Big news this Monday. Ricebridge Software has launched our second Java component: XML Manager. It turns your XML into a list of data records, ready for processing. Check out the demo (all AJAX-ified, if I do say so myself!). We're doing a soft launch on this as it's far to close to Christmas to get into a big launch scenario. But come the New Year we'll have lots of fun.

This blog is supposed to be about starting a software company so you'll be hearing a lot more about my product marketing efforts over the next few months. I was holding off a little while we were finishing XML Manager, but now that the cat's out of the bag, I can start pontificating about how to run an ISV! Now I'm no Joel, I don't always do things perfectly, and if you've been thinking of starting your own software company then you might as well follow along and watch me make all sorts of entertaining mistakes. But no fatal mistakes. Rule number one of this trade is to set things up so that you can't fail. We're talking zero overheads, and self-maintaining systems.

Anyway, back to XML Manager. To reward all my readers, I've a little Christmas treat for you. Anyone who posts a comment before Jan 1 2006 gets a free single developer license. Hey, that includes a free CSV Manager single dev license too! So why not – you never know when you'll need to get a load of XML into a database!