November 29, 2001

9:10 AM

Moodstats the latest offering by the mighty K10K is finally available. The program is a shareware, a serial costs $15, but does it also cost K10K their anti-commercial attitude?
posted by riffola (21 comments total)

Some related comments at Surfstation.lu, Design Is Kinky and News Today.
posted by riffola at 9:14 AM on November 29, 2001

I should add that I personally think $15 isn't bad if you actually continue using the program after 20 days.
posted by riffola at 9:18 AM on November 29, 2001

I was a beta-tester...and the beta was awesome...I see no reason not to pay the $15. I see it as paying respect and giving props for an program and designers that have inspired me. That and the soundtrack is worth $15 at least
posted by plemeljr at 9:23 AM on November 29, 2001

what anti-commercial attitude?
posted by o2b at 9:24 AM on November 29, 2001

o2b: I was quoting a comment from Surfstation.lu, the news post there talked about it.

From what I know about K10K, they've had sponsorship from companies but the adverts were tasteful. So I don't see how one would think that the K10K were truly anti-commercial. I found it odd that others thought they were.

Yes, I do realise now that I probably should've put that bit in a comment rather than the main post.
posted by riffola at 9:36 AM on November 29, 2001

I see a lot of people complaining about the $15 registration... saying that they have either "sold out", or that they have gone "commercial" as though it's some sort of curse, or that their "anti-commercial" image is now dead.

But where do you draw the lines between being "commercial" and "paying the bills." It's kind of hard to pay for a site that was getting over 900,000 hits a month (I think the number was around there) when it's, in essence, a personal site being paid for through their own wallets.

Personally, I doubt that the k10k people are going to make a profit off of this - most of it, I imagine, will go to pay all the hosting/server/ etc bills.

Shrug, then again... most of the complaining is coming from whiny 15 year old "designers." They act like those indy rockers that wish their favourite band was more successful, but when it does find success - complain that it has sold out.
posted by mkn at 9:54 AM on November 29, 2001

I like that they chose to charge money for the software. Although it has web hooks, it is in reality mostly client-side software. The only network traffic is sending your stats to their server and fetching other people's stats. Running a central service is expensive, and if they get a big enough userbase, the $15 could probably just cover their expenses.

I find it surprising that they'd get flack for releasing software you have to pay for. It is far from unheard of to ask for money for selling software. I suppose it is a first for them, and that for some reason is a big deal.

Among the DiK/k10k/Three.Oh community, there are hundreds of font designers, many selling fonts, and almost always over $15 each. Do the Test Pilot Collective guys lose cred everytime they release a new font?
posted by mathowie at 10:07 AM on November 29, 2001

I don't get it, why not just write a diary? Who wants to track their mood like a Quicken chart?
posted by archeopterix at 10:14 AM on November 29, 2001

Hidden patterns and trends , new ways of correllating events to same.
posted by BentPenguin at 10:42 AM on November 29, 2001

i'm sorry, but if you're whining about them (or him, or whoemever) charging for this, then you are a lam3r. possibly even a lemur.

it looks like some pretty fun stuff. nothing i'd use right now, but i'd be interested to see it handle other stuff aside from emotions, with all the summarizing statistics and all... maybe i'll try it out yet.

my only gripe (and probably unjustified since i only looked at the screenshots)? as great as k10k and this program is, i cannot see how you could expect anyone to read such small text as this comfortably.
posted by lotsofno at 10:47 AM on November 29, 2001

oh man, k10k has just lost *all* their indie rock street cred.
posted by lescour at 11:02 AM on November 29, 2001

"Download the program, pay the shareware fee, and we promise that you'll live happily ever after!"

$15 to live happily ever after? To think of all the money I wasted on McDonald's (TM) Happy (TM) Meals (TM).
posted by coelecanth at 11:12 AM on November 29, 2001

"...a built-in diary functionality suited for the Kirk Cameron in all of us..."

Kirk Cameron?

Do they maybe mean Doogie Howser?
posted by Tubes at 11:26 AM on November 29, 2001

Neil Patrick Harris.
posted by barkingmoose at 11:42 AM on November 29, 2001

What a completely useless program. Who would bother to download such a ridiculous thing let alone pay to use it? Computers aren't therapists!!!
posted by mokey at 12:25 PM on November 29, 2001

Hmmm.... this is very interesting. The first thing I want to do with this is make a PHP script to dump the XML data it saves into the MySQL db my site runs on, and have all sorts of neat metadata included in my journals. Of course I'm sure they're probably already thinking something similar...
posted by endquote at 1:02 PM on November 29, 2001

I'm list-obsessed geek enough to find this idea tempting. I wish they'd make room for more than 5 variables, though.
posted by muckster at 1:33 PM on November 29, 2001

Biorhytms.
Groovy, man.
As for dumping the XML, and so on: Get a LiveJournal, much less setup.
Now, where'd I put my pet rock?

Now that I'm through with the bitchiness, please tell me there actually is more to it than I'm assuming. I'm all for playing with software, but from what I've seen so far, this holds absolutely no interest.
posted by Su at 3:13 PM on November 29, 2001

i think it's incredibly spiffy. it's a total geek thing, as far as i look at it, because it's hardly my mom's journal entries to list a variety of things by numbers... but i love it. i think i'll see whether i stay using it for the 20 days, and if so, i'll probably register.

i give mad props to k10k, simply because it's very cool software and it's very well designed. although i kinda wish it didn't hide the menu bar when i was in it and it gave more than five categories.
posted by onthestereo at 3:33 PM on November 29, 2001

The first thing I want to do with this is make a PHP script to dump the XML data it saves into the MySQL db my site runs on

Actually, the first thing I did after putting in 3 days of data was to add an XSL stylesheet to display it in the browser. :)

Just add <?xml-stylesheet href="data.xsl" type="text/xsl"?> to the top, and then go wild with XSL.
posted by teradome at 4:10 PM on November 29, 2001

Considering that Michael Schmidt (of K10k) is now living in San Francisco, one of the most expensive residential cities in the world, I think it's more than okay for him to want a little extra cash to pay his bills.

I'm all for paying a few beans for Moodstats, especially when it looks like a fun program... There's a lot more crud software out there with prices far beyond its worth. I'm getting a copy.

Besides, I owe Michael a drink anyways. He's a good guy, and certainly doesn't deserve the crap that the "design" community (15-year-olds) throw at him.
posted by Down10 at 1:07 AM on December 1, 2001