Competition: The WINNER

Previous Topic Next Topic
 
classic Classic list List threaded Threaded
13 messages Options
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Competition: The WINNER

Andy Bower-3
Folks,

Okay, just to put you out of your collective miseries, the winner is
Guillermo Sapaya who guessed 4. Guillermo, well done! You obviously
have your finger on the pulse of Internet marketing and will be well
placed for a top job at any of the forthcoming Web 2.0 companies.
Please e-mail me your address and size of shirt required (M, L, XL: I'm
afraid we have no S sizes left).

So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
Frankly, even I was surprised by the poor response which is around 0.2%.

There has been a thread on comp.lang.smalltalk recently calling for
more free books on Smalltalk to be written. Someone asked why an author
would spend significant time writing a book for no payment and someone
else replied that if people read the free copy on the net then many
would later buy the printed copy. From our experience with the "pay
later" form of marketing I would say that, in reality, this would be a
non-starter.

PS: I think Travis Kay who guessed 201 also deserves a shirt for
outrageous optimism (that would a 10% conversion rate). Whilst you are
soon to be one of the more stylish people waiting at your local bus
stop I don't think you need apply for any top marketing roles just yet
:-). Please send us your address and size of shirt required, Travis.

Best regards,

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Steve Alan Waring
Hi Andy,

> So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
> Frankly, even I was surprised by the poor response which is around 0.2%.

I tried searching for DCE on download.com but didn't see it. I would
guess a listing on download.com would generate about 50 downloads a day
... much higher if the editors take a shine to it. The conversion rate
would be very low, but it is their bandwidth and who knows ... maybe
people are getting tired of downloading yet another P2P client.

Another thought is that the text on the Splash screen, that promotes
the professional version and nags for a donation, is very small. My
eyes just "skip over it" as it looks like the stock standard boring
stuff found in most splash screens. The only thing that really stands
out is the green next button. (the pictures are nice!).

DCE users probably won't like me saying this, but everything that I
have seen and read suggests that the more crippled/nagging a free
version is, the higher the conversion rate.

Looking at DCE (albeit only for 5 minutes), I don't think it is obvious
just how crippled it is without the RB UI. Populating the refactoring
menus with commands that open an information screen that explains what
they are missing could help.

Thats my 2c!
Steve


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Esteban A. Maringolo
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy Bower escribió:
> Folks,
>
> Okay, just to put you out of your collective miseries, the winner is
> Guillermo Sapaya who guessed 4. Guillermo, well done! You obviously
> have your finger on the pulse of Internet marketing and will be well
> placed for a top job at any of the forthcoming Web 2.0 companies.
> Please e-mail me your address and size of shirt required (M, L, XL: I'm
> afraid we have no S sizes left).

Congratulations Guille!
We're a winning team!
In just one week we won a stylish OA polo shirt and a Blue Book! :-D

Our football team didn't win the world cup, but at least we have
something to celebrate!

Regards,

--
Esteban.


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Guillermo Sapaya
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy,
I'm very happy!!!
I will be sending you my address in private!!!
It seems to me that my smalltalkers folks here in Argentina will be
interested in get a shirt too (otherwise they will envy to me :-)).
The problem is the cost (remember that the relation Euro vs Peso
argentino is 1 to 4).

Best regards!!!
Go Dolphin!!!

Guillermo Sapaya


Andy Bower escribió:

> Folks,
>
> Okay, just to put you out of your collective miseries, the winner is
> Guillermo Sapaya who guessed 4. Guillermo, well done! You obviously
> have your finger on the pulse of Internet marketing and will be well
> placed for a top job at any of the forthcoming Web 2.0 companies.
> Please e-mail me your address and size of shirt required (M, L, XL: I'm
> afraid we have no S sizes left).
>
> So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
> Frankly, even I was surprised by the poor response which is around 0.2%.
>
> There has been a thread on comp.lang.smalltalk recently calling for
> more free books on Smalltalk to be written. Someone asked why an author
> would spend significant time writing a book for no payment and someone
> else replied that if people read the free copy on the net then many
> would later buy the printed copy. From our experience with the "pay
> later" form of marketing I would say that, in reality, this would be a
> non-starter.
>
> PS: I think Travis Kay who guessed 201 also deserves a shirt for
> outrageous optimism (that would a 10% conversion rate). Whilst you are
> soon to be one of the more stylish people waiting at your local bus
> stop I don't think you need apply for any top marketing roles just yet
> :-). Please send us your address and size of shirt required, Travis.
>
> Best regards,
>


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Udo Schneider
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy Bower wrote:
> So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
> Frankly, even I was surprised by the poor response which is around 0.2%.
What about making a special "deal" .... we'll pay (a good price) for the
shirt and get a DCE license "for free" ;-)

I at least would order 4 of them ... (assuming each shirt is less than
50€ :-).

CU,

Udo


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Andreas Wacknitz
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:[hidden email]...

> Folks,
>
> Okay, just to put you out of your collective miseries, the winner is
> Guillermo Sapaya who guessed 4. Guillermo, well done! You obviously
> have your finger on the pulse of Internet marketing and will be well
> placed for a top job at any of the forthcoming Web 2.0 companies.
> Please e-mail me your address and size of shirt required (M, L, XL: I'm
> afraid we have no S sizes left).
>
> So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
I am a little bit disappointed by these numbers. IMO it shows the momentary
irrelevance
of Smalltalk. As I am a Smalltalk fan, I don't like the situation.
I guess it is caused by the fact that many (if not most) software developers
do not
get what Object Orientation is really about and thus do not catch the power
of Smalltalk's way
of OO in combination with dynamic typing...

There are some things that bother me regarding Dolphin Smalltalk or, in
other words, where you (Object Arts)
can improve the situation:
1. Your Web presence is a little bit boring and static. This starts with
the initial appearance on www.object-arts.com: a single graphics and nothing
else.
And the last message is of January 27th, nearly half a year old!
2. There are very few releases (either major or minor ones). Especially as a
customer I would like to have
more frequent releases of bug fixes.
3. Marketing: I haven't seen a single advertisment so far (eg. in a
magazine)
4. Missing documentation: The situation has improved from Dolphin 5
(non-existing) to Dolphin 6 (some),
still I am missing both decent beginner's and advanced information (eg. what
are ##(...) expressions).

Nethertheless Dolphin 6 is a great product and I think it should have a
greater audience.

BTW: I am already a Professional user and would be happy to pay another 500
or 1000 Euros
for a Linux (or even better: Solaris) version of Dolphin ;-)

Andreas


pax
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

pax
Hmmm,

Poor marketing is a valid reason for the lack of Smalltalk becoming
mainstream. However, this goes back to the days of Digitalk,Parc Place
and Visual Age having playing the role of "Big Gun" for large corporate
contracts and projects.

The high prices associated with Smalltalk has kept the ordinary
programmer out of Smalltalk. Lets not forget the poor corporate
management for Digitalk and Parc Place which no longer exist.

Smalltalk was never marketed to the masses but new blood in the
Smalltalk market such as Dolphin have made great strides in creating a
great development environment in addition to affordable cost.

Unfortunately, documentation and libraries still suffer from a lack of
attention.
Just my two cents...


Pax


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Andy Bower-3
In reply to this post by Steve Alan Waring
Steve,

> I tried searching for DCE on download.com but didn't see it. I would
> guess a listing on download.com would generate about 50 downloads a
> day ... much higher if the editors take a shine to it. The conversion
> rate would be very low, but it is their bandwidth and who knows ...
> maybe people are getting tired of downloading yet another P2P client.

Frankly, I've never paid much attention to Download.com. I never really
saw the point of going to a third party site for download hosting
rather than finding what you want via Google (say) and then going
straight to the source.

However, it's obvious that many people do see the utililty of such
sites so I've created an entry for DCE on Download.com which should
appear in 15 days or so. Thanks for the advice.

> Another thought is that the text on the Splash screen, that promotes
> the professional version and nags for a donation, is very small. My
> eyes just "skip over it" as it looks like the stock standard boring
> stuff found in most splash screens. The only thing that really stands
> out is the green next button. (the pictures are nice!).

Thanks. So far the effort spent on the DCE splash screen has by no
means been repaid so we're loathe to fritter away more time in this
area. It's my belief that DCE is actually too good (except possibly in
the area of documentation/tutorials, as always) but it's difficult to
know how to cripple it further (i.e. what to take out) to force people
to consider the Pro version.

> DCE users probably won't like me saying this, but everything that I
> have seen and read suggests that the more crippled/nagging a free
> version is, the higher the conversion rate.

I agree. The difficulty with Smalltalk (becaase it is so open) is that
is quite hard to add a nag that is removable on registration that isn't
also fairly easy to hack past. We looked at a couple of ways of doing
this before deciding against it.

> Looking at DCE (albeit only for 5 minutes), I don't think it is
> obvious just how crippled it is without the RB UI. Populating the
> refactoring menus with commands that open an information screen that
> explains what they are missing could help.

Yes, that's a good idea and possibly one for a future release. Also I
think we need a DPRO trial version.

Best regards,

--
Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Jeff M.
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy,

As a (former) shareware developer, and a user of DCE, I can understand
the frustration. I'm not one of the donations, but I do plan on making
the purchase to the Pro version as soon as I have a little free time to
work on my next project. I think Dolphin is perfect for it. I wonder
how many users of the CE are in the same boat I am (waiting/planning to
purchase, and therefor don't donate)? Donations are "tough", because
you are targetting a group of people that aren't going to pay/upgrade
to begin with; they obviously don't find it useful enough to buy, so is
it useful enough to use regularly?

Dolphin is (without a single doubt) the *best* Smalltalk IDE I've had
the pleasure of downloading and working with. The fact that CE has just
about everything the Professional version has is fantastic, and I hope
this isn't going to change. Even if people don't donate/purchase
Dolphin, you are exposing a lot of people to Smalltalk that otherwise
would only have access to it through Squeak. I have nothing against
Squeak, but it doesn't scream "I can make professional software with
this!" Dolphin does.

It's a great product. I (and many others) will be using it soon. Just
don't let lack of donations get you down.

Jeff M.


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Andreas Wacknitz
In reply to this post by Andreas Wacknitz
"Andreas Wacknitz" <[hidden email]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:[hidden email]...

>
> "Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:[hidden email]...
>> Folks,
>>
>> Okay, just to put you out of your collective miseries, the winner is
>> Guillermo Sapaya who guessed 4. Guillermo, well done! You obviously
>> have your finger on the pulse of Internet marketing and will be well
>> placed for a top job at any of the forthcoming Web 2.0 companies.
>> Please e-mail me your address and size of shirt required (M, L, XL: I'm
>> afraid we have no S sizes left).
>>
>> So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
> I am a little bit disappointed by these numbers. IMO it shows the
> momentary irrelevance
> of Smalltalk. As I am a Smalltalk fan, I don't like the situation.
> I guess it is caused by the fact that many (if not most) software
> developers do not
> get what Object Orientation is really about and thus do not catch the
> power of Smalltalk's way
> of OO in combination with dynamic typing...
>
> There are some things that bother me regarding Dolphin Smalltalk or, in
> other words, where you (Object Arts)
> can improve the situation:
> 1. Your Web presence is a little bit boring and static. This starts with
> the initial appearance on www.object-arts.com: a single graphics and
> nothing else.
> And the last message is of January 27th, nearly half a year old!
> 2. There are very few releases (either major or minor ones). Especially as
> a customer I would like to have
> more frequent releases of bug fixes.
> 3. Marketing: I haven't seen a single advertisment so far (eg. in a
> magazine)
> 4. Missing documentation: The situation has improved from Dolphin 5
> (non-existing) to Dolphin 6 (some),
> still I am missing both decent beginner's and advanced information (eg.
> what are ##(...) expressions).

I have to add one point to this list:
5. Missing breakpoints: "self halt." isn't really comfortable and disturbs
version control
as packages are marked as changed.


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Christopher J. Demers
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

>
> Okay, just to put you out of your collective miseries, the winner is
> Guillermo Sapaya who guessed 4. Guillermo, well done! You obviously
> have your finger on the pulse of Internet marketing and will be well
> placed for a top job at any of the forthcoming Web 2.0 companies.
> Please e-mail me your address and size of shirt required (M, L, XL: I'm
> afraid we have no S sizes left).
>
> So that is a total of $120 from 4 people out of 2000 downloads.
> Frankly, even I was surprised by the poor response which is around 0.2%.
...

That is interesting and unfortunate, however some people may have tried out
the DCE and then opted to purchase the Professional version without making a
donation.

It feels like something seems to have significantly increased the traffic in
this news group.  I don't even have time to read all the posts like I used
to.  I would tend to think that might be due to the DCE version.  Perhaps
people are working with the DCE version now and if they develop something
they really like and want to deploy it, you may see some additional
purchases of the professional version down the road.

Are you going to sell any shirts? ;)

Chris


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Eric Winger
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy Bower wrote:

> Steve,
>
>> I tried searching for DCE on download.com but didn't see it. I would
>> guess a listing on download.com would generate about 50 downloads a
>> day ... much higher if the editors take a shine to it. The conversion
>> rate would be very low, but it is their bandwidth and who knows ...
>> maybe people are getting tired of downloading yet another P2P client.
>
> Frankly, I've never paid much attention to Download.com. I never really
> saw the point of going to a third party site for download hosting
> rather than finding what you want via Google (say) and then going
> straight to the source.
>
> However, it's obvious that many people do see the utililty of such
> sites so I've created an entry for DCE on Download.com which should
> appear in 15 days or so. Thanks for the advice.
>
>> Another thought is that the text on the Splash screen, that promotes
>> the professional version and nags for a donation, is very small. My
>> eyes just "skip over it" as it looks like the stock standard boring
>> stuff found in most splash screens. The only thing that really stands
>> out is the green next button. (the pictures are nice!).
>
> Thanks. So far the effort spent on the DCE splash screen has by no
> means been repaid so we're loathe to fritter away more time in this
> area. It's my belief that DCE is actually too good (except possibly in
> the area of documentation/tutorials, as always) but it's difficult to
> know how to cripple it further (i.e. what to take out) to force people
> to consider the Pro version.
>
>> DCE users probably won't like me saying this, but everything that I
>> have seen and read suggests that the more crippled/nagging a free
>> version is, the higher the conversion rate.
>
> I agree. The difficulty with Smalltalk (becaase it is so open) is that
> is quite hard to add a nag that is removable on registration that isn't
> also fairly easy to hack past. We looked at a couple of ways of doing
> this before deciding against it.
>
>> Looking at DCE (albeit only for 5 minutes), I don't think it is
>> obvious just how crippled it is without the RB UI. Populating the
>> refactoring menus with commands that open an information screen that
>> explains what they are missing could help.
>
> Yes, that's a good idea and possibly one for a future release. Also I
> think we need a DPRO trial version.
>
> Best regards,
>

Couple thoughts.

I just downloaded the dolphin community edition and frankly I didn't
even notice the Help Out section on the web page. Until I read this
thread. You might consider putting at the top of the page or at least
make it more visible near the download links. Maybe I'm just a consumer
conditioned to not see requests for money.

Here's another idea. What if the donation was instead treated like a
downpayment toward a professional purchase. I give $15 now knowing that
if I'm happy and want to be professional later, I'll get a discount.

btw - Since I just gave a donation, if I guess 5, do I win? :)

Eric


Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
|

Re: Competition: The WINNER

Chris Uppal-3
In reply to this post by Andy Bower-3
Andy,

> It's my belief that DCE is actually too good (except possibly in
> the area of documentation/tutorials, as always) but it's difficult to
> know how to cripple it further (i.e. what to take out) to force people
> to consider the Pro version.

I don't, myself, think that the ActiveX wizard is needed in the free edition --
it "feels" (if you see what I mean) like a pro-grade tool, that I'd expect to
pay for.

    -- chris