Archive for category General Business
Head in the clouds?
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business, Technology on May 5th, 2009
Cloud computing has been getting a lot of attention over the past couple of years, along with “Software as a Service (SaaS)”. Here is a provacative article about the questionable value proposition for small and larger enterprises alike.
Weather forecast
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business on April 18th, 2009
OK, so this is not terribly new and exciting, but it was satisfying. My wife asked what the weather forecast was for tomorrow. Because we recently redesigned the website for our local township I was able to go right to the site and click on the weather forecast link. Very convenient. Unfortunately, the weather tomorrow will not be nearly as nice as it was today…oh well. Welcome to New Jersey in April.
Weather link @ ByramTwp.org
Unlocking Android
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business, Software Development, Technology on April 7th, 2009
Today I received the final ebook for Unlocking Android from Manning. Along with a couple of other authors (Charlie Collins and Robi Sen) have been working on getting this title out for over a year. It should be on book store shelves within about 10 days or so.
Unlocking Android
Sounding the alarm
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business, Software Development, Technology on April 3rd, 2009
In Byram Township where our office (and my home) is located, we have terribly “hard water”. Heat that water up constantly in a hot water heater and you’ve got a recipe for rusty hot water heaters that rot out faster than imaginable. So… today some of the guys were working in the classroom and discovered that a small hot water heater used for hot water in the kitchen and bathrooms decided today was the day – to leak on the floor and keep me from getting much of anything useful done. Well, most of the damage is behind us, some multiple hundreds of dollars in new hot water tank and expert installation included. (Thank you, Polite Plumber). And the dehumidifier is cranking to get the remaining water out of the carpet. Oh the joys of property management. Anyway, this is the push over the ledge I needed to come up with a (hopefully) cost effective environmental monitoring system. No, this isn’t some United Nations nonsense about how much vegetation-feeding carbon dioxide is going into the atmosphere, it is about keeping an eye out for leaky appliances and some useful (and fun?) technology at the same time. This is going to start out as a hypothetical design idea and a mobile software application to monitor it. Why mobile? Well, a couple of reasons. Mobile is more interesting in some ways and I want to extend it to have some more features over time. Could it all be browser based? yes, and we might start that way, however the problem with browser based applications is that you have to think to go there and click and clack. I prefer an application which is periodically checking on things for me. So now, off to write an article about how this thing is going to work….
Going Steady
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business, Technology on April 3rd, 2009
In our computer lab we often have students who prefer to customize their “desktops” during the duration of their time with us. For example, our classes generally run for one month in duration and students tend to gravitate to the same seat every day. Sometimes they get spyware, sometimes they delete files we would prefer them not to, etc. That’s OK, its part of the learning process. However, at the end of the instruction cycle, we incur a cost to restore the machine to the state it was in at the beginning of the class session. We used a program called Deep Freeze, which did an OK job, however it didn’t allow enough flexibility. We’re now trying Steady State from our friends at Microsoft. This promises to be a better experience. We shall see…
Young Professionals, epilogue
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business, Sussex County on April 2nd, 2009
We had about 20 people show up including Tammie Horsfield from the Sussex County Chamber of Commerce and Steve Skorski from HQW architects. I am happy to say that MSI had three gents in attendance; myself, Watson and Slim, our ace web developer (one of them anyway). We’re planning on meeting again the first Thursday of May. Location to be determined. If you are interested in joining us, please contact myself, Steve or the Sussex Chamber office.
Sussex County Young Professionals Meeting
Posted by Frank Ableson in General Business, Sussex County on April 2nd, 2009
We’re meeting tonight at JC’s Grill on Spring Street in Newton for a couple of hours. The purpose of the group is to foster business relationships between the “younger” generation. Somehow, that includes me, so I’ll be quiet and not complain. Looking forward to making some local business connections.
Thinking and Doing
Posted by Frank Ableson in C12, General Business on March 17th, 2009
Today I have a C12 meeting in PA. Our ‘working on my business’ topic is Balancing Strategy and Execution. This is an area I have been giving a fair amount of thought of late as we are doing just that – trying to make sure that we are headed in the right direction as a business, and getting done what we said we would do.
Running a business is kind of like sales in a way. There is a lot of energy and excitement when planning (selling) and then when the plan is ‘approved’ (closing the deal), the work begins (delivery). As a CEO, my job (I am learning) is to keep everyone, including myself, focused on their tasks – on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis. Part of that task list is to measure progress against our plan on a regular basis.