The first essay I wrote at university was returned to me with the phrase ‘awkward prose, needs work,‘ scrawled on the back with a thick pencil. I was mortified, thinking at the time that I was hot stuff and would carry all before me with the power of my pen. Even now, the subject of that one essay is still fresh in my mind, while the years that followed are no more than a hazy memory.

Embarrassing as it was, this episode was my introduction to the painful process of editing, and I’m thankful it happened at a young age. The essays that came after were hacked half to death, reading more like crisp technical manuals than lively historical arguments, but things settled down after a year or so, and the prose became more readable.

We all need to be told our writing is clumsy and awkward at some point, otherwise we carry on in blissful ignorance, inflicting our barely coherent ramblings on the world. When I began work on PageFour, there was no intention of addressing the editing process, my thinking was that this was something every writer must tackle themselves. Instead, the primary focus has always been to improve the writing environment, and remove whatever distractions might exist to interrupt the writer in full flow.

But now I face a dilemma. For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking of introducing a feature into PageFour that would step over this line.

From my own experience, one of the more common problems tackled when editing, is repeated words and phrases, where the same two or three words appear many times across paragraphs, pages and chapters. When this is not intentional, it can be incredibly difficult to catch, often slipping through many editing iterations.

Computers however, have no interest in how smooth your prose reads, and would flag these potential problems in a heartbeat. So the question is, should I implement this feature?

I’ve already designed the user interface in my mind, and it looks good - tucked away out of sight until it might be needed. The way I see the feature working, a single page or a number of pages would be read, and a list of two, three, or four word phrases that appear more than a certain number of times would be displayed. It would then be up to the writer to decide if these needed to be looked at in any detail. An additional linked feature might be a similar list of words or phrases used at the beginning of sentences.

Up to now, I’ve based the design of PageFour on what works for me, but I fully realise that implementing a feature that plays a part in the editing process may prove a serious turn off for many people.

Is crossing the line into editing a step too far?

Marketing was never my thing. I’ve posted here before about the major shortcomings of small software companies; that we understand the developing of the product all too well, but that what comes next - the hard sell - is where so many of us fall down.

Every few days I get an email from someone telling me how much they love PageFour, how it’s so much better than other software packages aimed at writers, such as Dramatica, Treepad, and such. Downloads are increasing, and sales have definitely picked up, but it’s all happening very slowly, and for this I can only blame myself.

There’s never been any real momentum building around the product - no buzz. It’s had mentions on the odd discussion board, and an appropriate number of downloads as a result, but that interest is rarely maintained once the initial posts become old.

I’ve been considering offering free licenses to anyone who blogs about PageFour.

Similar strategies have been tried before by other software companies, and with mixed results. Recently, a company called Axosoft shifted over 2,500 copies of its flagship product by offering them for five dollars a copy, with the five dollars going to the American Red Cross. This generated huge interest and featured on many prominent blogs, as well as leading to a front page post on del.icio.us.

So the question is, could this strategy work? The product is strong enough now to come under any form of scrutiny, so I’m not particularly worried about people trying it out and hating it.

Is there a downside?

There is no direct link from PageFour’s commercial web-site to this blog, so any offer made here would be unlikely to prevent genuine buyers from paying for the product. The only negative I can see would be a slow or non-existent response to such an offer, and though that may be a little embarrassing, it would hardly have an adverse effect on the business itself.

PageFour needs exposure - not enough people have heard about it, so not enough people are trying it out. An offer of a free license to anyone mentioning the product on their blog could provide this exposure, and as long as there was a time limit on the offer, I don’t see how it could have a negative impact.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Every other week I stumble across web-sites that prove invaluable. At the time, I’m left wondering how I could have missed them for so long, and once noticed they seem to pop up everywhere. Here are 5 sites I use on a regular basis. Each one has had a major impact on my online activities:

1. iStockphoto - Massive resource of photos from amateur and professional photographers. Before finding this site, sourcing images for use on web-sites and blogs was always a problem. Do you have rights to use the image? Should you just ‘borrow‘ it and say nothing? Most of the images sell for $1, and are royalty free. Once you set up an account, downloading the odd image is a one click process.
2. Bloglines - I have a list of about 30 blogs I watch regularly. Until I started using Bloglines to keep me updated on changes, I had to click on each bookmarked link every time I wanted to see if a new post had been submitted. The beauty of using an online service like Bloglines, is that you can access these favourite blogs from any PC, and you’re immediately notified not just of new posts, but changes to existing posts as well - always interesting to see how other people edit their work. Try it out, and don’t forget to add me to your list.
3. Copyscape - Have you ever had your work copied and posted somewhere else? Copyscape is a simple site that scans the web for complete or partial copies of anything you post on your blog. It’s useful to track down plagiarisers, and other writers who are quoting and commenting on what you’ve written. The first time I used it I found this - a word for word copy of one of my own posts.
4. Squidoo - The premise behind Squidoo is that search engines now return so many results for any query that they are fast becoming meaningless. Far better to have a single page written by an ‘expert‘ on a particular topic with further links to articles, books, blogs, and other resources. Anyone can be an expert and create a lens on any topic, from links about your own product to resources for eBay sellers.
5. Ping-o-Matic - Most blogging environments like Wordpress automatically ping all the relevant sites after you add or change a post, but every now and then the ping seems to get lost along the way, and sites like Technorati fail to display your stunning new post. Entering your URL into Ping-o-Matic allows you to send the pings yourself, at any time.

What else am I missing out on?

PageFour has received its second five star review on Download.com, which is very welcome. I’m always slightly scared that someone will hate the product and post a terrible review, but it hasn’t happened yet, so fingers crossed. Reviews by users have a big impact on the number of downloads - I often use them myself as a guide to whether something is worth trying out or not.

What PC have also reviewed the product and awarded it five stars. When it comes to the multitude of smaller download sites, I’ve always taken the reviews and awards with a pinch of salt, as they tend to award every submission the same high mark. They appear to be designed to keep the developers of the product happy rather than guiding the potential user. What PC seems to be a little different as it awards a good proportion of low marks, so I’ll take it as a compliment.

The new printing options in PageFour have finally been put to rest - for the time being at least. Version 1.42 is now available for download, and I’m more than happy with how it’s turned out.

This version makes the construction of the print templates simpler and easier to understand, and adds a new feature for anyone with multiple printers or print devices such as PDF writers.

Feedback, as always, is more than welcome.

The current release of PageFour is a week old today, and it’s been a good week. The number of downloads are higher than for any previous release, and there have even been a few sales, which is always a good sign. But there is a problem.

The new printing features, which are the centre piece of this release, may not be advanced enough for some users. Throughout the design of PageFour, I’ve tried to keep everything as simple as possible. For many users, having too many choices is worse than no choice at all, and this is why the print templates feature was given a limited number of options, rather than a more comprehensive format.

When designing the print templates, the idea was to allow documents, or folders of documents to be printed in a different format to that used when writing. The aim was to make printing in manuscript form a simple, one click process, and this has almost been achieved. The template structure allows for different font, paragraph, and line spacing settings to be selected, as well as header and page numbering options. It would then be simply a case of choosing which template to use when printing.

The grey area lies in the header and footer construction, where PageFour allows only a selection of options, rather than a full free text field. You can construct a header with chapter name, custom text, and various page number formats through simple selection from the available options, but for more advanced users, this may not be enough.

It’s the old argument of complexity versus simplicity. Do you satisfy ninety five percent of your users, and make the product as perfect as possible for them? or do you aim to please the five percent who want and need more advanced features, while at the same time making the product as a whole more complex. Logic would suggest you please the ninety five percent, but it tends to be the smaller five percent who are the most vocal about your product. To steal a phrase from Malcolm Gladwell, these five percent are the ‘early adopters,‘ the people who try out new things, and if they like them, recommend them to their friends.

The introduction of macros into the header construction would give the advanced users everything they want, but I’m loathe to do it. I’ve always seen macros, or any from of scripting construct as weak design. If you can’t see something visually most non technical users won’t touch it.

A new version of PageFour will be released next week. It won’t have macros - yet - but it will have some changes to the header and footer constructs. Though adding little in the way of new functionality, the changes will make header construction far more intuitive, and who knows - it may just be enough to please those early adopters.

If not, I can always macro later.

If you have even a passing interest in marketing yourself or your product on the internet, you need to know who Seth Godin is, and you need to understand his message.

A good introduction can be found in a speech he gave at Google last month titled ‘All Marketers are Liars.’ It’s a forty minute video and well worth watching.

Should the speech hold your attention, consider following it up with his many published books, blog, and latest online venture Squidoo.

Do we really need another MP3 converter? Or another Windows registry cleaner? What about a new time management program that’s just like all the other time management programs only with one extra feature?

When it comes to developing new software, originality is in short supply. So many companies seem to take the safe route and build a product that has been built before. They convince themselves that their product is going to be different, and that their interpretation is so much better than the competitions. The field they choose to work in is almost always flooded with more established versions of their new product. PageFour, my first project, falls into this category.

So who are we designing software for? Or more importantly, who are we not designing software for? A quick search on Google throws up the following:

Why is no one designing software for undertakers? They’re a business just like any other. Well, maybe not just like any other - but they keep records, make sales, and have a product range and stock to manage. They must be keeping tabs on all those different coloured coffins and bottles of formaldehyde somewhere.

It’s not only undertakers who are suffering from a lack of quality software to help them do their jobs. Software for nuns returns only two results, one of which is a link to a porn site. Pet shops, preachers, magicians… all suffer from a similar lack of attention.

Why are new software startups not taking advantage of this gap in the market? Granted, sourcing the product requirements may involve some hanging out in morgues and cemeteries, but surely a shot at becoming a market leader in an area that is guaranteed never to run short of business more than makes up for working in a socially embarrassing field.

So here’s a call to all you morticians, pet shop owners, preachers and magicians out there. How happy are you with your current software solutions? Are they drab, grey and barely functional? Do you dream of better days to come, when software with pretty icons will be designed just for you?

This is more than idle curiosity. I’m researching new product ideas, and would genuinely like to hear from anyone working in slightly unusual fields where dedicated software solutions are in short supply. if this sounds like you, and we’ll talk.

The new version of PageFour was released yesterday, a day ahead of schedule - unless you live in Australia, in which case it was on time. All the download sites have been notified, existing users emailed, and the website updated with the changes necessary to push the new features (sorry, benefits).

It’s a nerve wracking time. Even though the testing has been comprehensive, and I’m one hundred per cent sure there are no fatal bugs just waiting to bite me in the ass, it’s hard not to wonder if something has been missed. With twenty downloads since yesterday afternoon, and no screams for help - things are looking good.

Releasing a new version is a fifteen step process, and all of those steps involve the actions of a human being - me. I was going to list each step here, but I got bored before I reached number seven, so I’ll spare you the pain. The only point to make is that something always gets left out.

But that’s negative thinking, and all the self help books I’ve never read say … something negative about negative thinking. Everything will run smoothly, people will love the new features, and there will be no bugs.

If I say it often enough, it will happen. Right?