There are many drawbacks to traditional backup software: only saves one version or a snapshot of your files, if you lose a document during editing you can’t get those changes back, setting up is difficult and even then it may not be getting the files that are most important to you.

There is an opportunity here to have a better experience and give you peace-of-mind knowing that your documents, photos, music and video are safely backed up. Setup is quick and simple, taking under 10 mins while automatically selecting the files and folders that you use the most. The BackInTime feature gives you a time capsule view of all versions of your files. Travel back and forth to find the file you want.

Try FreshCrop MediaBACKUP free for 30 days!

“You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

It is worth spending some time on, but don’t bang your head on the wall for weeks trying to get it perfect. Pick something that feels right and run with it. I’ll lay out a few of the ideas that worked for us. You can apply these concepts to company names, product names or service names.

There are several reasons to get a name right:

• You don’t want to have to explain the name after every meeting with a potential client.
• How do you spell that?
• You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself in to a niche or segment. Example: you don’t want to call yourself “Matt’s Tractors” if you plan to eventually expand beyond tractors to sell ATVs or side by side vehicles.
• You don’t want to have a city, state, region in your name and then move the business away from that area.
• You don’t want an offensive name in another language or culture.
• Plain words don’t stand out in a crowd.

Step 1.

Brain dump a list of names. Quantity and diversity is the key here. We focused on three questions:

1. Words that describe your product category?
2. Words that describe the difference between your product versus your competition’s?
3. Words that describe the benefits of using your product?

This can take hours of time. We came up with a list of 200 words for FreshCrop.

Step 2.

After getting a list of words together you want to start thinking about constraints or attributes.

• One to two words are best.
• Easy to spell.
• Has strong consonents…b, c, d, g, k, p, q, t
• Mashups usually look bad.
• Ameri, soft, corp, tech have been overdone.
• Don’t be so obscure as to have questions raised constantly about meaning and spelling.

From the list of words and constraints start putting together a list of names that you like.  15-20 works the best.

Step 3.

This is where the decision maker steps in and takes charge. Collect a list of your top 5 or top 10 names and say them aloud, talk the ideas out with friends or customers. Once you get it down to your favorite name, give it a few hours or sleep on it. At some point it will just feel right and you’ll know you found the perfect name! Once you find that name it just resonates. After a few hours or a day you grow to love it and it seems like that was the obvious choice all along.

The process gets easier with subsequent products. SoldFresh.com, The Farm blog all play off of the FreshCrop name. Congratulations on your new name!

Sometimes a product and company are the same thing. Web SaS or software as services are an example. MediaRECOVER software was the same as our initial company name MediaRECOVER, LLC. This is fine, but again be careful about painting yourself in to a corner.

Step 4.

Search for a matching domain name. Finding .com is important. Your customers will assume it is a .com and you don’t want to miss the action with a .net or .biz name. That perfect domain name is increasingly elusive with the domain name land grab going on and sometimes you run in to domain squatters. If the name feels right, sometimes you just have to pony up. If you don’t have the resources I’d suggest getting creative and adding HQ, Co, Inc, etc on to your name to buy the domain outright.

The naming process seems daunting when you first start. You’ll start seeing ideas for names coming from conversations, other products, things you read, TV…from all directions. Going through the steps and putting effort in to the process will pay off. This is an investment you won’t regret.

This happens because of heavy accents, fast talkers, inadequate translators on the call, poor translation software being used by the offshore people. This can lead to many misunderstandings and delays if not properly managed or monitored.

If you find a company with moderate to good English skills where you do not need translators, it is a real plus. Many people in American companies think that because there were so many British in India that the India based programmers have the best chance of understanding their English, this is not always true. The British speak, read and write Oxford English and in several ways it is different from American English. In addition, many of the Indian programmers have a heavy accent and speak fast.

Filipino offshore outsourcing companies are thought to have better English because of the American presence in the Philipines for so many years. However, management usually has the best English skills and the programmers commonly having the same quality as the Indians. This can be aggrevating but they all mean well so patience is needed in extra doses to get through this.

If you manage to have an offshore outsourcing company with programmers that have moderate to good English skills, plan to patiently work with them to grow their skills to fit your needs. It will usually pay off in the end. As well, be sure to take the time to adequatly explain all areas of your expectations clearly so that they fully understand. They usually want to get the job on time and to your expectaions. If you do not make sure to go through every part of what you want, you may be let down.

This is different than when you work with someone in the same language you speak, read and write because there is an expectation of automatic understanding of what has been given to them. It will take a while before you can realistically have this expectation from your offshore programmers.

In addition, it is crucial that if you are going to rely on these types of offshore business partners, that you know for sure that they fully understand what is in any agreements or contracts between you and them. I have seen problems before where you take their word that they understand and it seems like they understand, but somewhere in the project, there is a misunderstanding on their side.

Of course the misunderstanding stems from a line item in the agreement or contract with them that they didn’t really understand. This misunderstanding may mean a delay for the company and a loss for the offshore outsourcing company. This will result in further delays and a possible lack of trust between you both so be very sure that everything is understood before moving forward on projects with them.

It is very important that you clearly outline your quality requirements. In fact, it is good if you develop a test plan that is simplified to be checkboxes so that your offshore outsourcing company can give it to their QA people to follow it line by line, checking each item as passed or failed along with some brief comments if needed. Usually, the lower in the ranks of these companies you go, the less they are able to speak the language you speak sufficiently. As well, the lower in the ranks you go, the less ability for them to communicate with you through email or chat because they may not have access.

“The web is the ultimate customer-empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouse click away.”

- Jakob Nielsen

Great software talk by Joel Spolsky about creating superstars.

In today’s economy, there is little money to go around and something free is appealing, but if it could mean loss and further cost to cover the loss, it is surely something to think more about rather than making a quick decision.

Ultimately, a good percentage of the same people that ask why pay for it, end up doing exactly that, they pay for it in loss of their time, loss of their files, the computer stops working, the computer becomes very slow, they get a virus or some other malware, etc…

On the other hand, there is a good percentage of freeware out there that has the makings of great software and could potentially be great one day once they get enough resources and money to take the next steps needed to grow. Many great companies started in their garage or school dorm room with one person and grew their software to be some of the most recognizable names in the software industry.

The truly greatest companies may not be the largest or the most recognized, they just do the absolute best they can to fill the needs of the customer and sell their product for the best deal possible so that it is affordable to everyone.

Some companies prefer to remain lean and efficient in order to stay close to the product and customers. This can allow them to put their money right back into the product and make it that much better for the customer. Other companies grow to an unmanageable state where the majority of the people in the company care, but it becomes impossible to reel it all in with escalating amounts of people, processes, policies, opinions, etc… being constantly added.

In the end, those companies commonly get bought and the product evolves to something it was never meant to be or sometimes, the companies just go out of business because they can’t communicate and deliver a product due to overgrowth, distraction and exceeding costs they weren’t prepared for.

The thought that goes into a piece of software is generally where it all starts and then the dream is born. After that, the real work comes while trying to make it a reality.

Once you decide what you want to do and how it will work for your customer and their needs, you have to get into all of the background details of how those seemingly simple features and functionality will actually work. For instance, many companies will develop software based on one or more of the programmers or owners personal experiences that are common to that of many people they know or have heard life experiences from.

Taking the next step to research it is the best thing to do. If doing a survey is possible, those can be very useful for mixed feedback that you may not hear from friends or those close to you.

Taking all of this into consideration is what really makes the software more universally accepted. Many freeware applications are not very feature rich because they are intended to only do a few things or they can only have more features as the money comes in to cover the development costs whether it is more development tools they need or programmers, it all costs money.

Some freeware may have a lot of features, but several of them are being grown over time and in their daily build state, may be more prone to bugs that get worked out later as they can be addressed.

Larger companies get stuck in the game of who has the most features based on bullet points. It is not only how many features you have, it is how well you accomplish the goals with what you have and that could be only an effective yet small handful of simple yet powerful features in a small application that doesn’t cost much and is supported well.

Some companies put together multiple applications into large suites that are so broad, the customer has no idea where to begin or where to find the one or two things that they need to do at the moment. What happens very often, is that the immense amount of effort put into a suite like this is wasted because the end user uses a couple of features that they were able to find easily and they never use the rest of the suite.

As well, many of these large suites have so many little applications that they really never add the right features to the small applications. This means that even though the huge suite has a lot of stuff, it may not even be the stuff that is needed if and when you actually find it.

Talk by David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals about keeping products simple, starting small, pricing, identifying a market and getting the most out of your time.

It used to be that when a board failed that you could just buy another drive with the same firmware and swap the board and maybe your drive would work.  The chances of this working on current drives is about zero. Modern drives are calibrated to extremely fine tolerances. The manufacturers are squeezing every last  bit of performance out of the hardware. One way they do this is by calibrating each head and drive and platter at the factory. You see not all heads read and write  with the same sensitivity. Platters do not have the same magnetic coercivity evenly everywhere. So the manufactures build the drives and then they run a bunch of tests  to determine how much voltage each head needs for each part of the platter to write and read. All this information is stored in tables and saved in the drives firmware.  These values are called ‘adaptives’ and are unique to each drive – so swapping a board won’t work. In order to swap a board you have to reprogram it or fix it. This requires special expensive equipment and knowledge.

Oh… and the other problem is finding a board with a matching firmware revision. Manufacturers change their firmware constantly. It even differs by country and head amplifier chip.

hmmm... fried brain.... Marvel chip on a Western Digital