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FEATURE
Support on the Run
Providing your users support while on the road
Issue: 6.6 (September/October 2008)
Author: Mattias Sandström
Author Bio: *** bio goes here ***
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 6,050
Starting Page Number: 15
Article Number: 6609
Related Link(s): None
Excerpt of article text...
Programming is not that hard. Once you have mastered the basics such as language elements, the object-oriented model, and the tools you are planning to use, you are good to go, writing your first application. Making a business out of programming is harder. You need a good idea, a good piece of software, and a way to distribute and charge users for the software. Finding the idea is the first obstacle: either you get the big light-bulb above your head and start programming The Perfect Application or you struggle and gradually your software evolves into The Perfect Application. However, if you would ask some software developers what you need to make a business out of software they would probably say, "You need luck -- be at the right place at the right time."
I am one of the lucky ones. In January 2005 I happened to be at the right place at the right time -- outside a conference room in Orlando at a conference center. Right there right then I used REALbasic to create a rough draft of The Perfect Application and within a week the solution was sold. As they say, "The rest is history...."
History has now turned into a reality and the software has evolved and moved into new directions and volumes that we could not dream of back then. We now have thousands of users world-wide every month using the software and our servers to take certifications. The users download the client software (written in REALbasic) which then downloads questions with attachments and pictures, presenting them to the user, gathering the results and producing downloadable certificates for those who pass. Now that we have been able to pass the "harder part" -- making a business out of programming -- we are struggling with the hardest part: supporting the application and users!
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