Month: September 2014

We have selected a programmer for the Goldenseal Pro update, and work has begun!  Our best guess for completion is 2 or 3 months.

The past few days we’ve sent the Goldenseal source code off to a couple of programmers, after signing non-disclosure agreements.  They’ll take a look, and then we’ll decide which to go with, and sign a contract for Goldenseal Pro. That will probably take a week or two.

Meanwhile, we have started work on a major overhaul to the Turtlesoft website.   Web page design has improved enormously since our last site overhaul, and the new format will be friendly to screens of any size: from phone to pad to desktop.  There are a couple thousand pages on the site (mostly in support of the Answers button), so it’s a big project, and will happen gradually.  Right now we are still learning how to best use css rather than tables, for page layouts.

Running a Kickstarter campaign was an interesting experience!   Even though it didn’t meet its goal, it accomplished several things:

• We got some video editing experience.  In the works are some instructional videos that we will put on YouTube, to help out beginners.
• All but $40 of the backing came from existing users.  We kind of expected some new users/backers from Kickstarter itself, but business software must just not be entertaining enough for that. Oh well, this is what happens when you are in a non-sexy industry like accounting.
• We got acquainted with Kickstarter.  They make it very easy to set up a campaign.  We’d recommend it highly if you want to produce a movie, or launch some sort of innovative tool that will attract the fancy of the Kickstarter backer pool.
• It was a “vote of confidence” with our users.  Although not overwelming, it was sufficient to make Goldenseal Pro seem worth doing.
• We now have the same incentives on our shopping cart, as reduced price pre-orders for Goldenseal Pro.  You save some money by paying in advance, and we get the funding we need to have pros do the conversion. We even save the 5% Kickstarter fee.
• Playing around with Cocoa for a couple months really convinced us, we would much rather work on estimating and accounting code, rather than slog through framework esoterica that we’ll never touch again.  Unfortunately, Apple’s standards for developer tools are much lower than for their consumer products.  PowerPlant was understandable, and it’s sad that it wasn’t replaced with something as good, or better.

Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
Turtle Creek Software