As the entire city and all of my consulting clients are snowed in today, I’m experimenting with small business financial software InDinero, proposal writing software BidSketch, and project planning software Tom’s Planner. Reviews coming soon.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
Several days ago I decided to use PayPal’s Website Payments Pro system for the Stronico credit card processing system. At the time, I thought PayPal was the obvious choice. It had relatively low fees (about $60 per month), no setup fee, and it seemed to be the 800 pound gorilla in the space, so how bad coudl it behard could the setup be?
As it turned out, I was very, very wrong. I spent part of the day Sunday and all day Monday wading through non-working sample code, looking at near duplicate setup guides for the 56 (how it is 56 I don’t know) versions of their Website Payments Pro system, installing all of the add-ons needed to get the sample apps going and so on and so forth. All of that merely to make a Get request with the proper query string (which is all the Website Payments Pro System really is). Continue reading →
Several months ago I finished reading Brain Rules by John Medina and I’ve been raving about it ever since. Medina is a noted brain researcher and the book contains the 12 things he wishes the lay public knew.
The 12 things (with my notes in bold and italic)
From this book I have made the following changes in life Continue reading →
After writing yesterday’s post on lessons learned from eight years in business, I thought I would come up with my listing of great books that have helped me starting out.
I follow Tyler Cowen’s notion that if you you finish every book you start you’re wasting time on crap. On average I finish less than half of the books I start. Since I’ve gotten a Kindle I’ve upped my selectivity considerably. Before anyone asks, I have yet to finish Getting Things Done by David Allen.
With no further ado – here are the books I recommend to start out. Continue reading →
For some reason the blog posts about QuickBooks Pro 2010 are the most popular ones on the entire blog. As I’m doing accounting this morning, here are what I would change.
photo credit: Rego – twitter.com/w3bdesign
First things first, I have not seen the Apple iPad. I am an enthusiastic owner of an Amazon Kindle. I honestly don’t see what the hype is about. Granted, I never do with Apple products, but I can’t even see it from Apple’s point of view this time. The Kindle is perfect at what it does, largely because it doesn’t do that much. You read order, download, and read books on it. Period. The Kindle does that effortlessly and the e-ink is easier to read than paper. The pages are consistently sized (an under-reported feature of the Kindle that helps quite a bit) and the battery lasts forever. The Kindle also weighs almost nothing and you do not have to choose between it and a laptop in terms of weight or space. In sum, the Kindle solves the problem of “I want to read something” quite well.
What problem does the iPad solve? It will have the low battery life of anything with an actual monitor, so it can’t go that long without being charged, so add in the bulkiness of a charger 40% of the time to the transport of the unit. It is harder to read (again, relative to the Kindle) so that’s another strike against it.
Perhaps I’m reading this wrong, maybe the competitor isn’t the Kindle, but rather some segment of the iPhone market. Perhaps there is some segment of the world that is clamoring for multimedia computing power that is available while in motion. But the obscurity of the Microsoft Tablet OS/PC indicates that there are not legions of people clamoring for walkable computing power.
Happily no one’s products depend on me, so good luck Apple.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
Overall Grade: 6/10
I recently picked up a copy of The Power of Less by Leo Babauta (I was using a gift certificate and that was the only interesting thing Barnes and Noble had in stock). Babauta blogs as www.zenhabits.net and I imagine most of the content originally appeared there. It is an easy, fast read.
The book boils down to these points: Continue reading →
Overall Ranking: 8/10
The first book I purchased on my new Kindle was Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. I bought it based on this review by Derek Sivers. On the whole, I liked it very much. In fact, I read it in one sitting. Here are my thoughts:
What the book is not:
What the book is:
Overall Ranking: 10/10
This Christmas I succumb to pressure and purchase a Kindle. First thoughts
The Good
The Bad
On the whole, the Kindle is wonderful and I reccomend it to everyone.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
I recently finished Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen and loved it. I found it to be an insightful treatise on the Autistic Spectrum and it raised many thoughts which are still bouncing around my head.
As a self-diagnosed Aspie – I was particularly fascinated by the part about degrees of difference, mainly that some people can appreciate/perceive some things, music, food, books, etc, to a far higher degree than others. I thought I would create some lists for future reference.
High degree of perception list
Low degree of perception list
What does all this have to do with Stronico? I’m not sure, but I was inspired to make several changes to the app after reading the book, though I find the reasons to do so unclear.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
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