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A Summary So Far Of Your Marketing/Advertising Ideas

Back on the 14th I posted $10 Million To Make A Clarion .Net Ad.

There was a great response, both here and on the newsgroups. Following is a summary of your thoughts:

BLOG

Murray Gillespie

  • It was a simple ad, "Ease of use vs Price", that sold Clarion to him.

Richard Rose

  • Language. Appgen. Smart Approach. Templates. Integration. Code Generation (from Dave).
  • Talk about global companies who are using it. Mentioned largest construction company in the world (www.alrahabeach.com).
Billionaire Bill Gates

Image via Wikipedia

Dave Harms (http://clarionmag.com)

  • "Templates" while the world was saying "Objects".
  • Quote: "We’ve been doing code generation since Bill Gates was in short pants. And now we do it for .NET."

Gustavo Pinsard

  • "From novice to expert, to customer satisfaction."
  • True language. Strong code generation capabilities built into the IDE.
  • Screenshots:
    1. A piece of Clarion source.
    2. Appgen in action.
    3. Image picturing satisfied Customer.
  • Programmers / Developers AND Customers / End Users.

Paul MacFarlane

  • Do a World Tour.
  • Give out Subscriptions.
  • Training Class, in two halves.
    1. Demo the program, Instructor creates an App.
    2. Attendees create their own Apps.

NEWSGROUPS

Paul MacFarlane, Mark Riffey, Pratik, Myself

  • Conversation about the Intangibility of Advertising.

Andy Morgan, Dave Harms, Jeff Slarve, Richard Rose, Myself

  • Conversation about Trial Versions, Time Limit, Usage Counters.

Pratik

  • Hold a conference next to MS Visual Studio‘s next one.
    • "Clarion: Be productive .. Be Profitable."

Paul MacFarlane, Richard Rose, Andy Morgan

  • Conversation about World Tour, User Groups.

Art Bonds, Myself

  • Pirate jokes. Because no conversation is complete without them.

 

There you have it. If I’ve left anything out, please let me know in the comments.

This was a fantastic exercise. I’m going to continue down the same vein.

What would you like me to ask the Community next?

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$10 Million To Make A Clarion .Net Ad

Let’s say you were tasked with the job of coming up with an advertising campaign for Clarion dot Net.

What would you do?

Here’s an idea to kick things off, although anyone who’s listened to the podcast will already know it.

The Focal point of the campaign is the word "Rad". It’s said by a bunch of different people, in different situations .. All pointing back to Clarion .Net.

If you had an big budget, what kind of Advertising Campaign would you do for Clarion .Net?

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New Clarion Beta Versions

Looks like the SV crew have released a new build of Clarion 7 (and probably .Net, although I haven’t got the email yet).

There are new Dictionary features, Win32 RTL and a few IDE enhancements, plus a bunch of fixes. No AppGen yet .. I am sure the entire world will hear the echoes of rejoicing and whining in one when the AppGen is released.

Thanks SV for releasing a new build.

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Clarion Sharper By The Minute, Linq Support

I’m never sure what to do when Bob Z drops a bit of info in to me. Whether to blog it, hit the newsgroups, jump on skype.

See, I get a little nervous. Why? Because I can hear the cries of angst and trouble.

"Why aren’t they concentrating on bugs?"

"When is the AppGen done?"

"What is GTA IV doing in the SV office?"

Here goes.

Support for Linq (MS Site, and Wikipedia) is being added to Clarion#.

I like this. Means we’ve got another enticement to grow the community, and another facet that strengthens our competitive advantage.

At least, that’s how I see it.

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Clarion in the “Hello World” Collection

Clarion is part of a massive huge list of Hello World programs.

Here’s the list, and here’s the Clarion entry.

There’s a lot of programs and languages (including human ones) in the list. It would seem we have a lot of ways to say the same thing. To make the same thing.

I wonder if there was a "Tower of Babel" for programming? Like did everyone get together one day, intent on building "The One" language? It might have gone something like this:

Mr. X – "Compiler is everything."

Mr. Y – "Un-Typed vars!"

Mrs. S – "Restrictive variable names."

Miss Y – "As we speak it!"

Suddenly the room erupts in a vicious nerd argument. As we know, these are the worst. Name calling and scratching and plotting revenge with a twenty-three sided dice.

Alas, due to hubris and other plant-sounding words, "The One" language was never built. To this day, it’s ruins can be seen scattered throughout the various "lesser" languages.

True story.

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There Is A New Report Designer In Town

Steve Ryan is a shining light. When most other people are either disparaging the new Clarion (newsgroups) or not doing much with it at all (me), he’s toiling away. Sure, he’s struck a few hurdles, but it hasn’t slowed progress.

Steve and his crew are nearing the end of a big product. They are completing the end user GUI for the stand alone development report designer and runtime.

Steve has kindly sent me some screenshots+words, as follows:

Picture 1. The Report Listing Application.

reportdesigner3

Picture 2. The Report Designer.

The report layout editor supports multiple report breaks all with separate database access. Full range limit support and filters plus embed points at runtime for customised report statements using over 1000 commands supported by the runtime.

reportdesigner31

Picture 3. The Report Designer Database drop and drop tree control.

Drag database properties to the Report Layout and the layout will get it’s setting from the primary key its uses to report breaks, it’s all automatic. The simple ribbon toolbar expands to display the options on the tabs. This design approach splits the window into two parts. The Layout design and the ribbon (toolbar) options plus Report Layout Options which are shown in Pic4.

designermode2

Picture 4.

The report setting mode allows the report designer to switch back and forth between layout design and report settings by simply pressing the view buttons
on the left. Report Design mode, Next, Previous and Back switch the user between modes so that all options are displayed on the one window without the need for toolbars or floating windows that clutter up the appearance design window. This makes it very easy for end users to master the report layout designer. Its all pretty easy.

designermode3

Kudos to Steve and his Crew!

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The Clarion Call (Magazine), Summer 1987

It was a beautiful winter over here. I can remember .. not much, being eleven years old.

Larry hit us up on Skype recently with this amazing PDF file,

  (3.5+ megs).

If you’d like to see Clarion bling at the earliest of stages, then take a gander at this document.

Interesting fact: Back in the day, they charged $19.50 for updates to Clarion, _but_ if you were the first to report a bug, the "correction update" was free.

Here’s a peek ..

clarioncall-normal