I was wondering if people across the country are seeing similarly steep drops in consulting business as we have seen in Los Angeles over the summer. Maybe I shouldn't have watched the CNN reports on the DOW dropping almost 1000 points in two days. How is your pipeline looking? Do you have big customers putting projects on hold? ...
If the Mono project is successful it will pave the way for commercial software on non-Windows platforms. I am interested in the prospect of writing and selling commercial software for the Mono platform along the lines of our existing Smoke Vector Graphics (OCaml) and F# for Visualization (.NET) products. Are any commercial library devel...
I am a contractor who lives in UK and does work targeted at an exotic programming platform. It is a niche market with a limited number of available developers; unfortunately there seem to be no specialised recruitment company. There is a list of companies that use this language and tools, some for software products they sell and others i...
Many clients see only the "per hour" price and go "eek" and choose a "cheaper" coder to do the job. Very often these clients ends up with a complete MESS because they wanted to save a couple of bucks per hour. Just because one consultant charges $100 - $200 per hour does not mean he is more expensive for the client. One coder might do t...
It has often been said that selling software is harder than writing it. With aspirations of having my own software firm one day I often wonder if I could sell the software I write and/or my services as a software developer. I will be relocating soon and have been thinking about my options. One idea I have thought of is taking a job in s...
How many of you programmers (I assume almost everyone here at Stackoverflow is) has a blog on your website in support of your software? How often do you write? What do you write about? Do you talk about competitor programs? Do you give away plans of new features that you are adding? Are you worried your competitors will read you blog an...
I have currently working on a desktop application which I intend to make available for purchase. Are there any free or cost effective services/websites which I can use to sell my software and collect payment? ...
Hi, I've developed a little software package and will now go and do the sell to various companies in the target industry. I was wondering what people do to protect their ideas from being stolen by the companies you show the idea to. I'd like to get the company to sign some kind of agreement so they can't reverse engineer or develop th...
What are your experiences with storing consumption tax information in a database (e.g. sales tax, GST etc.). I am looking for elegant and simple methods that will be suitable for Australia, the US and the UK. I am seeking answers from people who have dealt with the more complex intricacies of consumption tax : i.e. the cases where pro...
Is it worth my while letting programmers from Oxford University loose on my projects? What are universities like when you wave confidentiality agreements at them? ...
I want some inputs/tips on quoting the cost to a Client. If I am developing a web site with medium level of complexity and time to develop is say 2 months and 1 resource is required. What is the difference in pricing when the Client 1)does and 2)does not require ownership of the code. ...
When I approach any new web application projects now, I like to offer up the idea of using Silverlight to the client. Often if it is a public facing application I meet a dead-end when the argument of "downloading the Silverlight plugin is an inconvenience to the user". I can use the argument that it would be cheaper to the client to im...
We are (barely a) startup looking for one or more open-source and web-based applications for (1) sales and CRM and (2) enterprise content management (ECM) and web sites. The idea is to have a content system/repository to manage detailed records of products, handle knowledge management, and use this data to power one or many sites or blog...
How do I go about explaining that I am a "Web Application Developer" and not a "Web Site Designer" to prospective clients - without talking myself out of the project?! Often I am approached to "design a web site" for someone where it turns out to be more of a "brochureware" presentation site and less of a real web application. While I...
There is another post on here "How to quote project development cost" where user SpliFF commented: This is not a labor market, you are selling knowledge and solutions. Some solutions are better than others. 10 hours of failing is worth much less than 10 hours of building a killer app. You need to stop thinking about time...
I need to make use of the order comment history in sales order view page,and display the entered value in the order list.Though the textarea is for entering comment about order,I am using it to enter an id type value and would be inserted just once and that value should be displayed in the order grid under the header of the added custom ...
Do you have any ideas on how to successfully market a Point of Sale solution, or any software solution targeted at small businesses for that matter? I'm interested in some kind of dedicated advertising channels, because I presume it wouldn't be of much use to advertise on software websites, as the solution is not targeted at most end-use...
Hello, I have been thinking about the correct approach to face our clients and talk about a Business Intelligence project. I would like to receive your opinion about how to make that approach. Do you have some advices, papers or case studies I should follow? Thanks in advance, Ricardo :) ...
What's the best relational structure for implementing a FIFO product inventory? I need that the product entries be stored grouped by entry date and entry price, but sales from the existing stock be made in a First-In-First-Out manner, in which the product quantity representing the sale would be subtracted from the oldest entries first. T...
Any good software modules, or combination of them, where one can key in sales figures from the excel, then upload them to a web app for user to see? User access need to be controlled to the sales item level, or a group of sales items. Ideally, the web app can hosted for cheap price. Thus, I suppose PHP related modules would be better. ...