Maintaining multiple Calendars

While I have to put the Outlook Calendar entries into the office calendar I do have my own private calender on Google that I share with my wife and vice versa. I want my wife to know when I am at customers or in foreign countries. That enables her to make appointments for us without the need to call me several times a day.

There are two problems:

1. And this is a general problem of the crappy Outlook*): With version 2007 or 2010 they changed the style how invitations are sent and this means: When on an Android phone for example or you do not allow HTML display in your mails due to security reasons you don't see the Outlook appointment information on your phone or mail-client. Both is given in my case.
    
2. I need to create each work-related calendar entry twice - once in the Outlook Office 2010 calendar and one on my Google calendar.

Solution for problem 1: Install Invitation Processor Pro on your Android device as unfortunately by default Microsoft Outlook inviations cannot be processed by Android (while gmail invitations and those sent with Thunderbird+Lightning which are also distributed as .ics file are displayed fine so this is not a general problem with event invitation mails). Say thanks to Microsoft.

Solution for problem 2: I thought of several possible solutions, but a) I am not using the Desktop Outlook at all (so all Outlook plugins for syncing calendars are irrelevant for me) and b) I do not want extra hosting for calendar syncing. You might be in a similar annoying situation so here is another still a little annoying, but acceptable way:

1. Create two rules via Outlook web access 2010:
   a) Forward all mails of type meeting request to your private gmail address:
   
   Rule Name: Forward event invitation
   

   After the message arrives and...
   

   the message is Meeting Request.
   And my name is in the To or Cc box

   Do the following...
   

   forward the message to 'you@gmail.com'
   and
   b) Delete your own meeting responses from yourself (confirming events on GMail side):
   
   Rule Name: Meeting response from Google Calendar
   

   After the message arrives and...
   

   the message was received from 'calendar-notification@google.com'
   And the message is Meeting Response.
   And the message includes specific words in the subject '(YourFirstName YourLastName)'

   Do the following...
   

   delete the message
   And stop processing more rules on this message
2. Use Outlook (web-access) 2010 to confirm appointment requests (at work for me the 90% case). When creating appointments on your own then invite yourself (your private or your work email address).

And the good thing when solving problem 2 this way: You also solve problem 1 as GMail is able to display the invitation details (date and time) even for the .ics files originating from Outlook. I installed the Invitation Processor Pro anyway to see the event details also when currently in K-9 Mail on Android.

There are four different use cases:

1. Co-Worker sends me a meeting request:
   => I confirm in the same way using Outlook web access 2010 and GMail. This way I have to confirm two times, but don't have to recreate the appointment twice manually (and using wrong dates or times) so I can be sure they match. And just to see it in GMail I don't even have to respond to the meeting request because on arrival in GMail I can see it in Google Calendar.
    
2. I have to create a private appointment:
   => I simply create this event in my private Google Calendar.
    
3. I have to create a work appointment that is completely irrelevant to my private time planning (maybe just a time blocker or reminder):
   => Just create this event in my office Calendar (using Outlook Web access).
    
4. I have to create a work related appointment:
   => Create the appointment in my private calendar and invite myself (send invitation to my work/office email address) and
   => confirm the incoming message with the Outlook web access.
   OR
   => Create the calendar entry in Outlook web access calendar and invite myself (send invitation to private email-address) and
   => Confirm invitation in GMail.

The remaining little annoyance with this solution is: As I usually use Thunderbird to access my Microsoft Exchange Mail account from the office, I need to switch to Outlook web access for confirming meeting requests.

Related posts: Outlook Calendar Meetings, Outlook 2010 Meeting Requests, Thunderbird and the Outlook global address book.

Surveillance, privacy (NSA, PRISM, ...) and encryption

It's been now a while that the "whistle-blower" Edward Snowden caused heated discussions about the NSA and it's PRISM program. Privacy since then got a big issue for many.

Some of my friends consider to close down their Facebook accounts, their Google Accounts and think of refusing many other internet activity.

That could be a good idea - if you want to have more spare time with your children, your family or your hobby - but to avoid being spied out they ignore a root problem:

• Most of them use Windows: As long as you are using Windows and that machine somehow is connected to the internet you are at risk. As long as there is a feature in the operating system kernel to harvest your data that can be done already before encryption happens. Linux is Open Source and can be checked by everybody who understands the programming language (C). And indeed nations are interested in having an operating system that is secure so even the NSA has contributed code to Linux (SELinux). They want to spy out others but they are not interested in getting spied out themselves by others. ;-)
   
  
• They don't refuse email: EMail is like sending a post card. Everybody (postman or IT guy) that sits between the sender and the receipient can see the content/text of the letter/mail.
  OK: Now, the more informed people are not thinking of using PGP. They usually find out after a while that while I can help them setting up their PGP encryption they need to have their peers also having the required software. While it is very easy to get started using PGP in Thunderbird using enigmail it might get a little more difficult to get Gpg4win to run smoothly not to talk about webmail <your favourite product here>. Oh, on Android you can use K-9 Mail and APG to send and read encrypted mails on the go.
  Apart from that even less people know that using PGP only the email content is encrypted, but not the header information like sender, recipient or subject. So when sending private encrypted mail it makes sense using a nonsense subject like "Thank you for the fish" ;-).

In many cases it is not a practical short-term solution to ditch Windows completely and switch to Thunderbird + encrypt all your mails. And you should also stop using your mobile phone (you can be tracked not only via GPS but also via antenna mast your mobile phone connects to). But as long as you don't do that and also do not encrypt any other data that you have saved somewhere in the cloud, it is quite irrelevant if you close down some of those accounts. Sincerely: Are you writing serious stuff in Facebook or Twitter that may really hurt your privacy if it would be made public for everybody?

There is always a tradeoff in having security and so is in having privacy. To avoid beeing hacked you can close down as many ports and sites as you want, but in the same time you loose access to features that might boost your productivity. We can be private and secure but then you wouldn't be able to use the benefits that the technical solutions offer.

Related posts: Pros and cons of cloud solutions, Administrator ethics, Social networking sites, Your holy machine, IT Dependencies.

Firefox and RSS feeds in Google Reader

Update: Google Reader will be closed down at July 2013 so this article is quite obsolete - read the newer article "Why RSS Feeds and alternatives to Google Reader".

However, here is the old story:

Lately I explained RSS feeds to someone and wondered why Firefox is not behaving the same way as on my machine when subscribing to RSS feeds. I did not remember what I exactly did on my machine to get it to work because it is so long ago that I created my profile for new that I first started searching the internet. Interestingly I could not get it to work so - back home - I investigated my own settings. Interestingly they do not match what I found on the net so I think it could be worth writing this article.

Preamble: Google Reader is an online RSS news reader that is also available for Android phones which is very fine when you (as I do) use your phone a lot to read news (for example while on the bus or waiting for it). What you read on your phone is synchronized with what you see when you are back on your laptop or PC. What I show here is how to get subscriptions with Firefox:

1. Newer Firefox versions do not show the RSS feed symbol by default any more. - Right click next to your tabs or somewhere between your toolbars and choose "Customize...". Look for the "Subscribe..." button and drag it onto your toolbar (I have it next to the refresh and abort button).
    
2. Type "about:config" into your url location bar and search for "feeds".
    
3. Change "browser.feeds.handler" to "reader"
4. Change "browser.feeds.handler.default" to "web"
5. Change "browser.feeds.handlers.webservice" to "http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=%s"
6. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.auto.application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed" to "http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=%s"
7. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.types.0.title" to "Google"
8. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.types.0.type" to "application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed"
9. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.types.0.uri" to "http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=%s"

Now when you are on a site that offers RSS feeds the "Subscribe" button should be active (sometimes, when there are many different RSS feeds available on a site they are available through separate links on the site while the main RSS subscribe button is inactive so you might need to dig a little for the RSS  subscription link) - however in both cases you should get the option to put the RSS feed onto your iGoogle page or subscribe with Google Reader then.

Related post: Efficiently following web news with RSS, Why RSS Feeds and alternatives to Google Reader.

The truth about software

To summarize the software-troubles:

• Too many bugs
• Too difficult to use
• Too much administration and maintenance work

As you might already know, as it seems obvious for you - or maybe, if you are listening to your inner voice, you only hear it from somewhere burried deep down in your mind: software is full of bugs. There is no bugfree software.

Since I started programming, I could see the IT world complexity growing and growing. In the beginning there was one processor and one process running at a time - no other software to integrate with. Everything was easier. When I think back to times of Commodore C-64 or when I was using the MS DOS Borland Turbo Pascal or C compilers - they were all extremely robust and when there was something not working as desired, I could be to 99 % sure that it's my fault. So at least the core system and the development platform were rock-solid and stable. That did not always apply to my programs... ;-)

Nowadays, operating systems and their core services as well as development environments - and in addition to that a bunch of third-party libraries all have their issues. So the software developer doesn't even start on a rock-solid base as it happened to be back in the early eightees (at least according to my experience - YMMV). In addition to that: If you want to produce cars, toys or whatever other physical stuff, in most cases you need a factory and a lot of money before you can start. For producing software, all you need is a computer and download some tutorial from the net and even a fool can get started - and unfortunately a lot of fools do...

But the low entrance barrier is only one reason for the lot of issues around. In my opinion the complexity is the worst thing here. Even with the honest strong desire to get everything right, you can't - apart from the fact that IT world has grown far too big to be completely covered by a single person.

But the growing IT world did not bring only troubles - we do have far more possibilities since computers were invented. Software development is far easier than in the beginning of computers. We can build software with far more features in much shorter time now. The problem: The software can often do far more than the users can handle.

And last but not least: I remember times when the "installation" of a program was just copying it to the machine and run it. Today it requires dependency checks and sometimes complex installation procedures. Although still possible - only a very few programs that run fine when you just copy them. Nowadays many software products have a bunch of required preconditions and a lot of integration options that need configuration. Highly integrated software means more maintenance work regarding updates (of any of the involved components). Another reason for increased maintenance work are the customization options that most software comes with.

A normal user nowadays is working with a lot of different software products and often there are some software products that are used very seldom only. I have seen users dealing with software they need to touch only once a month. From one month to the other they need to re-find all needed menu items again because from one month to the other they always forgot.

The challenge these days is:

• To reduce complexity (of the problem and feature set) as far as possible (while maintaining flexibility).
• To make using the software easier - software must be intuitive to use (only a very few people do read documentation or help file text).
• And to make configuration obvious and simple.

Related posts: IT fallout and buddhism, New user experience, Proof of concept, IT Dependencies.

Mobile world with Android

As I already wrote earlier, I was not one of the early adopters when it comes to smart phones. In fact, the first smart phone user in our family was my wife with an iPhone (which I am happy that it has been ditched in the meantime because my wife had some troubles with it from time to time and I could not do anything about them with this mega-locked block).

In the beginning of the year (which is only a few weeks ago) it was time to choose a new mobile work phone. As I already have a smart phone now, I was searching for a very simple phone for doing just calls. Battery duration was the primary "feature" I was looking at when comparing models. Unfortunately I was not able to find something better than the Samsung Galaxy S II which is again a smart phone. It has one of the longest battery times, is slim, lightweight, very low SAR value. And one of the reasons why I again have chosen an Android smart-phone: It is simple to setup - just login to my Google Account and all the contact data is there - automagically.

First I had a few concerns with two phones running against the same Google account, but I find it very fine now. I have setup mail and calendar for both phones and so I can very easily check appointments or emails on the second phone while talking (it often happens that a customer calls me and wants to talk about an email he/she has sent a few minutes ago. Easily now with a second smartphone.

You may not believe, but there are cases, where I go out or going on vacation without my Laptop in the luggage and I might be on places without WLAN access. So happened a few weeks ago when a customer called with an issue which I solved using the great TeamViewer Android application on my phone while having the customer on loudspeakers.

While in train or bus going to work in the morning, I do read news with the Google Reader Android app or listen to podcasts, so if I do not travel for a longer time right now, I don't turn on my laptop any more.

Here is the list of applications I am using on my mobile phone - bold ones are my frequently used apps:

• Advanced Task Manager (Saves battery power by killing apps that are not in use but otherwise remain started).
• AlarmDroid (Alarm clock)
• Apo-App (Austria)
• BarClone (Get rid of customer/club cards by having the barcodes in your phone and display them instead of using the card - unfortunately a lot of barcode readers in shops are not capable of reading the barcode from the display although other smart phones can read them without problems).
• Barcode Scanner (zxing)
• barcoo (Barcode scanner)
• BatteryTime (Display battery charge level more in detail or as icon on the Android-Desk)
• BeyondPod (Podcast software - like Google Reader for Podcasts)
• Bluetooth File Transfer (Phone-to-phone data exchange)
• Bump (Handshake with other people to exchange contact data)
• CamScanner (Scan documents with your phone)
• Citrix Receiver (Remote access to company citrix server)
  
• ConnectBot (Remote access to other Linux/SSH servers)
• Contact Widget (Put Quickdials on your Android-Desk)
• Dolphin Browser HD (Alternative Web browser)
• Dropbox (Access to your cloud files - I use it on Android for saving ringtones and small files containing notes or scans/photos done during meetings to get them automatically on my work machine without requiring the use of bluetooth or USB).
• ES Datei/File Explorer (File Manager)
• Facebook (if not already there, but I use it less and less because it gets slower and slower with each update)
• Financisto (Financial expenses tool)
• Flash Player
• Flashlight (several available)
• Genial Writing (Handwriting tool)
• K-9 Mail (Alternative E-Mail client - I tried several, that is probably the only one where you can configure IMAP folders to use in detail and probably the one with the most options).
• Money Manager (Financial expenses tool)
• MultiLing Tastatur/Keyboard (I tried several original keyboards of different phones and always finally downloaded MultiLink keyboard - it's simply the best with the most options.
• Note Everything (Note taking tool)
• (Opera Mini - as alternative for Dolphin Browser)
• (PowerTutor - if you do not already know what consumes the most power
• and consider appropriate settings)
• QR Droid
• QuickMark
• QuickOffice (View office documents)
• Reader (Google Reader)
• RealCalc (Alternative calculator with more features than the usual default ones)
• Schweizer Taschenmesser (several small tools)
• Shazam or SoundHound (both are quite equal - record music from where you are and get the name and interpreter of the music title being played.
• Stoppuhr (Timer)
• SwiFTP (Access your phone via FTP - must be on the same WLAN-net - use that at home to bulk-download fotos).
• Tasks To Do Free (Tasklist / todo manager)
• TeamViewer (Remote Support and meeting tool)
• TuneIn Radio
• XING (Xing social networking Android app)
• YoutTube (Video viewer - mostly already installed by default on Android phones)
• Zeiterfassung (Timesheet, worktime recording)

Related posts: Mobile phone situation.

Virtualbox vmdk image to vdi

One of my VirtualBox virtual machines used the vmdk disk format (From VMWare). Somehow it seemed to be slower than another machine I had running in VDI format (default for VirtualBox >= 4.0).

I had to search the internet a while to find the right solution and it was not complete, so here is my description on how to migrate the virtual machine disk format from vmdk to vdi:

cd <folder where your disk image is>
vboxmanage clonehd somename.vmdk somename.vdi --format VDI

That takes a while. After finished you need to start virtualbox and go into the settings of your virtual machine. Under "Storage" you will still find the old HD file attached to SATA (or IDE) controller. Remove the old one and attach the new .vdi file.

Try starting the virtual machine to see if everything works as intended.

Then shutdown your virtual machine, go to File->Virtual Media Manager and remove the old vmdk file even there. Now you can delete the .vmdk.

Efficiently following web news with RSS

As my productive machines are all running Ubuntu 10.04 where Firefox 3 is still the standard browser. It is not automatically updated due to a policy like "never change a running system". However, you can add another repository from Mozilla to get the latest stable Firefox, which I did a few weeks ago.

So I am probably one of the last persons suddenly missing the RSS feed icon at the right side of the URL location bar.

If you don't know, what RSS is: It gives you the possibility to read new blog and news site entries of different sites all from one place with the ability to track what you already read and what not - more information here.

I found this blog post telling that it got removed with Firefox 4 because only 3 percent of users ever clicked on that icon! - That is crazy! Are there still people surfing manually from one interesting page to the next? - I simply can't believe that!

Although I have upgraded to the latest Firefox already a while ago, I only now noticed the missing RSS button. I think, it is because I already have a quite stable set of feeds I read which does not change a lot any more. Maybe this is a reason for the 3 % statistics mentioned above...

Without RSS feeds I wouldn't be able to follow recent news in my areas of interest. There is so much news published on the internet and there is so few time to read. Without RSS feeds I couldn't get over the massive amount and read just the most important (and really new) information.

With the rising amount of smart phones I find it even more important to have RSS feeds as surfing the web on the smart phone is just annoying.

For all others, missing the RSS feed icon: It's now under Bookmarks -> "Subscribe to this page". You can get back the button by adding it to the toolbar (right-click into a free area on a toolbar and choose "Customize..." - there you find the RSS button which you can drag somewhere onto your toolbars).

Here is my way how I keep up-to-date:

1. I select sites (Blogs, News-Sites, Forums etc) that publish good content in areas of my interests.
2. I subscribe to those sites via RSS (clicking the Feedly RSS button) - Feedly is my favorite RSS reader.
3. Then I categorize the feeds into Computer, Linux, Development, News, Science etc so that I can read news by category when I don't have time to go through all.
4. Since having an Android smart phone I usually go fast through the headlines by starting the Google Reader Android app Feedly app while on bus or tramway - or waiting somewhere. I star/mark those items I want to read more in detail later or where I want to do more searching on the net for the topic - or if I want to comment later on a particular blog post.
5. When back on one of my laptops or desktop I go to Google Reader site click the Feedly-button again and switch to starred/read-later items - as the feeds are synced with my smart phone and across different machines whatever has been set to read or marked with a star is the same status on all machines automatically. When I am done with what I wanted to do, I remove the star and done.

Even if you an artist, teacher, plumber or other profession - no matter, there are plenty of sites that might be worth watching. Don't waste time by continuesly surfing from one site to the next where you can't see immediately what you already read and what not!

Related post: Mobile phone situation, Firefox and RSS feeds in Google Reader, Why RSS Feeds and alternatives to Google Reader.

Microsoft & Skype

I guess you have not missed the news about Microsoft aquiring Skype. Although Microsoft told they will continue development on all versions of Skype I have my doubts - and so do others too.

Recently Digium, a company that develops an integration for Skype with Asterisk, had to give up because Skype/Microsoft is stopping the partnership - read here.

You are free with your own interpretations on this but I am already searching for a replacement for Skype.

The very sad thing these days is: As soon as a software got really good and really adds value and/or increases your productivity, it gets destroyed somehow - being prices getting too high or not being continued. This way we will never step out of the bronze age of IT...

What you can see here as an example: People often say that in Open Source world you don't have a guarantee that the software is supported and continued. As you see here, proprietary software is not different here. But in open source world there is always the option to fork (see OpenOffice->LibreOffice). This option is missing in proprietary world. So basically in Open Source world you are more safe!

Related post: The Open Source movement.

Java applications on the desktop

When it comes to discussions about programming languages on forums and newsgroups, one argument against Java is that there are quite no Java applications for the desktop.

This is definitely not true. I have looked what Java applications I am using (or used a lot in the past), and here is a list:

• Yuuguu (Screen Sharing, Web Conferencing, ...)
• Freemind (Mind Mapping)
• jDiskReport (IMHO the best disk space report tool)
• PDF Split and Merge
• Yugma (Web conferencing)
• jalbum (I have used that very much in the past, but currently don't - but not because it's bad)
• LimeWire (Don't use that any more either, but it was good)
• SignLiveCC (Digitally sign PDF documents)

And of course, if you are a developer programming in Java, JavaFX, C++, PHP, Python or Scala for example, then you probably use NetBeans or Eclipse - both very popular IDEs (integrated development environments) are written in Java.


There are many, many Java desktop applications out there, look for example at javadesktop.org. You can see the wide area where Java is used on the desktop at geertjans blog here for example or at the NetBeans site here.

One advantage of using Java at the desktop is that you can choose between two core different ways: Swing or SWT. While SWT tries to use the OS specific widgets (to look more like the original OS and be faster), Swing does render everything itself. So SWT is a little bit faster and looks more like OS, but Swing is more flexible (more widgets available) and you can easily use different look and feel / themes (there is also an OS like). In both cases you can develop modern Java desktop applications that look nice and integrated with your OS.

The disadvantage of using Java on the desktop - I will be honest - is startup speed. Once started, SWT and Swing applications behave fast - probably not as a native Gnome application for instance but really - it's fast enough for the user. That startup time is still an issue you will notice mostly, if you write small tools as Java desktop applications. For larger ones it is less annoying because those you don't open and close all the time. If you open the application and tend to keep it open you will have no problem. If you open and close the app frequently then it may become an issue. Same applies for small commandline tools - writing those in Java is maybe not the best option. Anyway, really annoying is only the first start of the first Java application after reboot when the Java runtime is not in the cache yet. NetBeans for example (which is a big Java application) needs 12 seconds on my machine (a year old) when the Java runtime is already in the cache. Freemind is a smaller application and takes only 5 seconds to startup which is acceptable.

If you look also at server-side then ... what should I say .... the world is full of Java applications - too much to cover here (and of course for many websites or web applications you often can't really say from outside what is used behind the scenes).

Related post: Popular Java myths, The future of Java.

The small software vendors

Especially these days companies are very careful in choosing their vendors. This certainly also applies for software.

I do get some considerations from customers which I do not really consider being always relevant or true:

• "We prefer to buy from large software vendors, because as an international company, we need the availability of support in different countries."
  Especially software support can be available all over the world because there is no need to actually sit there. With chat, voice- & video communication plus remote desktop tools support can be done all over the world from a single location.
  Further, a large company could have plenty of people sitting in plenty of countries, but this does not mean that all those people have (the same level of) good knowledge of the software. Honestly, those who really know the product, are always the developers and the people who communicate most with them.
  
  
• "A small software vendor is more likely to fail and go bankrupt and then we have invested in a dead product."
  First, present time shows that even a large company can fail (maybe except banks ;-) ).
  Second, bankrupty is not the only case leading to a dead product! It happens more often that a product is simply discontinued and this happens for products of bigger vendors also. In bankrupty case, if a product is good there will be other companies taking over the product - especially if money can be made from supporting the product. But if nobody is interested any more in the product your situation is worse.
  Third, if you ensure that you have access to the source code (even if only in bankrupt case - which would be sufficient and cheaper in most cases), you always can hire people working on the product implementing the features YOU need (this is a big advantage of Open Source).
  
  
• "At small software vendors the deep know-how is bound to a few people only which also means a higher risk for the customer."
  Nowadays companies do not invest in having a lot of backup resources. This also affects developers. And I have experienced dependency on a few people also at big companies. Just because the company is bigger does not necessarily mean they have more smart people there working on the same stuff. It is more important that the team is continuously motivated and people like to work for the company employing them. A stable and motivated team at the vendor is the key for lasting long-term support of your product.

And last but not least let's not forget about a few advantages of choosing smaller vendors:

1. Usually more flexible organization.
2. Better and more direct contact with tech people.
3. Cheaper - big companies often have a big head of administration and more levels of managment - all those want to be paid.
4. What a small customer is for a big vendor can be a big customer for a small vendor. So the small vendor is more likely to listen to your needs.
5. If you are a big company and somehow get too dependent from a very small company, you could take over more easily.

And BTW: There are more smaller vendors than big ones, so the set of applications to choose from is significantly higher if you consider also the small vendors.

Related posts: Small Business Boom, Scope of IT projects, Paying for free and Open Source, IT Outsourcing, IT projects cost explosion, The Open Source idea.

Scope of IT projects

In the last weeks I have worked very hard to finish a project in time (where I did not have a real influence on the deadline) - and this by the way was also a reason for not posting here for a while.

I finished in time but most of the others didn't. And one of the reasons (besides others): Unawareness of scope and impact of the project.

I remember times when (at least smaller) companies had to be introduced to computer basics when I brought the developed software because prior to the installation of the new software and hardware there was nothing - nothing computer related of course.

Current IT landscape is far different. Each piece you are going to change affects plenty of others (and this might be the crucial factor why many companies still stick to full Microsoft product stack hoping that at least that works smoothly ;-) ). When designing new software you not only need to think of the software features itself but also of the (possible) environment where it is supposed to run. And according to that, the appropriate interfaces need to be present. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), links to other well-established software packages, (automatic) sync and import/export features are not a gimmick any more - they are required parts for a new software piece. Otherwise the thing can't be plugged into the existing stuff. But most serious software products nowadays do consider this situation.

Let's talk about "processes" - a very "consumed" word these days: At meetings I often can observe a lot of thoughts, ideas, issues and uncertainties thrown at the table at the beginning and then after a certain level is reached that nobody can get hold of the whole thing any more, somebody states (trying to get to an end of the meeting) something like: "We need to analyse the processes (now)." Of course the processes or work flows are a tipping point. Companies should know them or at least analyse them before. When starting to analyse the environment and work flows - the processes are often very different in the reality from what I get told initially by IT or management.

While in projects related to SAP it is normal having a planning phase during at least a year, for most smaller projects the teams do not invest into analysis at least a few weeks or not even a few days.

Another big pig in IT project management: Assumptions and interpretation. Source of huge creativity is the sketchy documentation or just quick look at designs or prototypes. In documentations there might be unclear statements. People often tend to interpret (and discuss interpretations) rather than clearing up the situation by investigating the facts. At the beginning of a disaster there is always crappy guesswork!

And it comes to ignorance: Even on projects where prototypes or demo versions have been set up at the client months before switching production, I experienced, that nobody was really examining the demos and prototypes and then they wondered because of unhandy GUI or whatever.

So we get to implementation: I don't know if it is because of economic crisis that software testing efforts are reduced or if it is not the testing effort but the increasing complexity of software - or both, fact remains: Software nowadays to me seems to be more buggy than 15 years ago - generally spoken. But this means that software should be tested more than ever. That said in reality the implementations often get late and to keep deadlines, testing is done only on the surface.

You may wonder if it could be still economic to set up a new IT project looking at the general situation in IT and with software. I say: Yes, there are a lot of processes ;-) that could be drastically improved with the aid of IT and computers. In reality IT has grown to a crucial backbone of most companies during the last 15 years - they simply can't to without any more. And so, it is more important than ever, doing precise planning and good quality work (not only when it comes to software).

Related posts: IT project costs explosion, Economic crisis and IT, The small software vendors.

Your holy machine

One of the arguments that I hear from people who want to emphasize the advantage of web applications is usually that you can access your application and data (e.g. webmail) from every computer.

But think of it: What are the PCs you really trust? For me it is a very few not more than 3 or 4. When I am at a customer or at a friend or somewhere else - the only PC that I really trust is the one that I bring along.

And thinking of GTD, on a different PC you will not have your keyboard shortcuts configured and other options set that allow you to be efficient. You can't really be highly productive without having setup your personal environment with the tools, settings and shortcuts that give you a boost. Being on a foreign PC sometimes my problems already start when grabbing the mouse as many may have different mouse acceleration settings than me.

Using a USB stick with your portable applications installed and configured is not a real solution as it binds you to a particular OS to be found at the client at least.

So it really makes sense to take your machine with you. With the rise of netbooks it even got easier to carry your machine with you. And you will have it configured to make you most productive and efficient.

Related posts: Web vs Thick client, The mobile device, Web application security, Pros and cons of cloud solutions, User lock down.

The License keys

Arriving in the office today I got notice of a notebook that a customer brought in and it should be reinstalled. Unfortunately nobody can find an install CD that is matching the license key labeled to bottom of the notebook - neither the customer nor our technical staff.

...yes, it is a Windows installation. Variants of license keys must match the variant of CD used.

It is typical - especially for home users - that they do not find their (correct) install CDs when needed. Unfortunately many people are not well organized.

Similar things happen to different type of software pieces. For instance, I used the Wise Installation System software and we have bought an upgrade a long while ago. When I later reinstalled my development machine I first had to install the older version, enter the license key and then - you might guess - upgrade and enter the new update license key. I do not know if current versions are still made this way. When reinstalling a complete machine you can easily get in rage entering (typos included) serial numbers.

There was a time when I argued against software automatically connecting to the internet and automatically retrieving their license from the internet. But now I think this is maybe the less annoying variant. - However, we also have bought software in the past designed that way and often we had to argue that the old machine was replaced with a new one and that they can be sure there is still only one license used.

What companies do to ensure that people do legally use their product caused me to avoid commercial software wherever possible. And indeed even on my Windows machine at work I use mainly free and open source software. This is the best way from avoiding pain when reinstall is required.

Related posts: The Open Source movement, Paying for free and Open Source, The Open Source idea.