Goodsol Solitaire Blog

Various Things

A few various items:

Update to the Digital River/eSellerate deal: There's more information about the deal on the Software Marketing Resource blog, including a link to Steve Kiene's blog.  I particularly liked the statement in the comments "How long would this post have been back when you were outspoken?".  Those of us who were at a particular eSellerate event at a recent SIC know the answer to that question!

I've been busy continuing to work on the new web sites and getting various issues fixed.  During the process of updating the sites, I received an email announcing an update of EditPadPro, a great text editor I use.  I was having some problems with Homesite at the time, it wasn't working well on my new computer.  And the version of Homesite I was using is about 10 years old.  But it turns out that EditPadPro can be used as an HTML editor as well, so I upgraded and it really, really helped my productivity with the HTML coding.  I know everybody has their own favorite pet text editor, but if you are looking for a good one, EditPadPro is definitely one to look at.

Finally, things are going to be a little slow around here as I take a bit of a break prior to next month's SIC.

Digital River Buys eSellerate

Apparently, Digital River has bought eSellerate, their largest competitor in the shareware e-commerce space.

I cannot find a press release about this.  Digital River is a public company and if they are making an aquisition of this magnitude there should be a press release.

This is going to cause lots of shareware companies to once again try to find another ecommerce provider to get away from Digital River.

I'm not concerned about Digital River developing a monopoly because I don't think it can happen.  The barrier to entry in the business is just too low and there are so many other options.  You can always choose to set up your own system and not use an ecommerce provider at all (that is probably Digital River's biggest competition).  PayPal and some other more general payment systems are always available as well.  Plus new shareware ecommerce providers are starting up all the time - it's just too profitable a business for people to ignore.

The Forgotten Birthplace of Casual Computer Games

While surfing around recently, I came across the following Wikipedia article:  PLATO

This is the best source I've yet found for information about what was probably the birthplace of computer casual games: the PLATO computer system at the University of Illinois in the 1970s and 1980s.

Although PLATO was designed for computer-based education, many consider its most enduring legacy to be the online community spawned by its communication features. PLATO Notes, introduced in 1973, was among the world's first online message boards, and years later became the direct progenitor of Lotus Notes. By 1976, PLATO had sprouted a variety of novel tools for online communication, including Personal Notes (email), Talkomatic (chat rooms), and Term-Talk (instant messaging and remote screen sharing).

PLATO's architecture also made it an ideal platform for online gaming. Many extremely popular games were developed on PLATO during the 1970s and 1980s, such as Empire (a massively multiplayer game based on Star Trek), Airfight (a precursor to Microsoft Flight Simulator), the original Freecell, and several "dungeons and dragons" games, including dnd and MMORPG Moria, that presaged MUDs and MOOs as well as popular shoot-em-up games like Doom and Quake. Avatar, PLATO's most popular game, is one of the world's first MUDs and has over 1 million hours of use.

The first computer version of MahJongg solitaire was also done on Plato, in addition to the invention of FreeCell and the first computer version of FreeCell.  Jim Horne, who wrote the Microsoft FreeCell game, saw it on PLATO.  It's where I first saw many computer games (the PLATO lab was a great place to avoid studying).

New Site Design: Goodsol.com

And now the main site has updated:  Pretty Good Solitaire

There are still a few sections of the site that haven't converted yet, but all the primary high traffic areas are done.

It's so nice to finally have this project done.  It's basically been sucking up my time for more than a month.  Now I can start on some marketing projects that have been delayed while this was completed.

It was encouraging to see that sales were good over the weekend, especially for a summer weekend.  Although not all of the site was converted over the weekend, major parts of it were.

The next step is to test changes to optimize the sites.

New Site Design - Pretty Good MahJongg

The new sign design updates continue - now the Pretty Good MahJongg site has updated.

This leaves only the Pretty Good Solitaire site left to update.  That site is updating in pieces (parts have already updated).