NJ Geeks - New Jersey's IT Community

Massive list of awesome icon fonts.

This my dear readers is how you issue an apology.

We are committed to making myBalsamiq known for its uptime, but clearly we have a long way to go. We are learning, and I feel very sorry that our early adopters have to pay for our inexperience. :(

They go on to offer an extremely generous credit for the downtime as well. However, to me that is secondary. All I think users really want to hear is that you are honestly sorry and that you will make your best effort to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

One really good sign of a healthy product - The ability to remove features which don’t work and/or cause more harm than good.

Spring Cleaning

Today we’re removing two features. They’ve been gathering dust for a while and it’s time to throw them out.

Don’t ever think you cannot remove crappy features. This is a horrific myth perpetuated from the enterprise software world.

It is much better to have customers angry at you for removing a frustrating feature than to keep it around and let it slowly chip away at your credibility.

AKA - The best damn post EVER about pricing

…price should be a consequence of value. When creating products, we should first focus upon the customer, what they need, and how we can provide value. Then, we should learn what our solution is worth to them and charge accordingly.

Less customers is OK. I don’t get this obsession (especially in the startup world) with massive scale.

Find a group of customers and serve the bejesus out of them and grow from there.

I’m happy to announce that on Saturday April 21, 2012, the New Jersey SQL Server user group will be hosting a “SQL Azure Saturday” event!  This will be a FREE full-day event on SQL Azure & data in the cloud related topics.  The event is something that I have been working with the group’s organizer, Melissa Demsak, to produce.  The NJ SQL user group has hosted & sponsored many great SQL Saturday events in the past.  This new SQL Azure Saturday event should be just as great!

Registration is now open on Eventbrite:

General Agenda:
8:30am - Registration
9:00am – 12:00pm – Kick-off/Presentations
12:00pm – 1:00pm – Lunch / Networking
1:00pm – 3:00pm – Presentations/Closing

Location:
Microsoft NJ Offices
101 Wood Avenue South, 9th Floor
Iselin, NJ 08830

• Intro to Azure Platform
• Intro to SQL Azure
• Migrating to SQL Azure
• Performance/Scale in SQL Azure
• SQL Azure Reporting
• Intro to NoSQL and Big Data

Note: exact agenda times TBD

Peter Laudati - The "JrzyShr Dev Guy," is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in the New York/New Jersey area. One of his roles is supporting and educating developers working Microsoft technologies. Peter supports the developer community in the NY/NJ Metro area by speaking at user group events, Code Camps, and various tech conferences. Peter is also the co-host of the “Connected Show” (www.connectedshow.com), a podcast focused on the cloud and connecting Microsoft technology with non-Microsoft technology. His blog can be found at http://www.peterlaudati.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @Jrzyshr.

Jim Priestley - Microsoft, Azure Technical Solution Specialist -  Jim recently joined Microsoft as an Azure Technical Solution Specialist in the Mid-Atlantic District.  Jim has spent the past two years hands-on successfully migrating an e-commerce solution to Windows Azure (www.plccenter.com).  He enjoys sharing the lessons he has learned and spreading the knowledge about Windows Azure.

Don Demsak- An Advisory Solutions Architect at EMC Consulting, based out of New Jersey, who specializes in building enterprise applications with .Net. He has a popular blog at www.donxml.com and is a former Microsoft MVP. He is currently immersed in building cloud based applications on Microsoft and non-Microsoft cloud stacks. @DonXML

While it’s certainly good that people are taking an interest in your start-up, you’ve overlooked a critical element of the conversion process: Getting referrals.

Money.

I recently wrote an eBook about UI design and needed to find a way to sell it, so I compared five such services: Quixly, FetchApp, Pulley, E-junkie, and Gumroad. I’ll tell you which one I picked at the end… but in the meantime, here are the results of my research.

Great write up by Smashing Magazine on where to sell your digital goods.

Love seeing stuff like this on KickoffLabs:

Get ready…30 EmpowerMentors are ready to help you TRANSFORM your business, RE-IGNITE your passion and EMBRACE your life!

On potentially selling your business for $600K:

Was it the right decision? Only time will tell. In my view, $600,000 in the hand is awfully nice compared with having to work in the business over what could be years to possibly make more — or not.

Obviously, the exact amount varies, but the question is still valid: If paid a ‘fair’ price would you sell?

I love what I do and would probably do the same thing either way…still the goal is to have cash in bank. In the end, I don’t think you can really prepare for that type of situation (well, except skipping a reality TV show).

Nice: bundle outdated

Show all of the outdated gems in the current bundle. This will give you a report of gems that have newer versions available.

Bundler 1.1 has a built in outdated feature. I had previously been using this gem.

success is largely about keeping your promises.

A couple of people have asked a similar question recently, ‘what have you done to grow KickoffLabs’.

There are a variety of things we do around blogging, commenting, tweeting, advertising, etc.

But the one constant is support. We treat every support request as an opportunity wow and delight our customers.

In many companies, support is used as a training (cough proving) ground for new employees. Spend a little time there, don’t screw anything up, and you can move into a more coveted role.

This is the wrong approach. You need people in support who want to be there. Who love to be there. You need people who want to do nothing other than delight customers.

You might be saying to yourself, “people like that don’t exist”. Bull Shit! These people do exist. The problem is support is way too often under funded. It is the place (especially in tech) companies like to drop entry level employees.

No one in your company interacts with your customers more than support. No one in your company is as likely to leave a lasting impression as your support staff. And no one in your company is as likely to cause you to lose (or keep) a customer as someone in support.

Do you really thing this person should likely be one of the lowest paid members of your staff?

Dig responsive design? Hate fluid grids? Try a Frameless grid.

I got slaughtered in support this month. But there is some good news:

1. Even though I lost, KickoffLabs customers won big time.
2. Baseball season starts soon and @evolvingwe should be more pre-occupied. :)

See: Flutter.io

Currently only supports starting and stopping iTunes and Spotify.

However, if they add skipping songs and Rdio, I would break out my credit card.

Now that I think about it, this could be a killer way to do Pandora as well (skip, thumbs up/down).

Using the inverted method has quickly made the AeroPress my goto coffee option.

Great coffee and super easy to clean. Highly recommended.

We published a bunch of @kickofflabs API and embedding documentation updates.

Be polite or shut up.