Monday, December 31, 2007

Three Screens are Better Than One

I rationalized that since I sit in front of a computer all day, I might as well splurge on a decent LCD monitor.  But after I looked at the prices for high end, very large monitors, I decided it was better to go the cheaper multiple monitor route.

Last week I took advantage of some sales and picked up not one, but two 22" wide screen LCD monitors.  I now have a 3 monitor desktop which stretches the entire length of my desk. 

I'm glad that I did.  I can honestly say that I wouldn't want to go back to my single LCD screen/KVM/Synergy setup.  

Productivity Increases Related to Coding

Various studies have stated that adding additional screen real estate can increase a worker's productivity from 9-50%.  Most of the studies fall into the 20-30% range for dual monitors. 

Darrell Norton concisely captures what everyone says: 1) people who get multiple monitors don't want to go back; 2) productivity improves.

After multiple monitors were introduced:

  • Productivity in lines of code per day increased 10%.
  • Defect levels decreased by 26%.

Also as part of my work I created a basic survey to measure some of the qualitative benefits of multiple monitors.  The survey used a Likert scale (answer 1 to 5 for each statement, with 1 being disagree strongly, 3 neutral, and 5 agree strongly) to measure respondents on 8 questions.  The most important results were:

  • On average, people would much rather have 2 smaller monitors than 1 larger monitor.  Nobody answered that they preferred 1 monitor over 2 even a little bit.
  • Multiple monitors were most useful when the application had palettes or when 2 or 3 windows needed to be open, such as for programming/debugging.

Source: Darrell Norton's Blog.  "Seeing Double: An Unbiased View on the Benefits of Multiple Monitors."

Simply stated, for $200 plus a video card and you can have an enormous bump in productivity.  It is one of the cheapest productivity enhancements available to small businesses.

References:

1. "Seeing Double: An Unbiased View on the Benefits of Multiple Monitors"  Darrell Norton.

2. "Two Screens are Better Than One"  Suzan Ross.  Microsoft Research.

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Posted by Joe Turner at 12:40 PM | | Comments

Sunday, December 30, 2007

SCO Group Delisted from Nasdaq Exchange

Nasdaq has delisted The SCO Group, due to SCO's current Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.  As you already know, the company filed for bankruptcy after years of decreasing Unix revenue and and the retarded business strategy of asserting the ownership of Linux and threatening to sue their potential customers.

Posted by Joe Turner at 4:01 PM | | Comments

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Small Business Accounting Software, Part I

I'm currently using Quickbooks Online Edition to manage my corporate books.  Quickbooks Online is $24.95 per month, or $299.40 a year.  Additionally, since Quickbooks Online Edition requires you to use Internet Explorer and their ActiveX control-- it is a web-based solution that requires you to run Windows and Internet Explorer to access it.

Since, I haven't gotten to the point of no return yet, so I decided to spend some time evaluating some other, cheaper alternative accounting packages. 

"Low End" Accounting Software

Of course, the cheapest solution is to use some form a manual ledger or Excel spreadsheets.  To my surprise, Microsoft even has some ledger templates.  Next up in price and features is using a standard home accounting software package like MoneyDance (versions for Linux, Windows, and Mac), Quicken, or Microsoft Money.   Of course you will have to manually file your taxes, generate your own invoices and manually track who has paid your invoices.

The next level-- these are basically the same software with the added function of tracking payments, tracking invoices, and the ability to manage your personal finances simultaneously with your businesses. 

For the most part, transactions are categorized with a focus on what will end up on a Schedule C tax form.  None of these packages offer payroll or add ins for payroll.  Additionally, the ability to send the data files to an accountant for cleanup and tax preparation, are for the most part, almost impossible.

Quicken Home and Business 2008

I've used Quicken product off and on since the 1990's.  They had a world class product, but in recent years the changes have generated a considerable hostility among the Intuit user base (just checkout the Amazon reviews).  Complaints about file corruption and crashes in this year's version should give you pause (and at least one very ugly security vulnerability).

imageQuicken Home and Business 2008 is a $99 version of Quicken that gives you the added feature of tracking your business in addition to your personal finances.  If you are strictly a sole proprietor or freelancer who operates on 1099 basis (or other Schedule C centric enterprise), you can use Quicken Home and Business to manage both simultaneously. 

There is a 60-day free trial, but the trial refused to print out a reconciliation report (or any reports for that matter) and promptly crashed.  That was the end of my evaluation.

Microsoft Money Plus Home & Business

image Like Intuit, Microsoft offers it's Microsoft Money Plus Home & Business version in a 60-day trial version. 

And like Quicken, Microsoft Money Plus Home & Business focuses on business transactions that can be placed on Schedule C.  As a result, freelancers who are sole proprietors and or bill on 1099 basis.  You can generate invoices as well.

Reporting seemed to be a little weak, as I couldn't generate a bank reconciliation report, but all of the other standard business reports were well represented.

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Posted by Joe Turner at 10:59 AM | | Comments

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Agave Mountain's First Customer

I'm happy to say that the ink is drying on a purchase order; we have landed our first paying customer. 

To celebrate, I will be working this weekend to upload some new content and tweak the corporate website.

Most notably, I will be modifying our privacy policy to specifically state that we will not sell, rent, or give away customer information, the way Deluxe sold my account information to the sleazy Website Pros telemarketers (a forum discussing website pros here).

In any event, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

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Posted by Joe Turner at 11:56 PM | | Comments

Gentoo/Git

I'm investigating moving my source repository to git. In doing so, I quickly ran into a stumbling block. After emerging git, I started receiving a cryptic error message involving "Core.pm." Same happened when I installed git on an older red hat install.

To fix: re-emerge subversion, after setting your USE flag to include Perl. The Core.pm files are apart of the subversion package. Next everything should be ok.

For other platforms, you will have to recompile/reinstall subversion configured with Perl support.

Next, to import a subversion repository remotely:

$ mkdir myproj
$ cd myproj
$ git svn init http://mysvn/repos/directory
$ git svn fetch

But be advised crunching down and absorbing a subversion repository remotely takes a very long time.

Mangled by ScribeFire.

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Posted by Joe Turner at 11:24 AM | | Comments

Monday, December 17, 2007

Email to Deluxe

I drafted the following email to Deluxe and sent it:

From: joe@agavemountain.com

To: feedback@deluxe.com

Subject: Privacy Policy violations and selling my confidential information to telemarketers.

Tonight I received a call from Website Pros. The telemarketer stated that they were calling on behalf of Deluxe and was checking to see how my order in September went. I was then subjected to a hard sell for search engine optimization packages.

I am thoroughly disgusted and disappointed that your organization would sell my sensitive account information to telemarketers, especially since you have been entrusted with my corporate bank account numbers, routing numbers, and other sensitive information. In addition, it is readily apparent that you are even violating your own privacy policy (http://www.deluxe.com/deluxe-privacy.jsp?WT.dlxgluid=foot-t_privacy ):

“Disclosure of Individual Consumer Information
Deluxe Financial Services is committed to protecting your private information. It uses the information collected about you to process orders and to provide a more personalized shopping experience. Names and other consumer information that are received by Deluxe Financial Services through a financial institution or via this Web site are not shared with or rented to nonaffiliated third parties except for the purpose of fulfilling its contracts with financial institutions or as otherwise permitted by law.”

Further:

"Deluxe Financial Services agrees it will not provide to nonaffiliated third parties for marketing purposes confidential information delivered to it under this agreement except as authorized by the Financial Institution”.

As I have said, I am disgusted by your companies actions and I will no longer be purchasing any products from your company in the future.

Posted by Joe Turner at 5:44 PM | | Comments

Deluxe Partners with Website Pros, Losses Customer

They say that nothing in life is for free.  I learned that lesson again when I ordered some "free" business cards from Vista Print.  Vista Print offers "free" business cards, but the price of them aren't always clear up front.

Soon after I received the cards, I started to receive hang up calls on my corporate phone number.  Caller ID showed the number as 888-682-0313.   The only time I was able to pick up the phone fast enough I got a hard sell about SEO and website submission for an outrageous amount of money ($69.96 per month).

I told them (several times) that I wasn't interested and to stop calling.  

Well, since the beginning of this month, the hang up calls started again, from 888-682-0313.  Today I snatched the phone was surprised at the greeting:

 

This is xxx from Website Pros, calling on behalf of Deluxe.  We just wanted to call and see how your order went from September.

Then I was the target of a hard sell for search optimization services and search engine submission.

I am fuming mad.  I took the effort to call Deluxe and tell them I wasn't happy that an organization that had my banking information was so free about selling my information.

Sure enough, Deluxe has sold my information to Website Pros and happily proclaimed the relationship in press releases.  This is contrary to Deluxe's own privacy policy which states that they will NOT disclose any consumer information to third parties.

Posted by Joe Turner at 5:39 PM | | Comments

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Microsoft.com Setup

Jeff Alexander posted on his blog an entry which exposes who Microsoft.com and update.microsoft.com are setup. Interestingly enough, here are the high points:
  • We don't handle HBI data so we don't have the need for external logging capabilities. If we did handle HBI, we'd have firewalls.
  • We have ~650GB/day of IIS logs just for www.microsoft.com and update.microsoft.com (not including the 6GB/hour for each download server). Just IIS logs are a challenge without trying to parse another ~650GB of firewall logs.
  • 5+ years ago, there wasn't a firewall solution that would scale to our needs and this forced us to focus on network, host, and application security. Based on the success of that work, we've not looked further at firewalls even though there are solutions that I believe (haven't tested) would handled the traffic load (our non-download based web traffic alone can be in the 8-9 Gbps range and ~30 total for internal hosted traffic).
  • We also used NLB for load balancing exclusively up until July 2006 and the micro segmentation of networks required by that solution made firewalls an expensive and very complex solution. Again, especially at the scalability that used to be available.
  • Application security is critical since a firewall is likely going to allow traffic on the correct port and protocol through to the web servers so IIS/ASP.NET/Applications must deal with these requests gracefully. I realize there are other options/features of firewalls/IPS that provide other options.
Interestingly, they don't use a firewall, squid or other "scalable" architecture.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:38 PM | | Comments

What credit crunch? Oh THAT credit crunch.

Until today, I have pretty much ignored the sub-prime lending "crisis."  I felt it was the ultimate product of a love triangle between greedy real estate professionals who helped push up valuations, greedy bankers who were more than happy to give loans to people living above their means, and people agreeing to purchase houses they simply could not afford (and at horrible terms). 

Largely, I have ignored the bitching and moaning about the perceived credit crunch.  After all, just this week I have received a total of six credit card solicitations, and three of those were for corporate credit cards.  I still see advertisements for 0% APR car loans.  Obviously, credit is available to those of us who have protected our credit score by paying our bills on time.

Besides, the Fed (which is run by private banks) is addressing the problem by bailing out the banks.  So far it reduced interest rates, and is now creating a bailout program for banks, err... I mean distressed homeowners (but only the ones who are current on their payments and below a certain means threshold).   

However, today the Fed did something (with other central banks) which totally stunned me-- announcing the anonymous auction of $20 billion in loans (with two more planned in January).  Banks already have a way to borrow money from the Fed via the discount window (at 4.75 percent), but banks that do are seen as in financial difficulty. 

The real "credit crunch" happening at the banks.  Understandably, banks are wary of loaning money to other banks.  This is where the Fed is stepping in, by allowing banks to anonymously barrow money at a discount, with looser collateral requirements.

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:23 AM | | Comments

Monday, December 10, 2007

Christmas and New Years shutdown Schedule

We will be closed on December 24th and 25th for Christmas and again on January 1st for New Years. We apologize for any inconvenience and wish you a happy holiday. Eat well, drive or fly safe and enjoy your friends and family. Joe Turner CEO, Agave Mountain, Inc.

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Posted by Joe Turner at 12:56 PM | | Comments

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Yellow Pages Scam

Scamming small businesses must be exceptionally profitable these days.  Iimage received yet another fake invoice solicitation letter.  The scam is always the same-- you are sent an real looking invoice (with or without the required "this is not a bill" verbiage). 

Apparently, "Yellow Pages" and the walking logo are not trademarked, and anyone can use them in solicitations.  Sure enough this company ATDYP, a fictitious name used by a company is New Jersey, is using them.  If you read the small print, they are billing $49.50 per month, billed semiannually.  That's a whopping $594 per year.

Don't do it.  If you want your business listed in the "yellow pages" contact your local phone company that distributes the local edition. 

Additionally, you can list your phone number for free so that it ends up in the directory assistance.  I did this with my business's number.  It was free and only took 30 minutes.

Don't be conned by these guys.  

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Posted by Joe Turner at 9:17 AM | | Comments