WYSINWYG - What You See Is Not What You Get
15 08 2008If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Brief post here from me tonight as I’m going to keeping a close eye on Tom Biscardi make a complete idiot of himself “tonight” my time, “today” USA time. If any of you are following the “news” about this “Georgia Bigfoot” dubbed the “Georgia Gorilla” by Loren Coleman then I’d warn you not to believe a word. I’ve been following this for some weeks (before the media “broke it”) and its’ been a sickening side show that would make Barnum roll in his grave. No. It’s not that I’m some kind of Big Foot watcher, the kind of “undiscovered” critters I’m keen on hearing about relate to my hobby of herpetology. Such as the recently discovered “smallest snake” and “smallest lizard” in the world. Not all undiscovered animals are wacky. But the sideshow coming up over this Georgia stuff should be a ROFL!!
But that’s not what the subject line is referring to. Rather I’m talking about the product I’ve been working on and blogging about here called MixAction. The one from the June 30 Day exercise.
As you’ll remember I declared I wasn’t finished and didn’t go to release. In fact I went as far as to call it a functional prototype. I’m really glad I did this.
The program has changed a heck of a lot since June and the screenshots and discussion I posted here. Some things do indeed remain the same. But some of the premises have changed. For the better.
Now, originally I was going to expand on this right here inside this blog. However. A certain person who shall remain anonymous contacted me to tell me about a forum in which a character of no fixed genetic value as a human being is cloning the application based on the screenshots posted here.
Wow. Is that lame!!
I knew the risk of posting publicly but this is an unreleased, un-marketed software product. My thanks to the person who contacted me as I was able to access the private forum concerned and read the discussion.
All is fair in love and marketing, even if it cost a few dollars in order to access it legally. 
Here’s the kicker. What was shown here in concept is nothing like the product as it stands now. I’m not going to say I contrived this, as I did not. It’s a happy accident. But as it turns out a rather amusing one in some respects and every bit as good as if I’d planted disinformation in the first place.
To my new found competitor - good luck with your endeavor. Despite your comments about me and your vision of “empire” (gotta love the egomaniacs) there’s plenty of room for competition yet and it’s not over until the obesity challenged lady sings.
My other point, directed at my new found admirer is - have you budgeted for what is going to be an expensive product to promote? It’s nature is hardly something people just Google for, or are you still convinced they’re going to beat a pathway to your door?
Now. I’d be a fool to expand on how my own product has changed in light of what is now going on. So I’m not going to do so.
However I’m still going to blog about issues openly as I bump into them. This post is one such issue.
I’m flattered I’m being cloned, so early too. But I’ve got to wonder about the old domain knowledge issue…
Judging by the questions the illustrious boy wonder was asking in said forum I’ve also got to wonder about his coding skills.
But I can’t complain, posting an alpha link to an exe download in a forum and leaving it on your server has to be certifiably stupid.
Scott Kane
Quote of the day:
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings. - Evan Esar
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Bah, I wouldn’t worry about this much. It seems scary, but it isn’t. Remember code is only 5% of the work. More than likely this is some coder who saw your idea and thinks “hey I can do that in 4 days”. They probably can, who cares. It’s going to sit on their hard drive forever while you build a business.
Someone just copying code or UI is so far from a business as to be unworthy of consideration as competition.
Yeah, but it’s just a crappy thing to do and means Scott will share less. I’m enjoying the journey of the app.
I figure some of the extra UI work will be hard to copy. Also, good that you found out now and not 6 months in, after feeding him all your ideas.
Hi Ian and Richard,
Thanks for your comments.
@Ian, I’m not badly cut up over it. I have his exe.
There are significant difference in his interpretation. Toolbar rendering is two colors and not eight for the gradient, menu bar doesn’t blend, panels are bitmaps and don’t resize right, database is XML and messy and so on. The Audio engine he’s using is unlicensed, I know the developer of the engine and confirmed that. If he’s going to sell it he’s in for a shock. There are other things.
@Richard. I’m still going to talk about stuff here, but I’ll just be a little more careful and plan how I tak about it. There are some things this guy can’t do, at least easily. I intend to make the most of that, as I said, the changes I’ve made will take him by surprise, and I think in many ways the product is becoming more like what I saw in the “minds eye” in January than what I ended up implementing in June. A hint, hopefully it’ll drive him nuts, objective orientated Audio has never been done before (or at least never released before) in quite the way I’m doing it. As Ian said, quite rightly, it’s about building a business, not building a product as such. In the coming weeks I’ll be talking about the website too, which has also altered dramatically.
Hi Scott,
Copycats are always a risk at any stage of your software development. I wouldn’t sweat it though; anyone can easily access tools and start but not everyone has a functioning business or the resources to take a product to market successfully.
I wouldn’t sweat your copy cat.
And assuming he’s eventually expecting to receive money for his product there could well be some easily usable legal avenues that you could follow for a royalty claim against his earnings.
I have to admit, I wouldn’t sweat your copycat either. It’s going to happen, if not now, than later. Joel Spolsky actually talked about this at one point (can’t remember when or where) where people have actually copied the direct source code of FogBugz and tried to resell it (just re-skinning the app).
It never works. They’re always behind. They don’t really get it. And more importantly, as has been suggested, the app is only a portion of the business. Even with a better app it doesn’t mean you’ll win