Archive for the ‘industry trends’ category

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What Happens In Vegas Is Shared Worldwide

February 6th, 2009

I just returned from Las Vegas, where I attended the Parallels Summit 2009. Parallels is best known for their software that lets Macs run Windows programs. But they’re also a leading seller of automation and control software for large data centers. These Parallels customers, who are website and server hosting providers, were our target audience. Our message: offer your business customers an online database, and all three parties (the customer, the hosting provider, and TrackVia) will benefit.

TrackVia at Parallels Summit 2009 in Vegas

We had a good time meeting new people, learning about hosting businesses from all over the world, and showing off TrackVia. We also drank a little too much and smoked a cigar or two. That part can stay in Vegas, but we hope our message about the value of reselling TrackVia will spread worldwide.

One highlight of the trip was a cocktail reception hosted on the 64th floor outdoor balcony of  THEHotel at Mandalay Bay.  We looked down on the Luxor and the rest of the Vegas strip. Awesome!

View of Vegas Strip from 60th Floor

If you missed us in Vegas but would like to learn more about reselling opportunities, please let us know!

 

 

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Open Source Collaboration – Driving Your Business and Others

February 5th, 2009

Where else can you work on a piece of technology, set it free and find that it has evolved into something even better when you return? In the open source community of course.

As part of the development staff at TrackVia, I contribute to an open source software project called Spreadsheet::XLSX. This project is an open source Perl module that we use to parse Excel 2007 spreadsheets and import them into TrackVia. In collaboration with other developers around the globe, we all volunteer to maintain, fix, and enhance this software.

A couple months ago, I checked in some significant enhancements that I worked on to build up TrackVia’s support for different formatting in Excel 2007 spreadsheets. The open source community received the benefit of my full time effort for several days, and the features I added. TrackVia had the benefit of it taking me less time to add those features to the existing open source module than it would have cost me to build it all from scratch. Less time means it saved the company money, and allowed me to bring the enhancements to market faster. Recently, some other developers added more to the module, and, after I reviewed and tested those changes, I was able to add them quickly to our product. Our customers benefit because we now support those additional data conditions in our spreadsheet import feature.

As we go forward with new features in our product, we will continue to look for ways to use open source modules to reduce the time to market and the cost of development. We’ll also continue to contribute modifications and enhancements of those modules to the open source community so others can receive the benefit of our work too.

We believe it is important to give and receive in the open source community, which begs the question, how have you contributed to an open source project or perhaps benefited?

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Database Architecture Meets Prefab Architecture

February 4th, 2009

The February 2009 issue of Dwell on Prefab Architecture intrigued me and led the data architect in me to identify some similarities between current prefab and database architecture.  In the past, all prefab options were kits.  For example, in the early 1900s a Sears and Roebuck home came with a 75 page instruction manual and 30,000 pieces, not including screws and nails.  There was little if any freedom to deviate from the manual.  The same could be said of packaged database software; you got what you purchased and nothing else.
As the issue pointed out, the times have changed in the prefab housing world; you can now purchase prefab offerings that you can customize with your own personal touch.  Your prefab pad no longer has to scream, “I am just like the house next door!”  The same is now true for the database world.  You can now purchase an online database solution like TrackVia, without worrying about getting trapped into a specific mold that was designed or dictated by someone else. Today, online databases are extremely flexible and give you a host of options to customize the database to suit your business’ individual needs.
Like the Dwell article, I have outlined the benefits of today’s prefab database architecture:

  • Affordable – Online databases are more affordable than pre-packaged and custom designed databases, and come with unlimited free phone and online support (at least with TrackVia).
  • Mobile – Online database solutions can be accessed wherever there is an Internet connection, allowing you to take your database with you.
  • Reconfigurable – Edit your database to meet your needs: easily add/concert fields, control user permissions and change format views to meet your specific criteria.
  • Completely Custom – Easily customize database to meet your specific data tracking needs without the need of a consultant with programming knowledge.  Also, receive new features in real-time.

There is always the option to hire an architect to build a custom house or a programmer to build a custom database, however it does not come cheap.  If you were an architect designing the future of “prefab” databases, what features would you look for to differentiate your blueprints?

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The Green Inauguration

January 21st, 2009

It appears as though I’m feeling green in 2009 (maybe it is the Irishman in me or my intrigue with the green movement), and thus I will continue to write periodic posts on the green movement. I recently wrote a post about the “green electronics” theme at CES, and now I turn my focus to what was billed as the “greenest inauguration ever”. Although I did not experience the inauguration firsthand (I could claim I was doing my part to reduce the carbon footprint, but in all honesty I was saving some green), I do have an opinion or two.

How was this inauguration greener than the first inauguration in 1789? I don’t claim to be an environmentalist, but I still have my doubts. Is calling it the greenest ever a little too aggressive? I think so.

It was estimated by the Institute of Liberty that over 600 private jets would generate 260 million pounds of carbon dioxide during the inauguration. Even if this figure was exaggerated as some claim, I don’t think private jets and limos were an issue back in 1789, but I could be mistaken. Did Hollywood need to make the trek to DC or could they have done their part to save the Earth by watching the event streamed live via Silverlight?

Don’t get me wrong. I think it is great that steps were taken to make the event green – from valet bicycle parking by the Washington Area Bicyclist Association to invitations printed on recycled paper to hundreds of volunteers sweeping the parade area to collect trash and recyclables. It should not take an inauguration to make U.S. citizens think green, and let us not diminish the green movement by calling it the greenest inauguration ever. But in taking a few words from our new president, this effort could easily be called “ the inauguration with hope for a greener future”.

If our kids believe it was the greenest ever, how can we improve on making it even greener in the future? I challenge everyone to take a step back and ask yourself, what did you do to make TODAY a little greener? Let me know.

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Transparency and Accountability with an Online Database

January 19th, 2009

I don’t know about you, but I never liked having to ask my parents for money. I always knew what was coming next.

How did you spend that last money I gave you?
What do you plan on spending this money on?

Yes, it is sad to say but my Dad required a budget for any advance and then a detailed report on how the money was spent. It was never fun, but I must admit I learned to be financially accountable, something I question whether or not the people who have been handed BILLIONS of dollars in TARP (Trouble Assisted Recovery Program) funds have ever learned.

With taxpayers questioning how the first $700 billion in government bailout money was spent and beneficiaries having few answers, 2009 is becoming the year of transparency. An Arkansas lawmaker has even put forward a bill that would require a public database of all state spending to increase transparency. It is great that politicians are working to make their donor lists public, however I challenge politicians and those receiving TARP funds to make public how the money from donors and the government is being spent.

One suggestion for those politicians who are ready to increase transparency could be, ahem, an online database. You might be asking how would an online database improve transparency?

Well, to get started, I have listed the Top Four Ways Databases Increase Transparency (The Database TARP):

1. Track every change made to your database with automatic change history notes
2. Access real time dynamic views
3. Restrict ability for users to update data based on permission levels
4. Publish views to a Web Site

How do you make your data transparent while still maintaining control? Should the U.S. government add an online TARP database requirement to future bailouts?

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Detroit Bailout Funds for TrackVia?

January 13th, 2009

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Inventory Traffic Jam Hits Chrysler” made me do a double-take. And not just because the photo accompanying the article was from my home town of Golden, Colorado. The article describes how car dealers are refusing new inventory from factories due to slow sales, causing an inventory pile-up for manufacturers.

I’m pretty sure TrackVia can’t solve that problem, but it sure can help manage the logistics. I know this because one of our customers is a major automobile manufacturer that uses TrackVia to track vehicles that have been shipped from factories to off-site storage lots. In fact they’re using a nifty date formula to see how long each vehicle has been in the lot, so they can prioritize shipments and meet targets for inventory turns.

Meanwhile, politicos in Washington are working out conditions that will be attached to any auto-maker bailout. I wonder if my Congressman could slip in a requirement that car makers have to use TrackVia to sort things out? Hmmm….

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Apple’s Design Secrets

January 9th, 2009

The MacWorld Expo wraps up today in San Francisco, and though CEO Steve Jobs didn’t attend, he stole the show anyway by announcing he has a hormone imbalance. Meanwhile the success of Apple’s products hums right along: iTunes sales reached 6 billion songs, the MacBook became the top-selling laptop computer in the U.S., and the number of third-party software applications available in the iPhone’s App Store topped 10,000.

I was one of the 250,000 programmers who downloaded the iPhone software development kit (SDK) in the first three months after it was announced. I figured I’d try my hand at building a simple iPhone application just for kicks. I didn’t get very far, but I did discover a little gem that helps explain much of Apple’s success.

Tucked away in the technical documentation of the iPhone SDK was an article called, “iPhone Human Interface Guidelines.” (It’s here, but you have to register as an iPhone developer to access it.) It provides guidelines for building iPhone applications that users will understand and enjoy. Along the way, it explains how Apple thinks about software design, in terms that are applicable to any software or web-based product, not just the iPhone. For example, it explains the importance of providing feedback to users:

Users need immediate feedback when they operate controls. Your application should respond to every user action with some visible change. For example, make sure list items highlight briefly when users select them.

It continues in another section,

Users need to know whether their requests are being processed and when their actions might result in data loss or other problems. That said, it’s also important to avoid overdoing communication by, for example, alerting the user to conditions that aren’t really serious or asking for confirmation too often.

The document also uses dozens of screenshots to illustrate specific best practices in design, such as thinking top-down, minimizing input required from users, and expressing information succinctly. The advice goes on for dozens of pages.

If you design or build software or other high-tech products, or you’re just curious how Apple keeps cranking out so many successful products, I recommend taking a look!

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Should the USDA Certify Green Electronics?

January 8th, 2009

There is a lot of buzz about “green” products invading CES this week. Several have identified green products as a key theme of the conference. I must ask, what makes an electronic product “green”? Is it grown on a farm without pesticides?

I previously worked for a brand consulting firm and had an organic bread company as a client. I literally broke bread with consumers in their homes to explore what “natural, made with organic and certified organic” meant to bread lovers. It turns out USDA seals add credibility but consumers view all bread as natural and a little organic goes a long way.

If the USDA requires 95% of a product’s ingredients to be organic to proudly display the USDA badge, should electronics have to be made with 95% recycled materials to be classified as “green products”?

I’m all about taking the steps necessary to produce greener electronics; however I feel the tech community should set some standards to alleviate confusing or misleading consumers. I like to think TrackVia is a green online database but I don’t feel confident saying we are 100% green. The technology community has a chance to prevent the confusion confronted by consumers in the grocery aisle over organic and natural. We should not muddle the waters with various shades of green. Either a product is green or its not.

To learn more about “green” electronics, Greenpeace has done some of the work for us in its recently released report titled “Green Electronics: the search continues”.

What do you think the standards should be for an electronic product to call itself green? Bonus points – what should the seal look like?

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What did you do during the Salesforce blackout?

January 6th, 2009

Word traveled fast on Twitter when Salesforce.com had an outage today.

I am amazed at the number of tweets about Salesforce.com being down (it even made the twit scoop list). In the social media world, where was Salesforce in the conversation?  The bigger question, how should companies respond to an outage as it is happening? 

I admit I am 2 hours behind the outage, but the outage made me wonder what do you do when the tools you depend on go down? Silicon Alley Insider had an interesting suggestion that Starbucks should have had a midday coffee promotion. What would you do?

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TrackVia’s 2009 Resolutions

December 30th, 2008

Watch Chris Basham, CEO, and Matt McAdams, CTO, share their top three resolutions for TrackVia in 2009.

 

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