I’m sorry, but I have to post this. Every couple of days I check my blog stats - not out of some pathetic desire to see if my readership has hit double digits, more out of an insatiable curiosity over how readers are finding their way here.

You see, people are strange. I worked this out years ago, but I’ve been keeping it to myself. Wouldn’t do to offend and all that…

Over the past few months I’ve had some … unique … search strings typed into Google and MSN, but one of today’s offerings wins hands down. Would the guy who typed ‘HEIDI KLUM AND HER MONGREL CHILDREN‘ into MSN please stand up and explain yourself?

I mean, come on, what exactly did you want to know? Does Heidi Klum even have any children? I blame Seth Godin. If it weren’t for him, Heidi would never have had a mention on this blog, and let’s not even start on…

Compliments of the Snarky one:

Some Basic Guidelines on Writing Well

Well, it made me laugh.

I backtracked a PageFour referral yesterday to a site called Literature and Latte, home of a new Mac tool for writers named Scrivener. The designer acknowledges PageFour’s influence on one of the key features of the product, citing the Snapshots as inspiration for their implementation of versioning. I’m flattered that my humble offering is having such far reaching influence, but in all fairness I can claim credit only for trying out a few non-standard ideas borrowed from elsewhere.

A little over a year ago I read a book called About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design, written by Alan Cooper. It was the thoughts and ideas presented in this book that formed the basis of PageFour’s more unique features. The author questioned much of the established wisdom or ‘way of doing things‘ in User Interface design, using MS Word as a primary example of how not to do things. He demonstrated how many of the features common across software are common not because they are intuitive or even useful approaches, but because they were first implemented at a time when meeting the hardware requirements was more important than satisfying users. Today, with hard drives and memory doubling in size every eighteen months, hardware limitations are almost a thing of the past. Yet despite this, user interfaces still carry the burden of design weaknesses from a bygone era, and many of us have come to accept these flaws as the correct way of doing things.

When you put a blank sheet of paper into a typewriter and start typing, the words appear on the page as you work. You don’t have to make a decision ten or twenty minutes later to either keep what you wrote or clear the page. You’ve spent a lot of time thinking carefully about which words to use and how to string them together, so of course you want to hold onto them. Yet this is exactly the sort of decision that software like MS Word expects you to make every day. You type into a blank document, the words appear in front of you, and after you’ve finished your work, you’re asked if you want to ‘Save‘ it. You’re basically asked if you really meant it or were you just playing around for the past twenty minutes?

Software works this way because hardware works this way.

A blank document in a word processor is not the same as a sheet of paper. When you type into MS Word, your work is stored temporarily in one type of memory. When you ‘Save‘ your work (which of course you want to do, otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered to begin with), it’s stored a second time in a more permanent type of memory. This is the ONLY reason software asks you if you want to save your work, and it only asks you because once upon a time memory was scarce and very, very expensive, and if there was even the slightest chance that you really were just playing around, it wouldn’t have to use up that little bit of permanent memory.

And because software worked this way once (out of a kind of necessity), it still works this way today.

Users are expected to understand how the hardware and Operating Systems of their computers work in order to use even the most basic software. They are expected to know what files are, how folders can exist within folders, and why they need to ‘Save‘ their work even though they can see it right there on the screen in front of them. Most people who use software should not need to know any of this - that’s what software is designed for, to control how the user interacts with the rest of their computer and act as a buffer between them and the hardware. Properly designed software is supposed to handle all this for you.

Many of the core elements of PageFour came from ideas presented in the chapters of Alan Cooper’s book, in particular the ‘concealing‘ of files from the user, the quick Snapshot feature to replace the over- and often mis- used ‘Save As‘ option in MS Word, the naming conventions of Pages and Notebooks, the automatic saving of all changes, and the interactive archiving.

These ideas are not my own, I simply tried out different ways of doing things suggested by other people, and in doing so attempted to dump the baggage of decades of ill thought out interface design at the door. The guys over at Literature and Latte are more than welcome to copy or adapt features from PageFour, just as I’ve copied and adapted ideas from Alan Cooper, and hopefully they won’t stop there. Just because things have been done one way for decades, does not mean there are not better ways.

PageFour is finally listed in the Open Directory.

About three months ago, I spent some time jumping through all the hoops during the submission process. The rewards of a mention are huge, as it is probably the most widely read classified listing out there, but there is no way to influence or speed up the process. Turns out some people really are immune to the persuasion a fast dollar brings.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Open Directory Project, it’s the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It’s managed and policed by volunteers and takes itself as seriously as the other big non-profit sites like Wikipedia. The beauty of the site is the absence of spam and advertisements of any description, and the knowledge that every web-site and product listed has first been checked out by a human being with the power to deny entry.

PageFour is listed under the Writers Resources category and shares a page with a host of other products and services aimed at writers. It may turn out to be the most profitable link yet, introducing the product to new audiences. Referrals have already begun to flow, so I’m crossing my fingers.

It’s been a good couple of months for PageFour - not spectacular by any means, but consistent and improving. There just may be a future for the product yet, so I’m optimistic. But then I’m always optimistic, even when pessimism is the order of the day - never allowing elbow room to those negative thoughts.

Every time a published author buys PageFour I get just a little kick inside. While it’s true that not everyone is a fan of my interpretation of a writing tool, the positive comments far outweigh the negative, and every time I google a new buyer’s name and come up with an Amazon link, I know I’m on the right track.

Over the past two weeks I’ve had three journalists buying the product and one published author. The journalists have surprised me, as PageFour was designed first and foremost for creative writers struggling with that first novel or set of short stories, but it just goes to show, people always find uses for things you never envisaged. What this means of course, is that I’ll need to start looking at the PageFour feature set with journalists in mind.

I knew a guy years ago who began every other sentence with the phrase: “As the man said.” I kept asking him who this man was, because for a stranger nobody had ever met he certainly had a lot to say for himself. Blind advice is easy to come by, but when you actually break down these words of wisdom and ask yourself are they true? the answer is often no.

They say love is blind. They also say you should work on something you’re passionate about. They can’t all be right.

Most software startups fail, and it seems to me they fail because they design the wrong product. They design products they’re passionate about, not products anybody else is passionate about. These one man shops work on pet projects out of love, and often turn their feelings into crazy market projections and dreams of wild commercial success. For over a year now I’ve been hanging out with the multitude of startup owners who frequent the Joel on Software message boards, where everybody offers advice and blunt criticism to their fellow passionate software designers. Most of the readers of this forum are working on failed or failing projects out of love.

Should you be passionate about a commercial product you’ve just started working on?

I don’t believe so. Anyone who’s been in love knows it makes us do crazy things. Our thoughts turn irrational. We make assumptions about the person we love that a sane man would call insane. We make allowances for defects and character failings. The same is true of software design. Passionate programmers assume everyone else will be just as passionate about their product. How could they not love it just as you do? It’s so cool it leaves Microsoft in the shade. It’s sure to be the next big thing, because in your own mind it already is the biggest thing.

Over the past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that when designing new software, it’s far better to go for an arranged marriage. Arranged marriages often succeed because the two parties involved are compatible beyond the lingering gaze across a crowded room, because the passion often comes later when the relationship is established and has proven itself. If you fall in love with your wife or husband a year down the road, you know their failings just as well as their strengths. You’re not blinded by passion.

I designed PageFour because I wanted to. Commercial considerations were pushed to one side as I stumbled on in blissful ignorance, convinced that my own love of the product would be reflected in the market as a whole. I made the fatal and all too common mistake of working on something I was passionate about. The response was lukewarm. Feedback was encouraging, but rarely translated into a love to match my own, and only very rarely into sales. No matter how good the product, it’s difficult to compete in a crowded market where many of your competitors are free. The incentive to try something new is simply not there. A more commercially aware mind would have seen this straight away and considered the wisdom of designing yet another word processor, however unique and different some of its features may be.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been researching product number two. Note the use of the word researching. It’s a novel concept for me that has nothing to do with passion and love. I’ve learned my lesson, and it was a lesson worth learning.

The question in my mind now is what to do with PageFour. Should I let it carry on, earning a small amount each month and building up an equally small user base? Or should I release it as freeware, the place most passionate software truly belongs, and build up a much larger user base?

Version 1.43 of PageFour has just been released. There are no cool new features, no major improvements or enhancements, simply a fix to a single bug. In certain software development circles there is an opinion that the word ‘bug‘ should never be used, that it has a negative feel to it and does little to inspire confidence. The favoured term to replace this three letter word is ‘opportunity.’

This minor release therefore is simply an opportunity to improve the page numbering feature of the product. More details can be found on the What’s New page of the web-site along with a download link.

A few days ago I stumbled across a useful piece of FREE software for creating PDF documents called - wait for it - PDFCreator. It installs itself as a printer driver and allows you to convert any document type quickly to PDF, saving you from passing your hard earned cash to Adobe. This is worth a look, as it hooks in neatly with MS Word as well as PageFour.

What does it say about you that you measure your worth by whether or not a web-site graces you with a red heart every week?

www.download.com is the number one software download site; the site all the cool guys rave about; the site that is supposed to make or break a small software company. Every Sunday, the total number of downloads are added up for each product, and those with a sizeable number are awarded an image of a blood red heart to signify their huge popularity and general worth. No doubt suicide rates amongst the ranks of Shareware authors peak on a Sunday evening.

And what does it take these days to be popular? When products such as SpySweeper and Winzip regularly notch up six digit figures each week you’d be forgiven for assuming the bar to the heart would be great indeed. You’d be wrong.

Twenty downloads. Twenty clicks and this download site amongst download sites flog their good opinion and recommendation to all and sundry.

They’re a cheap date and I’m not impressed. Thankfully I gave up relying on download sites months ago, but I still feel I should be jumping up and down every week over my bloody red heart.

Ten days ago, PageFour was picked up by a series of British computer magazines, nost notably Computer Active, What PC, and Computing. When I say picked up - it featured as a recommendation on their software download sites and appeared in the newsletter they send out to subscribers. This has resulted in a large increase in downloads, sales, and enquiries. My first thought when the figures shot up was that yet another dodgy download site in Hong Kong or Russia had found me.

PageFour ships as a thirty day trial version, so it’s too early to say how effective this push will turn out to be, but even now, ten days on, the download figures remain high and sales keep trickling in.

I played no part in this whatsoever.

Just over a week ago I attempted a marketing push of my own, where I offered free copies to anyone prepared to blog about or mention the product on their web-site. The plan was to generate some sort of buzz around PageFour, as up to now it had had limited exposure, popping up on blogs and discussion boards only rarely.

They succeeded. I didn’t.

The strategy had merit, as other companies had tried similar drives before. A few months ago, a company called Axosoft released their flagship product for five dollars, with all the money going to the American Red Cross. They shipped thousands of copies over a three day period and appeared on the front pages of del.ic.ious and Reddit.

So the question is, why did I fail where Computer Active succeeded? They had little to gain from promoting a small software product owned by another company, whereas I built PageFour and invested much time and energy in making it as perfect as possible.

What it boils down to is that they have a voice that is heard, and I don’t. Sending a targeted newsletter with a list of new software recommendations to people who’ve specifically asked you to do so, is very different from standing on a soapbox in the middle of an empty square and offering your product to a busy world.

If no one is listening, then it doesn’t matter what you say or how loud you say it.

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?