The following are quotes from an actual email conversation with a potential customer. I’m no fan of bullshit NDAs, so I’m just sending this and I trust you that this’ll not end up on Twitter or anything I know quality…
There are basically two kinds of deadlines: Real, and Arbitrary. Real deadlines are those necessitated by some external, unchangeable event. For example legislation, the company running out of money, the CEO having to get up in front of the world…
When building a new software project, you should focus on building your core functionality - usually the magic sauce that makes your company money. This might seem obvious, but many people don’t realize just how much extra work is needed…
Read the full entry, Business, Projects, Software , 0 comments
Running my own web development shop unfortunately means I have to do contract negotiation and dealing with other legal mumbo jumbo. It is not an aspect I particularly enjoy, especially not when the potential customer tries to restrain my business…
Rails Rumble is an annual, 48 hour web application programming competion. This year around 300 teams attempted to build and launch a web application over the course of a weekend, 180 succeeded. Participating in the Rails Rumble is a lot…
Read the full entry, Business, Projects, Usability , 0 comments
All software projects trend towards The Big Rewrite. Inevitable, at some point one of your developers is going to put forth the absolute truth: “This sucks, we need to rewrite it”. This is not a great situation to be in,…
Last week I did something I very rarely do. I - together with visual designers, barq - replied to a Request For Proposal. The experience confirmed my suspicion that RFPs are indeed a broken concept….
One of the many things I try to make my customers realize, is that their web application is never done. There is always something that can be made easier to use, pages that can be made to load faster, new…
Being self-employed is hard. Having no one around to tell you what to do brings up a slew of problems, one is that of focus. Should I start another personal project, learn a new technology, create a (well, another) small…
When I founded Substance Lab I knew I wanted to build a virtual business - or at least as much as it could be. Why should petty details like physical locations decide whether I can help my clients? From the…
A long long time ago, I quit my great job at BiQ to live primarily of my freelance Ruby on Rails development work. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Being directly responsible for my own income has…
I pulled the plug on a project today. The project was the first Rails project I ever built, and my first, feeble attempt at getting some of all those free money I’ve heard is floating around the internet. 4 years…
Whenever I launch a Terminal window, it starts up in a very important folder on my harddrive; my Projects folder. This is where I store the projects I work on - both for clients, but also internal projects and experiments…
I have been moonlighting as a freelance webdeveloper for the last couple of years. The first year, I was using my spare evenings and weekends until I began having trouble finding enough time to dedicate to new projects. My reaction…
Business, Life, Programming, Projects, Software, Usability, Webdesign , 7 comments
Apple, please make it easier for us to consume Steve… Why is there not a single podcast I can subscribe to, so the HD versions of the most recent Apple keynote, iPhone SDK announcement, or any other reality-distortion-field-spreading event automagically…
“So you want to link to our free, advertisting supported website? Sure, that’ll be 4500 DKK + VAT (around 979 USD)” This might sound absurd to you, but it’s the reality this blogger (in danish) faced when he linked to…
This is a followup to my previous rant about the state of accepting online subscriptions. A few things happened after my post. Most importantly the client met with a focus group of potential users, and - among other things -…
Payment gateways, merchant accounts, transaction fees, statements, grraaaah, it’s driving me bonkers. Here’s the deal: I have a client wanting to sell subscriptions for his web application. Nothing fancy, everyone’s doing it. It should be easy finding a payment gateway…
It’s been pretty quiet around these parts lately - if you ignore the posts about Copenhagen.rb meetings at least. That’s primarily because I am having tons of fun at work, which for some reason doesn’t leave me much time for…
BiQ on Rails, Blogging, Business, Copenhagen.rb, Life, Mentalized.net, Projects , 0 comments
I am now well over a week into putting BiQ on Rails, and I’ve been having so much fun. The fact that I actually getting paid for writing code that’s pretty and well tested means so much to the enjoyment…
Thursday marked a major step on the path to exploring Rails as an alternative for BiQ. As I’ve mentioned earlier I’ve been looking for someone to come and present Rails for us. We found Scott Raymond of Blinksale and IconBuffet…
Read the full entry, BiQ on Rails, Business, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
In Pricing a Project Brian Fling talks in great detail about how Blue Flavor prices their projects (duh). It’s a great article, and I find their process strikingly similar to what I do in Substance Lab. At a recent project,…
I’ve been eyeballing MacZOT! before. Basically they offer you handpicked Mac software for greatly reduced prices, and I learned about them when they offered a “MysteryZOT” - you buy a package of software, but you don’t know what you get….
Heh, even when filling out the provided PDF on a computer and printing it, the OCR at SKAT (Danish IRS) manages to misread stuff. Substance Lab turns into Sunstance Lab….
Rejsefeber. I might have praised your website last year, but this year you blew it. Remembering our pleasant experience from last year we actually went to your site first when trying to book our vacation for the summer. And we…
At the day job I’m the sole developer and maintainer of a legacy ASP/VBScript system. Yes, ASP/VBScript. No, not .NET. And yes, it’s driving me insane. The code contains around 42000 lines of VBSCript drivel and 30000 lines of supporting…
BiQ on Rails, Business, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
I know coming up with names is terribly hard - especially if you want a domain name that goes with it. But c’mon, the numbers thing was cute when only a few had it, now it’s just overdone. The old…