Tsunami widget...FOR KONFABULATOR!
We're losers! Loooosseerrrs!
Sunday, January 23, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
Let's get this question out of the way now:
Is Konfabulator better than DesktopX for the creation and usage of widgets?
I don't think it is. I *like* Konfabulator but it's not nearly as easy to create widgets for and the final widgets are .widget files and not EXEs like they are in DesktopX. Its default widgets ARE more polished than the typical DesktopX widget for sure.
But we're getting our butts kicked by Konfabulator. At least in terms of market share now. I'm not sure where we're going wrong. But we're going wrong somewhere. It's not in features that's for sure. If anything, we have too many features. And DesktopX costs less, doesn't time out and doesn't have a nag screen.
And it's in a positive cycle now. Robert X. Cringely wrote a terrific article about emergency systems using Konfabulator as part of his solution. Some students read it, write the app and contact their local newspaper. Newpaper runs it and pretty soon it's picked up everywhere: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20631
Somewhere, something has gone wrong. I've been reading the riot act to our PR agency for months. I think perhaps it's time get a new PR firm since they haven't managed to get any stories going.
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Reply #62 Thursday, January 27, 2005 12:40 PM
BlueDev: Again - perfect is the enemy of good. Having the media materials ready for this week while I"m on a media tour in San Fran was key. They had to be sent last week to be here for my trip.
And while us geeks get all excited about semi transparent start menus, the media I meet with doesn't care about that. Color shifting, tool bar icons, progress animations, and other things that they arne't familiar with are the key.
There is a whole world outside these little websites and their news items. WindowBlinds isn't the most popular desktop enhancement in the world because we get news items on websites. It's because ew've been successful in getting mainstream coverage and at that level, you're covering much more basic bullet items.
The pearl skin wasn't ready in time for the media materials to go out. It's as simple as that. It's not like we were going to cancel the media tour because we didn't have screenshots of a particular skin ready in time.
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Eddie - look I'm the first to criticize our stuff but if you right clck on the DesktopX icon in your system tray there is a "Documentation" item. There's no way around this. The documentation and its availability is well within the "good enough" range. It is not affecting the success or failure of DesktopX.
I might add, Konfabulator doesn't have a help button either. In fact, as a user who has downloaded it, how can you possibly compare ours (where one of the program's menu items takes you to the dev documentation) to Konfab's where you have to visit their web page.
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I'm not really looking for suggestions on marketing. I understand that many of you think that our little community of websits is the world and hence think of all things being done to satisfy that. But that's not the issue. We don't care of l33tdue84 thinks a Lava lamp is cool or not.
I happen to think that the DX screenshots on its website are quite good. Now if you'd like to start your own competing product and put your own marketing skills against mine with your own vision of what constitutes a great screenshot go right ahead. After all, I started Stardock as a college student. So I feel I've earned the right to say that I have an inkling of how to market.
Where we've fallen down on is not effectively getting DesktopX out to the mainstream media.
Robert X. Cringely didn't write about DesktopX because he hadn't heard of it. Not because it had ugly screenshots or the documentation wasn't easy enough to find or whatever.
If you want someone to write about your product or service, step one is to make sure they have it. That's where we've failed.
Reply #63 Thursday, January 27, 2005 1:22 PM
| Having the media materials ready for this week while I"m on a media tour in San Fran was key. They had to be sent last week to be here for my trip. |
I hadn't thought about that. Thanks for pointing it out. Makes more sense now. I will drop that subject as my understanding was lacking.
Reply #64 Thursday, January 27, 2005 5:50 PM
quite some time, i know it looks more agressive then what i ment it to be, but at some point i give
up deleting and rewritng and press submit.
maybe if i try to explain it different, i'm a webdesigner and i work with macromedia. all of there
programs are designed the same way exept for freehand, it's completly different. therefore i do not
use it, lately i'm more into the graphic department then the design department and i am in need for
a good vector program, so now i'm seriously thinking to change to Adobe, just to be able to work
with the same program design/layout. it's easier to be productive that way. that is how i decide
on spending my money and i think i'm not alone in this. it's not about costs, upgrading from
studioMX to studio2004 MX is a lot cheeper than swithcing to Adobe for me it's about workflow.
So if you can enchange the workflow (wherever) you deliver better programs and i'm more tended to buy them.
Cheers Eddie
Reply #65 Thursday, January 27, 2005 9:11 PM
Eddie: Ah I see what you're saying.
I agree that the documentation can always be made more readily accessible.
But in Product Management, it's not about having everything perfect. Rather, it's about picking which areas you are going to fail at from lack of resources.
There are some markets that Stardock can no longer compete in because we're "too big". Pixoria is a total of 3 people (the people who make Konfabulator). So for us, if a product can't bring in 6 figures in revenue, we can't really push it. In fact, what we usaully do is if something can't make 6 figures in revenue, we just make it freeware and expense it as "marketing".
Reply #66 Friday, January 27, 2006 7:27 AM
If you can get the CPU demand a bit lower then I am sure more people will adopt it.
Thanks
Ed
Reply #67 Friday, January 27, 2006 7:58 AM
Reply #68 Friday, January 27, 2006 8:36 AM
| it uses about 97% of CPU |
Are you sure that is the DX engine using that much CPU or do you have a widget that is misbehaving? Try unloading all of your widgets then see what the actual engine uses. Then add your widgets back one at a time until you see what is causing the spike in CPU usage.
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Reply #61 Thursday, January 27, 2005 11:34 AM
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