This is my first obligatory cat post.

A week ago, after a necessary feline hiatus of more than a decade, our family picked up two kittens that were on track to become barn cats otherwise. These are a couple of males from the same litter and are probably 3 months old, so they are getting closer to adult size but still behave like kittens. Without futher ado, let’s get to the pictures.

Socrates “Socks” Kitty:

Theseus “Theo” Kitty:

Theo and Socks relaxitating:

These two are likely to be fantastic mousers. The toy mouse that would have been hanging down in the second picture was ripped apart within a few minutes. Unfortunately for our budgerigar, they seem to have a very healthy interest in birds, too. Healthy, that is, unless you happen to be a parakeet. (We have not yet seen how they react to bats.)

Before anyone asks: No, I did not name these cats.

Are you all sitty comfty-bold two-square on your botty? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time, there was a game company called Spectrum HoloByte. The product lines that this company developed and published are written in the annals of history: Falcon, Tetris, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Spectrum HoloByte was then lead by a benevolent ruler, who we shall call Gilman. One day, in a bit of overexuberance for which charismatic leaders are known, Gilman announced that his company, with its teams of (necessarily underpaid) game developers, would create the strongest chess program ever. With that decision, the great challenge began.

Soon, Gilman learned that which so many before him had also realized: chess programming is resilient to good intentions and extra resources. He eventually had to admit defeat, but like any good leader, he had an alternative plan. Rather than simply kill the project, Spectrum HoloByte would instead create the funniest chess program ever.

So, at this point National Lampoon was enlisted (at least for the name) and it was decided that “if you can’t beat them, ridicule them.” Lots of artwork, video, sound effects, and voiceovers were added to the game, so the game eventually shipped on twelve 3.5″ floppy disks. (There was also a SKU on CD-ROM, but few consumers actually had CD drives at the time.)

Everything seemed to be going fairly smoothly, if slowly, for the chess game. Then one day during beta testing, a new Senior Software Engineer in the PC Group noticed that the chess being played was particularly poor. I… I mean, he… had done some basic chess programming, so he used his simple program from 5 years earlier and it played against the new game’s highest level and won!

This was clearly not right. Fortunately, one of the wizards of the kingdom, who we shall call Erick, came to the rescue of the product in distress and saved the day. (If you must know, there was a serious bug in the handling of the hash tables. When fixed, the game crushed the old program, as it rightly should.) As with any good fairy tale, the victory was just in time, as the boxes were already printed, and the disk duplication had to commence at once.

Alas, this is where the story takes an unexpected turn and reveals the true conflict. After some 30,000 boxes had been printed for National Lampoon’s ChessMeister 5 Billion and 1, a lawyer informed the producer (and, apparently, everybody else who would take his calls) that the name violated the trademark of their client, whose product was not the strongest chess program, nor the funniest, but perhaps it was the market leader. Perhaps, too, that was why it was the target of the parody.

The test for determining a trademark violation is possibility of confusion. Perhaps the “ChessMeister” part sounded a little similar to some portion of the other name, but the “National Lampoon’s … 5 Billion and 1” part (fully 70% of the name) was unique. There is also a principal known as fair use that covers parody, but the lawyer was kind[sic] enough to provide case law citations to indicate that this may not apply to commercial speech. Spectrum HoloByte relented and agreed to change the name.

Having forced retreat, the lawyer advanced further. Not only was the name a violation, so was the image of the crazy old man with a white beard (because, apparently, nobody had ever seen one of those before). The rumor was that the image used for the other product was modeled after somebody’s grandfather, so they took this as a personal insult. So, the old man had to shave, but that was not all. He also had to lose the “Blisterine” he swilled because, somehow, a company had associated their trademark with it after magically discovering the contents of the inside box artwork for a game that had not yet been released.

After a tough week, Paul, our ChessMeister turned Chess Maniac, shaved his beard, sustaining a cut to his chin, and took to some unidentified purple liquid. (He did resort to a bottle of some disgusting pink stuff, but that, too, was taken from him for legal reasons.) Finally, he made his appearance on the cover of National Lampoon’s Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1.

Here are some box shots (outside and inside cover) of the released game:

Fortunately for everyone involved, and for the sake of the whole economy, the lawyer and his puppeteers forced Spectrum HoloByte to destroy the 30,000 boxes already printed, thus saving consumers across the country, and maybe even around the world, from potential confusion.

Can you image what it might have been like had one of those boxes made it into the wild? If, hypothetically, one of the unfolded ChessMeister boxes had fallen off the truck as it drove away to the landfill, I imagine it would have looked something like this:

Alas, this story does not have a happy ending. Our good liege had his kingdom overrun with vulture capitalists, who dethroned him and ceded his company to others of their breed. Gilman himself then became one of them working on behalf of the CIA. (No, seriously… he does. If you do not believe me, look up In-Q-Tel.)

In an act of fair use, let me end this story with a quote from the user manual: “Any reference to persons living, dead, undead, or just plain boring is purely intentional and done totally in jest. Don’t sue us, please!“

Early last week, we finished a brand new product, Most Popular Solitaire.

Most Popular Solitaire was released by Goodsol Development on August 30th. As the name implies, it contains 30 of the most popular solitaire games. The criteria used for the selection were which games are widely known (such as Klondike, Canfield, and Spider), played most often in Pretty Good Solitaire, or simply have some special significance.

All but one of the games in Most Popular Solitaire are among the 611 games implemented in PGS 10.2 (the current version). The one extra game, Crazy Quilt, involves a layout with cards rotated 90 degrees, a feature not available in PGS until the next version. This title provides an alternative for solitaire players who are overwhelmed by the huge selection of game in other titles (or who just want to spend a little less money).

One benefit of Most Popular Solitaire that will not appear in any feature list for the game is the fact that it uses an interface similar to that from Pretty Good MahJongg and Action Solitaire. The games themselves are very similar to Pretty Good Solitaire, and they even share the same high score lists. However, Most Popular Solitaire was written in Visual C++ and does not use any of the same code as the PGS executable. (It does share library code that is used in the card drawing library we wrote for Goodsol, though.)

The release of this title solidifies Goodsol Development as the undisputed leader in solitaire game software and sets the stage for further collaboration between Goodsol and SophSoft, Incorporated.

Stay tuned…

A significant networking event arrives in ten days.

The Grand Rapids Schmooze 2005 will occur this year from the evening of Thursday, September 15, through the morning of Sunday, September 18. This one is shaping up to be the best shareware schmooze I have yet attended (of only 3).

What is a “schmooze“? A schmooze is an informal networking event for independent shareware authors to meet and socialize. Unlike a conference, there are no sessions or other formal events. Instead, a hotel suite serves as the headquarters, and participants arrive and depart on their own schedule, many staying at the hotel throughout. There are field trips arranged for certain meals and to visit local attractions, but most of the time is spent in conversation at the suite, where drinks and snacks are available.

I am particularly excited about this schmooze because we, SophSoft and Digital Gamecraftâ„¢ are hosting Campfire under the Full Harvest Moon, an optional event on Saturday night. That evening just happens to coincide with the full moon for September, the Harvest Moon, and it provides a decent escape from the confines of the schmooze headquarters. I just have to hope for decent weather so we can enjoy a little fresh air, a nice campfire, and some refreshments.

If you are an independent software developer (or in the industry) or a game developer (established or aspiring), and you are within reasonable (or even unreasonable) traveling distance, I encourage you to consider attending the Grand Rapids Schmooze 2005. It is an excellent way to both network for your business and make good friends.

The giving continues at high levels.

The local radio stations mentioned in my previous post set a goal of 40,000 bottles of water to fill a truck destined for the hurricane survivors. That first truck left on Friday evening as my wife and sons watched. In the following 24 hours, the people of the Lansing area filled a second truck. And a third. And a fourth. And a fifth! They collected over a quarter million bottles of water as donations, and the local stores are running low. Additionally, they also took in, at last report, more than $223,000 in cash donations at one location.

Of course, most of the monetary donations are going directly to the American Red Cross, who are now running radio advertisements asking that donations be sent to local chapters due to the overwhelming response.

Also, today it was announced that Michigan is preparing Fort Custer, near Battle Creek, to receive 500 or 1000 evacuees (depending on the news report) as early as tomorrow. Governor Granholm has offered to accept 10000 people displaced by Katrina, planning to house some at Camp Grayling, where our local Boy Scout troop has stayed for recreation. The Lansing School District, which just closed five schools this summer, is now making these buildings available for housing.

As tragic as the situation is, it is nevertheless gratifying to see the outpouring of generosity.

Sometimes, events remind us of what is truly important.

Please, I urge you to donate to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. You can make financial contributions directly to the American Red Cross. Many local organizations are also collecting various needed items. Here in the Lansing area, a local beer distributor is donating trucks, and the local media has started collecting bottled water from residents (including us) and the first shipment of 40,000 bottles of water is already on the road south. Another relief effort is being organized in Corpus Christi, Texas, by CoffeeCup Software.

If you were fortunate enough not to be directly affected by this killer storm, please reflect on the need and help where you can.

Thank you.

SIC 2005 was a very worthwhile experience.

Although there is always lots of good information in the sessions, the most valuable parts of the Shareware Industry Conference are those derived from networking and the camaraderie among people who work in the same industry. Many of these people have become friends and I look forward to seeing them again, hopefully before next year.

I want to extend big thanks to Mike Callahan (a.k.a., Dr. File Finder) and the rest of the SIAF Board of Directors for putting on such a wonderful event.

As much as I would like to expound on the many lessons learned, excellent people met, and several great people missed, it is too late (or early) to do so. The story goes like this…

I was scheduled to leave Denver via Amtrak to Chicago, en route back to East Lansing. Also on the train were Fred and Jan Clabuesch of SigmaTech Software, heading to Flint, and Tim and Sharon Thousand of Scooter Software, who were driving from Chicago back to Madison, Wisconsin. Since the California Zephyr was not scheduled to depart until 7:25pm, we made plans to wander the Lower Downtown (“LoDo”) area.

To make the very long story short, I was able to eat at Dixon’s Downtown Grill, which had “Solitaire” painted on its windows, and browse the famous Tattered Cover Book Store, which had a display containing Solitaire Coffee and MahJongg Tea. We spent lots more time in conversation before actually taking our bags to Union Station. Our train was hours late, so we were there for about 5 hours.

Making matters worse, the train lost more time on the way to Chicago, so much so that our huge layover was completely lost. Amtrak had to hire a van to drive several of us bound for Michigan to our destinations. As the only rider going to East Lansing, I was able to be dropped off directly at home, but by then it was after 3:00am Tuesday. Unfortunately, Fred and Jan were the last on the van and still had another hour of travel just to get to their car to drive the last stint. Ouch.

That brings us to the present, so while I assimilate all the knowledge I gained, I will just wrap it up with:

Final Common Ground update: Sunday I missed Johnny Rivers, who would have been fun to have seen for the first time, and The Beach Boys, who I saw at Common Ground just a few years ago. Reports are that all the shows were consistently good, but with no home run act this year. The lineup was at least good enough that I hope they can schedule next year on a different week than SIC 2006!

Tonight is Shareware Industry Awards Foundation (SIAF) banquet.

The SIAF banquet is the major event that concludes the Shareware Industry Conference. It features a nice meal, a comedian for entertainment, and then the actual awards ceremony. The highlight of the evening is certainly the presentation of awards to friends and colleagues. This year, there is added anticipation, as three products on which I have worked received SIAF nominations:

• Action Solitaire was nominated for Best Action/Arcade Game
• Pretty Good Solitaire was nominated for Best Non-Action Game
• SnagIt was nominated for Best Graphics Program or Utility

First, though, the evening starts with the annual waiting around by the bar while the room is prepared. Many (and this year, most) attendees dress up for the occasion, though some of us still keep the affair casual. One unnamed person even commented that he always felt comfortable knowing that at least he would be more dressed up than me. I have to say in my defense that I have it on very good authority that this was the way the event was intended to be, so I am upholding tradition.

Once the doors opened, we found some good seats. We were close enough to see well, with chairs facing the stage, but out of “heckle range”: perfect. At our table were Thomas and Anne Warfield of Goodsol Development, Paul Scandariato of Intelli Innovations, Suda Pethe of Centered Systems, and Michael Halls of FileKicker.

After the usual introductory words and a very tasty meal, the comedian came on. This year, it was Bryan Kellen, who was billed on the SIC site as follows: “With his high-energy physical style of comedy he’ll be sure to make you laugh!” Well, I certainly laughed, but he is almost the same age and also grew up in the Midwest, so the references were directed straight at me. There were a few reviews that were not totally positive, so that may be too narrow a target.

There was a short break before host Phil Schnyder (yes, that Phil Schnyder) began the awards ceremony. The first set of awards were the People’s Choice Awards, presented based on customer voting on popular download sites. There are no nominations, per se, so it was a pleasant surprise when Pretty Good Solitaire won the award for Best Non-Action Game the second year in a row. The full list of winners, current and past, are available on the People’s Choice Awards page of the SIC site.

In the second half of the program, the Shareware Industry Awards were presented, in reverse order. Unfortunately, we did not have to wait long for Action Solitaire and, immediately thereafter, Pretty Good Solitaire, to remain nominees in their respective categories. However, several friends won awards, and SnagIt won the award for Best Graphics Program or Utility, though I doubt that my contribution a dozen years ago (literally) had much impact. A full list of 2005 SIA winners and nominees can be found at the 2005 Shareware Industry Awards page.

With the “formal” festivities complete, many of us retired to the hotel bar, so many that the service came to a grinding halt. After a wait that was more easily measured by parts of hours, we managed to get a few drinks. Much of the alcohol at our tables was on SophSoft, but the poor service was working to keep our tab down.

The list of people to whom I owed a drink kept the conversation lively: Sheila Manning of Grand River Software, Mike Stevenson of Shareware Junction, Danny Weidig of AcroVista Software, and, of course, Thomas Warfield. We were also joined by Carl Gundel of Liberty BASIC and Ed Pulliam of OUISoft, among others. A Good Time was had by all!

Unfortunately, the final ice cream run of SIC 2005 became the FINAL ice cream run for Eric Issacson‘s previously trusty old car, so we will end with a short moment of silence…

.

Today is the final day of conference sessions.

Although I would certainly have benefited from attending the Encouraging Sales presentations, I decided that I could also benefit from sleeping a little longer and then checking my email, so that was what I did. However, I made sure that I made it to the Networking session presented by Phil Schnyder of askSam Systems, Jessica Dewell of Happy Hangers and President of the Association of Shareware Professionals, and Ronny Karl of SurfWare Labs. It was everything I expected, plus more, as it became something of an interactive workshop. It was definitely worthwhile, and I have to mention that Andrei Belogortseff, of WinAbility Software, and Thomas Hruska, of CubicleSoft (ShareWrap), were the stars from the audience.

Lunch already? The ESC Luncheon was next on the schedule, presented by the Educational Software Cooperative, and just for fun, the SIAF held it in a different location from the ASP Luncheon, requiring a little bit of hunting to find our food. I sat between Dave Gjessing, of WaverlyStreet and Clintonville Software, and Brandon Staggs, of Akamai Software (SwordSearcher), and the conversation was excellent. The Outstanding Achievement in Educational Software was presented to Kathy Salisbury of Pharos Games.

After lunch, I attended the Design Web Sites to Sell session presented by Dave Collins, of SharewarePromotions, and Dave Sampson, of MixMeister. The latter Dave provided an excellent before and after comparison of his web site redesign with specific comments about various design decisions, and stated the fact that sales improved enough to pay for the change within days. Dave Collins showed several sites as examples of good and bad web design. Of course, there is a little bit of subjectivity, and my neighbor was vocal in his disagreement regarding one of the “good” sites where Dave had admitted to some guidelines being broken.

The next session was the rescheduled eMail Marketing, Newsletters, etc. presentation, which included Thomas Warfield, of Goodsol Development, and Sarah Brook, of CNet. The session was quite good, and although I knew some of the newsletter information from working directly with Thomas, the whole of the session really helped me solidify my decisions regarding newsletters.

The final conference period was a choice between Selling and Licensing Source Code and Visual Studio 2005 for the Independent Developer. I chose to spend time networking and talking business in the hotel lobby rather than attend either session, but all reports from presenters and attendees were that the latter session was excellent, and as it was the last time slot of the conference, they were able to run for an extra hour over their time at the request of the session attendees. It looks like I will actually need to break the seal on my Visual Studio 2005 beta, despite my previous disappointment with VS 2003.

The hotel lobby is fairly quiet now, as most of the conference attendees are preparing for the SIAF Awards Banquet, which will be the subject of my next blog entry.

Common Ground update: Tonight I will be missing Alan Parsons Live Project, who I really wanted to see. I must admit to being a little confused by the selection of Christopher Cross as the opening act, though he is a fine singer that I would probably enjoy hearing.

The conference is now in full swing.

The morning got off to a poor start for me. The Shareware Industry Conference sponsors free breakfasts each day before the sessions begin, and having missed the omelets yesterday, I decided to partake in the waffles on offer today. Unfortunately, when sitting down to eat, my conference badge swung out and landed briefly in the syrup before dropping back onto my shirt, taking the sticky stuff with it. Worse, the waffles were not very tasty in the first place.

The first session for me was Sales & Marketing Strategies, for which one of the presenters was Phil Schnyder of askSam Systems, along with Sharon Housley of NotePage. This was a very entertaining session, as expected with Phil in the room, but Sharon got in a couple of good one-liners, too. As far as content was concerned, it was a very practical session with lots of ideas. Instead of taking loads of notes, I relied on the presentations being on the SIC Conference Sessions CD.

The next session was Visual Studio Shareware Starter Kit, presented by representatives of Microsoft, including Michael Lehman, the “shareware evangelist”, and Dan Fernandez, the project manager. Microsoft said “shareware”! Fairly early in the presentation, I asked the question about requirements and learned that the product was based on .NET, and although Dan clarified that there was an unmanaged C++ version of the kit in development, I inadvertently sparked a wave of mostly negative feedback on Microsoft and their approach to .NET. To his great credit, Michael handled everything with grace and was seriously listening to our issues. (The content of the session, beyond the audience ranting, is worthy of a separate blog entry, so stay tuned.)

Next was the ASP Luncheon presented by the Association of Shareware Professionals, obviously. I spent enough time in the previous session that most of the tables were full by the time I arrived, and the turnout was excellent. I sat between Loren Brewer of Shareware Solutions, who is also the ASP content webmaster, and Kee Nethery of Kagi, who I had never met before. Fortunately for everyone, this year I am no longer an ASP leader and did not get near the microphone (although it could have used a little amplification).

The highlight of the luncheon was the induction of three deserving individuals into the ASP Hall of Fame. The first inductee was Jerry Stern, of Science Translations Software, who has served and continues to serve as the editor of ASPects, the ASP newsletter, for many years. The next inductee was Chris Thornton, of Thornsoft Development, who is a past Chairman of the Board. The final inductee was Steve Pavlina, of Dexterity Software, who was a past President of the ASP. All three have contributed greatly to the organization beyond the brief descriptions above, and they are also wonderful people as well.

The session I attended after lunch was Software Protection Methods, which had some changes in the lineup. Kee Nethery, who I had just met, was on the panel, and Chad Nelson, recently departed from Silicon Realms (Armadillo), was noticeably absent. Rick Bump, of Digital River, took blame for the spyware fiasco with Software Passport during his introduction. The content of the session was good, although it mostly just reinforced the information I already had without providing any revelations.

The following session was Beta Testing Programs, which is one of the topics on which I would feel qualified to present, rather than merely attend. There were a couple of good presentations by Kohan Ikin, of Namesuppressed, and Dave Sampson, of MixMeister. It was nice to hear how others approach their beta testing, and the fundamental principal is that there is a beta test. However, I found myself disagreeing with a few of the specifics of Dave’s approach. In particular, he indicated that one should discourage feature suggestions from beta testers, while we value any information obtained from testers, even if we have no intention of making changes (in the current version).

For the final session of the day, I got up to attend OutSourcing, where Phil Schnyder could continue the running joke from last year that I charge less than outsourcing to India. However, on the way out of the room, Becky Lash of Epic Trends gave me a copy of her handout for the User Interfaces session. It had so much practical information that I actually returned for that session instead. The other presenters were Greg Weir, of Tucows, and Sue Pichotta, of Ace Icons, and the information was great.

This session had a special guest, heralded with a loud and very weird siren as Greg was finishing his presentation. As Sue began her discussion of icons, the public address system announced that a tornado had been spotted in the area, and that we were to climb under the sinks in our rooms. Shortly thereafter, we were ushered out of the conference rooms to the lower level. A few conference attendees were clearly freaked out, but those of us from tornado-prone areas… not so much. In fact, Sue tried to lead a large contingent back to the conference rooms, but the hotel staff was having none of that. After the “all clear”, though, most of us returned to hear the rest of her presentation.

The first official activity for the evening was Exhibit Night, which provided food, information, prizes, and, of course, more T-shirts for my wardrobe. The ASP booth was giving away prizes all evening, and I won a “goodie bag” with a shirt and discount from Promaxum, as well as a free license of Virtuoza OverSpy, which was nice considering I have not been eligible (as a Director) for the past several years. I worked the ASP booth for the last 10 minutes or so, as the “human megaphone”, bringing attention to the final drawing for the remaining ASP prizes, including some very valuable software donated by Borland.

This was followed by a dessert buffet sponsored by Dr. File Finder and NotePage. There was also an unofficial activity off site this evening, and after breaking down the booth, I had to choose between free cheesecake and free beer, and the cheesecake won. The discussions during and after the buffet were excellent, and many of the luminaries of the shareware industry had conversations until late into the evening. This certainly beats loud music in a crowded bar, in my book.

Common Ground update: Tonight I am missing Grand Funk Railroad, which was one of the big draws for me this year. I have a report that the opening act, Silvertide, did a great deal of moving around, and even climbed the scaffolding, giving the security guys fits.