Despite Datafeed Studio being written in PHP, it is fair to say it is not my programming language of choice.

Datafeed Studio is a web application that is installed by the end user on their server, thus it made sense to go for for the language that has the biggest support amongst web hosting services.

Of course, now that mod_rails / Passenger has been released, hopefully it wont be too long before Ruby does some catching up in the widespread availability and ease of deployment stakes. I understand that major web hosting providers such as Dreamhost are already offering support.

The second reason I chose PHP is to do with script protection. There are several PHP solutions out there to encode scripts to prevent piracy such as Zend Guard, Code Lock and IonCube (I opted for the latter) but seemingly none for the Ruby world?

My previous Rails projects have been SAAS based so I’ve never had to worry about this - but I have a mISV idea that like Datafeed Studio, would require the customer to install the software on their server, but the lack of script encoding / protection does unfortunately put me off using Rails in this instance.

Has anybody else been in this position? What did you do? Am I worrying too much about piracy concerns?

I’ve finally become a bona fide Micro-ISV (mISV).

Today marks the launch of my first product, Datafeed Studio - a web application that allows affiliate marketeers to create price comparison sites, niche online stores and product compare pages from CSV datafeed files provided by online merchants.

Running my own business has always been a dream of mine, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those people who have inspired me to take the leap from the lucrative world of contracting into the far riskier realms of being a one-man product making machine.

First and foremost I’d like to thank my wife and two young ones for their support and understanding this year as I’ve been developing Datafeed Studio.

Other influences include :

1. Bob Walsh - perhaps the voice for the mISV community. Micro-ISV : From Vision to Reality
   is still the mISV bible - I guess now I better start reading this in earnest.
2. Eric Sink - author of another mISV classic.
3. Steve Pavlina - former shareware author and now a personal development guru, always challenging, always inspiring.
4. Business of Software forum. Maybe I can stop lurking now that I’ve earned my stripes and got myself a product?
5. Joel Spolsky - great musings on software development, and for FogBUGZ, which I’ve only just started using but it looks like it could save me a lot of headaches.
6. Andy Brice - fellow Brit and a great contributor to the mISV community. Thanks for the software and marketing tips on your blog, Andy.

So - what’s the plan from here on in?

Well, much as I’d love to make a full-time income from my product, I don’t think that’s viable just yet.

By the end of this year I’d like Datafeed Studio to make 20% of my monthly income (the other 80% coming from freelance web application gigs (Ruby/Rails, PHP, etc.), which, yes, I am still available for if anyone is interested in working with a reliable, hard-working developer type).

I am to increase this percentage by 20% each year, so in five years all my income is from my own products. Well, that’s the dream anyway. Only time will tell…

Enter r2check, a small tool which does some regular expression searches against your codebase for things that we know are changing.

I’m impressed.

After years of using Chicken of the VNC as my OSX VNC client of choice I’ve just tried JollysFastVNC and it flies!

Link : Mokka mit Schlag » A Stupid Idea for New Year’s Eve

I was asking myself the same question a few weeks back installing Ubuntu on a Sony Vaio laptop which has a native 1400×1050 resolution which it miserably failed to detect.

Only after a few hours of tinkering (i.e. Googling) did I manage to get it to work, but then there was the lack of sound, hibernate/sleep facilities, etc. and I was quickly back in Windows on that machine - and the comfort of OS X elsewhere.

(Those cheap Intel PowerBooks can’t come quickly enough.)

Link : Automate acceptance tests with Selenium

Definitely one to add to every web developers toolbox in 2006.

* Should I use CGI or FastCGI?
* Should I use lighty or Apache httpd?
* If Apache, which freaking version?
* And how do I configure mod_fastcgi with Apache?
* Should I let the webserver manage fcgi processes or spawn them externally?
* And what’s this SCGI thing?
* And what’s this SwitchTower thing?
* What version of MySQL is the server running?

Link : Real Lessons for Rails Deployment

The Java hyper-enthusiasts have left the building, leaving a significant contingent of Java programmers behind, blinking in the bright lights without the constant drumbeat of boosterism.

Link : The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts

A novel solution to sychronising bookmarks across multiple machines :

Foxmarks - Foxcloud Wiki

Still awaiting the service that will allow me to synchronise across multiple machines with different browsers (e.g. convert as necessary for Safari, FireFox, Opera, etc.).