Great video explaining different aspects of the cloud

Confused over the cloud? 
Don't understand the difference between the cloud and a SaaS solution?

Take the time time to view the great video I found at Tobias Strandh's blog.
It's from a cloud presentation last week at Informator.

 

It's 90 minutes long, but well worth the effort to look at.

Have you been Squarespaced yet?

 Do you think Wordpress is the 'the stuff' when it comes to blogging? It's time for you to get 'Squarespaced'!

I've been using this SaaS blogging platform since 2006 and has been more than happy. Tonight I (finally) sat down and tried out all the new version5 functionality. (As you may notice from the redesign of my blog.)

And have they improved!
Below is how the screen looks like when changing design template, number of columns and navigation. Just click and draw. A picture tells you more... you have to see this video.

You want more details?
This video shows the Squarespace team showing of by rebuilding the 37signals blog in 18 minutes(?).

It has been some improvement since I, in 1996, wrote my first site using notepad... 

A Swedish perspective on SaaS

Computer Sweden (the largest IT paper in Sweden) ran a SaaS topic last week including a conference (when I was in Cannés...).

The seven articles are found here (in Swedish).

It's great to see this effort and I'm looking forward to more to come.
(Also glad that they put in the effort to find other SaaS representatives than just Salesforce...)

MySQL consultants more expensive?

The most interesting presentation at the the IT fair was given by Magnus Stenberg from MySQL (an open source database provider from Sweden bought by Sun Microsystems for 1 billion USD).

The topic was if property management systems are ready for an open source approach. The question wasn't really answered. It was more about the story of MySQL and how clients in general could use their database technology. A very interesting presentation though.

Started a debate
Anyway, since I believed that there was to little debate and I wanted to increase the temperature I stated that one of the reasons when suppliers don't go for mySQL could be that they believe it will be more expansive when it comes to hire consultants in this field and referred to an article in Computer Sweden (the largest IT paper in Sweden). Not surprisingly, this point was denied. (Even   laughed at which in a sense proves the point...)

The 'fact'
Unfortunately I wasn't able to defend my point (I wasn't given the microphone) with 'facts' (it is still just an article) and showing the actual source of my point, so here is the link to the article (in Swedish). The story is about that an 'open source' consultant could cost up to 1 500 SEK/hour, compared to 950 SEK/hour for a .NET developer.

Of course, there is not one (1) truth when it comes to prices and it will change over time. My point is still that it could be one of the reasons why a company hesitates to make the change to open source program. Not saying that it's wrong to go there.

Well, at least the temperature raised....   ;-)

How to survive a major development

My blog activity has been low for a longer period (quite an understatement) due to a massive work load since we (read Datscha) had a major release on the 20th of may. Not just a release or upgrade, we're talking about a complete new platform.

Anyone being through such a technical project know the scale of it. Below is a screenshot from the Property Analysis module, where the user is able to calculate the value of a commercial property using a cashflow model. (If you're interested in testing our service, just drop me a line.)

The release has been a great success, both technically and from a user perspective. Being the Product Manager through such a project is for sure mental roller coster. One of the most challenging aspects, in the later stage of the project, is to keep track of bugs and enhancements that are needed to be done prior to release.

Too many MS Excel spreadsheets
Like in the property industry there seems to be too many Excel spreadsheets also in the IT industry. To use Excel to track bugs works fine in a smaller project, but it will quickly be cumbersome in a larger project. Instead use a 'Bug and Issues tracking software'. Over there years have tried a handful an no one comes even close to Jira from the Australian company Atlassian. Through it's simplicity and well designed interface it's almost fun (?) to work with.

Screenshots save time
One great feature in Jira is the possibility to easy attach a screenshot to an 'issue', which indeed helps the developers to understand how the, for example, enhancement is supposed to work. So the next step is to have a solution to easily take screenshots and to add a note or highlight a specific part. A great solution for this is SnagIT from TechSmith.

The simplicity to take a screenshot of a smaller part of the screen, add a note and put in an issue has saved us hundreds of hours of communication. In other words, a better product in a shorter time.