I'm playing a bit with theme files and macros, working on a tool to build themes in Radio. Bear with me if the site pages go “weird”. The RSS feed shouldn't change.

Brent Simmons posts a couple of his favorite bug report “feedback”

Bug Guilt Trips.For me, there are three main tactics that I see:

1. I’d buy it, if…— If NetNewsWire had just this one feature I’d buy it.

2. It would be more Mac-like if…— It’s the trump card of user interface discussion. (Its brother is “it would be more intuitive if…”) The problem is, when an app gets as much feedback as NetNewsWire, you get mutually exclusive feedback. Persons A, B, and C don’t agree on what the Mac-like solution is for a given user interface problem.

3. It should be easy for you to just…— Oh no you didn’t just say that! This comes from programmers as well as people who don’t program. They know it’s good psychology, because it goes right to my pride as a programmer. The thing is, you don’t know what’s easy to implement and what isn’t. Simple-sounding things are sometimes wickedly difficult. Hard-sounding things are sometimes a piece of cake.

And one bonus tactic…

4. You don’t want to try to be Dave Hyatt— Okay, I got this one only once, but I liked it so much I have to repeat it. It came up in a discussion of how NetNewsWire uses Web Kit. (Of course, the thing was that I wanted to use Web Kit—use the great stuff Dave Hyatt and the rest of the Web Kit team has provided. Not be Dave Hyatt. Quite the opposite.)

—snip—

[inessential.com]

Sean redoes categories. He's inspired me to do the same…

the death of dot-communism. In my urge to do year-end cleaning, I've decided it's time to really get a handle on this stupid “category” feature in Radio. So I'm going to start using it the way it was intended: for subcategories within a single weblog, instead of for publishing multiple, schizophrenic weblogs with no apparent connection between them (as I have been doing for quite some time). One blog is more than enough work, thank you.

So, given how things are going these days, I've decided to retire “dot-communist” as a separate entity from my Radio weblog, Rant Central. As the new year approaches, I'll decide where I'm going to host the single resulting weblog.

–snip–

[Sean Gallagher: the dot.communist]

I just read the whole post and the comments. Priceless. We all need a walk down memory lane from time to time, even if it's just ot remember how far we've come.

Mama don't let your babies grow up to be…. I got my first programming book the day I turned 11. (12 words) [dive into mark]

TPM points out that Dean might not be the Dem that's nominated at the national convention. He
lists several valid points; I'd like to add another:

To the average voter, Dean will be old news by the national convention. He
will seem like an insider and no longer the dark horse that needs to be
supported. He won't be any different than any other Dem, just “internet
enabled”. It makes me wonder if the Clark campaign is on to something. Cam
Barrett said in a Chris Lydon interview (at 9:39) “we never were out of
contention in Iowa, we just publicly said we're not going to focus on it.”
He goes on to mention the lack of funds compared to Dean, I believe setting
up the campaign to be the underdog on purpose. No, Cam is not the
spokesperson of the campaign and probaby doesn't set strategy, but it does
make me pause.

Update at : Added title and update notice, removed title from top of post since this was sent by email.

Amy Gahran via Nick:

What is RSS, and why should you care?.

Amy Gahran provides a basic overview of RSS, and why you need it.

[Nick Bradbury]

Nick mentions this nugget about CSS. It applies to life as well…

Keep CSS Simple.

Peter-Paul Koch encourages us to keep CSS simple and avoid CSS hacks.

All I can say is, “I agree.” Using CSS should simplify Web site maintenance, not complicate it. If CSS isn't simplifying your work, then you need to simplify how you're using CSS.

[Nick Bradbury]

Shareware. Last night at the Innovators presentation at the O’Reilly OS X conference, Rael Dornfest brought up the old days of Mac shareware. (I immediately thought of Anarchie and MacHTTP; there are other great examples.)

The question got me wondering about the meaning of the word shareware.

I’m not sure what it means these days. My company may be small (my wife, me, and a fierce gray tabby), and we don’t have a physical box for our product, but I don’t think of our business as being fundamentally different from larger software companies. I’ve never called NetNewsWire a shareware app (though other people have, and it doesn’t bother me.)

Three types of companies

You could break software companies down into three groups if you want. One group is the very small—companies like mine, like UserCreations and Flying Meat Software. The next group is the small companies: Bare Bones Software, the Omni Group, and so on. The last group is the large companies: Adobe, Macromedia, Apple, and so on.

What’s common to all three is that they develop and sell software. Some companies have boxes and large advertising budgets, sure, but I don’t think that’s the difference between shareware and commercial software.

You might say that there’s a difference of culture. Many small developers have weblogs, they’re open and accessible, outspoken but also good at listening. (Being good at listening is perhaps the key attribute of a successful small developer.) They are, in short, not corporate.

But the definition of shareware has traditionally had to do with how the software was distributed and not the attributes of the developer. What I think has happened is that the Internet has made even large companies shareware developers. Not long ago I downloaded Adobe Photoshop Elements, evaluated it during a demo period, then bought the software. I did the same thing with Transmit by Panic, which is a far smaller company. The experience was the same.

Is Transmit shareware? Is Photoshop Elements shareware?

Software

I prefer to think that Transmit and Photoshop Elements are, purely and simply, software. Software these days is often distributed online and has an evaluation period built in. Try before you buy. In that sense, I think the shareware model caught on all over the place, so much so that it’s now hard to talk about shareware as being different from the normal practices of software companies.

But… there clearly is something different about small developers. Something to do with weblogs and chat and talking and listening and sharing code and ideas. A community thing.

I just don’t know what to call it. Shareware community isn’t quite right (but I don’t really mind it, either). I’m not sure it needs a name, but maybe a name would be helpful? I don’t know.

Update: further reading

There are some good previous posts on this topic—here’s Buzz Andersen; here’s Slava of Unsanity: Shareware Is Dead. [inessential.com]

Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches. Did that last “fire your boss” spam push you over the edge? Do your wish-fulfillment dreams revolve around letterhead, legal entities, and avoiding arrest for tax evasion? If you’re crazy enough to start your own business, Kevin Potts wants you to learn from his mistakes. [A List Apart: for people who make websites]

Sean writes about the dearth of quality TV comedy. I couldn't agree more. I watched the NBC trifecta of Friends/Will and Grace/Scrubs last night was bored senseless. My wife laughed at a few of the lines, but I couldn't get into the plots. They *are* transparent and contrived. This is yet another reason to get a TiVo–I could have figured this out and deleted the rest of each show without watching any more.