the microisv show - Channel 9

My computer won't boot and I need my data!?! - Tugboat Enterprises Selkie Rescue can save the day!

Michael Lehman — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:28:21 GMT

At the Software Industry Conference 2007, Michael Lehman (blog, blog/podcast) and Bob Walsh (blog) interviewed Judi Tyabji Wilson, CEO of Tugboat Enterprises, about their innovative MicroISV product Selkie Rescue.

When your machine won't boot because the OS is discombobulated or you've come down with a nasty virus, you can boot from the Selkie Rescue CD. Selkie Rescue turns your machine into a file server from which you can then retrieve your precious data.

Definitely worth a look!

UPDATE: Fixed the download link.

Video Version: It's all about the code... CodeGear that is! - Nick Hodges of CodeGear talks about Co

Michael Lehman — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:40:52 GMT

In this video, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh visit Nick Hodges at the Borland developer tool spinoff now called CodeGear www.codegear.com and talk about how CodeGear came about, Pascal, Delphi and native code.

It's all about the code... CodeGear that is! - Nick Hodges of CodeGear talks about CodeGear, Borland

Michael Lehman — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:33:19 GMT

Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh visit Nick Hodges at the Borland developer tool spinoff now called CodeGear www.codegear.com and talk about how CodeGear came about, Pascal, Delphi and native code.

A video version of this episode will be posted shortly.

The MicroISV Show @ SIC 2007 - MicroISVs on the "seat of heat"! - Part 1

Michael Lehman — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:50:01 GMT

The MicroISV Show hosts, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh, recently visited the Software Industry Conference 2007. While there we did a few traditional MicroISV show episodes which will go live soon.

In addition, this event has an "exhibit night" at which Microsoft had a booth. We set up our video camera and put as many MicroISVs as were willing on the "seat of heat" and asked them who they were, the name of their company, a brief description of what they do and a URL you could visit to find out more.

This is part 1 of those short interviews.

In this episode you'll meet:

Ricky Housley - Del.icio.us Finder - http://www.toocoolkids.com/geeks/Downloads.htm

Ernest Cook - Better Idea Group - Quick Payment - http://bigsoftwareinc.com/default.aspx

Giusepe Farese - BeboSoft - Mediata Survey - http://www.bebosoft.com

Dennis Reinhardt - DAIR Computer Systems - HTMLAPP - http://www.dair.com/

Thanks to Ricky, Ernest, Guisepe and Dennis! They make products you should know about!

Stay tuned for more MicroISVs on the "seat of heat" in the near future.

How does your software make your customers feel - Lou Carbone - Experience Engineering

Michael Lehman — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:24:31 GMT

Does your software make you feel more or less empowered? Do you want to throw a party for your favorite software company or throw a brick at your screen? What emotional reaction your customers have to your application is huge, especially for the MicroISV.

Lou Carbone, founder and CEO of Experience Engineering (www.experienceengineering.com) has been leading the experience management revolution for more than 20 years. His writings on the subject have appeared since 1994. His 2004 best seller, "Clued In, How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again & Again", is in its seventh printing, and is a must read for MicroISVs.

In this episode, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh talk with Lou and explore how important experience is in the development and marketing of your MicroISV application on the desktop and on your website.

From the hammock in the backyard - software to help stroke victims speak again - Clay Nichols - Bung

Michael Lehman — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:56:08 GMT

MicroISVs often have both the luxury and challenge of working at home. In this episode, our intrepid hosts, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh, travel virtually to the backyard of the home of Clay and Terri B. Nichols founders of Bungalow Software to talk to Clay about software that helps victims of brain damaging illness learn to talk again.

The software Bungalow makes is a quintessential example of "scratching the itch". In their own words:

Terri Nichols was frustrated. A speech-pathologist providing therapy to stroke survivors, Terri's therapy time was limited. And stroke recovery takes a lot of therapy. Most of her patients could not afford all the therapy they wanted and needed. And the Plateau Paradox meant that insurance coverage was limited. Her patients needed an economical way to get a lot of speech therapy practice at home. So she turned to her husband, a computer programmer...

Terri explained in detail the methods she used for providing practice therapy. She also showed him worksheets she created as "homework" for her patients. Clay, in turn, developed the Aphasia Tutor computer (software) program. What started as a 2 week project turned into a year long process of tweaking and refining the programs.

Bungalow Software was born. That was 1994. It seems like last millennium.

Enjoy!

Putting your best face forward - The growing importance of design for MicroISVs - Mike Rohde - Rohde

Michael Lehman — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:14:00 GMT

It's a brave new world for MicroISVs in which it's no longer enough to drag some controls onto a form and simply make sure they're lined up and the tab order is right. The mantra "form follows function" is becoming more and more important for developers as advent of Windows Vista, WPF and Silverlight once again change the expectations of how customers perceive software. You've got to "put your best face forward" and think about design of the user experience right from the beginning.

In this episode, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh talk to Mike Rohde, designer and art director for MakaluMedia, about the changing role of design in software development and how and why MicroISVs must incorporate design thinking into their development process.

Working from his Milwaukee, Wisconsin office, Mike is also a writer and blogger, sharing his thoughts on design, drawing, technology and life, at Rohdesign.com, since February 2003.

He is also the proprietor of PlannerHack.com a "do-it-yourself guide to converting a pocket-sized, ruled Moleskine notebook into a custom weekly planner and task management system."

Mike Rohde also provides design services and consulting for MicroISVs.

The MicroISV Show #21 - Dr. Edward Hallowell - Crazy Busy

Michael Lehman — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:36:28 GMT

This week Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh talk to Dr. Edward Hallowell, author of the book "CrazyBusy - Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD".

Crazy Busy refers to that state of "acquired" Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) that seems to be affecting more and more of us every day as we acquire cell phones that do email, start posting tweets on our Twitter accounts and get less done by spending more time!

Listen and learn what you can do to help yourself!

The MicroISV Show #20 - Pamela Slim - Escape from Cubicle Nation

Michael Lehman — Mon, 21 May 2007 23:24:18 GMT

In this edition of The MicroISV Show, Bob Walsh and Michael Lehman talk with Pamela Slim, author of the blog Escape from Cubicle Nation, wherein she opines regularly about "how to go from corporate prisoner to thriving entrepreneur".

Pam give her opinions on how to (and how not to) start your own company, when to tell your boss (and your co-workers) and how to do some self evaluation to decide on what things to do yourself and which things are best left to experts.

Here are links to the sites Pam mentions in the interview:

Pam's Business website: www.ganas.com
Pam's Radio Show on VoiceAmerica

Virtual assistant resources:

http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/ (it is an association for virtual assistants, but it also provides resources in the "Client Guide" section

The MicroISV Show #19 - Special Edition - Office Live Review for MicroISVs

Michael Lehman — Fri, 11 May 2007 22:53:18 GMT

May 21 - Redmond

June 5 - Boston

June 11- Silicon Valley

In this special edition of The MicroISV Show, Scott Burmester, Don Campbell and Rohit Puri talk about the upcoming Office Live Review for MicroISVs. Are you coming?

How to Register:

1. Click on the registration link: https://microsoft.crgevents.com/officelive/

2. Select New Registration
3. Supply the Registration Code: GENATT

Do you build software solutions and/or provide services to small business?

Do you want to create an additional stream of income with a low technical barrier of entry?

Are you interested in knowing how to take advantage of the shifting software plus services paradigm?

Then the Office Live Review for Micro ISVs is the event you should attend!

Come hear details about the Office Live platform, how you can easily integrate with your applications, create solutions and offer services to small businesses, and… receive a free copy of Office 2007 Ultimate and Windows Vista Ultimate! The first 20 people to create an Office Live solution and post it to the Office Live Marketplace will also receive a Zune!

Office Live provides you with an opportunity to access the 6 million US based small business market in a saleable and profitable manner through extending the Office Live platform by:

· Extend and integrate your existing products via the Office Live web services and the Windows Live SDK to interact with the Office Live environment accessing contact information, presence management, document management, shared calendaring and more.

· Creating customized, verticalized, and niche solutions offered to a single customer or created for a broad audience

· Providing design and other consulting services to Office Live customers

· Extending the capability of a customer’s existing server deployment with extranet based solutions that may integrate with other applications

Office Live is a set of web-based services for small businesses to manage their business online. It consists of a public facing web site for their customers and private web site that employees can use to collaborate and manage the business. The private site comes with business applications for managing contacts, e-mail, calendars, projects, documents, sales and more.

To the developer Office Live represents a compelling software-as-a-service platform for rapidly building custom solutions available to thousands of small businesses.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When:

May 21^st ^th, 2007 9AM-5PM

Where:

Redmond, Washington in the Platform Adoption Center @ Building 20.

What:

This one-day workshop will focus on delivering the following goals for the attendees:

Understand Microsoft’s Office Live strategy and how to build solutions that extend it.
Understand Microsoft Office Live offerings – Office Live Basic, Office Live Collaboration, and Office Live Essentials, and what types of scenarios each of these apply to.
Learn about Office Live Business Applications and Shared Workspaces.
Learn how to customize the Office Live environment, including templates, look and feel, web parts, and navigation. Understand when to use Site Designer and when to use SharePoint Designer to customize the environment.
Learn how to extend the Office Live environment, to create verticalized applications. This includes defining workflow rules, data sharing, web parts and mash-ups.

The workshop will provide developers with the necessary experience to exploit Office Live functionality in the following technologies:

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 (Web Parts, Workflows, Lists, Content types, Web services)
Office 2007 (SharePoint Designer, InfoPath 2007, Access 2007, Excel 2007)
Office Live Specific (Business Applications, Shared Sites, Site Designer, SBA Sharing Workspace)
Windows Live ID
Web Technologies (HTML, XHTML, Web Design, CSS)

Attendees are encouraged to consider the following pre-requisites to ensure a positive experience in the workshop:

Active development experience with C# and/or VB.NET or JavaScript
Active development experience with Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Office SharePoint Server.
Basic understanding of Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, RSS, client-side scripting
Ideally development experience with Office client applications
Basic understanding of SharePoint portal technology

Workshop Format:

The course will be comprised of module covering an Office Live concept. The agenda for the one-day event is as follows:

Start	Stop	Description
08:30	09:00	Arrival and registration
09:00	09:15	Welcome and logistics
09:15	10:00	Understanding the Office Live Architecture
10:00	11:00	Understanding the Office Live Data and Storage Architecture
11:00	12:00	Using Workflows to Define Business Rules in Office Live Apps
12:00	13:00	Lunch
13:00	14:00	Programming with the Office Live Web Service API
14:00	15:00	Integrating with Office Live Authentication using Windows Live ID
15:00	15:15	Break
15:15	16:15	Build Office Live Integration using VS with Project GlidePath
16:15	17:15	Creating Mash-Ups in Office Live
17:15		Dinner

The MicroISV Show #18 - Nick Bradbury

Michael Lehman — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:44:15 GMT

In this episode Nick Bradbury, author of FeedDemon, talks about living the MicroISV life, being acquired by NewsGator and more.

Nick's blog is at http://nick.typepad.com and his products are available from http://www.bradsoft.com

The MicroISV Show #17 - Kevin Epstein - StupidMarketing.com

Michael Lehman — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:29:20 GMT

On this weeks show, Michael and Bob talk with Kevin Epstein, author of Marketing Made Easy and proprietor of the Stupid Marketing site and blog where his theme is: "It's not that I hate marketing; I just hate bad marketing."

Kevin, a Silicon Valley veteran with a career that spans Netscape, RealNetworks, Inktomi and VMware, is currently VP of Marketing at Scalent which makes data center management software.

In this episode Kevin, Bob and Michael talk about marketing and MicroISVs: when, where and how to start thinking about marketing and how to do it.

Standard MBA method for doing marketing plans:

· Company

· Customers

· Competitors

· Product

· Price

· Promotion (marketing)

· Placement (distribution)

SWOT analysis

· Strengths

· Weaknesses

· Opportunites

· Threats

Kevin's website & blog:

· http://www.stupidmarketing.com/

· http://blog.stupidmarketing.com/

The MicroISV Show #16 - Jessica Livingston - Founders at Work

Michael Lehman — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:46 GMT

This week Michael and Bob talk with author and investor Jessica Livingston whose recent book, Founders at Work, give great insight into the startup process and the many twists and turns that many have encountered on the road to success.

Jessica is a partner in a firm that gathers startups together and funds their early stages: www.ycombinator.com

The website for her book can be found at: www.foundersatwork.com

The MicroISV Show #15 - Phil Wright - dotnetmagic.com

Michael Lehman — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 22:50:55 GMT

In this episode, Bob and Michael talk to Phil Wright, founder of two MicroISVs: dotnetmagic.com and componentfactory.com selling .NET software components.

Phil talks about how he got his start as a MicroISV, the challenges and joys of moving his business from the UK to Australia, and the marketing strategies that have worked for him.

The MicroISV Show #14 - Don Dodge - Microsoft's Emerging Business Team

Michael Lehman — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:23:41 GMT

This week Bob and I had a great time talking to Don Dodge the Director of Business Development on Microsoft's Emerging Business Team.

Don and his group work with startups by introducing them to product groups, helping build partnerships and, in rare cases, some startups have even been acquired by Microsoft.

Their website is called The Microsoft Startup Zone and can be found at: http://microsoftstartupzone.com/

Don also writes a great blog over at The Next Big Thing.