I need to create little screencast quicktime movies to help users of StakeItOut. This is something that it looks like Backpack have done successfully and it really is a good idea.

So I downloaded Snapz Pro X a while ago to try it out. It seems like a good product, but I didn’t need it straight away, so I didn’t buy it yet. Then I have been hit by the most obnoxious nag screen I have ever seen. The app installs itself into some sort of ancient system hook mechanism, that I don’t really think is necessary now a days. All other screenshot apps I’ve seen for Mac just work as standard apps. I’m no OSX expert, maybe there is a good reason.

The problem with this is that you get the above nag screen popping up all the time. I get it almost every time I switch desktops using Desktop Manager. What a pain in the *ss.

While I didn’t maybe research the market well enough, there doesn’t seem to be a good alternative to Snapz Pro X for screen casts. If there was I would buy that. Unfortunately I had to buy this. So I pay it and enter my cc details etc. and they give me the registration code. What happens?

What the hell does that mean. How come my date is wrong? I thought maybe it was some silly US centric bug, where you could only use it in EDT. Nope. Well I’ve emailed them, I hope they will get back to me quickly.

Probably no more dangerous than Funding by Plastic and probably a lot more fun:

Meador, who is head of operations at ClearContext, and Deva Hazarika, the chief executive officer, have been playing poker in lieu of collecting paychecks for the past year while working to get their three-person company off the ground. After logging 50 or more hours a week at the office, each one spends another 10 to 15 hours, usually on weekends and evenings, at their favorite poker sites—mainly Partypoker.com, Ultimatebet.com and Pokerstars. CNet: High-stakes start-ups

Please don’t do this though unless you know what you’re doing. (That was just my don’t sue me for posting this disclaimer.) If you try it let us know how it goes.

It reminds me of a time when I was so low on cash that I was paying my annual domain name fees “investing” my meager E-Gold account balance on Blackjack at The Gold Casino .

One good thing that semi educated gambling can teach you though is to make calculated bets . This is the same for startups. If you bet all your money/resources in one go you are making a huge bet with a tiny chance of winning.

Most of us entrepreneurs have a dream and we are very focused on this. Unfortunately things that are obvious to us can very often be undecipherable for others.

Startups with more people can also have this problem, but are less perceptible to it as the other partners or investors will start questioning you early on. Us solopreneurs rely on public feedback.

I was inspired to write this by the recent simple changes I have done to StakeItOut.

I was wondering why many people who signed up for StakeItOut, didn’t found ventures or add assets. I figured it was some usability issue, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

Luckily I’ve received some great feedback in the last week, highlighting two major deficiencies:

• It was not obvious what to do next once you’ve signed up.
• The bookmarklet method of adding assets was not obvious to people.

Now, I’ve cleaned it up a bit and added some bold “First steps” to show exactly what to do.

I’ve also tried to hightlight the option of installing the bookmarklet. I also stop pestering the user to use it once he has used it the first time.

I realise that there is still more to do. Especially with respect to the new webservices features. So that is where I will put focus now.

I’ve listened to the feedback I’ve received from you and have now hopefully improved the usability of StakeItOut for new users. Thanks everyone for the very constructive feedback.

It has not been obvious what to do once you’ve signed up. To improve this, I’ve added 3 step displays on various screens, to guide you through the first part.

We still need to do more and also do some screen casts showing various common usage scenarios.

Arrived in Tallinn in Estonia today. We nearly missed it due to the release I did earlier today.

However we arrived and the sun is out, even later than in Denmark. It is now 22:20 Estonian time and it is still completely light, in Denmark it would have started to get dim a bit by now.

The beer is good and the old town is beatiful. Also the fact that there is Wifi everywhere is also great.

I hope to meet up with a few people this visit, although it really is a bit of a vacation to celebrate my wife and my second aniversary.