Los Angeles adopts Google e-mail system

The city of Los Angeles recently decided to use Google’s email system. From what I've seen, the reaction to this news is fairly divided.

Some view this as a mistake. Some view this as a catastrophe waiting to happen. They believe entrusting the data, emails, and information of such a large city is a security risk.

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5 new technologies that will change everything

How will technology change in the next 5 years, and how will it affect you? According to this article on PCWorld.com entitled, “5 new technologies that will change everything,” the future of technology lies in speed, mobility, and instant information.

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Easy development made easier

If you haven’t heard yet, we’ve recently overhauled m-Power’s entire browser interface. The new interface simplifies the application development process even further and provides a more intuitive experience for non-developers (and developers alike) who want to create web applications.

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Are you proud of the face of your company?

The face of your company is whoever or whatever a potential client encounters first. It could be a person, a website, or a physical store. It creates a positive or negative impression and often makes or breaks a sale. Take this story for example:

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10 tech trends to watch in 2010

The technology industry is easily one of the fastest moving industries. New advancements in technology frequently bring new time/money saving opportunities for businesses. However, the IT industry as a whole is slow to adopt many of these new technology trends. Why? I could rattle off a number of reasons, but I think this article in Techrepublic really hits the nail on the head.

That being said, those who stay on top of the ever-changing technology industry have a real chance to better their organizations. But what are the latest up-and-coming tech trends? Gartner offered its opinion on the top tech trends of 2010, which you can find on Datamation.com.

It can do that?

I always thought our Crazybikes demo site was pretty self explanatory until a few weeks ago. I was going over the list of features with our marketing guy for one of our Crazybikes demo applications. At one point he stopped me and said, “Whoa, I didn’t know it could do that.”

Maybe it wasn’t a self explanatory as we thought.

So, we created a little help box on every page listing each feature along with a short description. You might not realize some of the time-saving features built into these web applications, and some might even surprise you. Next time you visit Crazybikes, hover over this image to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Handy tool or ticking time bomb?

If I had a dollar for every time I heard about a problem caused by the overuse of spreadsheets, I could retire early. By “overuse of spreadsheets", I’m referring to tasks that spreadsheets were not meant to handle, such as reporting, business intelligence, shipment schedules, etc…

I know many companies are guilty of this, but I doubt that management at those companies know how much time and effort is wasted on spreadsheets. Here’s something to try: If your company uses spreadsheets extensively and you don’t know how long they take to create and manage, find out. You may be surprised.

I wish that a little wasted time was the worst problem associated with spreadsheet overuse, but it’s not. Read this forum post to learn about more potentially serious problems, as well as a solution.

17 tips to improve productivity

Do you struggle with productivity at work? Here’s a great article on productivity501.com that lists a bunch of tips sent in from many different people.

Here’s a tip taken from the article that I’ve found to be true in my own life: “Focus on three things: diet (including water), exercise, and sleep.” That is so true. It’s a lot easier to be productive when I’m getting good sleep and eating well.

How about you? Do you have any productivity tips to share?

Free modernization whitepaper

This white paper covers the techniques available for bringing your business applications to the web, pitfalls to avoid, and best practices for making long term technology decisions in today’s market.

It even takes a practical look at the steps we took to modernize the character-based mrc-Productivity Series into the Java-based m-Power and a few tips to help you modernize quickly.

You can download the white paper here.>>

How to create an iPhone app

Want to see your m-Power applications on your iPhone? Turning your m-Power app into an iPhone app is not only possible, but very simple. Better yet, you don’t have to go through Apple’s unpredictable approval process.

All it takes is a little formatting in m-Painter. We’ve written up some instructions and placed them in our forum.

6 ways to beat job stress

It’s a stressful time in the business world, especially in the IT industry. When you combine the bad economy with outsourcing fears, IT professionals deal with a lot of stress.

If you need some help dealing with your stress, check out this great article on Forbes.com entitled, “Six ways to beat executive job stress.” Not an executive? No worries, the information in this article really applies to anyone dealing with stress.

Have a good stress relief tip? Feel free to share it in the comments section.

Is your great software actually worthless?

User adoption is a funny thing. You may have the best, most cutting-edge software in the world, but if people in your organization don’t use it, it's worthless. Many enterprise software purchases focus on features and functionality, while forgetting the most important aspect of all—user adoption.

I recently spoke with a former insurance company employee. Their IT department rolled out some powerful ad-hoc reporting software that required multiple training classes to understand. To make a long story short, people went back to the old method of requesting reports from the IT department because the software was so complicated.

When it comes to applications that non-IT employees must use, such as ad-hoc reporting applications, ease of use is paramount. For instance, take a look at this ranking report example. While you are there, hover over the (and tell us what you think of our new Crazybikes user guide). Do you think non-IT employees would need a training class to run ad-hoc reports with this?

Want to create reports like this for your users? Let us know and we’ll build you a free proof of concept application.

Five top IT budget killers

I just read an article on CIO.com entitled, “Five Top IT Budget Killers.” The article lists the most common areas that businesses waste money within their IT department. While it was an interesting read, I’ve seen a few others ways that businesses waste money.

For example, many IT organizations waste money purchasing separate software packages for specific tasks, such as shopping carts, business intelligence, order entry, report writing, etc… In other words, they have to pay for, and spend time learning, each individual software package. This becomes even more costly when paying per user or per seat.

How to save: Look for software packages capable of performing a variety of tasks. This is an easy way to save money on licenses, training, and even maintenance costs. If you have any money-saving ideas, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

10 BlackBerry apps for the IT professional

I love how quickly the tech industry changes. For example, just a few short years ago, mobile applications were rare. Today, mobile apps are a booming business.

If there's an application you need, chances are, it exists. Wading through all the available apps to find the one you want is a different story entirely. If you're an IT professional looking for apps, here's a nice list of Blackberry applications on Eweek.com.

Have you found a great mobile application specific to the IT industry? Feel free to tell me about it in the comments section.