Posts filed under 'Miscellanea'
After finishing Malcolm Gladwell’s amazing book, The Tipping Point
, I decided to take another stab at Michael E. Gerber’s E-Myth Mastery. I have gotten to the chapter entitled, “The Discipline of The Enterprise Leader”, and the something resonated with me this time that hadn’t before—Michael’s idea that discrimination will set a leader apart.
All too often, small business owners find themselves caught up in the minutiae and trivia of everyday work activities and spend equal amounts of energy and time on tasks that have vastly different values in relation to the goals or vision of the business. Discrimination and learning to do it actively is an important lesson to take hold of. Allowing ourselves to quickly decide whether activity is of high value or low value and focusing on the high value will, I am sure, move you more quickly to toward your end.
My exercise for the next week is to discriminate and evaluate everything in relation to my vision.
What can you do next week to move you to make your business become truly world class?
February 3rd, 2007
A while ago–okay a long while ago–I posted about my search for a desktop Feed Reader application. I thought I should give an update since the situation has changed.
New Years and a Hard Drive Failure Brought the Winds of Change
Beginning in the new year, after the release of IE7 and FeedReader’s latest version (3.07 at the time), I noticed a significant performance slowdown with FeedReader. It was taking painful amounts of time to load posts and render them for reading as well as their being a change to the interface. Since I read on average 50-100 posts each day it was taking longer and longer to do this in FeedReader and eventually I gave up. I stopped reading and stopped getting current and new information on the fields that I crave information on.
My New Solution
My new solution is Google Reader. I had at one time decided that hosted feed readers were too slow and not as convenient as using a desktop client but after my problems with FeedReader my hunger for my feeds returned and I remembered that Google Reader was part of my Google Account features and decided to give it a whirl.
Faster and Functional
Whirl it does! Not only can I read posts faster, I now have the ability to tag them, forward, star and save them. Google Reader is not only fast but an all around great application. And, if I have another hard drive failure, I don’t need to worry about losing or having to somehow restore the desktop client database (who knows how tricky that might be). I now spend far less time reading many more posts and can send posts of interest off to friends.
Getting Even More From Google
One further enhancement has been to use a Google Gadget to display my GMail, GoogleReader and Calendar all on my Customized Google Page so I have that set as my “Home” page in FireFox and I never am more than a click away from an excellent control panel.
The next step?
I am likely going to move my domain email (via Google Apps) to GMail so that I can read, manage and post all messages using GMail instead of using my local email client, Thunderbird. Again, if another hard drive failure comes my way and I can’t recover my email messages, I won’t be stuck seeking old copies etc.
On a related note: Yesterday I talked about my quest for an Integrated, Hosted Contact Management System.
February 2nd, 2007
[UPDATE 1: I want to offer a special welcome to those of your from the Freshbooks forums. Thanks to VortexPortal for the link.]
[UPDATE 2: 37Signals has announced the release of its Contact Management Tool formerly known as Sunrise—now Highrise. You can read my first impressions on it or the announcement from 37Signals.]
After a stupid (and refreshing) hard drive failure on my main computer, I lost lots of data and emails etc. I was using SugarCRM as a solution for contacts. It is open-source, and therefore free, but not without issues.
I had it installed locally on my box instead of on my webserver because I was just one person (then). Now that it is gone due to a corrupted backup disk I am searching for a new solution.
Initially, I thought about reinstalling SugarCRM, but this time on my webserver. I cringe at the thought of going through the install process as well as dealing with the inherent lack of perfomance on my server. My host server is not a high performance system. It is an inexpensive shared server meant to host small websites with little traffic and so burdening myself with questionable speed in managing my contacts, appointments and lead tracking is just bad business.
The Search for a New CRM Solution
I started searching for options this morning with an awareness of some hosted and installed applications: The installed I have tried and left are vTiger and SugarCRM. Neither did what I needed and both did way more than I would, could ever need. There are a number of hosted services for the really small business , like mine and I have signed up for ZohoCRM and BigContacts but neither seem to do what I want.
The big problem is that I already use some hosted applications such as Gmail, Freshbooks and Basecamp, GoogleReader, and GoogleWriter and to a small extent, GoogleCalendar and none of these comfortably coexist. What I want is a applications that work together.
Personally, I think that Google going in the right direction with Google Calendar and GMail. I love the speed and flow of working in the Google interfaces but Google doesn’t look at the two and say, “Lets mesh these into a compact, fast and lightweight CRM solution for Small Business. I am not an application developer, but I think it would be relatively easy to take the next step and allow more robust contact management and event scheduling.
If I could log in to GMail and lookup a contact and see notes, tasks, meetings, calls with that individual, schedule such activities in the future, assign categories, and link documents, I would give up localized contact management and my desktop email app forever.
Google Apps are Fast Enough for Every Day Use
The reason? Google apps are fast and user friendly, period. Last week I became frustrated with my desktop feedreader and decided to give GoogleReader a try and wow! It is immeasurably faster than FeedReader. GMail is equally fast and effective at managing my emails and after playing with GoogleWriter, I can see the possibility of using hosted apps for most everything. I just need to see this missing app–the integrated CRM for small business.
Integrated CRM is Missing
Yes, I said it was missing. What about ZOHO and BigContacts? Well, they are both limited, ZOHO is a linear application that requires page reloads for every think you click on. BigContacts is limited for a number of reasons: it is not really doing CRM but contact management and calendaring. Where it does win is speed. It is build using AJAX (for good) which makes it fast and desktop-like. When you click on a link something immediately happens without a page reload–this is what Google is doing already. BigContacts suffers from the inability to create repeating activities. If you have a meeting every Tuesday at 4:00PM, you are going to need to schedule this manually. So much for the “management” side.
That being said, almost all of the CRM applications I have tried, don’t do this correctly. Many of the meetings and calls I do as a consultant are weekly or bi-weekly and who wants to have to spend time to add all these appointments. Both ACT! and Outlook have done this for years but I guess the hosted and installed application developers think that this is not important.
Sundown on 37Signals’ CRM Solution?
I came upon this article about Basecamp creators 37Signals coming out with a hosted CRM called Sunrise HighRise back in the first half of 2006 and have found nary a word about it since the middle of ‘06 about it. I don’t know if this is because 37Signals had objectives shift after their cash injection from Jeff Bezos? I like the way BaseCamp and Writeboard work so I would love to test their idea of a CRM but alas it is nowhere to be found (although, it is reportedly being used in house at 37S).
Google is Closest to the Finish Line. Are They in The Race?
I think, based on my experience, Google has the shortest path to successfully launching a CRM application because they already have the pieces of the puzzle and the proven performance to make it mainstream. If 37Signals ever comes out with Sunrise Highrise, it may be a fierce application, and a significant tool for all small business.
One final note: If I found that all this could work for me in an integrated fashion, I would be willing to pay for it–it just has to work!
What are you using? What features are you missing?
February 1st, 2007
In my search to find a better solution to reading my subscribed feeds in a standalone desktop client, it seems other people are thinking about reading feeds as well.
Online, Offline or Both
Just this morning David at BloggingPro, wrote about his use of feed readers and offers his opinion and habits using online services such as Bloglines and offline clients like FeedDemon. My own experience using most online tools—not just feed readers—is that they are slow and changing settings is often takes two to three times as many steps vs. a standalone application.
Folder and the River
This afternoon, Robert Scoble noted that he prefers the folder to the river as a method for reading posts. This is the way I have been reading feeds this last few months. I had tried browser extensions and then switched to the feed reading support in Thunderbird but became frustrated with a lack of control of my feed appearance.
Cautious Conversion to FeedReader
My search led me to install FeedReader. I am a cautious convert. I had no trouble installing the application but I found that its default display was too small and the contrast was too low. Fortunately, if you know Cascading Style Sheets, changing the display is quite easy using the XSL file.
NewsGator Doesn’t Make it Easy
After a comment from NewsGator regarding my complaint that I was unable to download their reader for the 30-day trial, I successfully downloaded and installed it. Too bad after importing my OPML file from FeedReader, FeedDemon kept coming up with errors. Sorry NewsGator, two failures and you’ve lost me. Seemed like it would be a good application but who has the time to debug commercial software issues. (Jack Brewster: I don’t have an hour to uninstall and reinstall and go through the process of trying to make it work. Maybe I will revisit this soon.
Tags: BloggingPro, Bloglines, FeedDemon, feed readers, rss readers, Robert Scoble, FeedReader, NewsGator
July 14th, 2006
I posted the other day about unsubscribing from blogs because I was getting only partial feeds and no link. I have come to realize that the bloggers in question are not to blame and it is really a function of my feed reader client. On an average day I read between 20-50 posts. I don’t necessarily read the whole post. I usually skim the article and if they are sending me partial feeds it takes me out of flow.
I have been managing and reading feeds using Mozilla Thunderbird. It has worked for me for a number of reasons but for me the killer is that I can organized feeds into category folders instead of having a huge list of feeds organized by title or feed URL. As a stop-gap it would be good if Thunderbird could determine if it was a full or partial feed and then attach the permalink to the bottom of the post so I don’t have to drop down the header to find the link and click on it.
Ideally what I want is a feed reading application that doesn’t require me to have to switch applications while reading. Either Thunderbird could further integrate its HTML support and Flash as well have the links to feeds open in the preview pane instead of having to switch to Firefox.
I know that there a number of desktop feed readers as well as some browser integrated readers. Which ones work the best and why.
As I write this post I have downloaded and installed Feedreader 3.05 and it looks promising. I have also attempted to download News Gator’s Feed Demon but for some reason when I click to download on their site I receive a JavaScript prompt for a username and password.
I’ll post soon with the results.
Thanks Jules for making me try something new.
Tags: Feedreader, FeedDemon, Thunderbird, blog reader, feed reader, productivity, Julian Rickards, tools
July 14th, 2006
To all my fellow Canadians at home and abroad. Have a proper beer and have fun with some friends today on Canada’s Birthday.
For those of you from other places you can read the background on our National birthday from the government or the Wikipedia version.
All the best!
July 1st, 2006
To the handful of people who read this blog,
I have cleaned up the categories for Destination: World Class.
I kept looking at the list of categories and they didn’t seem to make sense anymore. I hope they make sense for now and the future.
The new category list is as follows:
- Announcements and News
- Client Fulfillment and Production
- Leadership
- Lessons Learned
- Management
- Marketing
- Miscellanea
- Personal Development
- Productivity
- Reviews
- Sales and Selling
I am open to suggestions on new categories if you observe that anything is missing.
June 29th, 2006
I came up with the idea that I should really convert my whole website company website to sit on WordPress as a content manager and blogging system.
Continue Reading June 27th, 2006
One of the things I have figured out over the last little while is that I have to focus on a few things at a time. I will most certainly not be able to run two blogs, build up my web development and design business, help take care of my 7 month old and keep on top of the regular day to day things that just need to get done.
It is a long time coming but focus is my new focus. I will reduce the clutter in my life. One of the first things that will happen is that this blog will be placed in hiatus until further notice.
It has been weighing on my mind and I have been reading other bloggers like Guy Kawasaki, Steve Pavlina, Yaro Starak, and others and have found that I need to get other things in order before I dedicate time to blogging on business and my experiences in it.
I look forward to coming back to this with a new lightness and understanding.
For now, all the best.
May 4th, 2006
For those of you who actually read this blog, I have developed a companion Lens at Squidoo to provide a single resource for all the books, sites, references I have read and have used — and more. I will keep posting about things that inspire and lessons I have learned.
April 14th, 2006
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