http://www.juliesoft.com solve niche problems, make users happy Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:33:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I didn't mean to learn anything about customer support - I was just researching the competition. More precisely, I was researching some indirect competitors for Every Single Shot and I found myself at SmugMug. Although I was looking to learn about the specific features of SmugMug, what I ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2010/02/how-to-give-good-customer-support-be-like-smugmug/ Total earnings as of February 11th, 2010: $0 This week was a lot slower than I had hoped it would be. I don't think I made enough progress to be able to launch a beta (remember to sign up) on February 15th (4 days from now!) - but I'm still ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2010/02/changelog-2-storing-photos-and-little-else/ Total earnings as of February 1, 2010: $0 I've been busy the last few weeks working on many of the things it takes to turn Every Single Shot from an idea into an actual product. The last few weeks of work have been really, really fun. Not only have ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2010/02/changelog-1-hacking-branding-and-ec2/ The past I've been blogging here since December, 2006. In that time, I've covered lots of random topics, including building my first product. I haven't (yet) blogged about shutting it down, but that topic is on the short list to cover soon. The last three years have been ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/12/time-for-a-change/ Someone just posted a question over on the Business of Software forum asking for recommendations on books and blogs related to sales. Since I've been doing a lot of reading on marketing (I know, marketing isn't sales, but they go hand in hand), I figured I'd post my reading ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/11/marketing-books-for-small-businesses/ Starting a business is a lot of work, especially when you're doing it all yourself. I need all the hours I can get in a day, so I came up with a handy little practice that's really increased my productivity. Yes, I'd even say it's doubled it (hmmm...does ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/11/double-your-productivity-with-1-tip/ UPDATE Looking for more marketing books? Here's a list of good ones that I've read recently (or am planning to read). I just read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and was happy that I set aside a couple of hours to do so. I'm currently working on a new ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/10/the-22-immutable-laws-of-branding-summary/ UPDATE There's an excellent article on the Grails website that walks through installing and using STS with Grails support. I recommend you use that guide instead of the one below. STS 2.2.0 was released today with support for Groovy and Grails development. If you're new to STS, the route ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/10/installing-springsource-tool-suite-sts-with-groovy-and-grails-support/ With regard to my previous post, it looks like I pulled the Maven command from an old set of documentation. I believe the preferred way to create a new Grails app with Maven is a command like the following: mvn grails:create-app appName I can't say I don't have anything against Maven, ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/10/revisited-what-is-right-with-grails-and-wrong-with-maven/ This just cracks me up.Here's how to create a Grails app using the Grails command line:grails create-app demoAnd here's how to create the app using the Maven command line:mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.0-alpha-4:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.grails -DarchetypeArtifactId=grails-maven-archetype -DarchetypeVersion=1.1 -DgroupId=example -DartifactId=demo http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/10/what-is-right-with-grails-and-wrong-with-maven/ This is your friendly reminder that the Triangle microISV Group is having its 5th meeting tonight (Tuesday, May 19th, 7pm, Southpoint Panera). This will be our 5th meetup - the first 4 have been great - I think the people who have come have really enjoyed themselves and found it worthwhile. Here's ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/05/triangle-microisv-group-may-meeting-tonight-tuesday/ This is your friendly reminder that the Triangle microISV Group is having its March Madness meeting tomorrow (Wednesday, March 25th, 7pm, Southpoint Panera). For you NCAA fans, make note that there are no games tomorrow night, so you should be free to come to the meetup! This will be our ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/03/triangle-microisv-group-march-madness-meeting-this-wednesday/ Just a quick note to let y'all know that we'll be having the 2nd meeting of the Triangle microISV Group this Tuesday, February 24th at 7pm at Southpoint Panera.If you're curious, here's the agenda:The second Triangle microISV Group meetup will be on Tuesday, February 24th at 7PM in the Panera ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/02/triangle-microisv-group-meeting-this-tuesday-feb-24th-be-there/ I've been trying to get a PDF to embed inside of a Web page for most of the day, but I've been having problems with most browsers. In IE, the area where the PDF should be is just a blank white box. In Safari, a dialog pops up ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/02/tip-on-embedding-pdfs-in-web-pages-use-the-right-file-extension/ I just stumbled across CyTunes.org, a music download site that gives every penny it earns to cancer research. All of the music on the site is original and can't be found anywere else (take that, iTunes!). Here's a write up about the inspriational story behind the site.By the ... http://www.juliesoft.com/2009/01/looking-for-some-original-music-why-not-fight-cancer-too/