Adam’s Peace

Well, progress on Placebo has gone extremely well in this past couple of weeks, after a two week break as I worked on unpacking, worked on my latest post in the Pragmatic Peace series (which will be available in a couple of days, once I’m done proofreading and I’ve contacted Jeff, who is helping with the post as well), and visited family that I haven’t spent significant time with over the past eight years.

Right now, Placebo is working considerably well. I have fifteen ‘test’ tasks in the program, scrolling by smoothly, showing the same three words: “Finish this program.” I have some limited ability to add and edit the tasks (and very, very minimal ability to schedule a task), the ability to delete a task, mark a task as done, display the tasks based on their priorities, as well as cleanly close the program (very important ) and move the main bar between the top and bottom of the screen.

I was considering putting in a screenshot, but since it is still in the prototype phase, the program is still, well, offensive to the eyes.

I have five tasks to finish up before I can start the beta testing portion… I need to add a way to quickly scroll between items, I need to put finishing touches on the ability to add/edit and schedule tasks, I need to make it look pretty, I need to be able to safe the tasks to a file (so that they can re-appear if the computer is turned off, or [gasp] someone shuts down the program), and I need to choose a finished, marketable name.

I figure that adding a quick scroll ability will take about a week of work; maybe just five hours, maybe up to fourty, depending on many different factors.

Adding/editing and scheduling tasks should only take another three hours of work. Most of it is quite well and done with, except for a couple of arbitrary decisions and implementing them in the program.

Skinning the program seems like it is going to be the most time consuming part, since I am most certainly not a graphics wizard. Fortunately, I have my wife to sit over my shoulder and hit me upside the head when I make foolish color choices. I should only suffer three concussions from making Placebo look pretty. Anyways, I am considering adding the ability for other people to make and add their own skins, though I might wait until I make an updated version, as skinning isn’t absolutely necessary for a to-do list manager.

As for saving the information to a file… Unfortunately, this has to be done last, as the details of the to-do lists change ever-so-slightly each time I sit at my computer. Before I can tell the computer exactly how to save the information, well, I need to know exactly what information I’m saving, right?

Naming Placebo, though, will take much less work… Especially considering that I have access to one of the greatest networks of imaginative minds in the world. My only limit is on how many people hear about this project.

So, I have a contest: Name Placebo.

Here are the rules: Send in a possible name for the program, using either this site’s contact form, or through my regular email address (if you have it). Entries must be received by midnight, the morning of September 21st, Mountain Standard Time (GMT -7). No, I don’t observe daylight savings time, nor do I keep track of when the changeover is, so for those who are in a Daylight time zone at the time, consider it the same as Pacific Daylight time.

In order to consider a submission, I must have an accurate return email address, either in the “reply to” portion of the email, or in the body of the email itself. Email addresses collected for this contest will only be used in the course of this contest, and will be removed from my address book at the end of the contest. (Unless, of course, I collected your email address from another source… in which case, you already know just how much I “spam” people… which is never. )

On Sept 22nd, I will choose from one of the submissions. I will email the person who’s submission I picked, letting them know that they have won… I will give them 3 days to respond, where if I don’t hear back from them, I’ll choose another submission. (For those who use the contact form, please expect an email from a GMail account.)

If I choose a name that multiple people have picked, I will select the person who submitted their suggestion first, based on the timestamp on my email server. If I can’t reach that person, I’ll select the next, etc., until someone does respond within the 3 day limit.

Multiple suggestions are allowed, either in one email, or in multiple emails.

I will post the winner on Sept 22nd, along with their suggestion… If I don’t get a response, then the second winner will be announced on the 26th, 30th, etc., until I do get a response within the 3 day limit.

Now, the reason why I’m being so specific is because there is money on the line for the prize, and I’m trying to plug all of the loopholes that I can.

The Prizes: 1 license for Placebo, when it comes out for public release, as well as for all future versions, as well as 10% of the total sales for the first three months after the public release, to be paid at the end of those three months.

In other words, if I set the price at $30 per license, and I get 100 sales in the first three months, my total sales will be $3,000. That will put $300 in your pocket. (This is not a gaurentee of sales… If I only sell one copy, that only puts $3 in your pocket.)

In order to redeem the cash prize, you must either have a valid PayPal account, or be willing to give me a mailing address for the check. (Yes, I’m American, so I don’t spell it “cheque”.) I greatly prefer the PayPal address, since it is much more secure than sending a check over physical mail systems, though I accept that some people may not be in a country where PayPal offers their services. The purpose of confirming your email address is so that we can exchange the necessary information to get your free copy and the money, which is why I’m such a stickler to the three day response time.

Also, please, please, please double check your email address when sending in your submissions. If I can not reach you to let you know that you have won, then you will forfeit, and will lose the chance to collect the prize (and I may well lose the chance to use your submission, if nobody else has sent it in).

Once I have the name, I can begin working on its website. I’ll be doing the initial copywriting and page design myself, but I have another author and web designer in mind whos services I’ll be purchasing once I’m able to afford it.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net has asked his readers “What do You Know Now About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started?”

Well, looking at my total adsense earnings from this blog and its last incarnation, AskTrina, which total a whopping $30.37 over nearly a year of work, I realize that contextual advertising doesn’t work for my site. It might work on other sites, especially those which are optimized for ads, but it just doesn’t work here.

I know now that developing your own product is a much more efficient way to earn revenue. Each time you make a sale, you receive the income directly, rather than having to wait until you pass a threshold of earnings. I may never see that $30.37, because I’m not going to stick with ads until I earn another $69.63… It just isn’t worth the trouble right now.

So, where is this product from my site, you may ask? Well, it hasn’t been made yet… but I am happy to announce that the prototype of what I have codenamed Placebo has just made it past a very important threshold: I am now confident enough to announce its future arrival.

What is in a name?

Why did I codename it Placebo? Well, don’t worry, I’ll be changing its name in the future to something more fitting of what it actually does. I named it Placebo in response to all of the personal development programs out there that claim to help you without you lifting a finger… simply watch some images and listen to some sound for a few minutes a day… In the earliest portions of my planning phase, I originally had the idea to copy the functionality of an existing product, but when I really looked at it, I found a better use for both that product and for my own.

This other product had some problems that I hope to overcome with Placebo. Since I’ll be talking about its bad portions, and I don’t have the time to properly give it credit for what it does well, I won’t be naming this product directly, since it really isn’t deserving of the one-sided view I’m giving it. Let’s name it, say, Subliminal Manifestation Tool, or SMT for short. What SMT did was it patiently waited in the taskbar until a specific time came by… say, each half hour. Then, it would make a loud noise of your choosing, such as a bell ringing, and display a picture and some text in the middle of your screen. It then waited around for a short time, and showed another picture and some text… You would have to enter the text yourself and select a picture (it was very easy to select pictures, even ones off of web pages), then patiently wait to be reminded of what you had typed in before.

At first, it was great. The SMT was advertised as a product that helped you concentrate on your intentions for work on Intention Manifestation, so you were encouraged to write things that sounded like “I am working towards being super filthy rich, and all of my friends will be jealous” or “I am the smartest person in the world and everyone else wants to lick my feet.” Well, forget the negative parts of those intentions… you get the idea, right? The SMT worked great… The bell would sound, and in would fade my first intention… That would fade out, and the next would fade in… All in all, each half hour gave me about three minutes of reflection on my intentions. (K-L, I’m sure you’re just chomping at the bit to comment about how foolish it is to constantly think about your intentions… Don’t worry, I’m pointing out that the more you concentrate on an intention, the more doubt takes over and stops the intention from happening… )

Well, the next day came by, and the SMT didn’t work. Nothing popped up. The icon was still sitting in the taskbar, and a quick check of the processes showed that it wasn’t locked up completely… So, I closed it down and opened it back up, and the reminders started popping up again each half hour. Eventually I figured out that there was a bug in its schedule… It could only be scheduled for one day at a time, so unless you shut down your computer each night (which I didn’t, and probably never will), it will only show pictures and text one day, unless you restarted it. First annoyance.

After about a week, I started to shut the program down while I was working on certain tasks… I just couldn’t afford to be interrupted so frequently. There were times when I’d jump out of my chair, because I’d be listening to music quietly typing away, then I’d hear this sudden, loud bell come over my headphones. It definitely broke up my routine so that I could concentrate on the intentions, but sheesh, it took me another ten minutes to get back into the flow state. That was not what I signed up for at all.

Also, with the SMT, whenever it would pop up, it would take forever for it to fade in and show the text. By the time it was done with the first set of text and image, I had already mentally gone through each of my intentions, and I was automatically reaching down to shut the stupid thing off and get back to work.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad product… It just was not responsive, was not functional (i.e., the scheduling bug), and it was not unobtrusive. Eventually, it was de-installed because it took up too much of my time and concentration.

Enter: Placebo

After working with this little product, and after arguing on both sides of debates that had to do with very purely ’subliminal’ products… (My stance was that each product took advantage of the placebo effect, so while it didn’t work the way it was advertised, it still worked, so it was a good product.) I decided to make a mockery of those placebo effect programs. So long as people actually believed that it worked, it would work, but instead of making some wildly inaccurate claim about how it worked, I would simply tell everybody that it was the placebo effect in action. I started to model it after the SMT, keeping mind the reasons why I de-installed it. It quickly became apparent that I couldn’t have windows popping up on a schedule, because, while that was SMT’s strength, it was also its main weakness. The window fading in was just too distracting from what was going on that it was easy to make the choice to shut it down and stop using it entirely.

So, I needed something obscure, but ever-present. It’s easy to ignore something that is always there, and reference it when you need it. I decided to start researching application bars, or programs like Google Desktop and AGLOCO’s toolbar that reserve a side of the screen. I also thought that SMT would work be much more effective if it held a to-do list, rather than a list of intentions to worry about and sabotage. Eventually, it turned from a joke into a real, useful tool.

Design Phase:

Here are my current designs. It will be an application bar, sitting at either the bottom or top of the screen. It will have one big button, just like the Windows Start button, which will open up some menus which I haven’t entirely designed yet. On the main portion of the bar, there will be scrolling items, moving across the bar like a news ticker on a cable news station. With each item, there will be a box to check it as done, and the item’s priority, which can be changed. On the far right side, there will be a couple of buttons to move the bar to the top or bottom of the screen, to close the bar, and to hide it from view. Surrounding the main text area, there will be buttons to quickly scroll forward or backward through the list of items being displayed.

Also, since each item will have a priority attached to it, lower priority items will not appear until higher priority items have been marked as done… This means that checking your email will not appear until you have marked writing a rough draft as done, and writing the rough draft will not appear until you have marked off doing the dishes and emptying the litter box, though the dishes and litter box could appear on the list at the same time.

Another big goal is to have some items re-appear on the list. Most basic to-do lists out there require you to re-enter a task if you need to do it twice or more, and there is no real way to make an item appear at a certain time or on a certain day. This way, daily tasks would appear each morning… Weekly tasks, such as writing a rough draft, would appear on the days scheduled, and one time tasks, such as researching a specific topic, would completely disappear when they’re done.

Some other options are to add urgency and deadlines… that is, if a task isn’t completed by the time it is scheduled again, it will have a higher priority… or, if you don’t complete a task by the deadline, it will disappear. Other options to add is a stat tracking system, which would show graphical reports of how many tasks you add, how many get completed, how many are dropped, and how many run over the deadline. These are, of course, far future options, and won’t appear until after the initial version is released.

Right now, I’m estimating that I’ll be in Alpha testing within a month, and in Beta testing within three months after that. Of course, those are all semi-optimistic estimates, since I’ll be moving in about two weeks, but I am working hard to stick to that schedule. Please expect delays. I have already selected two people to work on the Beta testing, and once I start actual testing, I’ll be looking for people to test for free. I’m not ready to start accepting beta testers at this time, though… so hold them emails for a little while longer.

The Marketing:

I expect most of the marketing to be word-of-mouth and through affiliate links. Anybody with a website should be able to sell a copy and be able to earn some revenue from the sale, which I’m estimating should be about 50% of the price. I haven’t worked out any details yet, though, and I won’t finalize any plans until I am nearing the release date.

The Target Consumer

The person who I feel would most benefit from Placebo would be a person who derives at least part of their income from sitting in front of a computer, such as bloggers, programmers, and digital artists. If you’re not sitting in front of your computer for a good portion of the day, then a computer-based to-do list won’t do very much good, and I really don’t want to fool people into buying a copy if they aren’t going to use it effectively.

Current Progress:

Right now, it is a simple gray bar that sits at the bottom of the screen. It has two buttons, one which moves it from the bottom of the screen to the top, and back again. The other button exits out of the program. There is also a bit of test text that scrolls across the bar, which is the focus of my efforts right now… The problem is that it flickers, and the solution to that flickering seems to be creating some custom controls.

After the flickering is fixed, I’m going to be working on being able to click and drag the text so that it follows the cursor. After that, I’ll work on having multiple groups of text appear.