The license is, unless a last minute incident crops up, done and I'm packaging the liveTopics release to go out either tonight or tomorrow depending upon how quickly I can tidy the loose ends.  I think I'm going to have to abandon my hope of producing a proper installation since I can't seem to find an installer that runs on Windows and can build installation packages for both Windows & Mac.  I'm also struggling to get the website into reasonable shape for launch.

This time it's for real...

I've updated the find tool for Radio to fix a subtle bug that would cause it to skip some tables.  I've also added menubars as a search type and an option to use an exact name match rather than a substring match (the tool is still case insensitive, but then Radio table names are case insensitive anyway).

To install just drop the .root file into your Tools directory.  The Find menu will appear until Utils on your menubar.

Had a session with my life coach David this morning.  We were chatting about some of the problems I am facing trying to market a product in the knowledge management marketplace. It seems particuarly challenging when so many of the argued for benefits seem very abstract.  I had just brought up the old adage that only 20% of the knowledge in a company is usually stored in knowledge-bases whilst the other 80% walks home every night and how, whilst this might be true, it doesn't seem to be effective in convincing people to invest in knowledge management.

David then suggested a metaphor that I thought was wonderfully concrete:

"Imagine you are running a factory and every night 80% of the machinery walked home and maybe wouldn't come back the next morning.  How quickly do you think you would invest in ways of keeping it?"

A great article on Marketing Software in todays TidBITS

"You may have an application, and it might be truly useful (rather than a candidate for MacHack), but you don't necessarily have a product or, more importantly, a solution. What's the difference? A pencil is a product, but it's not a solution."

A good read for anyone in the software business. Also the first time I've ever read an article and actually contacted the author to query about their services. We'll see what comes of it.

[rebelutionary]

» Thanks Mike, A great article.  Timely to as I was just thinking about productising liveTopics now that the non-commercial license is finallly worked out.