AdesBlog.com

iPod and Mobile software developer Koloroo has decided to make its products free, or in their own words “careware”. Its products include Color Schemer (for Windows, iPod, and Mobile Phones) and Tip Calculator (for iPod).

What, exactly, is careware?

Careware is free Koloroo software … with one tiny catch — before you download it, you must agree to do something nice for someone. And it doesn’t matter how big or small your act of kindness is. ~ Koloroo

People are already reporting acts of kindness that they have done or plan to do on this page. It’s great that Koloroo came up with this kind of innovative way to give its products for free which promotes social responsibility. (i should have ended the post here)

Constructive Criticism of Koloroo

Koloroo has robust software development and user interface design skills. However, I think they are wasting their skills and efforts on the wrong products that do not make sense (i.e not really useful). For example, their color schemer software for iPod. How you are going to use it? It doesn’t make sense to have a color selection tool on your iPod. It’s not practical at all, and its application in real life would be like zero!

Few weeks ago they have developed a PC version of their color schemer. My question is “Why didn’t they start with the PC version from the beginning?!” Because at least PC version would have been useful to graphic designers.

I am pretty sure that Koloroo’s recent decision to make its products free was because they were not selling well, there was no demand for them. So, probably they thought “why sit on the products that do not make money, let’s give it away for free better!”.

Koloroo’s case is the opposite of FSCapture case. FSCapture started as a freeware in the beginning, but once it became popular the author suddenly wanted to make money on it. But then again that’s life… most of the thing revolves around money in this life.

Lesson: Anything you do (i.e projects) do it with long-term vision in mind. And of course, do your homework (i.e feasibility study) before you launch any product to the market.

If you own iPod, this is a great tool to create your own iPod ebooks. You can create iPod compatible ebooks from files in .txt and .rtf formats.

On top of that, you can directly cut and paste the text into the field provided, or you can convert webpages and even RSS feeds.

After you have created your ebook, you need to unzip it and put it in Notes folder inside your iPod. ebookhood.com

This is one of the best softwares out there if you want to convert your movie files to iPod. I have tried it and was amazed by its speed and ease of use. It supports wide range of video formats, such as: AVI, MPEG, WMV, MOV, MP4, RM, RMVB, DivX, ASF, VOB, and 3GP. Unfortunately it’s not a freeware, it costs $29.00. Download the trial here.
www.imtoo.com

WordPod converts an e-book into a set of files which can be read on any modern iPod (one with a dock connector). With WordPod, you can read any of the 16,000 classics available at the Project Gutenberg library. It can create books that feel like part of an iPod. You can navigate by chapter or by page number, using the standard iPod interface.
wordpod.berlios.de

ml_ipod is a plugin for Winamp 2.9x/5.x which allows you to manage your iPod using the Winamp Media Library. www.mlipod.com