Blog: Newsweek glory, Shareware awards

from WinCustomize Forums

It figures the first time I get quoted in Newsweek it would be the issue with Steve Jobs on the front.  His big mug glaring at me for all eternity as a constant reminder that even as software companies go, we're small potatoes. But still, it's pretty cool to be in Newsweek because of something we made as opposed to something we did! As they say, it's an honor to be in there at all.

Speaking of "honors",  The Shareware Industry Conference had its awards last week.

Have you ever heard the phrase "I care...but I don't care care."  If you have, please bear that in mind as you read this part.

If Len Gray, author of the excellent Microangelo, hadn't told me that WindowBlinds had been nominated last month for best "Desktop enhancement" I wouldn't have even known about it. It's not that I'm not interested in the shareware world. It's just that we've been around long enough to know that these various "awards" programs tend to be little more than a club of old guard developers who pick other club members to give awards to without any sort of recognition of the wider world out there.

For instance, for best desktop enhancement they had two icon creation utilities, WindowBlinds, and a screen saver. That's it.  Let's ignore, for a moment, that icon editors are not generally considered desktop enhancements (and that they had two graphics editing utility categories already that they could have gone in).  And let's ignore all the other Stardock desktop enhancements (on Download.com Stardock has 5 of the top 6 positions).  What about Samurize? What about 3DNA Desktop? What about WinStep? What about Hoverdesk? What about Rainlendar? None of these types of programs have ever been nominated. 

And this sort of provincialism isn't just in desktop enhancements. It's hit in miss in all the other categories too.  The more you look, the worse it gets.

You can almost imagine a group of a couple dozen guys who have a very fragmented level of knowledge on the wider software world. They get together and pop off the apps that they're familiar with.  No research, just what they know off the top of their heads.

That's how you can imagine programs like mIRC and WinZip (which won best OVERALL) still dominating something like this in 2004. Maybe they hadn't heard that ZIP is included with Windows and has been for some time (it's hard to believe but Windows XP is now 3 years old).

I like mIRC but let's face it, it's not exactly been evolving. It's the same program today essentially that it was in 1999. I can name a bunch of really new and popular such programs (we use Ventrilo here) that are really innovating in the area of communications.  At least Trillian won that category.

It's no surprise that WindowBlinds didn't win (Microangelo Creator won "best desktop enhancement").  I hadn't expected WindowBlinds to win for the reasons I just mentioned (which was one reason I didn't bother to announce the nomination).  And I'm glad that Microangelo won and not say the screen saver.  But come on, why bother even having a desktop enhancements category if you can only find one desktop enhancement to include? It's not an obscure category.

Let me be clear, I don't have a problem with Shareware organizations. I just think it's a little cheeky when they start giving out "shareware industry awards" that are essentially just awards to their buddies they know about.

See here's the thing, because they've been giving out these awards for so many years they now have credibility. So when they give out these awards, they get covered in places like PC Magazine, ZDNet, CNet, etc. And it doesn't take a lot of research to realize that these guys aren't really serious.

They nominate the same apps year after year as if they're living in 1996.

 Look for yourself:

2000 Winners: http://www.sic.org/2000nominees.asp Link
2001 Winners: http://www.sic.org/2001nominees.asp Link
2002 Winners: http://www.sic.org/2002nominees.asp Link
2003 Winners: http://www.sic.org/2003nominees.asp Link
2004 Winners: http://www.sic.org/2003nominees.asp Link

Let me illustrate it plainly:
2000 nominee for best Internet utility: FTP Voyager
2004 nominee for best internet utility: FTP Voyager

Apparently not much has happened with that whole Internet thing since the last millenium.

And this is just par for the course.  It's the same apps from the same tiny pool year after year.  Heck, Micrangelo won in 2000! Has new software been released since 2000?

If they were just representing them and their friends, that's fine. But when they represent themselves as the "whole industry" then it just gets absurd.

One can almost envision the awards as traveling back to a distant world where it's 1996 forever.  The land where Paint Shop Pro is the only graphics utility program. For in 2004, they only had 3 nominees for back graphics utility.

I guess there hasn't been much progress in graphics packages in the past decade. Forget PMView, ACDSee, Ulead, Snagit, Konvertor, FaceLifter. They apparently hadn't heard of those programs. I'm not even a graphics guy and I'm familiar with these programs.

Like I said, I care, but I don't care care about this. I wrote a shorter version of this on WinCustomize and someone thought I was really ticked off.  I'm not.  Winning the PC Magazine Editor's Choice award matters.  Being in Newsweek today is a help.  A shareware awards thing isn't a big deal. It just tingles my "fairness" bone a bit because I talk to shareware authors all the time where the recognition of something like this would make a different. 

These awards make no difference to us. At least in 2004.  But a legitimate shareware awards program back in 2000 would have been bloody helpful. And not just to us. And it would still be useful today to struggling shareware authors who work hard to put out neat things that go totally unrecognized because their first release wasn't in the Windows 3.0 era. Jorge at WinStep could use this kind of publicity. 

I don't want to make it sound like these or other similar awards are run by bad guys. Every person I've ever met associated with any of these programs has a heart of gold. I think they're great guys. I just think they've gotten so complacent that they're not really following the shareware industry today.

If you're going to present yourself to be some industry authority, it would probably be useful to check out what's going on outside the clubhouse.

18,312 views 30 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks for the heads up, I think I'll go get a copy tomorrow!
Cheers!
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Comparing mIRC and Ventrilo? That's like comparing apples and oranges! Yes, they're both fruit, but . . . mIRC does a fine job of being a client to IRC networks, and while having few exterior upgrades, it is well endowed as a base for IRC communication (and for those who do want that sort of thing, there are numerous scripts around). Ventrilo is primarily a voice chat application designed for a restricted number of people. Yes, it supports IRC-like chat, but that's not the focus.

They're both chat applications, but they're designed for different users and different situations, and mIRC's been around a lot longer so it's more mature. MS Office has been similarly charged by many to not be going anywhere, but perhaps that's because there's little more to add?
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just as I come to WC to make a news post about the Newsweek article, Brad beats me to it. Congrats!
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

GreenReaper: They're both Internet communication programs.


The category wasn't "Best IRC program".

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Have you even looked at the website of these guys? Total numbnuts...

Clearly they have as broad a vision of the software industry as a horse pulling a carriage with those pads around the eyes. (whatever they are called)

And, please, what next? Nominate Pong for being the best game? Yeah, it had its place but let's move on to better stuff, shall we?

This kind of stuff isn't even worth talking and tiring your finger about. I say let them do whatever they wish in their little itsy-bitsy worlds.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hehe ipods everywhere
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't think mIRC has changed except for moving to 32bit since OH, say 1994......... maybe even before that........
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Dood its sounds like that vacation you took has unhinged you. I love Stardock products but this diatribe against shareware organizations? I mean: why? It seems kind of unnecessary.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
You didn't link to the online version of the newsweek article.... It can be found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5452908/site/newsweek/
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I dont think he has an issue with Shareware organizations....just the lable of shareware.

Plus, Brad always rants about something controversial in these.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Judge: How is it "unhinged" to not see the value in shareware organizations?


I don't have a problem with Shareware organizations. I just think it's a little cheeky when they start giving out "shareware industry awards" that are essentially just awards to their buddies they know.


Go over to the link and look at the nominations. And because they've been around for so long, their awards get published all over the place (like Cnet).


Remember how mad some skinners got during the GUIOlympics? At least the judges were looking very deeply at each entry.


Whereas these guys just look at the same tiny number of apps each year. Don't believe me?


 Look for yourself:


2001: http://www.sic.org/2001nominees.asp


2002: http://www.sic.org/2002nominees.asp


2003: http://www.sic.org/2003nominees.asp


2000: http://www.sic.org/2000nominees.asp


Let me illustrate it plainly:
2000 nominee for best Internet utility: FTP Voyager
2004 nominee for best internet utility: FTP Voyager


Wow. Apparently not very much progress went on in that whole Internet thing since last millenium.  And this is just par for the course.  It's the same apps from the same tiny pool year after year.  Heck, Micrangelo won in 2000! Has new software been released since 2000? If they were just representing them and their friends, that's fine. But when they represent the "whole industry" then it just gets absurd.

Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well personally I think that some developers are held back by identifying too much as "shareware" developers. "Back in the Day" as they would say, that is, the late 80s and very early 90s, shareware was a big thing. It was a novel concept that you could dial up to your local BBS and download software for free. Some great programs existed as shareware. PaintShop Pro got its start there, for example. What I remember the ASP offering at the time, was help in distribution and promotion. Being a member also lent you an air of trustworthiness.

The world has moved on, but some shareware developers haven't. Jasc became a mainstream company, and few would call them "shareware"... Those who do are the old "geezers" who remember what they once were, and that they didn't even come close to playing second fiddle to PhotoShop as they do now.

I realized how out of it and behind the times the ASP was the other day when I downloaded an icon editing program (not the one mentioned here) that had all sorts of "award" logos, and a big ASP membership badge on its website. When I got it downloaded, I realized my mistake immediately. The installer was an old win95 style installer, it gave me some instructions about how to get various runtime dll's if my copy of windows didn't have them, and the interface looked like a badly designed port of a DOS program. It wouldn't even have met the standards for a win 3.1 app GUI - very basic. It ran, that's all I can say.

While using that app, I felt a bit nostalgic for those days when any kind of software you could get for "free" was worth a look, and you just put up with idiosynchracies like that. But then I looked deeper. The program was massively cripped. You couldn't even evauluate it properly - it covered every icon you edited with a watermark that over half the image. It couldn't handle .PNG format, nor could it handle TIFF. The author wanted $59 for this piece of garbage, too. Worse, it had a splash screen that not only nagged you to register, but was very nasty in its wording about those who freeload off other people's work, etc, etc.

According to the website, new versions of the program had been made recently too. I wasn't quite sure why the guy still bothered, or worse, who would actually be paying $59 for that program. Probably nobody, which is why the author was bitter.

Which explains shareware today. Those who were around in the early days fall into 3 basic camps.

1. Those who were good at what they did, and succeeded, moving up into the world of "real" software.

2. Those who were mediocre, but couldn't make much money at it. They quit or sold out years ago.

3. Those who were mediocre or bad, and just didn't get it, so they stubbornly stayed on, and blamed freeloaders for not registering, and progressively added more and more crippleware features to their programs to prevent said freeloaders. These seem to make up most of the Shareware "Community" that exists today. Bitter old men, basically. Most of them are still using Turbo C++, and haven't upgraded even so far as to the free Borland C++, let alone something modern like Visual Studio, or a variant of GCC for windows.

The same kind of people who still try to run FidoNet boards. Hey, I loved FidoNet... But I gave up my 1:106/7008 node sometime in 1996 and moved on.
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Wow... as much as I love the 'blinds, after looking at that 3DNA site, I think maybe they should have won based on innovation.... wow.. Of course, when I think of the load that would put my system under, I am happy with ObjectDock+...
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Froggy,

don't take this wrong but, who really cares? This is like being pissed at the local country Club members because they have thier little buddy system. Screw'em create your own buddy system, that's what I did.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top

3DNA didn't even get nominated, Lotherius. 


That was part of my beef. Two icon editors, a screen saver and "Window Blinds" were the "Desktop enhancements" category.


One envisions traveling back to a distant world where it's 1996 forever.  Paint Shop Pro, btw, did win best graphics program. There were only 3 programs in that category.


I guess there hasn't been much progress in graphics packages in the past decade. Forget PMView, ACDSee, Ulead, Snagit, Konvertor, FaceLifter. They apparently hadn't heard of those programs.


Which would be fine if they didn't represent themselves as being some sort of general awards. If you're going to pretend to be some industry authority, it would probably be useful to check out what's going on outside the clubhouse. 

Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top

TaST - written communication always has the limitation of being able to express how much we care about it.  I type 120wpm so I tend to write about a lot of things. 


In between writing this rant I also wrote a rant about the PC game industry:


https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=21895


And this one on renting software:


https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=21876


All today in between the regular day job stuff.  So don't get me wrong, I find this stuff interested but it would be a stretch to describe it as "pissed off" about it. Every year I see these various shareware awards announced on Cnet or in ZDNet or whatever and cringe for a second. I wish they hadn't expanded to include our stuff as I'd rather not be apart of something that they're not going to put in real effort to look at what's out there.

Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Froggy,

I believe that the las paragraph in your above post describes your feelings much better than the article. I've been reading your articles for a few years now and they nearly always come off as cotraversial. Maybe you should slow down to 60wpm and better describe your feelings?


As you know I also used to type before I really though it out I have learned better, well most of the time.


Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Let's have our own trialware awards


Give me a catagory and I'll judge it >
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top

TasT: That is my doom. If I slowed down my writing speed, I wouldn't get nealry as much done.


When it comes to writing, I tend to go with more is more even though sometimes my typing speed causes me problems (usually because I end up offending someone with poorly chosen words).


Here is a cleaned up version:


https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=21912


 

Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Wow that article, even though it still conveys the same info as the first one is written in a way I always new that you could, Froggy

A little thought on the wording went a long way.........
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Shesh, please stop the whinging. Bring back news to the front page, not all this "opinion".
There are sites for that sort of thing. (Sites that are not a million miles away)
If wincustomize.com carries on becoming Frogboy's person blog site, then I'm off.
Let's not lose the grip of what this site is supposed to be about.
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I think the vast majority of people frequenting Wincustomize.com welcome Frogboy's 'blogging' here....as it/they provide insight into what is 'behind' or in the mind-set of the person who steers the helm of the Company which provides the [majority of] proggies the skinners are here skinning for.


[in a future life I'll find a less wordy way of putting that]....

Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yes I am getting an insight into his mind-set.
But majority rules. C'est la vie.
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hehe my fav ipod moment on screensavers when it just crashed and all of Kevin's songs disapeared for no reason.