A big problem I always had was following conversations in other people’s blogs. Some blog types provide RSS for comments, but that’s not enough.

I noticed some services have emerged allowing you to easily follow conversations in blogs:

co.mments.com provides a bookmarklet, which you click whenever you are on a blog post which you’d like to follow. Then you can track all these conversations from one place. Even better, it provides a single RSS feed where all new comments from all conversations you track appear. The downside is that since co.mments has to crawl all these blogs, it is somewhat slow (new comments appear 4-5 hours after being posted). Also this may get out of hand as more and more people start using the service.

cocomment.com also provides a bookmarklet, but you can only click it before posting a comment. This means cocomment only follows conversations where you have posted at least one comment (not always the case). Moreover it only tracks messages by other people that use cocomment. Obviously this is not very helpful at the moment, as most people on most blogs don’t use cocomment.

I am using co.mments at the moment, as it does exactly what I need. Of course it’s not good for real-time conversations, but overall I like it a lot.

Axosoft is doing a “social marketing experiment”, which basically consists of them giving 5 licenses of their software (bug tracking, helpdesk, todo management) for $5 instead of $495. The point being bloggers may write about it ;-)

The software looks pretty good, so I bought it even though I already have such tools. The nice thing is it includes Windows, Web and VS.NET clients.

If you’re interested check out the offer page. The offer will be valid until February 24th.

These days I’m doing some Ajax stuff, mainly for fun but also getting familiar with the various libraries and frameworks that exist (certainly check out Prototype if you’re interested).

It’s interesting how using Ajax in a few carefully selected parts of an application, can completely change the experience (the hard thing is identifying these parts).

I have decided to create an installer (windows only) for Magna CRM. This will install a web server (apache or lighthttpd) and a completely pre-configured environment (prefilled Access database and configuration files).

There are 2 reasons to do this:

1. Offer an extremely easy way to install the trial. Right now you must know of things like web server, document root, Access / MySQL / SQL Server, permissions etc. in order to run the web based installer. With a Windows installer you’ll only have to press Next 4-5 times and maybe fill in 1-2 fields.
2. Offer this as a permanent solution for very small businesses. There are thousands of small businesses out there with 1-10 employees and no IT department. These could take advantage of the easy installation procedure without having to ask a 3rd party to install it.

Although this doesn’t look especially hard, there are many things to research: If the Apache / lighthttpd licenses allow redistribution, if the web server will be installed as a service (better overall but Xp/2000 only), how updates will be handled and what installer to use (I’ve used NSIS in the past but I am not sure its scripting language will be up to it - maybe I’ll have to check InnoSetup). Moreover this will create an extra step when releasing a new version but I hope to integrate this procedure in my current build process.

So Borland is selling it’s development products.

Although I consider myself a web developer, I use Borland tools when I need to develop desktop applications (Cheez for example). I’ve been a fun of Borland products since 1994, using Turbo Pascal and later Delphi (I also tried VB from 1998-2001 and hated it).

I guess this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on who the buyer will be. I hope not some mega corporation, where these products will be abandoned and forgotten.

When the time came to setup my online shop, I looked around for available choices. It basically boils down to these two:

• Do it all yourself solution: setup a merchant account and payment gateway, accept credit card payments and maybe purchase orders, phone and fax orders.
• Go with an established e-commerce provider like share-it, 2checkout, Kagi, eSellerate etc. You can find a comparison of many such services at http://www.regshare.com/ and http://www.blackcatsystems.com/regservices/.

At the time I felt that a completely integrated system is more appropriate for business software. However I changed my mind and went with an e-commerce provider for 3 reasons:

1. Some people believe it’s more secure to give their credit card to an established company specialized in receiving payments, than to a new, small company.
2. I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to handle purchase orders, phone and fax orders. I don’t think it’s that complicated or demanding but then again I had no experience in this area.
3. At the same time I read an excellent article by Dennis Gurock, describing how they did their shop using share-it. I think their shop is very well done: clear and professional while offering multiple ways to order.

So I followed their advice while building my shop, only I took it a step further: I created a customer area, where customers can login to download the latest version of Magna CRM and find their serial numbers. Although I also went with share-it, it is because I find their rates and service good. I think the same shop could be built with any other advanced e-commerce provider.

In order for this to work I had to take advantage of the share-it serial number generator API. Share-it allows developers to generate serial numbers for their products in real time. They do this using a generator you provide them: either an EXE or a specific URL that is hosted by you. I used this second way, only I don’t just generate a serial number I also create an account for the customer area.

So, when someone buys something from my shop, share-it calls a specific PHP script hosted by me. They pass information like customer details and what he ordered (obviously they don’t give any payment details). In this script, I create a new account for the customer area and return the username / password combination to share-it. This information is then sent to the customer who can immediately login and download the product.

Advantages of this approach:

• The procedure is completely automated. The customer can pay and download his software without any human intervention.
• Exactly the same system is used for the trial version.
• The customer area can provide more benefits in the future (apart from product downloads and serial numbers)
• The generator script also works as an event for a new / returning customers. I use it to update customer details and assets in Magna CRM or insert new leads in case of trial sign-ups.

Here are some completely useless but fun stats about Magna CRM.

Code, icons, help:

• 174 PHP files
• 26.613 lines of PHP code (including comments and empty lines)
• 999.853 bytes of PHP code (including comments and white space)
• 28 icons
• 1 JavaScript file
• 2 CSS files
• 24 html help pages with 16 accompanying images

Other:

• 25 Database tables
• 539 localization strings
• 160 resolved items in bug database (FogBugz)
• 369 subversion commits (I tend to do way too many commits, e.g. a typo in a comment may get it’s own file commit)

Site:

• 66 files
• 16 images