The current economic situation is not looking good in the near term. The U.S. has lost 1.2 million jobs this year, with 140,000 of those jobs being IT related. Job cuts are happening at Citi Bank and Sun, with companies like Intel not forecasting a rosy outlook for their sales. Old timers like me remember 2000 and 2003, and are beginning to see that 2009 may look like those years. What’s an application development team member to do? Simple, prove your worth to your organization. The harder answer is how.

I have talked to you about changing your perception, and communicating, well now is time to put this into action. Any process that you or your non-IT colleagues use probably has problems. Focus your energy on streamlining faulty processes for your business. Management is looking to keep those application development team members that have their eye on the business, not technology. When working on your proposal, try to come up reasonable time and money estimates. For example, saying "this process will reduce data entry by 30 minutes, and will save us $100,000 by reducing error corrections that are caused by manual steps" is better than saying "we can automate this process".

By sharing your process findings with management, you are showing that you have an interest in the business and you too are concerned with the bottom line. Don’t expect your findings to go unchallenged. This is where the office politics side of work raises its ugly head. I can’t help you there, except to say that if you can prove to upper management that your boss’s department is important, and you are important to the department, you will have a better chance at retaining your job. I know that we application development teams focus on technology to do our jobs, but at our core is the desire to solve problems. Right now, it’s your business processes that need your attention, and those who can show how to get more business with what that have are the ones who will ride out the storm.

The recent economic challenges that the United States and the rest of the world is facing has effected more than the loss of jobs.  Organizations that were dependent on Indian community out sourcing are now faced with a new dilemma, inferior talent.

About 60% of India’s IT outsourcing business comes from the United States and 40% of the work is in the banking, insurance and financial service sectors.  To ensure that they can maintain or at least keep pace with the downturn, these firms are taking steps to protect themselves from the problem.  One of the first steps they are taking comes in the form of reduced hiring of entry-level engineers and looking at second-tier cities with lower labor costs.  The Washington Post recently published an article on the effects of the economic downturn and the steps that the Indian community it taking to combat the downturn.

The outsourcing of IT has been driven by the insatiable appetite of the United States that will continue to drive the practice in hopes of reducing headcount.  A word of caution would be advisable for the future.  If outsourcing means getting second and third-tier resources what will that do for an organization that is seeking a competitive advantage?  Clearly it will be hard to justify the economic benefits of untested staffers.

My organization, STAR BASE Consulting, Inc., tests and pre-screens every candidate that we place.  We believe that a poor candidate is a reflection on our firm.  My suggestion is that regardless of which firm your organization uses to produce IT staffing, do not choose a firm that does not test and who does not pre-screen.  In this day and age of identity theft it appears easy for a person to represent themselves as someone they are not. 

Do you want to risk the success of your projects and the reputation of your IT department to an organization that promises more with less?

 

That’s the question I have been hearing lately.  It’s been a while since I have had a chance to post.   I’m sure you are all more interested in IT solutions or web application development rather than my personal pursuits.  The fact is, I’ve been terribly busy on both fronts.  On the personal side, my wife had some surgery (she is fine) and on the business side things are really busy, at least for the short term.  (Be careful what you wish for!)

Besides the normal day to day, I have been working on our messaging.  Our new mission is to transform our client’s IT into a competitive advantage.  We have a new client that has engaged us to deliver an ecommerce IT solution that will interface to their customer’s SAP system.   That customer has told our client that they will get all of their business if they can do that interface.

When we deliver this IT solution in January, the business our client is doing from this one customer will double.  Eventually they also will roll this out to their other customers as well. That my friend, is using IT for some serious competitive advantage.

This morning I attended a seminar that was designed to be an informational seminar on the value of business process management and work process design.  The session was to last one hour and it took every minute of that hour to discuss--leaving little time for questions and answers. 

The two presenters missed the mark because they were emerged in their world of information technology consulting with little regard for the audience.  I believed that between the two of them they used every possible acronym and buzz-word known in the Information Technology Consulting industry.  I could tell the audience was bored and I know I was. It left me questioning why I came to the seminar in the first place.  So, on my drive back, it got me thinking on what is it that organizations want to hear and how do they like to converse.

First and foremost, I believe that any audience wants an individual to speak to them clearly and precisely.  I do not believe that decision makers appreciate technical jargon because many times they are not familiar with and people in the technology consulting business have a tendency to talk at them instead of to them.  That is exactly what happened this morning.

I am a technology consulting that works to help assist clients to use technology to solve problems and to build a competitive advantage.  I make it a point to make sure I place myself in any potential clients’ shoes and talk to them and engage them into conversation.  Once a client believes that someone really wants to listen and understand their challenges they are much more inclined to listen to what it is you are trying to convey.

In the technology consulting services industry we have to remember that clients and potential clients cannot be enamored with your product or services until you understand exactly what they are dealing with.  Once you understand, then you can diagnose.

Technology changes rapidly and organizations DO need assistance to stay on top of it all.  However, these organizations need partners to listen first and diagnose next.  In any type of seminars, the audience is usually there to gain knowledge but they need to completely understand what a subject is all about before they can understand and actually get value from what is being presented.  My suggestion is to set the table before you serve the meal in any conversation about technology and technology services.

Part one is here. Part two is here:

The first two parts I have discussed the bad and the ugly. Now lets talk about making it good! Usability is a pretty involved art AND science. It can be pretty subjective at times. It’s like the saying "I don’t know what makes good usability, but I know what is usable!". Here are some simple guidelines to help make your application more attractive to users:

• Consistency – I cannot stress this enough. Make sure that the order of every toolbar, button and menu item are in the same place, always. The more you deviate from this rule, the harder it is to use your application.
• Standardization – Microsoft and Google have spent millions on where to place their icons. Millions of users are familiar with their menus and buttons. Why do you think your placement is better? Follow what users already know.
• There’s more than one way to skin a cat – This old adage works fine for usability too. Not everyone uses a mouse. Make sure you use keyboard shortcuts too. And please, follow the top two rules when applying them.
• Order, please – When adding fields to a screen, order the fields by importance. The most important fields on top, optional fields on the bottom.
• Don’t assume – A big problem with many designs is that they never figure the user may change their mind. Make sure there are ways to undo the previous action. "Are you sure" messages give users a second chance to recover from a mistaken button click.
• KISS – Not the rock band, the acronym Keep It Simple, Stupid. Don’t add features for marketing’s sake. A small usable feature set is more desirable than an application with many features, but the features are hard to find or follow.
• Mr. Clean - Make sure that lesser used commands don't clutter the main screen. User inputs should be easy to understand, with enough screen real estate to enter the entire field.
• Prototype, prototype, prototype - Work on screen mockups. Let your users play with the design. Fix those issues that are common in their feedback.
• What did you say? – Use easy to understand error messages. Users don’t know and don’t care about error numbers. They just want it to work.
• Danger Will Robinson – Display all warning and error messages at one time. Color the error fields so your user knows which field is in error. A cool thing I have seen is to number the error message and field so the user can relate to the error message to the field.
• Try before you buy - Put yourself in the shoes of a first time user. Are you messages clear? Do your steps make sense? Are things displaying as you planned?

Like everything else in application software development, communication is the key to success. Your UI is your way of communing with your users on how work is to be done. The best UI designs need little training for their use. If you have to explain how something works to your users, then you need to rethink your design. You can attend usability classes (Thanks Chris), or read books like "The Essential Guide to User Interface Design: An Introduction to Gui Design Principles and Techniques" and "Envisioning Information", that can help you with your design decisions. This clearly is not an exhaustive list, just a starting point. Please contribute your guidelines to this list, and I will put them on another post.

 In my last post I spoke about the next wave of web presence is Web 3.0 which will focus on connectivity and offer a great deal of enthusiasm for immersive environments as well.  Educators and creators of on-line learning use immersive environments to place a learner in an actual simulated environment to allow the learner to experience the actual environment before the user is put into the actual environment that they will be working in.

In web application development, we believe that we can take this same approach to attract audiences and to increase the use of the web as a viable marketing and learning tool.  With the economy struggling at the present time, it only makes sense that individuals as well as organizations are going to look at new ways to attract a particular audience.

This leads me to suggest that the importance of the visual presentation of the information on any site cannot be underestimated. The first impression to your audience is strong and memorable whether it is good or not. Unattractive websites can be a turn off. Many people think that if you didn't place any effort in making your business look good, chances are you won't care much about servicing your clients. Even more important, your website appearance can be utilized to evoke certain emotions in people; help building trust, emphasize on your marketing message, and as a result affect your sales.

Color is a powerful weapon and is an important element of design that is used to create ideas, convey messages, and invoke feelings. Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. Certain colors tend to evoke a similar reaction from most people - the overall difference being in the shades or tones that are used. Colors determine the psychological effect on viewers.

Color is one of the keys to good web design. Colors should be chosen wisely as they can affect the mood of the viewers. They should be chosen in such a way so as to suit the subject of the website. Choosing the right colors for a website involves more than deciding on which colors you like. Achieving color harmony is a science. Marketing statistics show that sometimes by changing the color scheme of your marketing materials the conversion rates can be affected by as much as 15%.

Next, a site designed to drive business should ensure that the site is user friendly and has good user-friendly design. Statistics show that the average user decides in 3 to 6 seconds if they are going to stay at the site or are they going to leave.  Any web site designed to drive traffic to a business needs to ensure the site is appealing, easy to use and has several “calls to action” to get the desired results.

Your site will make a statement about your company; the only question is:  What will it say?

Part one is here.

Part Two:

The goal of every application development team member is to write simple, easy to read code and robust interfaces. Time, knowledge, and even arcane rules are obstacles to that goal. You can get away with less than stellar code… for a little while, but bad UI is immediate.

My example is a third party product that I am currently using. This application is a tool to create other applications. Rules are created, and wizards then help create code based on these rules. There are lots of buttons to help the user step through the process. My first step has a next and cancel button, in that order.

The next step has a cancel and next button in reverse order. What? When it comes to buttons, order is VERY important. Users become accustomed to buttons in certain places and in a specific order. If you change the order, then confusion and mistakes occur, and users become frustrated. The cancel button immediately stops the process. No "are you sure"? I can see that on step one, but not on step four or five. You nearly complete the process, and that mistakenly press cancel, and BANG! You’re out. Not a good design. 

These buttons have mouse overs on them. The foreground is white, and directly on top of the button. The button itself is blue, on a white background. If your mouse hovers over the button, the text and the button completely disappear! Given the severity of the cancel option, there is no love for this.

The rules themselves are order driven. A rule may have over 100 instructions at times. New instructions are always placed at the bottom. You can only move one instruction one line at a time. You can only imagine how long it takes to move 5 consecutive instructions from lines 115-120 to lines 15-20.

You can have multiple versions of a rule. There is simple inheritance, where the rule from version 4 inherits from version 1. You can override the inheritance, but once overridden, there isn’t a way to revert back to version 1. This isn’t only a usability problem; it’s a real functionality issue.

Before you go "well it’s only this application", I will say that I have seen these issues in many other applications. Application development team members have to deal with a variety of events, language limitations, and bad specs. The point here is not to trash the application, but to go, "wow, how can I not do that". The people who do best in life are the ones that not only make mistakes, but learn from the mistakes that they, and others make. Part three will discuss some usability guidelines to limit mistakes.

This three part series looks at usability from different perspectives, and offers some solutions. Part one is about changing your existing design. One key concern I have with modern software applications is their design. As a user, I find many applications hard and confusing to use. As a software application development team member, I try to use the mistakes I see to make better design decisions. Does usability really matter? Let’s ask Microsoft.
Microsoft recently updated their Hotmail interface. They used to have two options, a "classic" interface, and a "full" interface. Microsoft took both designs created a single hybrid interface. The users are revolting against the change. "So a few users are angry, they will got over it," is a common attitude amongst application software development team members. I have never understood that type of thinking. For the users, they are not applications, but tools. They have specific uses for the software you created, and often in unintended ways from the original design. To change your UI design, it would be like replacing your trusty hammer with a skinny, small, plastic, and rubber hammer. It supposed to be better, but it doesn’t feel right in your hand, or when you use it. You want your hammer back, but it’s not there. "Sure the users will complain, but they will love the new features." The comments on the new changes have many users considering new email options. One even went to actively campaign against Microsoft products. Do you think a "let them eat cake" mentality is going to help Microsoft? For the first time in many years, they are feeling competition from multiple areas. Mistakes with their operating system in the past wouldn’t hurt them, but users can easily move to apple or Linux. Virtualization now lets people not change OSes at all. Is Hotmail giving you problems? Hello gMail. Changing the user experience is something you should take very seriously. For vendors these mistakes are costing them real money, even if the application is free. "Well, I’m not a vendor", some application software development team members are saying. If users are supposed to use your tool, but don’t, who is management looking at, the software application development team, or the users? Bad attitudes and bad choices cost money and jobs.

Those of us that have been a part of the Web from the on-set, have witnessed various stages of web and Internet development.  Web 1.0 was about Commerce, Web 2.0 is about community, and the next phase Web 3.0 is about connectivity.

This means we will need improved security, service oriented architecture (SOA), RSS feeds, bookmarking or tagging, crowd sourcing, crowd hacking, and user generated business applications that can be built by technical and non-technical people alike.  It also means that there will be new career opportunities in web development because organizations of all types will need to improve the level of communication by utilizing technology tools that can automate and intelligently route information

This newly developed web connectivity will play a proactive role in getting multiple generations to adapt to new processes and tools for the purpose of creating more efficiency, which will lead to greater productivity.  The next evolution of web development will improve the velocity of getting things done by using new Web based tools to coordinate, mandate, and route workflow.  Organizations will need to embrace the fact that technology and web application development can make the impossible – possible.  One is only limited by their own imagination because the next generation of web development applications is going to make connectivity to prospects, customers, and future customers a reality.
 
The fact-of-the-matter is, globalization is here to stay and organizations need to respect the fact that with the new push of connectivity through the web, mergers and acquisitions will move to a global scale and worldwide conglomerates will gain power.

Researchers have predicted that 3D immersive communities will be a part of Web 3.0 as well.  In the business-to-business atmosphere, manufacturers, distributors and retailers will be able to put their perspective clients into a 3D immersive environment so that end-users can experience life-like environment right from their desktop.  Is your organization ready for the next generation of web application development, or do you need some guidance to prepare for the next step?

As organizations grow, they often outgrow their IT departments. Business needs out pace their infrastructure.  This includes personnel, structure, process, and procedures.  Help can be provided to "mature" an IT department to a point where it is professionally managed and can scale with a growing operation. Often this includes a thorough implementation of procedures and processes that help the group become more dependable, secure, and able to meet the demands of the internal and external customers.

Recently, I had a meeting with a CIO of a sizeable firm that produces products for industry 24/7.  During the course of my “fact-finding” mission I made sure the individual I was meeting with understood that I was there to listen and to understand what challenges he had before him.  Over a period of time, my audience of one started to grasp the idea that I actually wanted to provide help and began to tell me what overwhelming challenges he faced.  The CEO of his organization was cutting IT budgets with little to no understanding of how this affected the operations of the organization and he was shouldering the blame from internal departments

In technology consulting services we often have a difficult time getting to the problem because IT departments are usually overburdened and overprotective of their departments.  Fact of the matter is that IT personnel and CIO’s are stretched so much they have little time to take a step back and look at their overall operations and infrastructure because they are too consumed in maintaining the day-to-day operations.

The value of a professional technology consulting services company is that they can offer an offer an objective opinion without pre-conceived ideas.  My firm STAR BASE, Inc. offers an IT Wellness Check™ that is designed to examine the IT infrastructure as well as the operational efficiency of an organization.  At the end of the survey a profile report is developed and our findings are given to the client.  This serves as a “checks and balance” report that allows the client to know exactly where they stand on IT, their IT perspective, as well as how IT meets the business goals and objectives of the organization.

How does your IT measure up?  Are you meeting your goals or are you just maintaining?  I would suggest that any CIO or CFO give these areas serious consideration to ensure 2009 will be an operationally sound and productive
New Year!

If you take the time to investigate, you will understand that technology is a vital part of our daily lives.  Technology is not just for business, but it can mean the difference of being competitive or not, delivering services and products or not, and it can actually make a real difference in winning and losing.  Recently we witnessed right before our eyes how president-elect Barack Obama and his team revolutionized the use of the Internet to reach millions of people to make a difference and raise more electoral funding ever.  Political campaigns will never again be approached in the same way.

In the field of technology consulting services, consultants use technology to solve problems and to enhance the working environment to become more productive.  In online learning we use technology and technology consulting services as a way to reach more learners in less time.  Like technology the face of learning has changed forever and organizations around the world are using technology to reach employees, customers and partners to better inform and educate them about processes, methodologies, procedures, and just basic knowledge on their product and services.

The value of technology is clear.  Technology can equip the people of any organization with the knowledge and tools they need to keep their systems and solutions long after an initial project has been implemented.  Good technology consultants do not tell clients what to do, instead that consultant uses technology to help organizations to develop solutions based on collective knowledge and experience.  Together organizations and technology can create solutions that were previously unimaginable.

Technology is simply a tool that can be used to ones advantage regardless of the task you have before you.  Many times I find myself marveling at the way we use to do things in the working world verses the way we accomplish tasks today.  When the computer first appeared on the scene developers touted how this “marvelous tool” would help us in working less and accomplishing more.   Well, I do not believe anyone believes it has helped any of us to work less but we would all agree it has assisted us in becoming more productive.  More production equates into being more competitive and keeping one step ahead of our competition. 

Those of us that have devoted our lives to technology consulting services enjoy being challenged to come up with workable solutions that fits a clients needs and is driven by technology.  I would suggest that technology will continue to evolve and those organizations that do not currently embrace it as a difference maker would best be served by taking a second look and deciding how it can make your world better as well.

In a recent Computerworld article, there were plans by ACS, an IT outsourcing services firm, of starting off shoring business analysts and project managers. While I believe that many enterprises might want to remove them for cost savings, these people represent your core business. They are the balance of your business and technical expertise. They translate your business plans to your IT development team members, and answers questions form both IT and the business units. If your BAs and PMs can be replaced, then the best cost savings would be from CEOs. On average, they make 435 dollars per hour more than the average worker.

Outsourcing does make sense when clear specifications are in place and clear expectations are set. These processes are typically managed by your business analysts and project managers. If they are replaced, who is looking after your best interest? If you are going to replace your IT development team, at least look at consulting firms like STAR BASE Inc. We have the business and technical acumen to handle your project, we are price competitive, and we are local. Additionally, the new president is looking to curb off shoring. You might want to help your business, bottom line and support your local area.

Rob Preston, VP and Editor in Chief of Information Week, looks at the two sides of the question of the future importance of the CIO role in business.  This affects more than Cincinnati IT Jobs or the Southwest Ohio Information Technology arena, but across America and the globe.  

He sites many blogs, articles and books in his article that stand on one side of the fence or the other.  The central piece centering around Nicholas Carr who in his many articles and books promote the idea that “IT Does Not Matter” and Ian Campbell who call for the death of the CIO role in American business within five years.

“All this chatter makes for lively blogs and columns, even if most of the pundits end up pulling back from their shock statements. But there's also some truth underneath the bluster. Business technology pros, academics, consultants, analysts, and others see a confluence of events and trends that are either marginalizing CIOs or subjecting them to intense scrutiny like never before.” states Rob Preston.  He compares these statements to those who predicted the Dow Jones Industrial Average would soar over 30,000 by this time.

The article is a very interesting read and invokes intense thought on the subject.  As to whether the role of the CIO will be dead in five years, I cannot put it better than Rob; “Now, the CIO profession is anything but dead for those eager to take on the above challenges. In fact, the demands of globalization and business reinvention will elevate the sharpest CIOs to business process owners, master integrators, and ultimately trusted innovators. The CIO position has never--never--been more critical.”

Today’s fast-paced, ever changing business environment does not lend itself to the old “reductionist” IT model.  Every business organization, no matter what the size, will need a leader at the strategic level to ensure that the Information Technology Strategy supports the business strategic goals and initiatives of the organization.  Whether the title is CIO, IT Director, Chief Integration Officer, IT Manager or CEO; the role is essential to the organization.

As an Open Source guy, I am sure my windows application development friends are going to think this post is a hatchet job, but here it goes anyway. I have heard that Windows has pushed up development of their Windows "7", and that the early beta is coming out now. On the surface, that sounds like a good thing since Vista has had it share of problems and slow adoption rate among businesses. Vista had 5 years of development, and we users and application development team members were promised a new UI, file system, and better security. What we got was XP with cancel/allow questions, and new bugs. As proof, my wife uses Vista at work.She is not an application development team member, just a user. When I asked about Vista, her response was "It's just like XP, only my applications don't run on it." Proprietary software apologists like to say, "Well, it’s the first version, it will be stable by service pack 2". These are the same people who rail on open source software for not being polished. Vista is not polished, so what’s wrong with Linux?

All of this is great fodder for a pub debate, but Microsoft is going to CHARGE you for being essentially a beta tester. "We have learned from Vista’s mistakes, and this time we nailed it!" is probably the new ad slogan. If you were unlucky enough to buy Vista, you can always buy our new operating system. There was a phrase that originally went "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", which now has been replaced with Microsoft. With our current economic crisis, how can any business afford to change their OS every 2-3 years, and still have a job?

Within website application development, we find far too many companies build a site and never touch it again.  When an organization is asking itself "how is our web site performing”   they will quickly answer that it is not performing very well. This same organization will go on to say that it accounts for little to no traffic when it comes to driving sales and producing revenue.  Furthermore, the frustrated organization will continue to elaborate and say, “We were told we needed a web site, we built one and it does nothing for us!"

Web site performance does not happen in a vacuum. How often you update your website is extremely critical to your success on the web. First and foremost, search engines love fresh content. Once you grasp the concept of how search engines work you can begin to understand why it important to update your website every month.  Web application development in this media driven multiple- messaging world, needs to consider that content needs to remain fresh and continually updated or any potential new client will not visit your site for very long.

Let's take a look at two examples of B2B websites.  Example A will be a site that updates their content every month.  Example B is a site that was built and the company has not updated it since it was built. Search engines only have "so much time" to index sites.  If the spider comes back and finds that information has changed, it will normally decrease the time between now and its next indexing (to see if there were even more updates that have happened between crawlings.) If the content hasn't changed it might increase the time between its last crawl and its next crawl--assuming that if it wasn't updated lately it probably won't be updated next time either. Regularly updated content will bring spiders back more often which leads to faster indexing.

Now, what if both sites decide to run sales specials and both update their sites. Which special will be seen sooner and thus have a better chance of being effective?  Besides being great for search engines, fresh content is great for real life humans. People love getting the latest information about everything. Updated content also builds trust in the information you provide. If you haven't updated, people might think that you have gone out of business, or don't care about keeping your customers updated, or don't carry the latest product that the competition has on their site.

Still another benefit of new, fresh content is that it builds authority into your site. As you add new pages about your products, services, or frequently asked questions, you further strengthen your authority of that subject. You show that you really know your stuff. More people will be willing to link to you because you have the answers that they are searching for.
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With the popularity of blogs and other mechanisms for publishing content quickly on the web, the importance of updating your site has increased exponentially.  Fresh content will bring spiders, and people, back to your site more often.  When is the last time you updated your web site?

If a dwindling 401k and questionable job security keep you awake at night, you're not alone. Experts are offering IT solutions professionals' advice on how to handle these tough times and remain employed. By updating your skills, taking on new responsibilities, and working to become indispensable to your employer, you can ensure security.

"As any company looks to control costs, they look to IT people to become a jack of all trades in some respects," John Estes, vice president with IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology told CIO.com. "No one in IT can truly be that, but more companies are looking to staff to have broader, more diverse skill sets."

This coincides with what Michael writes, “Clients seek out individuals with multiple skill-sets that can multi-task, change and adapt as technology or market needs dictate,” in his blog.

The Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) reports that it has seen an uptake in certifications training, which indicates that IT solutions professionals see the need to update their skills to remain competitive. "Historically, we see that certification volumes rise when the economy is somewhat sluggish, and that is indicative of less jobs and more competition in the market," says Kyle Gingrich of CompTIA.

As you know I am all for obtaining IT certification and increasing your skill set.  You can take on more responsibility and/or lead projects with real ROI to work toward becoming indispensable to your employer, but let’s face facts folks—true job security is an illusion.  To be IT outsourcing proof and have absolute job security, you have to own the company.  In one of my former lives I worked for a CFO whose father-in-law owned the company.  Not long after I left the company I heard that the CFO was hitting the unemployment lines.  So as one who has been around the block a few times, who has had the economy knock his feet out from under him and who has personally been downsized and outsourced—job security is an illusion; even if your title is CIO.  Stay tuned!

I recently wrote about making a decision to purchase a G1. One of the big selling points for me (or any application development team member), is the ability to write your mobile apps. The Android toolkit has been out for a while so developers have started writing cool apps. The best part of Android is that there isn’t a store; you just download and go. The drawback to open source is that it may not be as feature rich as you may like. The source is there, so use your application development skills, and get hacking!

I wanted to highlight a couple of cool apps; things you may not see on your phone.

Shazam – Rather than trying to figure who wrote the song playing in the restaurant, use Shazam to do the work for you. Shazam uses the built in microphone to analyze the music and brings back the artist, song name, album, etc. But wait, there’s more! It will bring up the artists’ MySpace page, and any YouTube videos.

ShopSavvy – Want to know if an item is cheaper? Use your camera to take a picture of the item’s barcode. ShopSavvy will compare prices from local shops and on online stores. The "local" may not be as targeted as you like, but you will get lower prices, particularly online.

These are just a couple cool things Android can do. Now I wonder if anyone is interested in a wine rating app, or JFrets on Android. Application development team members, let me know what applications you are working on and check out the 
The top ten Android app list.

The next President of the United States of America will have a full plate to contend with.  Along with the issues that have been getting top bill during the presidential debates and campaign—securing the financial future of America, rising health care costs and the energy crisis; he will have several Information Technology Strategy initiatives to deal with.  

According to an article by Jon Oltsik, Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, the government is treading water on a number of highly-visible, strategic initiatives like the underfunded Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative and the implementation of the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act.  See the article for details on these initiatives.

These initiatives could have far reaching implications on Information Technology Strategy and change IT Infrastructure Management for the federal government and many businesses within America by enforcing new legislative regulations on those businesses.  Does this have the ring of Sarbanes-Oxley to you?

Websites these days are handling most of our work, saving us the essential time and effort. Things which took us hours and days to complete can now be done in just a wink of an eye. Thanks to the various web application developments that are being introduced regularly.These applications are being incorporated into the websites making them more user-friendly and efficient. There are several examples of how web application developments  have made our work much easier and faster.


Business-to-business (B2B) development landscapes are changing continuously with a broad spectrum of web development services, including application support and e-commerce support for customized and integrated hubs.  Organizations everywhere are learning to use web-based applications that expose and deliver business-specific information about product and services to their customers, business partners and potential clients as well.  The integrated enterprise has learned many processes can be automated while saving the organization time and investment while driving models of efficiency right across the enterprise.

Maintaining a website is now much easier than what it was a few years ago.  As development processes have become more refined, organizations have embraced the use of a CMS, better known as the content management system, which will ensure fast and efficient management of website content. Uploading fresh content to an organizations web site is an easy task which will take only a few clicks and a few minutes.  Integrated your web site or e-Commerce site to your internal ordering and receiving processes and your organization will be a model of efficiency, on top of your business, with satisfied customers with less chance of human error.

Dynamic web application development has become a vital link in any organizations supply chain.  Real-time visibility is as important as is real-time updates of your company web-site.  To ensure that your site is always up to date with fresh content and information it is imperative to stay one step ahead of your competition.  At STAR BASE, Inc we always try and show our client’s how to make their web sites to work as part of their information systems so they can stay on top of both their business and their customers. 

It seems that application development team members have night jobs too; Family IT Manger.
I wanted you to follow up on an earlier post on buying a new laptop for my kids. I went with the dell laptop over the Apple. My daughter is heavy into Photoshop, and she wanted a familiar OS. I am going to put Open Office on it though. It can save her work in Office readable formats, so I don’t need to spend a fortune on Office software. I don’t have any problems with my daughter wanting Windows, but one of my colleagues pointed out that Apple has a special VM that runs Windows applications. It’s too late for my daughter, but maybe my son gets an Apple instead.
The desktop they have been sharing is going to be an Ubuntu machine soon. The hard drive is acting up (its 5 years old), so maybe a new hard drive is in order. I am thinking of using that machine to capture/serve movies. If anyone has good idea on a new use for a trusty family desktop, let me know.