Developing eWrite

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eWrite has been around for a number of years, operating comfortably providing software and support to a number of businesses in Ireland.

Earlier this year I started something which I’ve wanted to do for some time, I begun to make smaller versions of the various tools we have created along the way focusing on content management, email marketing and protecting web forms from spam.

A new site was created at http://www.ewritecork.com to promote these new products. I want this site to accurately reflect the work and features we have put into the applications we have developed. To me, creating a bullet point list of the features and benefits for an application is a a good way to explain the useful points of a programme, though this isn’t going to impress anyone.

When explaining or ’selling’ a programme, are there recommended titles to use, such as introduction, features, testimonials, price?

Are there any sites out there that are great at explaining and promoting their software?

Ironically, the broadband went down as I was writing this post so I have to post using Dial-up.

Almost every day I need to FTP files up to remote servers. For as long as I can remember, files and folders almost always fail to upload correctly. Whats worse is that it can sometimes LOOK like a folder has uploaded correctly but a couple of the files will have swapped titles (or content depending on how you want to look at it). This has gotten me into trouble a couple of times and led to needless reworking.

A few months back, my father and I wired CAT 5e cable around the house from the attic where the connection enteres the house to the office where I work. Before this I was using a wireless connection on my desktop PC. Using a wired connection improved things, but didn’t fully fix it.

My broad band is provided by Airwave Internet. They provide me with a 1 MB upload/download for €60 Euro per month compared to around €45 per month for a 3 MB line from Eircom while living in Cork.

I wasn’t going to mention the broadband providers name, but as a result of these tests I can see they’re not the problem at all despite their service going offline all afternoon today.

I ran the Blacknight speed test in a couple of different scenarios on my LAN between 5pm and 6pm today. (Just before the broadband went down, coincidence??)

From my desktop, using a CAT 5e wired 100 MBPs connection through a Linksys BEFSR41 V3.1 router:

Speed test results:

Advanced Statistics:

Connection Summary:

From my desktop, using a CAT 5e wired 100 MBPs connection through a Linksys WRT54G V4 wireless router (latest firmware)

Speed test results:

(Messed up the Statistics screenshot for this test)

Connection Summary:

From my Dell Vostro 1500 Laptop using 54MBPs G Wireless through a Linksys WRT54G V4 wireless router (latest firmware)

Speed Test Results

Advanced Statistics:

Connection Summary:

From my Dell Vostro 1500 Laptop, directly connected to the connection provided by Airwave Internet

Speed Test Results

Advanced Statistics:

Connection Summary:

So it seems my routers are at fault, both of em. Since I can’t bring my desktop machine up into the attic to work every day, I must go get a new router. I’ve thinking of getting the Netgear wireless router with multiple internal ariels for stonger signal strenth. Anyone out there use one with good results?

I’ve been thinking about putting a little box on this blog showing a counter of the number of users of eWrite products, would this fit with being open or is it vain or pointless?

Some of the products have low numbers, so I don’t think its going to be too vain.

Discuss..

This post isn’t really related to developing eWrite or anything, but I just got the urge to blog about some loose ideas, prompted by reading Iarfhlaith’s recent post entitled ‘New Ideas to Improve URL Shortening‘. I was impressed by the post because it openly gave some great ideas that anyone could potentially take and run off with to create a great web app.

In relation to the URL shortening, A good addition might be to create a site something like short.ie with user profiles. An example profile location could be www.short.ie/gordon which would show a list of all the URLs I have shortened, along with their full URL and the short link in the form short.ie/gordon/ShortPostTitle. The links might also contain a description would could be retrieved automatically from the meta description of the page being linked to. Google Analytics could be used to track stats etc.

The main thing here would be the short link. Rather than a short link like http://url.ie/g00, the link would be http://short.ie/gordon/ShortPostTitle where ‘ShortPostTitle’ would be a very short title using popular SMS texting shorthand abbreviations instead of the less description ‘g00′ in the example.Sure, its that bit longer, but I agree with Iarfhlaith, Id be happy with a slightly longer URL link if it gave me an idea of what I was about to click.

This process could be taken a step further by providing an RSS feed that friends could share in Google Reader or even shared bookmarks in Firefox. Hmm, Im almost at the point of convincing myself to start creating a site like this.. Would it be used?

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This brings to a mind an earlier site I created called ‘Yell if it changes‘. The site lets you know by email or RSS if a site has been updated, if a site has increased or decreased the number of incoming links or if Google page rank has improved. There are over 260 sites being watched for various changes. I love this project and I think it has great potential, especially in giving stats on how often sites change, when Google causes Page Rank changes and when surges in incoming links happen.

Unfortunately I don’t spend much time working on this site, I can’t afford the time on it. I wonder if it might be worthwhile hiring a couple of people on contract to add a few features to it.

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Since I started this blog, I’ve found myself commenting more on other peoples blogs. All of a sudden I have opinions it seems It got me wondering about the comments I’ve already made on peoples blogs. Are there means of aggregating these comments together so I can quickly see where I have commented and go back to them from time to time to read further comments? Not all blogs have the ability to email you if further posts are made.

It might be useful to combine this with the URL shortening above, any comments I make on a blog could automatically be shortened and added to my profile.

Perhaps it might also have a use for the ‘Yell if it changes site’, to email me if there are more comments on a blog post.

Anyway, just throwing those ideas out there. Perhaps someone can make some use out of them.

Tomorrow morning I will be emailing a potential client who wants to use eWrite for their website to tell them I can’t help them.

Their site is using ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server. I currently only have eWrite Lite using PHP and mySQL.

So my options are to let them know that I don’t have a version of eWrite that will work on their site or else try to get them to host their site with Blacknight.

I’ve contacted their service provider in England. They don’t have mySQL or PHP on their servers and don’t plan to any time in the future. Bummer.

Im fairly sure they won’t want to change their site hosting as they have a close relationship with their current providers and also have other website related databases hosted there.

To add insult to injury, when I demoed eWrite Lite to them they expressed an interest in franchising eWrite Lite in relation to a web design company they are involved in. This would be great for eWrite Lite but alas I don’t think they’ll be jumping up and down about it right now.

As a result of this I’m wondering should I build a .NET version of eWrite Lite? I worked with ASP long before I worked with PHP and so getting into .NET wouldn’t be beyond me. I’m out of the loop on MS stuff though so wondering what costs I will be facing if I go down this road. Do I need a licence of any kind to write .NET apps? Can anyone recommend a good IDE for .NET ? I wonder is there an app out there to convert PHP code to .NET code which might save some time

Looks like I tried to optimize before I learned to walk. I started fiddling about with sub domains and permalinks a bit too soon resulting in broken links in various places.

On the upside, I’ve added a nice new category called ‘un-development’ for documenting any future mishaps, I’m sure there will be some.

Mainly writing this post to see if it posts correctly and the links are OK.