Simple Web Applications Make Buisness Easier

There is a trend towards software simplification out there on the Internet. The key elements are simple and useful. I remember in the early days of the internet the applications were all created from scratch. People had to concentrate on the killer app and could only include core technology. Those with a good UI caught on. Quicken.com was a great financial site, for instance (it’s morphed into a personal financial site now, not too bad.) Over time these applications fell victim to “feature creep” and the programs got really eleaborate and complex.

Competition was kept out of the market because development costs were high. Now, thanks to cool development tools like Ruby on Rails and AJAX, development is faster and cheaper. Simple versions of complex applications can be produced to capture a segment of the market that only needs core functionality.

37signals.com was no doubt a pioneer in the space with Basecamp, Writeboard, Tada Lists and Highrise. I never really took to their applications because they always missed some essentials, but I keep coming back to them to see if I can make them work.

Many of these sites are great for entrepreneurs because they are cheap and easy to use. I’m a big fan of Salesforce.com, but it’s not cheap and it is getting complicated to configure. Feature creep killed a lot of the good online apps for me. Quickbooks.com, for example. Can’t use it, don’t have time. Too much stuff.

 Here are a few others that I’ve noticed in my travels along the information superhighway (remember that silly term?):

• Expensify.com has a cool site designed to simplify expense reports.
• Outright.com is a good alternative to Quickbooks.com
• YCharts.com is a new site that does fundamental charting. Very cool. I used to run a financial site (PCQuote.com), YCharts.com is way better.
• ToDoist.com I use this for to-do lists all the time

There are many others, but I can’t remember them right now…more later.

My Sister at NASDAQ

My sister, Kendra Foley, works in development for Cambridge University. The chairman rang the bell at Nasdaq on December 02, 2009 and she was there. Here is a picture of her from the Nasdaq.com site. She is the one in the red sweater. (She was the one who had the 800 year sign made.)

Seems like she did the NYSE bell-ringing thing once too. She keeps pretty busy. I wonder what the exchanges do when thing are bad. Do they ring a bell with a deeper, more ominous sound?

How to Get Twitter in Outlook

Using Twitter is kind of a drag because you have to check the Twitter site all the time. However, I found a cool, free program that gets Twits and brings them into Outlook. It’s called TwInbox.

It adds a toolbar to Outlook and allows you to read and post Twits from Outlook. Ahhh… much better.

Twitterfeed.com

In my ongoing quest to understand new technology I just added my feed to my twitter account using Twitterfeed.com. A friend forwarded this post from Seth Godin’s blog. If it’s good enough for Seth. it’s good enough for me. Not sure why the logo didn’t copy very well but…

My twitter account is @MikeMoyer

Chocolate Covered Bacon

I’ve never tried it, but ever since I heard about it I’ve learned that it’s not that surprising to many people. Apparently people eat chocolate-covered bacon all the time. They say chocolate is good for your heart. That must mean it counteracts the artery-clogging fat in bacon. Hooray!

Thesis Customization Code

Here is a nice description of the .css:

http://diythemes.com/forums/resources-tutorials/16466-tutorial-ultimate-visual-guide-full-width-framework.html

My Book on Google

Google has scanned in my book and made a few chapters available online. Somehow the thumbnail picture is the pre-release version. The right cover appears when you click through to the image.

Feeds

I added my blog feed to both Amazon.com and Facebook.com today. I also added a social bookmark link to my site, www.MikeMoyer.org.

So… if this works my blog will now start appearing on Facebook.com and, starting with this post, on Amazon.com too.

Just for the fun, I’ve added this picture of my son, Anson, and I from last summer (2009).

Popchips

I tried Popchips today and I was pretty impressed. They are quite tasty and to the untrained consumer (me) they appear to be more healthy than fried chips and more delicious than baked chips. I would be willing to go so far as to say they are as delicious as fried chips, but, I’ve only tasted the originals.

Nice job, Popchips.

My Author Page on Sourcebooks.com

Here is my author page on Sourcebooks.com.