My Current Goals
- More of the same – just keep moving, keep adding.
- Visionary Goals: better software, more of it, happier users and developers.
- Better explanations – this is something I've been working on off and on: a project to explain the our site, our project, or the general story of portability. It never quite blossoms because I don't really feel like writing a comprehensive guide that might quickly stop being relevent if the industry (or our project) shifts. [EDIT: I made some progress on this point.]
- HOWTO focus – a more grandular version of the above goal, push things towards more of addressing clear, specific problems. How do I format a USB drive? What do I put on it? How do I compress data? How do I access that on a Mac? How do I secure files I put on a cloud drive?
Minor shift
- Data focus – start data mining site activity and focus on whatever is popular.
- More developer focus – more outreach, more focus on collaboraton to bug test and improve programs, using the site as a forum for devs.
- More open source focus – projects come and go but open source seems to stick around. Start giving open projects priority.
- Launcher focus - More active, direct effort to find a replacement for Pstart, making building a launcher program the center of the site. Maybe try to fund development/activity. Would really like to see either a successor or a replacement to Pstart. ASuite seems to have gone offline and WPP's Net Launcher seems to have gone quiet.
- Portablizer focus – rather than describing behavior, come back to forcing programs into a portable system (YaP, JauntPE, etc.)
- Feature monster programs – focus on beast programs that have loads of features. This would include MultiCommander, PeaZip, LibreOffice, etc. This is really counter to some of the appeal of this website, which covers some great niche freeware, but it would be one way to focus on improving already successful, working, and stable programs.
Media shift
- Video first – I've done a few videos but considered pushing hard into this with a full video series making a case for portability and showcasing how freeware is so important and useful.
- Podcasts – I have a little background in this and would need assitance, but could definitely come up with a lot of material to discuss.
Major shift
- Integration with sister projects PortableApps / WinPenPack - I don't know what this would entail but years of this work has made me wish more similar projects could play nice. I know I'm part of the problem in this.
- Distribute the site – build a huge archive of the best programs all chosen and carefully organized. This is basically restarting the Kitchen Sink project. I think I could resolve some of the issues that held up this project and the huge amount of manual work it required. This would create an ongoing "best of" freeware tool and would resolve the problem of projects constantly going offline.
- Privacy Focus - Some kind of response to Windows 10 selling user data. This would push the site in overtly against Microsoft's new move to become data-centric company, evidenced by their purchase of LinkedIn. This would probably hurt traffic long term and pull away some of our core support. If it's one thing that seems unavoidable, it's the way the industry as a whole is moving against privacy. On the other hand, it could boost our standing in helping users be (more) anonymous and secure.
- Exit Windows – assuming Microsoft finally drops the ball and other operating systems move in for a kill (arguably this is happening with Android right now), start a transition to other operating systems via WINE and similar tools.
- Linux or Android focus – similar to the above effort but with a clear destination.
Current Focus
Right now as I see it, the site has a few goals already in place:
- Low strategy, high flexibility – right now we have a format in place (portable means you save settings locally) and a few concepts surrounding it (stealth, folder/drive portability, etc). This is important because so many programs claim portability without thinking what that might mean.
As such, the implicit goal of the site is to keep checking programs to see if they're portable, add them to the database, and then maintain that database. Alongside that we have some program usage discussion/assistance and developer outreach. This isn't necessarily a bad thing since anyone who comes to the site can sort of make it their own, but it might be too vague to grab the interest of new users. - Low integration, Windows-only – there hasn't been a lot of effort to integrate with mobile devices or other operating systems. This is dramatically counter to the work of so many software programs over the past 5-10 years where mobile integration was crucial.
- Local device focus, high privacy – we don't have a lot of programs that utilize cloud or online services. It's very much about doing work on your local network or the machine you're on. Again, this is counter to almost every other group out there, but doesn't risk putting your data where you don't control it.
- Professional focus / low game effort – this is partly my doing as I've completely ignored our games selection and I don't think I've ever tested a game for portability. That has been great up at work but again might not be attracting new users.