BTW - I've finally got a twitter account: @ythos, to turn passing thoughts into 140 characters.

As global economic conditions get chillier (already things look much worse than the early 90s), it is becoming increasingly difficult to find early stage venture funding. If you're in a job, are you really going to leap out into the dark (illuminated only by your BizSpark sparkler) and start up a new business?

Possibly, possibly not. What a lot of software folks can do is to start burning the midnight oil to create their new technology, so that there is something tangible to invest in.

If you go down that route, then you need to be very careful that you are not falling foul of your current contract of employment. At the very least, you need to make sure that you don't use any of your employer's resources (PCs, equipment, time, space, heat, oxygen) to do the job. And if they have first right of refusal on anything extra-curricular, make sure you get that waiver in writing. It doesn't matter how many verbal assurances you get, if you do anything even slightly successful you'll find that they were never said.

Which brings me to a sideline of my own. I was down in London last week, and caught up with some friends: Brian Randell, Ian Griffiths, and Felix Corke. Brian has cooked up a project which sounds very interesting - a data visualization problem in WPF. I'll leave it to Brian to explain the background, but it should be interesting, and result in something pretty useful (at least two of us already have something in mind for it when it is done).

One project that's kept us extremely busy for the last 3 weeks or so has been an Enterprise Search app with EMC / Microsoft FAST. I'm pleased to say that it has just been demonstrated in the Tuesday keynote at FASTForward.

As with the Tesco demo at PDC, the UX was the brainchild of the EMC Consulting guys and gals, who have done a fabulous job - sufficiently fabulous to win an award for best search UX at the show.

I just wanted to post a couple of thoughts about developing multi-touch interfaces, as embodied in the Microsoft Surface technology (and Windows 7, if you've got the necessary hardware).

Losing the mouse, and thinking about many people collaborating in the use of the same application changes the way you think about developing software. You have to find compact ways of displaying large amounts of information so that you can have multiple "centers of focus" for the different users; but equally, you need large target areas so that my fat fingers stand a chance of manipulating the information. Text has to take a back seat, and sound becomes an important part of the experience.

Given a blank sheet, there's plenty you can do, but should you do it? Will people realize that a two finger contact might be different from a single finger, for example? (Answer: no!)

The mouse is a proxy for your eyes: users tend to move it where they are looking, and you can deploy all sorts of clever hover effects when they do so, to enhance the information content. With touch, on the other hand, your eyes are your eyes (amazing!), and you don't make contact with an object until you are ready to action something; more like the "real world".

In fact, there's a lot more interaction with the physical world, and that brings up new questions: how could/should objects like your cellphone and business card interoperate with the virtual environment? How does security work in a public space like this?

We had three weeks of discovery and experiment, and although we're a long way from fully exploiting the possibilities of this platform, I think we're starting to find new and exciting ways of approaching old problems.

Quick tip if you are intending to install Virtual PC on Windows 7 (i.e. use Windows 7 to host other OSes, not install Win7 as a guest OS), and are upgrading from Vista.

1. Uninstall your existing Virtual PC instance

2. Run the upgrade from Vista to Win 7

3. (Re)install Virtual PC 2007 SP1

If you don't, then you can hit a problem with virtual networking / network sharing. (Although uninstalling and reinstalling VPC while in Win7 also seems to work)

The New Year has arrived, it is still unusually cold in Cambridge, and I've downloaded the Windows 7 Beta.

I decided to try an upgrade from a spare Vista x64 SP1 installation, with development tools (VS2k7, SQL2k8, Office2k7, TFS PowerTools, Resharper, Oslo bits, Flash CS4), and my usual utility set (MagicDisk, 7Zip, Feeddemon, BBC iPlayer, Live Messenger, Live Writer, Acrobat amongst others).

Only hiccup to start with was the long-standing "you have to remove PowerShell before you can upgrade" problem. It is hidden in the Windows Features bit of the Programs control panel applet, and needs its box unchecking. After that, it started the loooong process of backing up my programs and settings, the relatively quick installing of the Windows bits, and another looooong process of putting my programs and settings back.

On the plus side, it did actually work; everything is just fine at the other end of it, and my desktop is still recognizably my desktop.

Only a couple of minor gripes in the upgrade process - it would have been nice if it had defaulted to putting my Sidebar gadgets on the right of the screen in the order they were when they were forced to be docked there, rather than sort of splatting them in the top left of the screen. It could also have looked at what I had in the quick launch bar, and pinned them to the Task Bar for me.

As for the OS itself - well, it is a heck of a lot more polished and stable than the bits we got at PDC; in fact, this is one of the best Windows Betas I've ever seen (so far). It knocks Windows 2000 Beta 1, Windows XP Beta 1 and Windows Vista Beta 1 (redux) into a cocked hat for "feeling finished". I'm particularly pleased to see that Messenger supports the Jumplist feature already.

There's a slight disappointment in that Google Chrome is completely non-functional (even from the current Dev branch). Windows does warn you about it, though, with its standard "incompatible application" dialog.

The major disappointment is that they have gone ahead and tuned down UAC to the point where it is a waste of time. Job 1 is to go and crank it back up to 11, unless you are the kind of person who enjoys inflicting evil on us all. (And, BTW, for all those Mac Users who claim that their version of same technology is any less intrusive, I'd beg to differ...not only does it seem that I have to click a button, but I have to type my password in too. I can, of course, cut down on the amount of typing by just leaving it unlocked...but that's just as bad as turning the security off!)

Anyway, the Beta will be there for everyone to enjoy/hate/love any day now. Happy New Year.

We’re working with a couple of companies right now who are gearing up to shipping their products. They’re very different products in very different spaces, but there are a number of issues they have in common:

1. What exactly is it that we’re going to ship?

Technology businesses often get lost in the feature list. You don’t necessarily need to ship everything first time out of the door – especially that stuff you’ve only just crammed in at the last minute.

Make sure you know exactly what value everything brings to the end user, and be ruthless about cutting stuff that looks like bloat. You can always add it in later, but you’ll never be able to take it out again.

2. And how are people going to get it?

If your product runs in the browser, then you’ve got a relatively easy life. Because installers are hard. Really, really hard.

On the plus side, there are plenty of guidelines to follow (there’s good information here and here for the Microsoft stack). If you haven’t been planning for install (and upgrade) since the very beginning then it isn’t too late, but it is going to be more difficult.

The art of installation comes in three parts:

i. Prerequisite management (the hardest bit)

ii. Getting the bits onto the disk, and letting the right users access them

iii.  Updating the bits when you have a change

Make sure you’ve covered all of these in your installation process, right from the very first release – especially your update strategy. v1.1 will come frighteningly hard on the heels of v1.0.

Testing is then the key – you’re going to need a wide range of test environments (virtualized, naturally), just for installation. Every user that downloads your trial software and has a lousy installation experience is a lost customer; don’t skimp on install/uninstall testing.

3. When they’ve got it, are we sure they’re going to know what to do with it?

Have you invested in “getting started” and “how to” documentation? What about a walkthrough video? FAQs? A web forum? A web forum that you used during your soft-launch/beta testing to seed some user-generated content? Who’s looking after your web/email support? Do you need to run “getting started” webinars – like salesforce.com do?

None of that is very expensive, but it makes a massive difference to your users’ first experience of the product.  Oh – and make sure it is all available to people just trying it out, too.

4. And, is it likely to work?

You can’t test enough – but you can waste an awful lot of resource testing “known good” (or “known bad”). But, whatever your process, you can’t ship-test a moving target. This may sound stupid, but until you stop changing the code, you can’t ship. Stop. Stop now.

Right. You’ve stopped. Now – you need to work out when you’re going to stop fixing bugs. Not finding bugs. Fixing them.

Every bug you fix increases the chance of you creating another bug somewhere else. And testing will find bugs – especially beta testing. Have a process for investigating, prioritizing and then deciding whether to fix.

Don’t fix a bug at this stage because it is easy to fix; fix it because it will seriously impact on your customers. Remember you’re trying to stop doing anything else to the product. Including bug fixing.

I know this all seems pretty obvious, but I think we sometimes lose sight of the obvious when we’re in throes of shipping – especially shipping for the first time. Which brings me to…

5. You have to ship

You’re not going to make money/get investment/get sold without shipping. Companies have done so in the past, but that’s not going to happen in the current climate. Well, not often…

Turns out that writing a virtualizing panel (like VirtualizingStackPanel) is quite difficult. There are some good examples out on the web to give you a start (like here) but there turn out to be several further problems to overcome.

1) You have to deal with repositioning the scroll offset when the viewport and extent change relative size

That’s relatively straightforward – when you recalculate the viewport and the extent, you just need to scale by the relative changes: e.g.

_offset.X = (oldOffset.X / oldExtent.Width) * newExtent.Width;

2) You have to deal with focus handling, or ListBoxes (and other containers) won’t work properly

This is the most common problem with the existing examples.

By far the easiest way to do that is to realize one extra item off the beginning and the end of the visible area in each direction, and update your offsets accordingly. Don’t forget to check for the boundary conditions, where you’re already at the zeroth or (Count-1)th item in the collection.

3) Don’t forget that your panel can reach zero size, and may have infinite extent

Dealing with the infinities in the Measure() pass can be tricky. Don’t forget to check for them when it matters.

4) What about the case where you’re using it in a “non-virtualizing” manner

Sometimes, your VirtualizingPanel gets used in a non-Virtualizing context. You need logic to work out that there isn’t, in fact, an item container generator in play, and fall back on simple measuring of your InternalChildren. It should be possible to share your Arrange pass, though.

To help illustrate these points, I’ve hacked up an example virtualizing panel called EqualStackPanel. It behaves exactly like a stack panel, but fits the stack items to the available height/width of the container, depending on its Orientation. By default, it will try to fit all the items in the available space, but you can specify an alternative number of ItemsToDisplay, and it will fit exactly that many, and scroll to fit the remainder.

This isn’t production-hardened code, use at your own risk, your mileage may vary etc.

Over recent months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of startups and developing technology businesses. It is exhilarating to spend time with someone passionate about their technology, and determined to see it succeed, whatever the environment; that makes it very satisfying to get involved and help drive these businesses forward.

In the process, I’ve had a lot of “over the beer” conversations about what you need to get a software business bootstrapped these days. The answer is, of course, “it depends” – but there are a few common threads. The principles apply equally to a backroom startup, an MBO or a research spin-out; the degree of formality, or initial cash requirements might be different, but the underlying message is the same.

If you’re going to take the plunge, these are the 5 things I think are most important.

1) Decide who you’re going to work with

You’re going to go through the peaks and troughs together. You need to have a strong relationship, and share a vision. But you don’t want a monoculture – you have to challenge each other and offer complementary skills. A technology business is a technology business. You need both aspects covered.

2) Get some basic infrastructure in place

You need good email and collaboration, web presence, telephone answering, mobile telephony, computers and internet access. Virtualize as much of this as you can (i.e. everything) – there’s no point in having on-premises infrastructure these days. It is expensive and has a tendency to consume maintenance  time that would be better spent on product development.

3) Get to a revenue model, quickly

Understanding your technology is important, but understanding who is going to pay you money, for what, and why is even more important. You haven’t got a business without that. But be prepared to throw away your first idea – don’t chase a market that should be there, but isn’t.

4) Plan to get product to market as soon as possible, but no sooner

Part of getting (3) right is testing your proposition in the market place. This is a very scary step for most people in technology businesses – there’s always something you can do to make the product better; there’s always some competitor who seems to have a killer feature you don’t. Have the courage of your convictions – build enough product to deliver on your value proposition and get it out there.

5) Work out how you’re going to support your customers

From the moment you talk to your first potential customer – even before you’ve signed them up – you’ve got to manage their expectations and give them a great experience. Work out how you’re going to do that for the whole life cycle of your product. Happy customers are your best resource, especially early on.

You can get to this point by spending only a few hundred pounds, working out of a home office, maybe only at evenings and weekends (the “midnight entrepreneur”).

When you’re there, and you’ve got a few customers, you can start to think about your scale-up cash requirements, and putting together a proper business plan for the angel networks or VC funding. You’ll have taken a lot of risk out of the equation if you’ve got real paying customers, product and a revenue model that you’re looking to scale in a substantial market, rather than a great idea that has nothing concrete behind it.

We're going to be running some free seminars on bootstrapping a business over the next couple of months.

The format will consist of 4 or 5 talks of about 10 minutes each on an aspect of starting up (or kickstarting) a technology/software business, such as business planning; funding; turning technology into product; and selling. We'll then open up for discussion.

If you're interested in either attending, or speaking at one of these seminars, or have an idea for something you'd like to include in the conversation, then get in touch with us at startup@ythos.net