Johan; thinking out loud.

My upcoming shareware application is almost ready. There is some more testing to be done in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I am also going to try to run it in Ubuntu using Mono, but that will come after the initial release. I’m arguing with myself about whether I should implement the GUI in WPF in a future release or if I should stay with WinForms so that I can run with Mono.

Apart from testing I still have to implement some sort of licensing system. I would prefer having the keys generated by the PayPal manager I have in PHP so that the sales process can be fully automated. It will take some extra care since an issued key has to work in the future. I can’t upgrade that part of the code without invalidating all issued keys.

My first attempt created a key based on the customers email address. The big flaw with it was that it was only possible to do one check so if someone figured out the algorithm for creating the key I would have free keys online forever. I need to create a license key that I can do several different checks on in different versions of my program.

At the moment I’m thinking of using hashes of GUID’s. That way I can incorporate different GUID’s in different compiles of the program. It will also be possible to include lists of invalid GUID’s both in the application and as part of the automatic upgrade manifest.

The next problem will be to inline the validity checks in my c# code so that the potential cracker has more than one place to shortcut. I don’t believe it will be cracker proof. It just has to be hard enough to stand the first attempt at cracking it.

Hopefully I will make the release early September.

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In my ongoing quest to find an eCommerce solution for my upcoming shareware title I recently got noticed about First Data. They offer shopping cart software as well as a wide range of hardware and software needed to accept credit cards in an ordinary physical store or restaurant.

There is almost no price information on their site, but they offer a free sign up until 25 July 2007 with a stated value of $495. (When I started writing this the offer was valid until the 21:st so it might move forwards a while longer.)

I don’t think I will spend more time investigating First Data for my shopping cart needs.

Here is a list of features for their eCommerce solution:

• LinkPoint® Central
  Process and manage credit card transactions and checks manually from any computer that has an Internet connection, web browser, and a user ID and password.
• Credit card processing online
  Accept major credit cards including Visa®, MasterCard®, American Express®, Discover®, for products purchased on your website and/or shopping cart.
• Accept Checks Online via ACH
  Give your consumers the option of paying via online check for products purchased on your website and/or shopping cart and over the phone.
• Recurring billing
  automated billing of recurring payments.
  Note: This offer is brought to you by CARDSERV.
• Membership / Subscription password service
  Add “premium” content areas to your web site that can only be accessed for a fee.
  Note: This offer is brought to you by CARDSERV.
• Fraud and Risk Management
  Customizable fraud and risk management system helps you maximize sales and minimize risk.
• Shopping cart integration
  We are compatible with many of the leading shopping cart vendors.
• 24/7 Experienced technical support
  7 days a week.
• Online reporting
  All the details of your transactions are available online.
• User Friendly
  Easy to use program with multi user interface.
• Process transactions
  anywhere around the world whenever you have internet access.
• Address Verification Service (AVS)
• Email receipts
  to both merchant and your customers.
• User Accounts
  Supports unlimited number of users Unlimited transactions from nearly anywhere in the world.

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I’m almost done reading The Long Tailby Chris Anderson.
It is the kind of book where I feel I’ve thought of the basic ideas presented before. Not that I could have written it myself though. Far from. Chris describes the long tail as all the small niches that doesn’t get any shelf space at Best Buy, but are very lucrative when exposed on the web. This is because web sites like Goggle and iTunes helps bringing niche consumers and niche producers together. It also looks like more and more people are turning away from being hit consumers when it becomes easier to find just the right niche products.

Anyway; this infinite range of products got me thinking about The Diamond Ageby Neal Stephenson. This book portrays a world where mankind has mastered nano technology so that it is possible to crate almost anything on a molecular level. It is a world where diamonds are cheaper than glass since diamonds are made of carbon atoms in straight lines as opposed to the internal chaos of glass. In the homes, of those that can afford it, there are machines that can create things. These machines are connected to a feed from which they get the materia needed. In this post information-industry world the feed is as much class barrier as internet for us today.

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I’m just about done reading Professional Team Foundation Serverand at the end I found this little gem:

This tip needs the Team Foundation Power Tool (tfpt.exe) to work.

When you are working offline you just clear the read-only attribute on the files you want to edit. Later, when you are online, you open the command line, navigate to your workspace and run:

tfpt.exe online

Now the power tool will find all those writable files and create a change set from them.

Remember that you can not rename files while offline, but it is ok to add or remove files.

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Here are my votes for Blog Project Three.

• L’Amour De Blog: 3 reasons why blogging is like being in love
• Three Things to Do Before You Click Publish (and One Thing to Do After)
• Three is a Magic Number
• 3 Tips for Staying Focused with Small Children
• Three things I want my kids to refrain from saying on our upcoming road trip
• 3 + 3 + 3 Places Where You Can Get Free Icons For All Seasons And Reasons
• The 3 P’s for Creating a Successful Website - Passion, Persistence, and Patience
• 3 Must Do Things For A New Blogger
• 3 Things no one told you about web monetizing
• Three reasons to try a marathon…
  
• 3 Reason Why Entrepreneurs Succeed!
• Top 3 Reasons Why You Have to Work from Home
• 3 Signs that You are in the Wrong Company
• 3 Ways to Track Your Comments

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When I moved logview4net to SharpDevelop I got the dreaded CodeDomSerializerException in the WinForm designer. It complained about resources not existing.

Since everything worked in Visual Studio and the application compiles and runs I started looking for other things. After some digging around I found that the properties in the typed resource class was declared internal. I changed the modifiers to public instead and now the WinForm designer works again.

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I just made a new release of logview4net.

New features are:

• A StdOut / StdErr listener
• A block ignore action

Goto jsiSoft.com to download it.

CHANGELOG:

7.28
Fixed: Add an IgnoreBlock action that should have an IgnoreStart + IgnoreEnd pattern
Fixed: Make it possible to ingore events on pause instead of caching them.
Fixed: Make the cmd-line parser use the StdOut-listener for .exe-files
Enabled the StdOut listener
Fixed a dispose bug on all listeners.

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The paid posts I have started doing here is because I want to finance a new web host. The current one is unbelievably cheap. Cheap as in low cost. But I am starting to have some performance issues though. The service of Manufrog has been very good this far. I will probably keep a site or two with them even in the future.

My sites does not have very much traffic, but on days with a couple of hundred visitors I get server errors and time outs. I’ll stay with Manufrog for a while longer and hope it’s just a temporary glitch.

Anyway; I am thinking about moving to DreamHost but unless I pay for a year in advance there is a setup fee of $49.95. I can see why they want do do it like that, but I think it locks customers to them in an unhealthy way. It seems to be a common thing though.

I have used DreamHost before and was pleased with their service. I canceled the account because I couldn’t justify the cost for just having my own e-mail addresses.

BlueHost and HostGator are also quite compelling. Their offers a quite alike, but they have no setup fees. It is such a tough choice and it is hard to find honest reviews of web hosts. Most sites I find are full of affiliate links (like the ones in this post) so their opinions are questionable.

So… If anyone feel like helping me please go to jsiSoft.com and click the PayPal Donate button.

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Jeffrey Palermo states in his post ‘Baking requirements - Developing with raw ingredients is waste‘ that requirements has to be thought through before they are presented to the developers.

I think that is a statement that holds true for all levels of requirements. Software development is intangible and it is perceived that changes are easy to do. This leads to bad requirements from everyone. Customers doesn’t think through their needs and expectations before starting software projects. Business designers doesn’t think through either requirements or business rules enough before presenting them.

Very often it is possible to start working on a requirement even though the related business rules aren’t clear. But most times I find the business peoples lack of understanding of the constraints we developers are under to be very frustrating. A rule that is easily implemented or discarded in a manual process might need architectural changes in an automated process. It is frustrating for both parties. The current buzz is that developers should reduce the gap to business, but I think the responsibility to close that gap falls equally much on the business people.

We could argue that learning to program is hard, but failing to learn programming would also be a lesson learned.

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I haven’t set up the online store I will need for my shareware application yet, but there is a donation button on jsisoft.com for supporting logview4net, my open sourced log viewer.

The main company in the ecommerce software space is DigitalRiver. They have bought a lot of shopping cart software and keep running them under their old names. It was quite refreshing when I heard about Ashop Commerce, a company that is not under the DigitalRiver umbrella (yet).

The main advantage I found with Ashop is that they do not charge any transactional fees. I sent them a support request wondering about fees for credit card payments. Even though I sent the question way out of business hours I got a quick reply. It seems handling credit cards requires a merchant account that probably will include transactional fees.

Ashop has functionality for managing affiliate programs. A feature I find very interesting a a marketing opportunity for my own software.

All in all I find Asoft a compelling alternative to roll my own store using PayPal for payments.

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