Tamer Business Directory for London, 1988 - 1994

Technologies Used:

MS-DOS
dBase
QuickSilver (dBase compiler)

This project came about as a result of several things happening over a few years. I had done several computer programs that kept track of the basic information about people: names, addresses, and phone numbers. Each of the programs then had additional modules that were specific for the client:

• Faculty of Medicine, UWO, had modules for salaries and publication lists
• Campus Recreation, UWO, had a module for the hours worked each day, each week
• Dack's shoe store had a module to keep track of a customer's shoe buying: style, number of pairs

So I thought to myself: Why not create a core program that had the basic functionality that someone could use as is and sell it cheap? I would make the bigger dollars on the customization that most people would want. There was already Act! and Maximizer but each had their limitations that I thought I could overcome. The problem would be market share - they were already out there and big.

Anyways, I produced a program that did have the following:

• names
• multiple addresses
• multiple phone numbers
• a person could be associated with any number of groups
• notes could be added for each person, particularly useful if talking on the phone
• there was a way to create groups from groups by specifying which groups to include and which not to include
• there was a way to export a list of names with fax numbers suitable for use in a group fax
• mailing labels could be produced
• paper directories could be produced

I tested the program myself by keeping track of my own people contacts and by maintaining a mailing list for a local art gallery.

Once I had debugged it, written the manual and named it The People Tamer, I showed it at two trade shows: The Home Office and Small Business Show at the Metro Convention Centre, and the ComputerFest at the CNE. It was fun to do the shows but the response was poor.

One problem was the size of the manual. The initial perception was that it would be a difficult program to learn because of the manual size. The actual material documenting the program was 25% of the total pages. The other 75% of the pages consisted of examples on doing various common procedures:

• entering a new person
• creating groups of people
• exporting names and fax numbers for a group fax
• printing labels
• printing directories

I should have split the material into 2 manuals which I did. But I found there was still not enough interest.

During the trade shows and other contacts, I was often asked if there were any names and addresses in it already. There wasn't at that time but I thought that this may be the way to go.

I contacted marketing companies in London and found one that was interested in the idea. They already had a database of sorts for the London area but no real program to mine it. When I looked at it I found the quality of that information to be poor. I dumped the information into my own program and ran various automated fixes on the data to clean it up. The last step was to do a visual scan of the data to check that it was of good quality.

By the time I had finished, the marketing company had lost interest in the project. I decided to market it on my own. I arranged to have the program put onto diskettes by Saturn Disq, a Toronto company. They also supplied me with clear plastic clamshell diskette holders. I put into each holder a 5¼" high-density diskette, a 3½" high-density diskette, and an insert describing the program. The name of the program was now the Tamer Business Directory for London. It had about 4,000 business names, and about 6,000 names of people involved in those businesses.

I placed copies with a local computer software store on consignment. A few copies were sold but the store owner found that he was being asked for a Windows version of the same data. During the time of developing this package, Windows had snuck up on me.

Given the fact my resources were not large enough to neither market the present package as it was properly or to develop a Windows version in a reasonable time, I decided it was time to let it die.