Milestones First Advertising Campaign

“If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.” – Mario Andretti For someone like myself, it’s a somewhat terrifying experience to be out of control. Airplanes freak me out a bit, and only half the reason is because I know a lot about engineering. The other half is that I don’t feel like my destiny…

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Setting Goals for 2006

The past week and a half, I’ve had a chance to reflect a bit on what’s gone right this year, and what hasn’t. Most people do this at this time of year because they have all decided that after feasting like a pig at various celebrations, they need to lose some weight. Others decide to…

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Volume IV: Rewards and Incentive Programs

It’s that time of year again. I’m not talking about Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, or <insert your personal holdiay here>. It’s getting towards the end of the year, and it’s typically around this time, that companies start doling out bonuses of one sort or another. I’ve been giving some thought to this, as my own personal…

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Milestones version 1.0.0 Postmortem

Well, it was a long hard road, but Moon River Milestones is finally out the door. It’s less than a week after the launch, and while I accomplished a huge amount of work, there’s still a lot left to do. I use Milestones mainly for my own project management, both in the business, in my…

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If my installer… had a brain…

Recently, I was evaluating obfuscators for Moon River Milestones, and after going through all of the motions, I finally settled on one. Now, being as tight with money as I am these days, not to mention the massive costs I’ve incurred while starting up my business, I decided that I’d wait a little while before…

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Post Piracy damage control

You’ve spent months, possibly years working on what you think will be your virtual cash cow. Your software will take four hundred doohickeys and turn them into over fifty thousand thingamabobs without wasting a cpu cycle. In under ten seconds and affordably priced at a mere $49.95, you’re ready to make a killing on the…

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You have exactly 3 customers

As unfortunate as this is, finishing the code for your software is really only half the battle when you’re launching products. There’s a ton of work that still needs to be done once your code is complete. For Milestones, I need to finalize the code obfuscation and do the installer work. As a .NET application,…

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Glamorous software doesn’t equal instant success

Let’s face it. Building games is cool. It’s one of those software disciplines that until recently, was something that you had to pick up on your own and with a little luck, land an entry level job with a game development company. In recent years, colleges and universities have begun to offer concentrations in game…

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Volume III: To build or to buy

Starting anything isn’t easy and building a new business has historically been fraught with peril. I don’t have any hard statistics on how many fail. Those statistics are difficult to come by because small businesses are not required to file public financial statements. The best you can generally do is look at the number of…

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Volume II: Conserving what little cash you have

Every hero has a nemesis. Frodo had Gollum. Batman had The Joker, and Harry Potter had Voldemort. In nearly every case, the hero finds himself with his back to a wall, the end of the world is near, and people are going to die. Well, it may not be quite so dramatic when you’re a…

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