Like many professionals during these difficult economic times, software developers are being asked to continue producing the same quality end product but with significantly reduced budgets.

What is a software developer to do?

One of the best ways for struggling developers to get more out of their diminished funds is to take full advantage of all the open source software resources available.

Luckily, Palamida, a leading provider of security for open source applications, has just announced their top 25 open source projects, all of which will help developers do more with less.

The projects are divided into five different categories-

1. Development Tools
2. Database & Mapping Tools
3. Core Utility Classes
4. Reporting & Charts
5. Web 2.0

By utilizing these open source projects and others like them, software developers will help themselves weather these challenging economic conditions.

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I was talking to a friend recently, and he mentioned the Christmas bonus he’d given the woman who cleans their offices. It was very generous. Perhaps even a little too generous, I thought to myself, because surely even a third of the amount would have made her very happy? But then this particular friend has always been generous, almost to the point of extravagance. And perhaps that is precisely why he’s also an extremely successful businessman.

A recent post over on Copyblogger discusses the Secret Trait of Millionaires - and it reads like a description of my friend.

“Despite stereotypes about greedy, ruthless businesspeople, the truth is successful entrepreneurs always find ways to give. They give away generous samples of their products. They share their time, energy and success with partners. They give back to their communities. They generously support charities. They reward great employees.”

I couldn’t agree more. I know times are tough right now, and everybody is feeling the squeeze, particularly at this time of the year. But unless you’re living in a cardboard box, this is not the time to cut your spending completely. There are people out there who are much more desperate than you.

Google’s Matt Cutts is also thinking along these lines. The charity recommendations post on his blog is an excellent place to start if you’re in a giving mood.

At SoftwarePromotions, we will continue our holiday tradition of donating money to the World Wildlife Fund on behalf of our clients. It makes a far more positive impact than a Christmas card, and our clients seem to appreciate it, too.

If you’re still holding on to those dollars/euros/yuans, make sure you read the Copyblogger post. Generosity pays. And the warm and fuzzy feeling is actually just a bonus.

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Google has announced that they are making an unlocked version of the G1 phone available to members of the Android developer network.  The phone, which costs $400, is intended to provide mobile software developers with a ”real world” hardware environment in which to test their applications. The G1 is the first mobile device to use Google’s Android mobile operating system.

It’ll be interesting to see how the mobile software development world responds to Google’s entry into the market, and if the new Android OS is able to lure people away from their beloved Blackberrys and iPhones.

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I recently noticed an interesting recommendation on the AdWords campaign summary page. From time to time Google will make recommendations such as increasing your budget or how they can help with optimizing your campaigns.

Today I noticed a new recommendation titled, “Increase traffic by showing your best ad most often“. I have my campaigns set to “Rotate Ad Serving” and they are recommending that I change this to “Optimize Ad Serving“. To most AdWords users, this probably sounds like a good idea, however it is not.

Take a look at Google’s definition for optimized ad serving:

“Optimize (default): Optimized ad serving delivers ads with higher clickthrough rates (CTRs) into the ad auction more often than other ads in the ad group. These higher-quality ads gain more impressions than other ads in the ad group, resulting in higher ad served percentages. By using this ad serving option, your ad group will likely receive more impressions and clicks overall, since higher-quality ads attain better positions and attract more user attention“.

If you are only interested in clicks and you do not care how they actually perform once they arrive on your website, then by all means play along with Google’s recommendation. If, however, you prefer to receive quality, targeted traffic which performs well on your website, the ad with the highest click-through rate might not be your best performing ad.

What is good for Google might not be good for you. High CTR is great for Google and it may be good for you, however there are situations where the ad with the lowest CTR actually performs best from your perspective. Once the visitor arrives on your website, do they leave immediately or do they stay and perform what you consider to be a conversion? CTR has nothing to do with what people are doing once they arrive on your website.

“Rotate Ad Serving” allows you to monitor and track ad performance by correctly identifying which ad actually performs best for you and not just Google.

Never allow your AdWords account to run on cruse control.

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Our company uses MessageLabs for spam filtering, and as a result, I get a lot less “special offers” by email than in the past.

That being said, I’m currently being bombarded by discounts and offers; yet these are legitimate offers from companies I have purchased from in the past.

This is the first recession where the internet has played a significant part, and many online retailers and services are taking advantage of the “new media” to send targeted offers and discounts to their customers.

Are they working? Not so much for me personally, as I’m not an easy sell – though some may describe me as cheap and cynical.

If I don’t want something, I won’t be tempted by a lower price. But if your offer is something that has already interested me, or your offer convinces me that your product or service is something that I really need, a mailing with a significant discount will tempt me.

‘Tis the economic season to be seen and be sold.

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According to a post on search engine land, the Google suggest feature is “testing providing links to web sites, direct answers and even ads that appear within the Google Suggest list.”

Google do a lot of background testing, and many of these ideas don’t make it to final release. I personally hope this is one that never makes it beyond the drawing board.

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Paul Carr from guardian.co.uk is less than inspired by LeWeb:

Apparently LeWeb had no wireless internet access for the whole of the first day, no heating, and uninspiring speakers.

“All of this, of course, thrilled the American attendees. If any of them was any doubt about Silicon Valley’s tech supremacy over Europe, they only had to spend five minutes in that freezing hall, with its nonexistent Wi-Fi and and its cloakroom sign that read “Cloackroom” and all was right with their world view.”

American high-profilers attending the conference also appear to be unimpressed.

And to think I was thinking of attending!

Freezing cold, no internet, boring: it’s a French web 2.0 conference!

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The AdWords API Blog have details of some of their proposed changes for 2009. These include more operations in a single call, asynchronous calls, partial failure acceptance, lower costs and more.

The new API should be ready in the first half of next year.

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The beta test is over, and Google Chrome 1.0 is now available for download.

But why did Google release version 1.0 so quickly? Chrome was first released just over three months ago, and when you consider the fact that Gmail is still in beta more than four years on, you have to wonder why?

Having an application in beta for too long is a common mistake. Too many companies are fixated on having every bug and minor issue 100% resolved before launch, almost always resulting in longer than anticipated delays.

As a general rule, software companies need to get their products out there as quickly as possible. While I’m obviously not advocating pushing-out your next product’s alpha version as 1.0, spending too long refining, optimising and polishing can be extremely damaging.

Software marketing starts wth getting the product out there, spreading the word and being seen. Launch doesn’t mean the end of the product’s development; you only need look at well-known applications and even operating systems to see that bugs and issues are no reason to delay a product’s release.

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The Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that the Yahoo layoffs are well and truly underway.

Yet even now “a large Yahoo shareholder has joined a growing chorus urging the beleaguered Internet company to set aside its past differences with Microsoft and renew negotiations” according to The Mercury News.

These are interesting, frightening and desperate times.

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