I have seen amazing products crash and burn due to bad marketing. So equally key to getting good marketing is to avoid bad marketing. I'm half tempted to argue you should find "average marketing" by which I mean someone who isn't heavily invested in your company but can get the word out.
I would contact a PR company like RAZ or LiasonPR. (Or a PR company which specializes in your industry depending on what user group your software is targeting). They should know all of the media contacts to send demos to, they can walk your users through writing useful endorsements and they can push your product to the forefront in relevant magazines/websites. They'll also be able to write up press releases and push those out to the various press release distributors.
I believe they usually operate on a straight up contract rate so you aren't losing any equity to a third party. This will cover the most important aspect of your product launch which is to get the word out.
I would also contact an ad agency, it wouldn't need to be very large and again they operate on contract and they can handle your graphic design, copy writing and general promotional material as well as negotiate any ad buys for web banner ads or google keywords etc.
Lastly and by far most importantly you need a good business plan. I've seen development derailed and wasted because of bad pricing, complete ignorance of the market and terrible planning. This is something you can't contract out and will have to hire if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself. This largely comes down to knowing your customers and delivering a good product that's actually valuable to them. If you actually have developed a cost-effective product that does offer value to customers your PR company and Agency shouldn't have any trouble getting the word out.
If someone commits suicide over the prospect of 6 months in jail for committing a crime you're guilty of you can't blame the prosecutor. Especially when you deliberately break said law as an act of civil disobedience.
The whole point of civil disobedience is to show the law is unjust by letting "justice" carry itself out.
By that logic we should only be allowed to fly the least fuel efficient helicopters possible. Should the police only be able to drive 10mpg cars with a 30 mile range so that they can't abuse their authority?
Do we disagree with the notion that the police should be able to find and arrest a suspect? Is there a 'challenge level' that the police should be forced to overcome in routine police work and law enforcement? Should we give criminals a 2 minute head start?
I'm always a little confused by this angle of argument since the logical conclusion is that the police should be forced to pursue criminals on foot using 18th century technology and not employing any modern equipment since it makes them "too effective". What precisely is "too effective"?
Agreed. Even the summary seems to be suggesting by this sentence:
Yet detractors criticize it as being complicated (as if Photoshop is intuitively obvious).
that Photoshop users can't use GIMP because it's too hard. That's not at all what's wrong with GIMP. If you're a Photoshop user it's the fact that GIMP is incapable of doing many of even the basic things Photoshop does that its detractors criticize it for.
People are not at all sold on Photoshop being the be-all-end-all and high end graphic designers and visual effects artists are far from loyal to Adobe. The problem with Gimp is Gimp. And Gimp just doesn't fit in well as doing anything particularly well.
Microsoft's garbage software uses way less RAM than Sony's OS on the PS3. One of the chief complaints I hear from PS3 developers is how much more overhead there is from the PS3 OS compared to the 360.
The reverse of this is pretty amusing though too. I once found a very interesting post that I found very insightful and addressed exactly what I was looking for. I then went on to realize that it was a post I had written 4-5 years ago.:| I had no recollection of ever writing it but it was clearly my username and writing style on a forum I frequent.
I can't find the actual law, but this is the model law and it reads:
NOW, THEREFORE, LET IT BE RESOLVED, that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, calls on the United States Congress and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, to adopt legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court, and precluding the domestic use of drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, meaning any projectile, chemical, electrical, directed-energy (visible or invisible), or other device designed to harm, incapacitate, or otherwise negatively impact a human being.
If that's the resolution it's not even a ban, it's just a call for a ban to be implemented by the state and federal government. And even then it's only a ban on drone footage as evidence or arming a drone.
If you think it's bad that a given major University might lose a few million a year overall on their athletic program imagine what they would lose without football.
Well if we cancelled football... and soccer, volleyball, softball, baseball, swimming etc. We wouldn't lose anything.
If God created the world millions of years ago with the intent of life evolving (presumably under direction) why are we so poorly evolved and why did he include so much suffering in his plan?
If I were to create a species of intelligent, creative and spiritual beings I would have created them in such a fashion that their memory and intelligence was independent of their bodies. If anything happened to someone they would simply download into a new physical form. I would also create them in such a fashion that their energy source would be based on radioactivity so that they could go for centuries without refueling or eating. I would create them in such a fashion that they could communicate more directly and over much greater distances (perhaps through radio waves). I would create them so that they could operate comfortably and easily from -50c to nearly boiling. I would create a being made of nano particles that could re-assemble if broken, with redundant critical systems so that a lost limb would be an inconvenience not a life threatening and historically nearly certainly fatal injury.
We have the capabilities as humans to create creatures with nearly these capabilities (if not the AI yet but that's not terribly out of line with future software/microchips). And these seem like easy basics upon which to create life. Instead you think God created life in such a fashion that an endless holocaust of suffering would persist for centuries and mostly randomly make a slightly better creature than a sea slug but still suffer from most of its failings. What sort of divine creature would A) permit such an inhumane process to be his instrument of creation and B) pick such a poor evolutionary starting point as a slug for his template upon which to build his future race?
If you say he didn't choose the template and it was in fact Satan then he is not our creator, Satan is responsible for our creation and he is our God. If you say that God didn't choose the lowly slugs and worms as our basis then again he didn't create us... and what exactly is he doing for us and why isn't he doing more? Certainly evolution is a deterministic process. So he knew exactly what the outcome would be otherwise he wouldn't be responsible for our existence. Or if he doesn't know the outcome, why does he get credit for creation? Is he not then just simply an observer as are we?
Except that in the case of the bailouts almost all of our money has been returned with interest.
"Survival of the fittest" is great and all right up until healthy institutions rely on some institutions which appear to be healthy but then turn out not to be. Or people act incorrectly based on incomplete information. Or you take into account an entire system which is as interdependent as a national economy.
You say survival of the fittest but what if there is a run on healthy banks because of perceived weakness? Suddenly everybody starts pulling their money because they think their bank might fail--so even a healthy bank can't pay out and defaults on its withdrawals. Or maybe a bank is acting in its own best interest and suddenly with enormous uncertainty decides for its own good it needs to stop lending any more money in case something unexpected happens. Great for the bank--catastrophic for a business that depends on credit. Maybe that business is healthy, always makes its payments, is never late, but now can't get any loans to continue operating. Or what if your client is a large seemingly healthy institution that suddenly overnight declares bankruptcy and won't pay their last invoice?
When everybody starts looking out for their own best interest then everybody's interest often suffers. It's like the stampedes you see after a fire alarm. Everyone has the right goal of self preservation but in a panic innocent people get trampled.
My school was all Apple. It had the exact opposite effect of persuading me to use Apple computers in my daily life. The last thing I wanted as a kid was the buggy, slow systems at school.
They might pay full tuition for the facilities and salaries, but theoretically our colleges have unique and valuable intellectual capital that is being shared with students (that's the reason to attend an elite university). If they weren't why would everybody want to attend from around the world? If an education was as good in India as the United States why spend so much on a US University just to return? We're presumably teaching foreigners our competitive insights and then failing to profit from their applications.
I agree, I think we should keep successful students around and have them employ Americans to help develop their new ideas. But I would argue that they are getting a bargain even paying full tuition.
I have a friend who is at the top of his field, holds patents, industry recognition and fame etc... took him something like 4 years to get a green card and start working here.
If you want to put your career on hold for 4 years be my guest but H1Bs are great for 'briding the gap' and offering people a trial to see if they want to work here.
Not to mention if the choice is between "bad office work" and Foxconn... I think the choice is clear.
It sounds like Chinese workers want the same thing that American workers want: better working conditions. If the pay isn't sufficient to draw adequate quantity of talent then you need to start upping your incentives. Reduce quotas and hours (after all more than 40 hours a week is a waste of money since you're just paying overtime for someone to do the same amount of work), improve working conditions (maybe mix up positions throughout the day to prevent repetitive injuries and strain) etc.
And you have to look at it like dehydrated food. In lots of situations you have easy access to water even if you have no access to fuel or food. So for instance when backpacking you carry dehydrated food since the water makes up most of the weight while being easily accessible in the wilderness.
So while you might need 28 gallons of water to deliver 1 gallon equivalent of gasoline with this silicon system--it's probably pretty easy to find 28 gallons of water nearby--especially if potability isn't a concern.
Why on earth would we want to do that? Historically our technological innovation has been driven domestically in part because we have such an open policy to immigrants. The space program was dramatically accelerated by accepting German immigrants. The Manhattan Project owes a lot to immigrants. Let's get our collective nationalist heads out of our asses and acknowledge that there are people around the world who are smarter than most unemployed Americans. Unemployment for those with Masters in computer science/engineering is in the low single digits.
Which would you rather happen: foreign talented developers to start their companies in Asia, Europe or South America or for them to be in the states and hopefully develop their idea in the states? Most tech startups are employees who work at Microsoft or Google and then leave to create their company. If they don't come to the US, their good ideas don't come with them and we lose the best ideas in the world because we're afraid a burger flipper won't somehow magically get a job at Google because of the big bad Indian who took his hypothetical job.
I think this is an important point. I have used "touch" aka tablet friendly graphics software for over a decade and the tablet friendly UI's were all amazingly efficient UIs with a mouse and keyboard. People knock touch UIs as "dumbing down" UIs. But they said the exact same thing about GUIs *period*. You could say "dumbing down" or done well you could call it "removing excessive complexity". I could create the most cluttered UI imaginable just covered in buttons without any hierarchy. It would be extremely fast if you memorized where everything was. But a context menu would probably be better.
It's one thing to quit the Apple job because the employee applied to Palm for a job and got a better salary. It's quite another if recruiters from Palm are actively poaching their competitors' employees. Jobs did not approve of the poaching. Quitting and joining Palm on their own initiative is ok.
Who cares what Jobs thinks. I can talk to his employees all I want. If Jobs is unhappy with something that an employee is doing he can fire them. If Jobs is unhappy with something an employee at another company is doing he can suck it.
The only time you can be mad at recruiters is when you hire a recruiting firm that then starts trying to poach your own employees for one of their other clients. Then you're paying them to steal your employees which is highly unethical. "Hey I see one of your employees left, what a shame, how about I take a % of a new replacement's salary?"
Netflix is encouraging my ISP to build out infrastructure, and I'm supposed to be upset that I have to pay for it? More bandwidth is good for everyone, and can be used for anything, not just Netflix. This is unequivocally good.
No this is BAD. They aren't "building out infrastructure" they're asking for special servers and QOS packet prioritization. Remember when Netflix was saying that the ISPs would give their own video priority over Netflix? Remember how we all got up in arms over how wrong that was? That's what Netflix is trying to get the ISPs to do *for them*.
So if instead of Netflix you watch Amazon Video you won't get any infrastructure improvement. Now if Netflix was willing to pay to colocate servers at the ISP's switches in order to reduce latency that would be fine. They could pay a nominal fee to Comcast and pass that cost along to the customer. Instead they're saying to Comcast "you need to install these servers in your switch-room and we aren't going to pay you for the privilege".
Except they had a huge electoral advantage from their software. The GOP does not have very sophisticated get out the vote tools. So why on earth would the DEMs give the GOP one of their proprietary competitive advantages?!
"Hey we heard you wanted to gerrymander the districts even further. Here's a tool to help you elect officials to enable you to do that!"
Slashdot Mirror
I have seen amazing products crash and burn due to bad marketing. So equally key to getting good marketing is to avoid bad marketing. I'm half tempted to argue you should find "average marketing" by which I mean someone who isn't heavily invested in your company but can get the word out.
I would contact a PR company like RAZ or LiasonPR. (Or a PR company which specializes in your industry depending on what user group your software is targeting). They should know all of the media contacts to send demos to, they can walk your users through writing useful endorsements and they can push your product to the forefront in relevant magazines/websites. They'll also be able to write up press releases and push those out to the various press release distributors.
I believe they usually operate on a straight up contract rate so you aren't losing any equity to a third party. This will cover the most important aspect of your product launch which is to get the word out.
I would also contact an ad agency, it wouldn't need to be very large and again they operate on contract and they can handle your graphic design, copy writing and general promotional material as well as negotiate any ad buys for web banner ads or google keywords etc.
Lastly and by far most importantly you need a good business plan. I've seen development derailed and wasted because of bad pricing, complete ignorance of the market and terrible planning. This is something you can't contract out and will have to hire if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself. This largely comes down to knowing your customers and delivering a good product that's actually valuable to them. If you actually have developed a cost-effective product that does offer value to customers your PR company and Agency shouldn't have any trouble getting the word out.
If someone commits suicide over the prospect of 6 months in jail for committing a crime you're guilty of you can't blame the prosecutor. Especially when you deliberately break said law as an act of civil disobedience.
The whole point of civil disobedience is to show the law is unjust by letting "justice" carry itself out.
To be fair if he was staying at a hotel... you don't often have a place to plugin overnight. I haven't seen any hotels with EV charge points yet.
given the long successful history of precious metals as money.
Except for all of the cases where they weren't successful.
By that logic we should only be allowed to fly the least fuel efficient helicopters possible. Should the police only be able to drive 10mpg cars with a 30 mile range so that they can't abuse their authority?
Do we disagree with the notion that the police should be able to find and arrest a suspect? Is there a 'challenge level' that the police should be forced to overcome in routine police work and law enforcement? Should we give criminals a 2 minute head start?
I'm always a little confused by this angle of argument since the logical conclusion is that the police should be forced to pursue criminals on foot using 18th century technology and not employing any modern equipment since it makes them "too effective". What precisely is "too effective"?
Agreed. Even the summary seems to be suggesting by this sentence:
Yet detractors criticize it as being complicated (as if Photoshop is intuitively obvious).
that Photoshop users can't use GIMP because it's too hard. That's not at all what's wrong with GIMP. If you're a Photoshop user it's the fact that GIMP is incapable of doing many of even the basic things Photoshop does that its detractors criticize it for.
People are not at all sold on Photoshop being the be-all-end-all and high end graphic designers and visual effects artists are far from loyal to Adobe. The problem with Gimp is Gimp. And Gimp just doesn't fit in well as doing anything particularly well.
Microsoft's garbage software uses way less RAM than Sony's OS on the PS3. One of the chief complaints I hear from PS3 developers is how much more overhead there is from the PS3 OS compared to the 360.
The reverse of this is pretty amusing though too. I once found a very interesting post that I found very insightful and addressed exactly what I was looking for. I then went on to realize that it was a post I had written 4-5 years ago. :| I had no recollection of ever writing it but it was clearly my username and writing style on a forum I frequent.
I can't find the actual law, but this is the model law and it reads:
NOW, THEREFORE, LET IT BE RESOLVED, that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, calls on the United States Congress and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, to adopt legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court, and precluding the domestic use of drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, meaning any projectile, chemical, electrical, directed-energy (visible or invisible), or other device designed to harm, incapacitate, or otherwise negatively impact a human being.
If that's the resolution it's not even a ban, it's just a call for a ban to be implemented by the state and federal government. And even then it's only a ban on drone footage as evidence or arming a drone.
If you think it's bad that a given major University might lose a few million a year overall on their athletic program imagine what they would lose without football.
Well if we cancelled football... and soccer, volleyball, softball, baseball, swimming etc. We wouldn't lose anything.
If God created the world millions of years ago with the intent of life evolving (presumably under direction) why are we so poorly evolved and why did he include so much suffering in his plan?
If I were to create a species of intelligent, creative and spiritual beings I would have created them in such a fashion that their memory and intelligence was independent of their bodies. If anything happened to someone they would simply download into a new physical form. I would also create them in such a fashion that their energy source would be based on radioactivity so that they could go for centuries without refueling or eating. I would create them in such a fashion that they could communicate more directly and over much greater distances (perhaps through radio waves). I would create them so that they could operate comfortably and easily from -50c to nearly boiling. I would create a being made of nano particles that could re-assemble if broken, with redundant critical systems so that a lost limb would be an inconvenience not a life threatening and historically nearly certainly fatal injury.
We have the capabilities as humans to create creatures with nearly these capabilities (if not the AI yet but that's not terribly out of line with future software/microchips). And these seem like easy basics upon which to create life. Instead you think God created life in such a fashion that an endless holocaust of suffering would persist for centuries and mostly randomly make a slightly better creature than a sea slug but still suffer from most of its failings. What sort of divine creature would A) permit such an inhumane process to be his instrument of creation and B) pick such a poor evolutionary starting point as a slug for his template upon which to build his future race?
If you say he didn't choose the template and it was in fact Satan then he is not our creator, Satan is responsible for our creation and he is our God. If you say that God didn't choose the lowly slugs and worms as our basis then again he didn't create us... and what exactly is he doing for us and why isn't he doing more? Certainly evolution is a deterministic process. So he knew exactly what the outcome would be otherwise he wouldn't be responsible for our existence. Or if he doesn't know the outcome, why does he get credit for creation? Is he not then just simply an observer as are we?
Except that in the case of the bailouts almost all of our money has been returned with interest.
"Survival of the fittest" is great and all right up until healthy institutions rely on some institutions which appear to be healthy but then turn out not to be. Or people act incorrectly based on incomplete information. Or you take into account an entire system which is as interdependent as a national economy.
You say survival of the fittest but what if there is a run on healthy banks because of perceived weakness? Suddenly everybody starts pulling their money because they think their bank might fail--so even a healthy bank can't pay out and defaults on its withdrawals. Or maybe a bank is acting in its own best interest and suddenly with enormous uncertainty decides for its own good it needs to stop lending any more money in case something unexpected happens. Great for the bank--catastrophic for a business that depends on credit. Maybe that business is healthy, always makes its payments, is never late, but now can't get any loans to continue operating. Or what if your client is a large seemingly healthy institution that suddenly overnight declares bankruptcy and won't pay their last invoice?
When everybody starts looking out for their own best interest then everybody's interest often suffers. It's like the stampedes you see after a fire alarm. Everyone has the right goal of self preservation but in a panic innocent people get trampled.
My school was all Apple. It had the exact opposite effect of persuading me to use Apple computers in my daily life. The last thing I wanted as a kid was the buggy, slow systems at school.
They might pay full tuition for the facilities and salaries, but theoretically our colleges have unique and valuable intellectual capital that is being shared with students (that's the reason to attend an elite university). If they weren't why would everybody want to attend from around the world? If an education was as good in India as the United States why spend so much on a US University just to return? We're presumably teaching foreigners our competitive insights and then failing to profit from their applications.
I agree, I think we should keep successful students around and have them employ Americans to help develop their new ideas. But I would argue that they are getting a bargain even paying full tuition.
the only reason to buy new versions of Office is being forced into compatibility with the suckers who bought the new version
Or you could download the free plugin that Microsoft maintains to read docx. :P
I dont want to have to be online inorder to work on a document.
Good news, that's not at all what office 2013 is. It's just adding extra features should you happen to be on an internet connection.
Think sharepoint but not shitastic awful.
I have a friend who is at the top of his field, holds patents, industry recognition and fame etc... took him something like 4 years to get a green card and start working here.
If you want to put your career on hold for 4 years be my guest but H1Bs are great for 'briding the gap' and offering people a trial to see if they want to work here.
Not to mention if the choice is between "bad office work" and Foxconn... I think the choice is clear.
It sounds like Chinese workers want the same thing that American workers want: better working conditions. If the pay isn't sufficient to draw adequate quantity of talent then you need to start upping your incentives. Reduce quotas and hours (after all more than 40 hours a week is a waste of money since you're just paying overtime for someone to do the same amount of work), improve working conditions (maybe mix up positions throughout the day to prevent repetitive injuries and strain) etc.
And you have to look at it like dehydrated food. In lots of situations you have easy access to water even if you have no access to fuel or food. So for instance when backpacking you carry dehydrated food since the water makes up most of the weight while being easily accessible in the wilderness.
So while you might need 28 gallons of water to deliver 1 gallon equivalent of gasoline with this silicon system--it's probably pretty easy to find 28 gallons of water nearby--especially if potability isn't a concern.
Why on earth would we want to do that? Historically our technological innovation has been driven domestically in part because we have such an open policy to immigrants. The space program was dramatically accelerated by accepting German immigrants. The Manhattan Project owes a lot to immigrants. Let's get our collective nationalist heads out of our asses and acknowledge that there are people around the world who are smarter than most unemployed Americans. Unemployment for those with Masters in computer science/engineering is in the low single digits.
Which would you rather happen: foreign talented developers to start their companies in Asia, Europe or South America or for them to be in the states and hopefully develop their idea in the states? Most tech startups are employees who work at Microsoft or Google and then leave to create their company. If they don't come to the US, their good ideas don't come with them and we lose the best ideas in the world because we're afraid a burger flipper won't somehow magically get a job at Google because of the big bad Indian who took his hypothetical job.
Agreed. Seriously reduce H1Bs and offer them citizenship if they agree to stick around for 10 years.
I think this is an important point. I have used "touch" aka tablet friendly graphics software for over a decade and the tablet friendly UI's were all amazingly efficient UIs with a mouse and keyboard. People knock touch UIs as "dumbing down" UIs. But they said the exact same thing about GUIs *period*. You could say "dumbing down" or done well you could call it "removing excessive complexity". I could create the most cluttered UI imaginable just covered in buttons without any hierarchy. It would be extremely fast if you memorized where everything was. But a context menu would probably be better.
It's one thing to quit the Apple job because the employee applied to Palm for a job and got a better salary. It's quite another if recruiters from Palm are actively poaching their competitors' employees. Jobs did not approve of the poaching. Quitting and joining Palm on their own initiative is ok.
Who cares what Jobs thinks. I can talk to his employees all I want. If Jobs is unhappy with something that an employee is doing he can fire them. If Jobs is unhappy with something an employee at another company is doing he can suck it.
The only time you can be mad at recruiters is when you hire a recruiting firm that then starts trying to poach your own employees for one of their other clients. Then you're paying them to steal your employees which is highly unethical. "Hey I see one of your employees left, what a shame, how about I take a % of a new replacement's salary?"
Netflix is encouraging my ISP to build out infrastructure, and I'm supposed to be upset that I have to pay for it? More bandwidth is good for everyone, and can be used for anything, not just Netflix. This is unequivocally good.
No this is BAD. They aren't "building out infrastructure" they're asking for special servers and QOS packet prioritization. Remember when Netflix was saying that the ISPs would give their own video priority over Netflix? Remember how we all got up in arms over how wrong that was? That's what Netflix is trying to get the ISPs to do *for them*.
So if instead of Netflix you watch Amazon Video you won't get any infrastructure improvement. Now if Netflix was willing to pay to colocate servers at the ISP's switches in order to reduce latency that would be fine. They could pay a nominal fee to Comcast and pass that cost along to the customer. Instead they're saying to Comcast "you need to install these servers in your switch-room and we aren't going to pay you for the privilege".
Except they had a huge electoral advantage from their software. The GOP does not have very sophisticated get out the vote tools. So why on earth would the DEMs give the GOP one of their proprietary competitive advantages?!
"Hey we heard you wanted to gerrymander the districts even further. Here's a tool to help you elect officials to enable you to do that!"