30 Second Ad

Up pops up Blogger on my window and I remember that I've added an alarm to Time-Creator to this every day at 5 pm. This way I can remember to write each day about my software. So one thing you can do is remind you to write your daily blog.

One of the things I worked today was a 30 second ad. Actually worked on it while watching the really great TV show "Breaking Bad." I didn't get very far with the ad. I tried to answer three questions from Doug Hall's book "Jump Start Your Business Brain"

1. Overt Benefit
2. Real Reason to believe
3. Dramatic difference

According to Doug's book focusing your message on these things will increase your odds of success by a lot.

It isn't easy to write an ad, But this is my first crappy version:

If you're sick of being overwhelmed with too much to do Kravatz Inc. is working on a new product called Time-creator. It's an Excel spreadsheet that will help you to reach your goals, stay focused, deal with interruptions.

Download a demo today at http://Time-creator.com

There is no product on the market like this that will save you time

Now this ad is crappy. I'm thinking of some questions that will help me build the ad. Google had a number of suggestions for me to write a 30 second ad.

I added some new functionality today.

1. Track how many tasks I have on a daily basis by different categories to allow me to see the growth or shrinkage of my workload
2. I added a button that will filter my "A" priority tasks and randomly select one to do. 

I think I'll try to do

1.  a Google ad next
2. Come up with some questions to answer to do a 30 second ad
3. Read through the posts I found on Google

Give Demos of Your Product

You want to demo your product asap. You will learn a lot from this. But the real trick is too listen to the feedback you get. It is natural to reject what people are telling you but record the session if you can via a screen recorder like CamStudio or even your phone. Never criticize the feedback, you'll want to encourage it as much as possible.

Give as many demos as you can. This will help you with your presentation skills.Create Videos that people can review and try to get back feedback.

Once your ready for real demos, I'd recommend scripting the entire demo and not deviate from it. This is especially true for new/under development products you're working on.

I will guarantee if you try something for the first time in a demo you'll have issues.

Securing an Excel Spreadsheet

Security is an issue if you're a software developer.

There is always a trade-off between too much security and too little. Too much and you annoy your users and too little and people have a free-for-all with your product. When it comes to securing Excel software or any software someone can always reverse engineer what you've done.

 So the first thing to do is to add a password to your work. Go to the "Review" ribbon and select "Protect Workbook". Give it a nice long password to make it harder to crack. The second thing you can do is obfuscate the code. This means converting it from something that's easy to understand to something that's not. I worked on a tool to do this but never finished it.

 Searching on Google brings up 192,000 entries so someone has also thought about this.
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Now you need to secure your VBA code by going to Tools - VBA Project Properties, click the Protection Tab and then click the "Lock project for viewing" and enter and confirm your password.

People Needed for Time-Creator software

One thing I'll need to get Time-creator going is a person who is great at sales and believes in the product. Just like Bonnie had her Clyde; Wilbur had his Orville; Larry Page had his Sergey Brin, Lewis had his Clark; Moe had Larry and Curly; Jerry had George, Kramer and Elaine; it seems that teams do better than individuals. If you have experience in selling software to major companies or law firms in New York. I'd like to here from you. Just to start a conversation going. I also need people to use the product to get feedback from. If you're interest in being an alpha tester to a software product please sign up at http://Time-creator.com

Setting the Tooltip on the Excel Ribbon

I have so much to do with this project. Currently trying to get the Tooltip to work from the Ribbon in Excel.

I found something from https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/exceldna/7uMLPOrRJqw which lists the following:

The other parts of the tooltip popup are customised with "screentip" 
and "supertip": 
   <button .... screentip="This is the screentip " supertip="This is the supertip " /> 
and you can do a getSupertip callback. 

I'm using a tool called "Custom UI Editor for Microsoft Office" and if you're modifying the Ribbon it is a must have.

How Valuable is Your Time?

Time is your most valuable resource. It's very limited.

You have a finite amount of time yet an infinite number of things you can do with that choice, use it wisely.

This blog will contain the story of my product called Time-creator and some other random ramblings. It's a long story on how I got to where I am and where I hope to go. But basically I've been working on this project a very long time

So I'm developing a software product that will help solve some things that bother me. Hopefully they bother enough people that I can get enough people to pay for it.

You can follow the progress on this blog and at the home page of http://Time-creator.com

The current release is being developed in Excel 2010. My wife keeps say I have to create an app. I hope she's wrong and there are enough Microsoft Excel users who will love this product.