Thanks for the feedback everyone. Detailed responses below. > Mat: would these solutions then be proprietary outside of TW? Might such an endeavour actually hamper regular TW development?
TiddlyPip would be a set of tools that work with TiddlyWiki to create these custom iOS applications. They would initially be proprietary to Federatial (which isn't just me; the idea of Federatial is to allow the community to congregate as a semi-formal team to do commercial things). The existence of TiddlyPip wouldn't threaten TiddlyWiki in any way: it augments TiddlyWiki, and relies on it for the core functionality. Eventually, when TiddlyPip gets to the point of being a general purpose TiddlyWiki environment similar to TiddlyDesktop, it will benefit everyone in the community. So, yes, TiddlyPip is a commercial proposal. It needs to be to solve the immediate problem of being able to support myself with TiddlyWiki development (as opposed to getting a job with another organisation). But it rests on top of TiddlyWiki, with a symbiotic relationship: TiddlyPip enables Jeremy and others in the community to support themselves, which enables TiddlyWiki to keep improving and becoming more useful, which helps TiddlyPip to become better. > Mat: I mean, what if you or some skilled developers here 'code TW-stuff but that really also deals with or solves needs we have in TW (say, macros, widgets, interface issues or even applications... "photo gallery", "atom feeder", ...) - would these solutions then be proprietary outside of TW? Might such an endeavour actually hamper regular TW development? I think you're asking if TiddlyPip might create TiddlyWiki components that were proprietary to TiddlyPip. I wouldn't expect that to happen because the thing that makes TiddlyPip viable is TiddlyWiki, and it's cross platform nature. Think of TiddlyPip as being like a custom browser, just like TiddlyDesktop. People preparing content for TiddlyPip would use the same plugins as regular TiddlyWiki. > From Mat: The specified restrictions make it sound like you already have something specific in mind for this stage - or are you asking if someone has an idea *and* that it fulfills this? (To which my answer is 'yes, of course I do', btw). I don't have any specific ideas for content to publish using TiddlyPip. I'm asking for people who think they have content that is sufficiently valuable that it can be packaged as a paid app (or in app purchase). This is about working together to raise revenue from getting content on the app store. If writing the worlds best hypertext guide to the songs of Taylor Swift was a guaranteed success then I'd be happy to do that. For me, this is about finding short term revenue generation opportunities that will fund the gradual development of the killer iOS app for TiddlyWiki. > An alternative route might be to combine these two, i.e someone might have a great idea that others would be willing to help fund. Or is that what you mean (as opposed to many individuals funding their own ideas)? ...in a way a crowdfunding scheme... I'm not against crowdfunding, but I know from working with Eric's campaign that it's relatively slow to run a formal campaign. Maybe it's what we'd do in three months when we've got a couple of apps in the app store that people can try out? > From Alex: Of course, my contribution to the place management and development literature will take the world by storm: I am anticipating a huge income from the selling of tools. :) Alex may be in a similar position to others in the group, having created content that represents an enormous creative effort but may not have a large enough audience to generate enough cash through the app store to pay for its publication. Perhaps Alex would like to see the material on the app store so that it can reach the largest audience in the most compelling way, and might be prepared to pay the necessary costs to allow it to be distributed as a free app. If TiddlyPip were up and running, I'd have thought that it should be viable to publish free apps for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. There's always the possibility that some particularly valuable segment of the content be packaged to require an "in app purchase" to unlock, providing a revenue stream. > From Alex: Making it possible for the questionnaire to be delivered to a whole organisation, the questions tailored for each employee, results collected..... I think people would be interested. At the moment, if there is move to upgrade OMM, the main player is a .net outfit. Compatibility with other business intelligence software may also help persuade possible investors. This sounds like a business opportunity where the capabilities of TiddlyPip would be a component. If TiddlyPip were up and running then we could put the sort of material that you'd need for a joint bid on federatial.com. > From Richard: Did you see the maths textbook that I posted a link to recently? Yes it's a beautiful piece of work and I thoroughly enjoyed digging around in it. > I am interested in the possibility of deploying content like this in the app store, but it's open-source content and so the apps would be free - at least the basic content would be free, although I'm open to exploring the possibility of developing augmented versions of these books and/or discussing with the original authors the possibility of raising a small amount of revenue to cover development costs. Excellent. Again, similarly to Alex, the problem is just getting the cash together for the initial development costs. >> individual shares of the startup costs would be relatively small. > From Richard: How small is small? That's the million(?) dollar question :) Let's imagine that 20 people who were prepared to pay $1,000 to get their content onto the app store as a free app; that would certainly fund getting the 20 apps onto the store (remember, these are just plain full screen TiddlyWiki experiences; the app wouldn't be adding any cool functionality). The difficulty is that I'm trying to replace a decent London salary for a senior technology job; this is only worth doing if I can make it into an ongoing revenue stream for me (and hopefully others). That's why I was initially seeing the idea in terms of a publishing partnership with a revenue stream, and it depends on people in the community having ideas for content that people will pay cash for. But other models are certainly possible. > From Ed: We have a group of people on our xAPI cohort team from an educational company called IDS who might be very interested in leveraging your help integrating TiddlyWIki into their products on a commercial level. Not sure if you made the registration meeting today or not for the xAPI cohort event but they extending the registration time to allow us to organize. I would be happy to introduce you to them and allow those wheels to start spinning! Terrific, please do. > From Rich: I think that having a 'free' version of TW5 by you(Jeremy the creator of TW) and then 'upgrades(in app purchases)' to do different things like a GTD version could definitely work. Yes, I agree, but we wouldn't be able to do that until we get to the point where TiddlyPip is a full scale TiddlyWiki working environment like TiddlyDesktop. The idea of content publishing is to raise revenue to be able to bootstrap that development. Best wishes Jeremy. On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Ed Dixon <[email protected]> wrote: > Another interesting approach might be something like this > http://classroom-aid.com/mobile-learning-authoring/claro-pricing-vs-features/ > where extended capabilities needed for comercial purposes are added as a > premium feature and are not a part of the opensource effort if you wanted > to go that route? I met the author through my affiliation with FLE and > invited him to join our cohort team and he accepted a while back. Not sure > he made the kickoff but I will try to reconnect. I just discovered how well > versed he is with the xAPI spec he could be a huge help to us! > > On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 4:59:01 AM UTC-7, Jeremy Ruston wrote: >> >> Do you have an idea for TiddlyWiki content that you think people might >> pay for? >> >> Perhaps a technical manual? Or a guide for your city? Training materials >> for your company's field engineer force? Or maybe a manualisation of mental >> health intervention techniques? >> >> Would you be interested in working together to create your multimedia >> TiddlyWiki content and wrap it up as an app that can be distributed and >> sold on the iPhone/iPad app store? >> >> Here's the background for this invitation: I've recently finished my work >> with CTRLio. I'm very grateful to them for the support they've shown to my >> work on TiddlyWiki over the last 18 months. But now I need to find new >> sources of income to replace my salary. There's a few weeks in which I can >> consider some radical options, and this is one of them. >> >> I want to explore the idea of building a commercial TiddlyWiki ecosystem >> on top of the Apple platform of iOS, the Mac and iCloud. I'm not making any >> moral or philosophical judgement about Apple's place in the world. I'm >> considering this plan just because the App Store is one of the places that >> someone like me may be able to make money. >> >> This first step is simple: we create a framework for building iOS apps >> that provide a terrific, read-only user experience for interacting with >> TiddlyWiki documents. I'd want to support free or paid apps, with the >> possibility of using in-app purchases for premium content. It would be a >> way to deliver a highly custom, interactive user experience around >> multimedia content. We would be able to deliver free updates to the app and >> content via the app store update process. >> >> Such a simple application would be the quickest way to get into the app >> store - I believe in just a few weeks. The aim would be for the app to be >> invisible without much of a discernible user interface, just providing the >> mechanisms for the content to take centre stage. It certainly shouldn't >> resemble the familiar default TiddlyWiki editing interface. >> >> I'm open to suggestions about how to structure this from a business >> perspective. I'd need some upfront payment to fund the development, but >> hopfully we'd find a big enough handful of people that individual shares of >> the startup costs would be relatively small. >> >> If enough people can provide the necessary commercial backing we can use >> TiddlyPip to publish Eric's "Inside TiddlyWiki: The Missing Manual". >> >> Beyond simple read-only publishing, there would be a number of >> incremental improvements we could make once we see regular revenue: >> >> # Support read/write functionality like annotations, with iCloud syncing >> between iOS devices. >> >> # Support publishing custom, TiddlyWiki-based applications, such as >> tw5.scholars. It wouldn't appear to be a TiddlyWiki file: it would behave >> like a custom app for scholarly notetaking (including multi-device sync) >> >> # Support quizzes and questionnaires, with content unlocked by >> successfully completing exercises >> >> # Support reporting of progress to the TinCan API >> >> # Support one-on-one student/educator interactions through the app. >> Students might buy an academic textbook along with tokens to ask the author >> 5 questions via messaging within the app. >> >> # Create a full end-user application that enables the user to create and >> work with TiddlyWiki documents on iOS devices. This is really the ultimate >> goal from a development perspective. But it's a lot of work to create such >> an app with enough polish to stand out in the app store, and I'm not >> convinced there are enough people prepared to pay for apps like TiddlyWiki. >> But if we can bootstrap things via the content publishing route then we >> ought to be able to gain the time to make the app sufficiently polished and >> useful >> >> It's fun thinking about the possibilities. But we need to take this >> journey as a series of small steps, and I need to quickly find out if >> there's any hope of completing the first step. >> >> I need to know if there's anyone out there who might be prepared to put >> some money on the table based on their belief that they have content that >> could viably support this business model. So please let me know if you fit >> that description. Ideally, we'd find a handful of people which would make >> it easier to fund the initial development, until the app store revenues >> kick in. >> >> Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions, >> >> Best wishes >> >> Jeremy >> >> -- >> Jeremy Ruston >> mailto:[email protected] >> > -- Jeremy Ruston mailto:[email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
