Nick Bradbury

Not an Option

It's hard to say no to your customers, but I'm getting a lot of practice at it.

You see, almost every day I say no when a customer asks me to add a feature to FeedDemon.  It's not that I don't want them to be happy - it's just that every feature I add to FeedDemon potentially makes it more complicated for every customer, so I have to shoot down features that I don't believe will be widely used.

Quite often, the customer will reply with, "well, why not just make it an option?"  Which of course makes sense when you're thinking about one little feature.  I mean, how could adding one measly checkbox tucked away in the program's settings make it more complicated?  But multiply that by the number of feature requests I get, and it becomes clear that making everything an option is, well, not an option.

I wasn't always this way.  Many years ago when I worked on HomeSite (and, to some extent, TopStyle), I'd say "yes!" to feature requests all the time.  If the feature wasn't one that a ton of people wanted, I'd just make it an option.  I thought this was great - and at first, it was.  Customers got new stuff all the time, and loved seeing their suggestions included in the product.  But fast forward a few years, and suddenly my software was an option-laden monstrosity.

In a misguided attempt to please everyone, I had added page after page of checkboxes to the options dialog.  Customers kept asking for options that already existed, or wondered where an option was that they knew was there but couldn't find in the checkbox maze.  Even worse, they'd inadvertently enable some option that changed the program's behavior, and then report that the software no longer worked like it was supposed to.  Which meant that when I received a bug report, I'd have to figure out which options might be involved in the bug, and then figure out which of those options the customer had enabled.

The other thing is, while it's easy to add an option, it's very hard to take it away.  If you add an option to your software, you'd better be prepared to keep it around for the life of the product unless you want customers coming after you with pitchforks and torches.

For example, in the first version of FeedDemon, I added a few options that made sense at the time, but later on weren't being used much and were complicating the development of new versions.  So in the first few beta versions of FeedDemon 4.0, I did away with some options that had existed for years.  To say this wasn't received well would be an understatement.  Customers who had become used to these options were up in arms, and said they'd never upgrade if the options weren't returned.  It's pretty frustrating for a developer to hear that all the work done to improve a product is overshadowed by the loss of a few options that probably shouldn't have been added in the first place.

So if you're a developer and you're working on a new piece of software, don't make my mistake of adding options, especially if you're doing so just to please a handful of power users.  In fact, see if you can avoid the need for a settings dialog at all.  You and your customers will be happier in the long run.

My Top 20 Minor Annoyances

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter for any length of time, chances are you're following at least one person who constantly complains about all the little things that annoy them. If they stub their toe, wake up with bad hair, or someone just looks at them funny, they immediately post about it.

In an effort to not become one of these people, I've decided to spout off my minor annoyances here. That way I can get them off my chest without bothering my Facebook friends. So, in no particular order, here they are:

1. People who blow their nose in restaurants
2. Lights that are controlled by more than one switch
3. Wearing wet socks
4. Dr. Phil
5. "New" music which rips off classic rock
6. Fitness fanatics who worry about eating too much at Thanksgiving and Christmas
7. Fake eyebrows
8. People who think you can't see them picking their nose because they're in their car
9. Athletes who all-too-obviously thank god when they win a game
10. Doorbells that play music
11. Anyone who tries to cure your hiccups
12. Sarah Palin
13. TV commercials that are twice as loud as the show you're watching
14. Walking down stairs and thinking there's another step when there isn't one
15. Being woken up by the sound of your own snoring
16. Food with an unreadable expiration date
17. Slow elevators
18. Waiting for a long time at a red light when there's no other traffic in sight
19. People in an audience who loudly say "Shhhhh!" when everyone is supposed to be quiet
20. Clogging up the toilet in someone else's house

Bonus: Geek that I am, I can't help but mention my top five geeky annoyances:

1. Software that asks whether you really want to exit
2. Constant Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader updates
3. Anyone who acts superior because of their choice of operating system
4. Video games that make you start the level over when you die
5. Auto-correct that turns a technical term into a cuss word

Why I Decided to Charge for FeedDemon Again

By now, FeedDemon 4.0 is in the hands of thousands of customers, many of whom are disappointed to discover that it's no longer free (well, there is a free ad-supported version, but the full feature set is only available in the for-pay Pro version).

Explaining how this came to be requires some history, so bear with me here…

When FeedDemon became free back in 2008, I was still working for NewsGator, and the goal was to promote the NewsGator brand (especially the enterprise products) by getting consumer products like FeedDemon into the hands of as many people as possible.  I was among those who thought this was a good idea, and I'm sure it helped spread NewsGator's name.

But a year later it was decided that we still needed to generate revenue from FeedDemon, so we inserted non-intrusive ads which we hoped would earn a few dollars without pissing too many people off.  But of course, it did piss people off, especially those who purchased FeedDemon before it became free and were now faced with advertising (which is generally accepted on the web but not in desktop software).

Much to our surprise, there were also people who said they'd pay to get rid of the ads.  We hadn't planned for that, but it's hard to ignore customers demanding that they be able to pay you, so we scrambled to come out with a version that enabled purchasing a serial number to get rid of the ads.

Then just over a year ago, I was let go from NewsGator.  For the record, it was the right decision, and there are absolutely no bad feelings between myself and NewsGator.  They treated me very well while I was there, and I'm still friends with my co-workers.

But that left me in a tight spot: I had to pay the bills with whatever money FeedDemon generated, and as popular as FeedDemon is, it's not popular enough to bring in enough cash through ads alone.  And very few people were paying just to get rid of the ads (can you blame them?).

For a year I kept FeedDemon free, and I started work on FeedDemon 4.0 in the hopes I could find a way to keep it free yet still pay the bills.  But eventually it was clear that the only way to keep FeedDemon (and myself) going was to start charging for it again, and I figured the best way to do that was to come out with a free ad-supported Lite version with fewer features, along with a for-pay Pro version that had all the features and no ads.  That way there would still be a free version, which I knew had to exist, while at the same time there would be a way I could charge for a more feature-rich version.

Of course, I realize many of you aren't happy about this, and it's not just because you expect everything for free – more likely you're tired of the constant shift in FeedDemon's business model (believe me, I'm tired of it, too!).  I really am sorry for all the changes.  Honestly, in retrospect making FeedDemon free wasn't a great idea.  It would've been far better to have a free Lite version and a for-pay Pro version from the start and to have stuck with that model.

Given all these changes, I'm flattered that so many of you have stuck with FeedDemon over the years, and I thank you for it.  Despite the naysayers, I continue to believe that RSS has a bright future, and I plan to keep working on FeedDemon for a long time to come.

Would You Eat a Retarded Dog?

Just over a year ago, I became a vegetarian.  This was quite a shock to my friends and family, since they were accustomed to seeing me wolf down steaks, roast beef sandwiches, and more meat-laden pizzas than I care to admit.  To them, me choosing to become a vegetarian seemed as unlikely as Hugh Hefner choosing to become celibate.

The turning point for me was a conversation with my kids after school one day.  They'd learned about slavery in America, and were appalled that so many people let it happen.  They couldn't believe that an entire country could be so cruel.  I told them that they were right, and that it's difficult to understand how a nation could let something so horrific continue for so long.  But I also told them that it's easy to look back in history and condemn those who allowed cruelty to exist – what's hard is to see what cruelty happens today that we accept as normal.

The moment I said that, I immediately thought about how we treat animals.  Deep down I've always known – as we all do – that factory-farming requires horrible abuse to animals, but I never let the idea take hold because, well, meat just tastes so damn good.  It's hard to feel sympathy for a cow when a juicy steak is staring at you.

If I had been talking to someone other than my kids, I would've ignored this unexpected concern for animals.  But talking with your own children demands a level of honesty that you can't ignore, and I couldn't let go of the fact that animal cruelty popped into my head when I thought about what we do today that future generations will condemn.

Over the next few days I researched how factory-farmed meat is produced, and what I found was enough to turn me off meat forever.  I'm not going to be one of those recently-converted vegetarians that tries to shock you with grotesque images of animal abuse, but I will say that there's so much more to it than how we treat animals.  The reality of how 50 billion animals a year live and die before reaching our tables should make us worry about our own health, regardless of whether we value the lives of those creatures.

For the most part, I've kept my vegetarianism to myself (well, until now, anyway).  I don't expect anyone to cater to my meatless ways when they invite me to a party, nor do I act holier-than-thou when friends eat meat in front of me.  It's a personal choice for me, not a crusade (and after all, I've eaten enough meat in my lifetime to fill several farm yards).  But when close friends ask why I gave up meat, I'm happy to talk about it.  At some point I usually ask why they don't eat dogs, and they usually respond that it's because dogs are smarter than the animals they eat.  At which point I ask, "So does that mean you'd eat a retarded dog?," which unfortunately seems to stop the conversation.

PS: If beer and brownies are ever classified as meat, I'm screwed.