My iOS interval timer, WOD Timer brought in its average monthly share.  Adsense actually didn’t do too badly considering that September (like the previous umpteen months) didn’t involve any SEO or traffic “tactics”.  Unlike the previous two months, however, there was no affiliate income.  Not that I usually generate much affiliate income, but I was getting used to the Linkshare cheque.

As for my BlackBerry PlayBook apps, Awesome Timer did nearly the same as last month, but an interesting note about Beats Brainwave Entrainment – September saw more than double what we saw in August.  Last month I hinted at dabbling in some App Store marketing techniques and although I can’t say for certain at this point, it does seem that my efforts weren’t for not.

Take a look at the following charts.  The bottom chart shows the purchases of Beats Brainwave Entrainment.  Around September 8th, the purchases started spiking higher with more day to day sales than the previous month saw.  Around that same time, I released a free version of the app that was restricted to a single function.  The free version also contains a link to the full version in App World and every time the free app is started on the device, a nice banner pops up and reminds the user about the extra functionality in the full version.  Low and behold, this marketing technique suggests conversions, as the chart shows.

We’re still talking small potatoes here and perhaps that’s partly due to the market share that the PlayBook has.  But October sales of Beats have continued to show strength and I’m also surprised to see a little bit of increase in sales of Awesome Timer for the PlayBook as well.  Certainly looking forward to my results for this month.

Stay tuned…

I realize that this post is nearly… well exactly a half month too late.  Better late than never – even though, in a word, August online income was a real drag.  I was expecting a month similar to July, but ended up with some rather disappointing results.

iPhone Apps
Again, August turned out to be an ok month for my iPhone apps, which I haven’t touched in well over a year.  I’ve been finding that my single small niche app (WOD Timer) has produced a steady stream of between $100 and $150 per month for a while now.  Passive income at its finest. Get a few more of these coded up and I’d be really happy.  These results are really making me consider working exclusively on the iOS platform for my next app(s).  Especially after the month I’ve had with my PlayBook apps.

PlayBook Apps
So my last post indicated a nice little load of cash in my pocket, having had great results with my Beats Brainwave Entrainment PlayBook app.  That was July.  I really don’t know what happened, but August results took a serious hit and in total, between both of my paid PlayBook apps, I’ve only seen around $35 for the month of August.  Ouch!! That’s an order of magnitude different than what I saw last month!  My wife tried to make me feel better by suggesting that “there will be peaks and valleys” in my app revenue.  Hope she’s right   But alas, I have a trick up my sleeve  that I’m looking forward to experimenting with. I’ve yet to attempt this sort of app SEO method.  Does that make sense?  “SEO for apps”…  Maybe it’s more like “ASO” – App Store Optimization.  But then you’d have to be careful using that acronym in a sentence – I could seriously be taken out of context if I suggested that “I do ASO”

Affiliate Marketing
Last month was my first LinkShare cheque.  It was only $5.  This month, according to LinkShare, I’ve made over $13!  That’s a 160% increase in LinkShare revenue month to month.  I like that.  I guarantee this is not going to continue. I’ve more or less jumped off the affiliate marketing bandwagon… as a publisher anyway.  Certainly next month will not be as good.

And that’s that  – I’ll blame rough August app revenue on the rough August weather.  It’s all your fault, Irene.

It turns out to not be all that easy and to this day, a couple years after first reading 4HWW, I’m still nowhere near my goal.  But the project is still going strong and some passive, SWISS cash is actually getting into my hands (albeit not nearly enough to live off of).

I’ve decided to incorporate some monthly summaries of this snail pace project into my blog. I present the first of hopefully many more articles that summarize my monthly “passive” earnings.

The “passive” earnings breakdown for July 2011:

July 2011 was actually a record “passive” earnings month, believe it or not.  For some strange reason I pulled in more than usual AdSense revenue (though just $23) and also managed a couple of affiliate payments (truthfully my first affiliate payments, and they were also exceptionally small). The bulk of the earnings, however, were from my apps.

I’ve had an iOS app, WOD Timer, in the wild for a couple of years now and despite not touching it in just as long, it still manages to pull in between $100 to $200 per month.  But this month also included earnings from two newer BlackBerry PlayBook apps that managed to snag me over $250 in July.

Although I call this income “passive”, over the last couple of previous months, I spent quite a bit of my free time working on the PlayBook apps, so it’s hardly passive.  Fortunately both of these apps are in a good position now and, like WOD Timer for iOS, I don’t expect to be working on them much in the foreseeable future while they continue to work for me and “passively” deposit some dollars in my bank account.  Though I do expect to finish yet another app in the next month and I’m feverishly trying to find time to do so.

I don’t have the numbers off hand, but I believe that last year at this time I was making less than half of July’s earnings.  If my doubling rate is anual, I’m hoping for at least $1000 per month in “passive” cash in July 2012.  Of course, that’s assuming we make it there and that cash is actually worth anything when we do.

And it took virtually no time at all.  The most difficult part was creating the icon and splashscreen.  The rest was just as easy as making the background black and centering the content on the PlayBook screen.

In the movie, Cooper plays a character that goes from “lack of focus loser bum writer” to “super smart successful confident and intimidating millionaire” in a matter of weeks with the help of what the movie refers to as NZT – an expensive drug of unknown origin with underground distribution.  The character gets his hands on a stash and just one tiny clear round pill a day is all it takes.  Of course, as one can imagine, the drug has its side effects – both mental and sociological.

Besides, the pill doesn’t exist…

Or does it?

Although I can’t find the reference, I can recall reading something that Tim Ferriss wrote in his book or blog about drugs that can boost intelligence.  I also know SWIM who indulged in Ritalin during university and could bash out essays faster than I could write a single paragraph.

So I turned to Google and started reading up on Nootropics – also referred to as smart drugs, memory enhancers,  cognitive enhancers.  These are pills, supplements or simply foods that are purposed to help memory, cognitive ability, comprehension, intelligence and concentration.  Some of them are mild and lack much of an effect.  Others are said to have profound effects but are considered dangerous or are associated to illness or death.

But they do exist.

While I’m not interested in going around trying to score illicit “medication”, I am interested in what I can do safely, naturally, with minimal risk, that can maybe boost my focus and ability to recall information.

Starting today, I’m switching things up a little.  Ginkgo and Ginseng have been shown to possibly help increase memory and concentration but I can’t go this route because of adverse effects of drug interactions with current prescriptions that I take.  But what I can do is the following:

Go gluten free.  This is something that I’ve already been trying to do (although admittedly not consistently).  Gluten, found in wheat based products, has been anecdotally associated with ADD and ADHD.  I’m not gluten intolerant (that I know of) but at the same time, gluten doesn’t do us any good.

Drop the caffeine intake.  Caffeine has been known to increase alertness and energy, but excessive caffeine use (which I am possibly guilty of indulging in) lowers this effect over time.  Instead it is recommended to take caffeine only when necessary to reap its full reward.

Switch to green tea.  Green tea is loaded with antioxidants and has a lower caffeine amount than coffee.  Green tea also contains theanine, which has been known to stimulate alpha brain waves, calm the body, and promote relaxed awareness.

Up the Omega-3.  Fish oils are a rich source of Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA), a fatty acid that is found in high concentration in the gray matter of the brain. DHA is fundamental to the function of brain cell membranes and is super important for the transmission of brain signals.

Be careful with carbs. The brain needs sugar.  But high glycemic sugars (cane sugar, table sugar, sugar from fruit or white bread) gets absorbed quickly and don’t last long.  Instead, I’m going to work on ensuring I take in low glycemic carbohydrates in the morning.  Organic Oatmeal is an example of a high fiber, low glycemic carb that can feed my brain for the full workday.  Likewise, brown rice over white rice will be the norm.  Lots of veggies will also consume my dinner plate (yes, veggies are carbs). No pasta, no bagels.

Train the brain.  I used to play Brain Age on the Nintendo DS.  Haven’t for a while though.  Fortunately the iOS has a slew of brain training type games available for it.  The one that I picked up was Dr. Kawashima’s More Brain Training for the iPad.  I’m happy to report that I have a brain health of a 28 year old (according to the game).  I’m sure there’s room for improvement though.  I’ve also picked up Photographic Memory Training for iOS – a training app, based on research by A.W. Volkmann that supposedly helps photographic memory training.  The hope is that daily doses of brain training can help a lot.

I’ll report back after a couple weeks of my little brain health experiment.

“Just a couple days to go”
“TGIF”
“Got a case of the Mondays”
“Woot! Long Weekend!”

Do you recognize these statements?  Have you ever muttered these words as though making it through the work week was a struggle of endurance?  For many of us, Monday sucks because we’ve only just begun to enjoy a blissful weekend and the next weekend is as far away as possible.  Mondays suck because they possibly mean a rushed breakfast, a morning panic trying to get the kids off to school, unbearable traffic, anxiety over co-worker relationships, anxiety over deadlines and unfinished work from the week before – there are probably a billion things I could list off that cause us to think of Mondays as the lowest of the low point in the week.

Come Wednesday afternoon, we all typically start perking up a little bit in anticipation of the imminent Friday night, marking the beginning of a couple days of rest, family and fun.  Of course, these two days usually turn into a bumper to bumper list of errands and chores, rather than the fabled blissful weekend and then once again, Sunday night approaches and the whole cycle starts over again.

We simply carry on and live it over and over and over again.  “Yay Friday!”  “Boo Monday”.

If this sounds familiar and you have a nagging thought in the back of your mind telling you that perhaps there is something more out there, listen to that nagging thought and pick up Dan Miller’s No More Mondays.  It’s a book that you should read.

No More Mondays begins with a nice little back story prologue, telling the tale of how Dan Miller, the author, started down the road to being a self made millionaire.  His first person account is a littering of anecdotes of successes and failures – well written and enough to hook the reader for the rest of the book.

Miller then goes through the usual topics – finding your passion, linear versus residual income, being secure at a job verus imprisoned, living with purpose, etc…  I found Miller’s writing to read very easily and nary a sentence went by without resonating with me.  It’s obvious that he’s had a lot of experience as an entrepreneur.  As such, virtually every topic he discusses involves also relating it to a story or two from his past or some other success story in all sorts of industries.  These stories are what really carry the book, in my opinion.

The one thing that really hit me was his discussion of residual versus linear income.  Residual income being income generated ongoing for a single unit of work.  Linear income, conversely, is getting paid once per unit of work.  So the lawyer that pulls in 300k per year and drives a Porche really still gets paid by the hour.  If he stops lawyering, he stops making money.  On the other hand, the mother of three stay at home mom pulls in 50k per year because of some ebooks she has written that nearly sell themselves through an affiliate network setup and she has all the time in the world to take care of enjoy her family.

This isn’t that it’s mind blowing, of course.  In fact, many other authors, such as Tim Ferriss (in the 4 Hour Work Week) have discussed the concept passive income – making money with mostly up front effort and generating a stream of income that virtually runs itself.  Miller mentions a name for this passive type of income – SWISS dollars – Sales While I Sleep Soundly.  Apropos, although not necessarily super clever I suppose.

For anyone who has read any of the many success type entrepreneur books out there, the underlying message is likely nothing new.  However, I found this book to be an incredibly worth while read.  Miller may drop a few too many bible references for some (he certainly likes to quote them), but his writing style and his many anecdotes are enough to possibly finally rid some of us of our dreaded Mondays.

I’ve been hard at work on a few projects in my spare time, but no excuses for the lack of recent posts.  I’ve been concurrently reading both No More Mondays by Dan Miller and Atlus Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  While one is fiction and the other is not, they both ironically (and unintentionally) share a theme – that one must take accountability of their own actions in order to accomplish any worthwhile goals.  Otherwise, complaining and shifting responsibilities and blame is the path to unhappiness and a life filled with woes. Of course, Any Rand doesn’t start really getting into this concept until around 450 pages into the book while No More Mondays isn’t even 1/4 the length of Atlus Shrugged.  Regardless, I’ve been enjoying both books (although this isn’t my first read of Atlus Shrugged, possibly my favorite novel).

I have some big plans to get through 3 books per month in 2011.  At the current rate, it looks like I’ll have to make up time in February, but I’m not at all jaded by the slow progress so far.  Onward and upward, so they say.

Life in project land has been moving at a quick pace.  Earlier this month I released a new website, Automated Web Design, which flaunts a simple web development technique for bloggers and Internet marketers.  www.automated-web-design.com provides a number of tutorial videos chronicling my creation of the site using Artisteer – a brilliant web theme template creator. It is possibly one of my favorite programs that allows me to build WordPress or Joomla themes in minutes (dead serious).

I’m also hard at work on a PlayBook app. My first frontier into PlayBook application development has been a fortunately smooth process.  Actionscript is an awesome language and Air is a great framework to be working in.  The fact that RIM chose Air as a main SDK for the PlayBook was a smart move IMO.

Along with the app development, I’ve found myself building tools to supplement the BlackBerry PlayBook Air SDK.  Some of those tools I’m hoping to release to the community soon.

As a result of all this PlayBook stuff, something that I’ve found myself looking into without much success in the last week has been Adobe’s FXG vector file format.  For whatever reason, in the latest Air/Flex SDK, Adobe has decided to deprecate the far more common SVG vector image file type in favor of their own markup that they call FXG.  It’s not that the schema or documentation is not available – as always, Adobe provides a good dish of documentation on their website.  The problem is that Adobe Illustrator is one of the very few programs capable of writing to this format and I’m not at all interested in purchasing Illustrator. Apparently Illustrator does a somewhat lousy job of converting from SVG to FXG anyway.

So in my quest to find more FXG related resources, I’ve put this tiny list together:

fxgeditor.7jigen.net

fxgeditor is a simple Flash based FXG online vector graphics editor.  It supports shapes, paths, lines and some effects but doesn’t seem to do gradients very well – at least from what I saw.  But like I said – it’s simple and free.  Certainly no Illustrator, but often Illustrator is unnecessary.
Project ROME by Adobe

This is interesting.  In an attempt to create creative software tools as a service, Adobe released “Project ROME”.  This app is available in both an online version and Air desktop application.  The application allows you to create documents in a variety of ways.  The documents can then be exported in a number of formats including FXG files.  Despite the potential that Project ROME seems to have, Adobe decided to stop development on it and released the application for free.  This, of course, works in our favor.
InkScape SVG to FXG xslt plugin

An extension was recently committed to the InkScape trunk for FXG exporting from the fantastic InkScape vector editor.  Post #24 in the link above describes how to install it.  Further down in the buglog (link above) there is a link to the updated xslt transform that is used to transform the SVG document to FXG.

Fortunately there is a difference between “deprecated” and “not supported” and SVG files can still be embedded into swf files. I can’t see that changing any time soon. In fact, I’d be seriously surprised if Adobe fully removed support for SVG.  It would be like (although arguably opposite) Google removing support for h264 video in Chrome… oh wait….

DropBox

DropBox has quickly become a staple tool for me. A free gig of online data storage that syncs with multiple local folders give DropBox most of its awesome. Its simplicity and ease of use is a serious bonus. And with a decent API, desktop and mobile platforms are able to interface with with it, providing huge benefits for users with apps like GoodReader. And when my developer hat goes on, DropBox has become my source control system for small non-collaborative projects.

EverNote

Where DropBox excels at storing files and keeping them in sync across systems, EverNote excels at document storage for things like articles, ideas, little notes. When I have a new idea, I just fire up my email and shoot the idea off to my EverNote email address and it gets stored into my EverNote notebook for reference later. The free version is all I really need, never going over the 50mb allowance that free users get, but the pro version isn’t very expensive and would be awesome for even the most hardcore note taking enthusiasts.

SumoPaint

First, let’s be straight – when it comes to picture editing, Adobe’s product line is at the top, miles above most other programs. But when it comes to some simple design work, I’ve found SumoPaint to be absolutely coated in awesome sauce.

With an interface that would be extremely familiar to any photoshopper, the only lacking functionality, really, is the absence of some better filters and Image adjustment functions. Other than that, SumoPaint provides a very usable Flash based paint program.

One of the elements of SumoPaint that I really like are the gradient fills – very nice set of pre-defined gradients. But where it really shines is being able to store your design on your SumoPaint account. You can spin up SumoPaint on any of your machines and continue working on your project without needing to carry a file around or install anything on your system. Slick sauce.

There’s a place for Flash and Flex on the web and SumoPaint is a perfect example of what kind of web app fits in that place. It will be a while off before we see a similar kind of tool running in that HTML5 thing that everyone is talking about.

Google Docs

Yes, Google Docs has been around for a dog’s age (just a couple of years, really, in Internet terms). But Google Docs keeps bringing it. As far as online writing is concerned, there are likely few web apps with as much functionality. The autosave function is priceless by itself but when you’re sitting there editing a document in what feels like Microsoft Word and you suddenly remember that you’re using a web application, it is a little mind blowing.

When Microsoft Windows Live came out online with their online set of equivalent tools, I gave them a test drive, but I found myself disappointed that they paled in comparison to what Google Docs is capable of.

Google may have tried and failed a number of times in 2010 with things like Buzz and Wave, but Google Docs is an example of how Google is seriously capable of some awesome sauce kicked up a notch.

Mint.com

Earlier this year, I bought Intuit’s suite of tools. I started using them but looking back, I obviously lost interest. And having several machines that I use on a daily basis (laptop, netbook, iPad, Desktop) I don’t even really remember where installed it.

So it was with joyous song that when I found out that Mint.com pulled out the big guns and released a Canadian version. I signed up and hooked up my bank account along with all of my credit card accounts in literally minutes and was suddenly presented with a budget and indications of where I was at with respect to staying on budget.

My only wish – that Mint.com integrated with points cards and better stock market integration. But for a free online app that aggregates my financials, I’m happy. Awesome sauce and a side of chips

A couple of nuances that I’ve come across with using the PlayBook SDK from the command line include both the need to pass a boat-load of parameters and a lack of documentation on just how to use them. Through a bit of trial and error, I managed to get debugging with the command line tools to work and finally decided to automate some of the effort by using Apache Ant.

Apache Ant is a build tool similar to Make that facilitates the automation of the compilation and installation processes involved in building programs. Ant is also really simple to use.

I’ve decided to share my Ant build.xml file template for PlayBook application building. It’s fairly straight forward. Hopefully the following instructions (and video) will help you use the template. Note that these instructions do assume that you can already build and package swf and bar files and have already been able to successfully deploy to the PlayBook simulator.

You can download the build.xml template here. (updated Jan 12-2011 to work with Beta 2 simulator and to add better automated debug support)

Also, note that this build.xml template works only with Windows. It will not work with Mac or Linux.

To Get Ant Setup:

1. Download the Apache Ant .zip archive from here: http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi
2. Extract the zip archive to somewhere on your system
3. Add the Ant bin directory to your System Path. (Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Environment Variables -> Find the Path variable and add the path to the Ant bin directory)

To Use the Ant build.xml File:

1. Rename the build-template.xml to build.xml and place it in your src directory.
2. You will have to modify the first 5 property tags and set the values as necessary.
3. If your package (bar file) requires files or directories other than the .swf file, you will need to add them at line 34. Uncomment the last couple of arguments in the package target and modify them or delete them or add more as necessary.
4. To execute a build target from the command line, type “ant “. So, for example, to build the packagerun target, you type “ant packagerun”.

The following targets are included in the file:

• build-debug
• build-release
• package
• deploy
• run

There should also be a packagerun target that calls, in order, build-debug,package,deploy and then launches the app.

4.  If you would like to create a debug session, open another command prompt and type “fdb”. This will start the Flex debugger. Once open, type “run” before launching your PlayBook app from the command line. Once the app is launched, the debugger will break. Type “continue” and the debugger and app will continue. Trace statements will be output to the debugger session – as will errors. Further documentation on using fdb (setting breakpoints and stuff) can be found on the adobe docs website.

Here’s a video of me using Ant for an app I’m working on. Click on it to watch at Vimeo.com and see it in HD. Otherwise it’s difficult to see the text. Cheers!

First, Some Public Domain 101

Before the printing press in the 1400′s, documents were largely copied by way of manual effort – painstakingly laborious and error-prone hand copying. Along comes the printing press and exact duplicates of works could be relatively easily created and widely distributed.  In the 15th and 16th centuries, the church and government encouraged copying documents as a means of spreading biblical word and government information but also looked down on propaganda that wasn’t their own (critical work, works of dissent).  As a result, laws were established to enforce control over what printers could print and for how long they could do so.

In the 16th century, printers from across England formed the Stationers’ Company and were collectively given the power to keep tabs on printed books and ultimately gave them dominant control over English publishing rights through the 17th century.

In the early 18th century, the uniting of England and Scotland governments produced the Copyright Act of 1709, otherwise known as the Statute of Anne, otherwise known as “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.”  Obviously copyright came before the art of making short forms of otherwise long and boring terminology.
Although vaguely similar to modern day copyright, the Statute of Anne was only 6 clauses and unlike current copyright, did not actually initially specify the term length for the protection of copyrighted property.  This did eventually change though with the establishment of a limited 14 year term (and more importantly, a shortening of the title).  the copyright term could be renewed for another 14 years if the author was still alive to do so.

As soon as copyright terms began to expire, however, booksellers attempted to defend their rights to their works via heavy government lobbying and this lobbying has more or less continued to this day.

In the US, the copyright act of 1790 worked nearly identical to the Statute of Anne, giving a term length of 14 years, plus 14 year renewal.  However works could only fall under copyright protection as long as they offered a clear copyright notice.  Otherwise they fell into what was called the Public Domain.

In 1831, the term was extended to 28 years with a 14 year renewal.
In 1909, the term was again extended to 28 years plus a renewal term of another 28 years.
In 1976, term length exploded to 75 years or life of author plus 50 years.
In 1998, this again exploded further to 95 years after publication or life plus 70 years.

Works not under copyright or having an expired copyright are considered in the public domain.  Works considered in the public domain are, in general, works, ideas and information which are intangible to private ownership and which are available for use by the members of the public in whichever way the members of the public may wish to use them for.

Thus public domain works can be redistributed, sold, repackaged and modified by anyone for whatever reason.

There are some exceptions to the rule, but any works created before 1923 are considered in the public domain.  It is important to note, however, that audio works cannot reliably be considered to be in the public domain even if created before 1923.

Works copyrighted before 1978 required their term to be renewed in their 28 copyright year.  Thus, works copyrighted before 1964 but not renewed are also in the public domain.  Turns out that most works published before 1978 were not actually renewed.

So the whole thing boils down to this: We are all allowed to reproduce and sell non-audio works created pre-1923.  We may also be allowed to repackage/modify/distribute/sell works copyrighted before 1964 should their renewal not have occurred.  And while people can get these public domain works for free from a massive variety of sources, with some creative thinking and smart packaging, some fast cash can be made by simply republishing public domain work.

Where to Find Public Domain Content?

The best places online to find public domain content is Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is a massive website full of 100% public domain content.  It’s laid out in a wiki style and is easily searchable.  You can also download their entire catalog as an xml feed.

Project Gutenberg doesn’t have every public domain book available, however.  For example, one public domain ebook that I’ve republished is a book called Letter on Corpulence by William Banting – possibly one of the first accounts of a low carb diet.  This book cannot be found in Project Gutenberg.  Think And Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill is another book that can’t be found in this archive.

If there’s a particular book that you know of that you can’t find in Project Gutenberg, Google is the next best thing.  A search such as the following will return public domain results for the book you’re looking for:

“public domain” +”Think and Grow Rich”

Likewise, if you’re looking for public domain content related to particular keywords or terms, you can substitute the title in the above search query with those keywords.

“public domain” +”physical culture”

Republishing the content can be done in a number of ways.  The simplest is to use a text to pdf converter and link to the pdf file.

Alternatively, you can split the text into multiple html files and place adsense advertisements on each of the html pages.  This method is extremely good at generating ad impressions.  If done well and with good niche public domain content, there is potential to earn a few bucks with this technique.

I have a toolkit in the works to simplify public domain content publishing, in a simple and methodical approach that generates pdf and split html files and uses templates for each html page. I hope to have this tool available for download sooner than later.