My app ShoveBox is on NYTimes.com for some reason

http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/11/16/16gigaom-shovebox-for-the-mac-and-iphone-helps-keep-your-s-23340.html

by dangrover • 17 years ago

104 39 17 years ago

nytimes.com

DTrejo• 17 years ago

Congratulations!

metra• 17 years ago

Why the heck is it on there?!

tudorachim• 17 years ago

Presumably because the author of the article found it good enough to write about.

dangrover9• 17 years ago

I dunno. It says it's from GigaOm, but I can't find any article about my app on there. The same article is posted on Salon too.

WebWorkerDaily posts the article and it's in the GigaOm "network", but I saw the same article on some random obscure blog this morning and thought nothing of it.

I wonder if this means I can put a NYTimes logo on my page and have it link to the article, or if that would be sleazy?

patio114• 17 years ago

I wonder if this means I can put a NYTimes logo on my page and have it link to the article, or if that would be sleazy?

I think your concern that it is sleazy is based off of the reflexive engineer disdain of marketing. You may wish to carefully examine whether you have a rational basis for that disdain.

"As seen in the New York Times" is 100% factual and a valuable trust signal (which will make a measurable difference in conversion rates -- A/B test if you don't believe me), because it lets you mooch off the Gray Lady's 100+ year reputation for crusading liberal journalism.

Their sole purpose in life is dictating what the reasonably well informed person should know about, and now they are saying that the reasonably well informed person should know about you.

Granted, in this particular instance you've gotten past the gatekeepers not due to the vaunted internal checks at the NYT but because they're syndicating cheap content from an outside blog network to get all the bang from their brand without having to pay for the journalism. That suggests to me that they won't have a brand to speak of in a few years because they can't live on previously accumulated goodwill forever but, hey, it isn't your job to conserve their brand equity.

jamesjyu• 17 years ago

GigaOM has a syndication deal with NYTimes.

KWD2• 17 years ago

The way NYTimes lists it as just GigaOM when it's from any of the sites in the GigaOM Network is confusing. I went through the same thing awhile back when trying to find an original source post, and it was on NewTeeVee.com.

myoung• 17 years ago

the NYT tech section shows articles from a few tech blogs like GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, etc. this article was originally on Web Worker Daily (GigaOm) I believe:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/11/16/shovebox-for-the-mac-an...

patio114• 17 years ago

I love tracking things like this:

ShoveBox gets released to MacHeist which got covered by the AppleBlog which gets covered by WebWorkerDaily both of which are owned by Gigaom who has a publishing deal with the New York Times.

dangrover9• 17 years ago

You know, I hear suits are making a comeback in the workplace.

grinich• 17 years ago

I'd be really interested in hearing how MacHeist has affected your sales, this press included.

dangrover9• 17 years ago

Actually only a pretty minor boost to Mac sales.

Nice windfall of iPhone app sales to the people who got the Mac app though. Ended up selling about $5500 of the iPhone app over the past week (usually only sell <= $400/month of the iPhone app itself). This will probably be the first month where iPhone revenue is more than Mac revenue.

Support has been kinda rough lately, hopefully it will die down. Sometimes I look at these MacHeist sort of things as kind of a Faustian bargain. But I think it'll have been well worth it. I'm looking forward to sending a limited, tasteful email campaign to those 300K people when my next product/version 2 launches.

patio114• 17 years ago

Support has been kinda rough lately

Let me take a stab in the dark: you've found that folks who pay less for your application have higher expectations for it, are unwilling to read the documentation, are ruder, and cause many more support requests per customer than your customers who paid full price do? How'd I do?

This phenomenon is very common with shareware developers. Higher prices tend to scare away many of the pathological customers.

mronge• 17 years ago

What kind of sales did you have with your mac app before MacHeist? (If you don't mind me asking)

kevinholesh• 17 years ago

Great job!

novicecoder• 17 years ago

Congratulations - when you've got an app that's useful, effective and solves a real pain, people are gonna write about it...

I wonder if this type of publicity will start to nudge ShoveBox into the 'tipping point' of success...

dangrover9• 17 years ago

Thanks!

It actually desperately needs a ton of work. I want to get v1.8 (free upgrade) and v2.0 (paid upgrade) out as soon as possible. The baseline level of sales has been dwindling gradually. The MacHeist spike is an anomaly.

But I'm really busy now with my next app which may or may not pay the rent the way ShoveBox does.

It's weird actually feeling overwhelmed with my own business for once. Maybe I should do the next one with a cofounder.

csbrooks• 17 years ago

>But I'm really busy now with my next app which may or may not pay the rent the way ShoveBox does.

Have you considered if this is the best use of your time right now? Was it spolsky who said you generally make a lot more money by adding new features to your old product, than by creating a whole new product?

Not as glamorous or fun, I know, but...

thehigherlife2• 17 years ago

What's your time-line to 2.0. I was considering buying this app, but now i'm thinking that i'd spend $25 only to have to do it again in a couple of weeks...

ronnier• 17 years ago

The said link: http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/

DenisM• 17 years ago

For the curios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacHeist#MacHeist_nanoBundle

kajecounterhack• 17 years ago

Congrats Dan! Oh and I'd just like to add that WriteRoom is ridiculously awesome. Got it from MacHeist and have been using it ever since.

dangrover9• 17 years ago

Thanks! I like WriteRoom too. The guy who runs Hog Bay is a badass with way more class than I'll ever have.

oliverkofoed• 17 years ago

WriteRoom is cool for sure. If you ever need to "upgrade" a bit, then i've personally found Ulysses to be the next logical step. It has a fullscreen mode akin to writeroom, but also supports semantic marking for later output generation + system for keeping track of related documents in a "project"

No affiliation, just like it.

wglb• 17 years ago

For some reason. Sounds like it is there because it is really excellent. Congrats.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

It looks like NYT syndicates GigaOm, like how the Washington Post syndicates TechCrunch.

When we're on TechCrunch I make sure to send my friends and family the Washington Post URLs, since it looks a little more impressive to people not familiar with TechCrunch ;)

kvs• 17 years ago

Nice! It sure does sound like a nice app. Congrats. BTW: Does the iPhone app syncs using mobileme (or at least automagically) or do we have to manually open both apps and sync (Things-like syncing)?

wizard_2• 17 years ago

It's a things type of syncing, apple doesn't open up sync services for iphone apps.

nick007• 17 years ago

what do you mean "for some reason" -- it's my favorite app!

thehigherlife2• 17 years ago

This looks really cool and would be extremely helpful in my work-flow. Thanks, i had no idea this existed!

tangore• 17 years ago

what is your team size and how much time it took you to develop this app i am really desperate to build a simple app in iphone .. please help me out to make an estimate so i can plan over my expenses

dangrover9• 17 years ago

Just me. The original version of the app was made in about 130 hours, the iPhone version + desktop syncing feature in about 160.

My app ShoveBox is on NYTimes.com for some reason

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