Software Development as a Business - The Right Time to Take the Plunge

September 7, 2008 at 1:22 am · Filed under software

The Right Time
The signs are ominous. And they are everywhere.

With every passing day, more and more consumers are switching to the online route for transacting businesses. With every passing moment, businesses are reporting a jump of few points in the transactions that people are doing online. Quite a number of offline purchases nowadays are a result of customer reading up on information about the products on the web, or a result of research that they have conducted through search engines, forums, blogs, yahoo groups, and the like.

Couch potatoes are displacing their tastes of the newspaper, the radio, and the soap opera with online surfing and chatting. This displacement has reached to such an extent that media publications and Radio & TV stations are now forced to rework their strategies to leverage the power of the internet: if you cannot keep them hooked to your traditional platform, make a website your platform!

Footfalls in malls and shopping plazas are geared more towards window shopping than actual purchases - as people try to connect what they saw on the web with the actual look and feel of the product with their eyes and fingers. Yes, there is a very perceptible shift in the way the world is doing business.

Ideas, Ideas, and Software
Whatever be the business that you may be in, you know what it takes to jazz it up to give it that immediate, competitive edge which will appeal to the customer who will bypass all your rivals in favor of your product or service. It is that spark of an idea. It is your creative and innovative ideas that sets your business apart from the rest of the crowd. Driving this particular revolution of the internet too are *ideas*. Transforming creative, juicy ideas, formed as an abstract thought, into practical, workable implementation that are useful to everyone, is a business mantra that works for software business, too.

Whether it is Apple’s Macintosh or Microsoft’s Windows Vista, whether it is Nokia’s mobiles and cellphones or remotely-controlled domestic devices such as the oven or the coffee-maker or the hot shower, it is ideas that rule the world. Things have become so easy now that the moment an idea pops into your mind, the wherewithal to build a software based on it is readily available, right there on your desktop!

Entrepreneur! Avail of this opportunity
This is where you, an entrepreneur, come in. The omnipresence of computers and internet connectivity all around us cries for even better computer softwares that will improve the life of customers as well as bring moolah to your bank. All that you need to do - if you haven’t done already, that is - is to plunge into the business of software.

Just like any other business, the business of developing and marketing software is not an easy cakewalk; the success rate here is as high or as low as any other business. Add to this is the phobia that most entrepreneurs harbor about technology in general, and computer software in particular. The word “Software” brings to mind a world full of high-tech stuff that one reads about in computer magazines: it is supposedly a world of “tough” (sic) computer programming languages, and techno-geeks strutting around mouthing all that mumbo-jumbo. It becomes difficult for any businessperson, otherwise very, very worldly-wise and resourceful, to overcome the mindset of being an outsider to this altogether different world.

And yet, there is this opportunity that is waiting to be exploited.

Just like any other business, the business of software has its own unique models and style of doing things. But at the very basic basics, the business models and style remain essentially the same. It is just a matter of your opening up to the possibility of being able to understand the nitty-gritty of what it involves.

Taking you to Software Success
There is a very good book that can get you started on the business model of software. This book by Benjamin Prater is titled - “Software Secrets Exposed!” - with the subtitle - “The Ultimate How-To Guide for Building Your Own Software Empire”. The book was written in 2001: this was the time when the dotcom bust was hogging headlines. Not the perfect time to launch a book that extols how to build a software empire, eh? I do not know how the book fared then, though I did come across links to the book in the search engines. Yet, it contains gems of wisdom and insight that you can make most use of.

Have you already tried software development before? Was there any aspect of this business that made you uncomfortable? Or have you tasted failure in this venture earlier? While I empathize with you, I know for sure that if you couple the wealth of your hindsight with the experience distilled in the pages of this book, you can still make another go at it, and succeed this time.

Another interesting aspect of the book that I would like to highlight here, without crossing the threshold that makes this piece a blatant advertisement, is a separate chapter on how to go about generating, or in the author’s words, “incubating” ideas. This particular section is actually useful for not only software, but also for any other business, since hitting upon the right innovative idea is the key to obtaining a competitive edge anywhere.

Final Word
Explosion of the internet, change in lifestyles and buying trends, people preferring to work from homes rather than commuting to work, online funds transfers, drop-shipping, are all hallmarks of an ongoing renaissance unleashed in the past two decades. This renaissance requires ideas to feed itself: ideas that require to be dressed in software, in order to be implemented. This is the right time for Entrepreneurs to take the plunge. And generate wealth by truckloads.

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DVR’s

September 6, 2008 at 1:04 am · Filed under software

DVR is a term heard quite frequently these days. What exactly is DVR? DVR stands for digital video recording. Compared to conventionally used devices like tape recorders, VCRs, or time lapse recorders, the DVR is entirely digital and provides many features that are required for high quality data storage and retrieval. It is no wonder that this technology has found many applications in various fields.

Instead of recording data on tapes, DVRs convert data into MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 format and stores it on a hard disk. A typical DVR consists of a device that stores data that forms the hardware and software in the form of a service that provides programming information and the ability to encode varying data streams derived from single or diverse input devices.

DVR has touched many fields including television, surveillance and monitoring, motion pictures and logistics to name a few. DVRs are commonly used in television to pause a live TV show, revert back a few seconds for an instant replay. It even lets you skip thorough unwanted commercials. In these cases, a DVR records directly to a hard disk drive.

The advantage of DVR is storage and retrieval. Images, motion pictures and related data are converted into digital format and stored. The retrieval is quite easy and there is no loss of quality or data. There are essentially two types of DVRs. One is platform dependent like the ones that use personal computers. A variant of this is platform independent that are commonly referred to as stand alone DVRs. The former gets data from a device such as a camera and then handles the information and passes it on to the storage device located on the PC.

Stand-alone DVR is an all in one system consisting of a cabinet and vital sub devices such as circuit boards, power supply, CPU and all DVR related components. Usually, one board encompasses all this. The software is embedded inside an integrated circuit chip. Stand-alone systems are less complicated and are quite easy to use. The hardware-software configuration ensures optimal performance and eliminates the possibility of conflict between hardware and software.

Platform based DVRs often come with more advanced features and can be upgraded, and\or modified. As add on devices can be changed, DVRs can deliver customized performance depending on the environment. These devices are often used in the banking, retail and transport sectors among others. However, due to the addition of hardware, device conflicts can arise adversely affecting the whole system.

DVRs are also available to enhance your TV viewing pleasure. These DVRs allow you to record up to 4 programs simultaneously. One can also view up to two programs at a time. With this technology, one can pause a live broadcast, replay, sequence and even skip commercials. Unlike VCRs where the amount of programming that can be recorded is limited, a DVR can store up to 20 hours or more of television programming depending on the storage capacity.

DVR has become a mini revolution. In homes, people are now controlling what they view. In offices, storage of thousands of hours of digital high quality surveillance data is at hand and faster data acquisition, transfer and retrieval. In the future, DVR will employ many new people, and many new areas including monitoring pollution levels, weather watch, etc. will be explored.

DVR provides detailed information about DVR, DVR reviews, DVR cards, DVR software and more. DVR is the sister site of CD Copier Software.

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Basics to Internet Marketing

September 5, 2008 at 1:08 am · Filed under software

The internet is a place where people often throw darts into the darkness hoping that someday, somehow they’ll hit a bulls eye. Most people nurture a mistaken notion that huge amount of traffic can eventuate good business without paying any attention to what sort of people are coming to the website. This is the worst sort of Internet Marketing.

No matter how revolutionary your product or service is, unless it is backed by a well-thought-out Internet Marketing strategy, it is as good as being non-existent. You have got to be as sure as any of the conventional brick and mortar businesses.

Breaking the great wall of non-presence is the biggest challenge one faces while trying to set up an online business. When you set up your online shop, you don’t know them and they don’t know you. You need to make your presence felt; you need to set up an identity for yourself that tells your visitors that you are not an unemployed weirdo trying to dupe visitors from your dark and unheated basement. Your website should seem to represent a genuine business that can really deliver. How can you do that?

==> HAVE A WELL-MADE WEBSITE <==

A good website is quintessential to your online presence. It is your online office; people come there and draw an impression. Even the first glance can make or break a great business transaction. Your website should be neat and clean, It should be accessible to people of all abilities and it should have a well-structured navigation system. There should be no broken links and all the essential pages should be there.

==>> CONTENT IS, OF COURSE, KING <<==

If having a decent website is important, then so is having the right kind of content on your pages. As mentioned above, your website represents you amidst the din of the World Wide Web. Since you are not there to directly talk to your visitors, your website accomplishes that task. Make your content — whether graphic or textual — as convincing as you can. Utmost care should be given to the language and the tone to make sure your visitors get all the right information they need to take their visit to the next level.

==>> KEEP PERSISTENT CONTACT <<==

Establishing an identity takes time, and this is not just unique to the internet. Companies invest millions of dollars on establishing their brands. On the Internet, you need to establish your identity, you need your name to sound familiar, and you need to be there almost all the time. You should be accessible to your present and future customers and clients; you should always be in a constant conversation. A good way to carry out a regular conversation is publishing a regular newsletter (ezine) or blog where you post regular updates about your business.

Finally, although there are numerous “killer” methods being sold as the ubiquitous reports that claim to make you millions, there is no substitute for a thing called good old hard work. As in any form of business, hard work is need to build trust, to initiate a two-way communication, to render a countenance to your online presence your customers can relate to, and to deliver goods and services that set you on a path of long-term profitability.

Chet Holcomb of http://www.internetpromotions.biz is a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product.

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