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http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/06/19/microsoft-bizspark-serving-15-000-startups-and-counting.aspx
Any recommendations on this topic ?
I heard about this a while back and thought that the "Network Partner" requirement was a little weird. Now, you don't have to do that. You can make your request directly to Microsoft without a network partner.
I think the network partner idea is good but it's poorly implemented. They do nothing to help introduce startups to partners that are willing to help.
I went ahead and signed up for the service a few weeks ago. You basically get a full MSDN subscription for free. That means you can get legitimate versions of Visual Studio, Expression, even operating systems for free.
I find it very helpful to have access to various Windows operating systems so I can test my software (I run a software startup, not a web startup) on various platforms.
After 3 years you just pay $100.
I would say, yes, it's worth it.
I know several people enrolled in this program. As long as you meet the requirements it seems like a good deal.
1. The startup must be less than three years old,
2. The startup company's revenue must be less than $1 million,
3. If the startup goes public, you are out of the program.
You do have to pay a $100 program fee but that is not due until you exit the program.
My personal experience and comment on this for startups is that microsoft are incredibly unhelpful, terminally slow in responding and answering emails and applications, there is no way to speak to a real person... no phone numbers, no address, no contact names... They specify simple criteria on the web site, but when you apply they say you are not eligible... and don't give a reason, if you then push and say why? the response you get is obvious that they have not even looked at your website let alone your business and what you are trying to do. So, as a result, I feel that they are offering the service for purely for good PR, but are actually in no way actually wanting to help startups, I have been 6 weeks emailing every few days, they have an auto responded which says they will answer in 2 business days and its been 6 weeks.... So I am getting nowhere... I don't think microsoft really want to help startups at all . Very disappointed and annoyed with them. I can't see how this approach to interacting with startups will work for them? My recommendation would be to pick somebody else and avoid Microsoft.
So I just went through the process of signing up and I have to say that if you are start-up building in the .Net stack then BizSpark is a no brainer. I especially love the free Azure credit and the exemption that you can use the benefit for production purposes whereas normal MSDN users can only use it for dev/testing purposes. This shows that Microsoft gets it and at this stage of the game it really helps our little initiative.
Throw into the mix Visual Studio online that allows up to 5 devs free and suddenly its really amazing to build something using MS tech if you are a small start-up.
Regarding the slowness, I initially had the same problem after signing up with my support emails being ignored and all that. After a few weeks on a whim I sent a hail mary to my country's BizSpark contact detail instead of the .com one and that made all the difference. I got an amazing response from the local team being phoned within a few hours of dropping the mail. By the end of the day my application was approved.
My only suggestion to Microsoft would be to throw in an Office365 benefit to host your start-up Emails since then you quite literally can start a 1-5 man company with zero infrastructure and tool overhead and obviously MS wins in the medium to long run since products get developed in their stack.
+1 Microsoft.
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I want to choose a CMS that will be part of my infrastructure for my company websites.
What do you think are the questions I need to ask before I really choose one?
Choosing a CMS is almost like choosing a framework.
Thanks
Your two starting questions should be about people:
Who will be building and maintaining the technology? If your organisation's IT department is in love with Microsoft solutions, then find the best .NET CMS that meets your needs (Umbraco, Kentico, DotNetNuke etc). If you have no money but you're fairly IT-savvy and have a couple of Web designers on tap to help you out, then a designer-friendly free system like MODX Revolution makes sense. If some of your people have worked with a big system like Drupal, then that's your leading candidate.
Who will be adding content to the system? Internal users will want an interface that rewards use - it must react fast, protect the user from losing their work, make content easy to find, and ease tasks like creating new pages and including links and images. That might push you towards CMS Made Simple, or even WordPresss if your needs are otherwise modest. And if most of the content will be contributed by a user community, the CMS must support a strong forum capability.
After that, take a look at Step Two's document How to evaluate a content management system. These guys know their stuff. You may even want to buy their Content Management Requirements Toolkit. Their evaluation document gives you a starting point for your evaluation.
Do bear in mind, though, that not all requirements are created equal. For instance, many CMS texts stress the importance of complex workflow and versioning. In large publishing businesses, these sometimes matter a lot. In most smaller organisations they don't matter as much. Your workflow may consist of one person putting content into the system and another approving it to go live - the sort of task that can be accomplished with a staging server and email. Versioning may be adequately covered by a regular back-up.
And remember above all that when you put a CMS in an existing organisation, you're engaging in politics. You need to find out what people want, show you're delivering it, explain to them the considerations which they don't know about but which have to be taken into account, and convince them you're acting to bring them the best possible tool. Good luck.
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OpenFeint has a content delivery system for those who want to have IAP support in their apps. You can just embed the purchasable content into the app on distribution but a much more versatile approach is to use a server that delivers the content to the device. OpenFeint charges 15% of your sales to use their service. I believe this is ridiculously high.
I plan on making this service and making it available to anyone but first I want to know what you would think is a fair price. This would come with a simple SDK to interact with the service and download you content but it would also manage Apple payment verification server side. I was thinking 5-8% would be fair but I want to hear your thoughts. Do you have any ideas on ways to make the service stand out amongst others?
TL;DR - What would you be willing to pay for a content delivery service for your IAP feature in you apps? It would also help if you mentioned how big of a studio/company you are behind.
I don't think 15% are too much, if their service is reliable, secure (as in: people can't easily steal content) and fast. There are costs for decent file servers (you'll need multiple to reduce downtime risk), UPS, rent for the place you're storing the servers in, big pipes (best would be multiple as well to reduce the downtime risk), maybe load balancers, development and administration. It's one of those things that might look simple at first sight but once you break down all the requirements to get this job done you'll see there are a lot of costs, actually.
If you take a look at some of the competition you would be facing, e.g. UrbanAirship you are not that far off from what they are charging for a similar service.
One thing you should make sure, is that it requires a rock solid infrastructure on your part, meaning that it will be costly to host. A few percent on or off the price doesn't matter much, if developers can't trust you to deliver the content with something like at least 99.7% certainty (probably higher).
One thing to remember is that developers will also have to pay 30% of their IAP revenue to Apple. This means that for OpenFeint, developers will have to hand over a total of 45% of their revenue. That deosn't leave much to to development, testing, support, etc. if you also want to make a profit in the end.
So, keep your price as low as possible, but high enough to pay the costs of reliable and secure hosting.
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My company is trying to pass a policy forbidding distribution of any application (even free) in any appstore for all developers.
Their reasoning is that "outside work activities create a conflict of interest". They don't want that "you use your spare time to work on your app, and once it takes off you quit your job" (quoting the Head of Development).
A few developers (myself included) have already said it was an abusive, pointless and most of all counter-productive policy (developers will actually be demotivated to work here under such control and to be denied of the freedom to distribute their project).
Personally, I think it is actually in the interest of the company to promote side projects (even commercial activities, if there is no conflict).
I'm also curious, is that common practice?
Needless to say, this is horribly, horribly stupid on so many levels... It may be worth trying to find out whether it's even legal in your jurisdiction.
Anyway and apart from that, if you can, find colleagues who feel the same, and take a stand against it. Try to explain to the management that this is a stupid decision for the company as well. Don't sign anything: A policy like that would probably have to be amended to your work contract to be binding. Chances are, the risk of losing good employees over this outweighs the security they think they get from it.
If there's really nothing that can be done, and you are very unhappy with this (I would be), consider looking for a new job.
As an afterthought, if the practice of limiting your employees' rights to this extent is clearly illegal in your jurisdiction, it could be that simply making them aware of this might stop this without any further trouble.
All companies for which I have worked allowed outside work provided:
no company resources were used (this includes time)
the product of that effort did not directly conflict with the company's interest
the product was not based off of work or specific knowledge gained while working for the company
Typically, companies have a clause in your employment agreement that states that you will inform them when you begin work on outside projects and inform them of the nature so they can approve/deny. In such cases, you want to get that approval in writing.
In your case, this is a pretty difficult situation if this was part of your employment agreement. Even if it isn't, they can fire you for it if your employment is at-will and they find out. Unfortunately, in your situation, you seem to have one of four options:
Convince management that they are being unreasonable.
Fly under the radar and hope you don't get caught.
Find a new job.
Quit and just work on the apps full-time.
If your job is to put out apps in an appstore, though, there's really no way to argue that your outside development of apps for the same appstore isn't a conflict of interest in some respect. If I had to guess, I'd say that either this is the case or you're working for a development manager that doesn't understand the mindset of developers and how they like to tinker and learn outside of work.
While this example sounds a little draconian, it is not uncommon for companies to have some kind of policy regarding outside work. However, this is typically to protect the company from your mistakes rather than to protect them from your departure. If they're that concerned about employees leaving, they should go out of their way to make it the sort of place you would want to stay.
EDIT: I just found this today on a completely unrelated blog, but it totally rings true to this discussion. It's about 11 minutes long, but very entertaining and makes you think too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded The TL;DR (TL;DW?): Once you get outside the realm of purely physical tasks, organizations that assume you are motivated by money, hands-on direction, etc. will not accomplish their goals nearly as easily as those that assume you are motivated by desires for autonomy (self-direction, self-management), mastery (getting better at doing something) and contribution to something bigger than yourself.
I believe there was a similar pointless rule when I was under the corporate yoke. I think these rules are pointless, backward and wrong. Instead of keeping their developers management pushes them to look for new managment, well, at least the passionate and talented ones.
Unless your employment contract says otherwise, what you develop in your own time belongs to you.
If they are in the business of writing apps for the appstore, then they might have a non-compete argument against you.
If they allow other types of development projects, it is difficult to see the argument as valid.
Depends on the app and the company.
If you're working for an Android app developer, I'd see why they might not like it. 8)
If it competes directly with what your company produces I can see why they'd prohibit it.
I would consult a lawyer to see just how binding such an agreement would be if you were forced to sign it.
If it's really that odious, your only recourse is to find another employer.
Check your local labor laws. In California, this kind of thing is blatantly illegal.
The policy enumerated by Shaun is reasonable, and something very similar has been in place at most of my previous employers. The one place that tried something like this was quickly pointed at the statute by knowledgable developers, and the "policy" quietly went away.
The answer is in your contract of employment.
But if your job is as a computer programmer, you're almost guaranteed to have something in your employment contract stating that any software you write either in work or outside of work is owned by the company.
If you get written permission from HR and your manager, then if you were to make millions from you out of hours projects, then it would be more difficult for your employer to just take ALL those millions off of you.
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I want to port an open source program to iPhone, the license prohibited any commercial use of the code. I emailed the author and he sent back an email saying freeware is ok.
Of course I cannot (should not) charge anything on top of the code. Still, I want to get compensation for my work on UI design, graphics and integration work.
So I wonder:
Is donation (via PayPal) OK for my case?
Is in-app purchase OK? i.e. the program is free, the user has the option to buy addition theme graphics?
Thanks
EDIT:
Let me modify this to a hypothetical question. What if:
some course code is found on the net
there is a license coming with it, stating freeware is ok
the author cannot be contacted
Then
someone compiles and ports the code to a new platform
and adds some graphics
any necessary code changes are published
in the program, a donation link is added
in the program, (iPhone version), an in-app purchase option is added
Any comments on the above scenario?
Why are you asking us? We don't have the copyright and we cannot license it to you.
You've already been in contact with the creator, these questions are better suited for him.
Personally, I would think both your scenarios are okay since no-one is forced to pay you for the use. But, as I said, I'm not the copyright holder. You need to either have a lawyer look over the licence or get a very explicit release from the author stating that what you want to do is okay.
Okay, based on your edit.
Here is what my employer would most likely do (a company deadly serious about IP issues).
They would evaluate the relative costs of getting into trouble misusing the program (getting their considerable legal department to evaluate the licence) against that of just clean-rooming the program. They would choose the cheaper option and go with that.
Now here's what I would do, not having my own personal Nazgul of lawyers.
If I couldn't contact the author, then he's probably a one-man show - he'll be able to afford legal representation about as well as I can so will be unlikely to push that hard, in a legal sense.
I would argue that my application is indeed freeware since I'm not charging anything for its use. If a customer chooses to ask for extras (in-app purchase) or make a donation, that money transfer is not tied to the acquisition of my freeware at all.
Of course, if your freeware is near-useless without an in-app purchase, it could be argued that the connection is there between money and product transfers.
But I think I would be quite safe going the donation route. There is an absolute unbundling of the two events (product transfer and money transfer) there and one does not require the other.
Some people have even just asked for donations without a reciprocal arrangement (Save Karyn), although I wouldn't give money to some clown who'd already proven themselves inept at managing it.
Standard disclaimers apply: I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, I don't even look like a lawyer from a hundred yards away.
How much are you compensating the author of the open source program for their work?
I am not sure whether donations would be considered "commercial" under the terms of the license, but from your description it doesn't really seem in the spirit of software you are porting.
And why are you asking us when you can just e-mail the author as you did before?
Note that open source licenses allow commercial use and distribution (see #5 and #6 of linked page). So this is not open source, and whether your scenarios are allowed depends on the actual license.
Ask the original author, he should have the canonical interpretation of his license.
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Management is thinking of changing out Content Management Systems. What do you use/recommend?
What UCM solution is your company using?
How big is your company?
Are you happy with the implementation?
Current setup:
The company I work for uses Oracle ECM (formerly Stellent UCM).
We have somewhere over 10,000 employees across Australia, New
Zealand and Indonesia.
It works! Having worked with the system for a while now. I can see
where the initial implementation went wrong. Its 3 years later and
it is Rewrite Time! (Three year itch?)
1) CMS: Oracle's BEA Aqualogic
2) Size: 10,000+
3) Experience: As an end user with full community and content admin privileges, I find the tool to be outdated and stifling in terms of knowledge sharing and trying to get the benefits that exist in social networks. Perhaps this is due to the implementation, and not an inherent weakness in the product. Not sure of the future direction of the product either, since Oracle recently acquired it.
Our external business orientated site is running joomla which once you get passed the learning procces of how it constructs sites, is very good for a multi-user environement.
Company = 25+ people
We use Plone open source for the internal site...
We use a DotNetNuke intranet site. I think we need to upgrade or redesign cause I like Joomla much more.
1) We are moving from Microsoft Content Managemet Server 2002 to Sitecore 6.0 though we have internal PHP Wikis and Dot Net Nuke sites that have user content as well.
2) 1,000-2,000 people with about 3500 pages of Web content to migrate.
3) I'm content with it so far. There is still a lot of work to do in the migration and it will probably take a couple of years to move everything over, which includes legacy ASP and ASP.Net 1.1 and 2.0 sites that haven't been worked on in a few years as well. It would take a lot of things going easily for me to be happy with an implementation of this size.
Drupal. I've used it for small and medium sized projects.
1) We're using a CMS that was custom written in vbscript and sucks horribly. We're going to start using MODx for our external stuff, but we're not sure what's going to happen with our internal stuff.
2) A university with about 30,000 students (about 10,000 of which have ties to my department).
3) MODx looks cool, but haven't had much of a chance to use it. As stated previously, our other CMS sucks.
Tridion. And yes, there is that 3-year itch. Is Oracle on a new release or did the first implementation just look wrong now? I remember Stellent being on the development team's shortlist.
Us:
Mid-sized (small?) 700+ employee company, with over a dozen websites, but not all sites have the CMS implemented. In-house development team has worked on, and still support, a few custom solutions. Legacy code never dies. :-)
All of the CMS we researched had compelling features, but for content re-use, cross-site sharing, and programmability we found Tridion to be a good fit (compared to Ektron and RedDot). Our mandate was to stay ".NET programmers" and not have the tool take over the site.
I'm comfortable with and like with Tridion, but admire those of you who've done CMS with multiple platforms.
1) My company currently uses Word Press or no CMS at all. We are however working on a CMS that will work exactly as we want it to.
2) It's me and my friend so 2 of us
3) We're still starting up and finding clients so haven't had a chance to use it.
In my daily work, I use Tridion, and some of my colleagues use Hippo. At home I use Plone.
Institution-wide we see a variety of systems.
A few Plone sites. I'm a Plone fan.
The centre within which I work is somewhat multi-institutional (a good history of collaborative work) (one of two research centres situated within the same building) and the Plone sites that I'm setting up are fitting very nicely with diverse user/group requirements.
Companies I worked for usually developed CMS systems inhouse I've mostly worked for webshops and when cranking out websites is your core business the best way to get an edge is to be on top of this sort of thing.
So custom CMSes for:
Simplicity, just deliver what the client wants and nothing else.
Understanding it, it's developed in house so you can usually just talk to the guy who wrote it.
Profit, it's easier to ask for license fees.
We use the Alterian Content Manager application. It is very robust and suites our needs well.
20000 staff+
Very happy. Developers and business team find the application very easy to work with.