I’ve been going through the near annual acrobatics of setting up some new PC’s with all of our standard applications recently. You start off by locating all of the CD’s (for stuff that comes/came on CD) and installing these. Then register them as required. Sounds easy enough, and it sort of is, as long as you can find all of those CD’s. Continue reading “Software Housekeeping”
Creeping Featuritis
Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users recently wrote an article Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak which I’m sure will resonate with everyone reading this. Kathy wants companies to stop adding features to products, for features sake, even if that means losing some potential customers. Continue reading “Creeping Featuritis”
Securing Information – TrueCrypt
I’m fanatical about backing up my work. Writing software is complex and costly business and the thought of losing work and having to do it over is one I don’t care to entertain. I backup to an off-site server several times a day, and to other PC’s including my Notebook which has everything on it I need to allow me to continue working, if something should happen to my Desktop PC. Continue reading “Securing Information – TrueCrypt”
On Google
Well the fact of the matter is Surfulater is barely visible on Google (apart from paid ads). So I’ve been been doing some research to try and see how we can rectify this sad state of affairs. It is pretty obvious that if folks can’t easily find Surfulater when they do a Google search, then the chances of them becoming a customer are pretty slim. Continue reading “On Google”
On the Pod with Dan Bricklin
I’ve just finished listening to a G’Day World Podcast with Dan Bricklin. I can’t tell you much I enjoyed listening to Dan being interviewed. The interview covers a lot of ground, starting from the time he wrote VisiCalc right through to what he is doing today. Continue reading “On the Pod with Dan Bricklin”
Knowledge Lost
Two articles caught my eye in last weeks Melbourne Age IT section. The first was about two Californian business men who are setting up cruise ships 5.3km of the coast of Los Angeles where they will employ 600 software developers per ship and have them working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. These foreign workers will be classed as seamen and be able to come ashore without requiring visa’s. The ships will cost $US10M a piece to fit out. At first I thought this had to be an April fools day joke, but apparently they are very serious about this. One has to wonder where we are heading with such goings on. I guess the ships aren’t heading anywhere and what about the workers?
The second article was about the large numbers of qualified IT staff that have been let go from Australian companies in the last 3 or so years in the name of downsizing. It seems that these companies are now realizing that they’ve lost a vast amount of knowledge from this process, knowledge that will be quite costly to recover, assuming of course that it can be. This also ties in with offshore development (and on cruise ships) and makes me wonder whether all of the valuable information that is built up off-shore can be transferred back to its owners, or do they write that off in exchange for the money they save using off-shore development.
As far as I’m concerned building and retaining knowledge and the intellectual property that flows from that is fundamental to the long term success of any business. It’s what gives us the edge.
Should I laugh or cry?
Three US boffins built a programme designed to create research papers with random text, charts and diagrams.
Two bogus papers were submitted to a computing conference in Florida, and one of them was accepted.
I really can’t believe this. What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in when such obvious gibberish can be accepted by anyone with half a brain, let alone someone vetting papers for a computer conference. Continue reading “Should I laugh or cry?”
Password company spams
I can’t believe this but it’s true. A colleague of mine received the spam e-mail below the other day from a company that wants us to store all of our passwords, drivers license details, travelers cheque references and other valuable information in their virtual safe.
How can any company that purports to safely and securely look after all our sensitive information have the slightest tiny weeniest bit of credibility, if they are forced to send spam in order to try and drum up some business. Would you trust any of your passwords with them? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Continue reading “Password company spams”
Podcasts – what and why?
There was a post over at one of my favourite sites Codeproject yesterday asking if anyone was into podcasts, to which I replayed yes. If you don’t know what podcasts they are quite simply small radio shows that you can download and play on your MP3 player, iPod, PC or any other device capable of playing MP3’s.
Podcasts like the web cover a broad range of information and interests. To date my focus has been on listening to marketing and business related podcasts.
The thing I really like about podcasts (apart from the content) is that I can acquire information without having to sit in front of my PC.
I download podcasts and copy them to my HP iPaq PDA. Then plug in the headphones, start the music player playing the podcast and put the PDA in my pocket. Most times I listen while I’m doing chores around house, or I’m out for a walk. This is great because I don’t have to try and find some free time which doesn’t exist anyway and I get to feed my brain during times which it otherwise wouldn’t be doing much.
In addition to Podcasts you’ll find audio books available on the Web which are played just like a podcast.
The Podcasts I’ve enjoyed listening to the most so far are by Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba over at Church of the Customer. The content is fresh and interesting and Ben and Jackie have an upbeat very easy to listen to style. Their most recent podcast is Word of Mouth Summit highlights and interviews which I’ll be listening to today.
I’ve been looking at a few programs that enable you to subscribe to podcasts and automatically download new ones as they become available. So far none have particularly grabbed my interest. I’ll likely write more on this later.
Our Web hosting debacle
What a crappy week this has been. We’ve had a Web server with Dinix.com for going on 2 years. Overall they’ve been a great company to host with, but in the later part of last year some some strange things started showing up. Then we heard that Dinix had been either bought out our merged with Web Hosting Plus (WHP). The new owners assured as business would go on as usual and they had lots of experience in these takeovers and migrating our servers. So far so good. Continue reading “Our Web hosting debacle”