What do you want from POS?

Troubleshooting a 'Needle in a Haystack'

2006-08-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

After returning from a 3 week vacation in the USA I found out that there was something terribly wrong with my DigiWaiter Server setup file...
2 people reported they had an error starting the program:
Application has generated an exception that could not be handled

At first I thought it had something to do with the .net 1.1. framework but it turned out they had it installed and it was functioning alright.

I tested the server installation on approx 3 different machines (2000 and xp) and after that I draw the conclusion that my setup package was ok.

Now I had to figure out what was wrong, the 'application has ...' message is very common and it's very hard to determine what is causing this.

I installed the DWS on a machine of which I thought it resembled the machines of the users reporting the error.
It was a windows 2000 machine with nothing fancy installed..

I got the same error message and I was more or less 'happy I got it too', this gave me the opportunity to figure things out myself without having to ask the people who reported the errors..

Errors on client machines are hard to debug since there's no debugger on the client!
However if you copy the following files to the clients application folder:
cordbg.exe
cordbg.exe.config
msvcr71.dll
msvcp71.dll
msdis140.dll

And press 'cancel' at the error message the debugger will start and shows you more info!

You can download these files from:
http://www.dolesoft.com/downloads/DolesoftDebugger.exe

To make a long story short, it turned out that DWS needs the mdac 2.6 or higher (machine I tested on had 2.53) and I didn't include a license file for the crystal report engine that comes with the DWS suite.

I fixed it all so everything should be ok now, it's a shame that hundreds of people might have downloaded a program which didn't work for them.
I guess they installed it, got the error and just uninstalled it (which I would do ;)), I'm happy these 2 users reported it!

Take care and beware,

Mike

2006-06-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

22-06 Version 1.1 of the DigiWaiter Server's available for download now!

I finally finished a version with some new version which I found stable enough to 'release'.

Whats new?

Print Engine: Bind a printer to each category and send each order to the right printer on receival. Let's you print your entrees in the kitchen and your drinks at the bar!

Live Update function: checks for updates automatically

Updated SteelBlue Design
Bug fixes (e.g. fixed datagrid errors)

Please report every bug, comment or whatever you like to the Dolesoft Board

Table status

2006-06-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

How do you notify the kitchen that a table's ready for the entree?
Someone who works in the hospitallity business told me about working with coloured keychains.

If a table is ready for let's say the entree the waiter hangs a green keychain with the tablenumber on it on a board so kitchen nows they can start preparing the entree.
When they are done they place the platter on the 'distribution counter' with the keychain next to it.

How would you automate this process?
Would it be handy if I create some kind of panel with all the tables on it and you could change the status by changing colour (e.g. apetizer=green, entree=red, dessert=blue)?

Waiters could change the table status and depending on the status the printers in the kitchen would print the orders needed...

If you have an idea, please leave a comment?

Time to kick in some freeware!

2006-05-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

BabyMouse freeware

Last week I thought of ways to attract more visitors to my site, what better way to do so by giving away things for free?
So this weekend I created a small tool which I already had in mind for the last couple of months.
It's called babymouse and it removes the right click and scroll wheel functionallity of the mouse.
Impressive ahh?

Wait up, before clicking the crosshair read a few more lines because it might sound familiair...
With 3 kids ages 6, 4, and 1,5 I get my share of quality time playing computer games with them but especially when playing games / activities on the internet our pleasure's spoiled every 30 seconds e.g. because of them right clicking in Internet Explorer...

So if you haven't clicked the crosshair by now you might as well read the whole story on my web page:
http://www.dolesoft.com/babymouse_freeware.html

God bless and take care!

Mike

Operators order another round of handheld POS, wireless peripherals

2006-05-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

I've read a great article on POS today, I might have a look at how I can integrate these belt mountable POS printers in my apps...

It's a great article which really encouraged me to continue this project:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3190/is_26_39/ai_n14710404#continue

Quote from the article:"They allow us to get orders to the kitchen faster, and drinks get to the table faster"

There's a new update available!

2006-05-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to implement a 'nifty little update feature', thanks to a guy named Igor Krupitsky I got one, I used his code:
http://pscode.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=3640&lngWId=10
but changed the registry part since that requires my users to have administrator rights so I'm using an xml file to read some settings.
The update app uses an HttpWebRequest / port 80 to fetch the encrypted and password protected zip file which holds all the changed application files (e.g. executable, database file).
The xml file holds all 'variable' information so I can use this tool for all of my apps (except for the pocketpc applications..)
I guess I'll let the DigiWaiter periodically check for updates (or one can initiate it manually) this way I can 'roll out' new updates more easily..

Cooltools to promote your site

2006-05-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

I found these 'cooltools' today (thanks to http://www.realestateabc.com) didn't have time to check them out but they seem usefull though!

Google Ranking Check

Enter your search term and your web site/page. Find out where you
would come up on Google (provided you are in the Top 1000 sites). It
saves you having to search through pages and pages if you're not listed in
the top results.

Yahoo Ranking Check

Enter your search term and your web site/page. Find out where you
would come up on Yahoo (provided you are in the Top 1000 sites). It
saves you having to search through pages and pages if you're not listed in
the top results.

Yahoo - Google Comparison

Enter a search engine keyword and it displays the Yahoo Search engine
results with the Google search engine rank right next to it.

Mike's Multi-Search Engine Ranking Check

Type in your URL and your search term . Choose what search engines
you want to check (up to seven search engines and three directories).
Click "check rankings" and view your results.

SnakeT Multi-Search Engine Ranking Check

Type in your search term. On the bottom half of the screen, find
your site in Google's return, then highlight it. The top shows about
10 search engines and the green ball will be where you rank on each search
engine (if you are in the Top 25, anyway). It's cool.

Search Engine Scanner

Enter your site and four competitors, along with up to five keywords you
would like to search, and the results show you where you and the sites
show up in the major search engines.

Marketleap Keyword Search Results

Enter your URL and a keyword you want to check. The results show
search engines where you show up in the first three pages - and where you
don't.

Google Dance Tool

Did your Google search engine performance suddenly go "wacky?" Maybe
Google is currently "dancing," which means they are doing an adjustment.
This tool can tell you where you are currently placed on the different
Google servers.

Link Popularity Check

Marketleap LInk Popularity Check

Enter your URL and up to three competitors, then select "real estate" as
your category in the drop-down menu. Find out how you rank, not only among
those competitors, but among various other sites involved with real estate.

Link Popularity Check by WebPosition

Checks the number of links to your web site for three search engines and
compares it to three competitors you name, presenting the information in a
graph format.

UptimeBot LInk Popularity Check

This tool tells you how many sites link to you
(according to six search engines), plus your Google information about
PageRank, sites linking to you, total pages indexed, and how many times
your page is mentioned on web pages.

Mike's LInk Popularity Check

This is pretty cool. You have to scroll down the page a little and
find the "Submission Form" - then enter your URL. It creates a link
popularity report on a new page, but this is the cool part - you go back,
enter another URL, and the new report compares the results with the last one - so
you can compare yourself and up to four competitors.

Widexl Link Popularity Check

Checks the number of links to a specific web page (as indexed by
several search engines) and compares it with two competitors you name.

CGI Biz Link Popularity Check

Checks the number of pages linking to a specific web page as indexed by
three search engines at a time.

PageRank - WebRank

Proogle - Google Search Engine Results with Page Rank

Enter a search engine term and Google's search engine results are returned
- with PageRank. Good for finding sites with high Page Rank to link
to for your particular favorite keywords. May be up only temporarily.

KeyWord PageRank Finder

Enter a keyword and a PageRank, then this tool searches Google for pages
of that PageRank or higher. The tool may help you find sites you want
to get links from that have high PageRank.

Multiple PageRank Finder

List up to 25 of your web site's URLs to find out their PageRanks.
Or list URLs from other web sites, too.

Yahoo WebRank Checker

The higher the number, the better. Very similar to Google's PageRank.

PageRank Predictor

Predicts what your Google PageRank might be after the next update.
Doesn't appear to be a totally reliable tool.

Keyword &
Search Term Suggestions

Digital Point Keyword Suggestion
Tool

Covers Google and Overture - enter a search phrase or word, click enter,
and this tool not only suggests key search terms but tells you how many
times they are searched in an average day.

Overture Search Term Suggestions

Same as above, except it covers only Overture, but it tells you how many
times the search term was used for the previous month.

Miscellaneous

Download Time
Checker

Plug in your web page and click enter. It tells you how quickly your
page downloads for users on dialup, wideband, etc.

Whois by Network Solutions

Do you ever wonder who owns some of those "anonymous" web sites? WhoIs
will tell you (most of the time). Sometimes you have to switch to a
different registrar and sometimes the owner has paid an extra five bucks
for privacy

So what's next?

2006-04-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

Today I've spoken to someone who lives in our block, he's a chef cook in a restaurant (has worked in the restaurant business for about 20 years now).
I showed him my DigiWaiter suite (unfortunately I was a bit short on time) and explained most of the ins and outs of the programs like for instance the feature with which you can add a
category if you got for instance a 'Spanish theme', he really liked that.

What he didn't like or I should say he thought of as a disadvantage of my program was that I assumed you could have as server in the kitchen, which receives the orders from the pda or desktop clients.
He told me in all these years he has never seen a pc in the kitchen because it would get greasy, cooks wouldn't use it / would refuse to work with them.
He advised me to create an option to add printers and to assign a category to a specific printer (like for instance have all the entrees printed on the kitchen printer, all the drinks on the bar printer, etc, etc).

If any of you have something to say about this subject please do so, I can use all the help I can get!

Meanwhile I noticed my google hits for dolesoft went further down, despite my efforts to submit to the max on the net...
Dolesoft 271
DigiWaiter 517 (uhh I might be wrong about this, this could be an increase ;)) )
My google adwords are functioning a bit better now, they generate about 10 hits a day which cost me approx. 2 euro's a day.
I fine tuned the addwords, found out that I couldn't compete whit the keywords 'point of sale' if I didn't increase my budget to 50 cents a click...

I added a shoutbox to dolesoft.com but didn't see any shouts uptill now..

Ok gotta go now, remember to check out my flash movie!
http://www.dolesoft.com/flash/digidemo.swf

You all take care and thank you for shopping at K-mart!

Ranking for dummies (like me)

2006-04-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

So I've finished the beta versions of the DigiWaiter suite for a couple of months now.
While there was still a lot of work to do on these 3 applications I decided my first priority at that time was to 'get it out there'.

When I finished the beta versions and looked at my site dolesoft.com (which was in my Scan4Cover days created with a 15$ template I bought from the templatestore.com) I realized I had to 'facelift' this too.

I installed Joomla! 1.0.8, a superb and opensource CMS system works great and is really easy to work with!!

I wanted 'it':

to be downloadable
to get some feedback from people telling me what was good and what was not so good about it

This way I would be forced by this 'chain reaction' to react to these suggestions and improve my program accordingly.

From that day on this ranking thing really got me!

As you may or may not know reading this line, I created a Point of Sale or POS software suite. If you enter "point of sale" in google you'll get 213,000,000 hits.

christmas gifts: 70,500,000
dog food 112,000,000

In comparison if you enter a more or less common word like automobiles you 'only' get 91,300,000.

Ok, some will say you have to put quotation marks around point of sale to have an honest comparison, that brings it back to as little as 35,600,000...

Looked like a 'mission impossible' to mingle my site amongst the top
rankers or even being listed with the first 100.

Where to start / which path to follow?

There's an awfull lot written about this subject, just enter pagerank in google and you'll get 103,000,000 hits.

Thirst thing I had to know is what things like pagerank really mean (remember I'm dutch that doesn't make things easier...). Examining Wikipedia made it more complex

As I've said there's a whole lot written about ranking but it didn't make any sense to me at that time.

I really needed a dummy guide!

Uhh I really wanted to write about all my experiences in this post but it's going to take up to much of my sunday afternoon time and I can see some pretty unhappy faces around here so I'll have to write a raincheck for this..

Last night I ended up at http://seo.googlerankings.com/ I should have found this one much earlier because it's related to google.

If you haven't already seen that one, it's a good starting point.

Take care,

Mike

Google hits decreasing!

2006-04-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

That's strange (maybe not...) but as I hoped for an increase in hits my google hits are decreasing...

Current Google hits for DigiWaiter: 459 --> 450
Current Google hits for Dolesoft: 322 --> 309

For future reference:

Yahoo: Dolesoft 284 / DigiWaiter 267

Altavista: Dolesoft 287 / DigiWaiter 647

MSN: Dolesoft 230 / DigiWaiter 317

I was curious today which sites had my DigiWaiter Suite listed so I checked google and altavista, this is what showed up:

www.freedownloadscenter.com

www.winsite.com

www.newfreedownloads.com

www.sharewarejunction.com

www.files32.com

www.softpile.com

www.softaddict.com

www.downloadchoice.mmau.com

www.zoomload.com

www.softwarewings.com

www.amazingfiles.com

www.pc24hours.net

www.best-software.co.uk

www.shareit.com

www.onriverstreet.com

www.directory.searchwarp.com

www.sharewareviewer.com

www.allfoodbusiness.com

www.southernoceansoftware.com

www.sophtwarekodewerks.com

www.aptcode.com

www.downloadwasp.com

www.digitalshockwave.com

www.software.linxchange.net

www.windowsmirror.com

www.alouwebdesign.ca

www.most-downloaded.com

Take care!

Michael

Watch my Flash movie "Restaurant adventures of a waiter" now!

2006-04-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

I just finished my flash movie for the DigiWaiter Suite, the music you hear is 'early nineties' called 'on a ragga tip from SL2'!
Take a sneak peak, you'll like it.

Today the DigiWaiter suite was approved by newfreedownloads.com and they awarded it with a 5 star rating.

I checked out 12 other programs on their site and they all had 5 stars so I'm not sure what this 5 star thing means?

Current Google hits for DigiWaiter: 459
Current Google hits for Dolesoft: 322

Current Google PageRank: 0 &-((

Is there somebody out there who can tell me why I have all these old non related 'common words' when I look at:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/pageanalysis

I optimized my keywords with IBP8 ,
Created sitemaps
Created a html sitemap
Optimized robots.txt

And still when I go to the site mentioned above I see those old keywords from my 'scan4cover era' listed???

Step 1: write a POS shareware app. Step 2: promote it

2006-04-02T14:06:00.000-07:00

How did I get here? Why did I feel the need to start a blog?

Googling my way around the globe trying to improve the popularity of my shareware web site http://www.dolesoft.com/ by submitting to search engines, directories, etc I got to met some very interesting sites like http://waiterrant.net/ and http://new.horsefeathers.com/.

The idea came to mind that it might be 'blogical' to start an weblog about my pos software developing project "the DigiWaiter Suite" and see if it might speed things up.

First a bit about myself, my name is Michael I live in the Netherlands near Rotterdam and I'm thirties.
I work in a company as a system engineer we delivery the DIY stores with wood, fly screens, sliding doors, etc, etc.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, what I do is maintaining the 70 computers and 10 servers in our company, I take care of our ERP application. Program it to suit the needs of our users and do some programming stuff in MS .NET / flash. I always have trouble to find the right english word for the job I do so if someone can give me a better word for it as 'system engineer' please do so.

In the middle of my intro (I wanted to do this at the beginning but who cares...) I'm sorry for making typos, misspelling. The Dutch usually speak 2 or 3 languages (dutch, english and some speak french / german too) but to speak a language and to write in one is a different thing so please don't flame me...
In july we will be going to Lancaster PA to visit family so I can catch up on my english I hope...

Back to the popularity / web site thing, I started to write a Point of Sale (POS) application in .NET a couple of years ago, after in 2003 I launched with mixed success a vb application to create cd-covers which was called scan4cover.

You can still download it on the web (for instance at download.com) and since jewel cases where a lot more popular a few years ago I guess it's been download about 20,000 times (that's a rough guess, download.com tells me 7,500 and if you google for scan4cover there are about 2350 links with other download sites.

I protected my precious software with a serial and a 10-use trial, set up an account at http://www.shareit.com/ so that they could handle the 'flood of 14.95$ donations' from people who after were affected by the superb 'ease of use' of scan4cover couldn't do without anymore...

30 hours after I launced s4c I googled for it to find out that the first 8 hits were from sites related to one of Arnies famous lines 'hastalavistababy' yep they'd cracked my (not so) fort knox protection.

Up till now there have been if I recall right 7 or 8 people who payed the 14.95$. I still send them a card every christmas!!
I had to wait 2 years for shareit to pay me my first 50 bucks, they only pay out if your 'revenue' is > 50, they charge a percentage on every sale so it took my this long.

But then again it was worth it 100%!!! The feeling I got when I saw the first e-mail telling me about Order no. 1 for Scan4cover:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Michael van den Dool,

We have received an order for your product "Scan4Cover".
The credit card charge has been authorized.
We sent out the license code of the program to the user:
Program = 183036
Number of licenses = 1
ShareIt Ref.No. = 6202236
Reseller =
Promotion =
Net sales = USD 14.95
Net Discount = USD 0.00
collected VAT = USD 0.00
Shipping = USD 0.00
VAT on Shipping = USD 0.00
Our service fee = USD -2.50
VAT on service fee = USD 0.00
Total = USD 12.45

Not to mention the sight of 'my proggie' at korean, japanes, german, australian, etc sites.
It costed me 75$ to publish it on download.com but they have a whole lot of related sister sites (e.g. zdnet) so you can speak of 'a snowball effect' when your software's listed at download.com

After scan4cover MS launched .NET 2003 and I tried to get familiar with the object oriented OOP thing with which I have my bad and better days...

I don't know what exactly got me interested in the restaurant / POS stuff but one day I had the thought that with .NET and especially the compact framework I would be able to create an application on a handheld with which waiters could take an order and send it "Wireless" to the kitchen.
An excuse was born to get myself a 'cool' (otherwise totally unnecessary) Dell Axim!

Call me stupid but I didn't do any research on exisiting POS software, I never do I'm getting warmed up about something and I want to go for it.
Searching the net for existing software would for sure be 'demotivating' for me, sure I could learn a trick or two from it but with scan4cover I googled before I started out and seeing my competitors made me almost think: 'hey why bother, you can't compete with this...'

I started programming with great enthusiasm and because of the lack of knowledge (because I'm not really a full time / trained dot net programmer) it always took me twice the time to learn how to do 'a trick' and I have to double that because it's always implemented wrong the first (2) time(s) ;)

The problem arose I had to create 2 applications if I wanted to succeed, one (receiving) server and one (sending) client.
Because I only know the restaurant business 'from one side of the steak' I made the assumption that the appropriate location of the receiving server app. would be in the kitchen so the cook(s) could see the orders 'coming through'.

I ran into a million of minor and major problems:`

The server had to be able to 'talk back' to the clients.
How would the client know the order got through all right?
What if the server app 'crashed', the intended platform was xp / 2000 ;) , would the clients be able to reconnect.
How would I be able to add a 'memo' to an "order line", for instance if I wanted to let the cook know that the steak for table 5 had to be medium?
How would I handle the process of 'picking the orders', what would be the procedure if there was a mistake, how could one correct an existing order.
100 x etc, etc

In addition to the server and the PDA client I decided there should also be a desktop client so for instance bartenders could also use it to send orders to the kitchen. Better yet the desktop client should make it possible to "pick orders" to (like the server app..) because that's what a bartender does, doesn't he? (he 'picks the drinks')...
So I ended up building / maintaining 3 apps, if I changed something in the PDA client I had to change it in the Desktop client too %-((

Then there were problems like:
Protecting my applications with a time limit.
Creating installers so installing the apps would be a matter of clicking a link (hard part, especially the PocketPC application).
Making it able for the users to register there version / remove the time limitation.
Decrypt all of my code so it would be a bit harder to reverse engineer my code.

When I after a couple of years if finally had 3 more or less stable beta versions (yep sometimes more sometimes less stable), I really wanted 'to get the stuff out there..'

I created all necessary PAD files (same as I did with scan4cover), they prevented me from having to do a lot of work every time I wanted to submit my software to the shareware sites (especially because I'd have to do it 3 times per site...)
Submitted to a lot of shareware sites and search engines and tried to improve my popularity on google with special Internet Business Promoter software by changing keywords, meta- tags, etc.

Up till now I have about 10 users a day, I had 40 a day in February but it turned out to be (what I think of now) a Google ad-sense scam or something like that. Every day for a 15 minute period I got 30 visitors each 'consuming a few kb (20-40 kb) and after I informed google and e-mailed 2 or 3 times back and forth with my site statistics it stopped.

So now I'm enduring a continuous 'brainstorm' how to attract more potential customers, uhh correction my primary goal is to find serious beta testers because I don't really believe there's already anyone out there who's willing to pay for an unstable beta...

So that's why I got in to this blog and that's why I'm already typing for 3 hours now and I really like it better every hour ;))

But seriously, hit me with your comments, take a look and hey what the hack: 'burn down my software / site if you have that feeling about it' but remember two things:

I am an will be an amateur ;))
I am Dutch so I'll always defend myself by saying; 'hey, that's not what I intended!'

I'm pretty tired. I guess I'm gonna hit the sack...
You all take a look and take care!

Oh and uhh, best thing to start with is my flash demo:
http://www.dolesoft.com/flash/digidemo.swf

Michael