Association of Software Professionals

Many ASP members have been in business for quite some time and have their programs up and running. But the times (and Windows versions) are changing and there are some things one might easily overlook, being so used to one’s own programs.

Here are 6 things that you should check on your programs:

Code signing

Signed executables are important at many stages nowadays. Even though the customers usually wouldn’t notice the actual signatures, they will notice the reduced warnings that a signed executable causes. This warnings do not only come from Windows during the installation, but also from antivirus programs and other security software which rate the “trust” of each program. That’s why you should not only sign your installer, but also all ‘.exe’ and ‘.dll’ files that you’re installing.

High-resolution icons

I never noticed this one myself until a customer told me. The 16×16 and 32×32 icons in my programs looked pixilated and outdated. You can add higher resolutions to your “.ico” file with the freeware IcoFX. Be sure to keep a backup of the old “.ico” file because not all IDEs allow linking the new “.ico” files. As a workaround you can use the command-line tool ReplaceVistaIcon (available on Codeproject) which can replace the “.ico” section in your executable with the new “.ico” file.

Common controls 6

The new version of the Microsoft GUI will allow applications to have a “nicer” look, for example the slightly rounded buttons. You can activate this by adding a manifest file with a “Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls” section. You can either specify the manifest file in your project settings or use Microsoft’s manifest.exe command-line tool.

UAC

Many customers now have Windows versions with split rights accounts. In normal mode a lot of things will fail, like installing a service or creating a shortcut in the startup folder. If your program requires full admin rights for any of its actions, you should be aware of this. If the function fails you should either give the user a **helpful** error message or handle the UAC “elevation” to full rights automatically.

You can detect the type of account your program is running under with GetTokenInformation and TokenElevationType. It is not possible to elevate a running process. You have to start a new process with ShellExecuteEx, specifying “runas” as verb.

Progress bar

If your program includes any sections that display a progress bar for some time, then you should support the Windows 7 feature of displaying the progress also in the Windows task bar. The details greatly depend on your programming language. Use IID_ITaskbarList3 as a starting point.

Larger fonts

The screen resolutions have become so ridiculously high, that it’s difficult to read the text on the screen. That’s why many customers have activated larger fonts in Windows. This causes Windows to automatically scale up all dialogs. This works nicely with most standard dialogs but can cause problems with custom controls. Check your application while large fonts are activated.

Thomas Holz is the owner of ITSTH and the author of outlook tools to synchronize, remove duplicates and use boilerplate texts and writes in his devblog, if he still has too much time after optimizing the website.

Thomas Holz Articles product marketing, software, software marketing

A recent study of ASP membership may help ASP members and non-members alike.
As a benefit of ASP membership, member site URLs are listed in our site. Yet, something like 18% of our members do not take advantage of this benefit. Among that 18%, we think the rate of business failure is nearly 2:1 greater.

The chart shows year of joining ASP and records only those members not supplying the ASP with a URL we could publish. The expire/active determination was made as of Aug. 2010. So, for members joining in 2002, 17% of the expires did not supply a publishable URL whereas 9% of the still active members have not supplied a publishable URL.

This same pattern holds up year after year: the odds are greater that not supplying a URL to ASP when joining leads to lapse of ASP membership (the main contributor of which is business failure).

The message here is do not treat your site URL like a secret. Advertise it in all appropriate venues.

Dennis Reinhardt Articles

Today it is relatively easy to market your software (through a web site), distribute the software (via Internet downloads) and collect payment (using an online payment provider). It wasn’t so easy before the Internet existed. “Shareware” appeared in the 1980s as a way for small commercial developers to reach a large market.

Shareware was one of the surprises of the early personal computer industry. Who would have thought that you could make a living from software paid for on the honor system? Make it publicly available, invite people to make copies of it and give them to their friends, and base your income prospects on a little notice asking people to send you a few dollars if they found the program useful.

Michael Swaine, Dr Dobbs, January 2000

Early shareware pioneers including Andrew Fluegelman, Jim Knopf (Button), Bob Wallace and Marshall Magee proved the commercial viability of the shareware concept, reportedly making millions. Read more…

Andy Brice Announcements, Articles, Interviews, News ASP, News, shareware, software, try before you buy

When you start out with a new software product, you may find it difficult to get feedback from users. Here are 12 ways to get more feedback.

1. Release a Beta

Launch a beta release, either publicly or by invitation-only, to gather feedback before a major release. This helps you discover major problems before releasing major changes.

2. Ask other developers

If you hang out somewhere online with other developers, ask them for feedback or offer a free license in exchange for testing and comments. ASP members frequently get valuable feedback from knowledgeable colleagues in the ASP newsgroups.

However, keep in mind that colleagues are often more knowledgeable than your average user and may provide a different kind of feedback than a typical computer user. Read more…

Laura Look Articles product feedback, user feedback

Introduction

There are a few interesting tools around to analyze the speed of your website. Yahoo’s YSlow and Google’s Page Speed (both Firefox plugins) are a good start and offer a lot of advice and background information. In this post you’ll see graphs from Webpagetest.

This website offers the best visual analysis IMHO and shows exactly how the page is loaded, which file was received in which connection and at which time. I’ve used it to optimize my file sync webpage and will use the steps that I made as example. Here’s my starting point:

Image 1: First benchmark

Each bar represents a file. Time goes from left to right (less is better) and the different colors represent the different aspects of the file transfer. Read more…

Thomas Holz Articles loading time, page speed, website optimization

ASP Member Wins ESWC's 2009 Epsilon Award

Emsi Software’s a-squared Anti-Malware Wins ESWC’s 2009 Epsilon

ASP member Christian Mairoll of Emsi Software has won the 2009 Epsilon Award for Software Excellence at the 9th annual European Software Conference. Emsi Software’s a-squared Anti-Malware application was awarded the prize earlier this month at the conference in Berlin, Germany. The Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) was a sponsor of the European Software Conference.

Every year, the Epsilon Award recognizes the best software application from the European microISV and software community. Programs are nominated by software developers, a peer-review process that ensures that only the highest quality software is considered for the award.

In addition to receiving worldwide recognition for its software, Emsi Software was also awarded an artistic creation by a European artist, special prizes from the sponsors of the event and 200 Euros in cash which Emsi Software will donate to the SOS Children’s Villages organization founded in Austria. Read more…

Al Harberg Articles Epsilon Award, ESWC 2009, European Software Conference, software business

The Educational Software Cooperative (ESC) has started the 9th month of its new ESC Software Marketing Book Club. Each month, ESC members discuss a marketing book in detail. The central theme of each discussion is: How can the ideas in this book help software developers make their businesses more successful?

The October 2009 book selection is “How to Become a Marketing Superstar – Unexpected Rules that Ring the Cash Register” by Jeffrey J. Fox. It’s about using common sense and sound business practices to find and keep customers. It’s about marketing. Most of the concepts in the book apply directly to mISVs who are trying to increase their software sales.

Last month’s Book Club selection was “Then We Set His Hair on Fire – Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising” by Phil Dusenberry. The title refers to the creation of the Pepsi ad in which Michael Jackson had an unfortunate accident. But the book is about insights, ideas, creativity, advertising, and business.

Phil Dusenberry is the former Chairman of BBDO North America, an advertising giant that managed accounts for General Electric, FedEx, Frito-Lay, Visa, Mars, HBO, Pizza Hut, Polaroid, and Apple Computers.

One of my favorite stories from the book is about soup. The lessons apply to the software industry, too.

Dusenberry’s firm landed the Campbell’s Soup account in the 1980s. Soup sales were flat. BBDO did some serious research, and learned something unusual – lots of consumers had kitchen cabinets full of Campbell’s Soup.

Campbell’s Soup had been advertised for decades as a safety measure. It’s virtually non perishable, and you need to keep it in the house for emergencies. There was a huge disconnect between the purchase rate and the consumption rate for Campbell’s Soup.

What about shareware?

Most software companies ask their prospects, over and over, to download their software. Lots of people listen to this message and act on it. About one hundred times as many people download software as buy it, so the “download” message is being read, understood and acted upon. Just as the buyers of Campbell’s Soup didn’t receive the “eat the soup” message, many shareware downloaders aren’t receiving the “buy it now” message. Read more…

Al Harberg Articles ESC, marketing, software business

Taking screenshots of software programs for website presentations is an essential need for every microISV. It’s often said that an image speaks a thousand words and the screenshot as an image should promote the very essential nature of the product. Looking at ASP members sites around the web I noticed that many vendors use screenshots of various quality.

In many cases, they show a beautiful virtual 3D box shot, but somehow neglect the same eye candy on their product screenshots. What I am talking about here is the use of various artefacts such as not properly clipped window borders, weird shadows or the most obvious “dirt” on background.

So it is important to have pixel perfect virtual boxes (which don’t even exist in reality), but the quality of screenshots of products itself doesn’t matter ? Or are there some other obstacles that make producing nice screenshots a hard task ? Lets have a look. Read more…

Milan Marusinec Articles microisv, screenshots, software, software marketing, user interface

We all know that we should be spending more time reading good books about business, sales and marketing. But it’s difficult to find worthwhile books. Here are some tips for locating the best business books, buying them affordably, and building a library that will pay dividends year after year.
Choosing Good Business Books
Amazon.com has more reviews than other book sites. But it’s often difficult to tell if the book being reviewed is relevant to the software industry in general, and to mISVs in particular.  Many times I’ll buy a marketing book based on amazon.com recommendations, only to find that the book is targeted at larger enterprises. Most of us don’t need to read about strategies that ensure that our marketing staff is communicating effectively with our manufacturing managers. Read more…

Al Harberg Articles association, books, microisv, software

Photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg

… if you had to start your software story again?

As a software industry enthusiast, I am curious to know how others see their business development and what they would change, in hindsight and with a set of brand new 2009 eyes.

Neil on Business of Software Network asked the community a similar question (If you could wave a magic wand…) related to the marketing of software. Answers such as focus on usability, better knowledge of customers poured in (the discussion is still open).

Some even expressed their wish to get into their customers heads completely, or even in their competition’s financial reports, to see if it’s worth outrunning them anyway. Read more…

Adriana Iordan Articles association, software, software business advice