The End of Google Reader

Google has announced that it is shutting down Google Reader. People are coming out complaining that they still use this tool. I find that I only occasionally use the product myself. I just manually visit the most important blogs I follow.

From a business perspective, this might make sense. Google Reader is probably not making Google much if any money. However Google must loose some good will when they shut the thing down. I bet there are many people who use it for their RSS viewing needs.

The only bright part of this shutdown is that people are rising up to create a Google Reader replacement. Just today I saw a post stating that Digg is on the mission of building a replacement. This might help Digg in other ways if they build some extra features in the product that highlight Digg.

Office On Demand

I saw an advertisement from Microsoft for Office 365. Apparently students could get the software by paying $80 for four years. What? That must be a mistake. The old Office education edition used to cost eith $99 or $150. What is up? I went to a Microsoft site. After first I was pissed off because the site kept redirecting me to some spiel from Microsoft on signing schols up for Office 365.

I almost gave up. But I wanted to know about this $80 for four years deal. Sure enough, after clicking around, I found the page for Office 365 University. You do indeed pay $80 for a four year subscription. This allows you to get the latest version of MS Office. Currently that would be MS OFfice 2013 for PCs.

This is not a stripped down vesion of Office either, You get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access. This is the whole kitchen of Office products. Normally this would cost you $100 per year for a subscription. Instead students get it for $80 over four years. That's not $80 per year. That is $80 total for the whole four years.

I guess Microsoft is really pushing hard for this software subscription service. Feels like a great deal compared to the shrink wrapped versions of Office. I am going to have to give this a try.

Users Must Pay

I am taking a course in XML Development. We are getting to the point where we need to validate our documents. To do that, you run your code through an XML processor. It turns out that this is an external piece of software you have to acquire. Our instructor told us to use the industry standard software. He told us to download the free version.

It turns out there is no free version. There used to be a home use version that was free. However all traces of it seem to have disappeared. Now the company only allows you to download a free 30 day trial. After that, you have to pay big bucks to use their software.

This is great when you work for a big company. You just purchase a license. However that does not work for a starving college student. What is a hacker to do? Well you could go with a free or low cost alternative. In this case, the competition has weaker products. When only the best will do, you got to pay up to steal.

From an end user perspective, this sucks. My trial ends well before I can do my work for class. Should the company offer a student edition for a reduced price? Well I guess that depends. If I do get a low cost copy, will I be happy and talk my future employer into buying the expensive software? The other angle is whether I will somehow pony up the big bucks even though I am a student. That one is easy. Hell no.

The company has already done the hard job of producing the best software for this particular niche. Everyone wants to use their software. Now they have locked a high price tag on it. Let's see if the company makes out like a bandit, or suffers the consequences of the lock down.

Dome Fail

Was watching the SuperBowl to watch the commercials. There were few really hot commercials. A kid is going to prom. He looks depressed. Then his dad gives him the keys to the Audi. The boy is happy. He pulls into school and parked in the principal's parking spot. He makes out with the prom queen. He gets a black eye for the effrot. But he is happy.

Next I saw an ad that made me check of the link. It was some Stephen King thing. Not sure if it is a book or a movie ot TV show. Went to the web site. Had to enter my city and zip. Then I clicked submit. The thing hung for three minutes. What a waste. King probably spent a couple million on the SuperBowl ad. Could not convert because the darn web site was frozen.

Sales Funnel

I was reading a blog post. Found a picture near the bottom and thought it was part of the post. No. It was an advertisement. The girl with the big jugs caught my eye. I clicked through.

I saw a promotion for T-shirts. Nothing new. A girl with a big chest filling out a shirt has been used before. At first I thought the promotion was a buy three, get three shirts free one. Nope. Upon closer inspection, it was buy three, get six free.

Now I am one for a good deal. This was starting to sound like a good deal. I read the fine print. The only catch was that any upcharges would be applied to all the free shirts as well. Fair enough. Then I started trying to pick some shirts. The site was slow. Every options I chose took a while. Not good if I plan to buy 9 shirts.

I wanted a larger size. Upcharge. I wanted a color other than white. Upcharge. The deal was getting less and less attractive as I went along. The price was rising. And it was going to take forever to wait for the site to respond to all the options I needed to make. Sale lost. Too bad.

The Proposition

I found quite the interesting offer over on Hacker News. Dude put out a call for developers with ideas. He would put up $5k to pay for the developer to code up their idea. When done, dude would spend an additional $3k to promote the product. In the end, dude and developer would split the proceeds 50-50.

There was some comment backlash that 50% sounded a bit steep for $8k. However this was for ideas that were sitting around unfinished. Also the dude was offering expertise in marketing, and putting up all the cash. I actually kind of liked the idea.

The only caveat is that he dude required that he approve the initial idea. It has to be good enough for him to invest the $9k. That sounds fair enough to me. I wonder if he would back my latest game idea. I could probably code up an MVP in a month or two. There is only one way to find out.

The Goal of Free

I found this site that provides a daily list of free Kindle books. These aren't some lemons that nobody wants. They seem like good books. The reviews show 4 or 5 stars (out of 5) for most of them. I wondered why the authors were allowing the books to be distributed for free.

I have been reading a bunch of these books recently. And I am getting some ideas on wht is going on. Sometimes the free book is the first one in a series of books. I suspect the authoer is trying to get me hooked so I buy the rest of the series. Other authors are brand new. I bet they are just trying to prove how good an author they are. Then I might purchase some of their other titles.

Another technique might be getting buzz about a book. If you can get enough downloads, driven by a free price, your book could rise up in popularity. Then the price could be changed from free, allowing the author to profit.

Perhaps there might be some authors who just want to give their works away. Does not make much business sense. But hey. Not everything needs to be done to turn a buck I guess.