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April 23, 2008

What Numbers do I believe in?????

I just finished reading the morning newspaper, and now how have a lump in my stomach.  What numbers do I believe?   I honestly believe we have been so many of our institutions, our newspapers, our government, our political poles, our educators have taken to re-writing the truth to tell slant it for their benefit.

The political poles have been so misleading over the past few elections, its like why clutter your mind reading them. The potical poles are slanted to get a desired end result, and the end vote result looks nothing like the forcast presented.    In another section of the newspaper, there was an article by an LA times reporter that talked about need to standardize reporting methodology of graduation rates for high school students.  (How difficult can this be???).  The newspapers take such a bias in how they report with misleading headlines on articles that thinly disguise the real “editorialize” viewpoint of the author.  Read a quote from a government official about the health or sickness of our national economy and you get nothing but political double talk.

The result is confusion, anxiety, and lack of clarity; which is why, in my opinion that we are in for a side wards drifting in the local and national economy; probably for several years.  Throw in the Presidential election this year and ouch. Who’s going to make decisions about moving forward in all this confusion? 

We have become so politically correct that honesty has lost it dominant role for clear thinkers.   Let’s return to the basics of demanding facts, making decision on facts and get the craziness of a bias set of self serving individuals, government officials, and writers who are creating FUDD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Disinformation).   Bring honesty back to all we do, say, and think!

April 22, 2008

Novel Idea: software talks to other software

Marketeers have been talking about seamless integration of software for years.  You may have missed this technique, which you might find useful:

Smart tags are a feature found in versions of Microsoft Office XP and later and Microsoft Dynamics accounting software which recognizes certain words or types of data and converts it to a hyperlink between the data sources.

From Wikipedia.org, we find this expanation:

Smart tags in MS Word

With smart tags enabled, Word attempts to recognize certain types of data in a document (for example, dates or names) and automatically makes such text a smart tag, visually indicated as a purple dotted underline. Clicking on a smart tag brings up a list of possible actions for that data type.

As an example, in Microsoft Word the words "John Smith" would be recognized as a personal name and smart tagged. The list of actions available when clicked might be Open Contact, Schedule a Meeting, Add to Contacts, or Insert Address

Here are some examples of how smart tags might be used:

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp/product/gp_smarttags.mspx

Check it out.

April 21, 2008

Basbits.... what a funny name

About a year ago I started attending this user groups monthly meeting.   Basbits, which stands for Bay Area Small Business Information Technology Specialists' Consultants Group, is actively involved with Microsofts Small Business Server software.   I'm probably the only non - geek in the room, since I dislike hardware and operating system.  Still this meeting brings me value.  More important it exposes me to who is good with IT support and who is using and pushing these products.

If you are shopping for a new IT team to support your company, what a great way to get a "quick" over view of who is out there and who is good.   This group is meeting this week on 4/23 up in the Belmont, Ca area.  Check out their web site for more info.... See you there.

http://basbits.net

April 20, 2008

What some positive news about Silicon Valley

In the last few days, the editors in our local newspapers had to address some good news.  Great quarterly results by some big guys (Google, IBM, Intel).  So unusual because it seems like only bad news has been written about so long, here in the Silicon Valley.   The tech sector/software section, which got creamed in the Dot com bust some 6 years ago, seems to be doing actually pretty good.   

Reading and breathing bad news about the financial sectors, the banking and mortgage industries has been downright depressing.    Wouldn't it be a great way to celebrate spring's arrival by thinking and writing about some positive thoughts and trends..... Well, thank you for the good news of 4/14 -4/19, except for the always frustrating day of 4/15 or tax day.

Office 2007 -- xml watch out

What seemed like an eternity, back in the 1990's the software world changed from Dos to Windows.  Ouch, it was painful.   But if you ask me, would I like to go backwards and I would say emphatically NO.  Well we are on the verge of the same gigantic changes and most of us don't realize it.   But looks at all the big releases coming from Micrsoft in 2008 will have one common theme: everything seems to be supporting 64 operating systems and software.  Looking backwards we moved from Dos to 16 byte software, then 32 byte software, and now is 2008 were are really moving rapidly towards 64 byte software.

Office 2007 with its focus towards xml as the common file saving methodology, laid a big foundation piece for the 64 byte world.  Xml is creating a common communication platform for exchanging data much easier between multiple sources of information.   What do you see coming down the path and how is it going to change the way your business runs and talks to other business?  Like it or not,  there are big changes just around the corner.... 

Whose watching out for small to medium size businesses?

I can read the Mercury News or the SF Chronicle, but it seems that they only talk about the Big Boys.  What about all the rest of the businesses who aren't big.  We represent an often silent and unheard voice.  I think it is because we are just wearing too many hats.... doing too many things, and trying to be quick and nimble to find and keep our market niches.   Hopefully we can share a few thoughts which can make a big difference in your own businesses here in Silicon Valley ....  At least that's my goal

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