Phil Factor's Blog (4)

I sharpened my metaphorical pencil and brooded. I decided to write some simple tips on how a software company could survive in a recession, and make best use of it. As always, I sat down in front of a blank screen and stared at it. I waited for the muse to whisper inspiration in my ear. “Phil”, came the old familiar voice of inspiration in my ear. “This subject is a dead cert. Your company was founded in the nineteen seventies, and has been in business ever since. You’ve done well, generally sp… Continue

When I was a schoolboy with fantasies about being a successful businessman, I went to a lecture given by one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the time. The white-haired gentleman who gave the lecture was the complete antithesis of what I had expected a successful businessman to look like. He was quiet, courteous, respectful and reflective. He proceeded to spell out the qualities he looked for in young people aspiring to make a success in the rough and tumble of the City. He emphasized ov… Continue

Whenever I try out software, I always, out of habit, send the vendors a report that says exactly what I thought of it, in a considered and, I hope polite, way; but frank. Often, I'll add my opinion of their marketing efforts, and, nowadays, the impression I get of the website. Often, it is just little more than a 'thank-you' note, but if I feel that a company could actually benefit, I put more time into it. The response varies according to the rich diversity of human behaviour, but I haven't be… Continue

It was so long ago that I got fed up with the glacial slowness of commercial software development, and wrote a public-domain text-processing program. The premise was that spreadsheets were namby-pamby things, and that what one really needed was something that would process text as if it were a spreadsheet. Everybody knows that numbers in a column in a fixed space font are a column. Why bother with a spreadsheet? It was much easier to produce data and formulas as a text file and get a nice little… Continue