Irie Tools (Business & Technology)

The planning for the next major release of Irie Pascal is moving along nicely. As mentioned in a previous post, this release with be focused on web development. I have done a preliminary design for the new XHTML engine that will be integrated with Irie Pascal (and so far so good). I need to do some more reading on Cascading Style Sheets (or more specifically CSS 2.1). To that end I have ordered some more books from Amazon (I think I am single-handedly keeping them in business). Anyway the books I ordered are:

• The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites (2nd Edition)
• Pro CSS Techniques (Pro)
• The Confident Speaker
• Change Your Voice : Change Your Life : A Quick, Simple Plan for Finding & Using Your Natural Dynamic Voice

The last two books are just in case I find myself doing some kind of public relations. Hmm, maybe I should do a podcast.

I just finished reading “CSS The Definitive Guide” by Eric A.. Moyer, published by O’REILLY. I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It was very good but the reason I didn’t give it 5 stars was because I wanted a precise specification of CSS 2.1 to guide me in implementing software for authoring web pages, however I found that, not surprisingly, the official CSS 2.1 specification is better for that purpose.

The first few chapters of this book cover the basics of Cascading Style Sheets in a very clear and comprehensive manner. Later chapters, covering more advanced topics, and were very good also, but I found that their description of what goes on “under the hood” was not as good as in the official specification.

If I had to pick only one CSS book then I would prefer the  “CSS The Missing Manual” by David Sawyer McFarland, published by O’REILLY, but you probably would not be wasting your money if you decided to buy both books.

Below are links to the product pages on Amazon of the two books mentioned in this review:

CSS: The Definitive Guide

CSS: The Missing Manual

Please note that I am a member of the Amazon Associates program and I receive a percentage of the sales made through these links.

I have been reading alot of books recently (both business and technology books), as I begin to refocus Irie Tools on web development. My review of one these books is below.

• Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies
• Authors: David S.Evans & Richard Schmalensee
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (May 9, 2007)
• Pages: 228

This book describes what it calls ‘two-sided businesses‘, which to quote from the front jacket ‘… generate value by creating simultaneous and mutually beneficial relationships between the different groups of customers they serve’. The book opens with the example of Diners Club which creates value for the following two groups of customers:

1. Restaurants
2. Diners.

In this case, Diners Club allows diners to eat at many restaurants on credit without having to establish a credit relationship with each individual restaurant (assuming the restaurants are willing to offer them credit). The diners benefit from the credit they receive, and the restaurants benefit by getting more diners who spend more and by avoiding the hassle and expense of managing credit relationships with individual diners.

The book is easy to read (no jargon) and provides numerous and familiar examples. It may not astonish you with any earth-shattering insights, but it will make you look at ‘two-sided businesses‘ in a new way.

This book is a must-have if you are involved with or competing against ‘two-sided businesses‘, and will probably be useful to anyone involved with business generally.

Hello again. I am back to share with you some of my plans for the future of Irie Tools.

The future of Irie Tools is all about focus, focus, and focus. Instead of producing a general purpose Pascal programming environment (i.e. Irie Pascal), Irie Tools will focus on web development (both web sites and web development tools). The web development tools are expected to include:

• An open source XHTML engine that will make it easy to generate XHTML pages using any programming language (I think there are ‘better’ ways to do this than ASP.NET and JSP).
• The next major release of Irie Pascal (i.e. version 3.0) which will be enhanced and integrated with the XHTML engine to make it easy to create web sites.

The plan is that the web development tools will support web development on Windows only (at least initially). However the hosting platform (i.e. the platform you would use to host the web sites) will be the Apache web server, running on Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux (Red Hat, other distributions will be added later).

Why did I make the decision to focus? Well, I have been reading alot of business books recently (about product strategy and branding), and they all seem to agree that it is a good thing for a business (especially a small business) to find an area of specialization and focus there.

Why focus on web development? Web development has the advantages of being an important (and growing more important every day) area of software development, but still relatively new (with room for new players and new ways of doing things).

P.S. Of course when the next major release of Irie Pascal becomes available special upgrade prices will be offered to existing customers.

Hi, my name is Stuart King, and this blog is my attempt to ‘talk’ with two main groups of people:

1. Persons using or interested in using products from Irie Tools.
2. Small business owners (particularly those in the software development business).

This is my first post to this blog so here is a brief introduction to myself and Irie Tools. I am a Jamaican software developer and businessman (experienced software developer and not so experienced businessman). I founded Irie Tools in 1998, got somewhat serious about the business in 2002 (registered the business name), and then finally got really serious (quit my day job) in early 2007 and I am now fully focused on Irie Tools. At the time of this post, Irie Tools has one product, a Pascal based software development solution (IDE with compiler, editor, and run-time engine). You can find more information about Irie Tools here.

What is this blog going to be about? I am planning to cover the following topics (I have no doubt this list will change):

• News about Irie Tools.
• My experiences running a software development business in Jamaica.
• The Jamaican business and technology scene.

What is this blog not going to be about? Well, hopefully I will be able to avoid the following:

• Trying to sell you anything.
• Boring you with personal problems and/or issues.
• Trying to convert you to my world view.