Entries for the 'Business' Category

I have been working with Ken White over at FastSpring to setup a payment gateway and online store. I'm happy to say that this is finally done. I just finished the last bit on their side and hooked it up with my site today.

I'm hoping to have the part on my website done by Monday. The store link is already wired up, but I will not show it to the public until I get PainlessSVN working with the new license settings. The only thing left on my site is to wire up the buy buttons to the new URLs.

My current eCommerce system has been a total failure. I've been watching it with Clicky, and noticed that a lot of people were trying to buy, but couldn't. This is no good, so I decided to take it down today.

This was basically a half-assed system. I took a DNN module and integrated the licensing system with custom code. The main issues that I had were that I could not change the fields that were requested to something more reasonable. Also a lot of people were confused by its navigation. I'm yanking it today, rather than allow it to create even more frustration for me and potential customer.

I'm going to try my hand with FastSpring. Hopefully, this will allow me to outsource this part of my business. This will allow me to concentrate on making my products better, and not having to fiddle with stuff that I'm not familiar with. One feature that I'm looking forward to, is the ability to allow potential customers to pay in their own currency.

I'm going to be resetting the 30 day trial for PainlessSVN 1.1, so everybody will get another 30 days to play with it.

Frustrating, but good learning experience.

Springville, UT : September 6, 2006 - SystemWidgets is happy to announce the release of the first version of PainlessSVN Professional.

This is the first commercial product targeted specifically for Subversion repositories served with the svnserve custom server on the Windows Operating System. It is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) version 3.0 snap-in. This makes the Subversion server a first-class Windows citizen.

Headquartered in Springville, Utah., SystemWidgets is a software development company offering custom solutions focused around the Microsoft .NET Framework. SystemWidgets also produces several free utilities to help IS people manage their day to day activities. The SystemWidgets product line offers proven solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

For more information, please visit http://www.systemwidgets.com

###

Hector Sosa, Jr
SystemWidgets

I've been coding quite a bit in the last few days. I finally got the licensing bit from Infralution working correctly. I had to create a custom license generator for Infralution that would work for both the application and as part of ActivePurchase. 

It took me a while to figure out that I couldn't just use the source code classes from the licensing system. It was expecting a specific signature from an assembly. Once I added a reference to this assembly, then the custom Infralution key generator started working perfectly. All in all, I spent less time than what I had scheduled in my FogBugz (free version) case. What can I say? I'm a horrible estimator!

I decided to use a new PayPal account for the payment processor. I was previously using my personal PayPal account, but decided to make my life easier and got me a PayPal Business account. I just verified all the bits, so this is ready to go.

My last bit of work now, is to create a custom step in ActivePurchase that will generate the key, then email it to the customer. Thankfully, I have experience writing modules for DotNetNuke, and I had already translated a VB.NET custom step sample provided by Will to C#. So, I'm not going in totally blind.

It looks like I'm going to make my early September release after all. Maybe even September 6.

I'm disappointed with Eziriz's tech support of late. I have been trying to contact them for about 3 weeks now. At first, I thought they were ignoring me. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt when I read the thread called "Anybody home at Plimus?" on the Business Of Software forums at Joel On Software.

Basically, the thread talks about Plimus' email support probably having their spam filters too aggressive and eating a LOT of their emails. Several posters mentioned that using the online forms works very well. I decided to use the online form at Eziriz's website, but that went into a black hole as well.

What is frustrating about the whole thing is the total lack of non-communication. Nothing, zip, zilch, nada, not even an email saying that they got any of my emails. I don't think I've been a bad customer. I now know that MMC 3.0 snapins are a major pain to protect, because it constantly breaks .NET Reactor. Heck, even a "You are a customer that drains our support time, and unprofitable" is much better than this total silence. At least then, I would know where I stand and could take my business elsewhere.

PainlessSVN has been delayed because of this. I have a significant issue with the protected assembly not working on Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition. I'm in a bind, because my budget for protection tools is gone. I'm stuck with .NET Reactor. I does work very well for non-MMC snapins, though. I haven't had any problems with any of the other utilities I protected with it.

So Eziriz now falls in the disappointing category of very good product, with abysmal tech support.

So, I opened a business account with a local small bank called Bank of American Fork. So far so good. They haven't annoyed me, but I have been disappointed with their online banking. I realize that the reason for all their free stuff is that they can't compete otherwise.

Case in point... It's been a couple weeks since I opened the account, but I haven't received a debit card yet. So I call my branch and ask them why I haven't received one. The answer is that I need to fill out a form in order to get a debit card. Saaaaay what?!? Ok, this one was my fault, I should have asked them point blank about this.

My credit union, on the other hand, have been a total pleasure to work with. They let me pick a design for my debit card right when I signed up. Not only that, but they also told me that I could upload a picture and use that in the card instead of their stock stuff. I got my debit card with the US flag about 5 business days after I signed up.

Their online banking is superb. Their bill pay is free, and very sophisticated. They have relationships with almost all of the companies I have monthly bills with. On top of that, I can also setup entries for persons. Nice! The other thing that impressed me was that I didn't have to do the 2 small deposit thing with PayPal. It looks like America First Credit Union has integration with PayPal. I only needed to enter my bank account's password and answer the security questions and I got confirmed right away. Nice!

So I have a decision to make. I'm currently running as a sole proprietorship, since I didn't want to bother with a LLC, until SystemWidgets has a nice cash flow. I either continue with Bank of American Fork, or close the account there and use my personal account at America First Credit Union. I also have a joint account with my wife over at the credit union as well, so I can use my personal account to keep my business expenses apart from the family stuff. The no fee business account at BoAF is terribly tempting, but the hassle/annoyance factor is starting to increase.

I know that I ultimately have to make the decision myself, but I would love to hear from the people who read my humble blog.

I was wide awake early this morning, around 4 AM, and couldn't get back to sleep. So I decided to do a little cleaning up and tie lose ends for SystemWidgets. The first thing that I wanted to do was to close my eFax account, since I didn't need it, and it was eating up money that I need for other things.

The first thing I did was to look for a way to close the account myself. Nothing in the FAQ. So I scratch my head. So I kept looking, and found something under Billing: "You need to initiate a chat session, in order to discontinue your account." WTF?!?

Ok, so I initiate the chat. I tell the customer service agent; "Hi, I want to close my account." To which the agent responded with some long spiel about losing me as a client. So I'm thinking, "close my acount!" So now he launches into refunding two months, and wanting me to stay for two months free, then I can see if I want to cancel then.

So, I repeat myself a second time. "Close my a account, I don't want free anything. Just close my account now." So, the agent proceeds to ask me what are my reasons, and gives me a list of 5 choices. I pick two, but I can't remember what they were. The agent launches into another spiel.

By this time, I'm pissed off and very cranky. I'm now thinking "CLOSE-MY-FRAKING-ACCOUNT!!!" I know that this person is reading from a canned script, so he's not to blame for the blatant stuff. I proceed to repeat myself calmly, a herculean task now; "Close my account. I want it closed, discontinued, canceled. Capiche?" So now he finally gets it, and closes the account. GOOD GRIEF, ON A BICYCLE!

I was too angry, so I missed the chance to copy the text of the chat. So officially... eFax you suck! Don't annoy your customers like that.

Now, can anybody recommend a fax service that doesn't suck like that?

I've been using Google Alerts for a while now. I found them mildly useful. However, I have now found that these alerts are very useful when you want to know who's talking about your software. I just got an alert this morning that PainlessSVN showed up on a cracker's website.

I find this extremely amusing. PainlessSVN is not even released and it's already garnering attention. Too funny! Best way to combat this is just to put out a LOT of releases. I'm hoping to put out v1.0 sometime in September.

Business banking is one of those topics that caused me dread. Business banking practices are notorious for penny-nickel-dime business to death. I really loathe the per activity charges that are prevalent for business checking on all national banks. I really took my time in doing research here. I stopped counting after I reached my 20th bank.

These were my requirements:

• No or low monthly
• No per activity charges
• No setup fees
• Unlimited deposits
• Unlimited withdrawals
• Free Bill Pay
• Free Online Banking
• Branch close to my location
• Friendly business hours

All the national banks failed the no activity charges requirement. I was surprised that there were only a handful of banks that offered free bill pay. All the banks that I contacted offered some form of online banking. Most free checking had limits on transactions per month.

In the end the local banks ruled. My three finalists were:

• Far West Bank
• First America Credit Union
• Bank of American Fork

And the winner was...

Bank of American Fork

Here's run down on my thoughts for each bank:

Far West Bank has branches all over the state of Utah. They have been very friendly at all the branches I've visited. I disqualified them because they only had a 200 limit on deposits and withdrawals (combined) a month. Their turn around time on deposits left much to be desired. I currently have my personal banking here, that's how I know about the deposits turn around.

First America Credit Union has the second best online experience that I have ever had. Their website is very well designed. Everything was at the locations on the screen that I expected. Their demos are superb. The one thing that turned me off to their business banking was the relatively  high setup fee. This is a $148 one time charge. Their limit for transactions was MUCH higher than anywhere I contacted. They are open on Saturdays from 8 AM to 7 PM. WOW! I actually moved my personal banking accounts here.

Bank of American Fork is a very small local bank. They had absolutely NO FEES. I decided to go for the BizSmart account. This has a monthly fee of $7 if my balance falls down below $500. I can live with that! It took about an hour to setup my account, mostly because the guy that helped me had never setup a business account before. I was a bit disappointed when I checked the customer's online experience. I did like that they have a policy to make funds available immediately upon deposit. This setup seemed perfect for my cash strapped microISV. I only needed to show the state tax number, my Social Security, and a form of photo ID.

I will move my account to First America Credit Union, if Bank of American Fork proves to be a pain in the neck. Oh, and the number 1 bank in my opinion is Desert Schools Federal Credit Union (DSFCU) in Arizona. They have (in my opinion) the absolute best online experience. Their clerks are very well trained and very pleasant to deal with. I banked with them for about 7 years, and their clerks were always very fast with my transactions. Too bad they don't have a presence over here in Utah.

After much thought and research, I've decided on how to price PainlessSVN. The price will be 49.95 USD. I will have a special introductory price of 29.95 USD for the first month after PainlessSVN is released.

I decided to avoid taking money before the 1.0 release. This will be my first product, and I want customers to have a good experience. This will also lower my stress levels. I don't have a set release date, other than sometime in September, barring any unforseen problems.

I will turn my attention to setting up the eCommerce stuff, once I get Beta 1 out the door. I have decided to use e-Junkie to handle payments and licensing. I will start with PayPal, then 2CheckOut, as I already have accounts for these already. I still haven't decided if I want to use Google Checkout as well.