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Custom development on demand.
Offering technical support to foreign companies or individuals is hard when there's no infrastructure to accept payments, so paying for small items like support incidents becomes a problem for the potential customer. Also, most support requests come with a pressure of a quick answer. There are companies in this field already; read (B) in this page for an idea.
Hence, I decided to offer only development services and hope to list here all the main restrictions:
- Development tool is Delphi v6 Ent or BCB v5 Pro. D6 is used with Intraweb and TMS-IW to produce Internet-enabled applications if necessary. I can use any free C++ compiler that's available if you don't need a GUI (where Delphi excels) but plain routines. The development platform is Windows NT exclusively, sorry. With some dedicated customers I've entered agreements where they acquire the tools, but this is certainly not for a casual task.
- My experience is basically writing SW that did a lot of computations and had minimal GUI to display results or database applications that had a GUI centered around the data processing requirements or web-based applications that connected visitors with a corporate db. The engines I've used are MsSql, InterBase and Firebird (if you have read the main page of this site, you have an idea). My experience with Oracle is so minimal that's not worth mentioning it.
- Over time, I've used different Delphi add-ins, like InfoPower, Orpheus, WPTools, Async-Pro, QR-Pro, IBO and IntraWeb. I don't see a problem loading and learning other packages, provided that they don't crash my Delphi installation.
- I'm no graphic artist neither marketing FUD expert. If you want a shining, award-winning visual design, hire a person that can define the layout for your application. It's possible to add the logic to the user interface even with Intraweb applications, so your forms or HTML pages can be programmed after their GUI design is done. Otherwise, I will generate something that can be used, but that may not be too attractive for the user.
- In some countries (the US, for example), SW doesn't fall within the copyright and ownership rules that other types of work fall in. This means that currently, an external consultant continues retaining rights over the custom made SW. If you want these rights transferred, it can be done, however.
- Internet developments, because they are remote and can occur overseas, are based on mutual confidence. Up to now, my experience has been good. However, this doesn't mean the net is free from big scams.
- All communication is written, either in English or Spanish, using e-mail. If more is needed, phone calls could be used for Spanish only.
- Rates: probably I should have started with them. Currently, USD40 per effective development hour. Think of an effective hour as a filtered hour, so I work more time than I really bill. You'll have to contact me if you want another arrangement.
- Paypal is useless for me when it comes to receive payment. I can only send money (it works), not withdraw to my bank account. This is one of the reasons I don't handle support incidents, for example. This means any payment has to be done either directly by Western Union or through a wire transfer to my national account, using the SWIFT code.
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