Office 2.0 News

Black Friday and ShopSavvy

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:58:36 -0800

If you are like millions of Americans you will head to the mall tomorrow to take advantage of all of the holiday sales. Make sure you bring along ShopSavvy. ShopSavvy can help you determine if you are getting a good deal. If ShopSavvy shows a lower price from another retailer (online or local) ask the retailer to price match. Best Buy and Walmart will price match other local stores as well as some online retailers like Amazon. Download ShopSavvy here.

Technology to Help Navigate Black Friday Sales – New York Times
ShopSavvy Prices and Locates Better Deals – LifeHacker
How to shop on the go this holiday season – Gigaom
How to prepare your iPhone for Black Friday – ReadWriteWeb
Smart phones can make you a savvier shopper – Austin American Statesmen
Use your iPhone to get best holiday deal – TMC
Six iPhone Apps to Make Black Friday Less Painful – Cult of Mac
Shelly Palmer covers ShopSavvy – Huffington Post
At Checkout, More Ways to Avoid Cash or Plastic – New York Times
Scan Bar Codes with your iPhone – Tonic
Shopsavvy finally comes to iPhone – Washington Post
ShopSavvy arrives on iPhone – MacNN
iPhone Apps: ShopSavvy – ghacks.net
ShopSavvy arrives on the iPhone – jkOnTheRun
Mobile Apps (ShopSavvy mention) – CBS News Sunday Morning

Xero in on your accounting problems

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:10:46 -0800

Xero makes your accounting easy like it should be.

Here at FreshBooks, we want to make your accountant happy too. The day your accountant says you need double ledger accounting and a balance sheet, we’ve got your back. That’s why we’re excited to announce that the online accounting service, Xero, has recently released their FreshBooks integration. Your accountant will never stop thanking you.

Xero is a web-based accounting application that’s loaded with all of the accounting essentials, and then some. Xero even connects to your bank account to reconcile your banking transactions.

This integration allows you to export your FreshBooks invoices into Xero to include with the rest of your financial data. The combination of FreshBooks and Xero will likely make a killer combination for many small businesses out there.

As usual, you can check out this integration along with the rest in our add-ons section.

A Million Toons at ToonDoo!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:24:00 -0800

We’d previously blogged about our comic-based social network ToonDoo and its education-friendly version, ToonDooSpaces. Both of them are being creatively used to facilitate fun-based-learning in classrooms across the world. Today, ToonDoo celebrates the landmark achievement of a Million Toons created by users at ToonDoo! This toon (which is also featured on the ToonDoo homepage today) says it all.

We’re very excited to see ToonDoo’s growth and popularity! Here is a special mosaic of the Zoho logo created with the 3,600 best Editor Picked toons at ToonDoo. Click on the image below to view the toons that created this logo.

Join us in celebrating this achievement with ToonDoo! And if you haven’t already done so, try your hand at creating your own Toons at ToonDoo without having to draw.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

CMIS Domain Model

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:47:25 -0800

Nice ShopSavvy mention on CBS Sunday Morning

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:44:59 -0800

Here is the clip:

ShopSavvy, the iPhone Barcode Scanner, download today: http://bit.ly/shopsavvyiphone

Help keep ShopSavvy free!

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:21:25 -0800

We decided long ago to offer ShopSavvy to users for free. There are a million business models and ours depends on having lots of users. It is HARD to convince a lot of folks to download your app – much less use it regularly. If you have a blog or website and can spare a few pixels we would love it if you could put one of these badges on your site. Just link to http://bit.ly/shopsavvyiphone and we are in business (I have asked our folks to add the badge on this site). The badges are located here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexmuse/sets/72157622875134326/ They look like this in various sizes:

ShopSavvy Barcode Scanning Licensing (FREE)

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:34:31 -0800

We have decided to license our barcode scanning technology under two free models:

Data Sharing. Free License for Applications that share their data with ShopSavvy (food data, price data, allergy data, review data and so on). If your data can help ShopSavvy provide users with a better experience we will share our technology with you for free. We will ALSO provide a link to your app providing you with a free advertising channel.
Publishing License. Free License for Applications that use Big in Japan’s app publishing services. We announced this model previously in post titled, “License our barcode scanning tech for free” (you can read more there).

We have scanning libraries for Android AF, Android non-AF, RIM, 2/3G iPhone, 3GS iPhone and Windows Mobile. If you are interested just email or call Jennifer Donica at 1+214.550.3534 jdonica@architel.com.

2 minutes of scanning on a map. . .

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:51:22 -0800

In our offices we have a plasma TV tuned to the ShopSavvy channel. Basically showing scans in real time on a map. Here is an example of two minutes we filmed earlier this year:

Make Mine a Double

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:51:51 -0800

Oooh look! It’s the elusive flowchart seen in its natural habitat! It isn’t often we get to see a flowchart out of it’s internet-burrow (they’re nocturnal), so let’s see what we can learn from this brave little fella.

This picture of a sign at Market Lane Coffee in Melbourne Australia is from Flick’r user MuteMonkey.

Market Lane in turn bounces credit for the inspiration for their sign to Volta Coffee in Florida. So hats doffed all around, gentlemen and ladies. Good idea. (Now, can you get Americans to learn how to make a flat white? Awesome.)

This flowchart isn’t complicated or anything, but it doesn’t need to be. It isn’t fancy; just chalk on board. It is, however, satisfyingly clear. It tells you what you want to know without any delay and that means you’re that much closer to a damn fine cup of coffee.

Make mine a double.

For those of you traveling, good luck with the lines. And for all y’all, happy Thanksgiving.

Scanning head to head

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:39:20 -0800

Our version 1.0 scanning on the iPhone is just that – a first version – and it is getting much needed tweaks due out in version 1.2 (to be submitted soon, hopefully). The ‘other’ scanner gets high marks for scanning faster (we admit our scanner is sometimes pretty slow right now). My friend cut together this video that shows a particular barcode that we happen to scan faster. ROCK! Also, it is a little pay back for the fact that they use our trademark in their keywords (a big no no, legally and according to Apple’s rules). Anyway, I won’t mention their name, but here is the head to head video:

ShopSavvy for iPhone Version 1.1 Submitted

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:30:37 -0800

Just a quick note, we submitted ShopSavvy for the iPhone version 1.1 to the iTunes store. The version fixes a BUNCH of bugs. Here is the ‘new this version’ list:

General UI Polish
User Reported Bug Fixes (Thank you)
Local inventory status added
Support for international merchants added
Scanning tips included
Price alert bug fixed
Save product bug fixed
Local results sort fixed

Bring your team closer together with Relenta

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:30:59 -0800

Use Relenta to communicate with your leads and then manage them as clients.

As your business grows, so will the amount of emails you receive and relationships you have to manage. Relenta is an email management and CRM application that allows you and your team to effectively communicate with your clients.

What separates Relenta from other applications is the collaborative email feature. Have a generic email address your customers use to contact your business? Using Relenta is an easy way for multiple people to manage that account.

Once you’ve created contacts in Relenta, it’s very easy to pull up a client profile and view everything from email conversations, activities and up-coming tasks.

With this FreshBooks integration, you can now import your FreshBooks clients into Relenta and view invoicing activity within a client’s profile. That way you can always stay on top of your customer transactions without having to leave the application.

If you’re a growing business that’s looking for a new way to manage your customer relations, Relenta might be the solution for you.

If you liked this, check out our other add-ons. We’re always looking for better ways to fit into your world.

Zoho Creator mentions in the blogosphere

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:37:30 -0800

With each passing day, our users continue to take us by surprise.While the geeky users churn out marvel apps one after the other, the novice ones charm us with their brilliant daily usage apps.And while we are doing everything we can and trying hard to live up to their expectations, it's mentions like these that warm our hearts.

Sharon Machlis, from Computerworld, an avid Zoho Creator user herself, in an article suggesting the best web based applications that can be used for the holiday season ahead, talks about Zoho Creator:

My gift list is also moving to an online database. The plan is to tag people by holiday and location, so it'll be easy to see which gifts need to be purchased and shipped by what dates. That's still in the works, which will give me something to put on my Basecamp holiday to-do list for the Thanksgiving weekend.

I'm putting it all in a Zoho Creator database, the same app we use here at Computerworld for our database of product reviews. I could keep it all in an online spreadsheet, but the database offers additional flexibility for searching, sorting and filtering by multiple criteria.

I also like Zoho for its ease of development (drag-and-drop form creation, for instance); plus, you can export your data in multiple formats, and it runs on mobile devices. I expect mobile access to be useful not only for when I'm out at the stores trying to remember what to buy, but also throughout the coming year, since I jot down gift ideas whenever they come to me, not just in autumn.

A free Zoho Creator account will give you two users (you and someone else), three apps and up to 1,000 records, which should be plenty for most people's personal card and gift lists.

You can also read the complete article here.

Another user, Corinne Weisgerber, a professor and a researcher, has used a presentation to showcase how she has used Zoho Creator to create a Social Learning Environment. A very detailed presentation which describes how to go about creating a form to collect the required data and how to embed it in the required web page.

Creating a Social Learning Environment using ZOHO Creator

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

And then, there is Ben Suggitt, a student from Teesside University, who attended a lecture about Zoho Creator and was so fascinated about it,that he had to talk about it in his blog.

The advantage of using Zoho Creator is that it already had all the layout, templates and colour schemes built into the online system, therefore creating the basics and also a professionally styled interface is very easy.

As mentioned earlier, today was the first time I have used Zoho, and it looks like quite a basic application to use, apart from having to create/edit code. If I need to create a simple database that isnt based for a large professional company, then I may use Zoho Creator to store the data inside this application, although due to my knowledge of using Microsoft Access, I still think I will use this piece of software, due to the professional features that can be incorporated - although saying that Zoho Creator impressed me vastly today due its simpleness and easiness for creating a basic database system.

All of these features should be useful for me to create a simple but effective database, which meets a high standard.

You can read the complete post here.

Thank you all and keep them coming! And oh.. if you've got a story to share, let us know. We're listening!

Dreamforce '09 Round-Up: Electronic Signatures Go From Cutting Edge -- to Best Practices

echojason — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:05 -0800

We could do a dozen blog posts on Dreamforce 2009 and what we learned.

First, thank you to the over 100 EchoSign existing customers that came by to chat with us and visit at our booths. This is our favorite part of Dreamforce -- a chance to meet many customers than otherwise we never get a chance to meet face-to-face.

In terms of learnings, two related things stood out. The summary: electronic signatures, and electronic contracting, are now -- finally -- recognized as a core part of the sales solutions tool kit.

Salesforce.com led a session on Core Sales solutions and for the first time we've seen, highlighted e-signatures as a standard process step of sales operations. That's a big deal (and something we've been preaching for 4 years now):

On a related note, 13 of our customers presented on EchoSign or mentioned us in their presentations (see examples below). This is a small testament to EchoSign, but the more interesting part is that they presented EchoSign and e-signatures simply as a part of their key sales toolkit. Not as a novelty or something new.

In 2006, when we launched EchoSign-for-Salesforce together with Bluewolf, we were a slick 100% web-based sales tool for closing contracts that wasn't quite like anything anyone had seen before.

In 2007, when leaders like Successfactors, Preferred Offices and Clickability highlighted u s at Dreamforce, it was to demonstrate their leadership in adopting next generating sales tool.

In 2008, when Qualcomm won the CRM Elite award for their Salesforce-EchoSign deployment, web-based e-signatures were highlighted as a relatively new advancement to bring to enterprise sales teams.

Fast forward to 2009. At Dreamforce 2009, electronic signatures and e-contracting were highlighted not as cutting edge -- but rather just as standard and best practices by dozens of leaders.

E-signatures as a routine, almost mundane, part of the core sales ops toolkit.

Pretty neat.

Let your subscriptions' personality come through

Mihai Parparita — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:13:00 -0800

We recently asked you for your ideas (and votes) on how to make Reader better. One of the more popular suggestions was adding favicon support for subscriptions, so today we're introducing just that (thanks to 20%-er Shreyas Desai).

We realize that not everyone wants their subscription list to turn into a multi-colored extravaganza, so we've made it into a setting that you can access from your subscriptions menu.

Be on the lookout for more ideas being implemented, and feel free to let us know how you like this feature on Twitter or in our help forum.

Evolution

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:44:23 -0800

There comes a time in any application’s life when it needs more than a new coat of paint to keep up with the times. New technologies make new things possible, and help you grow and save money at the same time. Over the years, FreshBooks has been consistently updated with newer and better technology under the hood, but the time has come for something a little more radical than small-scale refactorings can manage.

We started building the business in 2003 with a PHP application, written in the dark days before web frameworks were in widespread use. Much of the sort of functionality that modern developers take for granted in their frameworks we had to build from scratch, like access control, session management, and database connectivity. Over the years we’ve steadily improved and updated that code, to bring it into line with modern practices, but there’s a law of diminishing returns at work here.

Any successful application eventually reaches a point where it’s more costly to continue refactoring the existing platform than it is to make a switch to an entirely new platform. Early in 2009 the technology team at FreshBooks agreed that the current platform was reaching that point, and that a new platform should be chosen and prepared for a migration.

This was not an easy agreement to reach. FreshBooks’ technical team is a team of peers, so there was never just one voice that could lay down the law and decide for everyone. Many possibilities were explored in months of discussion, review and testing, but in the end the team came together around a specific set of technologies that everyone agreed would serve the business best.

We’ve got a bunch of stories coming out of this process — it’s a huge part of the evolution of FreshBooks, and so it’s fitting that the new technology has been named “Evolve” by the developers. Evolve is already in production, although there’s no way to tell from the application, and there’s a lot of work still to be done. Our developers will be talking more and more about this new technology, however. There’s lots to tell here, but we wanted to kick things off with a general announcement. Most of the technical details will be emerging on our developer blog, but we’ll have plenty to talk about here. Stay tuned!

And don’t forget, FreshBooks is hiring developers and designers! If you’re looking to help create the future for our technology, send in your resume — or send in a friend’s. We offer a $1500 bounty for folks who direct us to a new hire. Don’t miss out!

ShopSavvy for Blackberry Update!

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:00:42 -0800

Okay, I will admit that two of our developers have been working on a Blackberry version of ShopSavvy for about 30 days. There are still a number hurdles they need to overcome, but a version of ShopSavvy for Blackberry is definitely on its way. Once the application is working we will complete the UI and design and release the application. Based on our current workload I suspect that the application skeleton will be completed in early January and by mid-March we could have the UI completed. Please don’t hold me to these dates. There are a number of projects that could extend this time line. So App World, get ready for ShopSavvy.

Scanning at Best Buy with ShopSavvy!

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:16:51 -0800

Last week Best Buy contacted us to tell us we had exceeded their API capacity (we get prices from their API) and as a result they would have to increase the capacity of the product feed we use for ShopSavvy. They even tweeted the news here. Yesterday they received more than 5.3 million calls to the API. Best Buy is a great partner and to repay their support we thought it might be fun to arrange for a bunch of ShopSavvy users to show up at Best Buy for a ‘Scan Mob’ this evening. Sort of like a Flash Mob, Scan Mob participants were asked to show up at a predetermined time and location and begin scanning the barcode of everything in sight.

The Scan Mob participants scanned hundreds of items finding opportunities for savings (Best Buy prices matches online retailer prices such as Amazon) as well as finding that Best Buy had great deals on lots of the products they wanted to buy. My parents even showed up and saved quite a bit on Jawbone Bluetooth headsets. Buy the end of the ‘Scan Mob’ a manager finally came up to us and asked what we were doing. Rylan showed him ShopSavvy and the manager explained there was NO video allowed. Rylan explained that ShopSavvy was not using video. The manager then explained to him that there were no pictures allowed. Rylan explained that ShopSavvy was not taking a photo. I mentioned that ShopSavvy was a partner of Best Buy and he let us continue wrecking havoc on the store (just kidding). I wanted to thank the Best Buy team at store #58 as well as the API team – you guys are awesome partners and a big reason ShopSavvy is such a success. Thanks a lot! Here is a video from this evening:

Never Forget an Attachment Again!

Manny DeJesus — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:24:33 -0800

Every week, if not every day, I forget to attach a file to an email. So like everyone else, I quickly send a follow-up with the famous “Oops!” in the subject. Annoying for all involved; I’m sure.

So I’m pretty excited about the new “Attachment Alert” feature in Rackspace Webmail (included with our Rackspace Email service). It automatically alerts me if a variation of the word “attachment” appears in my email, without a file being attached. And since I’m now sending 1 email instead of 2 – it’s literally doubled my productivity.

PS We’ve also added a “No Subject Alert” as well.

New Tutorial: Getting Started with CMIS

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:52:42 -0800

I’ve written a new tutorial on the proposed Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard called, “Getting Started with CMIS“. The tutorial first takes you through an overview of the specification. Then, I do several examples. The examples start out using curl to make GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE calls against Alfresco to perform CRUD functions [...]

CMIS Query Language

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:14:41 -0800

Personally, I’m Going Home for Turkey

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:46:14 -0800

You may have seen this one already, as it’s covering the Internet like grease on a McNugget.

This flowchart from Eating the Road doesn’t do much for me. That may be because the only reason I’d eat fast food is if I’d been buried in a box under the highway for three days with nothing to eat. And even then, I’m thinking I could make it to a gas station for some peanuts or something.

But what do you think? Obviously this chart has sparked something in readers to warrant its being posted and reposted and Dugg and all that.

Tell me why you like it (if you do).

Personally, I don’t see the humor here. The background is pretty distracting. And, most importantly, I don’t really think anyone has any use whatsoever for a flowchart telling them what fast food to eat. If you’re hungry, and you consider fast food to be food, I think it’s reasonably safe to say that the time for high-level thinking has passed.

Announcing Zoho Recruit

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:16:45 -0800

These days, HR departments and Recruiting professionals are finding it increasingly hard to pick the best candidate for a job opening among a growing pool of eager and qualified applicants. But selecting the best candidate is not the only problem - managing the increased pool of resumes, e-mail/phone communications and interviews has also become more difficult.

That's why today we are launching our newest product: Zoho Recruit. Zoho Recruit is an applicant tracking system (ATS) that helps staffing agencies and recruiting departments track their job openings, resumes, candidates and contacts quickly and efficiently. Zoho Recruit allows recruiting professionals to spend less time on the process and paperwork and more time doing what they do best: getting the right candidate.

Zoho Recruit allows Recruiting agencies, independent staffing professionals and HR departments to:

Source and Reach Candidates. Gather resumes from multiple sources and do the initial filtering and resume screening more quickly - without weeding out the qualified candidates.
Manage Candidates and Resumes. Manage resumes and track the candidates throughout the interviewing process. Zoho Recruit of course features a resume database. But beyond that, you can also schedule interviews, send automatic e-mail notifications and log candidate activities and notes. And once you've made a decision on a candidate you can "lock" him to avoid confusion with other positions or clients.
Create and Publish Job Openings. Collect resumes easily by creating and publishing the job openings in your website - and allow candidates to apply directly from there.
Parse Resumes. Populate resume information from different sources like social sites, mail attachments and more through and integration with ResumeGrabber. Oh - and Zoho Recruit customers get a very nice discount on ResumeGrabber.
Stay on top of what's going on. The activities stream allows recruiters and sourcers to stay on top of the recent and future activities. For example: what interviews are taking place today, who got hired recently, what new job openings do we have to fill?
Customize. No two recruiting processes are alike. Zoho Recruit can be fully customized to your needs. Create custom fields with our easy drag-and-drop UI (powered by Zoho Creator).

Recruiting agencies and headhunters will find Zoho Recruit particularly helpful. Zoho Recruit features dedicated functionality that helps them communicate and track their interactions with clients and contacts. They can also send quick notes to their customers directly from within Zoho Recruit.

In addition, recruiting agencies and headhunters will find Zoho Recruit a great tool for keeping track of the different clients and contacts they recruit for.

Like other Zoho products, Zoho Recruit has a generous free edition. It also has a Standard edition (at only $12 user/month). The main difference is that the Standar edition allows recruiters to add more job openings, do mass mailings, customization and more.

Take a look at Zoho Recruit. We hope you'll like it.

Rodrigo

ShopSavvy Weekend Update!

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:25:38 -0800

First, last week I jumped on a plane and headed to Mountainview (Microsoft Campus) to present at the Under the Radar Mobility Conference. ShopSavvy was head-to-head with very cool iPhone applications from around the country. Guess what? With a perfect score from the judges ShopSavvy came out on top. As the winner of the ‘best app iPhone award’ from Under the Radar I won an HTC Tilt running Windows Mobile (slightly ironic). Anyway, we are using it to test our Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy. I wanted to thank Debbie Landa for the invitation and the judges.

Second, we were notified by Best Buy that we exceeded the cap for their product API. ShopSavvy is the FIRST remix partner to exceed the usage caps (despite the fact that we have tried to filter and cache queries to reduce load). When we got the call from Best Buy we were a little concerned they were going cut us off. Instead they increased our cap. ShopSavvy users can feel free to keep shopping. Oh and while we are on the subject, you guys are going nuts – our server traffic is up 4X. We brought in two additional 4 core servers this week to take care of the additional traffic.

Finally, in celebration of our great relationship with Best Buy we have decided to hold a ‘Scan Mob’ at the Park Lane (store 58) on Monday night. Show up with your iPhone or Android phone and start scanning at 5:45 and get a Best Buy Gift card. Here are the details: Best Buy Scan Mob.

Offline?

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:09:48 -0800

As I write this blog post @ 30,000ft above the ground on a Virgin America flight, flying back from Boston to San Francisco, I started to wonder whatever happened to the 'Airplane problem' (or the Offline problem of online apps) we all used to talk about couple of years back.

At Zoho, we have had offline support for over 2 years now. Zoho Writer and Zoho Mail supported offline access and I kind of used them initially, but I have to admit, I quickly gave up using the offline versions as I never needed them. Sure, there were times I was offline, but during those times, well, I went offline too, grabbing a coffee or something.

My behavior is not just with Zoho Apps. Many other apps I use do support offline access and I never bothered to use them in offline mode. This makes me wonder if this is just me or do you also fall under the same category? I created a quick poll (using Zoho Polls, ofcourse) to get your feedback on this.

Share your opinion in comments section.

Share Your Dreamforce Videos on YouTube

Jamie Grenney — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:13:42 -0800

At Dreamforce there were lots of Flip Cameras and iPhones capturing all the action. If you've got a video you'd like to share with the community, post it to YouTube and tag it with Dreamforce. We've been watching YouTube and have already started to see some great stuff. We'll add to the playlist and start assembling the best clips from the community.

Post Your Dreamforce Photos to Flickr

Jamie Grenney — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:49:56 -0800

When you get home from Dreamforce upload your photos to Flickr and share them with the community. If you tag them as "Dreamforce" or "DF09" and we can go through and add the best ones to our favorites album. We're already starting to see some fantastic photos turn up!

Keep an eye on our Facebook Fan Pages as well (Dreamforce & Salesforce). We'll be adding photos there in the coming days.

Records Management in Plain English - Top 10 Terms

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:08:02 -0800

Welcome to another Alfresco Open Source podcast. I have with me today Carlos Miguens who drove our Records Management strategy that led to the recent DoD 5015.2 certification and headlines like: “Pentagon certifies Alfresco records management app” What this podcast is about is Records Management in “Plain English” and the Top 10 Records Management Terms”. Historically Records Management [...]

The Dreamforce Daily - Friday

Erica Kuhl — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:42:10 -0800

Join the conversation at Dreamforce
There are plenty of ways to connect via social media channels. To join the conversation on Twitter, use hashtag #df09.

THURSDAY HIGHLIGHTS
General session - Force.com platform
"When are you going to ask for innovation," salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff challenged the audience, before introducing Force.com and the new Chatter social platform as “fresh, exciting ways to break out of the status quo” presented by traditional platforms. Executives from companies including BMC, Vetrazzo, Japan's Lawson, Avon, CA, Appirio, and Accenture joined Marc on stage to demo new applications built on Force.com.

Special general session - General Colin Powell inspires
An impassioned Marc Benioff took the stage to showcase the great work the Salesforce.com Foundation does for the community, including donating $2 million to a new University of California San Francisco children’s hospital. He warmly introduced his friend, General Colin L. Powell (Ret.), who received a standing ovation.

General Powell regaled the crowd with funny stories of life after his Secretary of State post, such as becoming a proud owner of a Corvette. He imparted the audience with notions of ideal leadership, including contributing to society, always taking care of one’s “troops,” being a disciplinarian when necessary, and most importantly, being trustworthy. General Powell held the 8,000+ audience rapt, and reminded us all to be self-motivated and inspired.

4th annual Appy Awards
Congratulations to all our Appy Award winners! We’re in awe of the amazing ways they’re using salesforce.com technologies.
Sales Cloud Appy: Jamie Cornell, Chief Marketing Officer, Prudential Retirement (deployment by Deloitte)
Power of Us Appy: Susan Troen, Director of Data Services, Year Up
MVP Admin Appy: Emily Kranz, VP of Customer Facing Operations, Listingbook, LLC
Chief Innovator Appy: Yoichi Yokomizo, EVP and CIO, Lawson, Inc.
Custom Cloud Appy: Joe Drouin, CIO, Kelly Services, Inc.
Enterprise Deployment Appy: Junichiro Hisada, Director of IT, Sompo Japan Insurance, Inc.
Best Partner App Appy: DocuSign (as voted by thousands of Dreamforce attendees and tallied by a Force.com custom app designed by CloudConnect)

Tons of sessions
Thursday was packed with sessions, starting bright and early at 7:30 a.m. In our ever-popular hands-on sessions, attendees got to practice what they were learning right in salesforce.com.

Missed a session? You can download the slides for this or any of the Dreamforce sessions in the Attendee Portal. After Dreamforce ends, most sessions will be available on YouTube, and in early December, we'll add them to the Dreamforce Web site. So even if you missed something, you won't miss a thing!

Cloud Crawl
At press time the Dreamforce crowd was making their way to the Temple Nightclub to get their drink on. Partygoers collected stamps from Cloud Crawl sponsors to earn an invitation to experience San Francisco’s South of Market nightclub scene.

Are you ready for your close up? See photos from Dreamforce on our Facebook page, and feel free to post your own!

ON TAP TODAY
As you attend the final sessions of Dreamforce 2009 today, take a moment to pull out your calendar and...

Save the date for Dreamforce 2010
It's never too early to get excited about the next Dreamforce! Enter December 6-9, 2010 into your calendar.
We'll see you next year!

TODAY'S FEATURED SESSIONS
See the future: Find out what’s in store for salesforce.com in upcoming releases.

Platform Road Map: Administrator Tools of the Future
10:15–11:15 a.m.
Esplanade 310
Adam Torman, salesforce.com; Patricia Orr, salesforce.com; Mary Scotton, salesforce.com

The Service Cloud Road Map: What’s Next?
11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
North 121/122
Larry Robinson, salesforce.com

Product Road Map: Sneak Peek into the Future
11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
North 133
William Moxley, salesforce.com

Analytics Road Map
11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Esplanade 306
Thomas Tobin, salesforce.com; Leo Tenenblat, salesforce.com

DON'T MISS
Cloud Expo
Have you made you way to the Cloud Expo yet? If not, head over there this morning before Dreamforce winds down so you won't miss the latest cloud-computing innovations from over 250 sponsors. Prepare to be wowed with over 1,000 solutions, ideas, and advice.

And don't forget to stop by the AppExchange Test Drive Zone, where you can learn what's new with the world's first marketplace for cloud-computing applications. While you're there, find out how you can get behind the wheel of a Tesla, the world's first high-performance, 100% electric vehicle.
Location: Moscone North, Hall D

AND FINALLY...
Have fun! Get out there and explore the sessions, meet people, get your questions answered, and enjoy your time at Dreamforce.

And don’t forget to tell us what you think about the sessions you've attended. Take a session survey by logging into the Attendee Portal or finding a survey kiosk in Moscone South. Complete a survey, and you'll be entered to win one of several iPod Nanos in our daily drawings.

Thursday's iPod Nano winners:
David Ledrowski, Progress Software
Joy Tewksbury-Pabst, Hayes Management Consulting
Mike Burroughs, Benelicious-ISV Edition
Rob Burkett, Benefitfocus.com, Inc.
Toshiyuki Zamma, Gartner Co, Ltd.
Jessica Rush, Jobing.com
Deborah Parker, Liberty Mutual
James Scott, Tiburon
Jamie Hooper, Independent Community Bankers of America-ICBA
Heather Deloughrey, M Squared
Ethan Granger, Land Advisors Organization LLC
Tilmin Hudson, CPP Inc.
Robert Duncan, Make-A-Wish Foundation of British Columbia and Yukon
Sujata Nakhre, Network Solutions LLC

Thanks for making Dreamforce such a huge success… Hope to see you next year!

November Product Release Scheduled

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:52:19 -0800

Business critical apps, ones with complex relationships supporting many processes and having multiple administrators, are an exciting possibility for any team using QuickBase. In the past, making changes to these applications was best accomplished by copying the application, working on it and switching everyone over to the new version – safe, but not so simple.

That’s why I’m so excited our next product release on November 29th. We are introducing a Developer Sandbox for all Enterprise accounts that will let you make changes to your live applications without risk. You simply create and test the changes in the safety of the sandbox application, continue using the live application, run a compatibility check to identify any problems and update the live app with your changes – safe as houses.

There are new features that all customers will enjoy. An improved user management area allows account administrators to easily manage access of thousands of QuickBase users. Finding users is much easier with dynamic search and sorting capabilities, while modifying status is simplified with bulk actions and the ability to provision users by importing a CSV file.

Lastly, a great usability tweak worth mentioning is better visibility and tuning of [non]searchable fields. This is a great way to make fast searches even faster.

Our Newest Support Rockstar Graduates Super Mario Style

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:48:24 -0800

For those who don’t know, every new hire at FreshBooks starts in Support. At least two full months in fact. Frankly there’s no better way to learn our customers and our product then to be on the front lines. The really cool thing is that when their Support training is completed they officially become a Support Rockstar and we hold a crazy graduation ceremony. We do this for each individual person. And it is always a total surprise for the person.

On Tuesday, Tim Lee, our latest Support Rockstar graduated Super Mario style (he’s a big Mario fan). We surprised Tim by turning the entire FreshBooks HQ into the first stage of Super Mario Bros. We made him go through the entire “level” as Mario. It was ridiculously awesome! Watch the video.

P.S. We’re hiring!

QUICK TIP: No Powerpoints

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:11:46 -0800

"No powerpoint allowed on the first sales call. Talk about their problem not your solution" - Dharmesh Shah

Last week I ran across this tip from Dharmesh Shah who was speaking at the Business of Software 2009 Conference in San Francisco. While I did not make the trip out to the conference, I was fortunate enough to bump into Dharmesh's comments on Twitter. I found his point simple but profound and wanted to share it with the PipelineDeals Community since we are all involved in the sales process. Aside from being a successful entrepreneur, Dharmesh is also an author and I now plan to add his book, Inbound Marketing, onto the "Books To Read" list. Thanks for the reminder Dharmesh that the key to selling successfully is to solve a problem.

Your Big Mouth

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:29:19 -0800

Hello flowchart aficionado!

Is this your first time on the Gliffy blog? I ask only because yesterday Gizmodo covered one of our original flowcharts and now, well, there are a lot of new faces around.

Welcome. What we’re trying to do here is collect the best flowcharts and diagrams that we can find — the funniest, the cleverest, the most interesting — and hold them up for adulation. (Or occasionally, criticism)

We also create original flowcharts to share, and we happily accept your submissions for consideration, whether or not they’re made using Gliffy’s flowchart software. (It’s free to try, though…)

Made something you think is worth posting? Found something on the web you want to share? Get me in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

Today’s example of flowchart excellence comes courtesy of Wired Magazine. Daniel Dumas posted this one on their website and I thought it might appeal to you.

It’s called:

Ask a Flowchart: Should I Delete My Tweet?

Not bad, Daniel. I think the Colombians might object to the depiction of their postal service, but otherwise funny.

I’m not sure how I feel about how the design, though. Is its old skool circuit diagram look a little hard to follow? What do you think?

Zoho Projects : Communicating with your Projects via Email

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:58:19 -0800

We've been working hard to find new ways to improve the user experience which in turn helps you to improve your productivity. Even in these days of collaboration, we find that many people tend to fall back on email rather than shared online work spaces. And this being the most popular demand from most of our users we've included this feature as part of our recent update.

Let's see what's in store for you :

Post Comments in Forums with Attachments

There may be an interesting topic going around in the project forums and you may wish to quickly post a comment. Previously, you had to login to Zoho Projects and then post a comment. But now you can simply do so through an email.

Add Task Notes with Attachments

We've provided a unique email id for each and every task. Go to task details page. Now copy the email address and compose a mail along with your notes and send it. You can find your notes automatically added for this task via email.

Add Notes for Meetings with Attachments

Similarly you can add notes and attach files for a scheduled meeting through email. Also you can add notes for an existing meeting through a reply mail.

It's simple, isn't it ? Learn more about the new feature addition at Communicate with Projects via Email

We feel that communicating via email in Zoho Projects will be extremely useful for virtual teams as this encourages informal communication and team building. It's not just about a new feature addition - it's how you thoughtfully apply it. So find ways for your team to play with it and you'll be amazed at how quickly they find new ways to apply them to their work process.

We hope you'd start using these features in Zoho Projects and share your experience with us at support@zohoprojects.com

The Dreamforce Daily - Thursday

Erica Kuhl — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:27:33 -0800

Join the conversation at Dreamforce
There are plenty of ways to connect via social media channels. To join the conversation on Twitter, use hashtag #df09.

WEDNESDAY HIGHLIGHTS
Opening keynote - Join the conversation
Marc Benioff’s rousing keynote actually began not with a speech, but with an amazing video of people surfing through the clouds into the future… and the future looks bright. Marc revealed upcoming additions to the popular Service Cloud 2 and Sales Cloud 2 applications and unveiled our latest innovation: Chatter, which had the crowd buzzing over the potential for this new way to collaborate at work.

The audience was also treated to a sneak peek of the new user interface for salesforce.com (coming in 2010) and a special welcome from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who talked with Marc about the many ways the Salesforce.com Foundation makes an impact in the community.

Sessions, sessions, and more sessions
It's the number-one reason people come to Dreamforce: the information-packed sessions, filled with best practices, how-tos, expert panels, vertical case studies, and more. Like Wednesday's Platform State of the Union session, where Force.com platform experts laid out the vision and direction of salesforce.com's cloud platform, and encouraged everyone to raise their expectations of what a platform can be.

Missed it? You can download the slides for this or any of the Dreamforce sessions in the Attendee Portal. After Dreamforce ends, most sessions will be available on YouTube, and in early December, we'll add them to the Dreamforce Web site. So even if you missed something, you won't miss a thing!

Gain quick access to Dreamforce conference information using your mobile device:
iPhone
BlackBerry

Developer Hackathon
Hundreds of developers flooded the Force.com Zone to race against the clock in our biggest-ever Hackathon. Beginners and experts alike put their best code forward in Mission: Impossible-themed challenges, competing for iPods, a Dell Alienware M15x, and a MacBook Air. Go to blog.sforce.com to see who took top honors, and thanks again to everyone who took part!

Global Gala – The Black Crowes keep the energy flowing
Wednesday night was capped off with good food and great entertainment as everyone rocked out to the Black Crowes, "the most rock 'n' roll rock 'n' roll band in the world," according to one critic. Veteran rockers the brothers Robinson and company played to a packed house that was ready to cut loose after the first full day of Dreamforce. C’mon, you were dancing, admit it…

Are you ready for your close up? See photos from Dreamforce on our Facebook page, and feel free to post your own!

ON TAP TODAY
Here are some of the highlights from today's agenda:

General session: Marc Benioff and special guests (9:00–11:00 a.m.)
The sky's the limit when building apps in the cloud. Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff talks about new platform and infrastructure innovations that will change the way you think about platform as a service.
Location: Moscone South, Halls B & C

Birds-of-a-Feather lunch (12:30–1:30 p.m.)
Satisfy your hunger at the Birds-of-a-Feather roundtable lunch. Today you’ll network and nosh with people in your industry who are facing many of the same challenges and triumphs you face.
Location: Moscone North, Hall D

Special general session: Colin Powell (4:15–5:45 p.m.)
--> Plus the 4th annual Appy Awards
Former U.S. Secretary of State General Colin L. Powell (Ret.) shares valuable lessons on leadership in the era of real-time collaboration. And, we'll celebrate our heroes as we present the 4th annual Appy Awards.
Location: Moscone South, Halls B & C

Cloud Crawl (9:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m.)
You don't need no stinking sleep! Join the nightcrawlers at the Temple Nightclub. Earn access to this exclusive Force.com party by collecting stamps from the sponsors listed on the Cloud Crawl card in your badge holder.

TODAY'S FEATURED SESSIONS
Join the breakfast club: Get Thursday off to an early start with coffee and sessions.

Running IT in the Cloud
7:30–8:30 a.m.
Esplanade 307
Kirsten Wolberg, salesforce.com; Russ Nelson, salesforce.com; Jeff Smits, salesforce.com

How Salesforce.com Uses Salesforce CRM for Marketing Excellence
7:30–8:30 a.m.
North 134
Lisa (Plotczyk) Lee, salesforce.com

Eureka: Data Nirvana
7:30–8:30 a.m.
Esplanade 304
Tracy Johnston, Freeman; Erik Karlberg, salesforce.com; Suzanne Serwe, Brady Corporation

Salesforce CRM Admin Excellence: Setting Up Salesforce CRM for Sales Success
7:30–8:30 a.m.
North 132
Jenny Truong, salesforce.com; Randy Edgar, salesforce.com; Heather Ramsdell, salesforce.com; Michael Fullmore, salesforce.com; Sriram Iyer, salesforce.com

Managing Change: How to Win Friends and Influence People
7:30–8:30 a.m.
Esplanade 306
Laura Hendrix, Freeman; Joe Harris, Beazer Homes; Jennifer Olaru, salesforce.com

DON'T MISS
Force.com Zone
The Force.com Zone is the conference-within-a conference for technical attendees and partners. Build an app with self-paced tutorials or get help from a Force.com expert. Attend technical sessions to expand your knowledge. Get your problems solved or do a code review with 1:1 consultations. Lounge and learn with a hot cup of coffee. There's truly something for everyone in the Force.com Zone:

Immersion Lab
Code Consultations
Partner Sessions
Partner Conversations
Stratus Cafe
Twitter Vue

Location: The Esplanade in Moscone South

AND FINALLY...
Have fun! Get out there and explore the sessions, meet people, get your questions answered, and enjoy your time at Dreamforce.

Wednesday's iPod Nano winners:
Adam Bataran, Crossbeam
Link Cornelius, James Hardie Building Products
Kent Manning, LI-COR, Inc.
Jeffrey McAleer, Wells Fargo Advisors
Kathy Miller, Univar
Thad Puckett, The Karis Group Inc.
David Schild, Phoenix Technologies
Tahir Sheikh, Ingenuity Systems
Brandy Wallace, DeRoyal Industries Inc.
Steve Weinberg, Inolex Chemical Co.
Brian Wenzl, Demand Solutions Group
Saranda West, DAXKO
Patricia Wheatley, Tendril
Michelle Wiest, Transilwrap Co., Inc.

XING: Uptimes, Downtimes – and what we do

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:16:27 -0800

XING is fully available 99.85% of the time.

It happens pretty rarely, but sometimes our platform is affected too by operational faults and malfunctions. Of course we try to keep these hiccups to an absolute minimum. Our content is stored and supplied from two different data processing centers for instance, which means that our users can be re-routed from one to the other dependently on demand and performance. All systems have a failover cluster operation guaranteeing high performance and stability, as well as having sufficient reserves to cope better with peak loads. Making sure our platform is both available and fast is our number one priority.

Sometimes though, like last Wednesday’s morning for instance, we do encounter unforeseen problems. There isn’t an IT system anywhere that is 100% fault-tolerant – there will always be systematic single points of failure that will send part or all of the entire system crashing with them. In this latest case a defect network component corrupted a mechanism, which was specifically required to safeguard against failure (Spanning Tree Protocol). We will be analyzing and intercepting this error to make sure it doesn’t crop up again.

A look at the figures for the past twelve months shows that we are very close to our high targets, an average uptime ratio of 99.95%. In other words, this means that XING should not be offline for more than four hours and 2 minutes over the entire year. Or to put it yet another way: This is equivalent to around 44 seconds a day. Crashes affecting just certain parts of the platform have also been included in this statistic.

Here are the availability figures for the past twelve months:

Month	Availability
Nov 08	99,88%
Dez 08	99,75%
Jan 09	99,60%
Feb 09	99,97%
Mrz 09	99,80%
Apr 09	99,93%
Mai 09	99,87%
Jun 09	99,96%
Jul 09	99,95%
Aug 09	99,83%
Sep 09	99,76%
Oct 09	99,91%
Average	99,85%

To form a meaningful graph from these figures the vertical axis needs to be scaled up dramatically in order to see any fluctuations at all:

Chart: XING availability during the last twelve months.

Despite this record, every minute of downtime is a blow to us – as we know how important it is that our members can send messages, make contacts and network at any time. That’s why we’ll keep doing everything in our power to maximize stability and availability of our platform.

Biggest update in a long time

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:39:44 -0800

Today I pushed the biggest update to myowndb.com in a long time. It’s the biggest update, but you won’t see anything, it’s all happening under the hood.

The change is about the implementation of the file attachments, which is now more flexible and will allow the implementation of multiple backends and use one simply by changing the configuration.

Next step it to bring Dedomenon code up to date.

Information Governance: Business Challenges at the Intersection of Content & Compliance (RSD)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:37:39 -0800

View the webcast The volume of information within Enterprises is exploding, as storage and content management capacity increase, and costs decrease. Expanding government, industry and corporate policies regarding the retention and disposition of information deemed to be business “records.” At the intersection of these trends, companies have a host of issues to address, both technical and business. This [...]

OOdesk and Zoho

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:38:19 -0800

OOdesk (pronounced as voo-desk) is a virtual desktop application offering free email, storage space, file sharing etc. OOdesk users can view and save documents, spreadsheets, presentations directly online without downloading. And this is done using Zoho's Remote API.

Once you are logged to your OOdesk account, you will be presented with a virtual desktop environment (a desktop-like feel within your browser window). Double click on My Documents and click on the Upload option. You can upload any file from your desktop into OOdesk. Shown below is a Microsot Excel file opened within OOdesk using Zoho Sheet's remote editor. You can view Microsoft Office or OpenOffice files, make changes and save them back to your OOdesk account.

[Click to enlarge image]

If you are an ISV requiring such a functionality, do have a look at our APIs. We have a good many vendors who have successfully implemented our APIs (recently Central Desktop integrated Zoho Sheet). And it's not just for ISVs, any enterprise can make use of our APIs too.

New: Better matched questions, faster homepage login

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:42:09 -0800

A range of new things are going live on our platform once again this week. Many of these are quite minor optimizations designed to make networking even faster and smoother without you even noticing it, and to iron out the occasional problem that might occur in specific circumstances.

Anyone logging in to our homepage and switching between login fields using the tab button will find it easier from now on to get networking even faster – as we’ve optimized this.

Our OpenSocial application Ask XING has also had a slight algorithmic makeover this week – meaning that it can now process certain special characters more effectively. What’s more, members can now formulate paragraphs into their questions or answers. Our suggested matches for relevant discussions are now based on your current industry and the keywords you have entered under “Haves”.

We will of course keep on releasing both minor and major developments on our platform over the coming weeks – and will be sure to let you know about them here in the Release Flash. You’re also very welcome to discuss these new releases in the XING Group.

What has 19,000 registered attendees, 300+ sessions and the mayor of San Francisco?

Katy Dormer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:15:47 -0800

With 19,000 attendees registered from more than 60 countries, it’s clear that Dreamforce 2009 is the global cloud computing event of the year!

The excitement kicked off yesterday with attendees swarming the Cloud Expo eager to see the latest offerings from the incredible partners exhibiting. Despite the lack of wiggle room, an aloha vibe permeated the floor (fostered by the spirit of the attendees and the hula dancers who greeted guests with leis). The energy only grew for the keynote today, with many attendees standing along the sides of the keynote space eager to hear the latest news from salesforce.com.

Marc Benioff began his address by thanking customers, members of the press, and analysts for their belief in the cloud computing model and company. It was inspiring to hear about the nearly 70,000 customers on the service. Salesforce.com’s focus on all companies—and democratizing the industry so all companies can succeed—resonated as strong as ever. “Salesforce is a great equalizer if a little company like mine can benefit,” an excited Denise Jackson, vice president of client services at Medical Research Consultants in Houston told me over lunch.

Several guests joined Marc on stage this morning, including San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom (who ditched his tie when he saw Marc without one). In addition to sharing interesting facts about San Francisco, the birthplace of the United Nations, and a city of “dreamers, doers, entrepreneurs, and on the leading and cutting edge of technology,” Mayor Newsom recognized salesforce.com for its dedication to the eco center being built at Bayview Hunter’s Point and Project Homeless Connect, which has used Salesforce CRM to track the impact of its work. (Since monitoring its data trough Salesforce CRM, Homeless Connect has tracked that it has taken 10,133 people off the street.) “What you folks did is a big deal,” said Mayor Newsom. Jay Banfield, the executive director of Year Up in the Bay Area also visited and shared how the nonprofit received seed funding, hundreds of volunteer hours, and Salesforce CRM to support its mission of helping urban young adults earn careers in technology. The results of the program are incredible: after working with the organization, 85% of participants find work within four months.

Of course everyone was waiting to hear the latest about salesforce.com technology and after sharing details about the next generation of services: Sales Cloud 2, Service Cloud 2, and Custom Cloud 2, Marc introduced a new cloud, a new category for salefsorce.com, and a multi-billion market opportunity. Describing it as the “biggest and most important breakthrough in salesforce.com’s 10 and a half year history,” Marc revealed Salesforce Chatter, a secure enterprise collaboration application and social development platform, which will change the way businesses work.

In addition to being introduced to Salesforce Chatter and an entirely new way to work, customers, partners and developers were also pleased to meet Chatty, a new best friend for Sassy, and a welcome new addition to the salesforce.com family.

Stay tuned for more exciting news from salesforce.com at Dreamforce tomorrow!

What is everyone talking about? Salesforce Chatter!

Katy Dormer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:08:16 -0800

Just a few minutes ago, Marc Benioff took the stage for Dreamforce's opening keynote and unveiled our biggest breakthrough ever, Salesforce Chatter. Salesforce Chatter represents a new secure enterprise collaboration application and social development platform and salesforce.com's first enterprise-wide app. Salesforce Chatter brings the best of the consumer Web’s social networking models to the enterprise, allowing all employees across any business to collaborate in real time with a secure, private social network.

Social computing has changed the game on the consumer Web by allowing people to gain insight -- in real time -- into what’s going on in their world. But despite the obvious efficiency benefits, this kind of collaboration hasn’t made it to the enterprise level. Traditionally, content, applications and people have been disconnected and part of separate conversations. Determining what employees were working on, or determining the status of any given opportunity meant scrolling through endless e-mail chains (we can practically hear the frustrated sighs) or scheduling back-to-back conference calls for updates. The result? Time, energy and resources wasted.

Salesforce Chatter changes that. Content, applications and people can now -- securely and privately -- join the real-time conversation. Employees will be able to efficiently collaborate and share up-to-the-minute information via profiles, status updates, feeds, groups and more. And content and applications will be able to join the conversation by talking to users through their feed when ever there is a change in data or status. And, just as the Salesforce Chatter application will enable businesses to create an effective conversation, the Chatter social platform will empower developers to easily build social enterprise applications -- and all 135,000 native Force.com apps will instantly become social. This means that whatever application your business needs can be developed and shared with ease.

Salesforce.com is in a unique position to deliver this kind of social, enterprise-class application -- we’ve got proven security, a trusted sharing model and house critical business information in our cloud applications. What we’re really happy about, though, is being able to leverage this unique position to make companies smarter, more informed and better able to make those critical business decisions that best serve their customers, partners and employees.

More information can be found at http://www.salesforce.com/chatter and be sure to check out Chatter for yourself in the demo video:

The Dreamforce Daily - Wednesday

Erica Kuhl — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0800

Join the conversation at Dreamforce
There are plenty of ways to connect via social media channels. To join the conversation on Twitter, use hashtag #df09.

TUESDAY HIGHLIGHTS
Dreamforce volunteers
More than 260 Dreamforce attendees kicked off their conference experience by volunteering in San Francisco's Hunters Point neighborhood, where the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park is soon to be the first environmental facility that is 100 percent “off the grid.” Volunteers spent Tuesday installing pathways; building sign holders, benches, and planters; and creating a mosaic tile wall, among other activities.

The executive director of the nonprofit that is building the center said the 11-year project is nearly complete. “The work done today is bringing us a thousand hours closer to the opening of EcoCenter,” said Malik Looper of Literacy for Environmental Justice. “This might have taken months to accomplish,” added Karen Nemsick, executive director of Rebuilding Together, which helped organize the event. “We are bringing them over the top.”

First-timer orientation
More than 750 people attended Tuesday's first-timer orientation. They got great strategies for making the most of Dreamforce--not just from Conference Chair Tom Wong and other Dreamforce insiders, but from Dreamforce old-timers, who shared their stories and advice. One new tool not to be missed: the Attendee Portal, where people can find all the session decks, take advantage of "friendfinder," and much, much more.

Welcome reception
It's official! Dreamforce started in true Aloha style with the ever-popular first-night reception in the Cloud Expo, where guests were greeted by ukulele music and hula dancers. It was a large crowd including everyone from seasoned alumni to first-timers, customers to partners, and locals to international travelers (representing 60 countries)… all mingling with fellow cloud enthusiasts and checking out the latest cloud-computing solutions from 250 sponsors.

Are you ready for your close up? See photos from Dreamforce on our Facebook page, and feel free to post your own!

ON TAP TODAY
Here are some of the highlights from today's agenda:

Opening keynote with Marc Benioff and special guests (9:00 - 11:00 a.m.)
A highlight of the conference. Don't miss salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff talk about the future of cloud-computing applications. Be there to hear the salesforce.com news that everyone will be buzzing about later today!
Location: Hall C of Moscone South

Developer Hackathon (5:45 - 8:00 p.m.)
Advanced and intermediate developers will want to hone their skills, share tips, and compete for prizes at the Force.com Developer Hackathon, back by popular demand.
Location: Force.com Zone in the Esplanade, Moscone South

Networking reception + Global Gala (reception: 5:45 - 8:00 p.m.; gala: 8:00 - 10:00 p.m.)
Join us in the Cloud Expo for the single biggest networking event of the year, capped off by a private concert featuring the Black Crowes.
Location: Moscone North, Hall D (reception); Moscone South, Halls B & C (gala)

DON'T MISS
Service Cloud 2 Live @ Dreamforce
Have a question about Dreamforce? Wanna see the Service Cloud in action? Do both at the Service Cloud 2 Live @ Dreamforce.

Check out our live Service Cloud-powered contact center, right in the middle of Dreamforce. Watch as our agents take phone calls, Tweet, email, and help you and fellow Dreamforce attendees get the most of our their Dreamforce experience. Walk up to our help desk or concierge service, and experience service in the cloud yourself.
Location: Salesforce.com Campground in the Cloud Expo, Hall D on the exhibit level of Moscone North

AND FINALLY…
Have fun! Get out there and explore the sessions, meet people, get your questions answered, and enjoy your time at Dreamforce.
And don’t forget to tell us what you think about the sessions you've attended. Take a session survey by logging into the Attendee Portal or finding a survey kiosk in Moscone South. Complete a survey, and you'll be entered to win one of several iPod Nanos in our daily drawings.

Gliffy JIRA Plugin 2.1.3 adds French and German translations

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:32:58 -0800

We just released a quick update to the Gliffy JIRA Plugin that includes translations of non-editor text into French and German.

As with our last Gliffy Confluence Plugin release, this will likely be the last release of the Gliffy JIRA Plugin that includes Flash 7 support. All future release of the Gliffy Plugin for JIRA will require Flash 9 or better on the client side.

Happy Drawing!

Traditional Chasm Market Segmentation - Moving to the Max Segmentation Strategy

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:24:51 -0800

Bluewolf, PricewaterHouseCoopers, and EchoSign Launch Salesforce Channel Compliance Solution @ Dreamforce

echojason — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

We're pleased to announce our partners at Bluewolf, and PricewaterHouseCoopers, have launched an exciting new integrated Channel Compliance Solution for Salesforce.com at Dreamforce '09, integrating EchoSign.com e-signature for Salesforce.

Demos, customer case studies, and more at the Dreamforce session on Compliance and Risk Management, Thursday at 11:30am:

"Finding Your Way to Full Compliance: Automating Channel Compliance" (Thurs., Nov. 19th at 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.) with Kenneth Edwards of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Jason Lemkin of EchoSign, and executives from Bluewolf who will share insights on compliance. Since the "Enron Era" of 2001, compliance has been a daunting, costly, time-intensive experience for organizations. At this panel, hear real-life stories from enterprises that are finding their way to compliance, providing a robust defense against fraud and illegal transactions, from deal registration to electronic signatures"

Movember

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:12:33 -0800

My wife has forbidden me from growing a mustache — regardless of the fact that my growing a mustache could actually save lives!

Yes, it’s true. My (or your) lip-cozy could be at this very minute raising funds and awareness for men’s health as part of Movember.

So, assuming you are not forbidden from growing hair out of your face, you’ll want to know what kind of mustache to grow. Maxim has you covered.

In other fashion-related news, today our friends over at Hide Your Arms have been good enough to share our earlier advice about how to decide if your T-shirt is work appropriate. Thanks, Andy!

In case you’re not familiar with Hide Your Arms, you might want to click over and see what’s going on in the fantastic world of T-shirts and hoodies.

Burda Media new primary shareholder of XING AG

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:11 -0800

As we reported today, Burda Digital GmbH has purchased 25.1% of XING AG shares. By purchasing these shares from Cinco Capital GmbH, the holding company of our Founder Lars Hinrichs, the subsidiary of Burda Media has become the main shareholder of XING (read the press release here).

I’m very excited about this participation and the future cooperation with Burda. It’s a match made in heaven: Burda Media as the leading European media group and XING as the leading European business network. In recent years, the group has invested in the Internet continually, and is active online and offline with its own products and publications (CHIP, Focus, etc.) as well as participations (Tomorrow Focus, Glam Media, Zooplus). In doing so, Burda has proven itself to be a long-term and internationally oriented investor.

We still have a lot of plans on continuing to develop and grow XING. In this process, it’s great to have a strong partner such as Burda to support us.

WordPress Wins CMS Award

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:48:04 -0800

I was very excited last week to learn that WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is a landmark for us, as it is the first time we’ve won this award, and it marks a shift in the public perception of WordPress, from blog software to full-featured CMS. No small contest, the Open Source CMS Awards received over 12,000 nominations and more than 23,000 votes across five categories.

As Hiro Nakamura said when he first bent time and space to land in Times Square: “Yatta!”

In addition to winning in the Overall Best Open Source CMS category, WordPress was named first runner-up in the Best Open Source PHP CMS category. This is significant because we weren’t even in the top 5 last year, and now we’re #2, ahead of Joomla! As is stated on the Award site, “WordPress made its way into the top five for the first time. The fact that it was outranked by Drupal by a very slight margin indicates how popular it has become with users as well as developers over the past year.”

Every day thousands of new people are embracing WordPress to power not just their blogs but entire sites and communities without compromising on usability or scalability (as would be the case with a legacy CMS). Every member of the WordPress community, from core developer to beginning user, should be proud to be part of this momentum: congratulations to us all!

EchoSign-for-Salesforce Version 7 Launches

echojason — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:14:59 -0800

EchoSign has been the market leader in electronic signatures for Salesforce.com users for 4 years running - since 2006.

We're proud to have launched together with our partner Bluewolf Group in 2006, four years of #1 rankings and over 1,000 Salesforce customers later, we're launching the seventh version (v7) of EchoSign-for-Salesforce at Dreamforce tonight.

_____________

Simply put, we don't believe anyone can touch EchoSign-for-Salesforce after all this time, learnings, and installs.

V7 is available for existing customers to deploy to test sandboxes now and will have general availability in approximately 3 weeks.

Key innovations:

* Fully rebuilt in latest VisualForce for the state-of-the-art Salesforce experience

* Completely integrated INSIDE Salesforce.com - not an external web app bolted into Salesforce

* Full contract preview and drop-and-drag interface exposed to all sales reps (as desired)

* Dynamically set Alerts on a per-contract basis (know the second a contract has been viewed -- or not viewed -- by a prospect)

* Full integration with latest version of top-rated CongaCourier (launching at Dreamforce 2009 as well) and real-time integration with top-rated Apttus

and much more.

Please come by either of our booths for a demo. We're at booth 210 on our own, and also being demo'd in Bluewolf Group's Platinum Booth (you won't miss that one).

The Dreamforce Daily - Tuesday

Erica Kuhl — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:12:48 -0800

Join the conversation at Dreamforce
There are plenty of ways to connect via social media channels. To join the conversation on Twitter, use hashtag #df09.

MONDAY HIGHLIGHTS
Pre-conference training and certification
Dreamforce is already well underway for many CRM admins, developers, and consultants. Hundreds of them took our popular (and in some cases, sold-out) pre-Dreamforce intensive training classes on Monday, and more classes are scheduled today. Hundreds more are preparing for certification exams today--good luck, everyone. After the exams are graded, the names of the newly certified will be listed near the dining area. Watch for them!

Are you ready for your close up? See photos from Dreamforce on our Facebook page, and feel free to post your own!

ON TAP TODAY
Here are some of the highlights from today's agenda:

First-timer orientation (5:00 - 6:00 p.m.)
Dreamforce newcomers are invited to join Conference Chair Tom Wong and a team of Dreamforce insiders and alumni for a personal welcome. Learn how to get the most out of Dreamforce.
Location: Room 134, Moscone North

Welcome reception (6:00 - 8:00 p.m.)
Greet old pals and make new friends while checking out the latest gee-whiz technology from more than 250 companies.
Location: Cloud Expo, Hall D on the exhibit level of Moscone North

Run in the Cloud: 5k fun run (6:45 - 7:30 a.m., Wednesday)
Have shoes, will travel. Pavement pounders are invited to join co-sponsors Accenture and Salesforce.com Alliances for a 5k fun run at 6:45 Wednesday morning. Pre-register in the lobby of the Marriot Marquis at 55 4th Street.

DON'T MISS
The Custom Cloud in the Salesforce.com Campground
Whether you're a seasoned Force.com developer or brand-new to our cloud platform, be sure to stop by the Custom Cloud section of the Salesforce.com Campground.

Build an app on the spot. Work with a salesforce.com app expert to learn how to architect, then build an application. Your app expert will give you a great formula for how to get started, including suggested next steps. This is a great opportunity to ask questions and see demos, all tailored to your company's needs. Take advantage while you can!

Get 100 free users. Build and run your first custom app for FREE! Head to the Campground for your gift card for 100 free users.
Location: Salesforce.com Campground in the Cloud Expo, Hall D on the exhibit level of Moscone North

Cloud Trivia Live!
Test your salesforce.com knowledge in our trivia game show, and you could win prizes such as iPods, bicycles, music, or a MacBook Air. Ready to play? Watch for questions on the Dreamforce Twitter feed (www.twitter.com/dreamforce) on Wednesday and Thursday, or join us live in the Customer Hero Theatre to play the game or sit back and watch the action.
Location: Salesforce.com Campground in the Cloud Expo, Hall D on the exhibit level of Moscone North

AND FINALLY…
Have fun! Get out there and explore the sessions, meet people, get your questions answered, and enjoy your time at Dreamforce.

Say Hello to Rackspace Cloud Drive & Rackspace Server Backup

Cameron Nouri — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:57:55 -0800

Every day, Rackspace customers experience the benefits of having their IT in the cloud. By entrusting their IT to our team of experts, our customers are able to focus on their core business, instead of being distracted by IT headaches. We love hearing from our customers and how happy they are with us and our Fanatical Support®.

So, we’re particularly excited to announce the launch of two new Apps designed to help businesses work even more efficiently. With Rackspace Cloud Drive and Rackspace Server Backup, businesses can now organize, backup, and share their files in the cloud—securely, and backed by our 24×7x365 Fanatical Support. Here are the details:

Rackspace Cloud Drive is essentially an online hard drive—a hard drive that is in the cloud. Your Cloud Drive allows you to access and store files online, via a network drive on your computer. It works across Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems without any additional hardware. Yet the Cloud Drive offers more than just online file storage, online file backup, and online file sharing—with Rackspace Cloud Drive, you get access to powerful features that help you take advantage of the cloud:

Store and share files between other employees and/or team members
Synchronize folders across one or more computers
Use Rackspace Team Sync to ensure that team members are always working with the most recent version of a file
Set up automatic backups of your data to the Rackspace Cloud and easily restore that data in the event of a hardware failure
Secure your data with built-in AES-256 encryption, using a key controlled by the user

Get Rackspace Cloud Drive for $4/user/month, which includes 10 GB of storage space in the cloud. If you are a current customer, you can have your administrator add users via the Upgrade section in the Control Panel. If you are not a customer yet, you can learn more and sign up online.

Rackspace Server Backup enables you to automatically backup your Windows or Linux based server data to the cloud. Chances are, if you have a server in your closet, you also have backups running on that server already, most likely with a tape backup. Every few days or couple of weeks you have to go into the server closet and switch out the old tape for a new tape. Sound familiar? It can be a painful, manual process.

Using Rackspace Server Backup, you can toss all those tapes out and not have to worry about your server backups or data backup software anymore.

You can get Rackspace Server Backup for $5/server/month, which includes 10GB of storage space in the cloud. If you are a current customer, you can have your administrator add Rackspace Server Backup licenses via the Upgrade section in the Control Panel. If you are not a customer yet, you can learn more and sign up online.

Adding Advanced Drag and Drop Gantt Chart Timelines to QuickBase

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:45:07 -0800

How to add Dynamic Gantt Charts to QuickBase will be shown today at 2pm Eastern time when Don Larson of MCF Tech shows their enhanced charting product.

As you drag a timeline and link it to another task, data is updated automatically and reports are reconfigured on the fly.

Who: Open to All
What: Don Larson from MCF showing Advanced Gantt Charting for QuickBase
When: 2pm Eastern time today, 11/17
Where: Online via WebEx
How: Register at: http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/register/965033785

MCF Technologies is a Certified QuickBase Solution Provider and is based in Cleveland, Ohio. http://mcftech.com.

Label Enhancements & Contextual Options in Zoho Mail

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:22:35 -0800

Our Zoho Mail team recently added a couple of new features to the Mail app. Improvements to labels and contextual options for your folders. Let's take a look.

Labels Specific to Email Accounts

You may know that Zoho Mail supports multiple email accounts. This means, apart from your zoho.com email account, you can use Zoho Mail to fetch your emails from external POP accounts. By default, Zoho Mail lets you maintain a different folder structure for each of your mail accounts providing you a better way to manage your mail accounts.

Along with Folders, Zoho Mail also supports Labels, for those who prefer organizing their mail boxes using labels. But previously, Labels were common across all mail accounts. This is no longer the case. With the recent update, you can create Labels specific to your mail account.

To create/modify/delete labels for a specific mail account, select the mail account, go to Settings > Personalize > Labels.

Contextual Right Click Options

Do you know that you can right click on mail folders in Zoho Mail? We have a contextual menu offering folder-specific actions. If you right-click on a folder, you'll typically see options to create sub-folders, Mark Folder as Read, Rename, Delete, Archive etc. Apart from these standard options, you'll also notice an additional contextual option.

When you right click on 'Outbox' for example, you'll see the 'Send Immediately' option to send mails immediately without holding them in the Outbox temporarily. Similarly, right-clicking on Draft, Spam or Trash folders offers an 'Empty Folder' option.

Apart from the features mentioned here, we did add a few other features. We will let you discover these new goodies. If you do, drop us a comment.

Core Contributors at WordCamp NYC

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:14:57 -0800

WordCamp NYC was last weekend, and it was crazy awesome to have so many WordPress users and developers together in one place (final numbers to come, but looks like over 700). One of my favorite moments was right at the end, when someone suggested getting a picture of the core contributors (I’d asked them all to stand so people could applaud them when we were doing the closing remarks). Some of them were camera shy and kept out of the happysnap, but here’s a handful of the people who make WordPress what it is.

From left: Matt Martz (sivel), Jeremy Clarke, Shane Froebel (^BuGs^), Jane Wells, Matt Mullenweg, Mark Jaquith, Beau Lebens, Andy Peatling, John James Jacoby (jjj).
Photo by Chris Cochran.

Central Desktop Integrates Zoho Sheet

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:08:06 -0800

Online Project Collaboration application vendor Central Desktop integrated Zoho Sheet into their application using our Remote APIs. Zoho Sheet is integrated contextually within their application letting users view/edit spreadsheets and save them back to Central Desktop's storage.

This integration brings in all the goodies from Zoho Sheet into Central Desktop's application. This integration went live this weekend replacing EditGrid's spreadsheet application. Additional details about this integration are available here.

Zoho's unique APIs makes it easy for applications to integrate our office apps contextually to enhance their functionality and provide seamless experience. Central Desktop's integration is another such example. We'd like to thank our friends at Central Desktop for integrating our app. We are looking forward to a productive partnership.

Related Link

Zoho API Partners

8 Reasons to Get Excited About Dreamforce – Reason #1

Gordon Evans — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:14:34 -0800

Dreamforce is coming... in a matter of days, we’ll all be living the dream. Are you ready? We’re here to help. Check back each business day for a preview of conference activities, so you can start planning your Dreamforce agenda today.

8 REASONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT DREAMFORCE

Reason #1: Keynotes

Kick off your Dreamforce experience with inspiring speeches from salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff, General Colin L. Powell (Ret.), and more. You won't want to miss a word.

Dreamforce Opening Keynote with Marc Benioff & Special Guests
Wednesday, November 18
9:00–11:00 a.m.
South Hall C
Make sure you're in the room for the opening keynote when Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff reveals the latest news from salesforce.com. Don't miss the announcement everyone will be buzzing about!

General Session: The Force.com Cloud Platform
Thursday, November 19
9:00–11:00 a.m.
South Hall C
The Force.com cloud platform is the fastest way to build apps in the cloud. It’s five times faster and half the cost of traditional platforms. Join Marc Benioff for new platform and infrastructure innovations that will change the way you think about the possibilities of platform as a service.

General Session: Leadership in the New Era of Collaboration
Thursday, November 19
4:15–5:45 p.m.
South Hall C
General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.) takes the stage for an encore appearance at Dreamforce. Join him as he discusses the challenges to leadership we all face in the new era of real-time collaboration. Discover how to apply his principles of leadership to make a difference in your world.

Get ready...

See you at Dreamforce!

Missed a day? See the other reasons not to miss Dreamforce:
#8 - Pre-conference training and hands-on sessions (Thursday, Nov. 5)
#7 - Salesforce.com Campground (Friday, Nov. 6)
#6 - Force.com Zone (Monday, Nov. 9)
#5 - Cloud Expo (Tuesday, Nov. 10)
#4 - Breakout sessions (Wednesday, Nov. 11)
#3 - Networking opportunities (Thursday, Nov. 12)
#2 - Healthy planet, healthy people (Friday, Nov. 13)
#1 - Keynotes (today's post)

Dreamforce begins tomorrow! Check this blog each morning of the conference for our daily Dreamforce blog post.

"Looking Good and Walking the Walk" with E-Signatures

echojason — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:19:14 -0800

We're always pleased when thought leaders reach out to us. Dean Holmes, Social Media Strategist with over 14,000 followers on Twitter and 10,000 members on LinkedIn (and a 2 year EchoSign veteran), recently reached out to us to tell us how EchoSign had added value to his practice:

Workflow Challenge
“My challenge is all about speed and efficiency”, says Dean Holmes. “For me, time is money so I need to make the most of it.” As a leading online strategist, Dean Holmes is always looking for technologies that can help both his business and his clients. Dean was using eFax to get non-disclosure agreements and customer agreements signed and it wasn’t efficient enough. “I still had to go through a manual process and faxes are cumbersome and inefficient.” In addition, even with eFax it took 2-3 days to get contracts signed so Dean searched for a better way.
EchoSign Solution
Dean Holmes has been using EchoSign for about two years. He landed a client in Australia, used EchoSign to send the contract, and is now turning his client onto EchoSign.
Results
Dean has found that with EchoSign his contracts are returned within hours. “In addition to more efficiency, the ‘coolness’ factor of signing something online is key for me. It makes me look good to my clients and shows that I walk the walk.”
Faxes are a thing of the past. With EchoSign it’s won and done!
— Dean Holmes

Looking good to your customers. It's critical. If you are in technology -- which is now the single largest segment of the U.S. economy -- you need to be signing your customers and closing them on the web. Practice what you preach. As Dean notes, "walk the walk". Fax just ... doesn't quite cut it anymore.

Rackspace Email: New Features in Webmail

Manny DeJesus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:41:32 -0800

Some Rackspace Webmail releases have themes or a singular focus. For example, this past summer we worked on significant speed improvements and had a “Speed Release.”

Other times we release a list of features that are a) requested by customers, b) overdue and/or c) just pretty damn cool…

Our latest release was the latter. Here are the highlights:

Compose Window Pop-In
Speed is critical in web-based apps and Compose/Send is critical in email clients. So creating an improved and faster way of sending emails was a no-brainer. For users who love the flexibility of a pop-up compose window, but have been slaves to browser rendering, this pop-in is definitely for you. Give it a try.

Improved Address Auto-Complete
The auto-complete function for addressing emails is bigger, faster and smarter. It can store an unlimited amount of contacts and even remembers addresses not stored in your Contacts List. It also prioritizes the recipients you email a lot – over those you don’t.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Enable keyboard shortcuts in your Webmail Settings and never use your mouse again! Well, maybe not never, but Keyboard Shortcuts do allow you to perform many popular email actions from the keyboard alone.

“No Attachment” and “No Subject” Alerts
This new feature automatically detects a variation of the word “attachment” in your email and alerts you if no file is attached. Similarly for the Subject; an empty Subject field will prompt an alert. Both features can be toggled on/off in Webmail Settings.

Right-Click to Create Email Filters
Quickly create email filters right from your inbox. Simply right-click on a message to bring up the “Add New Filter” menu.

Invites can Send to Groups
A life-saver for all you project manager-types… Create a Group within Contacts that you consistently schedule meetings with (say “Developers”) and simply send an invite to that Group for future pow-wows.

Do you have a Webmail Idea?
Check out our Rackspace Webmail BETA to submit any and all feedback you may have… in addition to previewing new features before they’re released.

Log-in today: https://apps.rackspace.com/beta

Open Sourcing the Playbook for Blue Ocean Marketing

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:40:27 -0800

They’re Isnt a Chance Id Get it Wrong

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:26:08 -0800

I am a professional writer. Occasionally, I click send on an email only to glance at it again and release a long, horrible, Skywalker-esque “noooooooooooooooo!’

I’ve missed an apostrophe.

Luckily, thanks to the flowchart created over at the Oatmeal, this ghastly happenstance need never occur again.

click image to see full flowchart

This is just a segment of the full flowchart. If you have a lot of trouble with rules like this, or teach English to the apostrophatically challenged, they also make a poster.

This flowchart is an interesting variant on the standard form. It blends the usual bubble/arrow layout with more extensive copy. In this case, I’d say their format works well. The flowchart is easy to read, graphically engaging and plenty useful. Kudos Oatmeal.

Site tags dashlet improvements

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:53:48 -0800

If you attended one of the recent Meetups in Europe of the US you may have caught us using the site tags dashlet as an example of how to develop a custom dashlet for Alfresco Share. Mike Hatfield did a great job of taking my original code and re-working it to shift most of the logic [...]

8 Reasons to Get Excited About Dreamforce – Reason #2

Gordon Evans — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:33:27 -0800

8 REASONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT DREAMFORCE

Reason #2: Healthy Planet, Healthy People

Healthy planet
Less paper, more biodegradable or sustainable materials, recycling stations, and encouraging public transportation... these are only a few of the ways that the Dreamforce team is working to minimize the environmental impact of Dreamforce.

We’d love for you to help! Take advantage of recycling and composting stations throughout the conference center, and quench your thirst at a water station—no need for plastic bottles. If you ride your bike, we’ve got valet bike parking. Plus, bikers and public transportation commuters can enter to win a hot new bike. Find out how we can work together towards sustainability.

Healthy people
We want you to feel good and stay healthy at Dreamforce and beyond. To help prevent H1N1 flu (swine flu), remember to wash your hands often, use tissues to cover coughs and sneezes, and don't touch your eyes, nose, and mouth. For more details on H1N1 flu prevention, visit the CDC's Web site.

Run in the cloud
Join us (early) Wednesday, November 18 at 6:45 a.m. for a 5k Fun Run, co-sponsored by Salesforce.com Alliances and Accenture. Register in the lobby of the Marriot Marquis, right across from the Moscone Center at 55 4th Street and get your blood pumping!

Get Ready...
Log in to the Attendee Portal, where you can explore conference activities and create your personal schedule.

See you at Dreamforce!

Missed a day? See the other reasons not to miss Dreamforce:
#8 - Pre-conference training and hands-on sessions (Thursday, Nov. 5)
#7 - Salesforce.com Campground (Friday, Nov. 6)
#6 - Force.com Zone (Monday, Nov. 9)
#5 - Cloud Expo (Tuesday, Nov. 10)
#4 - Breakout sessions (Wednesday, Nov. 11)
#3 - Networking opportunities (Thursday, Nov. 11)
#2 - Healthy planet, healthy people (today's post)
#1 - Keynotes (Monday, Nov. 15)

Dreamforce begins Tuesday, Nov. 16. Check this blog each morning of the conference for our daily Dreamforce blog post.

Agile development with Kanban: XING reveals all at the w-jax’09 in Munich

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:46:43 -0800

Susanne Reppin (left) and Dr. Johannes Mainusch on the wjax stage.

Just how agile is XING? How agilely do we feel? At this year’s w-jax 09, Johannes Mainusch and myself talked openly about the XING culture, what kind of people we are, what we’re aiming for and what’s important to us. XING releases weekly updates on the platform, innovating therefore all the time during ongoing operation of the platform. We don’t want to have to put a halt to anything, and not when it comes to agile software development either.

XING already develops projects effectively using Scrum (see also Scrum @ XING – a case study). Alongside this, we’ve been working for nine months to put Kanban in place for one our maintenance teams – as both a methodology and philosophy. The initial idea for this came from Ralf Wirdemann, who’s an agile coach. Selecting Kanban fits in with our belief in agile and lean software development and to drive this forward in the future.

People took a great interest in our speech (here’s the slideshare and our PDF with notes, both in German). We explained why Scrum is so well-suited to our project work, as it protects the team from disruptions during the sprints – but that precisely this protection is contra-productive when applied to a team operating in close interplay with live operation of the platform. Kanban is considerably better suited to integrating disruptions – which bugs are after all – in an ad hoc way, and is therefore ideal for a maintenance team.

One of the major success factors here is of course the team itself. All team members were already experienced in agile development and wanted to learn more in a professional context. After about six weeks we were all surprised at how much more effectively and fast we could now go about our daily work.

Please note: The full talk held at the w-jax 2009 in Munich will be published in the next few weeks by w-jax.

Join the Data Visualization Contest and Win an iPod

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:55:56 -0800

Chandoo writes a very interesting blog offering tips about how to make the best use of Microsoft Excel and to chart data in general. And he announced a data visualization contest yesterday. Contestants have to map the sales data of a fictional company using any software. The charts or dashboards created should help a senior manager understand how the sales people have done in the past 24 months. The winner gets an iPod Touch 8 GB. Cool, right?

Since Chandoo announced the contest is open for sponsors, we asked him if Zoho can be the sponsor. He immediately accepted. So, Zoho Reports is sponsoring this contest and we encourage all Zoho users and readers of this blog to participate in it.

Here's the details about the contest. If you are comfortable using spreadsheets, this should be easy for you. Try using Zoho Reports for the task and see how different/easy the charting experience is when compared to using Microsoft Excel. You can also try using our online spreadsheet tool, Zoho Sheet.

Your comments welcome on how you charted the data, the approaches you followed, the software you used etc.

Does your company deliver great service? We want to recognize you!

Cameron Nouri — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:24:12 -0800

Here at Rackspace, we’ve built a reputation based on service, known to our customers as Fanatical Support®, our anytime, anywhere, any way approach to customer service. And we know we’re not the only ones who put customer needs first. That’s why we created The FANATI in 2007 to recognize one of our customers for valuing customer service as much as we do.

For three years now, Rackspace has awarded The FANATI to the one customer who best demonstrates ‘Fanatical Support’ when it comes to their customers. And this year is no different.

We are now accepting applications for the 2009 FANATI® Award for Outstanding Customer Service.

This year we are introducing a new formation for the application. No longer is it just a written application answering a bunch of questions. This year we want to make it personal and with a touch of creativity. That is why we are only accepting video applications! All our customers need to do is create a short (less than five minutes) video explaining what they do and how they exemplify outstanding customer service. It should be interesting none the less.

So if you’re a customer, and you think your customer service is pretty good…award winning even…then we would love to hear from you.

You can learn more and apply for The FANATI through our online application.

Have any questions? Leave us a comment below with your question and we’ll be sure to answer them.

IdeaExchange Site Down for Maintenance until Mon 11/16

marilynl — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:53:18 -0800

IdeaExchange Users,

The IdeaExchange site will be down for maintenance starting tonight and will be back up on Monday, November 16. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you have any questions, please contact us at ideaexchange@salesforce.com

~IdeaExchange Program Manager

False alarm with outdated virus scanner: An update will help

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:24:02 -0800

Just to make it perfectly clear from the outset: There is no virus on the XING platform, nor is there any code that might be damaging to your computer. Under certain – very specific – circumstances, you might find though that your virus scanner sets off a false alarm if it hasn’t been updated for a long time.

The reason: A module we have developed ourselves that serves to load files in a browser once the page itself has already been loaded. This is useful because it means we don’t have to send all functionalities and graphics that might possibly be used through the network at once for every page accessed, which saves you a lot of time waiting for pages to load. If you then decide to use a feature or function that isn’t yet loaded – such as the photo upload in your profile, this small additional feature can then be loaded separately.

The browser feature that our module accesses posed a security loopholes in earlier versions of Internet Explorer. You can read more about this here: Microsoft Internet Explorer onreadystatechange Memory Corruption Vulnerability.

The good news is that Microsoft solved this problem in their own browser some time ago. (It might be worth you visiting windowsupdate.com to make sure your operating system and Internet Explorer are both fully up-to-date.)

If you use an outdated version of the virus scanner F-Secure though, which has not received an update since the removal of the security loophole in Internet Explorer, it will show you a false alarm if you use the Microsoft browser.

Björn Kaiser, one of our software experts, had this to say about the matter: “We did everything in our power here to make sure we avoided any major difficulties here. Even though it wasn’t a security breach at all, we still didn’t want to unsettle our users with nonsensical warning messages from a virus scanner that wasn’t updated. He spent three days trying to pinpoint the exact source of the problem, combing through 60,000 lines of Javascript code to locate the one line that triggers the warning message. One harmless line, lots of work! Thanks to my colleague Ingo as well for all the great debugging he did …”

Doing without onreadystatechange was out of the question. This would have meant that certain modules wouldn’t work at all anymore. The solution our developers came up with was relatively simple in comparison: Thanks to

var handler = ["onr", "eadystatec", "hange"].join(”");

the virus scanner no longer recognizes the supposedly bad “onreadystatechange“. The string function join enables the components to be brought together and implemented though – without triggering the false alarm.

There was of course no danger to your data or computer at any point in time here. We contacted the manufacturer too to make sure that this was in fact a case of a false alarm.

Having said this you should make it a top priority, in your own interests, to update your virus scanner to the latest standards. At the same time we’ll continue to do everything to ensure the most secure networking possible on our platform, without any unnecessary warning messages.

Rackspace Listens!…no really, we’re serious

Michael Ferranti — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:16:34 -0800

We’ve got a Nintendo Wii in the break room here at the Rackspace Blacksburg, VA office. We’ve even got a wicked ax for rocking out to Guitar Hero. But the reason that everyone was gathered in there yesterday was to watch our CEO, Lanham Napier, on Fox Business News. He told the Rackspace story to thousands of viewers. He told people what a ‘Racker’ is. He got called a ‘Gutsy Texan’ by Liz Claman. It was a great interview.

One point that he made several times was that Rackspace is different from the competition like Google because of our Fanatical Support. We don’t just provide commodity apps, we partner with businesses to run their IT so they can save money and work smarter.

Part of what all that means is that we actually listen to customers. If you fill out a survey to help us learn how we can better meet your needs, we actually review your feedback.

I read over a really great survey from a customer yesterday. His company is growing rapidly. They provide a free innovative budgeting tool called BudgetSketch. Long story short, BudgetSketch got mentioned on the popular personal productivity site Lifehacker.com and when a lot of customers signed up they exceeded their daily Gmail email limit.

When I read about this, and about how happy this customer was with his new Rackspace Email service (set up at 2am by our transition team, by the way), I wrote him a note saying how happy we were that his site was succeeding and offered to chat if there was anything else we could do to help him succeed as BudgetSketch keeps growing.

Here’s how that customer responded:

Hello Michael,

It is always refreshing when a company takes time to follow-up with something more than a form letter. That’s our philosophy too. We personally respond to every feedback submission we receive. Clearly you took the time to read my survey submission and it is clear that your intent is to help us grow BudgetSketch. We appreciate that very much also.

…….

Thanks again for your follow-up. You guys are doing a lot of things right and we appreciate your efforts very much.

Keep up the great work,

Bill Barnett
Vice President – Finagilous LLC

This is what real partnerships look like. We want our customers to succeed and we listen when they tell us something…good or bad. To Bill and all the customers who have responded to our surveys, Thank You. We’ve heard you and are doing our best to help your business grow. If there’s anything else we can do, please let us know.

8 Reasons to Get Excited About Dreamforce – Reason #3

Gordon Evans — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:56:42 -0800

8 REASONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT DREAMFORCE
Reason #3: Networking Opportunities
So the morning sessions are drawing to a close and your stomach’s growling. What to do? Honestly, we can’t think of a better place to satisfy your hunger than the Birds-of-a-Feather roundtable lunches.

Here you can network with folks who share many of the same challenges and triumphs you face—even the same job. Wednesday’s lunch is organized by role. So you can rub elbows with your fellow admins, developers, or execs in sales, marketing, service, and IT. At Thursday’s lunch you can swap stories and business cards with people working in your industry.

In addition to lunch, there are networking opportunities galore throughout the conference—beginning with the Welcome Reception Tuesday night and continuing through Thursday’s infamous Cloud Crawl.

Be sure not to miss Wednesday’s Global Gala; this is the party that's guaranteed to have everyone buzzing in the morning. This year's private concert features the Black Crowes, so get ready to shake your moneymaker.

Get ready...

Missed a day? See the other reasons not to miss Dreamforce:
#8 - Pre-conference training and hands-on sessions (Thursday, Nov. 5)
#7 - Salesforce.com Campground (Friday, Nov. 6)
#6 - Force.com Zone (Monday, Nov. 9)
#5 - Cloud Expo (Tuesday, Nov. 10)
#4 - Breakout sessions (Wednesday, Nov. 11)
#3 - Networking opportunities (today's post)
#2 - Healthy planet, healthy people (Friday, Nov. 13)
#1 - Keynotes (Monday, Nov. 15)

Dreamforce begins Tuesday, Nov. 16. Check this blog each morning of the conference for our daily Dreamforce blog post.

Gliffy Original: How to Buy a Television

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:44:31 -0800

So you need a new television? No problem! Just go down to the local electronics shop, choose one impulsively and then spend the rest of the year with buyer’s remorse.

Or maybe that doesn’t sound like a good plan to you?

Another option, then, is to do what I did; spend most of a month reading articles on CNET about subjects as fascinating as aspect ratios and up-conversions, plow through reviews of TV models that are no longer available, and cruise bargain websites obsessively trying to find a deal good enough to spur you into action.

Then, of course, once you remember to factor in shipping costs you’ll end up at Best Buy, being stared down by a wall of televisions. That’s the worst part. Those TVs sing an enchanting song. You will have no choice but to take the most expensive one home, regardless of your budget.

Fun!

Honestly, buying a new television is intimidating. HDMI, LCD, HDTV, PiP, Hz, ms, 1080p / 1080i / 720p yadda yadda yadda… head explode!!!

Luckily for you, I’ve made a flowchart to help simplify the television buying process. I’m not an expert, but this chart does capture the insights I gained through my own extensive research. It is, uh, a little long.

click image to see full size flowchart

Yeah. I told you it wasn’t easy choosing a television!

For the record, I bought a Samsung LN32B460, which is a 32″ 720p LCD HDTV with 3 HDMI ports. I mostly use it to watch stuff off my computer and it looks great, much better than I expected. I don’t at all miss having 1080p or some fancy anti-judder fooferaw. 32″ is, if anything, bigger than I need and I’ve got a decently sized living room. I bought it from one of the only non-Best Buy electronics shops left in San Francisco and got a deal that was good enough.

I hope your TV buying process is shorter, less painful, and as finally successful as mine! And I hope this flowchart helps!

Confluence Plugin 2.0.2 released!

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:50:02 -0800

Today we released the Gliffy Confluence Plugin version 2.0.2. This release includes nearly 20 bug fixes and improvements related to the Confluence integration. Download the latest version of the Gliffy Confluence Plugin here. Three major highlights of this release include:

Confluence 3.1 compatibility – Atlassian hasn’t released Confluence 3.1 yet, but that hasn’t stopped us from making sure Gliffy works with this new version. If you’re planning on using Gliffy in Confluence 3.1, you need to upgrade to the Gliffy Confluence Plugin version 2.0.2 to ensure everything works smoothly.
Improved workflow when adding diagrams – We’ve reduced the number of clicks by one when adding a new diagram through the ‘Add Diagram’ link.
License Expiration Notifications – Administrators of your Confluence installation will now be notified when your Gliffy Confluence Plugin license has 30 days left before it expires. This should help ensure customers don’t get stuck unable to upgrade to a new version of Gliffy by accidentally letting their maintenance period slip by.

This will be our last Flash 7 compatible release -This will likely be our last release that includes a Gliffy Editor that works with Flash 7. Our next release will require that users are running Flash 9 or better. Buy adopting Flash 9, our users will see a significant performance improvement when using the Gliffy editor, and we’ll be able to take advantage of some new features in Flash 9 that will benefit everyone. We decided not to jump to Flash 10 since the most recent Flash Enterprise Penetration Statistics from Adobe suggest that Flash 10 is not widely deployed inside the Enterprise yet.

Detailed release notes for the Gliffy Confluence Plugin 2.0.2 are below:

[GLIFFY-1360] – Editing diagrams not working anymore after updating to gliffy version 2.0.0
[GLIFFY-1454] – The create diagram button text spills over the button on Firefox 3.0/3.5 on Mac
[GLIFFY-1528] – Confluence 3.1 compatibility
[GLIFFY-1612] – Document Manager does not show spaces in Confluence 3.1-m4 release
[GLIFFY-1613] – Remove Pencil icon from Gliffy Plugin Admin link
[GLIFFY-1614] – Creating diagram doesn’t work when confluence isn’t hosted at root context
[GLIFFY-1660] – URL field is truncating/deleting characters
[GLIFFY-1067] – Improve integration with Confluence
[GLIFFY-1441] – Links truncated / limit at 100, previusly at least 117 allowed
[GLIFFY-1521] – Change ‘Add Diagram’ link to show ‘Add Gliffy Diagram’
[GLIFFY-1672] – Copying Confluence Pages causes user confusion when they then edit diagrams
[GLIFFY-1415] – When there are only 5 days left in a plugin free trial, send an email to Administrators letting them know
[GLIFFY-1416] – Automated emails from Confluence plugins to administrators
[GLIFFY-1427] – Admin screen should report the number of Gliffy diagrams that exist in Confluence
[GLIFFY-1339] – Let users know that the Gliffy Plugin Trial is about to expire in more locations
[GLIFFY-1419] – i18n updates for 2.0.2 release
[GLIFFY-1560] – Change references to http://www.gliffy.com/confluencePlugin to http://www.gliffy.com/confluence-plugin

WordPress 2.8.6 Security Release

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:17:20 -0800

2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges. If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.

The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch. The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations. Thanks to Benjamin and Dawid for finding and reporting these.

Get WordPress 2.8.6.

I Knew I Should Have Taken That Left at Albuquerque

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:12:42 -0800

flow chart also flow·chart (flchärt)n. A schematic representation of a sequence of operations, as in a manufacturing process or computer program

That’s according to the Free Dictionary.

And if we accept that definition (as we do) the only thing keeping this most-excellent map from being a flowchart is sequence.

This beautiful translation of the Eisenhower Interstate System into “London Tube” map style was done by Flick’r member Senex Prime. You really need to click through to the large version to appreciate it’s majesty.

It isn’t a flowchart though. It’s a map. If it had directionality built in, then it would qualify. It’s really too bad, since there’s no possible way I could post it on this blog unless it’s a flowchart…

Perhaps if we say this map was designed to get me from Boston to San Francisco? We could overlay a few arrows, highlight one preferred route?

Whatever. One must accept life as it presents itself.

I wanted to share it here because it is such a beautiful design (based on the work of H. C. Beck, who did the London Underground map). It’s visually pleasing and wholly useful. How many things can you say that about? Excellent work Senex Prime!

As Senex says on his Flick’r page:

“I have rendered the Interstate system in a much simpler form. I have made the “major” highways (those divisible by 5) the framework of the map, with the “minor” highways reduced in importance and rendered as thinner grey lines. Even with these highways, a difference in the greys indicates whether they are even-numbered (west-east) or odd-numbered (north-south). Dots on the highways indicate interchanges: large dots where major highways meet other major highways, smaller dots where major meets minor and tiny dots where minor highways begin or end. A full key at the bottom indicates clearly where each highway begins and ends.”

Honestly, I can imagine traversing the country with nothing more than this map and I’ve driven back and forth three times.

Top Five Alfresco Roadmap Takeaways

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:58:34 -0800

Now that the last of the Alfresco Fall meetups has concluded in the US, I thought I’d summarize my takeaways. Overall I thought the events were really good. The informative sessions were well-attended. Everyone I talked to was glad they came and left with multiple useful takeaways. Everyone has their own criteria for usefulness–for these events [...]

Chicago Workshop on December 8th

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:49:57 -0800

A short while ago we announced we’d be bringing our How to Build a Web App Business workshop to Boston, Vancouver and Chicago in the coming months. Many of you have been asking about dates, times and places and we’re really excited to let you know our itinerary is in place!

We announced our November 12 workshop in Boston a couple weeks ago and our November 25 Vancouver workshop earlier this week. We’re rounding out our 2009 roadshow in Chicago and still taking your votes for 2010!

Our Chicago workshop will be on Tuesday, December 08 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at MacHero HQ (1307 W. Hollywood Ave.). Seating is limited to 40 people and the cost is $100 per person. Register now!

Mike will address many of the questions you have as entrepreneurs through topics such as:

Building – your web app, your company, your team
Marketing – with and without dollars
Product management – so you know what’s right to build
Metrics – to track your progress
Financing – the who, what, when, where, why and how 5Ws of fund raising

There’s a guaranteed a spot for anyone travelling such great distances to get the goods.

Once again, the details (in short form) are:

What: How to Build a Web App Business workshop lead by FreshBooks’ CEO Mike McDerment
Where: MacHero HQ (1307 W. Hollywood Ave., Chicago, IL)
When: Tuesday, December 08, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
How much: $100 per person
Register here!

Big thanks to Gino from MacHero for sharing his offices for the day!

Leave a comment or drop me a note at rayanne [at] freshbooks.com if you have any questions you want Mike to address.

It’s not too late if you want us to take the workshop to your town. vote here! Tell us where we should go next!

Zoho Projects : Task Details and Overdue Milestones View

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:56:22 -0800

We wanted to let you know about two feature enhancements done during the recent update of Zoho Projects.

1. Task Details View

Until recently, in Tasks & Milestones, you needed to dig deep to add notes, log hours or associate documents to a task. If you have a task for which you may need to frequently do these operations, then it makes sense to have all these options accessible easily. Hence we've introduced the Task Details page where you can add notes, associate docs, log time for a task - all from a single place.

To view the task details page :

1. Go to Tasks and Milestones tab
2. Click on the particular task to display the task details page

Here's a sample screenshot:

Apart from this, you can also set status, priority, percentage completed for a task. You can also take a print out of the entire task details page.

2. Overdue Milestones View

Now, you can see overdue milestones of your project from two different places

a. In My Home

b. From Project Dashboard

Check out these new feature enhancements in Zoho Projects and let us know your feedback at support@zohoprojects.com

Watch out for the much awaited feature coming up next week. Stay Tuned !

8 Reasons to Get Excited About Dreamforce – Reason #4

Gordon Evans — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:34:05 -0800

Reason #4: Breakout Sessions

With 300+ expert-led sessions at Dreamforce, your biggest dilemma may be choosing which ones to go to. Dreamforce sessions, which are frequently led by successful salesforce.com customers, offer a mix of best practices, how-tos, expert panels, vertical case studies, product roadmaps, and much more.

The agenda builder in the Attendee Portal is the best way to narrow in on the perfect sessions for you. Search the database by track, experience level, date, and/or keyword. Don't forget to browse our highlighted sessions, and add the sessions you want to attend to your personal calendar, which you can email or print to have with you at Dreamforce.

Can’t get enough of the breakout sessions? Come to Dreamforce early for more in-depth training opportunities. Get class details, pricing, and registration information for our hands-on training sessions and certification exams.

Give Forward @ Dreamforce

Dreamforce is the perfect catalyst for bringing salesforce.com experts and nonprofit organizations together through pro bono volunteerism. To learn more or sign up to help, visit the Give Forward Web site.

Missed a day? See the other reasons not to miss Dreamforce:
#8 - Pre-conference training and hands-on sessions (Thursday, Nov. 5)
#7 - Salesforce.com Campground (Friday, Nov. 6)
#6 - Force.com Zone (Monday, Nov. 9)
#5 - Cloud Expo (Tuesday, Nov. 10)
#4 - Breakout sessions (today's post)
#3 - Networking opportunities (Thursday, Nov. 12)
#2 - Healthy planet, healthy people (Friday, Nov. 13)
#1 - Keynotes (Monday, Nov. 15)

Dreamforce begins Tuesday, Nov. 16. Check this blog each morning of the conference for our daily Dreamforce blog post.

Movie Madness

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:12:04 -0800

Yeah, Randall Munroe at xkcd has done it again. This time his webcomic features a quintet of flowcharts tracking the character paths in popular films: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, 12 Angry Men, and Primer.

You really need to see it in full-size to appreciate the work — and the humor — so click through and bask in the genius of xkcd.

XING turns 6: Make sure you’re in with a chance of winning great prizes!

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:32:00 -0800

Have you taken part in our birthday sweepstake yet?

All you have to do is visit our sweepstake page and answer the question “What is a XING application?” to be in with a chance of winning one of 72 fantastic prizes.

We’re giving away a MacBook Air, a Jura automatic coffee machine, BlackBerry smartphones, iPod shuffles and 12-month XING Premium Memberships.

And there’s more – If you upgrade to Premium now you’ll also cash in on our special birthday offer:

Become a Premium Member by November 24 and you will receive one additional month of Premium Membership for free – whichever upgrade package you choose!

Check out the offer now

Desktop to Web in One Click

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:57:48 -0800

We’ve been pretty busy the past week sorting through Maven, Surf, Web Scripts and our Spring Integration development tools. Look for some pretty big things to be announced by the end of the month. In addition to Spring Roo command-line driven tools and STS integration, we’ll also have some really good Maven integration thanks to [...]

8 Reasons to Get Excited About Dreamforce – Reason #5

Gordon Evans — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:40:12 -0800

8 REASONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT DREAMFORCE

Reason #5: The Cloud Expo

As the biggest cloud-computing event of the year, Dreamforce is the perfect opportunity to discover the latest cloud innovations. The Cloud Expo will be jam-packed with 250 salesforce.com partners showcasing 1,000+ solutions.

Be sure to budget plenty of time to explore the Expo. Because innovation like this comes together under one roof just once a year: only at Dreamforce.

Cloud Expo hours
Tuesday, Nov. 17 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 18 7:30 - 9:00 a.m.
11:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Thursday, Nov. 19 7:30 - 9:00 a.m.
11:00 a.m. - 4:15 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 20 7:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Get ready...

Create your plan of attack for the Cloud Expo before you even set foot in the conference center, so you have plenty of time to go deep with the companies and solutions that could have the greatest impact for your business. Log in to the Attendee Portal, where you can create a list of can't-miss booths in the Cloud Expo. And while you're in the portal, explore conference activities and create your personal schedule.

Invite a friend: free keynote and Expo pass

While you prepare to enjoy all the benefits of the Dreamforce experience, you may have friends or colleagues that aren't planning to attend. Now's their chance. While it's not the same as coming to the full conference, you can invite them to join you for the keynotes and the Cloud Expo, a $200 value, for FREE. Just tell your friends to register for the keynote and expo pass, and use this promo code: SUCCESS.

See you at Dreamforce!

Missed a day? See the other reasons not to miss Dreamforce:
#8 - Pre-conference training and hands-on sessions (Thursday, Nov. 5)
#7 - Salesforce.com Campground (Friday, Nov. 6)
#6 - Force.com Zone (Monday, Nov. 9)
#5 - Cloud Expo (today's post)
#4 - Breakout sessions (Wednesday, Nov. 11)
#3 - Networking opportunities (Thursday, Nov. 12)
#2 - Healthy planet, healthy people (Friday, Nov. 13)
#1 - Keynotes (Monday, Nov. 15)

Dreamforce begins Tuesday, Nov. 16. Check this blog each morning of the conference for our daily Dreamforce blog post.

Introducing… the Rackspace Rescue Plan for Zimbra Customers

Cameron Nouri — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:35:08 -0800

Recently it was reported that Yahoo is looking to sell Zimbra, a software development company focused on building open-source email and collaboration software—an attempt at a Microsoft Exchange alternative, if you will. Many look at this as a good move for Yahoo, as they look to focus on their core strategy as a media company.

But what does this mean for Zimbra’s 50 million users and customers? For those facing uncertainty, we’d like to offer some help. So today, we are introducing The Rackspace Rescue Plan for Zimbra customers, and we will be running with this until the fate of Zimbra is decided. We want to make it easy to move to Rackspace email services, for those who might be interested in moving off Zimbra’s platform.

Here’s what we are offering with our Rescue Plan:

Free Microsoft Exchange or Rackspace Email for three months
Free email migration performed by our migration experts
Fanatical Support® around the clock, as always

Interested in taking advantage of this opportunity? Give us a call, email us, or chat with us and let us know you’d like to take advantage of our Rescue Plan. We will walk you through all the steps to make this a painless transition and help you find some relief during this uncertain time.

The Fine Print

Rackspace will waive the monthly fee for three months for each Microsoft Exchange or Rackspace Email mailbox that is purchased as a part of this promotion. Customers will be asked to submit a form, along with proof that your domain was using Zimbra (i.e., a pdf/screenshot of a Zimbra account, a receipt or invoice for service). And of course, we reserve the right to end this promotion at any time.

Network with respect and care

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:30:18 -0800

A network such as XING, with millions of members around the world, is a bit like a microcosm of the larger society: nearly everything that happens “out there” also happens on our platform, both the good and the bad. That’s why on XING, as in the real world, you should always be attentive to what’s happening. We do our best to create a business network in which members can decide for themselves how much personal information they wish to share with other members, and that they act in an appropriate manner. If a member does not act appropriately, and we hear reports of T&C violations or breaches of netiquette or just good manners, we’re happy to help.

We’re aware that XING is not completely free of harassment, inappropriate remarks, spam, and other violations described above. Although we’re convinced that only a small portion of our members are confronted with these types of contact, we take such situations very seriously, and encourage anyone affected to inform us immediately.

Reporting objectionable contents or activities has nothing to do with being a “tattletale” or “stoolpigeon”, contrary to what is sometimes discussed in forums. In fact, the whole talk of “stoolies” or similar is a rather striking example of inverting the whole victim-perpetrator relationship, implying that by reporting offensive behavior, a victim becomes a perpetrator. The true perp is the person spamming or offending others, of course.

Respect and trust are the basis for everything else

Mutual respect and trust are the basis for every functioning society, and by proxy, every network. A person breaching netiquette by posting inappropriate content also destroys this trust, acts in a disrespectful manner, and lowers the value of a network for all members in it. We cannot, nor do we want to tolerate this type of behavior on our platform.

For this reason, we’re working on a solution so that members who are harassed or otherwise offended by content can let us know quickly and easily. In fact, in recent months we’ve made it easier to report inappropriate content to XING, for example, in contact requests and in the “Ask XING” app. The aim is clear: a trustworthy, safe, and respectful networking atmosphere now and in the future.

8 Reasons to Get Excited About Dreamforce – Reason #6

Gordon Evans — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:58:42 -0800

8 REASONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT DREAMFORCE

Reason #6: The Force.com Zone

Interested in learning Force.com development, architecture, and best practices from the very best? Come to the Force.com Zone to meet an army of technical evangelists, product managers, and top developer community members. Whether you're an admin looking to build your first app or a Force.com development guru, the Force.com Zone has what you need to get started building apps in the cloud:

- Technical Sessions: More than 50 sessions in 5 different tracks for all experience levels.

- Immersion Lab: Ready to roll up your sleeves and dive right in? Get started with newly updated tutorials for Force.com.

- Code Consultations: Want a private 1:1 with a Force.com expert to help architect or code your app? Sign up here!

- Partner Sessions: Learn how to build your business in the cloud with 10 sessions on business planning, fund-raising, distribution, and more.

- Force.com Developer Hackathon: Back by popular demand, this exciting code competition will challenge the best developers in the community to show what they're made of! All skill levels welcome.

And, if you need a quick break to refuel, catch the rolling candy cart for a sugar fix or visit the Stratus Cafe, sponsored by Adobe, to grab some coffee before planning your next app.

Get ready...

See you at Dreamforce!

Missed a day? See the other reasons not to miss Dreamforce:
#8 - Pre-conference training and hands-on sessions (Thursday, Nov. 5)
#7 - Salesforce.com Campground (Friday, Nov. 6)
#6 - Force.com Zone (today's post)
#5 - Cloud Expo (Tuesday, Nov. 10)
#4 - Breakout sessions (Wednesday, Nov. 11)
#3 - Networking opportunities (Thursday, Nov. 12)
#2 - Healthy planet, healthy people (Friday, Nov. 13)
#1 - Keynotes (Monday, Nov. 15)

Dreamforce begins Tuesday, Nov. 16. Check this blog each morning of the conference for our daily Dreamforce blog post.

Learn About the Facts & Fiction of Hosted Email

Cameron Nouri — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:36:42 -0800

We are excited to partner up with the team over at Spiceworks to put on a webinar focused on the truth behind hosted email. The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CST. This is meant to be an informative session that will aim to present objective information and data to help those out there who are trying to sort through the facts behind hosted email.

You can learn more about the webinar and sign up for it online.

Vancouver Workshop on November 25th

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:13:50 -0800

We announced our Thursday, November 12 workshop in Boston a couple weeks ago and now is the time for you, Vancouver!

Second stop stop is Vancouver on Wednesday, November 25 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Earl’s Yaletown. Seating is limited to 40 people and the cost is $100 per person. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. Register now!

Mike will address many of the questions you have as entrepreneurs through topics such as:

Building – your web app, your company, your team
Marketing – with and without dollars
Product management – so you know what’s right to build
Metrics – to track your progress
Financing – the who, what, when, where, why and how 5Ws of fund raising

There’s a guaranteed a spot for anyone travelling such great distances to get the goods.

Once again, the details (in short form) are:

What: How to Build a Web App Business workshop lead by FreshBooks’ CEO Mike McDerment
Where: Earl’s Yaletown (1095 Mainland St. — Upstairs in the Private Dining Room, Vancouver, B.C.)
When: Wednesday, November 25, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
How much: $100 per person
Register here!

Special thanks to the folks at Bootup Entrepreneurial Society for helping us organize this event and making it run smoothly!

Leave a comment or drop me a note at rayanne [at] freshbooks.com if you have any questions you want Mike to address.

And if you want us to take the workshop to your town, vote here! Maybe we’ll be seeing you soon.

New Update: New & Improved Notes

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:37:58 -0800

Improved Notes Displayed

Launched this weekend, a new and improved notes display for your deals, contacts and leads.

Viewing Note Content

You no longer need to click to see the notes content. A preview of the note will display on the page. Click on the more link to expose the full contents of the no

Associated Contacts

You will see the associated contact of the note at the end of the note displayed in bold text. You will see the associated deal if you are on the contacts profile page.

To Edit Notes

Simply click the note to open the edit form.

To Delete Notes

Simply click the trash can icon.

To See Notes History

Click show more notes to display older notes

Maven Alfresco Lifecycle to gather all Maven Alfresco components

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:30:32 -0800

Few Build Successful’s were more satifsactory then the one which you can see in the window below Finally all the modules that I’ve been working together with the community, including AMP & Alfresco Extension Maven archetypes and the AMP plugin, under one single build, control and with a proper release process, called (almost obviously) [...]

Bug Hunt in Progress!

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:50:39 -0800

Just in case anyone forgot, the first of the November bug hunts for version 2.9 is now in progress, and will last another day. If you’ve got a dev environment set up, please consider pitching in to run some tests and help get us closer to the 2.9 milestone release.

Why Philosophy Matters (for business and you)

Michael Ferranti — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:29:15 -0800

Philosophy is important. It changes history because big ideas lead to big actions. Some of the most transformative political movements in history started as a purely philosophical project.

The closest thing to philosophy in business is a company’s mission statement. These statements lay out a vision of what the company wants to be, not just what it is. One can use a firm’s mission statement to learn about the company and its competencies beyond what’s contained in its product offering.

Flying high?

Compare the mission statements of Delta and Southwest Airlines. First Delta:

We—Delta’s employees, customers, and community partners together form a force for positive local and global change, dedicated to bettering standards of living and the environment where we and our customers live and work.

Now Southwest:

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

Everyone knows that Southwest is widely regarded as a great U.S. airline; Delta is not. Could one deduce this from their mission statements? Of course! What the heck does “bettering standards of living and the environment” have to do with an airline? In short, nothing. It’s a noble goal and I applaud any company that embraces social responsibility among their goals. But as the central theme of their mission? How does that win customers and build enterprise value? This mission statement shows a lack of focus that might partially explain why Delta is in the financial trouble it is.

Southwest’s mission on the other hand is clear, to the point and makes sense in the context of their industry. One normally does not think of low-cost carriers as great service companies, but Southwest’s “disruptive technology” was service—so focusing on that element, rather than simply on cost or speed of service is reasonable, and differentiating.

Try before you buy

The take-away from this brief comparison is that, as a customer, an easy way to “try before you buy” is to look at the company’s mission statement. Does the statement provide a clear picture of how the business creates value? If the company does everything it says it will do, will you win? If the answer to these questions is not “yes,” then you may need to think about going with a different company. When the philosophy is not compelling, can you expect big actions are a result?

At Rackspace, we take philosophy seriously. It’s a part of everything we do here and drives our decision making process every day. So what’s our mission here at Rackspace? To state it simply — our mission is to be recognized as one of the world’s greatest service companies.

Learn more about how we are delivering on our mission at Rackspace.

Forrester Research: "Demand for E-signatures is Finally Reaching Critical Mass"

echojason — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:35:16 -0800

DestinationCRM had a very interesting article in its November issue on e-signatures. It was one of the first we've seen that recognizes the change in the landscape that is happening to signatures and contracting, as signing evolves from a primarily fax and paper-based process into a primarily web-based process.

And it backed this trend up with analysis from three leading analysts:

"Consider for a moment how the Dark Ages finally gave way to the Renaissance: The capability for learning had been there all along, but a complete shift required evolution and expansion. The same could be said of the electronic signature.

Bill Nagel, a Forrester Research analyst focusing on risk management, says the technological foundation for e-signatures—the combination of secure digital signing and paperless processing—has been in place for approximately 20 years, with some vendors in the space sporting a track record nearly that long. But demand for e-signatures is finally reaching critical mass, Nagel says ..."

Gartner Research went on to highlight a key reason why web/SaaS e-signatures are accelerating:

"Gregg Kreizman, a research director at Gartner, says that e-signature users not only gain efficiency but also lose fewer business opportunities. “The number-one benefit is basically speeding up processes versus the time it took to handle signatures manually, or [to overnight] documents…and [wait] for the response,” he says. “There’s also the ability to get a customer signed and not lose the opportunity because of the mail or courier time involved, loss of interest, or [the emergence of] a better deal.”

DestinationCRM also noted EchoSign's leadership in the space and placed us on its Vendor Shortlist.

Making the most of References on XING

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:38:45 -0800

It is two days since we launched the new References feature on our platform. In doing so we have fulfilled a direct feature request from a great deal of members and created a valuable additional networking tool that helps vouch for the quality of your work.

As a Premium Member, you can display references to other members in your profile and receive recommendations from any XING member, whether Premium or basic. So how is the best way to make the most of your references on XING?

Utilizing the right references for maximum benefit

Even more so that with contacts, quality over quantity and informative value over empty phrases is crucial when managing your references. Letters of recommendation are not designed to be collected, but rather act as verification of your skills and strengths in your profile. You should take a moment here to think about who would fulfill this role best and how you would most like to be portrayed.

One rule of thumb is: Clients are the most “powerful” references for you, followed by your managers or superiors and possibly also external project partners. References from “normal” colleagues are certainly a nice gesture, but may well carry less weight for a recruiter. There are of course exceptions to this rule, e.g. a former colleague with a particularly good reputation in the industry, or a reference that relates to a particular past project you wish to highlight.

When asking for a reference, send a private message too and outline what you’d most like to attain with the reference. Maybe you’d like to promote your software expertise or a particularly ingenious idea you had? Ask the referee to mention this! The referee doesn’t have to stick to this, but more often than not they are grateful for this input and guidance.

And the other way around, when you give a reference, you should at least write a short, succinct text. Place yourself in the shoes of a potential client or employer and then write what you most like to read about yourself.

You can activate or delete all references you receive as you wish. Think here about how your profile works as a whole and make sure you end up with a limited and fine selection of personal recommendations.

Upcoming WordCamps

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:42:53 -0800

There are six WordCamps coming up before the end of the year, and since I like to make sure people know about it when there’s a WordCamp near them, here’s the list, with some personal commentary thrown in. If you just want the list without my asides, check out the full schedule at WordCamp.org.

WordCamp Phoenix is first up, on November 13. I’d planned on attending this one myself before they changed the date (it was originally scheduled for the 7th), but will sadly have to miss it as it conflicts with WordCamp NYC. If you, like me, can’t make it to Phoenix, be sure to check their web site for information on the live stream they’re planning to provide. If it’s anywhere near the quality of the stream from Portland or Seattle earlier this fall, it’ll be just like being there, but without a t-shirt to show for it (and theirs has stripes, so if you’re local, you should go!). My only consolation in missing this WordCamp is that I’ve seen about half of the speakers before. If you’re going, don’t miss the session by John Hawkins on Building a WordPress Plugin; it got me to write my first plugin in Portland! Matt‘ll be there, will you?

WordCamp Victoria is next, on November 14. This is another one I’d love to go to, but can’t because it’s at the same time as New York’s. I would especially have liked to go because it looks like the speakers are all local, and I haven’t seen any of them speak before. Occasionally WordCamps lose a little of the local feeling by focusing on visiting speakers, so it’s nice to see so many Vancouverites on the list. They’ll have a Blogger track and a Technical track running concurrently, so there should a little something for everyone. No word on a live stream, but hopefully they’ll be able to catch some of the presentations on video and post them to WordPress.tv after the event.

WordCamp Bangkok is scheduled for November 15. I have to admit that the first thing that catches my eye on their agenda is “WordPress Band.” I’ve known WordCamps to have people performing songs before, but a whole band? Might be a first. I hope they’ll post the video to WordPress.tv, too.

WordCamp New York City is the same weekend as the previous three, on November 14-15. In the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you that I’m one of the organizers of WordCamp NYC, so my informative comment about it here may be a little biased. That said, we have over 50 confirmed speakers (both local and visiting), and 2 full days of content in 8 — count ‘em, 8 — tracks. Newbies get a free year of hosting and walked through setting up a WordPress blog in workshop format, while the other tracks have specialized content for Bloggers, CMS Users, Beginning Developers, Advanced Developers, Academic Users, people interested in MU/BuddyPress, and the Open Source Community. Did I mention the theme and plugin contest? Or the awesome shirts? How about the Genius Bar, or the Hacker Room? The additional Unconference sessions? If you’re anywhere near NYC that weekend (and with the Acela, that’s anywhere from Boston to D.C.), you should definitely come. I’ll be there, Matt’ll be there, lead developer Mark Jaquith will be there, lead developer of BuddyPress Andy Peatling will be there, and too many other WordPress luminaries and locals to mention. If we hit 800 registrations by November 12, I’m baking cookies for everyone.

WordCamp Peru will be on November 28 in Lima. I was checking out their topics list, and it looks like they’re planning to cover all the usual topics around blog administration, security, increasing traffic, and integration with social media sites. No speaker list yet, but if you’re in Peru, it looks like this will be a nice gathering of WordPress users, and they’re hoping to have around 100 people attend.

WordCamp Orlando is the last of the year, on December 5. They haven’t published a speaker list or schedule yet, but I know Matt will be there, Mark Jaquith will be there, and I will be there. I know some other awesome core contributors are planning to come, but I don’t want to jinx anything, so if you’re curious, come see for yourself. Plus, Florida in December!

Exact Forms and Drag and Drop Calendars Webinar

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:12:44 -0800

Explore innovative ways to extend QuickBase Exact Forms and Calendaring functionality with two components from Juiced Technologies.

Exact Forms Plus! and the Scheduler were developed by Juiced Technologies to create feature rich enhancements to QuickBase’s Exact Forms and calendar components. Exact Forms Plus! enables you to generate MS Word and/or PDF documents in QuickBase and Scheduler provides multiple daily/weekly/monthly calendar views along with drag and drop calendar editing.

Join us when we speak with Keith Jusas, founder of Juiced Technolgoies for a technology webinar on Thursday, November 19th at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Register here.

Keith Jusas is founder of Juiced Technologies a Certified QuickBase Solution Provider that provides integration and development services as well as technology tools for QuickBase. http://juicedtechnologies.com/

Boston area Alfresco user group meeting on November 17th to cover Alfresco Best Practices

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:25:38 -0800

Join us in Waltham MA (Greater Boston area) and learn best practices for approaching and implementing projects with Alfresco ECM suite Determining your business use case Architectural best practices Development best practices Operational best practices Our presentation was co-authored by Russ Danner of Rivet Logic, Jeff Potts of Optaros and Peter Monks of Alfresco Where? Rivet Logic Developer [...]

Xpert Ambassador Group holds first Live Event

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:54:45 -0800

Are you familiar already with our Xpert Ambassador Groups? Besides almost 150 Regional XING Ambassador Groups based around the globe, Xpert Ambassador Groups are dedicated to a specific subject or profession. 17 of these groups exist already – from Controlling to Media through to the food industry and vocational training, to name just a few. More than half of these groups already have over ten thousand members, and the majority of them also have lively English forums as well of course.

More than 65,000 XING members network in the Xpert Ambassador Group called The Selling Group, sharing insights and experiences about all the issues and different aspects of this sector. This usually happens online, but now some real-life offline networking has taken place too: The group’s first XING Live Event took place on October 28 in the Porsche Centre at the Olympia Park in Munich, organized by Xpert Ambassador Stephan Heinrich. And there will certainly be more events to follow in the future.

Many members attending had travelled from far and wide for a chance to network in person with other sales experts. After a short introductory speech, the rest of the evening was left open for guests to mingle amongst themselves and network away to their heart’s content. You can click here to view photos by photographer Renate Blaes, and here to view a film of the event produced by the ad agency Fast-Emotions. We would like to express our gratitude to the organizers, participants and all those who made the event possible.

If you work in Sales and would like to connect and share insights with other experts, both online and offline, we recommend joining The Selling Group!

New @ XING: Market yourself with References

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:35:21 -0800

It’s always more believable when you hear praise from someone else. It’s no wonder that recommendation marketing is booming, and is being used more and more for acquiring new clients. When looking for a job, references are a big plus, too: they attest to the quality of your work, and are less formal than official letters of recommendation from your boss.

Turn your XING contacts into your references

As a XING Premium Member, you can now ask your contacts to act as references for you, and display these references in a separate area on your profile (you’ll find it when you click on the link under “References and Awards”. So go ahead and ask your contacts to tell your network what they think of you. A satisfied client or boss can make a big difference on how others see you.

References can be given with or without an explanatory letter, depending on the wishes of the referee. Of course, you can always hide references you receive, or even delete them. Furthermore, all members who use this new feature can also act as a reference for their contacts, and to view references of other people.

“Word of mouth marketing” makes you and your “brand” more legit

The advantage of getting XING References is that anyone who visits your profile can see who recommended you. Your network is the best evidence that you’re a capable, trustworthy individual, with services or products to match.

Partnership with Sage brings Netvibes to even more Enterprises

Freddy Mini — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:41:02 -0800

We just announced a milestone partnership with Sage to quickly integrate Netvibes personal dashboard technology into their next ERP X3 release by Q1 2010. Sage is one of the world’s largest business software providers for small and mid-sized businesses, so we’re very excited to be able to work together to bring Netvibes to so many, so soon.

As many of you are well aware, the modern workday is getting faster and more complex. People working at companies of all sizes need to juggle a variety of business apps, industry feeds, real-time client and competitor news–as well as their favorite personal media, social networks, widget and web apps. With our latest Netvibes Wasabi release (you can sign up for our private beta here) we eliminated the back and forth window switching and refreshing many people do between their widget startpages, feed readers and real-time web apps. Now with Sage, we hope to help make the workday easier by bringing enterprise tools and your personal interests together on a single, personalized workplace dashboard.

In short, we want to make your workday a little bit more like Netvibes—quick, easy to manage, and 100% personalized by you. This vision is becoming a reality as we speak: We’ve already engaged in the process of joint development to build these new applications together and starting today, Sage will begin offering Netvibes Premium Dashboards and Netvibes for Enterprise to their customers worldwide.

Furthermore, we believe this partnership will greatly advance the Enterprise 2.0 movement by combining the best business software (Sage ERP X3) with the best Web 2.0 technologies and personal environment (Netvibes) and by bringing the best of these two worlds together as one.

Freddy Mini, CEO

The New Economics of IT (by Doug Harr, CIO of Ingres)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:50:00 -0800

View this webcast Open source ECM is proven to : Lower Total Cost of Ownership Eliminate licensing fees and vendor lock-in Deliver faster proofs-of-concept Provide a complete solution for managing all enterprise content Many companies are already leveraging open source ECM to take control of their ever growing business content at a fraction of the cost of [...]

Toronto On-site Support on November 11th

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:52:53 -0800

Here at FreshBooks, we’re always looking for awesome ways to provide the best customer service we can. So, we’re trying something new: In-Person Support!

Yup! FreshBooks’ own Support Rockstars will be on-site in downtown Toronto at the Dark Horse Cafe on Wednesday, November 11th 2009 to answer any questions you have about FreshBooks, provide support or just to chat.

The Details:

Where? Dark Horse Espresso Bar, 215 Spadina Ave.
When? Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
When exactly? 4 P.M. – 8 P.M.
Who? YOU (and us!)

Drop in when you can, coffee’s on FreshBooks!

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[Launch] Self-Service Email Migrations Performed In the Cloud

Cameron Nouri — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:02:16 -0800

We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for businesses to move into the cloud. That’s why we’re proud to announce our new do-it-yourself Migration App.

With the Migration App, customers can copy their email data from their previous email servers to our Rackspace Email or Microsoft Exchange messaging platforms. The Migration App is located in the customer Control Panel and is completely self-service, walking the customer through the process step-by-step.

Here are some highlights:

Migrate from your own internal email servers or from other hosted servers.
Migrate from Exchange servers and POP/IMAP servers. We’ve even added settings for popular email services that we see customers migrating from, such as GoDaddy.
Create multiple migrations, including customized migrations for specifics sets of mailboxes.
Schedule your migration for a date and time that work best for you.
When the migration begins, email data will begin transferring automatically, without any additional effort on your part.
View migration progress online and receive email alerts.
Save migration details, so that you can review the migration report at any time.

Our Migration App will guide you through the process and includes helpful information along the way. And, of course, our Fanatical Support® team is here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, if you need any help.

Please note, if your business has advanced requirements that require a manual migration, our dedicated transition team can build a custom migration plan and manage the entire process for you. Please contact us to learn more.

Want to get started?

For current customers, the Migration App can be accessed within our Control Panel, under Domains -> Tools -> Migrations.

If you are not a current customer, what are you waiting for? Isn’t it time for your business to get in the cloud?

Twitter widget with conversations

Maurice — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:41:02 -0800

As you may have noticed, we just updated the Twitter widget. This time, we went for incremental improvements to make your daily use of twitter more enjoyable.

Here’s a short list of what’s new:

Global redesign
- the header now matches the facebook widget
- tweets are displayed as bubbles
- your tweets are emphasized with by putting your avatar on the opposite side
- the widget is globally more compact
Conversations: you can now see which tweets a reply is referring to. Simply click on “in reply to username” to expand the conversation.
Real names: usernames can now be replaced by the real names of your contacts
Message soft limit: messages are no longer truncated when reaching the 140 characters limit. The counter will just show that your message is too long so you can shorten it by yourself

We also fixed some of the bugs you reported to us and made the widget refresh more often, among other things. Let us know what you think by sending us an e-mail or by sending a message to @netvibes!

Using Surf in your Spring Applications

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:36:46 -0800

SpringOne was a really good event this year! Alfresco attended and we had the chance to catch up on all of the latest from the Spring community. We also had a chance to demonstrate some of the work that we’ve doing with Surf and with Web Scripts over the past few months. One of the main [...]

Do you blog, IM, wiki or what?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:10:37 -0800

QuickBase is looking for customers interested in talking to us about their social computing habits at work and how these activities do or don’t relate to the data you track in QuickBase. If you’re up for a 30-minute chat, please sign up here. We’ll randomly select a sample of folks to schedule calls with next week.

Version Baselining

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:44:24 -0800

One of the great things about working with Alfresco is the vast number of extension points the system offers to developers. Some of these stem from the pervasive use of the Spring framework, some of them to a well thought out application architecture, and many of them from a number of guiding principles that are [...]

BT: "We Save 5 Hours Per Week Per Sales Rep" using E-Signature from EchoSign

echojason — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:21:26 -0800

We'd missed this great video BT made a little while back on their top 4 sales tools for their sales teams. EchoSign (known as BT eSignature at BT) is prominently featured at BT's offices around 5:00 in the video.

There are some great benefits and ROI examples, including that BT saves about 5 hours per week per sales rep using EchoSign due to lack of any need to do follow-up with their customers after they hit "Send for Signature".

That's pretty outstanding.

Click on the image to watch the full video.

Beautiful order forms from Wufoo

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:30:57 -0800

Process leads and online orders collected from your Wufoo form with FreshBooks’ invoices!

We all do business on the Web. Your customers are there and so you want to be there, but we aren’t all web designers or developers. That’s why you need easy tools to turn your prospects on the Web into leads and orders for your business.

Wufoo is a beautiful Web application helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. All you need is a browser, an Internet connection and a few minutes to build a form and start using it right away.

And now, you can quickly and easily create Wufoo forms to collect online orders and leads directly into FreshBooks. Set prices in your Wufoo form and generate invoices immediately in FreshBooks.

Talk about making something seemingly impossible, easy. With Wufoo, you’re only clicks away from doing more business on the Web.

If you liked this, check out our other add-ons. We’re always looking for better ways to fit into your world.

Upcoming Bug Hunts!

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:28:00 -0700

As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it’s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who’ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, anyway) of everyone pitching in to test patches and report the results, working on solutions to major bugs, and helping to clear out Trac has come around again, and we’re scheduling not one, but two bug hunts over the next couple of weeks to ensure that everyone has enough time to prepare and participate.

#1 – The first bug hunt of 2.9 will be Thursday through Saturday, November 5-7, 2009. This should give people a few days to plan for it, upgrade their dev environments if they haven’t been following trunk, and figure out how to allot their time. We’re stretching over both weekdays and weekend to try and accommodate everyone’s schedule.

#2 - The second bug hunt will be a week later, Saturday through Monday, November 14-16, 2009. This should make it possible for anyone who needs more than a week to set some time aside to participate. This bug hunt will coincide with WordCamp NYC, where a special Hacker Room will be set aside for people to go and work on 2.9 bug tickets alongside regular core contributors including Mark Jaquith and Matt Martz (sivel from IRC).

The Goals

Test, test, test existing patches! You can see all tickets with patches that need testing by checking this report. When you’ve tested a patch, report your results in the ticket comments, so core committers can see how the patch is faring.

Fix known bugs! You can see the bugs that need patches by checking this report. Look for the ones that seem that they’ll affect the most people or have the biggest impact by being fixed. Edge case bugs should be lower priority.

Report new bugs! As you’re testing out the development version, if you come across a bug, search trac to see if someone has reported it yet. If so, add a comment with your experience to the ticket so we’ll know it’s affecting more than one person. If no ticket exists yet, create one.

Core committers will be around (in the #wordpress-dev channel at irc.freenode.com) both weekends to review patches that have been thoroughly tested, answer questions as needed, and give feedback on patches that need more work before being commit-worthy.

If you’ve never participated in a WordPress bug hunt before, but you’d like to get involved, we’d love to have you join us! To prepare, you’ll want to set up a test environment, start using the current development version/maybe install the beta testing plugin, join us in the #wordpress-dev IRC channel, and read up on automated testing.

The next Netvibes: Wasabi Edition

Maurice — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:19:48 -0700

Back in July, we revealed a few details about our work in progress on a new product and a breakthrough backend for the next Netvibes generation. Our goal was to make feed reading faster and easier.

Since then, not only we’ve been giving final touches to the architecture, but we have also designed a full-fledged feed reader. And today, we are happy to introduce you to our next version: Netvibes Wasabi Edition.

This edition makes Netvibes a truly unique and innovative 2-in-1 product offering both the widget view Netvibes pioneered and a brand new Smart Reader to improve the way your read feeds:

by streamlining feeds while keeping widgets only one click away
by offering faster updates
by showing articles as pictures in a beautiful mosaic view

As mentionned above, this new Netvibes will be powered by new technologies. After comprehensive benchmarks, our technical team decided to step away from RDMS (Relational Database Management Systems) and picked Tokyo Tyrant (along with Tokyo Cabinet) as the main database for the feeds.

We might dive into the details later, but in a nutshell, it allows us to go much faster than traditional databases while using only a fraction of the disk space.

Like with any major release, we’re taking extra caution, hence this βeta period where users will upgrade progressively to Netvibes Wasabi Edition.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

Sign up now to get your own βeta invitation
Soon after, we will send out invite codes so you can have access to the new Smart Reader. We will send the codes progressively as we monitor the behavior of the new architecture.
During the βeta period, we will collect feedbacks and regularly update Netvibes Wasabi Edition.
When we’ll be satisfied with the new architecture and the Smart Reader, all Netvibes users will automatically be upgraded to Wasabi.

Before you apply for an invitation code, you need to know that once you’re upgraded to Netvibes Wasabi Edition, there’s no way back. Obviously, we are taking extra care of your data, but consider yourself warned.

Ready? Simply head toward http://wasabi.netvibes.com/ and follow the instructions.

The Evolving Landscape of Contract Lifecycle Management (+ E-Signatures, + The Cloud)

echojason — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:06:28 -0700

There's a traditional $100m segment of enterprise software known as CLM, or Contract LifeCycle Management, which for most of the past 10-15 years has been pretty staid (and grown pretty slowly). CLM has focused on on-premise software for managing complex contracts, generally buy-side contracts (e.g., procurement), and with a strong focus on selling to legal as a vertical (the folks with all the liability when complex contracts go wrong, or are lost).

Like much of enterprise software, CLM has traditionally been expensive, with long-sale cycles and complex implementation cycles, often measured in years. A few vendors, like our partners Apptus and Upside, have shaken up the market and changed a number of these assumptions around by moving to a SaaS / on-demand model.

CLM though has traditionally only focused on two pieces of contracting -- archiving and then managing complex, high dollar contracts, and more recently, authoring and creating contracts. We've always believed since founding that electronic signatures are the key "glue" to make CLM truly end-to-end digital.

We were thus gratified and pleased to see AMR Research's most recent report on CLM which positioned Contract Signature as a key evolution of a truly digital CLM Business Process (with ourselves highlighted in the report) -- along with cloud-based Authoring systems like Google Docs (which EchoSign has integrated natively).

CLM software can be overkill for high volume, routing contracts like a standard, formulaic sales agreement. In those cases, often (x) a simpler-to-deploy combination of a tool to create form contracts (Google Docs or Box.net, or the EchoSign form library, or a Conga Merge in the Salesforce ecosystem) combined (y) with a service like EchoSign for signing, tracking, storing, and managing, can completely automate the contracting processes.

However, for more complex, lower volume, higher-dollar contracts with many participants, reviewers, and stakeholders, with complex post-contracting compliance, CLM software can provide huge value. And there, connecting CLM software with automated contract execution closes the loop.

Costume Contest 09: Vote for your favourite!

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:43:45 -0700

It’s our second annual costume contest today at FreshBooks! Like last year, we’re opening up the voting to the public. So, check out our costumes and post your vote in the comments section below.

We’ll let you know on Monday who’s won!

Harry Potter

Super Trooper

Paul Stanley from KISS

“It’s-a me! Mario!”

Zombie Cowboy

Civilian getting eaten by a shark! AaaAaaAAHhh!

Rodeo Clown

Leslie Chow from The Hangover

Phantom of the Opera

Eeyore

Alfresco Tech Talk Live New Episode @ 12pm EST, Friday October 30th, 2009.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:35:28 -0700

We will have our bi-weekly Alfresco Tech Talk Live @ 12pm EST, Friday October 30th, 2009. iPhone native App, CMIS and the Cloud Mike Mahon, President and Mike Muller, Director, Software Consulting at Zia Consulting talk about a native iPhone application Zia has developed that allows mobile access to an Alfresco document repository. This application runs against [...]

Congratulations Google, Your Win in Los Angeles is a Win for Us All

Michael Ferranti — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:33:01 -0700

Congratulations Google from all of us at Rackspace. Los Angeles, California is going with Google Apps for its new city-wide email solution. This is a big win for you and for Los Angeles.

We’re your competitor. We believe that we beat you on price and on service. But on the point that moving email and apps to the cloud makes sense for huge numbers of customers, we couldn’t agree with you more. When customers get in the cloud, they save money and work smarter. Whether they’re looking for the power of Microsoft Exchange without the headache of managing it or great web-based POP and IMAP, email hosting frees customers up to focus on their core competencies. Whether we call it Going Google or getting in the cloud, the point is the same. The future of email is cloud-based and we’re happy that you’re right along with us helping customers get there.

EchoSign at Defrag 2009

echojason — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:43:59 -0700

For our more tech-focused customers -- EchoSign is proud to be a part of Defrag 2009:

In addition to participating in the dialogue on where the web is, and is going, we'll be on stage during the Kederosky Awards. We're not quite sure how they work, but we'll apparently be competing for the "smartest person" together with our partner, Box.net and several other CEOs.

Please root for us, and if you are attending, we'll see you there.

-> Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the tools and technologies that are leveraging the "social" aspect of software to accelerate the "aha" moment. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation. <-

PipelineDeals at New York Entrepreneur Week on 11/16

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:39:12 -0700

New York Entrepreneur Week (NYEW) is coming to New York City November 16th through the 20th. The five day event has a line up of speakers tailored for companies of different sizes and stages. The content for the event is broken down in a way to be as relevant as possible to where you are as an entrepreneur: Start-Up and Idea-Stage, Early-Stage, Growth-Stage and Acquisition & IPO. The ticket pricing is extremely reasonable and is designed such that it is cheaper for entrepreneurs to attend. NYEW is a non-profit with the focus on putting entrepreneurs in touch with people and ideas that can help them achieve their goals. This approach frees the event to be able to be organized based on principle rather than profit. We really liked the NYEW philosophy and were excited to jump in and help out.

To that end, PipelineDeals Co-Founder JP Werlin will speak on Monday (11/16) afternoon as a panelist on bootstrapping. PipelineDeals has toiled away the last 3 years financing the company on its own means and is happy to share our lessons learned and give back to those just starting out. If you can make it to one or more of the events, please do as it is bound to be a fantastic five days. Also, please do say hello or if you would like to schedule some time while JP is in New York, please email us at customercare at pipelinedeals dot com. We hope to see you there!

Plugin Compatibility Beta

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:11:39 -0700

The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won’t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.

If you log in, you’ll be able to help us gather this information! Just select a WordPress version / plugin version combination and click the “Works” or the “Broken” button. Please note that this shouldn’t be used to report minor issues with a plugin. You should mark a plugin as “Broken” only if its core functionality is truly broken when run on the specified WordPress version.

Right now we’re just in information gathering mode. So get out there and vote! Don’t just vote on broken plugins… cast a “Works” vote for every plugin that works on the version of WordPress you are using. This can help improve the signal-to-noise ratio in our data and prevent a few mistaken “Broken” votes from weighing too heavily.

For developers, we’re now including this data in our API. The plugin_information action now returns a “compatibility” member with the multidimensional array format:

array( {WP version} => array( {plugin version} => array( {% of reporters who say it works}, {# responses} ) ) )

If the API knows which version of WordPress you are using (for example, if you are making this query using the plugins_api() function from with WordPress), the API will only return compatibility information for your version of WordPress.

Eventually, we’d like to gather this compatibility feedback from within WordPress, allowing you to vote directly from your plugins admin screen. The ultimate goal is to use this information to inform you of plugin incompatibilities with a new version of WordPress during the upgrade process. For that to be useful we need a large set of high quality compatibility data. Start voting!

The Tipping Point(s) for Web Signatures, and the U.K. Postal Strike

echojason — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:35:43 -0700

This week, EchoSign presented at the 5th Annual Houlihan Lokey Technology Conference and part of the discussion was on the tipping point for web / electronic signatures. I.e., when will the majority of routine contracts and documents be signed on the web?

The reality is there probably will be no single tipping point, but rather a confluence of smaller events that help, each on their own, to accelerate a trend already in place.

One we're seeing right now in the U.K. in the postal strike. As The Times notes, there is essentially no point in putting anything in the post in the U.K. right now. Since the "last mile" postal workers are on strike, nothing will be delivered (though it will be picked up).

The Times, eWeek Europe, and a number of others have noted that we are seeing a dramatic uptick in interest and sign-ups for BT eSignature (our brand in the U.K.).

The postal strike won't tip web signature penetration from it's current 2-3% (up from essentially 0% a few years ago) of contracts to 50% overnight. But it's a small piece of what will, in a few years, look like a tipping point.

Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

Beverly Yang — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:29:00 -0700

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog)

Today, we're launching two changes to Google Reader to help you discover more interesting content faster. Just as the launch of Personalized Search improved search results based on your search history, these changes use your Reader Trends to improve your reading experience.

Explore section - We're always trying to help you discover new stuff in Reader, and today we're introducing "Popular items" and "Recommended sources", two ways to find interesting content from all over the Internet. We use algorithms to find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions), collect them in the new Popular items section and order them by what we think you'll like best. Now you don't have to be embarrassed about missing that hilarious video everyone is talking about — it should show up in your "Popular items" feed automatically. And to make it easier to find interesting feeds, we're moving recommendations into the new Explore section and giving it a new name — "Recommended sources." Like always, it uses your Reader Trends and Web History (if you're opted into Web History) to generate a list of feeds we think you might like.
Personalized ranking - Only have a 10 minute coffee break and want to see the best items first? All feeds now have a new sort option called "magic" that re-orders items in the feed based on your personal usage, and overall activity in Reader, instead of default chronological order. Click "Sort by magic" under the "Feed settings" menu of your feed (or folder) to switch to personalized ranking. Unlike the old "auto" ranking, this new ranking is personalized for you, and gets better with time as we learn what you like best — the more you "like" and "share" stuff, the better your magic sort will be. Give it a try on a high-volume feed folder or All items and see for yourself!

The goal of personalization at Google remains the same as ever: to help you find the best content on the web. We hope these new features help you do just that — go Explore for yourself.

Finally, we'd love to hear your feedback — share your thoughts on our help group, Twitter or the Reader section of Get Satisfaction, a third party support community.

Bulk Import from a Filesystem

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:43:24 -0700

The Use Case In any CMS implementation an almost ubiquitous requirement is to load existing content into the new system. That content may reside in a legacy CMS, on a shared network drive, on individual user’s hard drives or in email, but the requirement is almost always there - to inventory the content that’s out [...]

Box.net + EchoSign inside of Salesforce.com

echojason — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:17:46 -0700

Today our partner and friends at Box.net, the web's #1 cloud storage and collaboration platform, launched a very powerful integration inside of Salesforce.

The integration is clever for a couple of reasons. First, it gets around storage and costs issues on the Salesforce platform (which are expensive). Second, it allows a more robust way to work with content inside of Salesforce, especially for folks who do not pay for or have the Salesforce Content module.

And when you use Box.net inside of Salesforce, you can full access to the applications natively integrated into Box.net -- including EchoSign.

Click on the image below to see a demo including sending a contract for e-signature on EchoSign from Box.net inside of Salesforce.com:

EchoSign offers its own top-rated Salesforce integration on the AppExchange.

But now, if your content is stored in the cloud on Box.net, you can also access right inside of Salesforce.com as well.

Alfresco sets course for 4.x at Alfresco Community Meet up in DC

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:58:06 -0700

Yesterday about 100 people crowded the halls of the Kellogg Conference Center in Washington DC as another round of Alfresco community summits got underway. Bill Robinson (Alfresco, VP Sales) reported that 1% of the total Alfresco community / ecosystem base has been attending these meetings. The customer to vendor mix seemed to be [...]

Creating Email Marketing Campaigns With QuickBase and Advantage CRM+

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:07:14 -0700

If you have ever want to use QuickBase to create email marketing campaigns and track their effectiveness through to sales close, then join us on Thursday, October 29th at 2:00 PM Eastern time when Scott Wyatt, CEO of Advantage Integrated Solutions, (http://advantagequickbase.com) will demonstrate and answer questions about their Advantage CRM+ offering.

This QuickBase webinar will show you how Advantage CRM+ works in QuickBase and uses built-in integration with Vertical Response’s, (www.verticalresponse.com) email campaign management engine. Advantage Integrated Solutions is a Certified QuickBase Solution Provider offering application development and custom integration services.

You can register at http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/.

New report: Profit & Loss

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:26:01 -0700

If you’ve glanced around the “Reports” tab recently, you might have seen our latest addition: the Profit Loss report. This report determines your gross profit, net profit, total expenses, and finally, your net profit. It also introduces a FreshBooks reporting first: Cost of Goods Sold, or COGS.

Expenses can become a Cost of Goods Sold one of two ways. Firstly, any expenses you rebill to a client (ie put on an invoice) will be included in your Cost of Goods Sold. Second, when you are on your Profit & Loss report, you can “edit” your Cost of Goods Sold (note the blue “edit” link above) and add expense categories you want to be included in your COGS. We’ll remember which categories you consider COGS so this report runs smoothly in the future.

I won’t get too deep into the thick of things, but the Profit Loss report is a powerful new tool in your FreshBooks arsenal. Login to your account, have a look, and tell us what you think.

WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:30:00 -0700

As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible.

The headline changes in this release are:

A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

We would recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection.

If you think your site may have been hit by one of the recent exploits and you would like to make sure that you have cleared out all traces of the exploit then we would recommend that you take a look at the WordPress Exploit Scanner. This is a plugin which searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames. You can read more about this plugin here – “WordPress Exploit Scanner“

Records Management and Cloud Storage

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:38:05 -0700

Alan Pelz-Sharpe brings up an interesting topic about Records Management in the cloud and concludes that the cloud is “dangerous” to RM. I’m no expert in the intimate details of RM, but I must observe that Alan made certain blanket assumptions about cloud storage that are not accurate and in the least, cannot be broadly [...]

MicroBilt: "Less Stress = More Sales."

echojason — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:56:07 -0700

The fax is on a slow, but accelerating, decline to irrelevance as a vehicle for signatures.

There are a number of reasons why. Signing on the web is becoming more and more intuitive. Customers are beginning to simply expect a web-based contracting process from their suppliers and vendors. And of course, there are large efficiency gains.

But when our customer Microbilt reached out to us, they highlighted a simpler way to describe why the transition from fax-based signatures to web-based ones is accelerating.

Web signatures take stress out of the sale. A lot of stress. And by removing stress -- more deals close.

They're right. It's that simple.

MicroBilt's Workflow Challenge

Heavy Federal and state regulation is a significant challenge for companies in the consumer data industry. Due to these regulations, MicroBilt customers are forced to complete lengthy contracts that are typically 30-35 pages long. “The Identity Theft Crisis in our country has compelled federal regulators to impose the highest standards of due diligence on those businesses granting access to personal identifying information”, says Juliet Arthur, Contracts Specialist, MicroBilt. MicroBilt has been looking for a solution to speed up both the contract delivery process and the post-signature contract review process.
Historically, faxing contracts of that length has not been reliable and in many cases has proved to be detrimental to the sales process. Several years ago MicroBilt simplified the contract delivery process by using email to send contracts rather than faxing them, however the contract still had to be completed, signed and faxed back. When a customer returned the signed contract via fax, some pages would be missing and often times account managers had to contact the customer numerous times to gather the missing pages and resend. Most of our customers are small and medium sized businesses and typically the owner is required to complete most of the paperwork. Once they fax in the completed paperwork, they’ve moved onto the next task in their busy schedules. Contacting them to track down missing pages is a nuisance that MicroBilt has been looking to eliminate. “We can’t process our contracts unless we have every page, and often it would take days to get the entire contract from the customer. It was a manual process that just wasn’t efficient.”
EchoSign Solution
In August 2009, Juliet was assigned to manage the initiative to improve the efficiency of MicroBilt’s contract process using EchoSign. EchoSign was chosen because the setup and implementation was a smooth process and it was very easy for the account reps to use. “We use EchoSign every day, and since August we’ve sent out over 300 contracts and addendums using the tool.” Each contract is sent via email as a complete digital package so pages don’t get lost.. “Even though our contracts are lengthy, our customers only have to sign it once so electronic signatures are ideal,” comments Juliet.
Results
“EchoSign has reduced our sales close cycle tremendously – we’ve seen contracts come back in as fast as 15 minutes!” says Juliet. Another benefit is that the sales reps are removed from the contract process so they can focus on selling – once they make the sale, they do not have to contact the customer multiple times to track down missing information. “EchoSign has relieved a lot of stress for our account managers. We use it every day. Our contract process is a lot smoother, and our account reps sell more.”
EchoSign has reduced our sales close cycle tremendously!
— Juliet Arthur, Contracts Specialist, Microbilt

US Partner of the Quarter - Rivet Logic

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:15:44 -0700

Earlier this month Alfresco announced the first winner of its US Partner of the Quarter and I’d like to offer my congratulations to Rivet Logic. Rivet Logic helps organizations to streamline their operations through the use of an enterprise-grade Open Source software. The group offers its customers a full range of Alfresco services which enable [...]

How will a web page look like 10 years from now?

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:42:42 -0700

If you are in the web business you may have considered this question before. It can have a significant impact on your business. Those who get ahead of the curve can gain handsomely from it. Look at Tim O'Reilly and his Web 2.0 ideas.

On one hand more and more non-pc devices are used to browse the web. Then you have a fast growth in video on the web and phenomena such as Twitter.

Love to hear what you think.

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Maven and Chemistry strike back … a Maven archetype as CMIS Labs and toolkit

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:46:24 -0700

CMIS is cool indeed, and especially working on it with Open Source tools like Alfresco, Maven and Chemistry can result in quite a bit of fun. I’ve been working quite a lot lately on producing some sample and training material for the coming Alfresco meetups (tomorrow I’ll be presenting the CMIS Master class live from Madrid), [...]

We'll See You at Dreamforce

echojason — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:44:48 -0700

We're looking forward to meeting many of you at Dreamforce 2009, our fourth Dreamforce. EchoSign will be represented on several panels, including our CEO speaking on Executive Insights for "Finding Your Way to Full Compliance - Automating Channel Compliance".

Last year, several of our customers, including an in-depth presentation from Time Warner Cable, spoke about the impact of EchoSign in accelerating and improving their sales processes. This year we anticipate over a half dozen of our customers speaking about EchoSign. More details to follow closer to the event November 17-20.

Please let us know ahead of time if you'll be there, or if you can't, please come by our booth to say hi and see EchoSign-for-Salesforce Version 7, launching at Dreamforce. It will change the face of e-signatures for sales teams.

Netvibes Push Publishing and the Future of Web Personalization

Freddy Mini — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:12:54 -0700

Two years ago, we introduced the first generation of our Publishing Platform with our Premium Universes, allowing our partners to publish a fully personalized page, built on Netvibes technology, integrated within their web site and accessible on their domain.

Today, with the release of the Push Publishing, I’m pleased to announce our second generation, named Premium Dashboard, uniquely orchestrating live publisher updates and complete user freedom.

As many of you know, our original vision of Netvibes has and always will be about advancing the movement to personalize the entire Web.

There are two ways of doing this: The first has been with Netvibes.com, which represents a bottom up, grassroots approach, giving everyone the opportunity to create, personalize and publish their own daily digital lives. The second way is with Netvibes Premium Dashboards, which represents a top down approach to personalize the Web, by giving publishers the tools to build user personalizable sites.

Just imagine if every website, every media portal, every brand or product page on the Web was 100% user personalizable. If we are truly committed to personalizing the Web, we feel we have to help both consumers and publishers with the right tools to make this possible.

But as we rapidly move towards the real-time Web, one question many people have had is can push publishing coexist with user personalization? Although publishers want to give and users want to receive live updates, at the same time, users don’t want publishers to alter their personal environment without permission. Look no further than the recent controversy over major UI changes with some of the web’s most popular sites. We believe websites and webapps should function more like real desktop apps, like in Windows, Mac OS X or Firefox where users get to decide which updates to accept.

That’s why for Premium Dashboards we developed Push Publishing Tools that make it easy for any publisher to deliver new updates, themes, widgets and content directly to users–while giving users the power to pick and choose which updates they want to accept. By doing so, we hope to empower both users and publishers alike to work together in harmony as we enter the real-time AND personalized Web.

As always, we could never have accomplished this without the feedback and support of our users and the many agencies and publishers we work with. Thank you and we look forward to hearing what you think about the new Netvibes Premium Dashboards.

Freddy Mini, CEO

Alfresco Tech Talk Live New Episode @ 12pm EST, Friday October 16th, 2009.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:18:58 -0700

We will have our bi-weekly Alfresco Tech Talk Live @ 12pm EST, Friday October 16th, 2009. Adding Pepper: A WCM and marketing toolkit for Alfresco SPEAKER BIO Nathan Kurtyka, VP of Technology, has been conceptualizing and implementing cutting-edge web applications for over a decade. With a unique blend of architecture, user experience, and marketing strategy, Nathan has led [...]

Issues with PayPal payments not coming in.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:15:40 -0700

As of this morning October 14th 2009 at 09:42 am CEST we're experiencing issues with incoming payments and subscriptions from PayPal not being verified and processed correctly through the PayPal IPN.

This issue only effects new subscriptions, account upgrades or renewals.

Don't worry, we've received your payment and as soon as PayPal fixes these issues we'll process the backlog as quickly as possible. We understand and share your frustration on this issue. Sorry!

Using Database ODBC with QuickBase

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:25:20 -0700

If you know of anyone that has long wanted to integrate QuickBase with SQL Server, Microsoft Word, Excel, Access or Visio, be sure to invite them to attend this webinar entitled “Using ODBC with QuickBase”. Scheduled for 2:00 PM Eastern time Thursday 10/15 we will talk with Claude von Roesgen one of the early co-founders of QuickBase and author of Qunect http://qunect.com.

This webinar session will show and demo how it is set up and how it works. Like all of the 10 live weekly webinars, they are free and open to questions and answers. Register here.

EchoSign October Release & New Features

echojason — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:59:48 -0700

EchoSign has just put out its October 5.2 Release, with dozens of terrific new features.

A partial summary:

Save your written/biometric signature. The next time you sign with a mouse, you can save it and reuse it again and again. Super useful for countersigning.
Multiple automated signature stamps. For an even more paper-like signing experience with 2-6 signers.
Advanced attachment settings. Users can now automatically turn off signed PDF attachments in emails and remove thumbnails of signed contracts in emails.
More Mobile. Our Blackberry and iPhone mobile sign experiences have been further enhanced, with an even slicker experience and more form support.

A slideshow summary below.

Getting involved with the 2.9 beta testing

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:16:09 -0700

We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We’ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.

There are a number of different ways in which you can get involved in the testing process, and each way is suited for each persons skill set and comfort level. First of all, you can join the wp-testers mailing list to keep up to date with the testing progress and to discuss things with the other testers. Secondly, you can head over to the Trac ticketing system and either create tickets for bugs you find or use some of the useful searches to look for patches that need testing or that need someone to try and reproduce the issue.

During the beta phase we are going to focus on stabilizing the new features and removing existing bugs which are well-understood and have easily testable solutions. During this process we will not be adding any new enhancements so as to ensure that the focus is on making the 2.9 release as bug-free as possible. We will also try and have a few special bug hunt days where one or more experienced WordPress developers will be available to help people track down issues and get patches committed to fix bugs.

To make is as easy as possible for you to get a beta testing install up and running we have put together a small WordPress plugin which makes it really easy to convert a test install of the latest release version of WordPress into a beta test install of the next up and coming release. The plugin is called WordPress Beta Tester and is available to download from WordPress Extend or can be installed using the built-in plugin installer. Please make sure you to only install this plugin on a test site. We do not recommend running beta versions on your normal, live sites in case anything goes wrong. You can read more about the plugin in “Making it easy to be a WordPress Tester”

We are aiming to release the first beta version of 2.9 around the end of October, after we have put the finishing touches on the new features. Then we switch to full on beta testing mode and your help and feedback will be very much appreciated. During the beta test program will push out new builds for automated upgrades regularly. Once we feel that a suitable level of stability has been achieved we will move into the release candidate phase. We hope to be able to make the final release 2.9 build available in either late November or early December.

The Sidekick, Trust, and The Right Questions to Ask

echojason — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:11:03 -0700

Much has been made over the past several days on the seeming total data loss at Microsoft of T-Mobile Sidekick data. How could Microsoft lose all of this data in the cloud? It seems impossible.

The true story may never be know. But it highlights one key point on cloud / SaaS vendors: they all claim wonderful uptime and operational data. Just like every salesperson somehow was in the "President's Circle" or top 10% of earners. Or how almost everyone that graduates from Harvard somehow does so with "honors".

The real question to ask is - what sort of downtime incidents has your vendor had over the past 3 years? How were they handled? And what was the real world impact?

If you hear from a vendor "we're never had any downtime", run, do not walk, to the exit.

No on-line SaaS/web vendor, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Salesforce.com, has ever experienced zero downtime. It's not possible nor is it credible. Servers are not 100% reliable -- including the ones that provide redundancy and horizontal scaleability.

The real learning is how vendors handle it.

At EchoSign, we've learned a lot over the past 4 years. First, we provide 2.5 years of 100% fully transparent up-time data 24x7x265 at trust.echosign.com. It includes scheduled downtime - i.e., we don't hide or ignore maintenance schedules. Why? Because it's too easy to blame real problems on 'scheduled maintenance'. And hide them.

We also discuss and highlight the downtime incidents we've had, in real-time, at trust.echosign.com.

At EchoSign we've had two material downtime incidents in our history, and zero data loss. The downtime incidents, one in 2007, and one in 2008, luckily both occurred after standard business hours and had minimal impact on our users. One was due to a total power loss at both the primary and back-up power centers at our primary data center - a once-in-a-decade event as there are multiple redundant power sources in our SAS 70 data center. But, the longer you are around, the more likely a perfect storm can and will hit. The other was a DNS (routing) issue that impacted a relatively small subset of our users at the end of the business day -- but for over an hour.

Evaluating the true reliability of an online services vendor starts with the product, its status in the ecosystem, its reputation and customer base, its scale.

But when the quality-of-service truly matters -- as it does with electronic signatures, when you're closing deals with your end customers -- ask for the real data, and the real stories.

The Secret to "Easy"

echojason — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:20:15 -0700

As those of us who remember Clippy will attest, one man's idea about how to make something simple is another's nightmare.

As of our October release (coming out Monday - more to follow), EchoSign will include approximately 11,600 workflow permutations.

Divide that across over 13,000 customers, and you get to ... well .. a lot of different ways people get contracts signed.

A lot more than the 4 workflows we started with.

We've been at this for almost 4 years, and we're only a small part of the way to building every use case and workflow we want. But we've built quite a few. Thousands in fact.

Our goal is to Work the Way You Work.

If you don't see an option, a workflow, a way to close your customers -- let us know. We've probably got an answer.

Happy Birthday to the Barcode

echojason — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:51:32 -0700

Google proudly (and geekily) noted today as the 57th anniversary of the barcode. Apparently, the first product purchased using a barcode was a ten-pack of Juicy Fruit gum.

Since then the barcode has gone on to many unimagined uses, including routing of EchoSign faxed documents.

While e-signatures are our primary function, EchoSign has sent and received almost 400,000 faxes since launching in 2006. We have a mature, proven global fax network with over 40 points of presence to receive faxes across the world -- from India to Ireland, to South Africa to Sweden -- and a multiply redundant fax processing system that guarantees your fax signatures are not only received, but processed in real-time. We also monitor our fax network by the minute to ensure 99.95% uptime and throughput.

The barcode is an unsung hero at EchoSign, but we're joining Google to raise a pint to honor its contributions to signature and contract automation.

Information Week: "EchoSign - Very Cool. E-Signatures in the Cloud"

echojason — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:46:46 -0700

Information Week's Fritz Nelson just did a terrific piece and video ReviewCam of EchoSign, taking notice after we crossed 1,000,000 users.

Our favorite part: Fritz thinks e-signatures are both fun and "very cool". Our kind of guy.

OK, this is fun: Electronic signature in the cloud. I know, it sounds small, but how many documents do you sign? What about your employees (HR forms)? Your sales team (contracts)? EchoSign lets you create a workflow to do this, from delivery to the actual signature to the storage and management. And all in the cloud.

Click below for the full piece and video.

Now, By Another Name

Larry Halff — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:24:26 -0700

I remember in the early Spring of 2005 Todd Sieling and I were trying to come up with a name for what would become this community. What word captures the granular serendipity emergent from the chaos of human relations? I can’t remember which one of us thought of it, but we both found it reflected in the spirit of PT Anderson’s Magnolia. It’s one of my favorite movies, and one that Todd himself had introduced to me years ago when I was living in Vancouver.

Still, I would be mistaken to confuse sentimental attachment to a word and the history it represents for the very real character of the community behind it. Running this service is truly a labor of love, especially in its current (re)incarnation. My work here is to provide a salon for this community of like-minded, or sometimes not-so-likeminded folks; and, also to do my small part advancing of the open web by exploring and supporting emergent standards and protocols, like Microformats, OAuth, and OpenID.

So, as you may have read, last week Magnolia, the makers of Magnolia CMS, requested that I change the name of this service. While it’s not something I would otherwise choose to do, I’ve decided that it is simply best to rename.

As of today, this is Gnolia.

I like to keep the G silent, like Gnosis – still apt.

With that, let us all focus on the forest and the path forward.

Caspio Launches Official Blog

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:49:00 -0700

Last week, Caspio launched its official Company Blog. Besides covering industry topics and company news, the new blog will provide tips and tricks on database application creation, feature showcases, and customer successes. Add it to your RSS and stay in the loop!

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Balance: Livestrong Day 2009

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:58:26 -0700

This afternoon we are taking a half a day for Livestrong Day 2009. For our office in particular today has a personal meaning. Two of our team members have lost their Moms to cancer: Debbie Ammons and Cay Galgon. Today's Livestrong 2009 Ride for Moms will not only show our commitment to the Livestrong Movement but celebrate the legacy that these two women left behind.

Ride with us!

Please donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. More importantly find a way to bring the Livestrong movement into your world. The founder and chief instigator of this movement, Lance Armstrong, sets big goals. We all know Lance's accomplishments on the bike, but as he puts it: "It is not about the bike". Only someone as bold as Lance would have the audacity to set a goal to "End Cancer". As history has shown, never doubt Lance. And Lance teaches us in turn, that we should never doubt ourselves. Follow Lance's example and set some big goals for yourself including joining us in the global movement to end cancer.

The Facebook Effect (and Business Apps)

echojason — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:24:19 -0700

Q3 was a strong quarter, with a strong finish in September, for EchoSign.

We celebrated crossing 1,000,000 users -- and added another 78,000 in September. At that rate, we'll add another 1,000,000 users in less than a year - 1/3 of the time it took us to get to the first million ;)

What's happening? Well it's not that the entire world is deciding overnight to move to e-signatures.

Rather, it's something you might call The Facebook Effect. The Facebook Effect (a term we're coining here -- attn Richard Lewis) is where an application that you started to hear about a few years ago begins, seemingly years later, to become more relevant, more common, more mainstream -- and then shortly thereafter, dramatically expands its footprint.

Where were you when you first heard of Facebook? For us, it was in late 2004 from college students. However, it wasn't clear how relevant it would be to us in the business world (Facebook wasn't even open to alumni, let alone the general public then). Around early 2007 we started to receive more and more invites from tech-centric business partners as Facebook opened up, but we mostly ignored them. By 2008, our aunts, uncles, grandparents, bosses, partners and customers were all connecting with us on Facebook.

And all the time.

The Facebook Effect is similar in business apps, but it takes longer. Viral exposure is measured in months, not minutes. Small businesses in particular are often laggards, too busy to investigate new web services.

But then it hits. Years after you first heard of it, you start to hear a lot more. And then, a little later, it's all around you.

Signing contracts, closing customers, on the web. It's happening. The FaceBook Effect will be here in 2010 for web signatures.

Get Ready for CMIS

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:32:51 -0700

It has been a big week for CMIS, the Content Management Interoperability Specification. Yesterday the OASIS Technical Committee voted the 0.70b version of the draft to become the official Committee Draft and approved it for submission to the OASIS public review process. In a CMSWire article, Barb Mosher talks about the early enthusiasm for the spec: “And [...]

Automatic Client Follow-up & Lead Nurturing

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:35:32 -0700

What's the difference between your favorite aunt and the underwhelming uncle?

Uncle Ted forgets your name and was last seen passed out at your wedding. Aunt Katie was ecstatic to be at your graduation. She never misses a card for every birthday and Christmas. She calls you often just to see what is new. You like and trust Aunt Katie because it is obvious she cares about you. So you care about her.

Most businesses treat customer relationships like bumbling Uncle Ted, showing up and calling only when it's expected. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could be Aunt Katie to your clients?

In a perfect world, you would deliver personalized letters to your clients on a regular basis. Your individualized attention would create a positive image for you and your company. Open communication would quickly establish a friendly rapport, keep your product front-of-mind and gain clients' trust. This isn't about teddy-bear hugs; people are inclined to buy from someone they remember, like and trust and to you that's cash in the bank.

It’s not a perfect world – but you have two options to nurture client relationships. You can:

Hire all those punctual and personal aunts out there
Use Solve360’s scheduled email feature to automate much of that personal interaction

Before you post job openings for “Communication-Savvy Aunts,” look at what Solve360’s new Scheduled email feature can do for you.

A Simple and Automatic Follow-up

Lets say you just made a sale or completed a project. While the ink is still wet, create a Scheduled email activity that will be delivered to your client exactly one month from now to thank your client for his or her business, confirm everything worked out and request a referral.

It really is that simple, it scales and it does make a difference.

Multi-Step Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Lets expand on the first example by using the Scheduled email activity to manage a company-wide personal lead nurturing campaign. Let’s say you've established an ideal ten-step process for handling each new lead:

Send an email with a free report on how leveraging your service can help them blow away from their competitors

Day 1	Send an email welcome message with your personal contact information
Day 3	Send an email with some tips on how to get started
Day 4	Schedule a phone call
Day 7	Send an email providing a list of tips on how to be successful with your service (benefits)
Day 11	Send an email on how you compare to the competition (they're doing it anyway, so jump in with your answers)
Day 14	Send an email that answers the questions frequently asked by new clients and some quotes
Day 18
Day 19	Schedule a follow-up meeting
Day 22	Send an email with a case study
Day 28	Schedule a follow-up meeting asking for their business
Held	Send an email thanking them for their business!
A Month Later	Thank your client for their business, confirm everything worked out and request a referral!

That continuous “personal” follow-up would do an amazing job of converting leads to clients, but just before your keyboard-bound fingers fall off from fatigue, your head would explode from the stress. Solve360 will systematically type and send those eight personal emails at exactly the right time and set up the three events in your calendar. It’s simple to do:

On a new contact record, create a set of Scheduled email messages and events according to the sequence of your nurturing campaign. Insert fields such as "First Name," "Last Name" and "Job Title" to personalize your Scheduled email messages. This simple step prevents you from using the over-used, generic “Dear Valued Customer" opening. Have you ever met Valued Customer? Imaginary friends are only OK when you’re a child.
Save this set of activities as a template with its own name so you can attach a copy of the same set of activities to each new lead with one, simple click.

Solve360 templates are blueprints of your work that you can reuse later. A template stores a set of scheduled email messages that can be applied to new prospects. When you follow the same steps repeatedly, templates save you a lot of time by simply plugging and chugging new information.

Combining the scheduled email’s field names with a template adds value to your sales and marketing efforts. Your emails will have personal appeal, provoking those fuzzy feelings with your prospects and clients, yet all you did was insert a template of pre-defined activities.

Continuous contact without the continuous labor. Solve360 gives you more time to spend doing... err... Facebooking counts as work these days, right?

Some Background on Effective Lead Nurturing Campaigns

To create sustainable customer relationships, lead nurturing (aka CRM Drip Marketing and autoresponder) campaigns are your best friend. Why? They work. Consider this: 80 percent of all sales occur after the fourth interaction. Shocking, especially considering that 90 percent of all salespeople quit after four interactions. (They were so close!)

You don’t want to pester your prospects. Effective lead nurturing campaigns are always carefully planned. Some things to consider:

Keep a consistent message throughout and point to benefits. The same theme should be present in all emails. Drive one point home instead of a bunch of pop flies that get you OUT.
Provide value to your prospect by helping them understand the benefits of working with you through relevant examples, recent news about your company and industry, similar case study and answer frequently asked questions. Make your messages to-the-point and useful to the reader.

Lead nurturing campaigns must be carefully articulated to have maximum benefit. But, with Solve’s new template and scheduled email features, you only have to perform the labor once! When you have a campaign that works, put it on autopilot by telling Solve when to send your messages. It’s like having your own communications assistant, typing away vigorously at the keyboard to boost your brand image and increase your sales through personal messages.

Show Uncle Ted the door and embrace modern business practices and systems to give your customers the attention they deserve.

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Solve360 is Not for Everyone

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:54:59 -0700

Here are some reasons why you should not buy our service.

Your business is broken

No application or service can fix flawed business processes or team trust issues. We're not going to miraculously cure your toxic work environment. We're good, but we're not magicians. Solutions require:

PEOPLE with the right attitude and competency,
PROCESSES that get the job done and
SIMPLE TECHNOLOGY that delivers expected benefits

You will continue to try and drive your business hiding behind Outlook

If you think emailing spreadsheets and documents is “sharing” and with some synchronization magic it could work even better; good luck with that. If a tool works for you then use it, but don’t be dogmatic. Keep your unrelenting focus on the value you and your team create for your clients. It’s not just about you.

Solve360 creates network benefits just like the fax machine and social networks. Benefits are exponentially correlated to number of users and total use. The more your company utilizes the features and potential of Solve360, the greater the impact it will have on your business.

You need to be sold on the benefits

You can't be serious? Staying on top of your clients is a no-brainer. If you need a sales pitch to get you onside the doubt in your heart will turn Solve into the next marginalized idea. Solve360 is at the vanguard of a simpler and better way of working and addresses the most important elements of your business:

It destroys bureaucracy and administration
It improves transparency and coordination
It facilitates relationships and connection

For most companies, this means change. If you are afraid of change then we can't help you.

Of course we'd love to have you as a client. After all, we've worked pretty damn hard to make Solve360 not just a good product, but an amazing one, and we'd like a chance to work with you and your team to demonstrate that. But it's only worthwhile if there's a chance that you will become so excited at the performance improvements in your organization that someday you'll tell everyone who will listen how well this nifty service you found is working out.

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CMIS one year on - soon in public review

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:58:37 -0700

Autumn marks the new school year, business year and CMIS year It's that time again. Autumn and the new school year and we are about to take another major step with CMIS, the Content Management Interoperability Services proposed standard at...

By Any Other Name

Larry Halff — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:27:03 -0700

“Looks like I’m going to have rename before Friday due to a cease & desist request from @magnolia_cms. Any ideas?”

First: I promise not to start every blog post with a tweet.

Second: This second blog post, a week after relaunch, was meant to cover items of substance: what’s changed, where there are still some sharp corners, how to get support, etc…

Third: Instead, this morning I found myself at the receiving end of a letter from Magnolia Americas, which you will find reproduced below.

In the few hours since tweeting about the situation, I’ve clearly heard that you’re not happy about a prospective name change. Neither am I.

Neither am I able to judge the validity of their claim. They may be within their legal rights, or they may ultimately have no legal ground for their request.

So, why am I considering complying with the request?

What I’m really interested in is developing the community and service, and – on a bigger scale – the open web. I’m not interested in pouring my time and resources into an open-ended legal confrontation.

The time frame of their request is short. Their letter was delivered on Monday; which means that by Friday, I would need to be operating under a new name. I’m still exploring all options, and Ma.gnolia does not have a new name yet.

That said, just a heads up, there may be another big change coming.

Houlihan Lokey Selects EchoSign for its 5th Annual Technology Conference

echojason — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:00:46 -0700

We've very pleased to note that leading technology investment bank Houlihan Lokey has selected EchoSign as one of the top 20 Technology Companies to present at its 5th Annual Technology Conference in San Francisco on October 21.

It's a testament to the support of our over 12,000 customers and 1,000,000 users that we have become recognized as one of the top up-and-coming SaaS leaders in the industry.

Thank you.

The Future of Contracts

echojason — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:38:18 -0700

One topic we've been thinking on, and working on, with some frequency is the future of contracts.

EchoSign has seen explosive growth in Q3 -- we've almost doubled our growth rate over Q2 (our previous record), and crossed 1,000,000 users.

Which begs two questions. One, how to keep it going. But two, once the world starts to adopt e-signatures en masse, what next?

The 1.0 concept here is so-called "signature automation" or "straight through processing". Once your contracts are digital, and the data in them is digital, they can be processed automatically. For example, several of the world's largest leasing companies use EchoSign to automatically process equipment leases, direct debit the first month's payment, and record all the paperwork, automatically, in one click.

But Contracts 2.0 may be something even more radical. If the contract is created, reviewed, approved, signed, tracked, stored, and extracted all on the web ... does it even need to mimic paper at all? And the business processes that have evolved, originally around paper -- are they ripe for radical de- and re-construction?

We're working on innovations here for 2011 and beyond. But some early observations:

The C> Drive is dead (long live the C> Drive). Getting a contract saved locally to your hard drive is certainly far easier than the '90s paradigm of going to a file cabinet. But local content can be lost, corrupted, changed and mismanaged -- and is lost to the enterprise. The contract will be entirely, and dynamically, generated in the cloud.

But Fax will survive far longer than people think -- just not for signatures. Approximately 40% of documents that are FedEx'ed are documents "out for signature". It's reasonable to assume a similar percentage for fax. This will no longer be done, ever, for Contracts 2.0. But fax also is a way to transport documents from one office to another, without the need for scanners or a stateful PC. Fax of documents not for signature will last for decades and only slowly decline. Fax for signatures, however, will be dead and extinct in 6-8 years, much like analog film is now dead.

More documents will be signed, not fewer. In the digital age, one might wonder if signatures might become an anachronism. In fact, the opposite is occurring. As commerce becomes more global, and more remote, "handshake" deals become less and less practical. Virtual relationships need to be physically consummated. The signature is that moment in time, and its value only grows as commerce ever-accelerates and ever-expands its footprint.

There's more coming. One thing we can guarantee you. In five years time, EchoSign will look a lot like it does today -- only it will be more powerful, more feature-packed, and more integated with more and more web solutions. But EchoSign will also being doing some things that today seem pretty out there.

Government Turning to Cloud Computing

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:51:43 -0700

Last week, the Obama administration presented its plans to utilize cloud computing to reduce federal IT costs and accelerate innovation. The shift to hosted information management will allow the federal government to free up some of the $75 billion it currently spends on IT, $19 billion of which is taxpayer dollars.

The U.S. Postal Service is already ahead of the curve, recently signing an enterprise-level agreement with Caspio. USPS manages 34,000 retail locations and delivers to every address in the nation – but unlike other agencies, it doesn’t rely on tax dollars to pay for operating expenses. Caspio Bridge will undoubtedly help USPS reduce costs and IT backlogs, while improving information processing time.

Caspio currently serves many government offices at all levels, and the maturity of the platform lends itself well to the strict security and service-level requirements in this sector. Caspio Bridge offers control for all intricate procedures involving secure data storage, organization and retrieval. The platform itself employs multiple layers of security including top-of-the-line firewalls, data encryption, and hosting at a leading SAS-70 certified datacenter. Learn more about our platform security and reliability.

It’s exciting to see a positive shift towards cloud computing at the federal level. Caspio has seen great success with our Fortune-500, SMB, media and education customers, and we look forward to empowering more government organizations as they move to the cloud. Caspio invites government agencies to request a demo today.

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Equinox

Larry Halff — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:33:20 -0700

Summer hours shorten,
Fall hours grow like a flower,
Petals unfurling.

And with a haiku posted to Twitter just just a couple of hours before the Autumnal Equinox, Ma.gnolia is reborn.

If you’re reading this blog, you likely know the story about Ma.gnolia’s first incarnation as a public social bookmarking service, and how it ended. If not, please check out this Citizen Garden Podcast and this blog post by Todd Sieling, Ma.gnolia’s former product manager and all around make-it-happen-er.

With Ma.gnolia’s relaunch come lessons learned and changes, and among the most obvious and important is that it is no longer a doors-wide-open public service. I’m currently inviting old Ma.gnolia members to return, along with others who might be interested. Soon, those Ma.gnolia members will be able to send out their own invitations.

With precipitous timing, Jay Donovan at CrunchGear published an interview with me discussing the future of Ma.gnolia and bookmarking in general. One of the first commenters posted, “I personally find url sharing very boring subject.” I agree, kind of, if we’re only talking about saving links in public view. Where link sharing does become very interesting to me is when we think about who we share with, our reasons for doing so, and how it changes our relationship with those people.

That’s the primary thinking behind driving Ma.gnolia membership through invitations: it brings the all-important ‘who’s connecting with people’ back into the mix.

Today is a first step, and as the relaunch progresses I’ll write more about other changes already made as well as specifics of what’s to come. And, just as important as saying that Ma.gnolia is back, I want to address what I’m sure is on everyone’s mind:

Tested, versioned, nightly database backups to AWS S3 are an integral and working part of the relaunched Ma.gnolia.