I just put up a new "In Depth" article on the UserScape site about why traditional knowledge base software doesn't work well for your customers and why HelpSpots knowledge books are the way to go. I thought it might be of interest to some.
knowledge base software article
It's also an example of using content to drive sales, which has been under discussion over on the JOS forums.
Last night I moved my real time stat tracking from StatCounter to Mint. So far I'm pretty happy with it. What I found most amazing about Mint is that it only uses 2 tables and one of those is for prefs, so tracking data is all in one table. While this limits a few of the things it can do, I imagine it allows it to be very fast, even in high volume sites. I'm looking forward to seeing it's speed once it's got a few months of data in there.
The other day Shaun Inman (creator of Mint) posted about rampant priacy of the Mint code. Mint is a PHP app and Shaun distributes Mint with complete source code. I feel for him, because he's in a very tough spot.
With HelpSpot I have it pretty easy because my customers are 100% business users. Having to use the Zend Optimizer hasn't been a big barrier, most deal with much larger barriers when installing the competition or other business apps in general so installing Zend is nothing. In addition, they're mostly paying me for support and upgrades, so stealing the code isn't really worthwhile. They could use free request managers as it is, they purchase from me because they like the product and just as important, they know it's supported and they'll receive upgrades, support, etc. Heck it's pretty easy to decompile encrypted source if you really want to, there's just not much reason to with HelpSpot.
Shaun is in a totally different boat. His client base in large part non-corporate. Lots of individuals, bloggers, and so on. They just want to use the software and many have the free time and inclination to decode the software if he did encrypt it. Selling web apps to individuals has got to be a real pain!
It sounds like he's working on a decent plan. I'm pulling for him, since he's made an incredible app that is a steal for $30.
I don't feel like there's as much interesting stuff in my newsreader as there used to be. There used to be tons of great stuff, now it's littered with dead sites, uninteresting sites, and sites I don't even know why I'm subscribed to. I need some injections of new ideas, I just feel tired of these old feeds. So I'm going to trim my 192 feeds down to 80 or so. Hopefully that will make space for some of my new subscriptions to get read more.
Update: Got down to 89, though 1 is mine and 8 are generic search feeds so I did make it to 80 actually individual blog feeds. Sorry to say alot of ISV's had to go. They simply didn't update enough to warrant their spot. Hopefully some new ones will popup to take their place.
Interesting post: Dissecting MySQL Fulltext Indexing
I wish apple would come out with some type of book reading thingy. I'm tired of purchasing books, especially fiction books which are purely entertainment. I almost never reread a paperback book. I don't like having to pay $6-$10 for a book I read once and then have to store. I want to rent my books from Apple. If a TV show is worth $2 how much is a book worth? I think for a book that's in paperback $2-$4 is fair. I'd pay it in a second and I'd most likely buy many more books than I do now since I could browse more easily and buy more easily and best of all not have piles of books around.
Rick Ellis lays out an interesting little encryption algorithm.
A little piece I did for MyMicroISV.com
"What I am thinking about is to start working toward an open source framework of PHP components aimed at ISVs and extracted from real world web applications and the development problems we are facing on a daily basis. This framework will grow over time and will be made available under the MIT license so that it can be used without restrictions in commercial products."
TranCreative currently has the most active public HelpSpot forums I've seen. 4 forums each with a full load of posts, great stuff. They've also built out several knowledge books. I love seeing HelpSpot being put through it's paces!
I've emailed with the folks over there a few times, it seems like a great crew. They make products for pocket PC's.
Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in seeing a reference HelpSpot installation.
Bob with an interesting post on Conversational Index. I'm not sure I buy it, but mine is .44 (550/1231) so I guess that's good.