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Jot Plus Notes -- moribund
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Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 23, 2012 at 02:17 PM
Mark wrote:
>
>A forum is also where would-be customers see all the problems with your software and
>decide to go elsewhere ... ;-)
I think the benefits of having a forum far outweigh this risk. Your software will never be perfect for everyone, so let them go elsewhere. The forum is for 1) providing better service to your existing customers; 2) helping new customers learn to use the software; 3) harness the collective wisdom of the user-base to fix bugs and to innovate.
If you’re a one-man band, you can always password-protect your forum, and you can deter those who’re not so interested and narrow the interaction to die-hard fans and new users with questions.
I’ve been evaluating DOpus, and it fills me with confidence that their forum has 7000 members and and there have been 82,000 posts…
http://resource.dopus.com/
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 23, 2012 at 03:07 PM
I have to think that only bad software needs to worry about too many negative comments on the forum. If you’re not confident enough in your product, then probably you should be thinking about another line of work.
Re TheBrain censoring their forum… I can’t say that they do not, but I have read criticism on the forum.
Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh
Jun 23, 2012 at 03:47 PM
Moribund.com made me laugh.
But in all seriousness, doesn’t a developer have to have a very distinctive offering to make any headway in achieving sales beyond us crimpers today? And isn’t it likely that most if not all possible “niches” - to relapse into marketing speak - have been occupied? A new PIM with a little extra functionality, or even an upgraded old one, isn’t enough.
My guess is that the frontiers and opportunities are likely to lie in cloud collaboration - perhaps not so easy for small developers - or tablets - though even there the markets are already crowded* - or in some other more complicated use of technology that even now isn’t so obvious.
*Perhaps the MS Surface Pro with Windows 8 and pen functionality, a relative step forward for an iPad rival, is the exception that will prove the rule.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Jun 23, 2012 at 06:44 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>
>Re TheBrain censoring their forum… I
>can’t say that they do not, but I have read criticism on the forum.
>
>Steve Z.
They go through phases of so doing. They released the newest version trumpeting improved SiteBain exporting, but all tests (and all posts) pointed to a complete emasculation of the export. They removed all those posts, including mine.
Graham
Posted by Pavi
Jun 23, 2012 at 07:40 PM
Referring to what Cassius suggests, using a PIM to catalog file and folders, this is precisely what I do with Ultra Recall (among many other things). You can have individual files or folders either as nodes or links, and folders then can be “opened” inside UR to browse files. Files can be opened within or outside of UR. Of course you need to sync any new content with Ctrl-F5 to keep all files current. I do this by having a saved search of all relevant nodes and then Ctrl-F5 on the search. It’s brilliantly executed, actually!
Just to mention, in UR the default behavior when dragging and dropping is link to item (which is what you want), and you can right click and drag to choose linking or embedding in the database.
Best, /Pavi
>P.S. What Steve Z
>describes is precisely the reason I introduced the topic “Using a PIM to catalog files
>and folders.” If we save our information in files with reasonably standard formats
>(e.g. doc, rtf, htm) and only use a PIM to catalog them (via drag & drop links), then the
>death of a PIM will not cause the loss of the information, but only the cataloging. Of
>course, to keep any loss to a minimum, we sould be wise about how we catalog. I’ll post
>some ideas in the topic “Using a PIM to catalog files and folders” after I’ve given this
>some thought.
>
>-cassius