A developer has just done a nice little piece on spellchecking. In 1984 it was ferociously hard. In fact, if you wanted a decent spellchecker in your custom application you had to pay dearly for the priviledge. Today it can be accomplished in a few lines of code.

It means that what was once going to cost you £100k to add to an application is now a few pounds.

Similarly, when we develop we offer up lots of wonderful functionality at incredibly low cost, because we’re just pulling in something that’s already been done. But if someone asks us for something custom, the price leaps up. They don’t always get it.

So here’s how we do it:

Step 1

We don’t know if the problem’s been solved before, and we don’t know how long it’ll take us to solve it either, so we give what may be considered to be evasive responses. We need time to research. Someone has to pay for that. Depending how interesting this research is to our business model, we may subsidise it. Otherwise, the client pays.

Step 2

If we find the problem’s already been solved, we still need to test the solution to make sure it applies well to the client’s requirements.

Step 3

If all is well, and the solution is found quickly, the client gets a call to say “yup, no problem, it’ll take us x amount of hours.”

But if we found no solution, we have to estimate how long it’ll take to develop the solution. And that’s hard in a commercial sphere. People don’t expect to spend much on R&D – they just want solutions.

So we do spend a lot of time trying to get people to understand the difference between solutions, and development. Just like a DVD player is a £30 piece of kit if you buy one from Sanyo while it would cost millions if you tried to make one your own from first principles. It shocks folk, but it’s an important message to get across that all developers need to take on board and to pass on to clients, or they end up stressed and trying to do the impossible on very low budgets.

But let’s assume you’re dealing with a typical, decent developer who doesn’t take the long route, or dangerous shortcuts.

There’s some nice research covering this, such as Boem, Abts Chulani [2000] which is worth reading if you’re interested by this kind of stuff.  But it’s heavy going, and doesn’t give a nice neat figure for lay people to understand.

So now I’m going to give the answer that many want to hear:

For each line of code produced in a 3GL non RAD environment the cost of your development is likely to come to around £20-£25 per line of new code.  And about £100 per hundred lines of re-used code.

Doesn’t sound too bad… that includes testing, development, refinement, code reviews and so on.  It’s based on the idea that most good developers can produce around 50-100 lines of code in a day if left alone and in peace.  Some produce reams of code, but it’s often poorly optimised and thought out and likely to bite back in years to come.  The cost also takes into account the design of that code before anyone touched a computer, and the various support staff required.  If a developer is working entirely alone and is self-supported with his PCs and the like, then his productivity drops so the project takes longer, but the cost shouldn’t change too much.

And don’t forget that cheap code is often bulkier than expensive code.  Which means nobody can look at a 1000 line program and actually say “Oh yeah, that’s £20k’s worth.”  Somebody needs to assess the quality of that code.

What we will say is that in general, if we’ve written you 1000 lines of fresh code (ie, no cut and pasting or reuse) it could well have cost you £25k by the time it’s fully tested and delivered.  A really big project, like, say, implementing a worldwide global payroll system for a major corporation may have five million lines of code and a final bill (including analysis) of around £125 million.  Not at all unreasonable, believe it or not.

So yes, code is expensive.  And that quick report you’d like us to knock up?  Maybe it’s not so quick.

To save costs it’s worthwhile looking at RAD (Rapid Application Development) methods, but in that you’ll end up with slower, more bloated code.  However, it can be a perfectly adequate approach and we use it all the time for simple data management back-ends and the like where performance isn’t that critical.  Sometimes we’ll generate 20,000 lines of code from a three hour job… but it gets the job done.  Albeit a little slowly!

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to raise awareness of their need for a new home by the end of July.  If you, or anyone you know, has the capability to offer some real and useful help then they’d love to hear from you.  IT industry firms are probably the best candidates.

Visit the Museum of Computing’s website…

What is it, exactly?

Well, just at this moment, we’re not saying. There’s been hints out there, and it’s not a huge secret, but we’re not ready to make any big announcements just yet. Look out for clues in our forum posts around the place, and in some of our work.

Really I had to post simply to explain why we’ve posted nothing on the blog for over a month. There’s been that internal project, but also some very interesting projects for clients. All of which has conspired to keep us with our noses on the grindstone. Soon we’ll look up and return to normal. Maybe.

But what happens if our clients and potential clients start to suffer as a consequence of an economic downturn?

Problem 1 – Spending Cutbacks

During uncertain times, many businesses choose to be careful on spending outside of their company.  In particular they may look to what are perceived as cost centres (website updates, build and application development) as being something that can wait for a while.  If that’s the case, there’s going to be a slowdown in spending on technology unless it’s deemed as essential for the company to operate.

Problem 2 – Credit Freezes

Thankfully we’re based in the North of England – this is an area which is traditionally very conservative with money.  People don’t like to borrow money or use complex financial instruments and most SMEs in the North West still tend towards being self-financed.  However, this article’s aimed at everyone.  Business that rely on finance will face certain problems.  In particular, curiously, the ones that have a moderate but high risk position are the ones who face the biggest chance of foreclosure.

Why?  Well it’s time to think like a banker.

Example 1: This business has loans of £100,000, assets of only about £30,000, and sales have plummeted.  However, the business is still viable if it can renegotiate its loan terms.

If the bank decides to close this company it will definitely lose £70,000.  In renegotiating the loan the business will continue to  function, and the bank will get its money, albeit over a longer period.

Example 2: Another business has been far more careful with its money and has a £30,000 loan with assets of £100,000.  However, sales have died due to the downturn and income is poor.  They too need a renegotiation as their cashflow situation makes it impossible to meet the loan payments.

In this case the bank, needing to bring in money to improve its cash position, will be less inclined to renegotiate.  After all, if it closes the loan it will get everything back – the full £30k.  Their cash position is improved and everyone’s happy.  The business may struggle now because it’s now £30k down on cashflow.  In fact, it could even fold because suddenly there’s no cash left in the company to help pay its wages and bills.  Worse, it can’t even negotiate a loan against its assets because all the banks are being ultra-cautious, will take one look at the cashflow problems and decide to look for someone safer to lend to.

You also have to think very carefully about any secured loans.  In the event of a repossession it’s possible for the bank to get everything.  They may repossess your premises and resell them at a significant profit.  In many jurisdictions there’s no compulsion for them to share or give the profit to the original debtor.

Problem 3 – Price Inflation

Inflation is pretty steady in the UK still.  But we still have one massive problem – we’re starting to sell internationally.  Countries that trade internationally in dollars will have found their costs rising dramatically when dealing with EU based economies.  It’s not that long ago since a British pound was worth $1.5 – yet now it buys $2.  But thankfully there’s an upside – the more steady, more sensible and less loan happy mainland Europeans have found their Euro increasing dramatically in value.  It makes our holidays to Europe more pricey, but the upside is that our services look a lot cheaper to Europeans – so as one market declines, another has grown.

But it’s not all bad….

Opportunity 1 – Competitive Pressure

Businesses that are struggling will need to fight to compete.  No longer will money simply roll through the door as naturally as leaves through a courtyard.  Instead some firms which have experienced an easy ride lately with their easy finance, will need to get out there and find customers.  They’re going to need to invest in technologies that help push them up ahead of the competition.  This is where there could be some real growth in the web technology market – at least, for the companies that can give the best results.

Opportunity 2 – People With Time

If there is a downturn it’ll mean more people with less work to do – perhaps not needing to work so many hours, or even higher levels of unemployment.  For them the web will be one of the cheaper forms of entertainment available to them.  They’ll be getting into blogging, Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, and even maybe dabbling a little and learning how to code themselves.  They’ll help the market to grow and will be enthusiasts for the business in the future.

Opportunity 3 – Weak Rivals Will Decline

One of the best things about a recession can be that the really weak rivals will suffer.  Web designers, for example, who churn out poorly thought out and over-priced websites will find themselves at a disadvantage to those with a reputation for positive results.  They’ll either have to reposition themselves more truthfully (at the economy market perhaps) or spend some time improving.  It’s also worth looking out for closing companies and seeing if you can pick up their past clients.  Filling a dead-man’s boots may not seem too ethical, but chances are it’ll be a relief for those clients to know there’s still someone around who they can rely on.

See the image below:

Now, you may notice something… The purchase price of the UK software is, before taxes, £705 while the US software (presumably with taxes) is $999. I’m going to compare our tax free price with the US full price, simply because I can’t assume that the US price includes taxes – I just don’t know the US system that well.
Now if you’re not well up on exchange rates the figures may make the UK copy seem cheaper. But every one of our Great British Pounds will buy 2.03 of your now considerably Cheaper US Dollars.

So let’s work it out.

If bought in the US, the cost without taxes is:

US$999 = GB£492

If bought in the UK, the cost without taxes is:

GB£705 = US$1431

So there we go – we pay over 40% more to download Adobe Software in the UK than in the US. And pity us with our taxes – if you add VAT the price goes up to an equivalent of a whopping $1682. If there were shipping costs, or shop costs to take into account we could understand it. But this is software. It costs the same to deliver wherever the end user is if you’re using the Internet. While there are costs with accounting, they don’t add up to 40% extra.

The US economy isn’t doing that well, but do they really need to rape the wallets of overseas developers in order to improve the situation?

Oh, and I’ll leave it as an exercise to you to spot just how much of a rip-off the upgrade prices are. I wish I had a daughter just so I could forbid her from dating Adobe accountants and marketers.

So it’s a shame that they don’t work that well together. In this article I go through the following:

• Posting to WordPress.com from the iPhone
• Posting to a self hosted version of WordPress using the Mobile Admin plugin
• Posting to WordPress from the iPhone and including images with the post

The latter is a particularly vexing problem, and one to which I can’t solve for WordPress.com. However, it’s relatively easy for self-hosting, or profesionally managed WordPress site owners to get images into their website, from their iPhone. Or for that matter, many other platforms. But this post in particular is all about getting on with WordPress when using an iPhone. Mainly because my shockingly generous girlfriend got me one for Xmas, I’m poorly, and I don’t feel like doing any ‘proper’ work today.

So let’s begin…

WordPress.com and the iPhone

WordPress and WordPress.com both use, by default, the TinyMCE editor. And it’s not a bad little editor either. A little buggy at times, but it’s feature rich and simple to use. What it won’t do, at least as supplied by WordPress, is work with the iPhone. You’ll have to tap on the Code tab above the editor and just enter plain text. You can then publish just fine.

If you’re only blogging from your phone you can turn off the visual rich editor in the WordPress Users | Your Profile tab in order to make this a simple one touch job. It may also save you the occassional Safari crashes that I experienced with the MCE editor running, even though I didn’t use it.

But… you probably aren’t limiting yourself to phone only blogging, and you probably like the editor. It lets you do nice things. But there’s also another problem… go down to the Upload part and you’ll notice that you can tap as much as you like on a “Choose File” button, but nothing will happen. So you can’t add images from your iPhone to your WordPress blog.

WordPress, the iPhone, and the Mobile Admin Plugin

If you’re a regular mobile blogger and you have your own, self-hosted or managed WordPress installation, then you have the option of plugins. And one of the handiest for WordPress is the Mobile Admin Plugin. You’ll need to follow the usual plugin steps – checking for compatibility, installation, and activation. But once you’ve followed the instructions it really does make using the iPhone (and for that matter, many other phones) on WordPress sites a cinch.

What’s great is that if you access the site admin using a normal PC, you still get the normal control panel.

Below are a couple of screenshots showing it in action:

Lovely isn’t it? And if you’re wondering why I’m not posting any of my own screenshots, it’s because I’ve not hacked my own iPhone in order to get the SSH access I’d need to take screenshots.

There’s only one downside, and I feel it’s a big one, to the whole Mobile Admin experience. It’s important to me as I’m a visual type and I like illustrations wherever possible – especially if I’m travelling and feel like showing some shots of where I’ve been. I’m also particularly keen to make it work as I had photoblogging to my WordPress site (Dave’s Geeky Play Area Blog) working just fine from a Nokia N95. Ok, that took some hacking too, but I’ve had photos… I want to continue with photos!

Posting Images to a WordPress Blog With Your iPhone

If you host your WordPress site yourself, you can do a lot… and get images from your iPhone directly to your site!

Now, the iPhone won’t tolerate MCE yet, and it won’t use the upload wizard in standard WordPress. So what’s to do? ftp tools don’t exist yet, so you can simply ftp your shots onto your site… which suggests that you’re stuck.

Well fear not. I’ve been casting around all afternoon and found the following works best. Basically, with WordPress you can set it up so that you can post to it by e-mail. This does require setting up either a cron job (something many hosting providers won’t do or allow) or it means hacking around so that the job fires off every now and then. Thing is, the standard WordPress wp-mail.php program doesn’t actually work all that well with images. In fact, it doesn’t work at all with anything other than text. So you’ll need something a little more…heavyweight.

But with WordPress there’s always a way. The plugin you need is called Postie, and this is what you have to do:

1. Install the Postie plugin
2. Read the instructions! Maybe do that before installing it?
3. Go to the Postie config page as instructed (it’ll show the readme first – just refresh), and set your image resize to something appropriate to your theme
4. Set up an e-mail account on your host that’s especially set up for receiving posts to your blog. Keep it a secret and make the password tricky too. Configure this information in Postie, bearing in mind the default port for e-mail is 110 (not defaulted into the form by the Postie plugin).
5. And then the easiest way to get an image to your site is from the iPhone image gallery press the little swoosh icon in the bottom left of the image viewer.
6. Tap Email Photo.
7. In the New Message box you should enter the To: e-mail address that you set up in step 4. You can also enter some text in the box. Press Send.
8. Now, the content won’t appear yet in your blog, but it’ll be waiting… all you need is to send a browser to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php or, if your WordPress is installed in its own directory: http://www.yourdomain.com/WordPressDirectory/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php
9. You can set up a cron job if you’re allowed, but it’s not my favourite way anyhow. I like to just have a favourite in my browser for mail posting which I click on whenever I need to update the site.

And that’s it! Ok, it took a bit to get there, and it’s not integral to WordPress so you can’t guarantee support on version changes, but… it’s one way forward, I’ve tested it, and it works well on WP 2.3.1. If you spot any mistakes, please comment!

If this post is popular I may well try and add some screenshots, photos and sample posts. I also plan to do a similar post soon on the Nokia N95 and WordPress.

We’ve been writing custom themes for clients for quite some time now, and felt it was time to give a little something back to the WordPress community.

So we did a fully GPL theme, complete with a Fireworks png, all sliced up and ready to be re-exported in such a way that you can completely change the site’s design without ever touching a line of code. You have to work within the limitations of the graphical elements, but there’s no doubt there’s a lot you can do.

You’ll see variants of the theme in use around the place – on the satirical motoring site Sniff Petrol on Dave Coveney’s site, and in a few other places soon we hope. We have high hopes for the underlying platform of this theme – it brings with it a navigation widget to give you fine control of an elegantly styled sidebar, an easy to customise contact form page template, and much much more. It’s a theme for people who like to expand what they can do with WordPress. It’s also, of course, xhtml 1.0 transition, works on every browser we tested on, and the work of a dedicated team of professionals.

Anvil Theme Official Demo and Download Page