Shipper 3.0 is a high velocity shipment processor for ecommerce websites.

To prepare for this post, I took a look back at the Shipper timeline:

• Shipper for UPS 1.0 was released on July 7, 2004. As you might guess from the name, it only supported UPS and one backend.
• Shipper 1.1 came out almost a year later on June 23, 2005. Most importantly, it was redesigned to support additional backends.
• Shipper 1.2 came out later that same year on October 10, 2005 with support for both UPS and FedEx.
• Shipper 1.3 was released just a month later on November 27, 2005 with support for Endicia.
• There were several incremental versions of Shipper 1.3 adding various features such as support for DHL and more backends, until Shipper 1.4 was released on October 18, 2007.

You wanted more. Shipper 3.0 delivers it.

• You wanted to print labels directly from Shipper. Now you can. Shipper 3.0 uses ShipRush by Z-Firm to print the labels. ShipRush is the same shipping component built into QuickBooks.
• You wanted better support for multiple carriers. Shipper 3.0 no longer requires a separate program for each carrier. Now all you need is ShipRush (which you may already have). One program to learn instead of 4 and almost instant startup.
• You wanted better reports, packing slips, and emails. Shipper 3.0 includes a powerful drag-and-drop report writer. Now you can easily build custom reports and emails.
• You wanted faster performance with high volume websites. Shipper 3.0 downloads new orders almost instantly and uses block downloading to eliminate errors even if there are 1000's of orders.
• You wanted better control over which carrier services to use. Shipper 3.0 allows you to define custom rules based on any shipment field.
• You wanted to control which fields were updated in the store. Shipper 3.0 allows you to pick the fields that are updated.
• You wanted to automatically print reports or send emails when you printed a label. Now you can. Shipper 3.0 allows you to define actions to perform when the shipment is first downloaded or when the label is printed.
• You wanted support for more back-ends. The Shipper 3.0 Agent will be available for soon for AbleCommerce, BV Commerce, and StoreFront. But the really big news is that the source code for Shipper 3.0 Agent will be open sourced. That means you will be free to modify the existing implementations to work with your customized backend, or even create a compatible agent for any other backend.

Today I am happy to announce that the first public beta of Shipper 3.0 is available for testing.

Download

Installing Shipper 3.0 and Shipper Agent

Unzip the download to find 4 files:

Setup.exe and Shipper3.msi for for Shipper 3.0. Run setup .exe to install the pre-requisites (.NET 3.5) and Shipper 3.0 on your desktop computer. You will also need any flavor of ShipRush 6 installed on the same computer. If you do not already have ShipRush installed, I suggest ShipRush for USPS or ShipRush for DHL since both are free. See www.shiprush.com for more information.

ShipperAgentAbleCommerce.exe contains the files for Shipper Agent for AbleCommerce 7. They work with AbleCommerce 7 RC1 and above. ShipperAgentMock.exe contains the files for a Mock Shipper Agent. They work with any .NET 2.0 web site (you don't even need an ecommerce backend).

Shipper Agent is installed on the target website. Copy the files in the bin directory to the bin directory of the website. Then copy the agent directory to your website.

Note: Unlike Shipper Service 1.x, Shipper Agent does not include any built-in security. To protect Shipper Agent from unauthorized access you will need to protect the agent directory with basic authentication. Since basic authentication passes the username and password in clear text, you should also use https in the Shipper Agent URL to encrypt them.

Getting Started

1. Launch Shipper 3.0.
2. Click on Websites.
3. Click on New.
4. Enter the name of your website and the URL to Shipper Agent (i.e. https://www.company.com/agent).
5. If you have protected the agent directory with basic authentication, enter the server username and password.
6. Click on Save and Close.
7. Click on Shipments.
8. Click on Download New Orders.
9. Select a shipment and then click on Print Shipping Label.
10. After the label is printed, click on Upload Shipment.

Stuff Might Change...if you want them to

There is still plenty of time to many aspects of Shipper 3.0 and I am counting on you to tell me what you want. Here are some suggestions for things to think about while you kick the tires:

• The quick start above does not even touch on processing rules (which allow you to automatically assign services, print documents, and even upload completed orders). Are the features in Shipper 3.0 discoverable? If not, what would help you discover them?
• Right now ShipRush is a separate install because some (most?) people have some flavor of ShipRush already. Did you? Were you able to find the ShipRush downloads? What would make the ShipRush install easier?
• The integrated report writer has a lot of features. Is it overwhelming? I have included 2 sample reports. Do they help give you ideas of what is possible and how to do it? Will you use the report writer?
• In this beta, Shipper Agent is implemented as a SOAP service. I have been debating whether to switch to a more REST-like service. If you are considering your own Shipper Agent, would one or the other be easier?

Feedback

Please send your feedback to support@structured-solutions.net. I will try to respond to each comment or question within a day. Thank you for taking a look.

Shipping Rate Rule Providers version 2.7.2 are now available for BVC5 SP3.2 and above. This new build includes 2 rule enhancements:

Support for Customer Inputs

You can now check customer inputs. For example put all of the items that require a monogram into a separate package using a rule like, "When Items Inputs is greater than 'Monogram='".

Support for all Type Properties including Multiple Choice

Earlier versions only examined Text and Currency Type Properties. This build supports all Type Properties, including Multiple Choice. For example you can select all the items with Choice A using a rule like, "When Items Custom Property 'My Choice' equals 'Choice A', ...".

The new builds are available on the downloads page. The DHL Providers for BVC5 SP3.2 and above have also been updated to include the new features.

Shipper 1.4.9 is now available to download. This version includes support for Endicia Galaxy Ship 5.3, which supports the USPS changes that went into effect today (May 12, 2008).

How do I install the update?

Download the installer and run it. The installer will update your copy of Shipper to version 1.4.9.

How do I import shipments into Galaxy Ship?

Select the Shipper profile, then enter the order number or shipment ID (whichever one you selected in Shipper), and then click on Retrieve Order.

Will I loose my configuration?

No. The installer will migrate your configuration to the new version.

Do I need to update Shipper Service on my website?

If your website has Shipper Service 1.4.7 or earlier, then you will also need to update Shipper Service. Please see the downloads page to download the most recent version of Shipper Service for your website.

Is there are charge for this update?

No. But this is the last free update for Shipper. After this there will be a charge.

If you have any other questions, please send them to support@structured-solutions.net.

Last week Guy Kawaski interviewed Steve Ballmer (Microsoft) at Mix08. On Saturday, Sarah Lacy interviewed Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) at SXSW.

In both interviews the interviewer was chatty, spoke about their own relationship with the interviewee, rambled a few times, asked some easy questions, asked some hard questions, and generally did a good job. Both interviews were about 60 minutes long and both ended with a short Q&A from the audience.

Sarah was vilified (and here, here, and here). Guy was praised (and here).

Was the reaction to Sarah unfair? Undoubtably. Was it sexist? Probably...at least a bit.  But it mostly comes from imaturity...Mark's.

Mark Zuckerberg did not treat it as an interview. He was the guest, but he was disrepectful to his host the entire time. He kept looking away from Sarah to address the audience directly for long periods of time (often spouting inane platitudes). Steve spoke to Guy answering his questions without sounding like he was giving a speach.

Mark gave Sarah blank stares and repeatedly made comments to undermine Sarah's role. Steve stayed 100% engaged and never said anything to undermine Guy.

After the show Sarah was supportive of Mark, and wrote off the audience reaction to an impedence mismatch between the technical nature of the SXSW conference and the high level nature of interviewing a CEO. That's kind of her, but the Guy/Ballmer interview was in exactly the same conditions.

I have 2 pieces of advice for Sarah:

1. Interview an adult next time.
2. Take a play from Guy's playbook and establish the host/guest relationship right away (about 2 minutes into the interview Guy tells Steve that if the interview goes well he will invite Steve back to the next Mix conference).

Here's how I using log4net and BugzScout to send logging events to FogBugz.

BugzScoutAppender for log4net

"Which also means when you're using Rails and OS X, you're using the platform of choice for douchebags."

- Jeff Atwood on Coding Horror

Because my products work with a variety of platforms, I participate in several e-commerce forums. Inevitably a post appears every few months with a lament that package X does not have some feature that Amazon has.

Since July 2005, well known researcher Jakob Nielsen has been advising against copying Amazon. Here's why...

Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce Design

Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design.

If you read the piece, you'll see that Mr. Nielsen does not through out the baby with the bath water. There are several Amazon features worth emulating, ranging from the easily used login system to their excellent fulfillment process.

Tess Ferrandez is an Escalation Engieer at Microsoft. Her blog is essentially CSI: .NET. If you enjoy the Jerry Bruckheimer series, you may like Tess' blog.

UPS released UPS WorldShip 2008 version 10 in January. I'm pleased to say that that Shipper 1.4 is compatible with UPS WorldShip 8.0, 9.0, and now 10.0. You can download UPS WorldShip 2008 Version 10.0 from here.

Yesterday Phil Haack and Jacob Proffitt reviewed "On the Effectivenes of Test-first Approach to Programming" by National Research Canada and published in the Proceedings of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 31(1), January 2005.

The test-first approach is often called Test Driven Development, in that the tests are written first and then "drive" the development. This approach is often encouraged in agile programming environments.

Phil posted first. After explaining his own intuition that TDD is a beneficial approach, Pill cited various sections of the report, including the abstract, that support the benefits of the test-first or TDD method.

Jacob posted after reading Phil's analysis. After explaining his own scepticism with reports like this (including his suspicion of confirmation bias), Jacob cited several sections of the report that seemed to show the opposite of what Phil and even the report abtract claimed.

Jacob made some interesting observations:

• The control group (non-TDD or "Test Last") had higher quality in every dimension—they had higher floor, ceiling, mean, and median quality.
• The control group produced higher quality with consistently fewer tests.
• Quality was better correlated to number of tests for the TDD group (an interesting point of differentiation that I'm not sure the authors caught).
• The control group's productivity was highly predictable as a function of number of tests and had a stronger correlation than the TDD group.

I have experimented with "test first", but found it frustrating. I always ended up just "faking" some tests so I could get on with the programming (Git 'Er Done). Then writing tests after to confirm that I met the requirements. This seems to correlate with Jacob's experience.

Both Jacob and Phil end their analyses with a call for more research. Me too.