The Curious Engineer

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Successful Software

successfulsoftware.net

...requires more than just good programming.

Software / engineering practiceC++

’10’15’20’25
Posts
435 from 3 Apr 2007 to 24 Sep 2026
Posting
monthly (9 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://successfulsoftware.net/feed/

2026 8

  1. Github has not removed malicious imitation software after 3 weeks
  2. ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage
  3. My experience buying ads in ChatGPT: the good, the bad and the ugly
  4. Sloptastic
  5. Investigating ChatGPT for advertising my software
  6. Support is wild in an age of AI
  7. Stop Publishing Garbage Data, It’s Embarrassing
  8. Transform Messy Data into Insights with Easy Data Transform Advanced Edition

2025 12

  1. Is the golden age of Indie software over?
  2. Updating application icons for macOS 26 Tahoe and Liquid Glass
  3. How many elephants?
  4. Software upgrade economics: some real numbers
  5. What I learned spending $851 on Reddit Ads
  6. The Online Safety Act for forum owners
  7. Pay to play: The ugly truth behind top 5 rankings
  8. Eurovision 2025 Jury vs Public Vote Discrepancies
  9. Reaching 3 million page views on my blog
  10. A quick experiment with generative AI
  11. 20 years working on the same software product
  12. Setting up a new PC

2024 9

  1. The heat death of the Internet
  2. Rocket science for teenagers
  3. Inputting and outputting to Excel XLSX/XLS using the LibXL library
  4. Easy Data Transform v2
  5. Making your own hot sauce
  6. Visiting Tanzania
  7. It might be a good thing if someone hates your product
  8. The AI bullshit singularity
  9. Visual vs text based programming, which is better?

2023 9

  1. Winterfest 2023
  2. What is the index of an empty string in an empty string?
  3. Ship Of Fools
  4. Summerfest 2023
  5. Oryx Digital sponsored team wins gold at International Rocketry Challenge
  6. Experiences promoting niche software
  7. Moving from altool to notarytool for Mac notarization
  8. Adventures in content marketing
  9. Renewing my authenticode digital certificate

2022 13

  1. Winterfest 2022
  2. 12 rules for software business happiness
  3. Easy Data Transform progress
  4. Discussing lifestyle businesses on Bootstrapped.fm podcast
  5. Creating a Mac Universal binary for Intel and ARM M1/M2 with Qt
  6. Fogbugz goes dark
  7. Software Startup Founders Academy
  8. Summerfest 2022
  9. No-one knows what they are doing
  10. Why isn’t there a decent file format for tabular data?
  11. Verifone seems to be having issues processing UK payments
  12. Positioning Software in a Crowded Market
  13. Making explainer videos for your software

2021 11

  1. WinterFest 2021
  2. A Windows Developer in Mac Land
  3. Battlesnake
  4. SummerFest 2021
  5. Garry Kasparov is a class act
  6. WTF Google Ads?
  7. How to add a dark theme to your Qt application
  8. Creating a forum for your product
  9. Adding colour schemes to Easy Data Transform
  10. Stalking website visitors with Microsoft Clarity
  11. Running Qt apps on M1 ARM Macs

2020 8

  1. Issues with Qt applications on macOS 11.0 (Big Sur)
  2. Upgrading to MacOS 11.0 (Big Sur)
  3. Microsoft PPC broad match goes nuts
  4. How I finally beat my son at a computer game
  5. Google Ads can charge you anything they like for a click on their partner network
  6. Easy Data Transform v1.6.0
  7. Analyzing COVID19 data with Easy Data Transform
  8. Easy Data Transform v1.1.0

2019 6

  1. Easy Data Transform v1.0.0 released
  2. Eating my own dogfood
  3. The Hacker News effect – wide but not deep
  4. Easy Data Transform video
  5. Easy Data Transform
  6. Bloviate

2018 9

  1. How to notarize your software on macOS
  2. Qt is broken on macOS right now
  3. 30 tips for creating great software releases
  4. Chrome SSL certificate issue
  5. Getting Qt 5.9 working on Windows (eventually)
  6. Tracking your sales pipeline
  7. Deciding what features to implement
  8. Flying in a f**king jet
  9. Volunteering Your IT Skills

2017 5

  1. Bundlefox review
  2. It’s OK not to have a social media strategy (really)
  3. Why you should create a ‘honeypot’ page
  4. How much code can a coder code?
  5. Choosing a market for your software

2016 10

  1. Giving a shit
  2. Promoting your software through 1-day sales and bundles
  3. Google CPA bidding goes wild
  4. How to make difficult decisions
  5. Hammer For Mac static website generator
  6. Updating the PerfectTablePlan website
  7. Pretty printing C++ with Clang-Format
  8. Things you don’t need for v1.0
  9. What every software vendor needs to know about SHA1/SHA2 and digital certificates
  10. Software products are *not* passive income

2015 18

  1. How to build a gym in your garden
  2. Confessions of a bad software entrepreneur
  3. South West Bootstrappers meetup No. 3
  4. Rocket Science
  5. Technical Debt
  6. South West Bootstrappers meetup No. 2
  7. A Few Good Links – Why you need them and how to get them
  8. It’s great to be in the software products business
  9. Business of Software UK 2015
  10. 7 Reasons Software Developers Should Learn Marketing
  11. South West Bootstrappers meetup
  12. ‘Start your own software business’ training course 2015
  13. The mystery of the Chinese downloads
  14. Keyword Funnel is now FREE
  15. Google bans hyperlinks
  16. Hyper Plan v1 launched
  17. 10 years a microISV
  18. AdWords Rot

2014 21

  1. A Business Idea : Individualized Mandelbrot Shirts
  2. Remarketing – does it work?
  3. Hyper Plan update
  4. My new product : Hyper Plan
  5. Signing Qt applications for Mac OS X 10.9.5 and 10.10
  6. “Wrong Way” Corrigan
  7. 2 Million Hits!
  8. Are you wasting your AdWords budget on in-app ads?
  9. Why have my sales dropped?
  10. Training course update
  11. Twitter Demographics Are Bullshit
  12. 5 things you can do to improve your AdWords profitability in the next 30 minutes
  13. Exploit the long tail of Adwords PPC with Keyword Funnel
  14. The psychology of successful bootstrappers
  15. Coding my way around 100 countries
  16. 32 fun and geeky things to do with kids
  17. Adwords vs Twitter vs LinkedIn ads, a small experiment
  18. Announcing a new date for my ‘Start your own software business’ course
  19. How to build Qt 4.8.5 on Mac OS X 10.9
  20. New shiny thing
  21. There is never a perfect time to start your new software business

2013 26

  1. A code pretty printer product idea
  2. Training course update
  3. Lifestyle Programming
  4. 3 practical tips for finding software product ideas
  5. Is desktop software dead?
  6. Fixing Qt 4 for Mac OS X 10.9
  7. Marketing = Hacking the Human
  8. Boostrapped.fm podcast
  9. 80 useful tools and services for software businesses
  10. My new ‘Start your own software business’ training course
  11. Blog Blazers interview from 2008
  12. Swisscom Pocket Connect #FAIL
  13. New design
  14. Asshole x software = Asshole at scale
  15. Upgrade your Adwords accounts before the 22nd July – or else!
  16. Amazon PPC Ads
  17. The declining profitability of Google Adwords
  18. Code Club – inspiring a new generation of programmers
  19. The imminent demise of Google Reader
  20. This blog’s sixth anniversary
  21. Ephemeral
  22. The brutal truth about marketing your software product
  23. The 1% fallacy
  24. How I increased sales 50% by adding extra price points
  25. DarkMarket
  26. First impressions of the Retina 13″ Macbook Pro

2012 13

  1. VAT basics for software vendors
  2. Buying a lean, mean, compiling machine
  3. The world’s fastest Rubik cube solver is made from Lego!
  4. How to sign your Mac OS X App for Gatekeeper
  5. 33 tips for giving great technical support at a small software company without being swamped
  6. Monetization: Ads vs Toolbars vs Charging
  7. Farewell to software on CD?
  8. An experiment with Pinterest
  9. Competition
  10. TestLab² offer
  11. The microISV test
  12. A curated list of 200 articles for microISVs and startups
  13. Pivot Tables demystified

2011 31

  1. Promoting your software
  2. Cppcheck – A free static analyser for C and C++
  3. ESWC 2011
  4. Losing weight with a minimum of willpower
  5. 13 ways to fail at commercial software
  6. What type of free trial should I offer for my software?
  7. Product ideas wanted
  8. Programming skills wanted
  9. Easy2Sync file synchronization software
  10. Selling software vs selling eyeballs
  11. Setting an optimal bid price for Google CPA bids
  12. Robo Print Job Manager
  13. A simple change that doubled sales
  14. 3 Low-Competition Niches In Retail Software
  15. Nearly all UK business websites now technically illegal (EU sites to follow)
  16. 15 criteria for evaluating software product ideas
  17. Al Harberg’s Software Marketing Glossary
  18. Is it worth advertising Mac software on Google Adwords?
  19. PerfectTablePlan Royal Wedding Special
  20. Interview with a cracker
  21. Success is always one feature away
  22. ESWC 2011 registration is now open
  23. Is it possible to run a successful software business with a 4 hour work week?
  24. TestRail
  25. A small experiment with LinkedIn ads
  26. Does the world *really* need yet another Twitter client, RSS reader, ToDo list or backup application?
  27. How to remove software cracks and keygens from file hosting sites
  28. Reminder – microISV pub meetup in Wiltshire
  29. An interview with Terrell Miller of CattleMax
  30. microISV pub meetup in Wiltshire
  31. Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide To Launching a Startup

2010 35

  1. Ka-ching!
  2. Eventcountdown.com
  3. Speccing my dream development PC
  4. Problem exists between keyboard and chair
  5. Advertising your software on Facebook (=Fail)
  6. programmer-tshirts.com shutting shop
  7. App stores set to dominate future software sales?
  8. Why statues weep
  9. First impressions count
  10. I’m a millionaire!
  11. 10 things non-technical users don’t understand about your software
  12. Selling your software in China
  13. 2010 microISV Pain Point Survey
  14. Mike Dulin, 1944-2010
  15. Hacker Monthly
  16. iPhone App store economics
  17. Shareware is dead – long live shareware!
  18. Do customers need to see an advertisement seven times? – Update
  19. Do customers need to see an advertisement seven times?
  20. Lessons learned from 13 failed software products
  21. Learning from failure – contributions wanted
  22. New Software Marketing Facebook group
  23. How to find a great software product name
  24. SQL Pretty Printer
  25. 2Checkout fail
  26. Surely no amount of execution can save this idea?
  27. Donationware – An interview with Hillel Stoler of GetSocial
  28. Unskilled and unaware of it
  29. 5 great ways to waste money in Google Adwords
  30. Mailplane
  31. An interesting application of genetic algorithms
  32. Haiti disaster relief
  33. How to build an igloo
  34. Should you offer a money back guarantee?
  35. Interview for Shareware Radio

2009 60

  1. Brain teaser
  2. Free computer wallpaper
  3. New links page
  4. Outsourcing software testing
  5. Easy screen sharing with Skype
  6. Marketing for microISVS
  7. Presents for programmers
  8. microISV reading list
  9. Off to ESWC 2009
  10. How good are your backups?
  11. Apple resort to FUD marketing
  12. Why I won’t be bothering with the Windows 7 logo program
  13. A survey of ecommerce providers for software vendors
  14. How good is your Ecommerce provider?
  15. StartupToDo.com
  16. The 1000 MPH car
  17. A new front-end for e-junkie
  18. The art, science and ethics of software box shots
  19. 1&1 and the disappearing IMAP ‘Sent’ emails
  20. Spot the difference
  21. Qt visual artefacts on Mac OS X 10.6
  22. Zed builds and bugs
  23. The Web Startup Success Guide
  24. Where I program
  25. Ten mistakes microISVs make
  26. Heading off to the Software Industry Conference
  27. A test of Cost Per Action (CPA) vs Cost Per Click (CPC) in Google Adwords
  28. Harddisk woes
  29. DeepTrawl
  30. Lazy instantiation marketing
  31. microisvcentral.com
  32. What are they smoking in Redmond?
  33. Using a Mac mini for development
  34. TrialPay results
  35. Interviewed on the Startup Success Podcast
  36. Consulting testimonial: Reserviz
  37. Getting ready for Windows 7
  38. Twitter backlash begins?
  39. The truth about conversion ratios for downloadable software
  40. Tips on travelling with a laptop
  41. Is the average visitor conversion ratio really 1%?
  42. Aren’t captchas supposed to be human readable?
  43. GraphicDesignerToolbox
  44. I will be speaking at SIC 2009
  45. The importance of Twitter
  46. Digital River up to their old tricks?
  47. The two types of reseller
  48. GoogleCheckout price increase
  49. T-shirt update
  50. The history of marketing, in 3 minutes
  51. Outsourcing artwork through 99designs.com
  52. WithoutAFather.com
  53. Interview with Craig Peterson of Beyond Compare
  54. Marketing your software through affiliates
  55. Charity T-shirts for programmers – update
  56. Qt to be available for free under LGPL
  57. Interview with Mike Dulin
  58. Mac OS X market share accelerates in 2008
  59. Yahoo can modify your PPC campaign without your permission
  60. Running a microISV

2008 77

  1. 100 ways to increase your software sales
  2. Why it is better to under-promise and over-deliver
  3. programmer-tshirts.com
  4. Programming with your feet
  5. Meh for Mapple
  6. Getting website feedback with Kampyle
  7. What do you buy a programmer for Christmas?
  8. Why it is so tough to get into the iPhone App Store
  9. Blog Blazers : 40 top bloggers share their secrets
  10. Visualization
  11. Mobile Internet access in New Zealand?
  12. C++ for the next decade
  13. ISVtube
  14. The perils of localization
  15. CoverageValidator v3
  16. 7 Ways to be a healthier programmer
  17. Hacking the press
  18. Google 2001
  19. Business Of Software network
  20. Does 2Checkout have the ugliest payment page?
  21. WordPress.com ‘no ads’ upgrade
  22. The realities of software book publishing
  23. stackoverflow.com goes public
  24. Should I give free upgrades for life?
  25. Google Chrome
  26. Consulting testimonial: Schemax Calendar
  27. A mathematical digression (revisited)
  28. “Think you can’t get a virus by visiting a web page? Think again!”
  29. Unlock new customers?
  30. Cookie tracking for profit and pleasure
  31. Virus Total
  32. Amazon payments
  33. Early registration for ESWC2008 closing
  34. Early home of computing falling into disrepair
  35. A mathematical digression
  36. PayPal vs GoogleCheckout revisited
  37. Consulting testimonial: Tudumo
  38. Using defence in depth to produce high quality software
  39. Microsoft adCenter over reporting conversions
  40. Software Podcasts
  41. The view from my office
  42. Lego
  43. The joys and challenges of running a nomadic software company
  44. How to generate traffic to your website
  45. Ebay bug?
  46. Sometimes the best way to recover Windows data is Linux
  47. PayPal reliability problems
  48. Is the Eurovision song contest rigged?
  49. So what’s your excuse?
  50. Getting customer feedback
  51. Business of Software FAQ
  52. Radical new software business model
  53. Selling your software in retail stores (all that glitters is not gold)
  54. Chinese domain scam
  55. Stackoverflow.com
  56. Functional programming – coming to a compiler near you soon?
  57. successfulsoftware.net one year in
  58. ACCU 2008
  59. Choosing a development ‘stack’ for Windows desktop applications
  60. Consulting offer ends 31st March
  61. planetmicroisv.com
  62. Animated GIFs
  63. Coverage Validator
  64. RegSoft customers beware
  65. Calculating volume discounts for software
  66. MicroISV Sites that Sell!
  67. svp.co.uk
  68. The great digital certificate ripoff?
  69. Credit card fraud
  70. Windows Vista service pack 1
  71. Your harddrive *will* fail – it’s just a question of when
  72. Seeing your software through your customers’ eyes
  73. Nokia to acquire Trolltech (makers of Qt)
  74. Facebook don’t need no steenkin’ software ads
  75. Google Adwords: improving your ads
  76. Oryx Digital is diversifying
  77. Mobile Internet access

2007 54

  1. The curse of the 419 scam
  2. Site uptime monitoring
  3. Be nice Microsoft
  4. Installing MacOSX 10.5 (Leopard) on an external harddisk
  5. Optimising your application
  6. Brand recognition: PayPal beats Google
  7. The software awards scam (update)
  8. First charge-back from GoogleCheckout
  9. Agile reaches the mainstream
  10. Beware upgradeware
  11. There *is* such a thing as bad publicity
  12. ESWC2007 talk
  13. The other side of the interface
  14. Moving from POP3 to IMAP
  15. Normal service resumed
  16. GoogleCheckout takes 22 hours 28 minutes to clear a payment
  17. Patently absurd
  18. Software audio and video resources
  19. Creative marketing
  20. Business of Software microISV survey
  21. Selling your own software vs working for the man
  22. Codekana
  23. Having a crack at the crackers
  24. digg vs reddit vs slashdot vs stumbleupon – who’s the daddy?
  25. The software awards scam
  26. Your code is sub-optimal!
  27. If you aren’t embarrassed by v1.0 you didn’t release it early enough
  28. Freecycling old IT equipment
  29. Cost effective software registration with ejunkie
  30. Business of Software wiki
  31. 47 hats
  32. I will be talking on usability at ESWC 2007
  33. Interview
  34. SWREG customers beware
  35. Google Adwords ‘placement performance’ report
  36. Business of software conference
  37. Software piracy
  38. Google playing fast and loose with broad match?
  39. The importance of targeted website traffic
  40. Google Adwords Editor
  41. Microsoft AdCenter vs Google AdWords
  42. Effects of the GoogleCheckout badge on clickthroughs
  43. Promoting your software (part 6)
  44. Promoting your software (part 5)
  45. Promoting your software (part 4)
  46. Promoting your software (part 3)
  47. Promoting your software (part 2)
  48. Promoting your software (part 1)
  49. The rise of Vista
  50. A software vendor’s first impressions of GoogleCheckout
  51. Programming in flares
  52. Dealing with embedded GIF spam
  53. 10 questions to ask before you write a single line of code
  54. How much money will my software make (and what has that got to do with aliens)?