Poker Copilot 1.2 is now released. The biggest new feature is support for PokerStars players and their hand histories.
Some other new features:
I often want to see the hands I won or lost in the last 15 minutes or so. The online poker sites supported by Poker Copilot have excellent hand replayers, but they are too interactive for what I had in mind. I had the idea of an ever updating list showing at a glance how I fared.
On Sunday afternoon I coded it, in time for the beta release of v 1.2. Here's a screenshot:
(The screenshot suggests that I won $2,085 in my most recent hand.The problem: I'm maintaining a list of requested features for Poker Copilot. These mostly come in through e-mail or discussion forums. It's getting unwieldy and I'm running multiple e-mail conversations and forum threads discussing these features. People are requesting things others have already requested. The same bugs are reported multiple times. I'd like the list of requested features and bug reports to be public. I'd like this to be as painless as possible, for myself, and especially for my customers.
The solution (maybe?): Get Satisfaction. I've been considering this site for customer support. Before I take the plunge, would anybody like to offer strong opinions for or against using this service?
I've just updated the Poker Copilot 1.2 beta version available here. Things I've fixed:
It seems I've found the right way to attract beta testers. Since announcing the open beta, I've been inundated with feedback and bug reports. The beta test has revealed a couple of regression bugs, a bug handling PokerStars hand histories, problems with handling accented characters used in non-English names, and some usability problems.
A big thank-you to everyone who has already taken active part in the beta test. I have to give a special thank-you to Pedro, who not only found an important bug, but also isolated it, determined the problem, and gave me specific steps to fix it. What more could a one-person software company ask of users?
After dithering around I've decided to make the PokerCopilot 1.2 beta an open process. Anyone can download and install the beta here. This is the version that adds, amongst other things, support for PokerStars.
The offer of free licenses for beta testers still stands. The deal is:
1) try out PokerCopilot 1.2 with PokerStars.
2) email [feedback at pokercopilot.com] with some useful feedback, especially bug reports.
3) you'll get your free license at the close of the beta process.
Naturally, my judgement on what constitutes "useful feedback" is final, but you'll find that I'm quite reasonable on this count.
The beta process won't last for long.
Poker Copilot has no user guide and no context-sensitive help. Why? Because I believe that if users need documentation then I've missed my goal of making Poker Copilot dead easy to use.
I was far from overburdened with responses to my call for beta testers for PokerStars support for Poker Copilot.
So let me sweeten the arrangement. There is a freePoker Copilot license for each and every beta tester who is at least somewhat active in their participation.
(I thought this offer was implied anyway. Now - to use an appropriate cliche - I'm laying my cards on the table.)
While adding PokerStars support I tried to ensure that Poker Copilot remains the easiest hand history analysis tool to configure and use. What I'm especially avoiding is the need for users to manually locate and "import" hand history files.
In light of this, I added a new start-up dialog for first-time users. It checks for the existence of both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, then reads their own preferences to locate the hand history folders. To ensure that the user knows what is happening, Poker Copilot presents the list of folders that will be imported.
Additionally it informs the user how to add folders later, perhaps containing a friend's hand history files. The complete Poker Copilot instruction manual in a sentence, if you will.
The implementation was easy, but designing a workable, elegant, and simple solution was a challenge.
I'm just about ready to release Poker Copilot with PokerStars support. But before I do I want to run a beta test.
If you would like to be a beta tester, you'll need:
Wow:
Less than 6 weeks from launch, Balsamiq Studios reached USD 10,000 in revenue.This is instance success most of us one-person software companies can only dream of. I suspect Peldi won't remain a company of one for very long.
I'm using FastSpring as my payment processor. Until recently they charged a flat 8.9% of Poker Copilot's purchase price. However they just announced an alternative: 5.9% + $0.95.
So solving a simple equation, I deduced that if you use FastSpring and your product sells for $32 or more, you should switch to the new pricing structure.
Poker Copilot sells for $49.95, so I'm happy with the new alternative pricing structure. It will give me an extra 55 cents per sale.
While working on the first release of Poker Copilot, I frequently added "nice-to-have" features to my to-do list. I had a two-part process to decide which features from that list to implement: first, is it easy to implement? second, it is useful to me as an online poker player?
Now that a few weeks have passed since I initially released Poker Copilot, the process of prioritising features has become easier. The most requested features are what I implement next. No longer am I guessing what my users want. The most vocal of them tell me directly, either through e-mail or comments on this blog.
The top feature request is, by a enormous margin, support for PokerStars. Which is why I'm currently implementing PokerStars support. Not everything is getting easier for my Poker Copilot endeavour as time passes. But prioritisation certainly is.
BTW: PokerStars support is almost complete, a task made easier thanks to Thrynn's generous donation of almost 50,000 hands worth of PokerStars hand history files. All that remains is comprehensive, systematic testing.
I'm a programmer, not a marketeer. Peddling Poker Copilot, however, has forced me to learn something about marketing really quick. Luckily the web is awash in information on "how to sell", some of it even a little useful.
For now, my main marketing aim is to get people to download Poker Copilot. Downloads have come mainly from three sources:
Sohail wrote:
So when are you going to come out with some numbers? Come on then!I'm running a business, and there's competitors appearing in the "poker tracking for Mac OS X" category. So I'm going to keep it discreet. What I will reveal is this: my sales are greater than zero, and I've met my arbitrary - albeit realistic - goals so far.
The #1 feature requst for Poker Copilot: support for PokerStars, the online poker room with the most players. I'm hoping to release Poker Copilot with PokerStars tracking by early September.
I've managed to get the initial PokerStars support running. There's still some way to go, but already the as-yet-unreleased Poker Copilot 1.2 is successfully parsing PokerStars cash games.
Here's a feature in Poker Copilot that is not immediately obvious: you can save and print the charts, as well as zoom in and zoom out. To do this, right-click or ctrl-click on any chart. You'll see something like this:
I can't claim credit for this. It's a feature built into JFreeChart, the Java charting library Poker Copilot uses.
That's the question. What's the answer?
I'm now sorting out priorities for the next version of Poker Copilot. What are the features you want to see? Now's the chance to make suggestions. Either post a comment or e-mail me at steve at pokercopilot dot com.
The main feature on the list is PokerStars support. I'm also planning a "Position" chart or table showing your style and results by position.
Okay, I've cautiously released Poker Copilot 1.1. The website looks the same for now - I'll be updating the content in the days ahead.
What's new?
* View info for the last week, month, 3 months, etc.
* Check out your stats for tournaments, ring games, and play money
* A summary of your tournament appearances
* A heads-up display that charts your opponents at your current tables.
My ears are open for feedback.
I've got one task left on my todo list before I'll release Poker Copilot 1.1 (the one with the HUD). That last task is to re-run the performance tests: making sure that CPU and memory usage is nicely low even with 100,000 hands. If not, then I'll need to hunt and destroy the bottlenecks.
Now back to my live testing. That is, I'm in the early rounds of a Sit & Go tournament. Playing tournaments is a fun way to test, albeit not the most systematic.
I was searching for an animated image I could use to indicate to the user that Poker Copilot's HUD system was actively scanning for tables. I thought something similar to what all the cool kids are doing now on their ajax-enabled web 2.0 projects:
By chance I found a smorgasboard of solutions, a tool that lets you generate your a custom animated image.
I want to make this absolutely clear.
If you buy Poker Copilot 1.0, it entitles you to a free upgrade to any future 1.x versions - including the HUD-enabled Poker Copilot 1.1 coming out in a few days. So don't fret about missing out on the new version.
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