Good points by Mike
"Recently I was reminded of some wisdom my dad shared years ago:
"photography is not about the camera, it's about process of capturing photos. A great photographer can take incredible photos with the simplest camera. It's not about the camera!"
Now, that may sound simple, and really it is. However, I've observed many people getting hung up on Specs when they ought to be focused on Process"
I feel like there's usually some conferences going on this time of year, but I haven't seen anything interesting. Am I missing something big out there?
Because it's great for your search engine optimization efforts. The things you talk about in your manuals and your forums are the same words potential customers are searching the internet for. By having a web based help desk solution you're increasing your chances they'll find you all while providing better support to your existing customer base.
I'm already seeing interesting traffic come in from Google on the HelpSpot helpdesk.
"If that's indeed what's happening, it isn't illegal and to some might not even be unethical (I guess) but it feels just a little bit EVIL."
An interesting experiment done with Adwords. It appears that if you lower the amount you're willing to pay per word that Google may penalize you.
A great post by Seth Godin about why and how an idea can spread in a viral manner. How do we get our ideas to spread like this in the software industry?
Whew, that's alot of acronyms.
Anway, one of the bugs that's really been annoying me is that when running under Windows and IIS as a CGI HelpSpot sometimes throws these weird CGI errors. In fact this isn't a HelpSpot bug, but rather a problem with IIS, however, that's not the point because at the end of the day it's my customers who will be having the problem.
The problem is complex because it doesn't affect all machines, often on machines with the exact same builds one will send the errors while the other doesn't. It seems that the issue is related to the speed of the machine.
After looking around for weeks I think I've found a workaround. It's not a fix really, but a setting you can apply to Windows which seems to instantly solve the problem. If you've experienced this issue with HelpSpot or other CGI apps (seems to be an issue with PERL as well) on IIS you may want to checkout the workaround here:
http://www.userscape.com/helpdesk/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=20
I finally found this answer buried in this bug discussion:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=9852
Unfortunately for the guys who create PHP the discussion isn't very flattering for them. They basically respond with the standard "well use open source products" answer instead of any actual help. The bug is from back in 2002 though so hopefully they've matured since then.
We could be witnessing the last days for legally downloaded music. I think it will be extremely interesting if the music industry manages to kill off their last hope by trying to bully Apple. What they don't get is that they can't stop it. Even if they pull their music from the iTunes music store they'll only kill themselves. I'll still want an iPod only now it will have illegal songs on it instead of legal ones. Combine that with what would surely be a huge growth in "podsafe" music/audio and you have the end of the traditional music industry. Well let's hope it happens. They had their day, they've made their mony, don't feel bad for them. Their time is over.
Just an FYI to everyone out there. We'll be closing the beta October 3rd so if you've been waiting to get in now is the time!
"Yahoo Email Delivers That Desktop Feel Most Users Expect"
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20050922.html
I haven't used the new Yahoo mail so I don't know if it's true or not but I have a problem with the statement in general. Is it really true that "most" users expect a desktop experience? I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's true for me.
I'm also pretty familiar with a group of users I call college kids. Most of them have had very little interaction with desktop apps, but lots of experience using the web. In a few years when they reach professional age will they really be looking for a "desktop" experience on their websites?