The post Graphcat 6.5 Available Now for Corel WordPerfect X9 appeared first on Startupware.com. Visit to read more about software design, malware, and computer security.

Original article: Graphcat 6.5 Available Now for Corel WordPerfect X9.

Some of us have office policies, or regulatory restraints, that won’t allow software created in certain countries. SoftwareKB now lists the country of publication of every product.

Need to learn more about wrappers, PUPs, and safe downloads? SoftwareKB explains them all, with a wrapper gallery. Wrappers and PUPs are a dirty mess that major download sites have damaged the software industry with, and it’s time to expose all their methods; read about the model, and safe downloading, at SoftareKB.com.

SoftwareKB.com and Startupware.com are both products of Science Translations.

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Original article: Software Knowledge Base has Free Downloads, but no PUPs.

Sometimes you have to read the reviews to really, really appreciate all the uses for a product. This NUCLEAR duct tape at Amazon is just one of those products. Whether you’re sealing cracks in a reactor core or fixing your type 40 Tardis, you’ll just find these product reviews really special…

Jerry Stern is webmaster at PC410.com and Startupware.com.

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Original article: Nuclear Duct Tape….

Here’s the subtitle: Create, Deploy, distribute, Sell, and Market Software and More on the Internet at Little or No Cost to You. That’s a strength and a weakness–that subtitle would take several thousand pages to cover properly, and at 546 pages, the book is nowhere near that heavy–this is a good introduction, but hardly all that’s needed. There are five parts:

Part I: Create a Program. Godtland chose Java as a sample language to create a classic ‘Hello, World’ program or Java applet. There are details on where to get tools, source code examples (also downloadable from the book’s website link), and all the steps needed to write a program, but this section is not a programming manual; it’s enough to get started, before looking for more elsewhere. Most programmers looking to sell software online are already programmers, and will just skim these four chapters.

Part II: Deploy a Program. That’s creating a help file, a program icon, wrappers for Java applets, piracy protection (but see below), trial versions, an installer, and testing. That’s 10 chapters, and a lot of information. The Install chapter is a better tutorial on Inno Setup than is easily found online.

Part III: Create a Web Site, Distribute a Program. Covers web site creation, hosting, HTML standards. Four chapters, and again, basically an introduction.

Part IV: Sell a Product. Covers taking check orders, credit cards, PayPal, creating keys, filling orders, adding a shopping cart in Paypal, but doesn’t cover using ecommerce partners other than Paypal.

Part V: Market a Product. Search engines, shareware versus freeware, marketing, and web statistics and logs. The definition of shareware is interesting, taken from an online dictionary, but it’s something out of the 1980’s.

This is a good book for new software publishers. It’s like the notes that a first-time attendee to the Software Industry Conference would make–pages and pages of information that’s hard to find all in one place, and information overload is possible. There’s lots of information, and good coverage on the technical topics. The writing is clear, the code samples are formatted nicely, and opinions are generally labeled as opinions, not as absolutes.

However, there are gaps here. The ‘Piracy Prevention’ section recommends code obfuscation, with no methods for encryption or self-checking a distributed executable file for alteration. Code-signing is mentioned, but dismissed as too expensive. And the legal issues of copyright are just plain wrong–there’s a statement that “Nothing need be registered anywhere” and no mention of how to go about registering a program at www.copyright.gov. The marketing section matches the typical microISV pattern–it’s weak.

All that said, this is a very large topic for a book of any size. The gaps are best filled-in by a membership in the Association of Software Professionals and a trip to the ASP newsgroups and archives, and the book will provide a very good starting point on dozens of topics important for launching a software product online.

Jerry Stern is the editor of ASPects, the ASP’s Coordinator of Anti-Spyware Operations, and is online at www.pc410.com.

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Original article: Book Review: This Little Program Went to Market.