Martin Weber feels that microISV’s are not on the radar of development tools companies. He looks primarily at Microsoft’s soon to be released Visual Studio Team System and writes the following:

While enterprise editions are often targeted at (larger) teams of developers they strip off too many features of professional editions to be suitable for a MicroISV.

I agree with that statement if what you’re looking for is an all inclusive solution, but there are plenty of companies out there that provide the microISV with free or inexpensive solutions that are fully integrated into Visual Studio. Eric Sink’s company, SourceGear, is a perfect example with his Vault source control product (free for one user) and Dragnet bug tracking software (ballpark price of $99/$129).

Microsoft is definitely not overlooking the microISV either. Jeff Sandquist recently hired an evangelist who will be working with the microISV community. We should be seeing more microISV related information coming out of Redmond in the near future.

Microsoft has announced the pricing and a simplification of the MSDN subscription services for the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2005. Promotional pricing is being offered for developers who wish to purchase an MSDN Universal subscription today which will allow customers to upgrade to VS 2o05 once its released.

It has also been reported that the release date of VS 2005 Beta 2 has been pushed back until April but the product release is still expected in September at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference.

An article on phillyBurbs.com looks at the value of creating a business plan to use as a roadmap for small business success. The author suggests:

If you want to make a commitment to being your own boss, begin by investing your time in developing a business plan. Through the business plan, you are testing your idea, calculating how much you will have to sell and at what price to break even and to make your enterprise profitable. This is information you want well in hand before you take the risk and hold that grand opening.

Tom Evslin offers a list for CEO’s to decipher the true meaning of programmer-speak. Some examples are,

“It’ll be done ASAP.”
Translation: There is no schedule yet.

“That feature shouldn’t add any time to the schedule.”
Translation: There is no schedule yet.

The list is humorous but several comments on the post state that Tom is right on target.

Tom’s second post of this series takes a look at the meaning of “Done” in regards to software projects.

Mark Miller discusses source code metrics to discover which parts of your application are too complex and could benefit from refactoring. He provides explanations of several issues that are somewhat controversial when gathering metrics on source code, such as the value of comments within the code. In addition to the explanations, Mark lists the values that can be applied to the different code parts used to generate the score and a table to decipher the meaning of the results.

via Alex Lowe

Recently I’ve been using Gmail as a code repository for a lot of the small code snippets I create and I’ve found it to be very helpful since the mailbox is searchable. No more opening all of the little text files I used to have spread out across my computer. You can even take it one step further and use Gmail’s Labels and the ability to star conversations to be able to find things very easily.

If you’re in need of a Gmail account, I have quite a few invites available. Just shoot me an email and I’ll send you one.

Rodcorp has put together a list of stories and anecdotes about how people relate to the work they do. Most of the people on the list are artists, writers or actors but there are entries about Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems.

Several applications have been added to the microISV Buzz. Each of the listed applications is tracked for then number of mentions on the web via the Technorati API. If you would like to have your application listed, use the Submit Information link to the right or leave your app name and url in the comments.

The applications added in this update are:

CoffeeCup HTML Editor
Forte Agent
Moffsoft Calculator
PocoMail
Registry Mechanic
Spyware Doctor

For a lot of developers, coming up with a name for your software or your business quickly becomes an exercise in frustration. An article on StartupJournal takes a look at the name game that many businesses go through when trying to create a new brand. Their take on it is ultimately,

A little less attention to branding — and a little more to the beef underneath the brand — makes all the difference.

This month’s microISV profile is of Clarke Scott, founder of Vivid Software. Clarke is developing a CRM application that is not yet launched so we have another view of the microISV life that hasn’t been profiled yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

David over at Joe Indie has a post about luck in the indie development world, and how your luck may require a lot of work. I especially like this quote:

The lesson is that sometimes we all get lucky. We’re in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing. The bitch is that you can’t know when that’s going to happen. All you can do is: keep doing your best and never give up.

No Free Silver Bullet Lunch

What is UML?

Examining the Cost of Change

Just Barely Enough Design

Extreme Programming - Its simple.

Starting a Company - Superhacker + Phoneboy Philosophy

How to get ahead in the software development business

Graham Glass has an excellent series on producing several software products. All of the information is based on his personal experiences and he describes how each company is founded in a way to avoid having to take on investors while still creating a viable company and product quickly.

In Part 6 of the series, the most recent entry, Graham provides a bullet list of assumptions that he works under. His list is a good framework for all developers to work off of, especially since he shares some of his results of using the list.

If you’ve spent any time on the networking side of the tech industry, you’ve probably heard of Newton’s Telecom Dictionary. The man responsible for the dictionary is Harry Newton who is now in search of the perfect investment. Take a look at the second item of today’s column where he says “Software is the easiest industry to get into, but the hardest to succeed in. ”

Harry presents three different types of software companies and comments on each from an investors point of view. Harry is definitely talking about dollar figures that are well above what a lot microISV software companies are even shooting for (even though it would be nice) but its always interesting to read about what people who have money to invest are looking for.

Jennifer Rice points out that you can’t truly own your niche but you can own the way you are perceived within that niche. In her article, she uses the computer PC industry as an example to show how Dell, Gateway, and Apple all sell in competitive markets but use their brand to differentiate themselves. By owning how they are perceived, each of these companies have set themselves up for future growth and expansion into new markets.