I am curious about how OAT fared compared to HDS. My bet is that lots more people saw (see) the worth of HDS. I sort of gave up on OAT. It didn't seem to do stuff that I was interested in and I found it difficult to implement. It just didn't seem worth the effort to learn it--it seemed to speak to people with radically different needs (insofar as their BBS's were concerned) than mine. There may be little money to be made in such a small market--so it is understandable if Kem & others might want to turn their attention elsewhere. I can only speak for myself that I will happily pay money for programs that work well and do something that I want (I expect to be purchasing copy #2 of HDS in the near future)
It seems to me that there might be several things that people would be willing to pay for however, and one need only look at past conference entries with an open mind to see some of them
1) a graphic interface to design the customized BBS desktop. Geez--even *I* could do this. I mean having a graphic user interface that would write directly to the resource fork of the preferences file--this seems easy. Not easy enough for me--I don't have the time--which is precisely why I would be happy to pay someone else to do it for me. (BTW--that's why people buy software--so they don't have to write it themselves---duh)
2) A utility which woul allow you to drag files (graphics or text) to the BBS desktop from a web browser--that sounds a lot harder
3) A utility which allows complete control over user permissions on a folder by folder basis so I can, in one place, assign privileges to individual users for specific folders--this way I can put people in charge of specific places on the BBS.
4) A utility which allows me to combine access groups --to build on them like type styles in word processor programsso that I don't have this nightmarish proliferation of access groups
5) Some spiffy filemaker pro templates for the various TF files
6) a graphic interface SPML code writer
7) something that would allow users to keep all their cofiguration info in their mailbox (address book etc), that would automate the production of a user profile
There are undoubtedly others--these things are suggestions I remember--some of them repeated over and over again in these bbs areas over the past 3+years.
None of this to criticize Ken--I was shocked one day to actually receive an overseas phone call from him to correct a problem with HDS--clearly my experience with his level of attention is different from those who have critiqued it.
On 11/22/98 7:21 AM, BKA wrote:
>On 20/11/98 3:24, Daniel O'Leary wrote: > >>I can tell you from my face to face conversations with Ken >>Sutherland while I was in Scotland last week, that poor response to the >>offering of Online Assistant for TeleFinder by TF sysops has >disillusioned >>Ken about producing further products. OAT is an excellent program and >well >>worth the price, yet demand has been sluggish. > >Ken should look at his own speed of response to demands in the first >place. I have waited for more than a year to get a proper response from >him to buy OAT and even then it was only through John's intervention >that he bothered to answer. With the way that the handles user demands >he hasn't got the right to moan. > >-------------------------------- >Greetings from Istanbul, Turkiye >Bekir Kemal Ataman >ArchiMac BBS Sysop >http://www.archimac.marun.edu.tr >
