Category: Business


Hazel’s 15th 16th Anniversary

September 6th, 2022 — 9:05am

It’s been 16 years ago today since Hazel’s first release. Why celebrate the 16th anniversary? Because I thought it was actually 15 years but got the dates wrong. So, to mark the 16th anniversary (or a belated 15th, if you prefer), Hazel is 30% off. That applies to all license types (single, family, and upgrade). Just go to the store. Sale ends at 3am EDT.

Chances are if you are reading this, then you already own a copy so share the news with friends and family. Just don’t tell Zach in Accounting. He knows what he did.

While odd bits have changed since the 10th anniversary, things remain mostly the same. After all these years, still not in the App Store. No plans to shift to a subscription model. I’ve resisted many of the “innovations” in software sales and distribution in recent years. I could probably write another post why but in short, I haven’t found any need to change something that works.

Can’t say whether I’ll still be here doing this for Hazel’s 20th anniversary but I hope you’ll forgive me if I forget again and end up being a year or two late.

1 comment » | Business, Hazel, Noodlesoft

Ten Years

September 6th, 2016 — 7:00am

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Hazel. On September 6, 2006, Hazel 1.0 was released and after all this time, it’s still going strong. I’ve already shared my thoughts on why I took this journey and how I managed to stay on this road so I won’t rehash that here. What started as a product developed in my bedroom is, well, still a product developed in my bedroom, but now I can say it’s a successful one.

Hazel back then was a much more basic product. You can check out the release notes page, which documents everything back to the beginning. It’s interesting to see what features were added later, many of which are probably considered essential now.

As for the future, who knows? While the list of big features I want to implement is much shorter now, there are still a bunch of smaller things I want to put in. I can’t say whether I’ll still be doing this in another ten years but I have no intention of quitting now.

And with today being the anniversary, I need to celebrate in some way so, from today until 3am (EDT) tomorrow (Sept. 7), I am offering Hazel at its original price from 10 years ago. That’s $16 (50% off). The family pack and upgrade didn’t exist back then but they’re 50% off as well. No special code or link. Just go to the store and buy. If you don’t have a copy yet, here’s your chance.

2 comments » | Business, Hazel, Noodlesoft, Software

Adventures in Email Hosting 2

May 19th, 2016 — 3:10pm

Yes, another journey into the world of email hosting. This time it’s a bit different. Instead of receiving email, today we talk about sending it.

It seems that during my recent launch I became collateral damage in the war against spam. Between a couple of email campaigns and a bunch of license emails, I had sent out a good amount of email; enough to cause me a ton of headaches as certain mail services, actually, mainly one: Gmail, decided to mark a lot of it as spam (if I was lucky) or make them disappear entirely.

The way things were set up, my email campaigns were sent out by Campaign Monitor, my license emails by my server and my regular “interactive” emails via Rackspace’s email service (as described in a previous installment). The ones I had the most problems with were the first two, as they were repetitive messages sent out in volume.

For a while, I’ve had SPF records set up. What are SPF records? In a nutshell, it’s a way for you to specify which mail servers are the “official” servers your email comes from. This is to help identify mail coming from you as opposed to a spammer posing as you. The way you set it up is to create special DNS TXT records listing out the specific servers for your domain.

Apparently, this isn’t enough. Seems like there’s another layer you can implement: DKIM. With this, you have your mail server sign outgoing emails so mail servers at the receiving end can know that emails are definitely from you and definitely not, once again, from a spammer imposter. So, I went ahead and set up OpenDKIM on my server. You can find various guides out there on how to install it on your OS and integrate it with your MTA (I use postfix and hooking the two up was pretty easy). You also have to add a DNS record listing your public key so other mail servers can verify your signatures.

Even after doing that, it still didn’t seem to appease the Gmail gods. I found this page which recommended yet another thing: DMARC. Here, you specify a policy as a guideline to mail servers on how to handle your email. One of the things you can specify is an email address where mail services can send you reports on the emails you send them. And you guessed it, you implement it by creating a DNS record.

Being desperate, I thought I’d do it, hoping that Gmail would send me a report telling me what I’m doing wrong. Soon after, I started receiving DMARC reports from all sorts of mail services (Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, etc.). Over ten days later and guess who still hasn’t sent me one.

I’ve been getting fewer reports about not receiving emails lately but that’s mainly because of decreased volume since launch. It’s still unclear whether Gmail is binning my emails at a high rate or not. Nonetheless, if sending out emails are an important of your business, I recommend doing the above. Even if Gmail seems to be hard to please, other mail services are more appreciative of the gesture.

Note that there is also the option of relaying all my mail through Rackspace. It’s still a possibility but (a) I’m afraid of poisoning the well since my email is already being marked and (b) using a shared relay opens you up to being blacklisted because of someone else’s misdoings. All in all, I feel that some level of redundancy is ok here.

When implementing the above, you can check the headers of an email received at the other end to make sure everything is set up properly. Here’s one from an email sent from my server to my Gmail account:

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; dkim=pass header.i=@noodlesoft.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of www-data@noodlesoft.com designates 2001:4801:7824:103:be76:4eff:fe11:5179 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=www-data@noodlesoft.com; dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=noodlesoft.com

As you can see, it shows that my SPF and DKIM passes. That doesn’t guarantee anything but it helps.

You can also check out Google’s Postmaster tools site. It will give you feedback on various metrics concerning email from your site. To set it up, you have to create a DNS record (see a running theme here?) with text it supplies you so that it can see that you control the domain. After that, it will track your site.

Also, yes, DNS once again: make sure all your regular DNS records are set up properly. Not only do you want an A and PTR record for IPv4, but also a AAAA and PTR record for IPv6 as more mail servers nowadays are checking for that.

Until next time, here’s hoping I don’t have to resort to human sacrifice to get Gmail to accept my messages.

Comment » | Business, System Administration, Tools, Web

Hazel 4 Development/Launch Post-Mortem

May 5th, 2016 — 7:37pm

It’s been a bit hectic because of the launch yesterday but I finally have a moment to post. Yes, Hazel 4 is finally out. You can find the release notes here.

Development was a bit rocky. I played with a bunch of different features but some of them didn’t quite pan out in a way that I liked. It felt like wasted effort in that that work didn’t result in a usable feature but many of them were only shelved temporarily. Oftentimes I end up having that eureka moment which would allow a shelved feature to be finally realized so something to look out for in future point releases.

That said, I’m happy with the features that I did get to work. They seem simple on paper but involved a bit more thought than would be expected. Sync is always tricky and getting the preview feature down to something as simple as it is now took a little doing.

Along with that was the site re-design (courtesy of the folks at Brotherhood). The previous site was mostly static. Adding content involved editing raw html pages and adding them. It was enough to discourage me from doing it often and discourage me it did, as I ended up leaving the site very outdated. The new site is backed by WordPress which will hopefully remedy that. The point here being that content can be added more easily using tools like MarsEdit or WPs web editor. I’ve already added a few posts (a review and a couple of knowledge base articles) since the launch.

Also, the new site design is a bit more stripped down and streamlined. I’ve tried to reduce navigation in favor of search. Most of the site is searchable via the form on the support page so I recommend going there first and doing a search if you ever have a question about Hazel.

 

The launch itself went relatively smoothly (except one incident – more details below). I can credit most of this to using a VPS (virtual private server). VPSes are great as you can clone, rebuild and resize them as needed. It gives you an amazing amount of agility when deploying servers.

Before the launch, I set up a clone server so I could set up and test the new site. Since it’s a clone, no need to reinstall and reconfigure everything (though you do have to make some changes in places where the IP address or hostname is stored). You end up with pretty much an identical server to play with which went a long way towards making sure things were working properly.

When I launched, I transferred the new stuff over to the live server. That part went with little drama but then disaster happened: I underestimated the load from tons of eager customers. The problem was that I had sent two email campaigns. One to those on my mailing list and another to those who purchased recently. The latter group received a message with instructions on how to get their free upgrade license. And guess what all those people decided to do immediately upon seeing that.

The result was that the site got slammed. More specifically, apache was overloaded. Enter VPS awesomeness #2: I was able to resize the server on the fly. It took a little while (maybe 15 minutes though it felt much longer) but the old server was still able to run, albeit very sluggishly, until the last minute when the conversion finished and it rebooted. After that, the site ran like butter and it was smooth sailing (at least as far as the server went).

 

Aside from some minor glitches (version 4.0.1 released this morning should address some of them), the launch has been pretty great. I just had the best day in sales in Hazel’s history so I’m pretty happy about that. My thanks to everyone who contributed, including Brotherhood, Jono Hunt for his icon and UI work, my beta testers, my friends in the Mac dev community and of course, all my customers who’ve been very supportive of Hazel all these years.

Comment » | Business, Hazel, Software, System Administration, Web

My NSConference talk

October 14th, 2014 — 1:51pm

Just found out this weekend, somewhat belatedly, that my talk at NSConference 6, “Life Outside the Mac App Store”, is available on Vimeo. I don’t have the nerve to watch it myself but given recent events, you might find it interesting.

Comment » | Business, Conferences, Hazel, Noodlesoft, NSConference, OS X, Software

The Long and Winding Road

August 29th, 2014 — 4:13pm

There have been a bunch of posts lately about the feasibility of being an indie dev in the Apple world. Brent Simmons has been doing a good job of linking them all so I suggest checking out his blog.

I’ve been doing Hazel for over seven years and I think it’s fairly safe to say that I’ve been successful doing it. I’m making more money than I did employed at other companies and I’m much happier with my job.

But it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t overnight. A common sentiment I see among a lot of new devs is that if they aren’t living full-time off their app in the first year, it’s a failure. I know when starting out there is the hope that your app will be an immediate success. It’s fine to hope that; after all, its our dreams that drive us to succeed. But you shouldn’t expect it. I would say it took about three years before I could be comfortable living off of it full-time. Yes, I did quit my job to do Hazel full-time from the get-go but I was living off of substantial savings in the beginning. 

During that initial period where you are struggling to get your app recognized, you try all sorts of things. You keep coming up with that one thing that you think will cause your app to break through. Maybe it’s some killer feature. Or lowering the price. Or maybe some promotion. Those things may or may not help but in reality, there’s no panacea. Things did explode for me after my version 3 but there was no one thing that did it, but instead it was a culmination of all the hard work that went into the product up to that point.

One thing that I did learn is to have a healthy respect for randomness. Luck plays a huge role and you can’t always attribute one’s success or failure solely on their decisions and actions. I highly recommend reading Leonard Mlodinow’s book, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. I won’t recap the points therein but I consider it pretty mind-blowing as it debunks many notions of the correlation between success and performance. The point is that a good deal of your app’s success depends on luck. That doesn’t mean you sit back and just let fate decide; you still need to work to improve your chances. Just realize that there’s a big chunk you can’t control and that on some level, you need to be ok with that.

And speaking of sitting back and waiting, don’t rely on the App Store. Many devs I talk to seem to think that their job is done once they submit their app. I did a talk at NSConference earlier this year about the Mac App Store and I think a particular point from that is relevant here: Apple is not your marketer. I’m not the best person to speak about marketing and whole books can be written on the subject but, in short, you need to do your own. Looking at the top grossing apps in the Mac App Store, most of the third party apps there I first heard about about outside the App Store. Many of them were even big before the App Store and I’d say they’d still be successful without the App Store. Why? Because they marketed their product and built up the userbase themselves.

In the end, realize it’s a marathon and not a sprint. It’s a long, hard road and not everyone makes it. But whether the journey takes you to the promised land or not, value it for what it is. For me, I’ve learned a ton and am still having fun working on my app. Some day, I will stop developing it but until then, I am enjoying the ride.

Comment » | Business

Hazel in Books

June 27th, 2014 — 12:24pm

It’s nice to see Hazel in books. Even in digital form, the book format gives me more of a sense of permanency than say articles on some site. So, when I see Hazel mentioned in a book, I can’t help but think of Hazel as being a more permanent fixture in people’s computing lives. The most recent entry is Joe Kissel’s book “Take Control of Automating Your Mac” which has a little section talking about Hazel. While most readers of this blog are already familiar with Hazel and Mac automation in general, this book is a great introduction for the novice in your life who is ready to delve deeper into their Mac. It also contains coupons for many of the apps mentioned in the book.

And on the topic of Hazel in books, I’m way overdue in mentioning “Mac At Work” by David Sparks. This came out a while back but is a great intro to using your Mac in a work environment. Also, it’s available as a physical book, which is always useful for propping up an uneven couch leg (after you’ve read it, of course).

I’m still waiting for Hazel to be incorporated into some work of fiction. Too bad Stieg Larsson isn’t around anymore as he had a tendency to go into way too much detail about characters’ computer configurations.

Comment » | Books, Business, Hazel, Software

Understanding OS X Betas

June 3rd, 2014 — 12:41pm

With OS X Yosemite going public beta, I feel that it’s important that people understand what that entails. This happens almost every year but it seems worthy of a reminder.

Beta is the development phase where the product is not finished but ready to be tested. Operative term: NOT FINISHED. What does this mean to you?

  • There Will Be Bugs
  • Many apps will not work.
  • Things may be slow.
  • You may lose data.
  • Issues will be addressed on the developer’s schedule, not yours. Even until some time after Yosemite is released, apps may not be ready yet.

In short, if you use your machine for any type of important work, DO NOT INSTALL THE BETA. It’s not our, or Apple’s, fault or responsibility if you are unable to get anything done because you didn’t heed this advice. If you must install it, in the very least install it on another drive/partition or virtual machine (VMware, Parallels, etc.) so it doesn’t impact your main installation.

And remember the purpose of the beta is for the developer to test their product, not for you to get a sneak peek at what’s new. If you find a bug, report it to the developer. And I mean REPORT it. Do not instead:

  • Talk about the bug on some site that the developer will not see.
  • Review an app running on a beta OS or is in beta itself.
  • Tweet a complaint with few details (Twitter is horrible for bug reporting).
  • Stay quiet about it and assume the bug will be magically fixed.

If you really care about the bug getting fixed, then tell the developer directly, providing necessary details. If possible try and figure out if the bug is Apple’s or ours and email the appropriate party. In general, during the early beta stages, the bug is probably Apple’s. Near the end, it’s probably ours. We do want to fix things but not reporting them properly is counterproductive to that.

With everyone’s cooperation, hopefully the transition to Yosemite will be a smooth one. Ok, maybe not, but at least I tried.

1 comment » | Business, OS X, Software

Hazel 3.1 is here

June 19th, 2013 — 3:40pm

Fresh from the Noodlesoft Danger Labs is Hazel 3.1 with a bunch of spiffy new things. The two main features this time around are file uploading and matching against file contents. If you don’t use Hazel, maybe these sound a bit abstract to you but for people that use it, it fills a couple big holes in their workflows.

But instead of elaborating on these myself, I’ve been fortunate to have a couple users do the work for me. Demonstrating use of the new file upload facility, Sid O’Neill shows his workflow for resizing and uploading images to his server

Next up is David Sparks (MacSparky and MacPowerUsers Podcast) showing how to match and extract dates out of your files and use them for renaming. Includes a great video so definitely check it out.

Of course, there are a bunch of other things in this release. You can find the full list here.

The response from customers have been great. I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful emails from people so far which has solidified my dedication to the product even more. As mentioned in my last post, I will be looking into Mavericks support, with a particular interest in its tagging feature, in a future release.

Also, in regards to the new upload feature, watch this space in the coming weeks as I’ll have something for you developers.

 

2 comments » | Business, Downloads, Hazel, Noodlesoft, Software

Modus Operandi

June 1st, 2012 — 9:18pm

Apple devs have had a lot to talk about in the past couple years. The App Store has changed the landscape in significant ways. As devs, we’re constantly concerned with issues of pricing, conformance to Apple’s rules, marketing, advertising… I may post about those issues sometime in the future but not now. There’s been a bit of soul searching amongst devs lately and I think it’s important for me to step back and talk about where I’m coming from and what motivates me. What I’m finding in a lot of these discussions is that some people seem to think that the raison d’etre for doing anything commerce related is to make as much money as you can with everything else being peripheral to that. There seems to be a disconnect when talking to people about my business. Where they are talking about profits and growth, I’m thinking in terms of cool things I can add to my product.

Sure, one of my goals is to make money as I want to make a decent living but beyond a certain point, the money doesn’t interest me so much. I find the most important things in my life aren’t bought. Yes, I’m fortunate enough that I make enough now to live comfortably and I understand that that is a luxury but when I look back on my life, I fondly remember what I’ve done and the people I’ve met, not how much money I’ve made.

For me, it’s about the product. I wrote Hazel because I needed it and when I realized other people did as well, I seized the opportunity. Many of the jobs I’ve had in life were working on products that I didn’t use myself. Sure, there were interesting technical challenges and many of the jobs paid well. While at times I was passionate about the work, I was rarely passionate about the product itself. Now that I’m creating something that I do use, it’s a world of difference. Some companies have a policy where employees can work on what they want for a small percentage of their time and what a difference it makes. Now imagine if they could do that 100% of the time.

As a result, my company is just a vehicle for selling the product. I could care less about growing the company into some major concern. If I had to make the choice, I’d fold my company in a heartbeat if it meant my product would live on.

Apparently this will sound strange to a certain segment of people, but I’m also not interested in having a huge number of customers, in and of itself. I don’t really get satisfaction from people who buy the product in a promo or based on hype and don’t use it. I’m not hit-driven. I want users buying my product, not consumers. What really motivates me is when I hear about people that have been using it for years and it’s one the first things they install whenever they get a new machine. It’s when people get excited as I am about new features. It’s when users comes up with unique ways of using the product that I wouldn’t have come up with myself.

And Hazel’s not just some thing that I put out there only to move on to the next thing. I think I’ve shown that Hazel is a long term commitment for me (nearing 6 years). I intend to keep working on it until it doesn’t make sense anymore or external forces somehow shut it down. I haven’t put out any other apps besides Hazel so far, but when I do, I’ll try and make sure they are things I would use myself. I feel that  scratching your own itch can’t be replaced by stock options in terms of the commitment one has to the product. And if it does come down to having to move on, I’ll try my hardest to make sure that the product can live on in some form or another.

I consider myself very lucky. Going indie has been the best career decision I’ve made and I’ve been fortunate that it has panned out for me. And I intend to stay indie. I don’t have an exit strategy and I’m not looking for a big payout. I’m doing what I want and doing it on my own terms. This is it for me and it’s how I want it to be.

2 comments » | Business, Noodlesoft

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