A note on Microsoft Great Plains “notes”

 Business, Great Plains  No Responses »
Oct 152005
 

Great Plains’ note taking system is an annoyance at best. While they’ve expanded it so that you can attach notes to just about everything (customers, invoices, vendors, items, etc) each note is stored as a 32K text entry — If you are at the limit, you’ve got to delete something else to add more. If someone inadvertently wipes out a note, it’s gone. In fact this problem is so bad I’ve had to write a note archiving and diff tool so that I can recover “lost” notes.

Microsoft needs to fix this archaic note taking system. What should be done is that each new entry in the note should be stored as an individual entry, along with the date/time that note was entered and who entered the note. When notes are displayed, it should show them in reverse chronological order (newest on top) with the date/time and note text. There should be security for editing and deletion of notes. Adding notes should be available to anyone with permissions to view the data. The entry should also show if the entry had been edited, when and by who.

 Posted by JeffH at 12:00 pm

What Microsoft doesn’t get…

 Business, Microsoft  2 Responses »
Oct 152005
 

Microsoft continually updates things by changing the interface or adding new, mostly working, functionality but hardly ever by fixing the brokenness of existing functionality. They might enhance functions but they seldom fix the primary brokenness. I grow weary of Microsoft’s continual upgrades that are suppose to make their software better — unfortunately they only have their shareholders in mind and not their customers. Each features links you more tightly and in proprietary ways with other Microsoft products. They should at least improve basic functionality of existing features and expand the interoperability with other products, both Microsoft and non-Microsoft.

This is the same lesson that IBM had to learn in the 90′s — Their proprietary, non-interoperable tendencies led to a sound thrashing by the market. I keep wondering why the market has allowed Microsoft to continue this bad behavior. Yes, the market has allowed this to happen. So everytime you decline to investigate non-Microsoft products out of hand, you are contributing to the problem.

Now it is important to not dismiss Microsoft products out of hand too. Doing so is just bad business sense. But it is time that the market stop following the Jones’ and do their own homework when it comes to software acquisition. You need to evaluate not only features(+), security(+) and vendor strength(+) but vendor lock-in(-). Vendor lock-in exposes you to increased future prices. The longer you allow yourself to be ensnared the higher the cost of escape. Not allowing for vendor lock-in in your analysis is actually exposing your company to increasing risk.

Microsoft needs to be forced to compete via the strength of their product and their ability to free businesses to use them in new and unexpected ways and not by using a death embrace of intra-product lock-in. Every time Microsoft uses a closed, proprietary file format or communication protocol they are displaying their “not getting it.” When Microsoft starts publishing formats and protocols, allowing them to be used freely and openly, then that is when Microsoft will start to “get it.” When Microsoft starts adopting open specifications with out attempting to subvert them (think OASIS) then they will have “gotten it.”

 Posted by JeffH at 9:56 am

Google global wi-fi/satellite based Internet ?

 Business, Google  No Responses »
Oct 102005
 

““With rumors of the GoogleNet and Google Wi-fi in the works and
their latest partnership with NASA, I highly expect Google to
announce some sort of global wi-fi or satellite based Internet
connection for the world’s poor to be announced once this One
Laptop per Child program becomes a reality, which it hopefully
will. Funded, by Google AdWords,” writes Baker.

We knew we were witnessing history. We may not have known to what
extent history was being made.”

Do you think this is possible? “

More than likely, Google is going to help NASA develop a method to index technical information needed by engineers, designers, managers and then astronauts and mooners. Google, while I have high hopes, still has yet to wire a moderately sized city, let alone any city, I would say that the time frame for any plan to “connect the world” on this scale is 15-20 years out. Maybe by the time we have a moon base.

Moon bases — now there is a problem. Finding the information you need a quarter of a million miles away from home. With all the radiation on the moon, it doesn’t lend itself as a easy place for computers. So what they are going to need are rugged dependable computers that can access the data they need quickly. This is what Google does best, searching decentralized file system with localized caching, sort of a moon proxy/cache for lack of a better phrase.

 Posted by JeffH at 11:47 pm

OASIS: Sanity in a proprietary document wasteland

 Business  No Responses »
Oct 102005
 

Dave Kearns, Network World, 10/03/05, Massachusetts Open Doc moves lack logic.
While I generally enjoy Dave’s articles in Network World, I am left aghast at what he has writ of late. I do not ever recall reading such a factually incorrect and logically flawed article from him, ever. My only guess is that he was under the weather and needed to make his post time. I’ll leave the medication to Dave’s doctor, but I’ll take care of the facts and logic.

First off, Dave contends that the 1.0 version of OASIS OpenDocument specification is a brand new work. Straight off the back of some cocktail napkins after an academic social hour. So therefore it is a lacking and hopelessly flawed spec.

“… You are aware, I hope, of what 1.0 means to an “open standards” body, right? It means, essentially, that it has started the process of identifying the area in which its members think they need to create a protocol or standard.

They may even have defined a few terms. But because everything could – and probably will – change by Version 2.0, no one in his right mind will implement it.”

While Dave may be right in general, I would point out the the OASIS OpenDocument specification is a continuation of the orignal OpenOffice.org XML file format. An amazingly good and complete 1.0 format. While the OASIS standards group may refer to it as a 1.0 specification is in reality a 2.0 specification that has seen two (2) different office packages, OpenOffice and KOffice. I refer Dave to the FAQ easily found on the OASIS web site, oasis-open.org/committees/office/faq, specifically items 13 and 14.

“13. OpenDocument previously was called Open Office. What is the relation to OpenOffice.org?

When the OASIS OpenDocument TC was founded, it chose the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the basis for its work, because the OpenOffice.org XML file format had already proven its value in real life. The OpenDocument format, therefore, is an advancement of the OpenOffice.org XML file format. It us usable and used by OpenOffice.org, but also by other office applications like KOffice.

The OASIS OpenDocument TC itself is not part of the OpenOffice.org open source project, and only some of the TC members are associated with the OpenOffice.org project.

14. Isn’t OpenDocument only the file format of the OpenOffice.org application that has been standardized?

OpenDocument has been developed as an application-independent format by a vendor-neutral OASIS Technical Committee (TC) with the participation of multiple office application vendors. The basis for the OASIS OpenDocument TC’s work indeed was the OpenOffice.org XML file format, but even the OpenOffice.org XML file format was developed as an application-independent file format that is not usable by the OpenOffice.org application only.”

Later in the article later Dave goes on to opine the injustice done the Microsoft Word Viewer. …

“Adobe’s PDF format is specifically declared to be “open” and may continue to be used.

I can only guess that because there is a freely downloadable PDF reader available, the letter of the law’s published intent is satisfied.

But, wait a minute! Microsoft also allows you to download (for free) readers for it’s Office documents. Wouldn’t that let Microsoft qualify, too? Well, yes, it should. “

Oh my! The way they treat those stepchildren back in Redmond. Seriously, Dave –you are attempting to compare a published specification, PDF and the myriads of viewers and writers available from many different sources and available on many different systems with a closed, non-published specification that only offers viewers for a select few Operating Systems, who are of course available for a fee from the same company?

I would direct you first to the primary reason it would be considered open, the published reference: PDF Reference found on the Adobe Developer Site

“The PDF Reference provides a description of the Portable Document Format and is intended for application developers wishing to develop applications that create PDF files directly, as well as read or modify PDF document content.”

Next maybe a look on what we can find in a wikipedia article. Portable_Document_Format is a valuable resource for finding other non-Adobe readers and writers that support PDF format. In fact, I would bet that Mr. Kearns would have a hard time finding a workstation OS that didn’t support PDF’s. So we have a document format, that is published and is supported on almost every workstation known to man versus the Microsoft Word Viewer that only runs on various flavors of windows, specifically Windows 2000 sp4 or better. No love for Windows 95, 98 or ME or any version of Win2k prior to sp4.

and finally Dave suffers from some memory lapses,

“In more than 20 years of specifying and buying software applications and services, I can’t recall one instance where the file formats made a scintilla of difference.”

Dave, I’ve got 4 letters for you — H T M L. The specification and it’s openess make all the difference.

Everybody keeps babbling about whether or not it is the computer or the network. It is all just misdirection.

My friends this is the 21st century and what matters is the data.

 Posted by JeffH at 11:07 pm
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