Some interesting websites I came across this week:
Coding By The Sea – The story of how a team at Red Gate Software developed a product by locking themselves in a seaside barn for a week.
Is Your IDE Hot Or Not – So many things to waste time on as a developer!
Mad Libs Style Web Forms – Increase your conversion rates 20% - 40%
jQuery Sliding Doors – Fun jQuery magic for naivation buttons
I’ve just finished adding my first iteration of some lesson plans on copyright law to my website. This is just a rough first draft, and I plan to improve the lesson plan over time, but it still might be useful to business teachers.
I’ve recieved some critical email about the “overly restrictive” copyright license on my website. I don’t really understand the logic of people complaining that something is not free enough. I echo Daniel Jalkut’s sentiments:
It [makes me upset] when somebody is cricitized for giving something away, yet somehow not giving enough. What part of FREE don’t you understand? Somebody … wrote something great, and gave it to you for free. It’s a technology you would not have access to without his generosity, and which you could not even obtain commercially, had he chosen to keep it private. A completely new, compelling solution which is available to you because one man had the community-serving idea that it should be open. Are you getting my drift?
I saw two great blog posts in my RSS reader today which greatly affected my thinking about my online activities. The first is from Steve Pavlina. He noticed how many people try to start “me-too internet businesses that don’t really need to exist.” Honestly, I think this describes most micro ISVs. I mean how many different twitter oranizers do we really need? How many fitness trackers? How many bug trackers or conference schedulers or ecommerce platforms – or any web app for that matter. These things are really a dime a dozen.
The second is a piece of advice from the Balsamiq company blog. It advises anyone wishing to start a new blog or online business to first answer the question, which online community would you like to be a part of?