Re: Release of Improved Tria Image Processing Program

Hi Jim,

I think your responses are valid. I'm pleased to hear that your
company is addressing the question of metrics because that will be in
your interests as well of that of those to whom you sell your product;
it might give you an advantage.

As to widening your sales targets I don't agree but I am no
businessman. It seems to me that the product, once produced (setting
aside development costs), is of marginal cost to propogate. Premium
price versions to academe and industry should include support but
there is no reason why a budget version (not a cut down version)
should not be distributed without technical support (other than a self
help user group whose online forum you could provide.) Perhaps I am
being naive but it seems to me that you could expand your sales
considerably on that basis. The parallel I would draw is what is
happening in the popular music (can't stand it personally) market at
present. People want it for free and largely get it for free. Their
view is that all they are sharing is a digital image; an ephemeral
entity. Regardless of the rights and wrongs, and intellectually
property law certainly needs updating, they will continue despite the
huffing and puffing by the music industry which is set in an outdated
business model. The industry should consider how best to achieve
revenue at the point of initial release of its products and not bother
what happens thereafter. In your case you are protected by a dongle
and though, doubtless, hackers could circumvent it the product is not
of sufficiently widespread interest given that it is marketed to
academe and research based industry. Anyway I would happily buy it if
it were offered at a suitable price for amateurs without technical
support.

Selwyn


On Oct 31, 3:55 pm, JimAtQuarktet <ca...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 31, 9:06 am, selwyn.stle...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:





Hi Heini,

I take your point. Your perspective is that of the professional user
and mine that of the amateur who also has a general interest in howdeconvolutiontechnology advances. There's no way I would buy one of
the high cost packages unless the vendors sensibly took the view that
they could increase revenue by selling single user copies at a low
price to private individuals for non-commercial or amateur academic
use. Bear in mind that such copies are unlikely to be abused in
academic or commercial institutions because they are all too aware
that they can be found out and that, at the least, causes
embarrassment.

However, I think it must be difficult even for professionals such as
you to find out which of the available packages you can afford best
meets your needs. Which brings me back to the idea that comparisons
based on the same photos would give you information on the quality ofdeconvolutionif not the general ease of use of the software. Vendors
naturally portray their products in the best light, I would do the
same myself if in their position. Yet, there must be several varieties
ofdeconvolutionis use in various labs and the users themselves could
arrange a compare and contrast excercise. That would also keep the
vendors on their toes both with respect to quality and price.

Selwyn

On Oct 31, 9:28 am, heini <buerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Hi Selwyn,

You raise quite a few valid issues here. Concerning comparisons,
there is no standardized image metric that can be used to determine
improvement in an image after deconvolution. I have read a few papers
that have put forth metrics, but they have been either narrow in
scope, or too complicated to find wide acceptance. For vendors, you
will never get them to agree to a comparison test, they have many
years of investment at stake. Comparison tests must be performed on
an academic level in order to have credibility, and even this does not
always work. Often the authors are experts in one form of
deconvolution, and do not appropriately apply the other types.

On our end, we hope to add some simple metrics to Tria in the near
future so that users can have some means of quantitative measure of
the improvement. The metrics will be well-described such that they
can be duplicated elswhere.

Concerning cost. a software vendor has to consider the target
audience when determining price. Comparing commercial blind
deconvolution software, Tria is 1/8 the cost Matlab with the Image
processing toolbox, and
1/15 the cost of AutoQuaint. I realize that these programs have other
features that add value, but for strict blind deconvolution, Tria is
very cost-effective. Now, on the the low end, dropping the price for
a larger audience sounds attractive, but would create a customer
support problem. Being a small operation, we do not have the
resources to handle the segment that wants to clean up their camera
phone images. The target audiences for Tria include professionals,
academics, and dedicated amateurs.

I hope that helps, and let me know if you have further questions.

Best Regards,
Jim C- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is Apple Testing The Watters?
    ... "Form factor metrics" what the hell are you babbling about. ... Product design. ... factor is the size and type of motherboard that goes into a particular case. ... compete is based on price, not by price *AND* form factor. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: % Complete to Date
    ... If you have a Work Type Resource called "1 Day" and give it a standard cost ... I want to track two metrics for corporate scorecard purposes to show how ... Beyond this, I will have a project plan with 200 tasks, each containing at ... I would set each task and subtask with a completion ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Earned Schedule
    ... text field and manage the cost aspect somewhere else. ... "EVM" type metrics but without cost and resource info I'm sort of at a loss. ... But these measure only a specific kind of progress, ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Earned Schedule
    ... I'm trying to identify metrics that the PMO can use to control this project ... text field and manage the cost aspect somewhere else. ... "EVM" type metrics but without cost and resource info I'm sort of at a loss. ... Is it possible and or does it even make sense to jimmy the EVM metrics to use ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Lean Accounting?
    ... True Downtime Cost, he might of realized even more savings in fixing ... While the metrics described at http://www.DowntimeCentral.com are ... did removing the scrap cause a delay in cycle time? ...
    (sci.engr.manufacturing)
Loading