As you all know, the informal motto of Google has always been “Don’t be Evil”, which of course sounds very pleasant. But with time, they’ve certainly become increasingly profit-driven and corporate, and sometimes downright annoying (see any of the Google AdWords rants of this blog). Not exactly evil, but not the barefoot, organic, peace-loving hippies they were originally portrayed as. … Read More

The meaning of the word support seems to have become heavily diluted, to the point where it means something else entirely. Have a look at my Monday experiences so far: (1) I’ve been having issues with the Google AdWords Editor software. It won’t upload data for one of our client accounts, and instead gives me an error. After entering new … Read More

Bad grammar drives me crazy. Spelling mistakes make me foam at the mouth. I wish I could say that means that my emails are free of all errors and that I’ve never been guilty of a typo, but it doesn’t. It just means that I feel unreasonably upset when I spot them. It also means that I am particularly fastidious … Read More

Yesterday, Google launched Code Search, a place that gives programmers “a single place to search publicly accessible source code”. Of course, this competes with both Koders and Krugle, which offer more features and far nicer interfaces.  Nevertheless, it’s good to see that Google are making an effort to reach out to software developers. Code Search isn’t the only new thing … Read More

Backlink Obsession, that is. No, I didn’t coin the term, but it is used in a recent posting by Matt Cutts, which is a very worthwhile read for anyone with even a mild interest in PageRank. Last week, a new set of PageRank values were exported to the Google data centers, which means that some of you may have noticed … Read More

This is surely a sign of things to come. Tesco, the largest retailer in Britain, has announced that it’s launching a range of budget own-brand software. The supermarket giant will be selling six different packages by the end of this month, including office and security software, and each title will cost less than £20. It’s not surprising, really. Like most … Read More

Warning: Friday rules apply to this posting. Terms and conditions apply. When I was a young boy, growing up in Manchester (England), the summer holidays from school went on forever. Everyone knew everyone else around them by name, the streets were safe, there was no real crime, and people never used to lock their front doors. Nowadays many of us … Read More

There’s a good chance that most of the people reading this entry already know who Sharon Housley is. Whether because of FeedForAll, SoftwareMarketingResource, the Shareware Industry Conference or any of her other (many) projects and commitments. In this exclusive interview, Sharon reveals her thoughts on the most effective marketing areas for software developers, how she alleviates her workload, her top … Read More

There are times when I feel as though I live in a slightly different reality. A few examples. (1) Knocking imagination on the head. One of the companies that we work with sells Windows Automation Software. It’s a great piece of software that’s been around since 1997, but they’re always looking at new ideas. Recently they decided to post a … Read More

Rightly or wrongly, the appearance of an application can make or break the sale. You’re already familiar with the concept. You arrive at the website, and the product looks good. You click on the link to the screenshots and: – shudder. It would have looked old and tired in Windows 95. Clunky icons, bad colour scheme, odd layout. The whole … Read More