Association of Shareware Professionals

Happy new year everyone! “Lets hope the year of the Tiger treats us better than the year of the Cow did!” , to quote Bill from Webmaster World.

I hope this year the ASP will become even more popular (this is also the main 2010 goal of Jim Coutu, the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of the ASP) and will welcome more software authors.

A few changes have happened inside the ASP board: it has a new Chairman and 3 new members have joined the Board for a two year term. Jim Coutu from GatorData Inc is the new Chairman of the Board of Directors for this year. The three new members who have been elected for the board, that I wish to welcome wholeheartedly, are:

Don Waterfield, senior programmer/analyst at Aqumix, Inc.	Laura Look, project manager at Bitsmithsoft.	Michael C. Battilana, president of Cloanto.

A big thank you on behalf of everyone at ASP goes to the 3 members whose term ended in the Board of Directors, for all the enthusiastic work done in ASP: Henk Devos, Greg Weir and Dave Gjessing.

Get involved!

ASP depends on the commitment of professionals from the software industry. For the ASP to effectively represent you and our software industry we invite your participation. We are actively seeking passionate and capable professionals to join the ASP and serve as officers or committee chairs. Get involved at the ground level and offer your skills to help.

State of the Micro-ISV-osphere

For 2010, I think it would be a good idea to start with an assessment of your current software business situation, in comparison to the shareware industry statistics.

Our colleague Rob Ellison parsed through all the PAD files available in the ASP PAD directory (76,066 products!) and generated answers to some questions regarding the Micro-ISV-osphere state – do check it out, you might find something of interest!

So, what would you like to see ASP doing for you in 2010? Please comment below.

Adriana Iordan Announcements ASP, association, association of shareware professionals, shareware, software

The ASP funded the development of a software certification service called Safer Downloads (SD) through the trial stage.
It now wants to divest itself of this property and is soliciting bids to transfer ownership.

Up for sale, as a package, are the:

• saferdownloads.com (.net & .org) and safeshareware.com domain names (4 total)
• USPTO trademark registration of the seals
• ownership of the proprietary software and content used to power the site
• activity and test records, as they exist on site

All funds offered by initial prospective customers (less than 10) have been returned. Most bank balances have been recovered by the ASP. An existing CD (time deposit) will be recovered soon and so there are no financial assets transferring to buyer under this sale.

NOT for sale are the domain hosting, and DNS, Corporation shell (negotiable), records, and PayPal account. Buyer will be expected to supply own legal, financial, and internet environment. The buyer will also be expected to operate the site independently of the ASP and not imply any ongoing ASP approval, involvement, or participation.

The ASP explicitly reserves the right to not accept any bid for any reason or apply arbitrary ranking offsets. Extent of cash payments to ASP and special pricing for ASP members are two anticipated ranking factors. ASP expectation is that bidding start at $1,000.

Contact VP@asp-shareware.org with SD4SALE anywhere in each email. Such email correspondence may be quoted in whole or in part among ASP officers, directors, and volunteers having access to ASP boardroom. We ask that you register your intent prior to Midnight Dec. 13, 2009.

Dennis Reinhardt Announcements ASP, safer downloads, software

ASP Member Wins ESWC's 2009 Epsilon Award

Emsi Software’s a-squared Anti-Malware Wins ESWC’s 2009 Epsilon

ASP member Christian Mairoll of Emsi Software has won the 2009 Epsilon Award for Software Excellence at the 9th annual European Software Conference. Emsi Software’s a-squared Anti-Malware application was awarded the prize earlier this month at the conference in Berlin, Germany. The Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) was a sponsor of the European Software Conference.

Every year, the Epsilon Award recognizes the best software application from the European microISV and software community. Programs are nominated by software developers, a peer-review process that ensures that only the highest quality software is considered for the award.

In addition to receiving worldwide recognition for its software, Emsi Software was also awarded an artistic creation by a European artist, special prizes from the sponsors of the event and 200 Euros in cash which Emsi Software will donate to the SOS Children’s Villages organization founded in Austria.

The a-squared Anti-Malware Security Suite

The a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 security suite for Windows features a double virus scanner plus behavioral analysis and stops viruses, spyware, Trojans, bots and rootkits from infecting PCs. In 2009, in seven independent head-to-head tests against other anti-malware software, a-squared Anti-Malware was chosen as the most effective.

In the latest test, run by the Malware Research Group, a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 recognized 99.8 percent of the 554,891 malware files used in the test, a higher score than the other 21 applications tested.

While not as well-known as some heavily-advertised security solutions, a-squared Anti-Malware has a big and growing number of victories in independent tests.

The a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 runs under Windows, costs $40 (US) for a one-year single-user license and may be bought securely online from emsisoft.com. You can download a 30-day trial version from the same web address.

10th ESWC to be Held in 2010 in Vienna

The 10th annual European Software Conference will be held in November, 2010 in Vienna, Austria. For additional information about the Epsilon Award and about the European Software Conference, visit euroconference.org or microisv.eu.

Photo Credits: Pictured above are David Boventer (left), the European Software Conference’s Executive Director and Christian Mairoll (right) founder and head of Emsi Software. Many thanks to Dave Collins of Shareware Promotions for providing photographs from the conference. Feel free to check more of Dave’s photos from the 2009 ESWC.

Al Harberg Articles Epsilon Award, ESWC 2009, European Software Conference, software business

Download PADGen 3.1.0.41

ASP announced recently that a new version of PADGen ( 3.1.0.41) is available – utility that helps software developers create portable application description (PAD) files. This is the first major update to the PADGen™ PAD™ generation tool in over a year.

Does your software support Windows 7?  If so, you need to update to the new PADGen.  In addition to Windows 7, the new PADGen supports a streamlined and standardized list of Windows operating systems.

Are you switching to Mac? The new PADGen supports a standard OSX type rather than specific version numbers.  This future-proofs your submissions.  iPhone is new as well.

This support is based on the PAD 3.10, available to download sites for a few months.  While there will be some inevitable transitioning between old and new specs, the future appears to belong to Windows 7 and iPhones so we urge all authors to convert to the platform which supports them: download PADGen 3.1.0.41.

Special thanks to Oliver Grahl for the development of this update.

Dennis Reinhardt Announcements, News

The Educational Software Cooperative (ESC) has started the 9th month of its new ESC Software Marketing Book Club. Each month, ESC members discuss a marketing book in detail. The central theme of each discussion is: How can the ideas in this book help software developers make their businesses more successful?

The October 2009 book selection is “How to Become a Marketing Superstar – Unexpected Rules that Ring the Cash Register” by Jeffrey J. Fox. It’s about using common sense and sound business practices to find and keep customers. It’s about marketing. Most of the concepts in the book apply directly to mISVs who are trying to increase their software sales.

Last month’s Book Club selection was “Then We Set His Hair on Fire – Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-Fame Career in Advertising” by Phil Dusenberry. The title refers to the creation of the Pepsi ad in which Michael Jackson had an unfortunate accident. But the book is about insights, ideas, creativity, advertising, and business.

Phil Dusenberry is the former Chairman of BBDO North America, an advertising giant that managed accounts for General Electric, FedEx, Frito-Lay, Visa, Mars, HBO, Pizza Hut, Polaroid, and Apple Computers.

One of my favorite stories from the book is about soup. The lessons apply to the software industry, too.

Dusenberry’s firm landed the Campbell’s Soup account in the 1980s. Soup sales were flat. BBDO did some serious research, and learned something unusual – lots of consumers had kitchen cabinets full of Campbell’s Soup.

Campbell’s Soup had been advertised for decades as a safety measure. It’s virtually non perishable, and you need to keep it in the house for emergencies. There was a huge disconnect between the purchase rate and the consumption rate for Campbell’s Soup.

What about shareware?

Most software companies ask their prospects, over and over, to download their software. Lots of people listen to this message and act on it. About one hundred times as many people download software as buy it, so the “download” message is being read, understood and acted upon. Just as the buyers of Campbell’s Soup didn’t receive the “eat the soup” message, many shareware downloaders aren’t receiving the “buy it now” message. Read more…

Al Harberg Articles ESC, marketing, software business

Taking screenshots of software programs for website presentations is an essential need for every microISV. It’s often said that an image speaks a thousand words and the screenshot as an image should promote the very essential nature of the product. Looking at ASP members sites around the web I noticed that many vendors use screenshots of various quality.

In many cases, they show a beautiful virtual 3D box shot, but somehow neglect the same eye candy on their product screenshots. What I am talking about here is the use of various artefacts such as not properly clipped window borders, weird shadows or the most obvious “dirt” on background.

So it is important to have pixel perfect virtual boxes (which don’t even exist in reality), but the quality of screenshots of products itself doesn’t matter ? Or are there some other obstacles that make producing nice screenshots a hard task ? Lets have a look. Read more…

Milan Marusinec Articles microisv, screenshots, software, software marketing, user interface

We all know that we should be spending more time reading good books about business, sales and marketing. But it’s difficult to find worthwhile books. Here are some tips for locating the best business books, buying them affordably, and building a library that will pay dividends year after year.
Choosing Good Business Books
Amazon.com has more reviews than other book sites. But it’s often difficult to tell if the book being reviewed is relevant to the software industry in general, and to mISVs in particular.  Many times I’ll buy a marketing book based on amazon.com recommendations, only to find that the book is targeted at larger enterprises. Most of us don’t need to read about strategies that ensure that our marketing staff is communicating effectively with our manufacturing managers. Read more…

Al Harberg Articles association, books, microisv, software

Photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg

… if you had to start your software story again?

As a software industry enthusiast, I am curious to know how others see their business development and what they would change, in hindsight and with a set of brand new 2009 eyes.

Neil on Business of Software Network asked the community a similar question (If you could wave a magic wand…) related to the marketing of software. Answers such as focus on usability, better knowledge of customers poured in (the discussion is still open).

Some even expressed their wish to get into their customers heads completely, or even in their competition’s financial reports, to see if it’s worth outrunning them anyway. Read more…

Adriana Iordan Articles association, software, software business advice

Here we are at another milestone – the ASP Blog launch day . I’m just as excited as you are when thinking of the things we will be able to do via this powerful tool. As a first post, let me tell you more about…

… the idea behind it:

This new resource is intended to help you as a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals share your experience and learn from others on various topics of your interest.

… main benefits you can get from the blog:

I’m sure many of you are advocates of blogs in general. What’s in it for you on this one?  First of all, you will know how others handled various aspects of their business, what was successful and what went wrong. You can learn from their know-how and calibrate your strategy in the right direction, avoiding pitfalls.

Secondly, you can benefit from important advertising / promotion opportunities via the ASP Blog. Don’t get me wrong, we won’t encourage or accept blatant advertising. We encourage real knowledge, tips, ideas. The more you contribute, the more your name will be associated with Software Industry Professionals.

… contributing to the blog:

Any ASP member can post on the blog. You just have to send your request to blog@asp-shareware.org and you will get further details via email. Read more…

Adriana Iordan Announcements association, microisv, shareware, software