MarkLogic 5 includes the Express license, which allows for small production deployments. I decided to take advantage of that to put onto the web a little hobby site I’ve had in prototype mode for a year or so. I’ve collected lapel pins since 1984. In that time, I’ve gotten more than 150 and I’ve started [...]
Update: Amazon has just announced tiered pricing for Reserved instances, based on how many hours you actually run your instance per month. My assumption in this post is that you want to run a web site 24×7, meaning the new Heavy Utilization pricing helps. Revised numbers: Small: ($276.25/year + $0.02/hour * 8760 hours/year) / 12 months [...]
I have a little story to tell that I hope will inspire someone to pursue an entrepreneurial goal. I came across a notebook recently. I don’t remember exactly when I used this one, but it was somewhere around ’97 or ’98. Back then, I was playing chess on a web site called ItsYourTurn.com. I loved [...]
Early in my career, I decided I was going to build a web site to compete with one that I used, but had some problems with. It seemed like something I could pull off part time, while continuing with my full-time job. At the time, I had little idea of how much work it would [...]
Trovz.com taught me that it’s important to get some core users early. But how do you get them, and how do you make use of them? First things first: what does a core group of early users do for you? First, users will tell you what’s wrong with your site. (Or if they don’t, they’ll [...]
I’ve always known that the visual aspect of software is important, but most of my software development career has been building behind-the-scenes components that no user ever saw. I knew good user interface design was important, I just didn’t know how to design one. Not knowing anything about web development when I started, I began [...]
It’s very difficult to start up a company part time. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it’s tough. This simple equation popped into my head earlier: Productivity = Skill * Commitment * Tools Early in our effort, we actually did pretty well on the Commitment part of the equation. Four of us developers [...]
In April 2007, I started work on what became Trovz.com, a site to help people lend, rent, and buy stuff. On August 19th, 2009, I threw in the towel. I think my first lesson came even before I got started on this idea: the value of an honest friend. I’d previously worked with a guy, [...]