1st podcast: Jesse Grosjean of Hog Bay Software

Well, it's taken longer than expected by weeks and weeks to get this posted. Tune in to hear my interview with Jesse. He is the creator of Hog Bay Notebook, an excellent Cooca application which you can find here - take it for a spin!

Jesse has a great enthusiasm for the Mac platform and the future of OS X. As an independent developer, his words should bring encouragement to others in the same boat.

Let me know how the Internet Archive hosting works for you. I'm hoping it works out since I like the concept of OurMedia.org - especially the free part. I happily received the invite to check out ODEO but their hosting isn't yet taking new podcasts.

Here are some links mentioned in the podcast:
HogBaySoftware and Jesse's new user-centric beta site

I've added a Feedburner link for the RSS feed with enclosures and hope that works fine for most of you.

Here's the direct link to the mp3 file if you prefer to take your medicine that way: CocoaRadio: Jesse Grosjean of HogBay Software

Now, off to wrap up edits on show #2 featuring Frasier Speirs of Flickr Export, Xjournal, and appcasting fame. Cya soon and enjoy.

Comments

[Jon Bell]

http://odeo.com/channel/3950/view

[Jeremy Faller]

I really enjoyed your first podcast. It was interesting to hear Jesse's personal and company history, and I'm glad that he is having success in what seems like a crowded application market.

For future podcasts, I think it would be interesting to hear the following from the developers:

- Lessons learned about software development. Where they failed, how they overcame it. Unexpected pitfalls, funny stories.
- Thoughts on licensing and support. What tools do they use, how much time is spent on supporting versus developing their products. (It might be fun to have a "what is my typical day" segment.)
- How they made the leap to owning their own software company. Jesse covered it in his talk, but I think it's important/interesting for starting developers.
- Tools developers would like to see from Apple or third parties, gripes about XCode, etc.
- A picture!!! It's fun to see other developers (for those of us that can't afford to go to ADC). I also think it would be interesting to see where they work.

If I think of other idea's I'll post them.

[Additionally, I'd upgrade your blog to support HTML tags].

[Phil Aaronson]

I also enjoyed the podcast. I've been an avid user of Hog Bay Notebook (and did a podcast interview on it with Blake for a user perspective which didn't get used in this podcast). For me it was great just to hear the voice behind the application. But some thoughts, in no particular order:
- There was a lot of focus on future use of new Apple technologies, which dominated the discussion on the future of the notebook.
- The move to version 3.0 which was mentioned in the cast ... there's a bigger story here, and I wish it went into more depth. Somehow Jesse both kept his cool, and kept the faith and went through a very long beta/release cycle to get to 3.5. I still wonder how he did it. I'm not sure I would have.
- A picture (a screenshot!)
- Hog Bay Notebook's success seems to be tied to that very difficult to achieve place where people find your interface "simple", "elegant" (like a lot of Mac software). How does a developer find this place? Is it luck?

Anyway, looking forward to more!

[Jesse Grosjean]

Jerry,

I'll try to answer some of your questions. Licensing and Support. Check out the company user guide that's one the beta website:

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/beta/book/companyguide

A big part of that is describing my current ideas for how to license and support software. The basic licensing idea is charge an initial fee to get the software then make all other upgrades donation based. On the support end my plan is to make the software open to registered users (feature requests are by far the largest support time sink for me) so that they can change the software when I don't have time. Plus I'm trying to make all information and communication happen on the website, because for me that's much more efficient then trying to do things with email.

A Typical day. Well this one is hard, it's really very dependent on what I'm currently focusing on. For instance right now I'm starting a new development cycle so I'm spending almost the entire time programming. Once I release a beta I'll spend most of my day programming, but another good portion of it taking with beta testers and brainstorming ideas with them. Then I'll go back into my shell when I'm about to release. Then I'll spend a day marketing after the release... until I can't take it any longer and I'll start on the next version.

A picture. Well even if you could afford to go to ADC I can't yet so you'll still need a picture :). Good news is that the new beta website has more then just a picture, I've got a whole Hog Bay Software image gallery setup. You can find it here:

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/beta/image

Jesse