Today marks the first birthday of Reinvented Software, I released KIT 1.0 on August 3rd 2004. This is entirely consistent with Wil Shipley’s belief that every programmer’s first project is some kind of media database. It was a good launch with more sales than I’d expected in the first month – but it didn’t last long.

The business only really got going when Feeder was released some six months later. There were some extremely bleak days in the meantime and I nearly packed it all in. I applied for a number of jobs and almost got some of them too, but something would always go wrong at the last minute. This would leave me partly relieved and simultaneously filled with dread, because I knew I’d have to go through the whole cycle again. I only ever wanted to do this.

By the time Feeder was released in February, I somehow knew it was going to do well and that was my last hope. I came up with the idea in late October but didn’t get it started for another two months due to those job interviews and other distractions. My thinking was that with RSS due to go mainstream on the Mac thanks to Safari 2.0 in Tiger, people without blogs or content management systems would want RSS feeds on their sites.

In the meantime podcasting was gaining momentum, but I had no idea if podcasters would want to use Feeder. I built in some convenience features for them anyway. My research indicates that around 50% of Feeder users are podcasters and this seems to be rising quickly since iTunes 4.9 was released. I don’t think anyone imagined podcasting would get this big in such a short space of time but that is testament to how compelling it is.

One year on, things are going well and I’ve only just begun. I have big plans for my applications and a ton of other ideas. My biggest problem is time and juggling all the various aspects of the business – I do it all. Being an independent software developer is thrilling and exhausting all at the same time, but it would mean nothing without the people who buy my software, plug it on their web sites and in their podcasts and use it to do some amazing things. Thank you!

I released Feeder 1.2 with the new iTunes podcasting features last Friday, a little earlier than planned but it couldn’t come soon enough for most people. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

For the beta testing, I needed the help of people already listed in the iTunes Music Store both to test that the XML was working and to test Feeder’s cool iTunes Preview feature matched iTunes itself. As such I’d like to thank those people who put their listings on the line (I didn’t quite put it like that at the time, did I?) to test out Feeder, namely:

• Adam Christianson of the MacCast
• Dan Klass of The Bitterest Pill
• DJ Freak of Beathustler Radio
• Mark Reid of The Mac Report
• Timm Hacket of the English 1100 Podcast
• Paul Figgiani of The.Point Podcast

All the links above are to their listings in the iTMS so you can see Feeder’s work in situ, subscribe, enjoy, etc. 😀

Also thanks to Björk for keeping me awake for the last 30-hour stint <rolleyes>. I needed some music that I hadn’t heard in ages and even more I’d never heard at all.

It also should be noted that Sam Ruby and Mark Pilgrim’s work on FeedValidator, posts on Intertwingly and the new Apple Syndication Dev mailing list has been incredibly useful. We know Apple has the questions, all we need now are answers.

Now that mad dash to the finish line is over, I no longer need to obsess over the minutiae of the iTunes RSS specification and I’ve caught up with my sleep, I’m going to be able to post more interesting things on this blog.

Stay tuned!

Apologies if you’ve tried to reach this site and been met with some awful spammy placeholder page. I paid Tektonic, my hosting company, to renew my domain at the beginning of this month, but it seems the renewal wasn’t submitted and thus the site went offline.

Awful timing, for 101 different reasons.

Anyway, it’s back now. Thanks to everybody who let me know, particularly Jerry Musser, who was the first to break the news. Also, Tektonic’s support is very professional and responsive – thankfully. Hopefully this won’t happen again.

My first reaction to seeing that Microsoft has chosen “Vista” as the release name for Longhorn was to look for something more interesting to read. While it’s an improvement on XP (for eXPerience – kinda funny, actually, since it really is quite an experience) it’s all rather bland and appears to be wholly inaccurate. All that marketing clout, all those millions of dollars and Microsoft hasn’t come up with a decent name or codename for any of their releases that I know of. It’s all cattle and sell-by dates (funny that).

So, I think Erik hit the nail on the head in his QotD. My thoughts exactly. Thankfully, it doesn’t matter whether or not I like the name because I don’t have to care. 😀

Feeder has been getting quite a bit of attention lately (can’t think why!), and there’s more coming in the near future…

Oliver Bredenback at Boinx Software has published an excellent article (biased, moi?) on How to Create Podcasts with .Mac.

Paul Figgiani mentions Feeder on ThePoint Podcast No. 38.

Mark Reid talks about Feeder on show No. 2 of The Mac Report podcast.

Jason O’Grady writes about Feeder on O’Grady’s PowerPage as he prepares for his podcast.

In Sweden, on MacPro’s website (thought I’m not really sure what it says, it looks innocuous enough!).

Feeder is was mentioned in the Cool Mac Picks segment of Inside Mac Radio on July 23rd.

Thank you, everybody!