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14351

General Software Discussion / Re: What does it mean when I say "successful freeware"?

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 05:08 PM »

I guess there are people out there trying to "make money" by writing freeware -- much in the same way that some businesses are trying to get rich developing Open Source software.

While that does seem to be possible -- to my simple mind, that way lies madness.

If you want to make lots of money, do things that make money.

If you want to create free software and have a rewarding experience interacting with your users -- freeware/donationware/opensource are the way to go.

14352

General Software Discussion / Re: What does it mean when I say "successful freeware"?

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 03:52 PM »

Regarding donations, I think it's been really well established that:

• It is very hard to get people to donate for software in even the best of circumstances.
• If you want donations you have to make a very big effort to let people know that they are important to you -- a simple button will not do it -- you have to really make clear that they are a critical part of your work.
• I hope these things change as we move forward -- I think that they will once we get some big players addressing the obstacles to micro donations.

My points are not meant to discourage anyone from asking for donations -- in fact quite the contrary -- I think we are all better off if we team up and champion the idea of donating to support free software.  Just be prepared for a long hard slog if you are trying to raise money through donations for your software, and most importantly, don't get discouraged if people don't donate -- it's not that they don't love your software it's just that the culture hasn't yet caught up to the idea that people should contribute financially if they aren't forced to.

14353

Living Room / Re: DC Front Page

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 02:09 PM »

Yeah i'm kind of thinking that way too.. though i think we want to try to avoid it being too cluttered.

14354

Living Room / Newspaper Article: The Dirty Little Secrets of Search

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 01:00 PM »

This is an article about how large retailer J.C.Penney used a large scale of spam and link farms to promote themselves to the top of search page results.

TO understand the strategy that kept J. C. Penney in the pole position for so many searches, you need to know how Web sites rise to the top of Google’s results. We’re talking, to be clear, about the “organic” results — in other words, the ones that are not paid advertisements. In deriving organic results, Google’s algorithm takes into account dozens of criteria, many of which the company will not discuss.

...

To Mr. Stevens, S.E.O. is a game, and if you’re not paying black hats, you are losing to rivals with fewer compunctions.

WHY did Google fail to catch a campaign that had been under way for months? One, no less, that benefited a company that Google had already taken action against three times? And one that relied on a collection of Web sites that were not exactly hiding their spamminess?

...

Here’s another hypothesis, this one for the conspiracy-minded. Last year, Advertising Age obtained a Google document that listed some of its largest advertisers, including AT&T, eBay and yes, J. C. Penney. The company, this document said, spent $2.46 million a month on paid Google search ads — the kind you see next to organic results.

Is it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers? It’s the sort of question that European Union officials are now studying in an investigation of possible antitrust abuses by Google.

http://www.thespec.c...le-secrets-of-search

from slashdot discussion

14355

Living Room / Re: DC Front Page

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 12:39 PM »

I think it's decided: We are going to have a new front page!

And we might as well unveil it publicly on the first day of the scheduled fundraiser, March 1st.

So now we have to figure out just what it is we want on our front page -- keep the suggestions coming.

One ground rule:

We aren't ready to majorly redo all of the pages, so the rest of the pages on the site (see the links at the very top of the site) are going to stay unchanged, and we aren't going to be moving to a cms (yet).

So, any more thoughts?

14356

Official Announcements / Re: Expect some final server hiccups this weekend (2/12/11) - final fixes

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 09:20 AM »

I think we should hold a planet-wide lottery -- everyone fills out a ballot writing in their choice of one written language and one spoken language.  then we pick one ticket out of a hat, and we all convert to that and ban the rest.

14357

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: StartSSL.com Certificate Provider: Mini-Review

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 08:59 AM »

Just a quick heads up: I don't know what this means but all of the new beta browsers (FF4, IE9, Chrome10) seem to not be setup to trust certificates from StartSSL, leading to dire end-of-world warnings when you try to access https on our site.

Needless to say im filled with some rage at this whole f*cking SSL clusterf*ck scam that is designed to scare you away from any site on the web that isn't owned by some giant corporation.  I will update as I learn more about what is going on.

Maybe it's something we have misconfigured..

See below -- all seems good now.

14358

General Software Discussion / Re: What does it mean when I say "successful freeware"?

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 07:51 AM »

to echo one point kip made, if you consider the number or amount of donations as a criteria for having a successful freeware application, then you are settings yourself up for failure.  even people who love your software are very unlikely to donate -- it's just not something that people are used to doing (yet).

14359

Official Announcements / Re: Expect some final server hiccups this weekend (2/12/11) - final fixes

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 05:41 AM »

Well basically here is what seems to have happened:

On the old server, the old mysql forum database was using character set latin1_swedish_ci.
And the forum software was configured to serve up pages using html charset=ISO-8859-1.

This combination worked fine in the past and everything was right with the world.


Ok so now we get to the server move, where we backed up the old forum database and imported it into a new database on the new server.

Now when you backup and restore (export and import) mysql databases (using mysqldump) it appears there are some tricky pitfalls to watch out for regarding character sets.

Now our intention was to keep the exact same database character set.  But when we imported the database on the new server, *something* changed in the character set.  But we weren't exactly sure how or why.. The mysql tables were still latin1_swedish_ci but the data seemed to be being served in UTF8 characters.

At that time we had some threads on the forum about character set issues after the move. That was when I made my first mistake, which was rather than to figure out the exact cause of the problem, I found a solution without understanding the problem completely.  The solution was to switch the forum software into UTF8 mode -- which basically serves up pages labeled as having character set UTF-8 in the html headers.

This essentially solved the character set problems on the forum, and we ran that way for a month.

Except.. There were some very small lingering issues.


The lingering issues were a rare and non-fatal database warning about "Illegal mix of collations", and the fact that at least one non-english signature (dc member fenixproductions signature) stopped working (turned to ????).

Eventually what we did this weekend to solve the remaining problems is re-drop the database and re-import it but this time force all tables and columns to UTF-8.  The source of the remaining issues was that the data was in UTF-8 format and the tables were still marked as latin1_swedish_ci.  So all is good now and every player in the chain is agreed that the data is pure UTF-8.


Now although it may seem like a straightforward solution in hindsight, what really through me for a loop and caused so much consternation and struggle with all this is that after we decided last week that we needed to get to the bottom of the remaining problems, we couldnt figure out WHY the data was being served up from mysql in UTF8 format, when it had always been latin1_swedish_ci.  And we were really nervous about trying to convert everything to UTF8.  smf forums has a script to convert data to UTF8 and we actually tried running as our first attempt at a fix, on our backup forum database, and it failed badly enough and subtley enough to make me really paranoid about converting to UTF8.

It was this fear that some post data might not convert properly to UTF8 using the scripts that made me resist the idea of trying to switch over to UTF8, and more focused on getting the forum database back to its original character set.

In the end though, what *appears* to have happened is that when the database is exported/dumped, it was automatically, without any clues, being CONVERTED by mysql to UTF8 in the export dump.  So that when we imported it back in, even with explicit latin1_swedish_ci tables, it ended up storing the newly converted to UTF8 data in those tables, without our even realizing it.  After satisfying myself that all of the forum data actually was converted to UTF8 smoothly, we decided to embrace UTF8 and so that is what we are using now and going forward.


And with yet another international character set experience under my belt, I can safely say: There is no god.

These character set issues and interactions are truly a nightmare of epic proportions and we can only hope that if there is life on other planets they have figured out how to use a single and SIMPLE (1 byte) universal character set, and that they invade us soon and impose their language upon us.  I welcome our new 1-byte-character-set overlords.

14360

Living Room / Re: Micropayments now officially supported by PayPal

« Last post by mouser on February 13, 2011, 05:05 AM »

Very cool -- thanks for the heads up 

14361

Official Announcements / Re: Expect some final server hiccups this weekend (2/12/11) - final fixes

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 07:22 PM »

Ok the forum was offline for a few minutes today while we implemented the final phase of resolving the character set issues on the forum -- which resulted in full switch over to a UTF8 database.

Everything should be good now, nice and clean and working smoothly.  If you notices any issues of course please speak up.

If people are curious I can post more about the character set issues and our sleuthing and final solutions.

14362

General Software Discussion / Re: eType - nice free auto spell checker word suggestion (and basic translation)

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 05:04 PM »

Can i make a plug for my fspell farr plugin?

https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=21399.0

14363

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 04:18 PM »

Very nice 

14364

Living Room / Re: DC Front Page

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 03:13 PM »

We do need a front page face lift.  and i should probably give up on the blog because after several years of daily updating, im not sure anyone gives a damn about it.

I think the main confusion regarding DC is one that has no simple solution -- and that is that we simply do too many diverse things -- which goes against the trend of the internet for the last decade, which is to focus on single-purpose websites.  But I don't see us changing that any time soon.

However, I'd love to see some mock up ideas for how we might improve the front page, and the site organization in general.

One thing we COULD do is make the front page a kind of collection of lists/tables, like recent interesting forum threads, recent software updates, recent event updates, recent new coding snacks, etc.

14365

Site/Forum Features / Re: Site improvements for https connections

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 12:41 PM »

now we can finally click the email-notify https:// links that those über-paranoid few people use without getting pesky warning messages

actually that's an interesting point -- but i think i already made it so that all email notification emails are converted from https to http.  let me know if that's not so.

14366

Site/Forum Features / Site improvements for https connections

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 12:23 PM »

There is no reason that people should have to connect to donationcoder.com using https, but doing so in the past could lead to browser warnings about pages being "partially secure" or other ridiculous warnings because some of the images on the page weren't using https protocol.

I spent a few hours this morning trying to improve that, so that most of the pages on DC and the forum should now load cleanly using https and use https on all links.

I think the forum should also now convert all links in posts that go to dc site pages, to https or http based on how you are currently connected, regardless of the original way a link was posted.

14367

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Ideas for Special Events?

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 08:40 AM »

Keep the big ideas coming.. would be nice if we came up with something uniquely clever and fun to do.

14368

Living Room / Re: Borders Goes Bankrupt - The Death of Print at Retail?

« Last post by mouser on February 12, 2011, 05:15 AM »

I gave up on bookstores long long ago.

Over the years every bookstore I've known (except the second hand used bookstores) has transformed itself slowly but surely into a coffee shop and clothing store first, and bookstore second.  I don't even know why they call them bookstores anymore..

On one hand I sympathize with them, because a retail store just can't compete with the selection and fast release updates and user reviews that an online site like amazon can deliver.   If you want to go hang out and get a coffee and connect to the internet, a "bookstore" is still a nice place to lounge.  But the truth is that bookstores are just not very useful for people who want to go and find a book these days.

Fortunately online book shopping is a pretty wonderful experience (at least in the US); shipping is super fast, cheap, easy to find good reviews, easy to buy supercheap used editions, easy to return, etc.

I doubt we will have physical bookstores at all for very much longer -- though i guess that's probably going to be the case for all retail stores eventually.

14369

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Ideas for Special Events?

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 03:16 PM »

I think the visual representation bar is a must...especially if you can link it so its totally live and we can see it going up every moment!

We used the Cody Fever Donation Amount Thermometer which shows the progress towards our donation goal last year and it was a huge hit, and we will use it again.

As for the suggestions about dif badges or status based on donation amount, we have a longstanding policy not to do anything that favors or gives status based on the amount you donate.  Everyone who donates is equally appreciated (some people have more money to spare than others).

14370

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Ideas for Special Events?

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 02:28 PM »

I don't see any zazzle store, mouser can you create one ?

we could create a zazzle store but we already have a cafepress store.  perhaps some high markup items on that would be an alternate way of accepting donations.

14371

Living Room / Re: One of my cats, Titch, passed away yesterday

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 01:22 PM »

Im so sorry to hear about your cat Carol.  But as Chris said, she was one of the luckiest cats to have such a good and caring home and someone who loved her.  Not much more one can ask for in this life, except perhaps to have lots of time to contemplate and cogitate on the mysteries of the universe, and after almost 20 years I'm sure Crackers came up with some profound theories about such things.

14372

Screenshot Captor / Re: Windows standard beep ("ding") when changing between screenshots

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 12:08 PM »

can you try the beta link posted above and see if that happens to help?

14373

Screenshot Captor / Re: Windows standard beep ("ding") when changing between screenshots

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 11:48 AM »

sounds like something completely different bob.  there is an option to play a sound on capture in the SC options (Post-Capture Options tab); try turning that off.  it shouldnt be a beep if enabled, but at least a good first step is to turn that off and see if that cures your problem.

14374

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Ideas for Special Events?

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 10:02 AM »

1. "Who gives a buck about DC?" whereby every member vows to donate at least $1, and earns a badge

.

I think your idea of encouraging everyone to donate (at least) 1 dollar could be the most important basic idea.  As we've often discussed, the problem for sites like ours that depend on optional donations, is that people cannot get past that initial stage of resistance that prevents them from donating.  I don't think the issue is the money -- i think it's the work involved, and the general unwillingness to perform a financial transaction unless they have to.

If we could just find a way to get people to take the leap of faith to make a donation, regardless of the amount, i think it would be so healthy for the site, but also bring many people in from the shadows who would enjoy being part of something and enjoy being one of the people that actively support the site.

But getting people to make that leap is hard.

14375

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Ideas for Special Events?

« Last post by mouser on February 11, 2011, 09:43 AM »

Another unusual idea might be to make one blog post per day about another website that has been kind to DC (by writing a review of one of our programs, etc.), just a way of saying thank you to the great websites out there that help indie coders.