Category: General

Open Source CRM Solutions Written in Java

I was grounded this week. No day job. No blogging. What felt like a bad cold was diagnosed as otitis media, a severe infection in the middle ear, which can lead to meningitis or can rapture the eardrum or cause hearing loss. It is – may I add – somewhat painful. But I’m back online. And feeling much better.

Just a note on the sideline, it’s great when you have a doc that cares. My doc has been very caring. Yes, I know – that’s what doctors get paid for. But it’s not the norm. It’s the little things that count like explaining the medication or offering telephone standby after hours. And judging by the very few encounters that I’ve had so far (and may they remain few), the Swiss medical system is more patient-friendly than on the northern side of the border.

Dogs
Here’s my contribution to keep blog content more balanced…

While traveling back from the doctor’s, I sat next to an elderly lady holding a poodle-like dog in her arms, which had obviously just been to the hairdresser’s… The dog, not the lady. I made one mistake: I commented on the dog’s appearance. Too late. The lady seized the opportunity to tell me all about the dog breed.

“It’s isn’t a poodle”.
“There’s only 2 Bedlington Terriers in the whole of Basel”
“No breeder in Switzerland. We had to go all the way to Germany.”
(much shortened version)

Hmmm – well my idea of a dog is somewhat different and looks more like the one in zkoo’s excellent photos [1] [2] [3]. Needless to say, dear readers, I politely listened. Thankfully our common journey was only a couple of stops long. After the lady had disembarked, another woman sitting opposite said that nearly everyone on the bus had heard the story at least once! Well, that’s one bus to avoid.

Nyambadwe Hill
Found a photo of Nyambadwe Hill in Blantyre. I used to scramble up this hill with all of my dogs. There’s a splendid view of Blantyre and the surrounding Michiru, Soche, and Ndirande mountains from the top.

NZZ on blogs
I just saw that another article about the recent blogger meeting in Basel has been published at NZZ online (in German only). There’s a summary at blog.ch.

today’s cultural event: went to see the exhibition, Blumenmythos, at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (along with hundreds of other visitors). The show is a “must see”.

Some of my favorites:

David Hockney, Mount Fuji and Flowers, 1972

Andy Warhol, Flowers, series, 10 sheets, 1970

I’ll probably go back on a quieter day to see the show again at a more leisurely pace (at no extra cost cos I have a Museum Pass for one year).

it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger

Practical examples showing how to use basic PHP to display dynamic web content:
Easy-peasy PHP

is it machiato, macchiato, or machiatto? non lo so!

Worries about rich web applications:

I know I’m just one quiet voice in a storm, but if you are thinking of developing any kind of “rich” web application, please, please, embrace all the aspects of the web experience we all love so much rather than rejecting them for your own preferences and assumptions. Don’t make your application an irritating, restricted and unfamiliar alternative to the web browser experience, make it a comfortable extension to the web browser experience. If you don’t allow your customers the control they are used to on the web, you will alienate your users and risk being out-evolved by a more compatible product.

I would rather endure the discomfort of adventure than the boredom of luxury.

Even introverts influence other people. Sociologists tell us the most introverted of people will influence 10,000 others in an average lifetime. Wow. How many people might you influence, seeing that you actually want to make a difference in the lives of other people?

source:
paraphrase from one of John C. Maxwell’s books on leadership I read some years ago

via kottke:
HBS Working Knowledge: The Leadership Workshop: Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload

Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

From Ongoing (via Haslo.ch)

If you’re still using HomeSite 4.5.1 on XP and you’ve activated automatic updates, you can start looking for an alternative HTML editor. I am.

Couple of days ago my HomeSite kept crashing, everytime I clicked the Design tab. Displaying the following error message:
No such interface supported.

A DHTML patch in one of the recent XP updates is causing the problem.

You can of course de-install the new DHTML patch that is causing HomeSite to hang up. But if at a later date you manually update your XP installation (e.g. to patch security holes that are being targeted by viruses), you’re back at square one.

My temporary workaround: I’ve disabled the Design mode.

But I guess it’s time to look around for a sturdy versatile HTML editor. For some coding, I’m already using UltraEdit. At a previous company I’ve used Dreamweaver 4 (can’t remember the exact version). I’m comfortable with writing HTML, but would like some visualization features for layout purposes.

Any recommendations? What are you using?

[Update April 16 2005] I’m thinking of switching to Nvu. Offers both a Windows and Linux version.

another day of snow biking in basel…

via Photomatt.net:

How to pitch an idea

A pinch and punch for the first day of the month. No returns.*

I like March. It’s my favorite month of the year!

* From my good old school days at Saints

grey, cold, and snowing… i started out on my bike but decided to change to Bus und Tram cos I couldn’t see much with the fine snow blowing into my face.
Here are some snapshots of the Basel ferry:

some thoughts on yesterday’s vendor presentation on email marketing software, InxMail.

Inxmail Professional is the “Rolls Royce” for email marketing and e-newsletters. Apart from managing personalized and individualized email campaigns and newsletters, it automates all aspects of email marketing.

Using Design Templates, campaigns can be generated without know-how in HTML or text layout. Graphical reports show your success in real-time. Automated bounce management handles incoming mails. It operates newsletters, discussion lists, and email sequences for automated online training. It supports automated opt-in and opt-out, tracking, graphical reports and much more.

There are some really neat features for email marketing. For example, you can set up templates using DTD and XML… but the price tag is high! It runs with Apache Tomcat and any database. It’s got a Java rich client front-end, which I think are more comfortable to use than HTML. But I’m wondering if there is a low-cost, open source alternative. Any ideas?

no further explanatory words required….

source: Africaspotter.at.tt