Planet MicroISV

Poker Copilot: Coming in the Next Poker Copilot Update

noreply@blogger.com (Steve McLeod) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:02:54 +0000

This is a minor tweak suggested by loyal Poker Copilot customer Arthur. "Times seen" in the HUD now shows big numbers better:

Up to 1,000, the # of hands played is shown in full. From 1,001 to 9,999, you'll see something like 1.2K - that is, to a precision of hundreds. From 10,000 onwards, the precision is thousands: 13K.

Seth Godin's Blog: If you want to learn to do marketing...

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:48:00 +0000

then do marketing.

You can learn finance and accounting and media buying from a book. But the best way to truly learn how to do marketing is to market.

You don't have to quit your job and you don't need your boss's permission. There are plenty of ways to get started.

If you see a band you like coming to town, figure out how to promote them and sell some tickets (posters? google ads? PR?). Don't ask, just do it.

If you find a book you truly love, buy 30 and figure out how to sell them all (to strangers).

If you're 12, go door to door selling fresh fruit--and figure out what stories work and which don't.

Set up an online business. Get a candidate you believe in elected to the school board.

The best way to learn marketing is to do it.

[And Chris Guillabeau's new book turns this simple idea into a plan for life].

Seth Godin's Blog: Design with intent

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:02:48 +0000

Neat idea, free PDF... will differently (definitely) make you think. HT to Lucas.

Poker Copilot: Second Update for Today

noreply@blogger.com (Steve McLeod) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:59:22 +0000

Mea culpa. I didn't perform adequate testing so lots of people lost their HUD with today's update. Those same people didn't get a working hand replayer recorder.

Both these problems are now fixed in Poker Copilot 2.63. You can download it now.

Sorry for the time some of you had to spend without a HUD.

Seth Godin's Blog: Whatever happened to labor?

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:07:54 +0000

Not Labor with a capital L, as in organized labor unions. I mean labor as in skilled workers solving interesting problems. I mean craftspeople who use their hands, their backs and their heads to do important work.

Labor was a key part of the manufacturing revolution. Industrialists needed smart, dedicated, trained laborers to solve interesting problems. Putting things together took more than pressing a few buttons, it took initiative and skill and care. Labor improvised.

It took thirteen years to build the Brooklyn Bridge and more than twenty-five laborers died during its construction. There was not a systematic manual to follow. The people who built it largely figured it out as they went.

The Singer sewing machine, one of the most complex devices of its century, had each piece fitted by hand by skilled laborers.

Sometime after this, once Henry Ford ironed out that whole assembly line thing, things changed. Factories got far more complex and there was less room for improvisation as things scaled.

The boss said, "do what I say. Exactly what I say."

Amazingly, labor said something similar. They said to the boss, "tell us exactly what to do." In many cases, work rules were instituted, flexibility went away and labor insisted on doing exactly what they had agreed to do, no more, no less. At the time, this probably felt like power. Now we know what a mistake it was.

In a world where labor does exactly what it's told to do, it will be devalued. Obedience is easily replaced, and thus one worker is as good as another. And devalued labor will be replaced by machines or cheaper alternatives. We say we want insightful and brilliant teachers, but then we insist they do their labor precisely according to a manual invented by a committee...

Companies that race to the bottom in terms of the skill or cost of their labor end up with nothing but low margins. The few companies that are able to race to the top, that can challenge workers to bring their whole selves--their human selves--to work, on the other hand, can earn stability and growth and margins. Improvisation still matters if you set out to solve interesting problems.

The future of labor isn't in less education, less OSHA and more power to the boss. The future of labor belongs to enlightened, passionate people on both sides of the plant, people who want to do work that matters.

That's what Labor Day is about, not the end of a month on the beach.

Poker Copilot: Poker Copilot 2.62 Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Steve McLeod) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:20:08 +0000

Poker Copilot 2.62 is now available to download.

What's changed:

The hand replayer now can record hands to a video file
Winamax hand history files from before 30th August, 2010 are no longer supported, as these tended to have incorrect numbers
PokerStars.FR step tournaments now handled correctly
Sometimes Full Tilt hands omit important information. Poker Copilot now detects when this is the case and reports an error, rather than pretending everything is alright.

What's fixed:

All-in equity value difference calculations with split pots has improved
The new Winamax hand history format from 30th August, 2010 onwards is now handled correctly
Cereus Network hands without a hero no longer cause an error

Update Instructions:

Download the latest version here.
Open the downloaded file.
Drag the Poker Copilot icon to the Applications icon. If prompted to replace an existing version, confirm that you do want to replace.

Now you're done and ready to hit the tables.

Lessons Learned (Eric Ries): Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you?

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:08:00 +0000

Since this blog's earliest days, I have made a habit of surveying you, my subscribers. I did it originally as a demonstration of the advantages of having a pathetically small number of customers, but I found the actual info so incredibly helpful, I have done it several times since. Since the last time, your ranks have grown tremendously, and I thank you all for this incredible support.

So, to celebrate Labor Day here in the US, I've created another survey. If you're willing to take five minutes to fill it out, I would be most grateful:

Click here to take survey

As usual, I've added a small minimum viable product (I'm starting to think of this technique as the "survey MVP") at the end, as yet another customer validation exercise. I'll post about the results later; to say anything here would bias the survey.

The Recursive ISV (Scott Kane): Internet – Science vs Politics – Quote For The Day Or Recursive Thought?

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:09:57 +0000

With Australia’s Senator Stephen Conroy, Britains recent Internet laws and the USA’s flirtation with “Net-Neutrality” reading the quote below from times past struck me as pertinent, whether we are Micro ISV’s or just regular Internet users:

Michael Crichton once said;

“In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the Dark Ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices transmitted to people who don’t know any better. That’s not a good future for the human race. That’s our past.”

Worthy of keeping in mind – if it’s not too late already.

Scott Kane

PS: Does this apply to “Anthropomorphic Climate Change” debate too? Oh I forgot! The Watermelons have told us that there “…is no debate” between cat calling those who sift through evidence as “deniers” whether they’ve “denied” it or not.

Tags: Anthropomorphic, Australia, Change, Climate, climate change debate, conroy, Dark, dark ages, deniers, Environment, Environmental skepticism, evidence, fears, flirtation, future, Futurologists, Government of Australia, IDE, Internet, internet laws, internet science, internet users, internet version, isv, michael crichton, micro, mind, net neutrality, Neutrality, philosophy, prejudices, recent Internet laws, Recursive, regular Internet users, Science, scott kane, senator stephen, Senator Stephen Conroy, Stephen Conroy, style, Technology_Internet, Thought, United States, USA, watermelons

Seth Godin's Blog: Your smile didn't matter

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 09:09:00 +0000

If you worked on the line, we cared about your productivity, not your smile or approach to the work. You could walk in downcast, walk out defeated and get a raise if your productivity was good.

No longer.

Your attitude is now what's on offer, it's what you sell. When you pass by those big office buildings and watch the young junior executives sneaking into work with a grimace on their face, it's tempting to tell them to save everyone time and just go home.

The emotional labor of engaging with the work and increasing the energy in the room is precisely what you sell. So sell it.

Seth Godin's Blog: Sometimes, price is an attitude

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 09:06:00 +0000

Passed a store the other day. The sign read 99 CENTS! And the subtitle was, "Everything $1 and up".

The 99 cent store was never popular because there's some magical power about the price that is a penny less than a dollar. No, it's because it represents an attitude, that this stuff is CHEAP. Not absolute cheap, just relatively cheap. Not even a good value, just cheap. Cheap compared to its non-cheap competition.

At the other end of the spectrum, the prices at the Hermes store appear to be missing a decimal point or two. The attitude is, "wow, this stuff is expensive." It's not about what you get, it's about how it feels to pay that much.

Seth Godin's Blog: Check-in, Chicken

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:45:00 +0000

One way to start every morning with your team is to have them check in. Go around in a circle and let people update and contribute. It's not a silly exercise, in that it helps people speak up and it communicates forward motion.

Another way, probably a better one, is to have each member of the team announce what they're afraid of. Two kinds of afraid, actually. Things that might fail and things that might work.

What are you, chicken?

Yes, we're chicken. We're afraid. The lizard has us by the claws.

So, tell us. What are you afraid might happen that would destroy, disintegrate, or dissuade--that would take us down? And what are you afraid of that might work, thus changing everything and opening up entirely new areas of scariness?

Micro-ISV Asia: More Goodies in Delphi XE and C++Builder XE

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:58:06 +0000

Delphi XE and C++Builder XE were released on Monday. The eagerly anticipated support for Win64, OS X, and Linux remains on the roadmap for Delphi and C++Builder. The focus for the XE releases seems to be on added goodies.

Regular expressions: With regular expression support now part of the RTL, that is one less 3rd party component that you need. The way the RegularExpressions unit is implemented is particularly nice. It uses records instead of classes to mimic .NET’s regex support. It only takes one line of code to use a regex. You don’t need to worry about memory management.
Subversion integration: Check out projects from version control and commit your changes without leaving the IDE. The Differences subtab of the History tab in the code editor allows you to quickly compare any two revisions of the file you’re editing. All this works even if you don’t have a subversion client installed, though you’ll probably want to keep the client you have to manage files that you edit outside the Delphi or C++Builder IDE. The CollabNet subversion client that is part of the installer is the command-line svn tool. You don’t need to install it unless you really want to work from the command line.
Beyond Compare: Delphi and C++Builder do not include the full directory comparison tool. They do include the file differ that is part of Beyond Compare. If you don’t like the built-in differ on the Differences subtab of the History tab in the code editor, you can make a change in Tools, Options to use the Beyond Compare differ instead.
AQTime: AQTime from SmartBear Software is a code profiler that supports a wide range of development tools for Win32 and .NET. Delphi and C++Builder XE include a version of AQTime with reduced functionality. It only works with the XE versions of Delphi and C++Builder, and does not include some of the more advanced profilers. Even so it offers everything most developers need for profiling their applications. AQTime normally costs $599, so that’s a nice bundle even with the limitations.
CodeSite: CodeSite from Raize Software is a logging tool. A logging tool can be very helpful for debugging code where breakpoints are cumbersome. The main benefit of CodeSite is that you can log almost anything, including complete Delphi objects. CodeSite can also log what your application does on your customer’s computers if they install a redistributable with the CodeSite logging application (or if you make it part of your own installer).
IP*Works: IP*Works is a set of Internet components, much like the Indy components that have shipped with Delphi and C++Builder for many years. Since IP*Works is not written in pure Delphi, Indy is likely a better choice for Delphi developers. IP*Works is included with Delphi and C++Builder mainly because it is also included with RadPHP, which is now part of RAD Studio XE. If you want to use the same internet components in Delphi and PHP, then IP*Works may be an option.

FinalBuilder is only included with the Enterprise and Architect editions of Delphi XE and C++Builder XE. All the other goodies are included with all editions, including the Professional edition.

Dennis Forbes on Software and Technology: Flash on Android Slightly Better Than Shockingly Bad

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:04:08 +0000

A Brief History of My Antagonism Towards Flash

I was anti-Flash before Steve Jobs made it cool. I have as much anti-Flash credibility as anyone.

For over a decade I've steered organization after organization away from building solutions in Flash, often against great resistance. I was evangelizing SVG — what I saw as the biggest opportunity for a more illuminated, open solution than Flash — back when it's strongest corporate sponsor was none other than Adobe.

Aside: Humorously Adobe was leveraging SVG in their battle against Macromedia's Flash/Shockwave empire, before finally giving in and buying 'em out.

I have railed loudly against Flash on many occasions.

The Great Flash of Propriety

Yet Flash is fairly pervasive, despite my valiant attempts.

Up until around 2005 and the birth of YouTube, Flash had very little presence in the video space: That realm was dominated by Real Player, Windows Media Player, Quicktime, among others. Flash fit in the RIA niche where it displaced the short-lived empire of ActiveX and Java Applets. It was the tool for great web entertainment like You Don't Know Jack, the Net Show.

Then YouTube rose with Flash at its presentation core, and the rest is history. Soon Flash was the oddball foundation for video.

If you mention Flash today, however, the topic will immediately veer violently to the great Flash/Apple battle of 2010, where Apple has loudly rejected Flash (where it represents a proxy for "rich applications they don't control"), and Google, perhaps being a bit antagonistic, has embraced it with their Android and Chrome solutions.

Ok, embraced is probably a bit of an overstatement. In reality Google's initiatives have top notch HTML5 support, the best JavaScript performance, and are probably the best mobile/thin platforms for rich HTML5 applications, but they just happen to optionally support Flash as well, perhaps providing a bridge from the past.

A Very Personal Flash Experience

I've been running Flash on my Nexus One for several months now. I have it configured to On Demand so the scourge of animated, CPU-clogging Flash adverts don't destroy my web browsing experience. When there is Flash content that I want to view, I click the little arrow and voila, Flash is running on my mobile phone.

Overall it has been a very welcome addition to the device. From restaurant sites, to small videos like Zero Punctuation reviews, to games for my children, to product information pages, I like having the option of engaging Flash when the need arises.

So when I saw entry titled "Just How Bad Is Flash on Android" on Daring Fireball, of course I was drawn in. There Gruber indirectly linked to some demonstrations of Flash failing miserably on several Flash video sites.

To which, I say, no kidding.

Anyone under any illusion that having Flash on their mobile device opened up any and all content is willfully or technically incompetent. That or it's link bait trying to herd in the people who desperately need their biases confirmed, and a lot of people desperately need to believe that Flash isn't necessary on mobiles. I'd probably say it's that second option at play.

Of course not all content will play. This is, after all, a mobile device with a little power-sipping mobile processor. While 1Ghz sounds pretty pimp, the Snapdragon in the Nexus One is in many ways a weakling, particularly in video decoding and 3D graphics tasks where it fell behind even the iPhone 3GS.

On this 1Ghz processor I've had trouble playing local 720x480 h264 videos encoded at 1Mbps, encountering frequent stuttering and dropped frames. Compare that to the iPhone 4 which allows for up to 7Mbps+ videos at 1280x720, which it plays flawlessly, owing to the excellent hardware decoding.

When it comes to video the iPhone 4 simply kicks the Nexus One (and virtually every other HTC Android device, as HTC is addicted to Snapdragons) to the curb. Then again, the Samsung Galaxy S kicks the iPhone 4 around and calls it Sally, while the OMAP in the Droid 2/X offers a fair fight.

Snapdragon processor devices are not the top of the pile by a long measure.

So the Nexus One really isn't a great platform to highlight video prowess anyways.

Enough with the hardware excuses.

Add that Flash is often its own worst enemy: When you enable the plug-in, your enable in the Android browser is browser wide for that page, meaning it simultaneously enables the twelve punch-the-monkey animated ads surrounding it, often destroying the experience.

So there is no surprise at all that a high bitrate 1000x500 video surrounded by Flash adverts — a scenario that clogs a high performance 2.4Ghz core on a modern x86 PC (which would be equal to about a 8Ghz or higher snapdragon) — probably with a layer of DRM adding more demands, doesn't run so great on a mobile device.

"So Steve Jobs Was Right! Flash won't work on mobile!"

Given that I've enjoyed Flash on my smartphone on many occasions, I find such claims — which I keep seeing made by seemingly non-stupid individuals — ludicrous. It is fervent, desperate doublespeak.

Mobile Flash exists. It's far from perfect. The available content usually isn't even aware that it exists. Yet still, it is.

And really, it isn't a fair fight anyways. When sites provide HTML5 video, they do so often specifically for the iPhone/iPad because of the massive namespace territory they conquered. Most sites don't even feature sniff for the functionality — they don't care if you are running Chrome or Safari or IE 9 and can run HTML Video — but will instead refuse to serve up HTML 5 video for anything but those Apple devices. Given that, they encode specifically and only for that platform, with appropriate bitrates and complexity profiles ideal for those devices.

There's no big surprise that it often runs well.

That isn't a very encompassing, scalable solution though. One device family isn't meant to rule, and at some future point HTML5 will start to leave the iOS devices behind. The iPhone lived through a special moment in time where it was handled as a blessed child, getting its own special treatment, however that moment is passing.

Of course the Flash people have a solution for disparate devices, using dynamic streaming that is based upon the consuming device (resolution and bitrate scaling based upon the capabilities of the device, very similar to some technology in Microsoft Silverlight). Not surprisingly there is little use of it yet given that mobile Flash devices just started appearing very recently, and still comprise a tiny market.

"So...Steve Jobs Was Right?"

No.

When I originally thought about how to respond to this, my first idea was to make a video demonstrating a smartphone failing miserably at rendering and interacting with various HTML5 sites. But then I thought better because someone might confuse that as a serious criticism of HTML5 when I love the technology stack and pragmatically realize that it can't (and shouldn't) always be universally accessible.

Yet still, contemplate the failings of HTML5 on mobile devices:

Layout can be ill suited for the screen dimensions and resolution of a smartphone.
Functionality can be overwrought and too heavy for a smartphone.
Input techniques might not work on smartphone.
etc.

Anyone who has browsed on their smartphone or tablet has experienced all of those. If someone were looking to go out of their way to act shocked that such an experience exists, source material can be found everywhere.

Which is of course why many sites, like the atrocious script pig TechCrunch (seriously, load it up in Firefox with Firebug and check the net tab), created special mobile pages that they force you to, against your will, when you try to visit on a mobile device.

The next time you see a TOP 10 CANVAS DEMOS on your social news site of choice, pull them up on your tablet or smartphone and check out how well they work. Chances are overwhelmingly that they will fail miserably. Almost every HTML5 game demands that you use a keyboard to control it, if they aren't simply too resource demanding for a little mobile device.

So do we write off web browsers on mobile devices? Do we say, in a tut-tut-tut fashion, "No mobile browser exists. WAP is the world for portable devices!" I hope not.

Punching Monkeys Coming in HTML5 Soon To You

One trend that is accelerating is the movement of many ads to HTML5 and away from Flash. That short period where iOS devices came with an almost intrinsic AdBlock+ in the form of the lack of Flash capabilities is rapidly disappearing. Soon every page you visit is going to be a mishmash of computationally demanding canvas renders and DOM manipulations, and it's going to become much more difficult to avoid their cost.

Closing Notes

For those who are on the fence about the whole Flash thing — whether they care about it on their mobile or tablet — take a look a the quick video I put up above. The videos did not run perfectly, the auto configurator didn't provide a seamless, perfect experience...yet if the option is that or nothing, I think most reasonable people would agree that it's better than nothing.

47 Hats (Bob Walsh): Time to start writing a new book…

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:43:02 +0000

I tend to write books when something in my life is very painful. My first book was dealing with the pain of all those non-programming things you have to do to sell commercial Windows desktop software; my last was getting my head around what a bootstrapping web startup needs to do.

The pain I’m feeling right now is huge and growing sharper day by day. Social media, Internet disruption, the Media Tsunami, infinite information and a thousand-fold increase in people and things wanting my attention is smashing into the old industrial ways I’ve depended on to be productive, make a living, get things done. It’s like watching the tide wash away the sandcastle you live in: increasingly, the ways to make value, communicate, get things done, build, connect don’t work. Or, they now work so badly they’ve become part of the problem: remember when people thought email would make individuals and companies more productive?

“The New Productivity: Producing Value in the Internet/Social Age” is the working title. (I just bought thenewproductivity.com ). It will not be an Apress book. It might not be a physical book at all – it belongs on Kindle/iBooks/ePub. But I’m going to go out there and see who else is feeling this pain and try and find some answers above and beyond the millions of existing tips on the web on being “more productive.”

Comments, suggestions, sharing your pain in hopes I can find something that will help are most welcome on this post or via bob.walsh@47hats.com or@bobwalsh.

[photo credit]

Joel on Software: Fork it!

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:43:19 +0000

The Stack Overflow Blog: “The Unix world loves to take sides. I don’t have to blog about this; Freud already did, in 1930. He called it ‘the narcissism of minor differences’”

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Poker Copilot: Please Don't Give Me Options

noreply@blogger.com (Steve McLeod) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:03:51 +0000

I went to the drugstore to buy new shampoo. They didn't have my regular brand anymore so I had to select a new brand. But which one? Shelf after shelf of shampoos surrounded me and taunted me. I had any useful criteria to select one. I suspected that most of them were the same formula in different colour bottles but I couldn't be sure. Spending two euros to buy an everyday product became a brain-taxing challenge.

What I needed in the drugstore was a big sign that said "This is the shampoo for everyday men like YOU". Below the sign would be a marble pedestal, upon which a glowing bottle of shampoo would just want me to purchase it. No choices. Just an easy solution.

You've been there right? Whether it's pasta or water or digital cameras or mobile phone plans, we are burdened either with choices that are inconsequential or with choices that we are ill-equipped to make.

Worse even is the choice some software gives you when you download it ("professional version or extended version?"), install it ("Where shall our product install its Quidjibo data?"), or run it for the first time ("Would you like classic mode or postmodern mode?"). I want to defiantly say, "I don't know, I've never used your software, just do all the defaults for me please".

I try hard to keep Poker Copilot free of options. Every time I add an option I feel like I've failed slightly in the user interface design and implementation. People want the option to increase the font size? The hand replayer speed? The keyboard shortcuts? Then I've probably done a poor job in that part of the program. Instead i consider improving how it works so that more people are satisfied with the defaults. Naturally some options are helpful. But most aren't.

This mentality drove the design of the new Hand Replayer 1-click video recorder. When you click "Record" there are no options. You are not asked where to save the file, what to call it, what type of video encoding to us, or what resolution you want it. You shouldn't have to know about these things. Instead I copied the approach used by taking screenshots on the Mac - press [Cmd] + [Shift] + 3 and a screenshot is immediately saved onto your desktop with the word "Screenshot" and the current date and time in the filename. Likewise with Poker Copilot's recorder. The recording starts immediately. The file is saved to your desktop with the poker room name and the game number. It is in a video encoding liked by both QuickTime and YouTube.

Poker Copilot: Coming in the next Poker Copilot Update

noreply@blogger.com (Steve McLeod) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:22:48 +0000

Do you have poker tracking software on your Mac that allows you to replay any hand and record it to a video? Something you can play in QuickTime, send to your friends or to online poker forums, or post on YouTube?

The next update of Poker Copilot will do this. One click on the replayer's "Record" button, and a video replay of the hand is saved to your desktop.

MicroISV on a Shoestring (Patrick McKenzie): New Trends In Startup Financing Explained For Laymen

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:56:57 +0000

Noted American technology investor and all-around smart guy Paul Graham wrote recently about emerging trends in startup funding, specifically that convertible notes and rolling closes are displacing the traditional equity rounds done at a fixed valuation done with angel syndicates.

Did that sound like Greek to you?

Great, you might benefit from this translation of Financier into Geek. (P.S. If you haven’t figured out the significance of it originally being written in Financier instead of in Geek, please, think it through.) I originally wrote it as a comment on Hacker News but somebody asked me to put it somewhere easily findable. I have elaborated with standard blog post formating and graphs where I thought they helped the explanation:

Why We Care About Angel Investing

Startups raise money from investors to accelerate their growth into, hopefully, massively profitable businesses and/or massively large acquisitions from big companies.

One particular type of investor that invests in startups is called an angel investor. An angel investor is often an individual human being who is wealthy, frequently as a consequence of successful entrepreneurship. They invest anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000 or so.

Fundraising is painful, and requires a lot of time and focus from startup founders. To mitigate the pain, it is often structured in terms of “rounds”, where the startup goes out to raise a particular large sum of money all at once. For an angel round, let’s say that could be a million dollars. (n.b. It is trending down, as companies can now be founded for sums of money which would have been laughable a few years ago.) Clearly we’re going to need to piece together contributions from a few angels here.

Why Angel Investing Frustrates Founders

Traditionally, one angel has been the “lead” angel, who handles the bulk of the organizational issues for the investors. The rest just sit by their phone and write checks when required. (Slight exaggeration.) Investors are often skittish, and they require social proof to invest in companies, so you often hear them say something like a) they’re not willing to invest in you but b) they are willing to invest in you if everybody else does. This leads to deadlocks as a group of investors, who all would invest in the company if they company were able to raise investment, fail to invest in the company because it cannot raise investment.

Startup founders are, understandably, frustrated by this.

What “Valuation” Means

All numbers below this point were chosen for ease of illustration only. They do not represent typical valuations, round sizes, or percentages of companies purchased by angels.

One item of particular interest in investing is the valuation of the company. This gets into heady math, but the core idea is simple: if we agree that the company is worth $100 at this instant in time (the “pre-money valuation”), and you want to invest $100, then right after the company receives your investment, the company is worth $200 (the “post-money valuation”). Since you paid $100, you should own half the company.

Traditionally, the company has exactly one pre-money valuation (which is decided solely by negotiation, and bears little if any relation to what disinterested outside observers could perceive about the company). All investors receive slices in the company awarded in direct proportion to the amount of money they invest. Two investors investing the same amount of money receive the same sized slice of the company. This can be written as “they invested at the same valuation.”

The thesis of PG’s essay is that allowing investors to invest at the same valuation is not advantageous to the startup. Instead, by offering a discount to valuation for moving quickly, you can convince investors to commit to the deal early, thus starting the stampede from the hesitant investors who were waiting to see social proof.

For example, take the company from earlier. We said it was worth $100 prior to receiving investing, but that is not tied to objective reality. Say instead we’ll agree that it is worth $80… but only with respect to the 1st investor. He commits $20. $80 + $20 = $100, so he gets $20 / $100 = 20% of the company for $20, or $1 = 1%. This convinces a second investor to invest. He says “Can I get 20% for $20, too?” Not so fast, buddy, where were you yesterday? The company isn’t worth $80 any more. We think it is worth $105 now. (Did we just get through saying $100? Yes. But valuations are not connected to objective reality.) So you get $20 / ($105 + $20) = 16% of the company for your $20. Think that is fair? You do? OK, done.

This continues a few times. The startup raises money — possibly more money, depending on how much the angels want in — with less hassle for the founders.

What Is A Convertible Note? Why Do Founders Like Them?

We’ve been talking about just dollars so far, and alluding to control of the company as if it were equity like stocks, but there is a mechanism called “convertible notes” at play here. A convertible note is the result of a torrid affair between a loan and an equity instrument. It looks a bit like Mom and a bit like Dad. Like a loan, it charges interest: typically something fairly modest like 6 to 8%, much less than a credit card.

The tricky thing about convertible notes is that they convert into partial ownership of the company at a defined event, most typically at the next round of VC funding or at the sale of the company. So, instead of the first investor getting $20 = 20% of the company, he loans the company $20 in exchange for a promise like this: “You owe me $20, with interest. Don’t worry about paying me back right now. Instead, next time you raise money or sell the company, we’re going to pretend that I’m either investing with the other guy or selling with you. The portion of the company which I buy or sell will be based on complicated magic to protect both your interests and my interests. If you want to sweeten the deal for me, sweeten the magic.”

Do we understand why this arrangement works for both parties? It incentivizes investors to commit early, which lets startups raise more money with less pain. Because startups are in the driver’s seat, it also lets them avoid collusion among investors (“We decided we’d all invest in you, but we don’t think the company is worth $100. We think it is worth $50. Yeah, that has no basis in objective reality, but objective reality is that your company is worth $0 without the $100 in our collective pockets. What is it going to be? Give up 2/3 of the company, or go broke and get nothing.”)

How Do You Calculate The Equity Value of A Convertible Note?

OK, back to complicated magic. When the company takes outside investment, the convertible notes magically convert into stock, based on:

a) the valuation the company receives for the investment round (higher numbers are better for both founders and angels)
b) a negotiated discount to the valuation, to reward the angel investor for his early faith in the company (higher numbers are better for angels)
c) possibly, a valuation cap (higher numbers, or no cap, are better for founders)

For example, continuing with our “low numbers make math comprehensible” startup, let’s say it goes on a few months and is then raising a series A round, which basically means “the first time we got money from VCs”. We’ll say the VC and startup negotiate and agree that the company is worth $500 today, the VC is investing $250, ergo the VC gets a third of the company.

How much does our first $20 angel investor get? Well, he gets to participate like he was investing $20 today, plus he gets a discount to the valuation. So instead of getting $20 / $750 = 2.67% of the company, maybe he got a 20% discount to the valuation, so he gets $20 / (.8 * $750) = 3.33% of the company. (We’re ignoring the effect of interest here for simplicity, but he probably effectively has $21 and change invested by now in real life.)

After this is over, the convertible note is gone, and our angel investors are left with just shares (partial ownership of the company), which they probably hold until the company either goes IPO or gets bought by someone. So if the company later gets bought for $2,000 by Google, our intrepid angel investor makes $66 on his $20 investment.

How Does A Valuation Cap Work?

We haven’t discussed valuation caps yet. Valuation caps are intended to prevent the startup dragging its feet on raising money, thus building up lots of worth in the company, and then the angel investor getting cheesed. For example, if they had just grown through revenues for a year or two, they might be raising money at a valuation of $1,250. In that case, $20 only buys you 2% of the company (remember, he gets a 20% discount : $20 / (.8 * $1250) = 2%), which the angel investor might think doesn’t adequately compensate him for the risk he took on betting on a small, unproven thing several years before. So we make him a deal: he gets to invest his $20 at the same terms as the VCs do if, and only if, the valuation is less than $750. If it is more than $750, for him and only him, we pretend it was $750 instead. This means that under no circumstances will he walk away with less than $20 / (.8 * $750) = 3.33% of the company, as long as the company goes on to raise further investment. (Obviously, if they fold, he walks away with nothing. Well, technically speaking, with debt owed to him by a company which is bankrupt and likely has no assets to speak of, so essentially nothing.)

Perhaps This Will Be Clearer With A Picture

Angels ultimately benefit from higher discounts to the valuation of the Series A round, and lower valuation caps. Higher discounts, and higher effective discounts, mean you get more of the company for less money. That is an unambiguous good, as long as you keep the quality of the company constant.

Let’s see how valuation caps affect how much of the company you end up with. The better the company is doing by Series A time, the less of the company the angel ends up with. This shows the incentive for the founders: do as well as you can prior to raising money, which is the same incentive founders always have.

As you can see from the below graph, a valuation cap essentially gives the angel an artificially higher discount for if the Series A valuation exceeds the valuation cap. Obviously then, it is in the interest of angels to negotiate as low a cap as possible, and in the interests of founders to negotiate a high cap or no cap at all. According to Paul Graham, this becomes the primary “pricing” mechanism in the new seed financing economy: if a founder wants to reward an angel, they award them with a lower cap. If they don’t, the angels get a higher cap, or no cap at all. This kicks discussions of valuations down the road a little bit, and allows you to simultaneously offer the company to multiple angels at multiple “price points”. That allows you to reward them for non-monetary compensation (mentoring, having a big name, etc) or for early action on the deal.

This Is Not My Business. Take With A Grain Of Salt.

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, my familiarity with angel investing is very limited and, to the extent that it exists, it is mostly about angel investing in small town Japan. (Oh, the stories I can’t tell.) The above explanation is based on me processing what I’ve read and trying to prove that I understand it by explaining it to other people. If I have made material errors, please correct me in the comments.

My current business is not seeking funding (and would be an extraordinarily poor candidate for it). I’ll never say never for the future, but for the present, I rather like getting 100% of the returns.

[Edit: Want to use some or all of this, including the graphs, for your own purposes? Go ahead.]

Neil Davidson: Different: escaping the competitive herd (a book review)

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:58:00 +0000

One of the speakers pulled out of BoS2010 a couple of weeks ago, leaving a gap in the schedule that I've been trying to fill since. For me, the best speakers at previous years have been those who've left my brain throbbing gently by the end of their talk. People like Geoffrey Moore, Don Norman, Seth Godin and Jennifer Aaker. I've been trying to think of somebody - they're often substantial academics and great communicators - who could fill that slot. I've been struggling.

Then I stumbled across Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon.

I picked it up expecting a book like all other business books. It would have, I thought, a single idea that would have made a good essay. That idea would be padded out to 200 pages, because that's the length business books have to be. It would include examples from WL Gore, Whole Foods, Best Buy and South West airlines. It would have a coherent set of principles and a checklist I could follow to help improve my business. It would probably do those things exceptionally well.

It didn't.

It totally under-delivered.

But it doesn't matter.

Why doesn't that matter? Because it surprised me in so many other ways. It's not a traditional business book - it's a mashup between a business book and a reflective essay. It meanders between marketing and philosophy, spending as much time discussing what it means to live in the modern world as how to build brands. As you'd expect, Youngme talks about Google and Apple (how could a book that talks about brands that insult their customers, polarise consumers and revolutionise product categories fail to mention Apple?). Less expectedly - but still within the category of 'business book' she's careful to keep one foot in - she writes beautifully and conversationally about Mini, Marmite, Red Bull and BAPE. But she also talks about Richard Feynman, the Onion and the Fonz. She even uses the word 'motherfucker' once. How many business books do that?

Youngme's thesis is that the way businesses are taught to compete is flawed. We're encouraged to talk to our customers and add the new features they demand. We examine our competitors, figure out where they're better than us and then we copy them. We find out what our weaknesses are, and fix them. We repeat, repeat, repeat, stuck on a treadmill of incremental innovation as we try to become better, faster, cleaner, cheaper, tastier - whatever it is that our customers tell us they want. The end result is entire product categories (bottled water, shampoo, detergent, cars, beer, operating systems, accounting software) stuffed with thousands of near-identical, micro-differentiated products that nobody can tell apart.

Youngme thinks there's a better way. She believes that the way to compete isn't by being better. It's by being different. The products and brands that people love are those that fail to give us what we expect, but which then surprise us in some other way. They refuse to be judged on the same axes as their competitors. They change our perception of what a product ought to do. Sometimes, they insult us. They cultivate their enemies as much as they nurture their friends. They're flawed, and they shout about their flaws to whoever will listen. They polarise. They refuse to be bland.

Youngme doesn't pretend this book is complete. Some of its ideas are tentative, and it has flaws. But rather than pretend those imperfections don't exist, she embraces them. Youngme describes Different as a 'leaky, leaky boat'. It takes what could be a weakness - its lack of absoluteness - and turns it into a tremendous strength. Sure, the book is ambiguous, its arguments aren't perfect and it offers few conclusions. But that's what the real world is like.

There's no way I can summarise this wonderful book in a single review. Go buy yourself a copy.

Youngme Moon is speaking at Business of Software 2010. There are still a few tickets left. Book now!

Seth Godin's Blog: Launching the ShipIt Workbook

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:52:41 +0000

Six months ago, I put together a workbook that would help Linchpin readers ship.

After testing it out on hundreds of people, it's now ready for retail sale. [UPDATE on 9/2--yesterday, the workbook was so popular it went to the top 10 of all books on Amazon. And they sold all the warehouse could take. So it's sold out... I have shipped more to them, but they probably won't go on sale until the 8th. I'll update this post then. Thanks guys.]

You can find details here, or jump right to the buy page. The goal? To make you uncomfortable at the beginning of a project (and successful at the end).

Here's the core idea: it's weird to write in a book. When you do, you're making a commitment. You're combining the open-mindedness that reading brings with the physical action of writing. If you do that at every step in a project--and if your co-workers do too--the seemingly slippery decisions that get made appear a lot more solid.

The ShipIt workbook is designed to be worked on in groups (hence the five pack) and it delivers. If you can confront the mechanics or the fear that's slowing down (or even killing) your project, it's easy to fix it now, before it's too late.

There's no digital version, because without writing things down, it can't work. But there is an mp3 interview that will help you get your arms around how each page works. I'm pricing this first batch at $3.20 each in a pack of five just for the launch. [PS Amazon is having trouble shipping to Canadians right now. It may take a while to figure this out, and all I can do is apologize...]

I hope you'll give it a try.

Seth Godin's Blog: Better than nothing (is harder than you think)

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:36:00 +0000

Most of the time, particulary in b2b and luxury sales, the competition is nothing.

"I will buy this treat or I will buy nothing, because I don't really need anything."

"I will buy your consulting services, or I'll continue doing what I'm doing now on that front, which is nothing."

None of the above.

"I will vote for you or I'll do what I usually do, which is not vote."

"I'll hire you or I'll hire no one."

While you think your competition is that woman across town, it's probably apathy, sitting still, ignoring the problem... nothing.

Stop worrying so much about comparing yourself to every other possible competitor you can imagine and start comparing yourself to nothing. Are you really worth the hassle, the risk, the time, the money? Or can't the prospect just wait until tomorrow?

Successful Software (Andy Brice): blog impressions

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:08:49 +0000

Well, not in pounds or dollars. But, according to WordPress.com and to my considerable surprise, this blog has now had over a million impressions since I started it, 3 and a bit years ago.

OK, I know Joel Spolsky or Jeff Atwood probably wouldn’t get out of bed for a meagre million impressions, but I still couldn’t resist crowing about it.

As you can see in the graph below the traffic is very uneven, dominated by a few posts that made it on to the front page of social news sites.

In fact over 40% of the total impressions come from just 5 (2%) of the posts:

Post	Impressions
The software awards scam	234,909
10 things non-technical users don’t understand about your software	55,291
Lessons learned from 13 failed software products	51,676
Your harddrive will fail – it’s just a question of when	47,505
Where I program	47,075

Here are a few things I have learnt along the way:

As with many things in life, persistence is the key.
Choose your audience and write for that audience.
Pick a realistic posting schedule and try to stick to it.
Find your own voice.
The titles of posts are important.
Don’t expect lots of clickthroughs from social media sites to translate to lots of subscribers.
Get your posts proof read (thanks Claire!).
I am lousy at predicting how much interest a particular blog post will generate.
Don’t blog about blogging.
Be prepared to break the rules from time to time.

Although time is sometimes scarce for blogging I have lots of ideas for future blog posts. But if there is anything you would particularly like to see on this blog, please leave a comment.

Filed under: blogging, software Tagged: blog, statistics, wordpress

Gamecraft (Gregg Seelhoff): Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.12 (and more!)

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:11:39 +0000

A new version of our premier Solitaire for Mac OS X is released. The autumn release schedule at Goodsol Development was kicked off with the release of Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.12 on August 17th. Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition is a Solitaire program that (currently) supports 200 different solitaire games. PGSME 2.12 is [...]

Micro-ISV Asia: RAD Studio XE Now Shipping with 4 Programming Languages

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:58:04 +0000

Embarcadero shipped RAD Studio XE on Monday. The successor to RAD Studio 2010 now includes 4 development environments:

Delphi XE: Develop native 32-bit Windows applications using the Delphi language. Since Delphi now generates Unicode applications, only Windows 2000 and later are supported.
C++Builder XE: Same as Delphi XE, but using C++ as the language.
Delphi Prism XE: Delphi Prism XE integrates into Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010. If you don’t have Visual Studio, the VS 2010 shell is installed when you install Delphi Prism. Delphi Prism was first included with RAD Studio 2009. It allows you to develop .NET applications using all the frameworks supported by Visual Studio, including WinForms, WPF, and Silverlight. Delphi Prism uses a language that is very similar to Delphi, but not identical. Unlike the Delphi for .NET compiler that was included with RAD Studio 2005 to 2007, it is not intended to make it easy to share code between Win32 and .NET. Instead it is intended to fully exploit the features offered by the .NET framework.
RadPHP XE: RAD Studio XE is the first release that includes RadPHP. RadPHP is the new name of Delphi for PHP. The old name was a bit of a misnomer because while RadPHP is inspired by Delphi, they’re totally separate tools. RadPHP is a development tool that looks and feels very much like Delphi and includes a framework very similar to the VCL, but creates web applications using PHP and JavaScript.

All in all that’s quite a bundle. There are 3 editions: Professional, Enterprise, and Architect. Enterprise has all the Professional features plus dbExpress server connectivity, DataSnap (for multi-tier database applications), WebSnap, UML modeling, and build automation. Architect has all the Enterprise features plus database modeling using ER/Studio.

MetaGreg (Greg Moreno): Deploy a Rails 3, Sqlite3 application in Tomcat using JRuby

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:08:42 +0000

and have a Ruby version running side-by-side.

A few months ago I got interested in JRuby while researching for text mining algorithms. I found some gems but they are either unmaintained or inadequate while the mature libraries I found were written in Java. No problem! JRuby to the rescue. Thank God.

Next stop, I decided to take Rails 3 and JRuby for a spin. Incidentally, I will be on a 3-city Rails tour in the Philippines this September and since there are many Filipino Java developers, they might find it interesting to see their favorite Java platform works nicely with Ruby on Rails.

Setup

I will be using the following for this tutorial:

java 1.6 + JDK
tomcat 7.0.2
rvm 1.0.1
jruby 1.5.0
ruby 1.9.2p0

Further below, I outline how to install these software. First, let’s see my current environment.

$ more /etc/issue
Ubuntu 9.10 \n \l

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_20"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_20-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 16.3-b01, mixed mode)

$ rvm -v
rvm 1.0.1 by Wayne E. Seguin (wayneeseguin@gmail.com) [http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/]

$ jruby -v
jruby 1.5.0 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-05-12 6769999) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.6.0_20) [i386-java]

$ TOMCAT/bin/version.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.2
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.2
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.2/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
Using CLASSPATH:       /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.2/bin/bootstrap.jar:/usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.2/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Server version: Apache Tomcat/7.0.2
Server built:   Aug 4 2010 12:23:47
Server number:  7.0.2.0
OS Name:        Linux
OS Version:     2.6.31-22-generic
Architecture:   i386
JVM Version:    1.6.0_20-b02
JVM Vendor:     Sun Microsystems Inc.

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2p0 (2010-08-18 revision 29036) [i686-linux]

Install JDK and Tomcat

$ aptitude install curl sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-jdk
$ wget  http://apache.mobiles5.com/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.2-beta/bin/apache-tomcat-7.0.2.tar.gz
$> tar zxvf apache-tomcat-7.0.2.tar.gz
$> mv apache-tomcat-7.0.2 /usr/local

Of course, these assume you want to use 7.0.2 and you want it installed at your /usr/local.

Install JRuby, Rails 3

I assume you already have rvm installed. If not, I highly recommend that you do. I can’t imagine a Ruby developer not using rvm :)

$ rvm install jruby
$ rvm jruby
$ rvm gemset create railsjam
$ rvm jruby@railsjam
$ gem install rails

Try a sample app

I’ve created sample app for the RailsJam tour. This have several functionalities already and better than creating a Rails app from scratch.

$ git clone git://github.com/gregmoreno/railsjam.git

Update the Gemfile

You need a separate set of gems to make your Rails 3 application work with JRuby. For learning purposes, I want my Rails 3 application to work other than JRuby. To accomplish that, we need to specify what gems are needed solely by JRuby.

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.0.0'

if defined?(JRUBY_VERSION)
  gem 'jdbc-sqlite3'
  gem 'activerecord-jdbc-adapter'
  gem 'activerecord-jdbcsqlite3-adapter'
  gem 'jruby-openssl'
  gem 'jruby-rack'
  gem 'warbler'
else
  gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'
end

(A copy of this Gemfile is available at the ‘jruby’ folder of the railsjam application.)

Now, it’s time to intall the gems.

# Must do this. Otherwise,  bundle picks up wrong version of jdbc
$ rm Gemfile.lock
$ jruby -S bundle install

Prepare the database.

The first time I worked on this tutorial, I needed to specify the jdbcsqlite3 as the database adapter. However, when I tried the tutorial on the same machine with a fresh gemset, it worked pretty well with just ‘sqlite3’. Just to be sure, I modified ‘database.yml’ to check for JRuby.

development:
  adapter: <%= defined?(JRUBY_VERSION) ? 'jdbcsqlite3' : 'sqlite3' %>
  database: db/development.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

production:
  adapter: <%= defined?(JRUBY_VERSION) ? 'jdbcsqlite3' : 'sqlite3' %>
  database: /home/greg/dev/railsjam/db/development.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

When you deploy to Tomcat, it will be on ‘production’ mode by default. Since sqlite3 is file based and for simplicity, I used the same development database.

Now, do the migration.

$ jruby -S rake db:migrate

Deploy to Tomcat

We use ‘warble’ which is an excellent tool for packaging your Rails application. It packages everything you need to run your Rails application inside a Java container.

$ warble
$ cp railsjam.war  $TOMCAT/webapps

# start Tomcat
# assuming you arein $TOMCAT dir
$ sudo ./startup.sh

Check your Rails 3 application

# You should see the famous Rails welcome
localhost:3000/railsjam

# Play around with your application
localhost:3000/railsjam/users

Deploy Rails 3 using Ruby 1.9.2

Without shutting down your JRuby and Tomcat version, let’s try to run our app using Ruby 1.9.2

# In a new console
$ rvm 1.9.2
$ rvm gemset create railsjam
$ rvm 1.9.2@railsjam
$ gem install rails

# Assuming you are in the ‘railsjam’ folder
# This will install sqlite3-ruby gem
$ bundle install

$ rails server

Now, go play with your Rails 3 applications

# jruby + tomcat

http://localhost:8080/railsjam/users

# ruby 1.9.2

http://localhost:3000/users

In case you encountered some problems, here are some ways to solve them. If your problem is not listed here, you can email me. I only accept Paypal :)

JRuby does not support native extensions

You did not update the Gemfile to use the jdbc version of sqlite3. You will encounter this error when you install the gems.

$ bundle install
....
Installing sqlite3-ruby (1.3.1) with native extensions /home/greg/.rvm/rubies/jruby-1.5.2/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/installer.rb:482:in `build_extensions': ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)

/home/greg/.rvm/rubies/jruby-1.5.2/bin/jruby extconf.rb
WARNING: JRuby does not support native extensions or the `mkmf' library.
         Check http://kenai.com/projects/jruby/pages/Home for alternatives.
extconf.rb:9: undefined method `dir_config' for main:Object (NoMethodError)

undefined method `attributes_with_quotes’ for class `ActiveRecord::Base’

I first encountered this problem when doing migration.

$ rake db:migrate
rake aborted!
undefined method `attributes_with_quotes' for class `ActiveRecord::Base'

This is caused by an old version of your jdbc gems. In my case, sometimes bundler installs the old versions:

Installing activerecord-jdbc-adapter (0.9.2)
Installing activerecord-jdbcsqlite3-adapter (0.9.2)

As of this writing, the latest version is 0.9.7

Installing activerecord-jdbc-adapter-0.9.7-java
Installing activerecord-jdbcsqlite3-adapter-0.9.7-java

Bundler keeps installing 0.9.2

$ rm Gemfile.lock
$ jruby -S bundle install

no such file to load — sqlite3

$ rake db:migrate
(in /home/greg/dev/projects/jruby/railsjam)
rake aborted!
no such file to load -- sqlite3

‘sqlite3’ is the default name of the database adapter but with jruby, it should be ‘jdbcsqlite3’. (another) But, when I tried ‘sqlite3’ with a fresh gemset and a new machine, it went well. Anyway, just in case you run into the same problem in the future, add a condition in your database.yml

development:
  adapter: <%= defined?(JRUBY_VERSION) ? 'jdbcsqlite3' : 'sqlite3' %>
  database: db/development.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

We’re sorry, but something went wrong.

If you see the famous Rails error message, you need to dig in Tomcat’s log files.

$ cd /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.2/logs
$ ls -al localhost*

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1181 2010-09-01 00:17 localhost.2010-09-01.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1062 2010-09-01 00:18 localhost_access_log.2010-09-01.txt

$ tail -f localhost.2010-09-01.log

In the log file, you will see the errors like missing database.

org.jruby.rack.RackInitializationException: The driver encountered an error: java.sql.SQLException: path to ‘/home/greg/dev/tmp/apache-tomcat-7.0.2/webapps/railsjam/WEB-INF/db/production.sqlite3′: ‘/home/greg/dev/tmp/apache-tomcat-7.0.2/webapps/railsjam/WEB-INF/db’ does not exist

Rails 3 upgrade part 1: Booting the application It’s time for another Rails upgrade! We all have our share of bad experiences and frustrations every time we upgrade a piece of software. Even for technical people who live...
How to setup a Rails 3 app I finally decided to give Rails 3 a spin after beta was released 20 days ago. In geek time, that’s being a late adopter. But first, a warning. I’ve read...
Rails 3 upgrade part 4: Prototype helpers and Javascript Rails 3 is embracing the unobtrusive Javascript (or UJS) mantra which is good because it is the right way; at the same time, it is bad because many applications will...

Poker Copilot: Comparing Mac Poker Tracking Software

noreply@blogger.com (Steve McLeod) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:35:26 +0000

Over at PocketFives, a concerned citizen is asking for advice as to which Mac OS X poker tracking software to use. Clearly I'm biased so I won't be answering. You, loyal blog readers and Poker Copilot customers are perhaps somewhat less biased. So I encourage to visit PocketFives and share your experiences. The wider web will be grateful.

OnStartups (Dharmesh Shah): 23 Tweetable Startup Insights From Seth Godin

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:23:00 +0000

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a long-time admirer of Seth Godin. He’s one of those “big thinkers” that has the added talent of being able to articulate high-level concepts in an immensely approachable way. That’s a very rare, and dare I say remarkable intersection of abilities.

The following is a list of short, pithy insights that I’ve been collecting from Seth’s Blog over the past few months. They were not all written specifically for startups, but I found them to be particularly relevant for entrepreneurs. I, like many, think Seth's ideas deserve to be spread.

Enjoy.

If you find any of these particularly resonant, there’s a convenient link to tweet it.

23 Tweetable Startup Insights From Seth Godin

1) Reliance on the tried and true can backfire. [tweet]

2) Sell the problem. No business buys a solution for a problem they don't have. [tweet]

3) Every activity worth doing has a learning curve. [tweet]

4) As the world gets faster, the glacial changes of years and decades are more important, not less. [tweet]

5) Cultural shifts create long terms evolutionary changes. [tweet]

6) Being 1st helps in the short run. Being a little more right pays off in the long run. Last is the worst. [tweet]

7) Build in virality. [tweet]

8) Subscriptions beat one-off sales. [tweet]

9) Treat different customers differently. [tweet]

10) Generate joy. Don't just satisfy a need for a commodity. [tweet]

11) Plan on remarkable experiences, not remarkable ads. [tweet]

12) Don't build a fortress of secrets, bet on open. [tweet]

13) You can get even more done if you give away credit, relentlessly [tweet]

14) Create scarcity but act with abundance. [tweet]

15) Competition validates you. It creates a category. It permits the sale to be this or that, not yes or no. [tweet]

16) There are lots of good reasons to abandon a project. Having a little competition is not one of them. [tweet]

17) It's not who can benefit from what you sell. It's about choosing the customers you'd like to have. [tweet]

18) The customers you fire and those you pay attention to all send signals to the rest of the group. [tweet]

19) 100 people doing something at the same time has far more power than 300 people doing it over time. [tweet]

20) Are you chasing or being chased? Are you leading or following? Are you fleeing or climbing? [tweet]

21) Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up to a thousand. [tweet]

22) Highlighting what's working helps you make that happen more often. [tweet]

23) Perfect is overrated. Perfect doesn't scale, either. [tweet]

Which is your favorite? Any that I missed that you have in your secret stash?

Looking for other startup fanatics? Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group. 130,000+ members and growing daily.

Oh, and by the way, you should follow me on twitter: @dharmesh.

47 Hats (Bob Walsh): 35 Hands are better than 2

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:18:45 +0000

The Iron Law of running a startup or microISV is there’s never enough time to everything, especially the important but non-critical stuff. It takes lots and lots of time to do the strategic stuff – often you have to pump in some unknown number of hours just researching.

That’s why I’m excited by Fancy Hands – it’s fixed price virtual assistants for simple but time-consuming tasks. I recently used Fancy Hands (15 tasks per month for $35) to kick off two projects that have been stalled forever: engaging more with other startup bloggers and social media bloggers. Before you can engage, you have to know who to engage with – and that’s an easy task to hand off to someone else and get “good enough” results.

All it took was signing up with the service (FH uses Google Accounts for authentication), then send them an email for a task:

Name, email and blog URL and name for the top 25 Social Media Bloggers.
Name, email and blog URL and name for the top 25 software Startup Bloggers.
(something private)

Here’s something worth mentioning: total elapsed time between putting in these two requests (and a third) and getting results: 45 minutes. Put another way, for that 45 minutes it was like having 3 Bob VMs running in addition to yours truly.

Fancy Hands isn’t a virtual bookkeeper, fashion consultant or speechwriter: they focus on scheduling, web research, making appointments. But getting 15 of those things off your plate for the month is worth a lot more than $35 or the X hours it would take you. Here’s some of their most requested tasks:

Restaurant Reservations
Scheduling a car service / taxi pickup
Find the nearest place that has iPads in stock
Find the advertising rates (or contact info) for the top 10 [industry] blogs
Schedule a haircut with [stylist] on Friday after 1pm
Call [three bars] and find out if they have a private room available for rentals
Call [primarily offline company] and get the status of order number xyz
Find a couple upholsterer options near where I work
Call TD Bank and ask how many checks I can use for free on a standard personal account
Call some hotel and extend my stay for three nights instead of two

I’ve been cajoling Mason Levey to add a more technical track to deal with the real IT pains in my butt like:

Why are my iCal alarms doubled up?
What’s the best online service out there to let people fill in a short questionnaire and book my time?
A proven recipe for setting up 3 WordPress blogs on a new VPS.
Best current tool for winnowing out low value Twitter follows?
What’s the best automatic Twitter background maker out there?
What should my Facebook privacy settings be?

There’s a huge market out there for these kind of Internet-related tasks – not just startups and IT people, but all those hundreds of millions of people out there being pulled day by day and step by step into our net-centric world. Give Fancy Hands a try (and here’s a StartupToDo.com Guide on Fancy Hands with a nice discount code), and bug Mason to offer an IT track: it would be awesome!

(P.S – and if you can make any of those IT pains go away, let’s talk: bob.walsh@47hats.com.)

Seth Godin's Blog: Responsibility and authority

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:40:04 +0000

Many people struggle at work because they want more authority.

It turns out you can get a lot done if you just take more responsibility instead. It's often offered, rarely taken.

(And you can get even more done if you give away credit, relentlessly).

Casey Software: OpenCamp 2010 Recap

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:36:16 +0000

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the first OpenCamp in Dallas, TX. While I've been to a few of the CMS-focused events - WordCamp Mid-Atlantic, WordCamp NYC, and DrupalConDC - this was my first time at one of the crossover events. In one event, we had some of the best and brightest from each of the communities in one place presenting, talking, drinking, and generally arguing over the intracies of each of their systems and why the other guy was completely wrong.

Alright, I'm kidding.. most people thought everyone else was just mostly wrong.

First, some high points:

The venue was fantastic. The wifi worked pretty consistently. The food (and coffee!) was reasonably priced. Lunch each day was well-done and generous and delivered by an excellent staff. If you're ever in Addison, TX, check out the Crowne Plaza.
More importantly, the event gathered some fantastic minds from all over the place. I had dinner with a significant portion of the Joomla! team including Open Source Matters President Ryan Ozimek. I met most of guys that organize DrupalCamp Dallas and chatted on how Austin & Dallas might collaborate. And of course, I had the chance to meet with friends and colleagues like Josh Holmes of Microsoft and make some new acquaintences like Caleb Jenkins and many, many others.
Finally, attending a regional conference was great. The vast majority of people here lived within 200 miles and many were from right there in Dallas. A conference has a completely different vibe when you're in someone's backyard. As "hosts," they work hard to take you to the good restaurants and make sure you have a good time.

Next, some low points:

The vast majority of the talks were not technical in the slightest. Sure, they mentioned technical concepts and a few even went into them.. but considering the flavor of conferences I normally attend, this was a little jarring. It's not that this was bad, just a little unexpected.
Next, the presentation format was just plain screwy. Thirty minute sessions without transition time are terrible. It meant each session was trimmed down to 25 minutes or more like 22 minutes if they left room for questions. Since 15 minutes is normally considered a lightning talk, this just seemed awkward. That said, some of the sessions were a full hour.
Finally, some of the presenters were just plain terrible. They all seemed to know their material, but it was apparent that some rarely stepped away from their computers. To be an active contributor in Open Source, a person has to be smart and passionate. The passion was definitely lacking.

Some final thoughts:

While the sessions were not a great match for me, the "hallway track" was fantastic. Through a combination of dumb luck and excellent introductions from good friends, I managed to spend quite a bit of time talking with smart people:

I learned more about Drupal modules, permissions, and how to abuse them for fun and benefit;
I heard some details about the inner workings of the Joomla! team;
I argued about the GPL more than I care to consider;
I gathered some patches on code I manage and shared a few with others; and
I learned how to make our (web2project's) stuff work better on Microsoft's infrastructure.

Would I attend OpenCamp again?

Yes, but I would go in with clearer expectations and take a more active role in the Birds of a Feather schedule. I know there were people actively looking to share technical ideas and compare implementations. It's just a matter of finding and gathering them in one room. Finally, the best but most unexpected part of all..

I got to spend a good amount of time with people I call friends and may have made some new ones.