Tag: Technology

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You can never have too many backups!

Yesterday I went to open up my website that I created in RapidWeaver and found that my site was all screwed up; I didn’t realize this until after I exported it to my server. Luckily, I was able to quickly restore what was on the server as I have a week’s worth of archives of my server in tar.gz files. However, getting the RapidWeaver file back required me to go back to the previous night’s backup. The problem seems to have arisen from the upgrade from RapidWeaver 3.5 to 3.6 where it converted the data file. A 3.6.1 update was released, but it appears I had already done my conversion before the update came out.

I had a momentary scare, but with my paranoia about backups, there was nothing to worry about. Worst case was that I had to grab the files from the hard drives I store in my safe deposit box; there were only a few web site changes since that backup.

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MotionBased has gone down hill

When I got my Garmin Forerunner 305 last year, I signed up for MotionBased and was generally pleased with it. I pay for a yearly subscription (which isn’t cheap), so I expect more than just a crappy website. Unfortunately their site has almost become unusable as it is so slow. The other day it took 5 hours or so to upload some runs to it. Today I wanted to upload my marathon and it’s just sitting there waiting to process. They need to start adding horsepower to the website and give paying customers priority over free customers. That’s just smart business sense. Can I recommend MotionBased to others? At this point, no. Hopefully the service gets better as I have about another 2 years left on my subscription.

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Opened my own store

My software sales have been doing well in the past 12 months which meant that my rate for eSellerate went up (the initial rate is a teaser rate). I could handle the initial rate even though it was a bit steep for the pieces I use, but the new rate was a 50% increase and that really hurt. So on Sunday, I started figuring out how to put up my own store. I looked at a few eCommerce solutions and settled on Zen Cart. I then setup a merchant account with PayPal as it was easy, had decent rates, and I never see the credit card numbers. Today I finally got the pieces together to integrate my registration codes into my store. To make people feel safe, I bought an SSL certificate (a wildcard one). I really didn’t need one as I don’t see credit card numbers, but I think it was worth the investment. There is still more work to be done to the store, but I think it is good enough for now. So without further ado, I present my web store.

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Success with Amazon affiliates

When I started ReceiptWallet back in October, I thought that it was a good idea to become an Amazon Affiliate and point people to scanners and collect a little money off the referrals. It turns out I was right. While I can’t retire off the 4-6% that Amazon pays me for each sale, it’s still a little money in my pocket. The DocketPORT 465 is one of the top sellers as that’s a scanner I recommend for ReceiptWallet. If I could sell the DocketPORT myself, I could make a little more money, but then I’d have to deal with inventory, returns, questions, etc. One problem with the affiliate system is that if I personally buy anything, I don’t get credit for it which is understandable. Oh well.

So, if you want to order from Amazon, please use the search box on this page and start your purchase so that I can afford to feed the dog 🙂

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Anti Spam Systems are Annoying

Recently I’ve had a number of customers contact me for support and when my automated system sent them confirmation, I received back a message that said I had to click a link (a challenge/response system). I have a strong objection to these systems (such as the one from SpamArrest) as they put the burden on me even though I didn’t initiate the contact. After clicking the click, these systems now require me to enter a code seen in a graphic which wastes more of my time. In addition, these systems block legitimate email, such as when ordering stuff, signing up for newsletters, etc. Most people won’t remember to white list every site they want to receive email from, so they’ll miss email and get mad when they don’t receive it. I tried a challenge/response system using procmail back in 1996 or 1997 and found that while it did reduce spam, it also almost caused me to lose important email from someone. Personally I’ve found that dspam is a quite effective, non-intrusive, system. When it catches spam, it quarantines it and then I look through the quarantine periodically.

Please people, stop using these stupid systems; they only cause you to lose mail and annoy me to no end. I’ve now put big warnings on my website that says I won’t click on the links. While you might say that it isn’t hard to click on a link, it is extremely annoying and I’m not going to play the game. My anti-spam system, that I’ve been using for about 2 years, I think, catches 95% of the spam that I get.

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New technical support system

This week, I installed (actually I had someone else install it as he had experience doing it and it only took him 30 minutes) a new technical support system for ReceiptWallet and DocumentWallet. I decided that I needed a more dynamic way to update my FAQ and better handle technical support inquiries as many of them are the same types of questions. For the last few weeks, one of my clients has been evaluating a new CRM system as it has outgrown its current system. I’ve been following along to see what would work for me and nothing that was being evaluated met my needs. So, I started looking at its current system, Cerberus, and found that it actually could work for me. They have a free version which I had installed and for now, it seems to meet my needs. If I need more, the $200 fee for small businesses is pretty reasonable in my opinion. So, check out my support site and see how the end user portion works. The backend that I use to respond to support tickets also seems to be working well. There is one bug in the user interface that I’ve been unable to fix (source is included), but that’s minor.

I hope to grow into this help system and have enough sales to bring someone else in to answer support inquiries. I’ll be ready for it, when (not if) the time comes!

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Fringe benefits?

The other day there was an article in our local paper about how Google has setup a transportation system to shuttle some of its employees to and from work. In addition, they provide free chef cooked meals, doctor checkups, etc.. While this sounds like a great idea, the article clearly quoted a Google employee as saying that these perks allow google to get a few extra hours a day out of each employee. So instead of employees working 8 hour days, these “perks” make them work 10-12 hour days. Hmmm…seems to me that they should pay employees more, but these perks probably cost less than paying their employees more. Google contact me a few weeks ago about a job in Colorado. Leave San Diego? For chef prepared meals (I’m not sure if the non Silicon Valley offices get the same perks)? I think I’ll stick where I am. 8 hour work days (OK a few more as I’m self employed) as all I can handle.

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A solution to an annoying ScanSnap issue

I’ve now had my Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-511E0XM for less than a day now and one thing that I found quite annoying is that if I wanted to scan between scanning to ReceiptWallet and to another application, say preview, I had to go into the ScanSnap Manager preferences (sorry, settings), and change the app. The app has a dock menu, so it wouldn’t have been rocket science to let me switch between apps from the menu. So, with a point in the right direction from a colleague, I present ScanHelper. ScanHelper is a small application that places a menu in the menubar that lets you select which application should be used for scanning. Simply tell the ScanSnap Manager to use ScanHelper and then ScanHelper routes the scans to the selected application. You can now easily select a destination right from the menubar. I’m releasing this as free software, but if you like it, please buy my ReceiptWallet application. You can download ScanHelper here.

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Digging up the past can sometimes be a good thing

I was contacted today by someone looking for a real early version of Eudora for Newton (prior to 1996) to prove that someone’s patent claim of email on a handheld is invalid. That’s pretty amazing to me that someone would actually attempt to claim email on a handheld so late as Eudora for Newton wasn’t the first; there was eWorld and the Motorola Marco which pre-dated Eudora for Newton. As I was searching and digging up stuff, I came across a press release announcing that Eudora Pro for Newton won a CES Innovations award in 1997 (that’s 10 years ago!). I either forgot about the award or no one ever told me about it. I wasn’t at CES to receive the award (I’ve never been to CES, I was at Comdex for one day the prior year, I think), but I guess that’s what happens in a big company. I was the sole author of the product, so I guess I can claim the award as my own.

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Let’s Play “Find the UI issues in the scanner software”

Today I received the Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-5110EOXM that I ordered (I couldn’t pass up the $100 Macworld discount and the $50 rebate). The scanner is great; it scans to PDFs and doesn’t make me look at their ugly user interface too much. However, I thought I’d point out the issues (first off I had to find the version of the software that was Intel native as the CD didn’t have it and it wasn’t readily available on their website:

  • They use Command-S to bring up Settings; it should be Command-, and the menu should be labeled Preferences
  • The buttons in the settings dialog are all laid out wrong. Mac applications put the OK button on the right, not the left like it is in their software
  • They use low resolution graphicslowres.pngin the settings dialog
  • They are inconsistent with the use of periods; they use them at the end of some radio buttons when they shouldn’t
  • They should use sheets instead of modal dialogs for some things
  • By having too many tabs, they have to put warnings in some tabs, like: “Note: JPEG is available only when “Color” is selected at [Color Mode].” If this were all on one tab, it could have automatically changed (which it actually does, but you won’t notice it until you flip tabs) and the user could see it.
  • Location of saved files looks like it is an edit text field, but you can’t edit it. You have to click Browser … and choose the folder
  • Browser … button has an extra space in the text
  • They don’t need so many sub dialogs as they could have accomplished much of it in the main window
  • Under “File name format …, they have “ex.) 2007_01_19_15_56_49.pdf” which is the example of the file name that will be generated. They could have spelled our example or done this another way; there is plenty of room
  • When the scanner is off, the dock icon has a big red circle with a slash through it Dock icon

For such a small application, it really has an awful looking interface. Luckily I won’t have to see it much.

Please, oh please, ask for a user interface review by Apple; they’d be more than happy to rip your application to shreds. (I’ve had a few UI reviews and got my stuff ripped apart, so I know how it feels.)