Austin Valley Software

Speaking to you, not at you

Ron — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:28:20 +0000

I purchased a notebook computer with the intentions of writing of blog entry everyday. What I had begun to realize however is that when I sit behind a computer I begin thinking more like an employee trying to work, rather than a person trying to run a business. It feels very unnatural for me to write in first person voice. I’ve been so accustomed to writing in third person voice for so long it’s hard for me to imagine that I am speaking directly to a person. So as my first entry, I’m pretending that I’m speaking to my cat. Well, I’m not actually pretending since my cat is sitting right here, and so long as I continue to pet her, I have her full attention.

It’s very interesting to me how I could have gone through the past 25 years of my professional life not realizing how trained I’ve become to working for the man. It’s amazing just how many filters I put on what i say. Working in politics for the last 10 years has made me try to be very articulate and precise in what I’m offering. It’s very easy to have your words twisted into meaning something you did not intend when dealing with people who only hear what they want to hear. You have to be very precise and verbose with what you’re saying. No place else is it more true than in law that words have meaning. And there is no place that the law is more prevalent than in politics. In fact it seems there are more politicians that are lawyers than any other profession.

Pretending that you have an audience when you speak’ helps quite a bit in putting your thoughts together. If I stand, for example, and walk around the room looking around like I’m speaking to an audience, it seems that the words come much more naturally because I feel like I am speaking to a group. Now if this voice recognition software which is actually translated what I’m saying into the words on the page it’ll make things a lot easier for me.

It’s kinda funny because the last sentence translated very well, without me really needing to do anything. As I understand, the more I talk to this computer, the better it should be in translating my words are into actual text, plus, I’ll begin to speak more naturally, pronouncing my words properly. Perhaps in time I will even be able to dictate an entire blog entry without needing to go back and make any corrections.

What’ll be really good, is if I have something to talk about besides this voice recognition software.

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PR Notes Experiment

Ron — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:54:35 +0000

I’ve recently issued a Press Release using 3 different, free or low cost services. They are;

PRfor25.com (publishes your release on their site for $25
FreePressRelease.com (allows you to upgrade for $1 to $30 depending on where you want to list)
www.prlog.org (completely free)

PRfor25.com published by request about 16 hours after I submitted it. If I had done my research a little better, I would have skipped using this service. On average, they get about 600 visitors per month on this site. It’s not very active with new content, so I don’t expect any value for my $25.

FreePressRelease.com gives you stats and some management capabilities. For a $1, you basically get a link from their site. The release gets rolled off the home page after about a day. If you want more, you pay more, period.

PRLog.org is by far a more pleasent experience than I expected. The page looks good, the account management is simple, and you can schedule releases far in advance. PRlog.com has grown significantly over the last year with over 800,000 unique visitors per month.. I’ll keep my eye on this one and update the stats a little later.

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Couples Learn Each Others’ Spending Habits Before Tying The Knot

Ron — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 07:04:51 +0000

New Website Serves Newlyweds And Newly Engaged To Combine Their Finances

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Aug 03, 2009 – SAN ANTONIO, TX –

One of the last things that most couples think about before getting married is money. Unfortunately, one of the most common reasons why couples go through a divorce is also money. A new website service called CashWaltz is available at www.cashwaltz.com to help newlyweds control their spending and give those newly engaged couples a head start on communicating about money and building a spending plan before their wedding day.

“Don’t keep secrets about money is the best advice I’ve heard when it comes to marriage.” says Ron Pitts, owner of Austin Valley Software. Ron, with his wife Wendy, created CashWaltz hoping to ease any chances of a money related argument.

“Combining finances is one of the hardest thing to do when you get married. We didn’t want money to be an issue in our marriage, and there wasn’t any other programs that let us share equally in the money tracking responsibilities.”

CashWaltz lets couples sign-up to track expenses together. Each person can use their own email and cell phone, with text message capabilities, to contribute to a single family expense profile. Once the couple signs up, they can begin text messaging their expenses, and/or entering their expenses through the website. This creates a detailed record of their combined spending. After a month, you’re ready to categorize the expenses into a
plan.

“It takes a few times to get into the habit of sending your expenses every time you spend money, but after you do this for a month, you have a great start on creating a spending plan together.” continued Mr. Pitts who believes a spending plan is how you want to start your marriage. “It’s a tremendous way to start communicating about money and your plans for a life together, even before you get married. You’ll both learn each others money priorities and make a commitment about your mutual financial goals.”

CashWaltz is free to use for the first five weeks, after which you may continue to benefit from its features including payment reminders, projected balances and expense tracking for only $47.00 per year. Other subscription options are also available including a gift subscription for Newlyweds. More information is available at www.cashwaltz.com .

How has CashWaltz worked out for its creator? “It’s been 18 months that we’ve used CashWaltz so far, and we have not had a single argument over money, and not one overdraft,” concludes Mr. Pitts.

If you’d like more information about CashWaltz, or to schedule an interview with Ron Pitts, please call Ron Pitts at 210-519-6065 or e-mail Ron at pr@cashwaltz.com

# # #

CashWaltz is a registered trademark of Austin Valley Software Corporation.

About Austin Valley Software Corporation.

AVSC is a software development company specializing in SaaS and Cloud Computing. Our flagship product is CashWaltz™

CashWaltz™ is a family friendly expense tracking service designed to save you time and improve communications by creating detailed spending records from a quick text message. Visit www.cashwaltz.com for more details.

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Tool To Help Your Software Business

Ron — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:42:06 +0000

Hosted Version Control

unfuddle.com and SubVersion

I don’t remember where I came across it, but I do remember the importance stressed in his book, MicroISV, that the smaller you are, the more important having good version control was. I started using Unfuddle.com and their SubVersion hosting in the beginning of 2008, and I’ve been very happy with them. It provides enough issue tracking, notes, and subversion repositories to keep me on track. I started using the free account, and upgraded to their $9.00 per month plan recently so I could bring on additional users and keep track of up to 5 projects.

I use Adobe DreamWeaver which has the WebDav connection, and TortoiseSVN at my desktop, and the command line subversion on my test and production servers. Moving a production version to my production server take just one command and a few seconds.

WebMail

AXIGEN Mail

There are plenty of good services to handle you e-mail out their, but if you want/need to run your own e-mail server, and have some Linux experience, check out AXIGEN. It’s a great product, and there is a 5 user version available for free use. They have a simple video tutorial you can watch online to help you get it installed and configured.

Hosting / Virtual Servers

Amazon Web Services – Elastic Compute Cloud – EC2

I cannot begin to express how incredibly cool Amazon Web Services and their EC2 service is. I’ve been hosting on AWS EC2 for a year and it’s amazing. Make sure you get the FireFox plug-in extensions for EC2 if you decide to pursue this route. Look for a long post on this subject in the near future.

FireFox Plugins

FireBug

FireBug is a plug-in extention for the FireFox Web Browser which provides you a window to the source behind the site you are viewing. This is wonderful for debuging your site, or looking into what another site is doing.

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Dealing With Payroll – Use PayCycle

Ron — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:40:07 +0000

One of the issues I’ve been struggling with has been how to handle some of the more touchy issues of being in business for yourself, and keeping good records to ensure that all the IRS and other regulatory issues are being met while I try and get the business running smoothly. That’s why I was very happy to see Scott Blitstine’s post on the PayCycle service for Small Businesses.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ll be self-funding my MicroISV using a form of self-directed 401(k) plan from Guident. Part of the product offering requires that I take a salary to ensure regulatory compliance and maintain the plans status. Outsourcing the payroll functions (withholding’s, W-2, SSI, etc.) is one part of being a small business owner I was not looking forward to. Now with services such as PayCycle, being a MicroISV is a little less work.

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The HTC G1 And Opportunities

Ron — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:37:42 +0000

I just received my G1 phone from T-Mobile. This is a great little device, and as the prices fall, it will make for a great secondary embedded system.

What I mean as a secondary embedded system is, for years, developing a computing platform from scratch has been extreamly expensive, as the number of devices needed for a particular application use would severely hamper the sellability of the product. Now that the G1 is out, with it’s S/D Ram, 802.11b/g wireless, bluetooth and gps integrated into an open-source O/S in a 3×2″ package, writting real-world applications to solve real problems may get fun, and affordable again.

	3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with HVGA (320 X 480 pixel) resolution.
	Full 5-row QWERTY keyboard.
	One-Touch Google Search™.
	Customizable Home screen with instant Email, text message and IM notifications.
	Instant access to mobile Internet services (Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Maps™, Google Talk™, Google Calendar™).
	High-speed 3.5G network connection.
	Wi-Fi technology with seamless transition to open networks.
	Android Market™ with access to variety of software and media downloads. (some fees may apply)
	3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus.
	microSD™ (SD 2.0 compatible) expansion slot for all your storage needs.

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