I used to get random emails asking when Johnny Coder was going to start blogging again. Well, I guess I knew I had been away too long when people stopped asking me where I was…

Over the past few months, I shifted directions. I left a 60+ hour/week lead/management consulting gig and have since taken on a full-time developer position.  What does this mean?  Well, it means I now spend roughly 40 hours each week writing code rather than watching over folks who write code. In other words, now I’m sharing in the fun which is something I haven’t done in years.  With any luck, I’m still good at it.  Having fun, that is.

Now, I didn’t jump into the fun right away.  After leaving my last contract, I took a sabbatical of sorts.  I worked out, ate well, drank beer at lunch and more than occasionally sat by the pool and read lots and lots. I didn’t only read technical things though having not been on the interviewee-side of an interview in quite some time, I found myself shying away from fiction.

Since I am re-learning a bit, I suspect the posts to come won’t be today’s news.  In the not-too-distant past, I was overly concerned with posting something which was already said or (even worse) something which made me seem out of the loop. Well, I’ve since abandoned that idea — probably at the pool. With any luck, I will continue to write about things which make you feel smarter. 

Thanks for waiting…

This announcement may be yesterday’s news for some, but I just discovered Aaron Lerch’s “Kick It” plugin today and it works like a charm.  If you are using WordPress AND Windows Live Writer is your go-to editor AND your posts tend to be .NET related, give Aaron Lerch’s DotNetKicks “Kick It” Counter Plugin for Windows Live Writer a try.  Again, it works like a charm.  Well, if I am being completely honest, I haven’t tested it yet as I’m not prepared to submit my own post to DNK. So, who’s going to be the first to test the plugin for me?

Jon Galloway is determined to write three posts a week.  I think it is a great goal — one which I wish I could meet. This past weekend, he wrote about “aspiring to be the dumbest person in the room” and how “more active participation in a group can lead to more information, but that new information can actually stifle further participation.” 

Well, when it came right down to it, Jon provided a list of reasons why he wasn’t blogging as consistently as he would have liked.  Rather than offering only excuses, he offered solutions or a better way of viewing the situation.  Jon did a nice job with the post.  For those of you who have been wanting to write more but haven’t, this is a good read for you. 

On a similar note, I am a firm believer in being the dumbest person in the room.  When it comes to management/leadership, only good things come from surrounding yourself with exceptional people — especially people who are smarter and more talented than you.  This can sometimes feel uncomfortable, but there’s something inherently good and responsible about managing and leading this way.  I may have provided insight into my overall attitude a while back when I encouraged readers to subscribe to my blog in order to feel smarter.  Guaranteed. 

Best of luck to Jon on his three-posts-a-week resolution.

Now that I’m a dad, I had to laugh at the comic below, but the truth is these fighting words aren’t going to come out of my kid’s mouth.  “My blog gets more traffic than your blog” is more likely.  This will, of course, be accompanied by a heated exchange of blog statistics served up by a couple of 5-year-olds. 

Since June of last year, I’ve helped setup four blogs for families with newborns.  My son’s blog, which is as old as he, has been online for 7 months.  You might say that I enjoy updating his blog more than Johnnycoder.com.  You might say it is because his blog gets a greater and more enthusiastic response. :)  OR it’s the best way a techie dad can show off his son to family and friends all over the country all of the time.  It’s the best.

To all the blogging dads and dads-to-be out there, do yourself and your kid a favor and give them something to fight with their friends about.  This is how I did it.

I spent most of my day working through approximately 750 unread posts which had piled up over the last couple of weeks.  It was an enjoyable way to spent a good portion of my Sunday, but I’m exhausted and I’m hopeful that I’ll never fall that far behind again.  

I came across several articles of interest, but I found one post particularly apropos.   It was about beating RIO (RSS Information Overload).  Here are the highlights:

1. Create an “Pending Review” folder and move all such feeds in that folder. Every weekend, clean the folder by deleting feeds that do not interest you anymore. The cycle continues every week.

2. Create a “Favorites” folder.  This folder will contain all feeds that you just can’t afford to miss.  Review this folder whenever you have a spare second.

3. Most aggregators sort feed by the feed title.  Use this to your advantage and rename your feed titles to include a numeric rank.  For example, 01 - My Favorite Feed, 02 - My Second Favorite Feed, …, 90 - JohnnyCoder. This ensures that your favorite feeds are featured on top of the list and well before JohnnyCoder.  [Example taken from the author’s ranked list.]

My fingers are crossed that these techniques will help me keep up with my ever-growing feedlist.  What do you do to battle RIO?

The way I figure it, I potentially have two types of readers.

First, there is a group which reads my blog because they actually find it interesting and/or educational.  These readers learn something from me — or they are at least inspired to continue to learn on their own. 

As for the second group, my blog provides very little to these readers intellectually. Compared to me, this group already knows everything and I suspect they read my posts for no better reason than to think up 10 better ways to do whatever I’m doing.  I may possibly amuse these readers (intentionally or accidentally) but they aren’t actually learning from me.

In either case, I’d like to believe that all readers at least feel smarter after reading my posts.  Whereas the first group is actually learning and are literally becoming smarter, the second group can add me to the list of people they are smarter than thus making them smarter by comparison and percentile.  

Want to feel smart?  Read my blog. 

A colleague of mine recently asked, “Where did Johnny go?” I’ve been away for a while, but I’m back. This post is my way of getting back into the swing of things and my way of showing my continued commitment to making you all feel just a little bit smarter in 2007.

 With the attention that Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are getting for agreeing on a standard sitemaps protocol, I figured it was probably time I got one in place which meets standard found on sitemaps.org. 

Though I’m sure I would have had a lot of fun using the Google Sitemap Generator Python scripts recommended by Google Webmaster Tools, I opted to go with yet another WordPress Plugin instead. 

Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 was a single file download and a single click installation.  There’s a beta release of the next version available, but I stuck with version 2.

Though the plugin pings Google and let’s them know about the new sitemap.xml file, I still visited Google Webmaster Tools and set things up manually as well. 

All individual software programs of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate including Microsoft Office Professional 2007, Visio 2007, Groove 2007, Project 2007, Infopath 2007 and OneNote 2007 software can now be downloaded directly from Microsoft Technet or MSDN Subscriber website as ISO images.

Link to Downloading Microsoft Office 2007 from TechPlus » Digital Inspiration

As of last week, I wasn’t providing full text in my RSS feed.  I don’t remember if this was a conscious decision or I was simply using a default setting, but I think this was a bad move on my part and I’ve corrected it.  This being said, I gave it some thought before converting mostly due to the fact that I don’t think the decision is as cut and dry as “money-hungry people provide excerpts and nice people provide full text.” 

When it comes to excepts, there is some truth to the above statement.  If you want to drive traffic to your site for the sake of advertisement revenue then teasers do make sense.  To be perfectly honest, however, I’m not completely sure this strategy works since we’re talking about current subscribers (not individuals stumbling on across your site in search of something) so they aren’t likely to casually click on your ads.  Knowing this, if you are committed to providing good content (the key to maintaining subscriptions), I can’t find any fault in this excerpts-to-generate-revenue approach.  After all, I have ads on my site and I wouldn’t mind if they were clicked a little more often.  But money may not be the only motivator for using excerpts to get people to your site.  You may simply believe that your feed isn’t all that you have to offer your readers.  For example, related posts, related links, photos, and much, much more maybe be found on your site and only if readers visit will they benefit.  Or maybe you think that nice people use excerpts.  It is conceivable that some readers will skim through excerpts and only dig into posts which seem worth while.  Hence, teasers acts as time savers and a convenience to some.  Finally, there’s the idea that excerpts require shorter download times, but I doubt this is really a factor for most subscribers.  Of course, no matter what your motivation, there’s a danger to using excerpts.  Unless you can fully grasp the reader’s attention in just a few short sentences this strategy will fail you.  You need to provide meaningful summaries which give a good idea about the full post, otherwise people are less likely to subscribe.  And simply providing the first n words of the post probably isn’t going to cut it.

When it comes to full text, I believe the statement is entirely true.  The bottom line is that there isn’t much in it for the feed provider.  There may be a spirit of generosity that is created by using full feeds that is good for business, but otherwise full text is all about making a reader’s life easier (especially if they tend to read entries offline.)  One might assume that full text feeds, compared to excerpt feeds, are more likely to maintain a solid reader base and this, in turn, could potentially lead to increased readership due to a greater chance that satisfied readers would share articles with non-subscribers.  That’s great, but I’m not sure if there is any evidence in support of this.  Finally, in the process of being a nice person, I’ve also read that offering full text feeds leaves one much more open to full content theft since it is so easily parsed.  If this is the case, you are actually taking a risk publishing full text. 

I know that the majority of the feeds which I read provide full text and I appreciate it.  Though I’m more money-hungry than nice (joke), I’ve decided to go with full text because I’m guessing this is what most subscribers want.  As for the content theft, if you are stealing from me, I’m sorry to report you have probably fat-fingered the URL of a more notable feed.

I have preferred PNG over GIF and JPEG for sometime now.  It isn’t that I’m an expert on image types, but I know that PNG files are generally smaller in size than GIF and they have consistently rendered nicely for me in Firefox and IE, so I stick with them.  

With this said, my faith in PNG had been shaken since working with Windows Live Writer.  If you have ever tried to insert an image into a post using Windows Live Writer you know that PNG is not included in their default  filter.  At first, I just got really frustrated because it took an extra click to get my job done.  Under my breath I’d curse the Windows Live Writer development team and say, “I don’t care if it is a beta release or not, somebody seriously messed up here.  How could a legitimate web-related product not automatically include PNG in their image list? ”  After a dozen or so posts, however, I started to doubt myself.  And I started doubting PNG.  After all I’m not a graphic designer (nor a web designer for that matter.)  Maybe I’m simply oblivious to the very good reason why Windows Live Writer is causing me such heartache.

Tonight I went looking for answers and I now believe my frustration has merit.  I didn’t realize it, but, Internet Explorer (like Windows Live Writer) has never fully-supported PNG and this has caused quite a lot of commotion amongst the web design community for some time now.  As I understand it, there are three arguments included in the petition for Proper PNG Support in Internet Explorer for Windows:

1. PNG is Superior to the GIF
When the same image is saved in both PNG and GIF formats, in an editor with full and proper support for both formats, the PNG image is typically a smaller file size, is free from royalties, patents, and copyright restrictions that hinder the GIF format, and can use more than 256 colors - up to 48-bit color.

2. PNG is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation
Microsoft has repeatedly stated their renewed commitment to web standards, so implementing full PNG support would be the next logical step in fulfilling this promise, especially since it was supposed to be implemented over 10 years ago.

3. PNG Supports Alpha Transparency
Anybody who has designed images for use online knows the woes of trying to make that image appear smooth on any background. Some designers create different images to be used on different background colors, other designers simply leave the edges jagged, and still others just give their images a solid background. It’s a bad way to go, but it’s the only choice right now. Using PNG images with alpha transparency would eliminate all of these problems, and make the work of web designers a lot easier. 

To further explain the difference between PNG Alpha transparency and GIF transparency, a GIF image pixel is 100% transparent or 0% transparent. There is no middle ground which tends to lead to grainy-looking graphics in some cases.  Alpha transparency, on the other hand, allows for pixel transparency to range from 0% to 100%.  This allows one to blend images together much easier and create a more seamless look.

There’s some really great information on this subject available here and  here   Now that I know more about its history, the added PNG support with IE7 is worth mentioning.  Of course, I’m hopeful that the Windows Live Writer team will be influenced as well and I’m a just few clicks away from having my favorite image type included in the default filter with WLW’s next release.

The Windows Live Writer Blog This extension for Firefox isn’t currently compatible with Firefox 2.0.  However, it is possible to get the two to work together if you are willing to manually edit Firefox’s version checking feature.

If you have not installed the Blog This extension yet, follow these steps.

1. Download the Blog This installer using the link above.
2. Close Firefox.
3. Run the Blog This installer.
4. Without starting Firefox, open the following file in Notepad: C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer\BlogThis\Mozilla Firefox\install.rdf
5. Change <em:maxVersion>2.0b2</em:maxVersion> to <em:maxVersion>2.0+</em:maxVersion>. ^[1]
6. Start Firefox.

If you have already installed the Blog This extension, follow these steps.

1. Uninstall the Blog This extension (you can only do this from Add/Remove Programs, not from within Firefox).
2. Close all Firefox windows, start Firefox again, close Firefox again. (Important!)
3. Reinstall the Blog This extension.
4. Follow the above instructions starting from Step 4.
5. Without starting Firefox, open the following file in Notepad: C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer\BlogThis\Mozilla Firefox\install.rdf
6. Change <em:maxVersion>2.0b2</em:maxVersion> to <em:maxVersion>2.0+</em:maxVersion>.  ^[1]
7. Start Firefox.
8. If the toolbar does not display the Blog This button then right-click the toolbar, select “Customize…”, and drag the Blog This icon from the palette onto the toolbar.

   

I followed the steps and it worked without any problems. 

^[1] Note, set the maxVersion to 2.0+ no matter what.  It may read 2.0b2.* for you.  No problem.  Just update.

Source: Using WLW Blog This with Firefox 2.0 « whateverblog.

First, what is FeedBurner?  At it’s core, FeedBurner republishes blog feeds.  This alone isn’t all that exciting, however, the service provides so much more.

FeedBurner’s most attractive feature is it’s analytics.  The service keeps track of feed subscribers, applications used to access your feed, where your readers are located and a few other statistics. 

Not only does FeedBurner manage your analytics, it also helps build your user base by introducing easy ways for readers to subscribe to your feed (via RSS, HTML and/or email) and by submitting your posts to numerous search engines for easy indexing.  And, of course, there’s the attractive FeedBurner counter you see on everyone’s site these days.  I mean, who can resist clicking on that little baby?

FeedBurner presumably maintains your reader base as well.  This is done by ensuring your feed is compatible with all aggregators and by adding features to your post such as email options and links to social bookmarking services.  Additionally, FeedBurner lets you change your feed location.  If you happen to move your blog to another domain you are going to want to bring your readers with you, right?

Any of these features are good reason to sign up with the service, but why did I start using FeedBurner?  Mostly because everyone else is doing it.  That’s right.  I guess I submitted to the peer pressure. :)

If you are interested in setting up a FeedBurner account or if you want to know how to integrate FeedBurner into your site, keep reading.  I also go a little deeper into feature list mention above as well.

FeedBurner Account Setup

This part is easy and free. 

1. Figure out your blog’s feed URL.  (I don’t know what it looks like for all blog types, but for WordPress it is similar to http://www.sitename.com/feed.)
2. Visit FeedBurner and submit your feed URL.   
3. Provide very little account information (blog name, user name, password, etc)
4. Activate features.  I would suggest browsing through the options on the Optimize tab first.  I added some “FeedFlare” such as links on the footer of each post to comment counts, add to del.icio.us, add to digg and email.  I also modified my feed’s Title/Description.  Many of the “Optimize” features are free so go nuts.
5. Head over the “Publicize” tab.  You will probably want to select all of the options under “PingShot.” This automatically notifies services like Technorati and Ping-o-matic when you publish a post.  If you would like to display the FeedBurner counter (chicklet) on your site, check out “FeedCount.” I would also recommend looking into ”Email Subscriptions” even though I haven’t activated this feature myself yet.  
6. Wait about 24 hours and then have a look at the “Analyze” section.  Twenty four hours is the amount of time FeedBurner needs to start “building” your feed statistics.  If you need some instant gratification, “Live Hits” should be immediately available.
7. Have a look at the premium service.  They aren’t expensive and they may be worth it to you.

Site Integration

How do you integrate a new FeedBurner feed into your blog?  After all, you may have millions of readers already tied to your current feed URL. 

If you are running WordPress, you are in luck. Check out the FeedBurner Plugin v2.1 from OrderedList.com.  The plugin detects all of the ways one might be accessing your WP feed.  For example, both http://www.johnnycoder.com/blog/feed/ and http://www.johnnycoder.com/blog/wp-rss2.php are valid feed URLs for this site.  After detection, the plugin will automatically start redirecting callers your new FeedBurner feed.  The redirection will allow you to track all subscriber - existing and new.  The plugin handles forwarding for your main post feed and optionally your main comments feed.  It is quick and easy to install and, to some extent, it will even walk you through the FeedBurner account setup. I was personally up and running in minutes and I understand the plugin works for both WP 1.5 and 2.0.

If you aren’t using WordPress and you can’t leverage this plugin, you’re going to have to find all instances of the RSS feed in your blog template and modify them to point to your new FeedBurner URL.  It should not be too hard, but it may be cumbersome.  You will also want to inform your readers of the feed URL change since they will have to resubscribe to your RSS.

Alternatively, if you have the means, write your own redirection routine at each entry point.  This way, you too, can automatically keep your current reader base. 

The quick answer is HUMILITY.  Here’s why.

First things first.  I’m guessing that most everyone already knows, but  what is Technorati?  At the risk of messing up an answer which isn’t really need in the first place, I pulled information from the About Us page on the site itself.  Technorati is…

Currently tracking 58.5 million blogs.

Technorati is the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

But it all started with blogs. A blog, or weblog, is a regularly updated journal published on the web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati. Who’s saying what. Right now.

And with an account one can a good look into Technorati’s analytics.  More specifically, one can review the rankings and link counts which Technorati has compiled on their endless sampling of blogs.  A search on JohnnyCoder.com provides the following summary:

What does this mean? I had the same question.  Fortunately, the little question mark icon brought me to an explanation by Brian Pinkerton,  Director of Search, which helped some. 

Everything in the green box reflects activity within the last 180 days.  In this case, my current rank is 555,042.  (As mentioned earlier, Technorati is currently indexing 58.5 million blogs so I’m not feeling too bad yet.)  Next, you will see there are 12 links from 5 blogs.  This translates to 5 distinct blogs contain 12 link references to JohnnyCoder.  (I felt pretty good about this statistic until I found more.)  In actuality, only 4 distinct blogs, each with a single reference to JohnnyCoder, have been identified.  I came up with his number by removing JohnnyCoder from the blog count and removing self-references from the link count. (I appreciate Technorati’s optimistic view, but 4 links from 4 blogs is nothing to write home about.  Just blog about, I guess.) 

Just below the green box, you will find another link count.  This is the total number of links to JohnnyCoder for as far back as Technorati has data.  This number is not confined to the last 180 days.  In my case, however, since I haven’t been blogging for very long, the all-time number and 180-days number are the same.

Again, what do you get with a Technorati account?  For me, it was mostly humility…

…but there’s more as outlined in the Organize section of Technorati Tour.  They write about managing favorites and setting up watchlists, claiming your blogs and attaching a profile and appropriate tags, but I can’t get into all of this now.  The humiliation, I mean humility, is really setting in.

I recently signed up with Digg. The registration process was short and sweet. I simply provided a username, email address, password, my birthdate and I also verified that I was a “human” (their words, not mine) by entering the text I saw in the image verification box. All fields were required. Upon submitting my request, I almost immediately received an email which contained a link to activate my account. The activation worked without a hitch and I became a member in all of about 17 seconds. Done.

But wait.

Username. Email address. Password. Birthday. Human Verification. A favorite tune from Sesame Street comes to mind…

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn’t belong?
If you guessed this one is not like the others,
Then you’re absolutely…right!

That’s right. Digg is requiring, not just asking for, my birthdate. That’s unusual. Why do you suppose they request this info?

A few ideas came to mind:

1. Digg collects demographical information on their members. This seems reasonable.
2. Digg emails birthday cards to their members on their special day. This would be a very nice gesture but it’s unlikely.
3. Digg checks and double-checks that you really are, as you say, human. It’s a cleverly disguised trick question. It’s like the bouncer asking you for your zip code or your sign when they suspect you are trying to sneak into their club with a fake id. All humans have birthdays so don’t leave this question blank!

There is some indication that Digg anticipated their request would get some attention. To their credit, they proactively provided some explanation.

We’ve got to ask for legal reason.

Digg is being a little vague, don’t you think? A 4-year-old asking “Where do babies come from?” might receive an answer in a similar tone. You know, a casual, nonchalant, let’s-change-the-subject-and-talk-about-more-comfortable-things- which-you-can-understand kind of answer. It’s an answer seemly made up of 1 part parental “because I said so”, 1 part childish “just because” and 1 part political “trust me.”

Truly, I think Digg would have been better served to give no explanation rather than offering up the legal reasons, umm, reason. If no explanation was provided, I would have been inclined to assume that one of my original guesses was accurate and I would have slept well tonight thinking that I’m so darn smart. I mean really. So what if Digg wants to know the glorious date I first entered the world? Big deal. Doesn’t everybody? ( Fine. It’s February 29th, 1966. I was expected to arrive in early January and I was supposed to be a girl. In turn, you might say that my parents have raised me to be a little skeptical and ask a lot of questions. Go figure.)

But since Digg served up a teaser of an answer, I’d like to know the whole story. They have really got me thinking now. After all, doesn’t a statement like this deserve further explanation? Shouldn’t the words “legal reasons” at least link to a page which outlines the details? I’m talking about my rights and I’m talking about Digg’s rights too. I want to know what I can do and what I can’t do. Most importantly, what is the penalty when I (I mean, if I) break the rules?

Digg understands this concept. Accompanying the “I agree to the Terms and Conditions for using Digg” checkbox, there’s a link to a page that thoroughly explains (you guessed it) the Terms and Conditions for using Digg. Similarly, when I buy something online, there’s typically a link to a page which respectfully explains what a credit card verification code is and why it is needed. And when one buys discounted pharmaceuticals from Mexico, isn’t there always a link to a page which highlights the potential side-effects? The bottom line is that “legal reasons” should come along with more documentation. Sure, the majority of humans (assuming again that you are human) can’t interpret legal mumbo jumbo, but it’s always reassuring to know it’s available and it is nice to at least pretend we understand the content.

So throw us a bone, Digg. Tell us more and give us (notice I’m dragging everyone into this now) some piece of mind and the opportunity to act smarter than we most likely are.

Rest assured, I have looked into Digg’s Terms of Use. I have read through the FAQs and I’ve done a few Google searches on the subject, but I’m still in the dark. At the risk of sounding like a whiny two-year-old, I ask again, “Why does Digg require my birthdate?” More specifically, what are the “legal reasons?”

Help me out. Why do you think Digg needs to know my birthdate?

As you may have deduced, this article was written in jest. I truly would like to get my question answered, but I want to stress that Digg is clearly very well-respected and I am innocently having a little fun with them here. Digg has simply fallen victim to my lazy Saturday afternoon.

To join Digg, go here. Sorry. If you haven’t been born yet, you’re just going to have to wait. I’m sure it isn’t because Digg wishes to alienate. In the easiest to understand terms, it’s for “legal reasons.”

In a previous post, I discussed that 9Rules was reviewing the first round of potential new member websites starting yesterday, October 25. I took a look at what 9Rules was looking for in a site and I shared that they claim to put content ahead of design. In the article, I said, “I appreciated what the 9Rules team had to say [and] it was reassuring.”

But why was it “reassuring?” I chose this word quite intentionally since, though I wish it were the case, I don’t whole-heartedly buy it. In my option, the idea that look and feel plays second fiddle to content goes against what I believe I see in software production/marketing .^{[ 1 ]}

You see, I don’t think large-audience software products (even community-based websites) become “top-sellers” primarily on merit. They don’t necessarily meet a need or provide a valuable service. I think “packaging” and “bells and whistles” play a much bigger role than we’d like to admit. If 9Rules, for example, didn’t have an attractive UI, I doubt there would be so much interest in becoming member.

The bottom line is I think you can sell anything if it has nice enough wrapping.

It’s true, isn’t it? When choosing between two products, we choose the one with the prettiest logo and the best marketing campaign. And it’s not just in software — it happens in grocery stores, car dealerships, everywhere.

What does this mean for software development? Make your stuff look pretty. And I’m talking about everything from cleaning up your code (code formatting, variable names, understandable and ample comments, etc) to making your prototypes presentable by using simple CSS, labels and help text. Try it out. Make your next demo look good and I bet you will get more praise for visual components rather functional ones. On a side note, beware of making prototypes too polished since the higher-ups may push to get the app promoted to the production environment a little too quickly, if you know what I mean.

Now, this is merely a rant. ^{[ 1 ]} There should be some opposition to my argument. Actually, I’m positive there are numerous big holes in my theory. For your convenience, here are some:

1. One may argue that being first to market is key. This holds a lot of weight and it’s probably a post for another time which may have the title, “Using Other People’s Time and Money to Produce Solid Software.”
2. One could say that good marketing and pretty “packaging” might land initial customers, but only a quality product will keep its user base. Maybe so, but check out # 1. Customers have a difficult time converting once they’ve already invested time and money into a product/service. My bet is initial customers will stay around at least until a superior product — with an inexpensive and easy transition plan — comes around.
3. Well, doesn’t price matter? Um, yes. But put two similarly-priced products side-by-side and my claim holds true. The more appealing product will get picked off the shelf every time.
4. Developers use tools which help them get their job done. They don’t care about packing and presentation. Developers aren’t typical consumers. Most of the time, they see right past the presentation and focus on content and/or functionality. Developers are the clear exception. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t touch some of the best technical tools/blogs with a ten foot pole.
5. Google Search isn’t fancy. It has the most bland page in the world. Based on your logic, it should be a major flop. Think again. Google is a marketing machine. And the simple search page with nothing but a few links and their rotating logo is UID genius at its best.

With all this said, I wish what 9Rules had to say was true. Maybe someday content will reign, but for now, please pay close attention to presentation. In my twisted, somewhat cynical opinion, it still rules.