Using humans to make sense of the Internet.
I just posted a bit for TechLinks about my continuing disappointment with the the cable TV company. I’m tempted to use Comcast for my Internet service, but I just can’t trust them. Am I wrong here?
http://www.techlinks.net/community/community-voices/One-Step-Closer-To-Cutting-The-Cable..html
-Andrew
Last night I helped out at the Atlanta Web Entrepreneur’s meeting. Unlike most meetings that are mostly networking and a presentation, this one was a hands-on workshop where the participants came away with a fully working website driven by WordPress and customized for their specific situation. Mike Schinkel did a great job of pulling this together and my survey of the participants was very encouraging. Everyone seemed to get a lot out of it.
While not every website is be patterned after a blog engine such as WordPress, WordPress makes a good core starting point for many who just want an easy way to get periodic content up on the web without all the muss and fuss of building your own web pages with a tool like FrontPage or DreamWeaver. WordPress not only allows you to add news-like content and a typical recent-first format, but also allows you to create pages of content that can be organized in whatever way you see fit. You can create a website with a main news page an the typical “About Us”, “Products and Services”, and “Contact” pages or whatever else you need. WordPress indeed also has a module system that lets you extend the core functionality to add such things as the ability to turn your website into a podcast by adding audio files.
WordPress is an open source project so if you’re inclined you can use it as the basis of whatever you needs my be given you want to dive into the code and start modifying it to your purpose. However, if your needs start drifting to far off of what WordPress offers, you’ll probably be better served by using a more generic CMS (Content Management System) as the basis for you site.
One that I ‘m involved in is a project called Drupal. There are literally thousands of CMS’s available to choose from as evidenced by CMSMatrix, but Drupal fits the needs of a wll thought out core system that is very extensible and has an extremely active developer community. The Atlanta Drupal Users Group is also a very valuable resource if you are considering it for a project. Unfortunately, with great power comes complexity and many users are put off by the learning curve of Drupal. But once it’s concepts are understood, you can pull together a relatively complex site quickly.
Of course if a CMS system like Drupal doesn’t fit you needs and you need additional custom features, you can build a site with a programming framework like RubyOnRails or CakePHP. These approaches are much closer to raw programming, but offer a certain leg-up on getting things created quickly and maintaining a structure to your site. There are other frameworks available and if you’re language of choice is PHP, I’d recommend you attend one of the Atlanta PHP User’s Group meetings.
And then there is just raw programming. While offering the ultimate in flexibility, you will also be creating a system that only a few people are familiar with and be effectively on your own as far as getting help and adding functionality. Widespread changes will be difficult to implement and costly in term of time and rework.
Today, I look at all of these approaches as tools in my tool belt. I usually start at the most complete tools for the problem and then work my way to the more customized approaches. It’s really about adding your own special sauce without having to reinvent the wheel.
-Andrew
These days if you’re a person who bills by the hour you have to juggle more than one client at a time. You’re not always at your desk so keeping track of those billable times is easier with an iPhone app like TimeLogger. However, it can be a painful task to export your times as a CSV and then format them into invoices for your various clients. Many professionals use QuickBooks to keep track of their finances so it’s a natural place to keep track of time and generate invoices.
iQBTimer™ is a service that easily integrates TimeLogger time data with QuickBooks.
Here’s what it can do for you.
iQBTimer™ uses a “Pay for time your bill for” pricing model. Each new account gets and initial 10,000 billable minutes credit so that you can try iQBTimer™ to see how it fits your needs. As you export your times, your account is deducted for the minutes that you actually bill, not a monthly fee. This way, if you bill a little, you only pay a little. Once your time has been marked as billed, you can export it as many times as you need. You’ll never be billed for the same time twice.
iQBTimer™ is now accepting beta users. Please drop by and register and give it a try.
If you have any questions about this service, please email me for more information.
-Andrew andrew@lunde.com
I’ve been programming as a professional since 1989. In that 20 years, I’ve seen the technology evolve so that things that used to be very difficult to do have become much easier to do. As a result, I’ve shifted my skills to the next high-demand difficult to do area in order to keep ahead of the curve. Remember when Multi-Media was all the rage? It used to take a serious programmer to create something as simple as an animated graphic with synchronized sound and a background music track. Continue reading ‘A Case For Raising The Barrier?’ »
In a recent article from Fortune, the Mobile World Congress is abuzz with announcement of many of the cell companies application store offerings. Here are some of the major announcements.
Although Apple wasn’t at the conference, it’s presense was. Apple understands at the core that just producing the device isn’t enough. Apple produced a whole eco-system to go along with it. The combination of iTunes to facilitate easy management of getting music on the device and organizing it and the app Store a marketplace where user’s can find and purchase content was what was needed to provide a truely frictionless experience for the user. Many have criticised Apple for taking a proprietary approach, but in the end the user just wants it to work. With 20,000 apps and over 500 million downloads so far, I think the public has spoken.
And I think everyone else is getting the message.
-Andrew
License fees, subscriptions, pre-pay, post-pay and pay for use are some of the ways we can pay for things on the Internet. Most of the time we pay up front some sort of fee to use a software package like Microsoft Office. If you have a website, you’re likely paying a monthly hosting fee or a fee to have your webserver at an ISP. Many of us pay monthly for access to online content. I currently use a technical book publisher’s service called O’Reilly’s Safari. It allows me to keep a small number of books “available” with their complete texts as long as I want. When I need a book that’s not available, I have to give up full use of another book. For many people pre-paid cell phones are the way to go because they don’t know how much they might need them. No need to get into some long-term contract with the phone company if you only need the phone once in a while. Continue reading ‘Amazon EC2: Pay As You Go.’ »
I’m currently reading a white paper called We Have Met The Enemy And He is Us and it is really eye opening. It talks about how in our knowledge worker based society that the information loads placed on us are tremendous and it’s no wonder we have trouble digesting it all and ending up getting anything done.
Although I expect that the conclusion of the paper is going to be that we are far less productive than we should be due to all the information and interruptions we face each day, I want to invite other folks to read it and start a discussion on this blog.
It seems that managing all the information from email, phone, IM, people, blogs, TV, radio, newspapers, and now Twitter is truely like drinking from a fire hose. I’m currently working on a mobile/backend system to help manage this issue and I would welcome the feedback of others.
-Andrew
Honey, I shrunk the laptop.
I’m a firm beliver that we’re heading to a point where our desktops and laptops will disappear and be replaced entirely with a mobile pocket device. Now this won’t happen for a while, but the signs are there. Smartphones are becoming more powerful and have larger and larger storage capabilities.
Context is king. Continue reading ‘What’s Your Sign?’ »
I’ve been thinking lately about how to create value in my own products and services. It used to be enough just to hang out your own shingle and pick up whatever work came your direction(and of course execute that work well). These days it seems harder than it used to be because the Internet(and economy) have evened out the playing field. It’s hard to justify why you’re worth what you are. In these times I find that the more I get to tell my story the more easily I can justify my own worth. Often, just setting up a situation to allow for you to tell your story is enough to get the dialog flowing between you and your prospective client. If you’re trying to get investment the process becomes even more critical. I just finished listening to a podcast from Phil McKinney that really drives home the point.
More can be found at Killer Innovations.
-Andrew
Seems that Palm is going forward with the launch of their new Pre smartphone in the midst of some patent haziness. Recently, Apple was awarded the patent for multi-touch interface on a mobile device. With all the shots across the bow that Apple’s been launching that they will vigorously defend their IP, I wonder if Palm is setting themselves up for a fight or if they have some sort of back room deal with Apple. Google seem to be keeping a hands off approach to Apple and have even agreed to keep multi-touch off their smartphone. Continue reading ‘Stop Touching Me!’ »