...requires more than just good programming.
When OpenAI dropped the minimum $50k spend on their ad platform, I thought I should give it a try for my seating planner app. Perhaps I can get some cheap and well targeted clicks, before all the corporate behemoths lumber in and push up the bid prices? This is a quick summary of my initial […]
I asked MS Copilot: It returned a list of products. The first 7 were sensible choices, including my own table planning app, PerfectTablePlan. But there were a couple in the list that I didn’t recognise: I clicked through to the web page that Copilot was using as a reference for these products (which I don’t […]
There is a common pattern with paid digital advertising channels. New platforms appear with opportunities for cheap ads. Over time, more and more advertisers start to use the platform. Supply and demand drives up the price per click. The platform owners also do everything they can to nudge click prices ever higher. Consequently ad prices […]
Recently a customer emailed me: Please consider re adding the option to convert from one time zone to another as was available in [Easy Data Transform] version 1.x. See the attached screen dump. Easy Data Transform has never had a time zone conversion feature, so that is a bit strange. Although . But the screenshot […]
Twice this week, I have come across embarrassingly bad data. The first instance is the UK government’s fuel finder data. This is a downloadable CSV file of fuel station locations and prices from around the UK. A potentially very useful database, especially during the current conflict in the Middle East. A customer suggested it as […]
My data wrangling product, Easy Data Transform, got a major upgrade yesterday, with the addition of data visualization capabilities. Here are some examples of what it can produce in a few clicks: You can see this new visualization feature in action in the video below: (Likes and subscribes help me with the YouTube algorithm and […]
The concept of shareware appeared in the 1980s. Developers would use relatively primitive tools to create their software, then promote it via fanzines, user groups and bulletin boards to a niche audience of shareware fans. If you wanted to try the software, you would have to get hold of a floppy disk with it on. […]
The application icon for my data wrangling software looks like this on a Mac up to macOS 15.x: However, Apple has once again nuked everything from orbit. Now it looks like this in macOS 26 Tahoe when the application is inactive or if you choose any Icon & widget style apart from Default: Thanks Apple. […]
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My seating planner software, PerfectTablePlan, is now at v7. Major upgrades are paid (discounted 60% compared to new licences), which means I have done 6 cycles of paid upgrades. I was curious about how long it took people to upgrade, and what percentage of sales are upgrades. So I took a few minutes to crunch […]