Mozilla recently released Thunderbird 11. It’s an excellent mail client, but one change they made was to move tabs above the toolbar. It’s not a huge difference, but it makes things a little tricky when you have tab positions in muscle memory. Thankfully there’s a quick solution in the form of an addon called “rise of the tools“. It’s quick to install, and doesn’t even require a restart of Thunderbird.

How to Install in Rise of the Tools in Thunderbird 11:

• Download and save the file to your hard disk.
• In Mozilla Thunderbird, open Add-ons from the Tools menu.
• From the options button next to the add-on search field, select “Install Add-on From File…” and locate the downloaded add-on

To add your new app to a page, use the URI below, replacing APP_ID with the ID of the app you want to add. It’s on the summary page of your app in the developers area (for now).

http://www.facebook.com/add.php?api_key=APP_ID&pages=1

That will brind up a dialog allowing you to add the app to any page or profile.

Courtesy of this topic on Stack Overflow.

There are a handful of tutorials for syncing with Remember the Milk, but the extension listed is no longer maintained and is unavailable on the Thunderbird extensions site (the old cache is available here).

Thankfully there is a slightly updated version of the plugin that works with the latest version of Thunderbird.

Please note: I didn’t write this plugin, but found it on the cached page and am sharing it here as I found it useful.

Install the extensions

Before you can start you’ll need to install Lightning and the updated sync plugin which can be downloaded here (mirror).

Once it’s installed, setting everything up is a breeze.

Subscribing to the calendar

Open a calendar tab in Thunderbird and add a new calendar (right click on the sidebar and select “new calendar”). Add a network calendar, select the “Remember The Milk” provider, and enter a few details.

Once this is set up, you’ll have a single task that contains details on how to authorize the plugin. Go to the URL in this message and allow the plugin to access your account. Once you see the confirmation screen, head back to Thunderbird and mark the task as complete.

If everything worked, you’ll receive a welcome popup in Thunderbird and your tasks will start to sync!

The original “psycho bean” is an idea my brother came up with many years ago during one of our sugar-fuelled game idea sessions. This challenge seemed like the perfect time to bring that idea to life.

Getting Started: Mind Mapping

Below are computerised versions of the two mind maps I used when coming up with ideas for the game. There are plenty of dead ends, but a few of the ideas filtered through to the final game. The decreasing energy seemed like a good way to go, and the transformational aspect tied into the whole “psycho” idea.

The original game was going to be a platform game with shooting elements (i.e. Mario with guns). As you can see, things didn’t end up that way.

A Brief History

I didn’t make a time lapse video, but instead took screenshots at key times of development.

	Version 1 The very first screen, taken about 2 hours into the coding process. Most of the assets were borrowed from Monster Mash to help get something playable as quickly as possible.
	Version 2 The first version with shooting and collision. At this point in development it was possible to spawn enemies, shoot them and jump onto the platforms.
	Version 3 This was taken at 8:30 on Sunday morning, roughly 10 hours before the deadline. The platforming was gone (as explained in “what went wrong”), and replaced with top-down shooting instead.
	Version 4 Two hours later, and the bullets were flying. There was still plenty left to do (more enemies, the weapons, points etc), but it was playable and more fun than the platforming.
	Version 5 This is the version that was entered. Bullets, AI, “Sugar Rush” mode and a statistics screen at the end.

What Went Wrong

I made most of the mistakes from Monster Mash, and some new ones too!

Even Slower Start — Saturday was the Reddit Triangle meetup, which took up most of the afternoon. Needless to say, not much code was written until the evening.

Scrapped Everything — When development ended on Saturday night I wasn’t happy with how the game played. The platforming didn’t feel right, and every now and then the player would stick to the ground after jumping. I didn’t think I’d be able to fix things in the morning, so a total rewrite was in order.

Graphics Dictated Gameplay — Switching to the top down perspective had a few side-effects. The biggest was the lack of diagonal movement and firing, which made the game less enjoyable than it could have been.

What Went Right

It Got Done — Like Monster Mash, at the end of the jam I had something playable. There were a few features that didn’t make the cut, and a lot of the game is unpolished.

Development Screenshots — Although I didn’t make a time lapse, I did want to capture what the game looked like at various points in development.

Scrapped The First Version — Moving from a platformer to a top-down shooter meant a lot of time was wasted, which can be a killer when there’s a tight time limit. Fortunately the changes made the game far more playable which is the most important part.

Lessons For The Future

Lessons for next time:

• Iterate faster. Get it playable. Make it fun.
• Don’t be afraid to throw things out if they’re not fun.
• Don’t worry if it looks stupid. It’s not a beauty contest (although having a nice looking game certainly helps to attract votes)

You can play the latest version here: Psycho Bean.

View all of the entries here: Reddit Game Jam #6: Final Submissions

All is not lost though. There’s an addon called “ToneQuilla” which fixes this problem, so you can play all the sounds you want!

Here’s an example of how to set up a simple filter that plays a custom sound when a BMT Micro affiliate sale is made.

Creating the filter

Look under Tools -> Message Filters. Click “New” button to open the filter creation dialog.

Click image to view full size

Set the filter to run on messages that have a subject with “BMT Micro Affiliate Order” in them. You can also add extra conditions for other sales emails, depending on who emails you.

Under “Perform these actions”, add a “Play Sound” action and link to your favourite sound. There’s plenty of cash register sounds at freesound.org, although personally I prefer the cash register noise from Sonic the Hedgehog :)

These articles are very dense, so it’s a good idea to either print them out or bookmark them for when you have some time. Even though the world of software has changed a great deal since these were written, they’re still full of valuable information.

I recommend starting with Cultivating Burning Desire and How to Get More Done in Less Time. The articles on marketing and sales are also well worth the time to read, and you’re sure to find at least a few actionable ideas to improve your site.

Product Development

• Zero-Defect Software Development
• Conducting a Project Postmortem
• Working With Teams

Building a Successful Indie Business

• Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals
• If No Independent Developers Are 100 Times Smarter Than You, Then Why Do Some Get 100 Times the Results?
• The Power of Clarity
• To Plan or Not to Plan
• Basic Negotiating for Fun and Profit
• Going Full-Time
• Networking Without the Cables

Marketing & Sales

• If You’ve Tried Everything Imaginable And Your Product Still Won’t Sell, Here’s What You’re Missing
• How to Get More Sales for Less Work
• How to Permanently Increase Your Sales by 50% or More in Only One Day

Personal Productivity & Motivation

• From Slump to Supercharged
• Cultivating Burning Desire
• Overcoming Procrastination
• How to Get More Done in Less Time
• Clean Up That Mess!
• Do It Now

The theme was "Metamorphosis", so straight away I was looking at things like Dali paintings, insects and mutations. My first idea was to mix a puzzle game with a festive picture, such as decorating a tree. I’m not much of an artist though, so a game where art is the primary feature wasn’t a good fit.

One idea that constantly came up was changing the appearance of something over time, either main character, the enemies or the world. I really liked the idea of attaching enemy parts to make yourself stronger, almost like Cyborg Justice or Biomotor Unitron.

In the end I settled on a simple version of "half minute hero", with some mutation bits thrown in for good measure. There’s lots of room for improvement, but the game was playable and pretty fun after a bit of tweaking.

What Went Wrong

Slow start — I didn’t actually start coding until about 16 hours in, which didn’t turn out to be a big problem, but those 16 hours would have been handy for polishing things up at the end.

Awful balance — The number one comment I got was that the game was far too hard. I’d originally intended to have about a dozen enemies to fight, but only had time to sprite 3 mutations so the rest were cut. This left the level caps and final boss out of balance, so the game was impossible to finish (although this was fixed shortly after the final submission).

Hidden Stats — There was no way to find out how much experience you had, your level or how many of each enemy you have defeated (to figure out how you’ll evolve). Again, this was planned but was cut at the end.

Unintuitive — Probably the worst part. There’s no obvious explanation of what’s going on, or how to get the various enemy parts, it just happens as you play.

What Went Right

It got done – This is the big one. At the end of the 48 hours, there was a playable game. Considering it was my first Flash, I was super excited. More importantly, it was a big confidence boost.

Planning saved a lot of time — I did jump in to code at the start, but took a break a few hours in to design the screen layouts and game flow. All the features I wanted were listed on a piece of paper in order of important, which really helped towards the end when things got tight.

Lessons For The Future

There were some excellent games entered, and I’ll admit the high quality really surprised me, especially given the short development time. Presentation played a big part in the higher rated entries, so that something to work on next time. Having a distinctive style is important to help you to stand out, although having a fun game is the key factor.

Lessons for next time:

• Spend time polishing and play testing. If possible, have someone else play the game too. I knew the rules inside out, so I couldn’t see the bigger problems.
• Join in. I worked alone and missed out on chatting with other developers. Next time I’ll hook up a second monitor and join the party.
• Make a time lapse video. I didn’t make one this time as it would mostly be me reading the Flixel documentation to see how things work, but I’m sad that I missed out on seeing how the game evolved over time.
• Start early, design more, get it playable ASAP. As soon as it’s designed, get something playable working. This helps with motivation, but also lets you know if you’re onto something fun.

You can play the latest version here: Monster Mash.

View all of the entries here: Reddit Game Jam #4: Final Submissions

Peggle is a popular puzzle/action game for the PC and Xbox Live Arcade. It’s certainly aimed at the casual game market, with bright colours and cheerful sounds, but there’s plenty of playability for more hardcore gamers (if they can get over the sugar).

The basic premise of the game is to remove all of the orange pegs on the board by dropping a ball from the top of the screen. It’s similar to Japanese Pachinko games, but the pegs disappear after being hit. There are also green pegs that grant super-powers, such as multi-ball or pinball-like flippers.

There are no official sales statistics, but the PC version has been downloaded over 50 million times ^[1], and the Xbox Live Arcade has made at least 100,000 sales ^[2]. Clearly the folks at PopCap are doing something right.

Try Peggle Deluxe

References

[1] — Peggle Finds A New Home

[2] — XBLA: The Road To NPD – Xbox Live Arcade Sales For March 2009

[3] — Why poor people win the lottery

A lot of times people concentrate on getting traffic, instead of on obtaining quality traffic.

This article contains most of the traffic generation techniques I’ve used in the last few years, along with some statistics on how well they perform. Naturally, your results may differ from these, but they’re a good starting point for evaluating different methods.

All statistics are taken from an 18 month period (September 2007 – February 2009) to give as large a sample size as possible. There are nearly 1,000 different referrers for this period, so these statistics are certainly not 100% accurate. They do give a good picture of what works, which is the important thing.

Anyway, enough with the disclaimers. Each table contains four columns:

Pages Per Visit

This is the average number of pages a visitor looks at. A higher number means they look around your site more, so keep an eye on this number.

Adding relevant links to the bottom of pages, or sprinkling them throughout your content can help. Be careful not to add too many links though, so you don’t distract visitors from downloading or buying your product.

Time on Site

The average amount of time a visitor spends on your site. Again, higher numbers are better, as it generally means they’re reading and not just skimming.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your site after a single page. For example, a visitor who enters your homepage and then types another link in the address bar without following your links has “bounced”. The lower this number, the better.

Download Rate

This is from a goal I set up in Google Analytics to track downloads. A lot of my sales come from people who buy from within the demo, so the higher this number the better. If a source of traffic doesn’t produce any downloads, it’s a sign that I’m advertising to the wrong people.

As you’ll see, there’s a big difference between the best traffic sources and the worst. The most traffic to sodaware.net comes from search engines, but search engine optimisation is a big topic that I wanted to avoid, so this article concentrates on sources that are easier to control.

Paid Advertising

Google AdWords

This is one of the easiest ways to buy traffic. All you have to do is write a short textual advert about your product or website, and then target keywords that people search for. It’s quick to set up, and you know visitors are looking for what you’re offering because they searched for it.

On the flipside, there’s a lot of depth to AdWords, and it takes a long time to get really great results. Throwing down a few dollars is only the start, and you’ll lot of your time will be spent on optimising your campaigns and weeding out underperformers.

Project Wonderful

Project Wonderful is even easier to use than Google AdWords. Create a graphical button or banner, select the criteria for sites you want to advertise on and you’re away.

Project Wonderful has the advantage that ads are extremely cheap, as you pay per day, not per click or impression. It’s a good way of getting lots of hits, and the campaign option makes things even easier. However, it’s quite easy to spend a lot of money and end up with little to show if you’re not careful.

Manual bids that are tailored to each site you’re bidding on seem to work the best. They takes more work, but the responses are generally higher.

Below are stats for the top three bids I ran.

Text Link Ads

According to Text Link Ads, the real power of this method comes from the increase in search engine ranking for your site. They recommend you leave your ad running for several months to evaluate it, as search engines take a while to update.

Over a five month period, I saw no change in my ranking. Having said that, I was trying to rank on very competitive terms, so it may be better for niche phrases instead.

These are statistics from the sites that ads were placed on. As you can see, the links themselves didn’t bring particularly good traffic compared to other methods.

Free Advertising

StumbleUpon

Although you can pay for Stumbles, I’m putting it in the free category as you can get good results without paying. Stumblers generally fall into two categories: People who will stay and read, and people who will leave within a few seconds. This dramatically skews the visit time down and bounce rate.

StumbleUpon brings in a big spike of traffic at the beginning, and quickly tales off after a few days. It continues to bring in visitors over time, and sometimes you’ll get secondary spikes. There’s also the chance that visitors will stumble your other content, leading to more spikes.

For the main page, the were quite poor, but for articles and resources it works much better. Your best option is to add tips, hints or guides to your site and have them stumbled.

Articles about unique qualities of your product will perform better, as long as you go easy on the sales talk and concentrate on writing something of value.

Article Marketing

This is a simple technique, but it can have good results. The process involves writing articles that target certain keywords. Each article will contain a link to your site in the article footer. This article is then submitted to article directories, which generally rank high in the search engines. For example, if you’re selling a solitaire game you could write about tips for playing the game and include a link at the bottom of the article.

It may sound a little bit spammy, but it isn’t if you provide value to your readers.

So far this has been one of the best methods of traffic generation I’ve used. It takes effort to research and write your article, but the traffic quality is extremely high. An article I wrote over a year ago still sends a good amount of traffic which converts extremely well into downloads and sales.

Article marketing is a topic I’ll be writing more about in the future.

Blog Commenting

Find a blog that relates to your topic, and make a relevant comment that contains a link to your website. As long as your comment is useful and the blog gets a reasonable amount of traffic, you’ll get visits. Depending on your contribution, you may also develop a relationship with the blogger which can bring more traffic.

The first result in the table below is the result of a single trackback I made three years ago. It’s brought several hundred visits (and still brings in a dozen or so a week), but the traffic doesn’t convert. This technique works much better for getting blog readers rather than customers.

Forum Posting

This is similar to blog commenting, but the link to your site goes in your forum signature. Again, the benefit here comes from generating an online presence, rather than raw traffic power.

These are the top three forum referrals to sodaware.net.

"How To" blog articles

Think of a problem you face daily, and write a blog article about solving it. Its simple, quick, and if you get the title (and problem) right you can get a lot of exposure and links.

I get a lot of traffic to one "how to" in particular, but the vast majority of visitors don’t stay for anything else. This makes sense, seeing as they’re searching for a solution to a problem and not for games.

The best advice I can give is to treat this method like writing a recipe with one of your products as the ingredient. This way you’re providing something valuable, and also encouraging downloads and sales.

Link directories

I tried an automated submission programme a while ago, but I’m yet to see a single visitor from any directory.

dmoz.org is worth submitting to, but as it’s human edited it can take a while to get added.

Blog Carnivals

I’ve entered blog carnivals as well as hosted them, and the results have been a little mixed. Hosting brings in a decent amount of short term traffic, but I suspect it’s mainly people who submitted articles that visit.

It’s a good way of getting a few more readers for your blog, and be good for spreading your site around.

Game Buttons

I tried these out in my $19.95 experiment and absolutely hated them. I think they cheapened the look of the site, and most of the banners contained images I didn’t really want to see. The other problem is you have to make a lot of impressions to generate any decent amount of traffic.

Free Developer Resources

The "For Developers" section is where I put articles, source code and tools for other developers to use. It didn’t bring in much traffic to begin with, but posting about some of the resources on forums helped.

WikiPedia

This is a five minute method that works well, but if done incorrectly you’ll end up looking like a spammer, so use it wisely.

Find an article on WikiPedia that relates to something on your site, and add a link to it in the "External Links" section of the page. Remember that WikiPedia monitors links that are added, so if you don’t add value to the topic you’ll find your link nuked (and you could also be banned). For example, my interview with Hanako Games is on the Hanako Games WikiPedia page.

As with text link ads, the real benefit here is getting links and increasing your search engine ranking.

Traffic Exchanges

This one is a little hit and miss, although it’s not as bad as some of the other methods. You add your link to a directory, and its position is dependent on how many other sites you visit. For example, visiting 30 sites may put you on the first page, which will get you more visitors.

The downside is that most people are only visiting your page to increase their own rank, but the traffic isn’t as bad as I expected.

Conclusion

This is just a small sample of the various method of traffic generation techniques out there. If you’re trying to increase your site’s traffic, just remember to measure what your visitors are doing, not just how many you’re getting. Sure, it’s nice to see big numbers in your hit counter, but that means nothing if they don’t stay and buy from you.