ISV Kaizen

For the next 5 days (starting on June 8′th), guys from True BoxShot will give away several free licenses a day, as part of “Out of the box” free contest.

Everyone may participate. The contest rules are simple and fun:
- Each morning we’ll post a new cartoon without a caption.
- To win the contest, you must supply the best caption in the comments.
… more details: http://www.trueboxshot.com/out-of-the-box-cartoon-contest

Daily awards:
• 1’st place: TBS Cover Editor free license
• 2′nd place: True BoxShot or True BoxShot for Photoshop plugin free license on your choice
• 3′d place: 50% discount coupon on any TBS product
• all participant will receive 5% discount coupon on any TBS product

Have fun and win!

And invite your friends and colleagues to take part too!

I’m currently watching an interesting discussion on Business of Software forum.

The topic is about if having your personal photo on your business card is a good idea or not. It’s like everything in business - you don’t know the right answer until you try it yourself. There are cons and pros.

Advantages:

• Breaking standards
• Easier to recall what the discussion was about
• Easier to recall who was that person
• Personal photo causes a feeling of trust and openness

Disadvantages

• Breaking standards
• May look vain
• May look geeky or amateurish

However, most of the discussion participants are inclined to believe that this may be a worthwhile idea. Also, they give other practical advice of effective business card usage. Check it out

BTW, do you know that you may create virtual 3D business cards with TBS Cover Editor like the sample below?

The recent release of Dr.Explain 4, help file authoring and documentation writing software, is a big import step in our company history. So, we needed a new visual identity for the application itself and for the product website to emphasize the great improvements and progress made.

First we decided to begin with a new logotype image design that would become a start point for the rest redesign works. The logo should express the following metaphors associated with our software:
- Intelligence
- Work
- Automation
- Technology
- Simplicity vs. Complexity
- Easiness
- Precision and Accuracy

We tried several “great looking” designers and studios and had failures with them due-to their flat vision and standard template-based approach. They all offered to us combinations of boring circles, paper sheets, lines and meaningless colored shapes.

After we had spent many days and many dollars on such graphical trash, we finally made a discovery - BrandBerry, a small branding and logo design company.

Designers behind the BrendBerry have an out of box attitude, non standard ideas, and simply amazing drawing skills. They had immediately abandoned the idea to use common logo template solutions and offered to invent a character. Now you can see this character on our website and in all promotional materials.

Meet the Dr.Explain. Here it is!

He’s smart, intelligent, industrious, neat, prompt, helpful, and friendly! We love him. Dr.Explain users love him. Everyone loves him!

Are you interested in process of the Dr.Explain character creation? Guys from BrandBerry have recently published a wordless pictured story of the Dr.Explain logo birth.
Check it out! For me, it is a kind of magic!

P.S: If in addition to the logo you need to design photo-realistic box shot images then look at TBS Cover Editor.

There are two common ways to describe a sequence of key pressings in your software help documentation:

The first one is like this

Press Ctrl+Shift+F to flag the record.

The second one is like this

+ + = Flag the record

If you prefer the second approach then these two resources will be helpful to you:
Clipart: Computer Keyboard keys
Free keyboard fonts at FontSpace

Have a great day ahead!

This post is my short response to a request in Business Of Software forum: “… what’s the best place for us to submit web application?”

Here are some links from our company’s Wiki. Just a list of links, without comments.

• eHub
• KillerStartups - submit via FeedMyApp
• DIY Startup News.com
• Ziipa
• Startup World
• Great Startups
• WebWare
• go2web20
• Ajax Projects
• web2list
• Blippr
• Mashable.com
• I Want To …
• boingboing.net
• carolsvault.com
• Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog
• Web Worker Daily
• Digital Trends

I’ve recently discovered a very interesting resource where web entrepreneurs share real experience on how they improved their web site conversions.

ABTests: http://www.abtests.com/

Although currently the number of samples is not great you may find there some interesting ideas for improving your web site’s \ application’s conversion ratio.

You are also welcome to share your own cases to inspire other visitors to share their ones… You know… It’s all about the social interaction and collective intelligence.

In this short post I’d like to share a real case of user interface improvement that we implemented in the upcoming release of the Dr.Explain 4.0.

In previous releases of the Dr.Explain we had a problem - much of screen space on the top of the application window was not used effectively.

Before (old versions of the Dr.Explain):

We reworked and united the toolbar and tabs to eliminate the unused space. Here is a solution:

Now (Dr.Explain 4.0):

With the new design users have more space for work, not for application buttons.

Check if your application interface has unused areas that might be used for real work.

This year our Dr.Explain help tool team is proud to be a sponsor of The Conference for Software User Assistance by WritersUA.

The focus of the Conference for Software User Assistance is on developing the best possible user experience for all types of software applications through well-designed interfaces and helpful and accessible support information. The Conference includes over sixty sessions Sunday, March 21, through Wednesday, March 24.

Success in improving the software user experience depends on applying the right skills and technologies to maximum advantage. The conference targets this need by providing an array of sessions demonstrating effective techniques, case studies demonstrating best-in-class designs, technology updates, and much more.

This year’s Conference features seven interest areas with information on:

• Emerging Skills
• Technology Updates
• Design Strategies
• Tool Techniques
• Content Development
• Open Standards
• Special Interest

Registration is open! Early discounts in Effect!

If your host uses Spam Assassin to protect your mail box from SPAM then read this post!

We use Spam Assassin on our host to filter out SPAM. Recently, it was discovered that the Spam Assassin had a bug. It added extra 3.4 SPAM scores to ALL e-mails dated 2010 or later.

I’m afraid we lost some incoming e-mails that were filtered out due-to false SPAM suspicious.

Currently we’re running beta testing of Dr.Explain 4.0. All feedback is extremely important for us! Missing e-mails is unacceptable.

If you sent us a e-mail in 2010 but haven’t received a response yet, please resend it. Sorry for the inconvenience.

… and …

If you’re using Spam Assassin then either update or add 4 points to your filter thresholds.

Thank you Microsoft for the MSDN Subscription. Now we have a New Year & Christmas Tree in the office.