Story of PodTrapper's Development

[marwatk]

Hi everyone,

In case you're interested I've finished an article that details the experiences I had getting PodTrapper in your hands.

Check it out here:
http://www.versatilemonkey.com/story.html

Let me know if there's anything I didn't cover you'd like to know about.

-Marcus

[countstex]

Just spent the past twenty minutes or so reading threw the article, on my BlackBerry no less. A truely fascinating read! As someone who works in IT, but has only ever coded for an organisation it was quite the insight into the 'indie' world. Quite inspiring!

[marwatk]

Thanks!

If anyone's bored I'm trying *really* hard to get on the front page of slashdot.

If you have a slashdot account go here:
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl
or
http://slashdot.org/popular

And rate me up if you wouldn't mind (Story titled "An Experiment in BlackBerry Development"). It would be awesome to get out there. A front page story on slashdot is like a life goal for me (I have a sheltered life).

Though only rate it up if you got value out of the story, definitely, I don't want to cheat.

-Marcus

[MADBRADNYC]

This was a good easy read, and very informative. For myself as a lay person regarding code writing, I am still amazed at how you put the industry, and processes within the industry, in such a clear concise format. Writings like this puts you at a level with the common man (like working a day job), when most people probably previously felt as if you were "Mobile Oil" trying to get over on them.

You deserve the best finacially, and spritually, your "cup runneth over" with die hard fans like myself.

My question to you is... What is the VERSATILEMONKEY thing about!?!? Why do you use this, and where did it come from? That's a piece of history that good to know, when 5 years from now I can say... "Yeah. Were cool. I used to email back & forth with him all the time before he got SO big. Do you know where his site's name started from?" LOL.

All the best.

[andrewnyc]

I just came across your story on Slashdot! Congrats!

[marwatk]

Thanks, guys!

My question to you is... What is the VERSATILEMONKEY thing about!?!?

Hehe, two requirements that went into the name:

A) Needed an available .com domain name
B) Needed to contain the word monkey (this requirement came from my wife)

From there it was just a matter of going through the dictionary and namecheap.com

-Marcus

[Tripper_]

I really enjoyed reading the article. It's truly refreshing to find someone so open and quick to respond with the end user. It's funny how so many people never learn the importance of good customer relations. Thanks for such a great app!

[milowg]

Interesting article..
Your experiences sound a lot like mine in writing my mobile app, ActiveGcSync for Windows Mobile:
http://www.milow.net/public/projects/ac ... -page.html

The only difference is I don't have sales stats because I decided to make my app free. I actually thought about charging at some point (and still might) but it seems like it would be too much hassle. Your article is pretty interesting to me in that respect anyway. And there are similarities in that the Windows Mobile App Store is in the same stage now that the Blackberry App Store was when you first started.

Actually, I am considering writing my own post about my experiences now. Maybe I'll post here when it is done.

Also, I am surprised you can let people post on your forums without logging and not getting tons of spam. I tried that once on my forum site and got spammed like crazy.

[marwatk]

I think it'd be great to hear experiences from all the various platforms. (I have no clue what it's like to develop on WinMo, for example).

The trick on the spam is to put some custom box in (like the math question on my form). Almost all spam is automated, so adding a custom bit of PHP (it's important that it not be a module) gets rid of it.

-Marcus

[Cranstone]

A great read!

Having developed our own "cross platform mobile application" (identical on both Windows Mobile PocketPC/Smartphone (two platforms) and Blackberry) I know exactly what you're talking about. Mot bloggers think these apps somehow magically fall out of the sky and just appear all debugged and ready to go with the perfect UI.

Your description of the "networking/carrier" issues was spot on. We ran smack dab into that when we shifted from Windows Mobile (very easy to deal with) to Blackberry. What a nightmare. Especially when their own transcoding engines ripped out "standard" HTML commands.

Cheers,

Peter
5o9 Inc.

[marwatk]

I went ahead and published a helper class for the networking stuff to my [new] blog. Check it out here:
http://www.versatilemonkey.com/blog/?p=3

-Marcus

[Christoph]

Hello Marcus

thanks for this great article. I enjoyed reading it. I am in a similar position: I started http://www.keepassmobile.com, a password management software for J2ME platforms as a hobby project some months ago. I decided to release it under GPL and provided a link for donations. In the meanwhile the project is getting more and more serious and the development and support takes a lot of time. Donators so far: one. So, I think of charging PRO functions in the meanwhile. Though it is not a problem of law to sell free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html), I don't want to annoy my users. Also, because this is open source, everyone who has the knowledge would be able to crack the DRM algorithms. It is a difficult situation, that bothers me at the moment. Do you have any good advices for me?

Thanks again for the good article.

Regards
Christoph

[marwatk]

Hi Christoph,

I assume you're using GPL'd code from the Keepass project in your code? If so then I'd imagine that limits your options.

I think, though, that 99% of users will pay normally, even if the source is available. You definitely won't be able to prevent someone from reverse engineering your licensing scheme, but I don't think it will be a huge issue.

Charging for ported GPL code may irk some users, though. Not sure on that one.

Sorry I couldn't be more help

-Marcus

[Christoph]

Hi Marcus

thanks for your quick response.

> I assume you're using GPL'd code from the Keepass project in your code?

No, all libraries that I am using are distributed under a license that would allow to include them in an closed source product. The reason to distribute KeePassMobile as open source is is that the KeePassMobile users (and me too) would not entrust my passwords to a closed source product. I believe, security software has to be free.

Maybe I should start a poll on my homepage and ask the users directly.

Regards
Christoph

[marwatk]

Well, in that case you can keep everything open accept your DRM class. Users would still be able to compile from the source if they wanted (and bypass your sales process), but they'd be unable to create a keygen or similar.

Hope this helps.

-Marcus

[Christoph]

True. I didn't think of this, yet. Thank you very much, Christoph.