Less Infinity

An age old tale, of how there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that one would want.

I worked a little bit late tonight, not too late. I drove home and started to clean up the kitchen as to be able to start cooking dinner. Before I knew it dinner was over and it was 10:30. I wanted to do a little programming tonight, but that was not in the cards.

So I am doing the next best thing, I guess, a blog post.

I had the chance to chat with Jeremy about my idea of a side project. It is something that I think solves a problem, nothing that will change the world. But something that if designed properly, could have a decent ‘Freemium’ structure, for future ‘monetization’ and even if it doesn’t take off, I know that I will use it.

The VB client application that I wrote for Hashserver.com comprises a number of the routines that I need to be able to build my next application.

There are a number of things that I will need to learn how to write in VB.NET. The funny thing about using VB.NET is that, well I don’t know it very well. I am fairly certain that my attempts at building this new application will take longer than they would any seasoned VB programmer. But I am not necessarily going for speed.

I want to build the app not only for the fact that I will find it useful, or that others might as well, but to learn a new language. I briefly thought about trying to learn some JAVA, that way the app could be more of an applet and be OS independant. But, I think that might take all of the fun out of it for me, JAVA is very alien from any language that I have used before.

I mean, in regards to what one might consider the core of the application I am going to write, I have already written the prototype in PHP. Which has been the language that I have been using for the last seven years I think. But the thing is, the application needs to be a client-side application, as to avoid scaling issues that would otherwise result from centralizing the application on Jules (or any other server).

There are of course drawbacks to distributing client-side software vs keeping it server-side (ie webware), but I am thinking the drawbacks are not going to present enough of a problem to negate me building it.

Well, it is about that time, where I should have turned into a pumpkin 40 minutes ago.

Laterz

This is the first real post on the LessInfinity software blog.

I am making this post while sitting here finishing up my lunch and listening to the Kindle Corner with my wife.

Having recently finished Eric Sink’s book, “Eric Sink On The Business Of Software”, I got the bug to formalize my side projects.

For the most part, I have spent the last decade intrigued by the folks that I met here in Texas that had some sort of side business (some of which make money, some don’t). I know folks that sell kayaks, I know folks that compose music, others that had online pet food/supply stores.

I have never had any sort of side business, my spare time has usually been spent playing video games, watching TV or occasionally bowling. Nothing wrong with that at all, I enjoy doing all of those things.

Yet, after reading Eric’s book, I got inspired to try and build some small applications. Applications that are useful, yet not complex. Applications that I might even be able to make a buck or two on. Nothing wrong with that either.

First and foremost, let me state that I am a “Generalist”. I am not a software developer by trade, I have never held the title ‘Developer’ or ‘Programmer’. I have however, written software, designed databases, system architecture, performed QA on software, written documentation.

Furthermore, I have done sales engineering, edited contracts, managed products, produced marketing content, and even designed logos (badly).

Now, what does LessInfinity mean?

To be honest, I don’t have a good back story yet. But in the interest of transparency and discussing the thought path about it, here is how I came to that name.

I own a domain called WebWareUnlimited.com, I love this domain. I love the concept of WebWare, being software that businesses can use that is accessed via the web browser. I have written some WebWare as side projects, have written WebWare in the past for my day job. Ultimately though, the name WebWareUnlimited felt too cheesy.

I started brainstorming plays on the word “unlimited”, after a few different variations, I settled on ‘infinity’. I wanted a name that was two parts, possible three. I love three letter acronyms (L.I.S.).

I poked around and found a mathematical definition of infinity, which for the life of me I cannot find right now, it had an interesting graph. (I will try to find the graph or just recreate it later.)

It showed a ‘negative infinity’, I felt the word ‘negative’ was not good, but the use of “-” before “∞” looked interesting to me. I decided that the “-” could be stated as “minus” or “less”, in the end making it “Less Infinity”.

I am not saying it is the best name in the world, but I think it isn’t too bad. It conforms to some of Seth Godin’s rules on company naming. I didn’t do the picture thing, but Kevin said he would draw up a new logo for me, and for the amount of time I put into the one I have, I am happy with it.

I have a couple of application ideas, that I will blog about here as I get them solidified. One thing though that I know I am doing that is not part of Eric’s book, is finding a space with competition. I don’t quite feel ready for building an app that I can charge money for, I need to work out a few kinks in my programming bones before I feel I should look at it that way.

Laterz