Written by Phil Miller, on September 22, 2008 at 13:45
There comes a point in every company's life where the course of things need to change direction. I think that point has come with BoraWare. As an independant developer I, like many other one-man-shows, have to juggle my everyday life with development. At times it seems as though my personal obligations cause me to neglect some of my development obligations and honestly that's just not fair to my customers. When I started BoraWare in 2005 I was single had a simple day job and had lots of free time. Now I have moved to an executive position at that same day job, have got married, and have a kid on the way. Also in getting married I acquired two cats and a dog. So needless to say my days have filled up pretty quick (and will fill up even more when the baby comes). So by this point you're probably thinking that I'm going to send BoraWare to it's grave, that's not the case *at all*. In fact things are going to be *much better*. So with that said, here's the roadmap I'm going to follow with BoraWare:
Discontinue all things ptpChat and ChatWorks then make them FreeWare
I have determined that no matter how many copies of ptpChat I sell I will never pay myself back for the hundreds and hundreds of hours I put in to development. For the longest time I decided I wasn't going to start a new project until my current project (ptpChat) was finished. Years went by and all I really had to show for it was one program. One weekend I decided to whip up PhoneSwitch (the original) and it was an overnight success. So here I was with a program I had dumped years in to with mediocre success and a new program which recieved maybe one week worth of development before being released and it had triple the downloads of ptpChat in it's first *week*. So with that I think it's definitely time to direct my focus to new, smaller, projects. As of today I am making ptpChat 1, ptpChat 2, and ChatWorks (which has already been discontinued) all free. Over the rest of the week I will be releasing a new version of each with the registration parts stripped out. If you'd like a free copy before the new version is released feel free to drop me an email with your hotsync ID and I'll give you a free registration code.
Focus on smaller programs and focus on *finishing* them
The development path of CallStop is following that of PhoneSwitch. It's a small, lightweight, program that takes minimal development time for maximum functionality. The idea of taking on many smaller projects instead of one or two monster projects is not a new idea, in fact it's not a new idea to many developers. Another developer that I know has been practicing this idea for quite some time and letting his larger projects take more of the back seat. I have a number of great little programs lined up and I intend on finishing most of them this year.
Start developing Windows Mobile applications
This has to be the biggest change in direction for BoraWare. Writing software for an entirely different platform can be quite a task but with the right tools I think I'll be fine. I have already wrote a few "test" programs that run well on a Windows Mobile 5 emulator. I'm not sure yet what kind of programs I'll write for Windows Mobile (except for one) but I'm sure it'll be fun. Feel free to let me know if you think of something you'd like to see.
Start development on my... other... project
I'm not going to give a lot of details on this other project quite yet. All I'll say is that I've owned a seperate domain name for it (and it's a good one) for over a year now. Also it will definitely be available for PalmOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows XP/Vista (maybe even iPhone via web browser). So keep an eye out for that.
Exciting times are ahead here at BoraWare, thanks for being a part of it!
