them but I think he liked Vader and Robot the best. Then we just kept on alternating 15 minute timers with his little brother who also likes to play on the computer.

Another interesting feature is that you can email your recording to people. I’ll have to try this in the office and see what people think. It can operate in menubar mode so that it is unobtrusive but that is almost unnecessary because its UI is unique and quite attractive.