Dear readers.
This will be the last post on PS:refocus.

The Popup Widget has found a new place at Jaeger & Schweizer. Further updates on it will appear on our blog there.

The posts about ebusiness and entrepreneurship moved to PatrickSchweizer.com, my new personal blog about IT development, entrepreneurship, ebook creation and some other matters.

Thanks for sticking around and see you maybe on Jaeger & Schweizer and PatrickSchweizer.com

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One of the most impressive things I experienced on my first visit to the US (I was thirteen) were the free samples at the supermarket. My cousin and I would go along with his parents grocery shopping for the sole reason to enjoy the free seafood samples. It was something I had never seen in Germany before.

Free samples are a pretty simple and straightforward marketing strategy. Offer something for free, get a potential customer hooked, then charge money.

This already worked pretty good in the past. But with digital goods it will become even better. The limiting factor in the past was that the samples had to be produced and that cost money. Therefore they were limited. The costs for copying digital goods however are next to nil. Therefore its easy to shell out free digital samples.

One thing with giving things away for free however is that a customer may not value them as much as if he had to pay for them. Its hard to explain to a customer why he should pay for something that he used to get for free before. Think of email services for example. We expect them to be free.

A way to get around this problem is to put a price tag on a product and then to give it anyway away for free to a limited group of people who will (hopefully) act as multipliers. Smashwords, the ebook platform does exactly that in the form of coupons. The books have a price but the author can chose to give out coupons and set a discount from a couple of cents to completely for free.

That is exactly what we are doing with our new book. If you are interested in traveling, you can get a free coupon of my second book (written together with Sherrie) here.

More on this topic:

• FREE, a free audio book by Chris Anderson:
  Article:
  http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/07/free-for-free-first-ebook-and-a...
  Direct download:
  http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/free/FREE_Audiobook_unabridged.zip
• Smashwords Marketing Guide: more on ebook marketing

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Amazon is not only the world's biggest book seller but also the biggest ebook seller. But a competitor is rising: Smashwords. Smashwords was founded by Mark Coker and provides a platform for self published ebooks. They distribute the ebook to all major retailers (except Amazon) and provide self published authors with great help to get their books out there and widely known. The platform offers social media integration, reviews, recommendations, an affiliate program etc.

But even Mark says: "Odds are, even with the marketing and distribution benefits listed above, if you do nothing else you are not going to sell many books".

But he does not leave it not at that. He gives (and explains) 31 tips on how to market your book. It starts with very simple things such as putting your book link into the email signature but also gives some not so obvious advice such as coupons. He explains how giving away a book for (partly) free can increase the sales. We will try the coupon idea on Sherries book and see how and if it will work.

Its a very easy read, targeted at non technical firm people. But nevertheless I think its a interesting read for any ebusiness entrepreneur. Although ebook marketing is a very specific niche many of the marketing concepts and ideas can be applied to other ebusiness.

Download it here for free.

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Sherrie has worked for the last 4 years as an English teacher in Germany. Thats how she made her money but thats not what she really wanted to do. She always wanted to be a writer. Being a writer, and not only a writer but a financially successful writer, is tough work. I am glad I'm a programmer, so much easier ;-)

Sherrie writing in an Mongolian ger

But that said I think it hasn't been a better time to become a writer then these days. In the old days you had to find a publisher to become successful (end even then it was hard). A publisher is basically a gatekeeper, someone who judges whose writing is worth printing. They were needed because making books and shelf space was very expensive. Only the best (or better: those who were considered to be the best) made it into the stores. When you think of it, it is was a very feudal system.

A privileged few got to decide what was suitable (and sellable) to the masses. This was necessary though as printing books and the shelf space they occupied was expensive.

But now in the era of print on demand and, even better, ebooks, the rules have completely changed. The system has been democratized. The costs for shelf space is zero today (think Amazon)*). There can be as many ebooks out there as we wish. Everybody can publish one thanks to ebook services like Amazon KDP or Smashwords. On the other side, with the Internet and its social media, it has never been easier for authors to reach out for new readers and to connect to them.

So Sherrie has made her choice. She started to write and is battling to become a successful author. I think this is a brave decision. Not very many people live their dreams and try to make them come true.

But why am I writing about this? While I was looking into the whole ebook business and the
selfmarketing of indies (writer speak for indipendent authors, someone without a publisher) I
realized that this is in many ways is not very far from what an IT startup does. Indeed its
a very special form of an ebusiness. I learned many interesting things from the indi
book marketing. I think some of these things can be used for marketing of ebusiness
in general. More on that in my next posts.

*) More on the implications of falling costs of computing time, memory and bandwidth in FREE, a free audio book by Chris Anderson, the guy who also wrote The Long Tail:
Article:
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/07/free-for-free-first-ebook-and-a...
Direct download:
http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/free/FREE_Audiobook_unabridged.zip

Other interessting article:
Did Amazon's Kindle Create A Model for the Creative Economy?

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Anyone who reads unleashyouradventure.com as well, where Sherrie and I blog about motorcycle travel, may have noticed that we are on the road again. We plan to ride from Germany to Newfoundland (where Sherrie is from) and take whatever route lies in between.

Currently we are in Ulan Bator, Mongolia and I am writing this blog post from within a Ger, the traditional Mongolian nomads home.

Mongolian ger

We plan to take anywhere from several months to a year off. I am often asked how that is even possible (and of course what my boss thinks about it), as I am still employed in a small software
consulting company in Stuttgart, Germany.

Well to be honest, Klaus, my boss, didn't like the idea as much as I did. At least not as my boss.
But as a friend he said: "DO IT".

And this is something that I, as an employee ,value a whole lot. What would have happened
if he would have said "no"? Well I would have quit the job and would have went anyway.
Klaus would have lost an excellent employee (self glorification  :-P) and I would have had
no job anymore.

Camping in Mongolia

I think any good boss will agree and help you. If not, you probably might want to reconsider
if you want to work for this person or company.

Once in a while I give some help and advice to my coworkers, and if I get totally bored (as you most likely would on a motorbike trip), since I anyway have my netbook with me, I can work on some internal projects from wherever I might be.

Riding on Olchon, Lake Baikal

As for the money I have a sabbatical agreement, that means I still get my reduced salary while not working (as I did when I was working).

But what if you don't have such a nice and understanding boss? Are there other ways of earning money while you are on a trip? This is what I want to talk and explore in my next blog posts. Or to put it in another way: How can you achieve a location independent lifestyle? I will dive into an interesting e-business niche: ebooks.

BBQ at Lake Baikal

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For a couple of months now the J&S Popup Widget has been used in real life:

ecratumSRM is a SaaS system for the interaction between suppliers and customers. It helps over 2500 suppliers to interact with their customers, they handle complaints, certifications and audits over the platform.

Here is what Christian Alsen, the CEO of ecratum has to say about the J&S Popup Widget:

   "After years of fiddling around with a variety of online help systems and tools, we finally came across the Popup Widget. This app rocks because you can implement it into your web app like 1-2-3. Every non-technical editor and help-desk guy can write and edit text in an instant. Greatly recommended for all inline help you need to communicate to your users without driving them through ticket systems, help desk software and so on."

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Unfortunately my Widget project has slowed down a lot. Other stuff took over my time and attention and since June I have begun to ride my motorcycle the long way  to Newfoundland (more on www.unleashyouradventure.com).
But none the less, the project is still alive. And it has a new name: J&S Popup Widget.
And a new place: It moved to Jäger & Schweizer Ingenieure, the SaaS company I run with my partner Jens.
And a new website: popupwidget.com
Greetings from Mongolia
Patrick

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A couple of months ago a package with a book inside showed up in the mail. The cover said Joel on Software. I had no idea where it came from but it turned out it was a gift from Christian, the founder of ecratum. Unfortunately I had not time to read it. So it sat in my book shelf until a few weeks ago when we went on vacation to Tuscany, Italy.

I must admit, as soon as I started to read the book I was hooked. The chapters are pretty random as they are taken from his blog and cover different topics for software developers, everything from character encoding to how to hire a developer. The book is over 10 years old (which is in the software world a very, very long time). Therefore even more credit to Joel since most topics still apply today.

What I like about Joel is that he doesn't get into the flame ware. Is Linux better then Windows? Is Java better than .com? Are apples better then carrots? Is blue better then green? Joel looks sees things with the eyes of a pragmatic developer. Maybe because he once worked for Microsoft ;-)

But Joel doesn't only  focus on the technical site but also on the business aspects of software. Most books do only either, but Joel combines both and therefore makes for a good read for entrepreneurs and developers with a business sense. 

The book is definitely for software developers but also for people who have to deal with software and software developers in general. Particulary the section on how to bribe software developers. Highly recommended.

PS: @Christan, thanks for the book :-)

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I believe in the release early, release often approach. You don't have to make assumptions about the problems in the real world. Don't spend your time imagining problems and fixing them. Release your Software and you will know. If there is a problem fix it fast.

This is of course not possible with the classic waterfall model. But I guess if you read my blog you don't believe in that anyway.

All right lets get started! To try the alpha release of the Popup Widget I found a perfect little use case. My girlfriend blogs about traveling in unleashyouradventure.com. There she maintains a pack list that we use when we go on motorbike trips. So far its just a list of all the items. But it would be nice to know for each item why we chose it over another item. Why is it this specific grill, cooker or tent? Believe me we have spent lots of time thinking about what to pack. There is not much space on a motorbike.

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Do you have a healthy IT project that you are sick of? Here are some simple tricks on how you can get rid of it.

• Strategy: Have none. But if you happen to have one: make sure no one finds out about it. At least not your team.
• Obfuscation: Ensure your team receives no useful information. If you are forced to give them information, make sure you hide it in endless documents which nobody understands.
• Divide and Destroy: Make sure the members of the project team cannot communicate: Put them in different places (best:different continents, different time zone, different language), forbid telephone contact, establish a ticket system that is too slow and too complicated to be used in a effective way
• Paper Work: Your best friend. Busy your developers with Excel sheets and other non- productive activities. If you run out of paperwork invent some new time tracking Excel sheets.
• Don't listen to your team: They might even come up with ideas on how to improve things for the project. How inconvenient would that be?
• Understand nothing: Make sure your managers don't understand the software developers. But more important make sure they are not interested in understanding them and their problems.
• Restructure: Do some restructuring, the crazier the better. It doesn't matter what as long as everything is different then before and no one understands the new processes. The only thing to keep in mind is that the new processes should take longer and be less efficient.
• Limit Access: Make sure you team doesn't have access to the servers and tools it needs. To make this measurement more effective don't tell anybody about the new restrictions. They will find out by themselves. The best thing about it is, it will be usually at a time when productive problems occur.
• Promise and delay: Make lots of promises, never keep them, always postpone. Phrases that might help you: "No problem, that will change", "Don't worry I will take care of it", "Yes, yes you are right", "Believe me I think the same way"
• Frustrate: Helps to slow down the productivity. Let them do repetitive, boring tasks (double the effect by picking totally useless ones). Its good practice to let them produce stuff for the garbage.
• Play the happy hippo: Once you succeeded in creating enough problems, pretend there are none. Everything is sunshine in the project. There ain't no problems. Everybody who says different is the problem. Also known as the sweep everything under the rug strategy.

If you have implemented all these tricks you can almost be sure to have reached your goal: the project will be dead, or at least much more expensive then before.

Blame the downfall on the lazy and expensive development team and show your boss (with some impressive power point charts) how much you have done to get the project on track, including all the restructuring stuff.

Open a champaign bottle and get ready for your promotion. Happy managing!

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I havent posted anything for a while. Thats because I have been reading a book.

It arrived sometime ago by mail, it was a pretty used copy with a cheesy cover showing a man squatting on top of his work desk. I thought it was a cheap spy novel or something like that and didn't pay attention to it.

So I checked it out and I must admit I was hooked immediately. Ricardo Semmler talks about how he built a company that is organized in a democratic way, where workers make their own decisions and hire and fire their managers. They even set their own salaries. The company has only the bare amount of paperwork and overhead. The company books are open for everyone, corruption is not tolerated.

Sounds like a pretty interessting way of making business. But thats not the most stunning thing. I guess that for example 37 signals would claim similar things. But we are not talking not about a small, idealistic IT company from silicon valley (or Chicago for that matter).

Semco (the company) is located in Brazil, a country known or its economic roller coasters and corruption, not for new ways of thinking.

Semco produces pretty old fashion stuff, like ship equipment, machinery, dish washers many other similar things.

Its not a small company either, they have over 3000 employees (according to CNN)

Its not  a new thing either. Semmler started to turn his inherited company upside down in the 80s, and is still successful.

I wish someone at Daimler would read that book ;-)

Anyway its an interessting book, highly recommended for someone who is into new ways of doing work.

By the way, this is the company website: http://www.semco.com.br/en/ and a profile on CNN

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To easily embed the help system into existing web applications is probably the best way to do the integration on the client side via Javascript. This implies only minimal changes on the server side: Including a little Javascript-snippet.

After looking at some Javascript libraries I settled pretty fast on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). It sounds quite promising, especially for a Java developer:

Google Web Toolkit is an open source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java. Other than a few native libraries, everything is Java source that can be built on any supported platform with the included GWT Ant build files.

GWT emphasizes reusable, efficient solutions to recurring Ajax challenges, namely asynchronous remote procedure calls, history management, bookmarking, internationalization and cross-browser portability.
From Wikipedia

That means I write and debug the application in Java in my favorite IDE (Eclipse) and GWT will magically turn it into a Javascript application. Pretty cool I would say.

Another big benefit is that GWT integrates pretty easily with the Google App Engine, a runtime platform for Java applications. Google takes care of everything that is needed in order to run the applications. You pay only for storage and CPU usage. Since I want to focus on the application and not on running a server I guess thats a pretty good solution.

I will keep you updated on how this will turn out in reality.

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I decided to release my product as Open Source. Many companies such as Microsoft protect their source code better then their eyeball. Why would I throw all my effort and work out there for free so that everybody can use it? A valid question.

Again I think its about what do I gain or lose if I do or don't do so. Many companies have proven that you can successfully make money with Open Source Software (Look at Red Hat for example).

Yes its true that people can use the Software for free. But here comes the trick: I don't sell Software, I sell a service: to have a superb help system with minimal effort and minimal costs. If you use the Software by yourself (which you can and I hope some people do) you save the costs of developing it. But you don't save the costs of maintaining, hosting and updating it. Other Open Source projects, individuals and some companies might want to do that anyway. And that is fine. And all the others who want a care free product will be willing to pay some money for my service.

But what brings me to Open Source? The most common known benefit is the bugs. Since many people can use it and hopefully will, they will discover bugs. Maybe they will even supply a patch for a bug. But much more important they will spread the word. And here comes the real benefit: that the software will get known to people much easier. And this tackles my biggest problem: to get known. People don't know about the service I offer yet. This is my problem and not competitors or people who don't want to pay for the service.

And last but not least this means I can even give back something to the Open Source community which does a really great job and from which I have already benefited a great deal (I'm typing this for example with Open Office on a Linux system).

You can find the source code here:

http://code.google.com/p/psrefocus-mcms/

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In one of my last posts I have tried to describe what kind of application I have in mind. Lets take a step ahead and make some sketches on how the application might look from a user point of view:

In the first row we see an input field with a little info button. When clicked it showes a popup with the help content.

In the second row we see the same popup but we are logged in as an administrator. We can click the edit button,

and change the help text (3rd row).

Uhm I think thats it for the first version. Pretty simple.

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Google Project Hosting announced a pretty cool new feature a couple of days ago:

“the ability to edit your source code files directly in the browser”

This is basically the same idea that's behind my help system idea with quick edit mode: Enable people to do their work faster by providing edit functions in the right place. No round trips needed through different tools.

It can save a lot of time if you just want to make a small change in your code.

Check out their full blog post post:
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/01/make-quick-fixes-quicker-on-google.html

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In my last post I talked about the problem. Lets find a good solution for it:

A person with domain knowledge (as in not an IT guy) should be able to edit the help popup directly in the web application at the point where it is displayed. There is no round trip to a back end system or even worse - an Excel sheet. The editor actually sees where he is placing the help and he has the context.

The help system should be embeddable into existing web applications without big changes to the application itself.

The editor should be able to make changes instantly to the help system without causing a redeployment for the application. That means he can change the help in a running system without causing any problems or work on the IT side.

But how could we do that?

Offer a help system with quick edit mode as SAAS to be embedded seamlessly into existing web applications with minimal effort and minimal costs.

Help system
An inline help system (as I've described earlier, so you are not redirected but rather the help system is on the same web page)

quick edit mode
That means, that the content of the help items can be edited through an authorized user directly in the web application. There is no need for a redeployment, all changes are immediately present. There is no technical knowledge necessary to edit the help system. Therefore a user with domain specific knowledge or a translator can directly edit the help system.

SAAS
The help system comes with all the “worry free” benefits of a SAAS System. This will be especially interesting for other small online business / SAAS Services:

• Immediately present, no time or money needed for own development
• hosting is taken care of
• backup is taken care of
• bugfixing and further development is taken care of
• costs are fixed per month and much cheaper then a “do it your self solution”

seamless
The end user doesn't know that the help system is injected into the the web application. The look and feel of the help system can be configured in one central place and adapted to the look and feel of the website.

minimal effort
To get the help system working there only needs to be a little Javascript included in the page. Done.

minimal costs
The costs for developing, maintaining and hosting your own help system are quite high.  Since the help popup is usually not a core feature of an online application (even though necessary), it should be a smart business decision to outsource it.

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In my last blog post I wrote about finding a problem that we can solve with a product that fulfills our criteria. A while ago I came across such a problem and a possible solution. Actually it was not me alone but it somehow popped up in conversation when I was on the phone with Christian.

The best way to design Software is in a way that it is intuitive and it will need no explanation. However this is not always a possibility, especially if the software doesn't solve a commonly known task (e.g. an email program), but a problem which requires lots of domain specific knowledge. An example for that would be tax software. The software may be as intuitive as it wants but if you don't know what VAT means you cannot use it without an explanation.

The traditional way of solving this has been to package the installation CDs with a printed handbook. This is not possible when you download Software from the Internet or when you use SAAS. Therefore the printed book is replaced by a PDF or some static HTML Pages.

This may work for a general overview of the topic but it doesn't really help while actually using the software. If a question occurs it takes way too long to look for the right chapter in the handbook.

Therefore tool tips and hints have been established. You click on a little question mark and a context sensitive help box pops up with a little explanation. Surprisingly there are many web applications out there who are either lacking this user friendly help system or who have just bad or unrelated content in there. As a software developer and an intensive Internet user I began to wonder why.

Since its not that hard to implement a little popup there must be other reasons. My guess is it's the domain specific knowledge. The developer normally does not have really deep knowledge of the domain. Nor is it his job to write help texts, they are written by other people, the domain specialists. The problem is that those people have normally no access to the source code. They need to tell the developer what to write in there. This is not a very efficient process. This is a clear case of misplaced responsibilities and abilities. The developer can integrate the help, but does not write it, the domain specialist writes it but can't integrate it. Now think of an application that comes in different languages. We need a third person, the translator. That doesn't really speed up the process.

Toss in there that since the help system usually comes very last in the development process, there is a good chance that it won't be done properly due to time and/or budget constraints. 

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In the past couple of weeks I've blogged about the lessons I've learned in the last few years. But as I promised, this thing here will be more then just a blog about online business. We will actually create an online business based on the lessons learned and principals I have written about.

So lets go, lets find a suitable product. Since I'm German and a German engineer at that, I naturally like lists. I have checklists for everything and according to Sherrie, this is the very soul of the Germans.

Thats why we need a checklist with all the things the product we are looking for should have so that we can easily identify it when it crosses our path. I guess its always a good idea to define what you are looking for so it is easier to know what it is you want to find. That is one step towards finding what you want rather than just finding something. At least it helps to rule those things out you are not looking for.

Of course the product should fulfill all criteria from our previously defined product criteria list.

But other then that I want to add some other criteria for my online experiment:

• SAAS
  I want to focus on SAAS (software as a service). This blog is mainly about SAAS therefore the product we create should be SAAS as well.
• A small product that can be developed and maintained part time by one person.
• As this is an experiment, I therefore want to minimize the effort and risk. The total time of development shouldn't be more then 2 weeks
• No big investments necessary;
  again, as this is an experiment it should be doable without me or someone else investing money
• The product should generate money.
  Although this is an experiment we are talking about a business experiment. Business is about making money (otherwise its a hobby). Thats what I want to do (at least one of the things). The product should be able to bring in at least 1.000 EUR/month

The list is done, lets go and find our product. Or rather lets find a problem. A problem that can be solved by a product which fulfills the criteria.

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(a little late though) but I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Todays post is a little different from the usual ones: I want to talk about an internet startup called betterplace.org. They have built a platform to bring aid projects and donors together:

The interessting thing is that they don't make any money with it at all. That means 100% of the donations go towards the projects.

But needless to say, betterplace requires funds to operate.
The running costs are supported by two carriers:

• private sponsors who are convinced of the betterplace approach
• companies, who are offered CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) services through their subsidiary company betterplace solutions, which actively engage their clients and employees.

I think its a brilliant idea to enable people to directly support projects, not an anonymous organization.

Anyhow, this year Sherrie and I will support a project called Lernhausen which is an association in the Stuttgart region who helps kids with difficulties in school with homework and a library.

Have some quite days with your family and friends until everything goes crazy again in 2011.

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Currently I'm working on an IT-Project for Daimler via T-Systems. To track the time we spend on the project we have to fill out time sheets in 3 different systems: an Access database, an online time tracking system, and in our ticket system. Then (because of course all the systems are not compatible) to coordinate all of this I have my own Excel sheet .

Recently, in order to save money, we went through a restructuring plan, with the result that we ended up with 5 different time tracking tools. Now I spend 2-3 hours every week tracking my time. This is just a little example of how complicated you can make even such a little thing as time tracking. Daimler and T-Systems can afford it though because they sell expensive cars and expensive IT consulting. But for a little company / startup this can be deadly.

About a year ago I got involved with a startup company who sells SAAS (software as a service). They were doing OK until the financial crisis kicked in and their biggest customer reduced its orders. We looked at their infrastructure and found a huge (by huge I mean HUGE) monster of stuff that ate up all the profit. And not only all the profit but it in fact ran the company deeply into debt:

There were 10 employees. There was a big office for all those employees. There was huge infrastructure for the office including several servers, and a super expensive telephone system (which had a leasing contract for 11 years). To operate the SRM software there were 8, in words: eight, powerful servers to handle the few requests per hour that were coming from the 3 customers. 2 servers ran a web server, 2 ran a clustered mySql data base and the 4 others you might wonder? We wondered too. They were for other minor stuff such as an SVN repository, their ticket system and backup. And the web page with about 7 HTML pages. These 8 servers were not cheap, they pulled almost 3.000 EUR a month out of the company.

To avoid bankruptcy (which was more then once very close) we had do do something. So we started to downsize, externalize and virtualize. The company no longer has employees but is operated by one owner and some part time employees (10-15 hours a week). There is no office, no internal network, no self operated repository, ticket system and such things. All these services are outsourced for a fragment of the costs. The company's data lies on an encrypted Internet drive.

Instead of 8 servers there is only one virtual managed server. Formally the costs of running the company were about 20.000 a month. Now they are about 2.000-3.000 a month. And the customers? They barely noticed that anything had changed. Because nothing of the costs we eliminated were essential. We didn't take anything away which was essential to the business model.

What I learned in those months (they were no easy months as you probably can imagine): Think twice before you purchase anything. Consider the following questions before any purchase:

• If I make that purchase, what do I win in the end?
• Will the win be more than the costs of the purchase?
• What happens if I don't make the purchase? What is the damage / risk?
• Is there another way to archive the same effect, cheaper or easier?
• Can the purchase be smaller and be extended later when needed (or shrunk when possible)?
• How long am I bound to the contract? Can I get out easily if there is no need for the purchase any more?

Or speaking as a developer: keep it small and simple

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