Category Archives: technology

Functional Design (from Sexy, Functional, Easy)

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Today on my JibberJobber blog I wrote about three critical elements of good design: sexy, functional, easy.

I’m sure many books have been written on each of these three things.

I want to share a quick thought about FUNCTIONAL.

Functional doesn’t mean LOTS OF FUNCTION.

It simply means that the software (or widget) has to do the job.  It has to work.

Some functional software will be overly complex.  Common example: Microsoft Excel.  I’ve heard many people say they use less than 10% of the features of Excel.  Most people have no clue what a Pivot Table is in Excel, or how to create or use one.  It is part of the 90% that people don’t use.

Other software/applications are super-easy (from the user’s perspective).  Think Flickr: simply posting pictures.  Or Slideshare: embed powerpoint presentations online (on their website and/or from my website).  PRWeb: post press releases and have them distributed.  The decision to use a less-functional application is quick, since there aren’t a lot of factors to think about.  Do I want to blast my press release out? Yes or No.

JibberJobber has a lot of complex functionality because managing relationships, and the job search, and networking, and follow-up, is a very complex process.  We try to make things simple for the user, and hide the complexity on the back end.  Sometimes we do a great job at that, other times we are lacking.

The more functionality a system has, the harder it is to get customers, educate them on the why and what of the system, and turn them into users.

We want the “easy button” in software, which works sometimes, but not all the time.

Finally, separate function from functionality.

Function = it has to work well.

Functionality = how many things it is doing (the complexity of the system)

Developing Mobile Apps: Need To Know

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I am regularly asked about developing web apps, like JibberJobber, or mobile apps (which I don’t have experience in, but am interested in). I found a really good post on Mashable titled 8 Things You Should Know Before building a Mobile App.

Lots of interesting tidbits in there…. the one that all my buddies need to pay attention to, first, is this:

Making an app will cost you, at the very minimum, around $10,000. This is for a super-simple program — none of that fancy enterprise or social networking jibber-jabber. Even still, any app worth its weight in code will likely cost you closer to $20,000.

Yes, you can do it for less, if you are a developer.  If you aren’t, get out your wallet.

And remember, there’s maintenance… p0tentially lots of maintenance.

Camille Carboneau Roberts on Screen Sharing Technology

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One of my favorite techie colleagues is Camille Carboneau Roberts, who specializes in in resumes (and especially federal resumes).  Camille always has great insight into techno-geek stuff.  She wrote in about her favorite screen sharing software/systems, and gave me permission to repost here.

I’ve been using GoToMeeting, GoToPC, and GoToWebinar since they first came out. I’d have to say for at least 12-13 years. So long ago, that the price I pay per year is not even half of what they charge now because I set it up to renew annually. I do get my money’s worth because I use it for training-software, social media, and on occasion 1:1 with clients on their projects.

However, now, I use join.me for the quick individual sessions. Clients don’t  always want to download the software even though it only takes about 2 minutes and join.me is just really simple to use. I also use it to “remote” in and do computer/file/software fixes.

There are hundreds of others that work well including:

WebEx.com

Glance.net

Skype

TeamViewer.com

Mikogo.com

Freescreensharing.com

CrossLoop.com

and a small drum roll:  Google+

There has been Remote Assistance built into the last few versions of Windows, but not a lot of people know about it… and it is a bit buggy if you aren’t tech savvy.

If you are looking for simple, you can’t beat join.me.

Thanks for the list Camille!

TOOL: After The Deadline – grammar and spelling

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Cleo Parker shot me a note about After the Deadline… looks like an awesome tool for writing better.  You can use it for free, and if you have a web service you can incorporate it there, for free.  I think we’ll need to add this into JibberJobber 🙂

Here’s what Cleo wrote:

While I was writing the summary, I used a cool tool I learned about in my local  WordPress Meetup, After the Deadline.  You may be familiar with it as it’s a grammar checker plugin available for WordPress and I see you’ve got a WP blog. But outside of a blog, you can use their online demo to check grammar and spelling in anything you cut and paste into the space.   It’s called After the Deadline, great resource for anyone who wants their writing to look as good as possible. http://www.afterthedeadline.com/

Thanks for the tip, Cleo!

Visual Artist Tools (for logos, etc.)

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I’m toying around with changing some visual elements of one web page (not a website), and I found some AMAZING tools:

Color Scheme Designer: This helps you see what colors go good with one another… very cool tool.

Flaming Text – Free Logo Designs: Put in the word, change some settings, and it gives you text with different visual characteristics.  Super cool.

Choosing Color Combinations: blog post that is excellent, from Veerle’s blog.

Smart Spammer Move: BE CAUTIOUS!

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Here’s a new thing I’ve seen in spam recently:

1. This is the first email I’ve noticed where they CUSTOMIZE the dormant account holder. Normally it is a deceased general or president or something like that, and I’ll get millions of dollars.  This time, though, it’s a supposed relative!  I’m guessing this is just enough to get the unsuspecting to start the scam process 🙁

2. and 3. Why is someone from an “international bank” using a Yahoo account?  It doesn’t match up… red flag.

There are a few other red flags in this email – but I hate listing them all for fear the spammers will only use them to make their messages better.

My New Toys: iPad 2 + bluetooth keyboard

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I’m sitting on my couch plucking away on a Microsoft 6000 keyboard I just got in the mail, writing this on my iPad 2.

I feel like I’m such a techie, although in reality I’m usually quite behind on new technology.

But this is pretty cool, I’m really enjoying it. 80% of the coolness of having an iPad 2 is that, well, I have one! Most iPad people only have the grossly outdated iPad 1 :p This is my first real apple product (not including a non-touch iPod), and I’ve had to figure out how it works… I’m slowly falling in love with it.

Here are some things I love about my iPad 2:

1. It is fast to turn on and turn off! I LOVE this for when I’m on the plane… as soon as we hit 10,000 feet I pop it out and turn it on and I’m ready to go. No watiting to load up.

2. It is small, small, small! Normally I like big, big big! but on a plane (I guess I spend a lot of time on a plane!) I find it more comfortable to collect my thoughts (work on a book, etc.) than using a keyboard… where my wrists and elbows are bent at unnatural angles.

3. It definitely has a “cool” factor that I’m not used to. Everyone wants to ooh and aah over it…

4. I love my first exposure to Apple design. I find some stuff to be non-intuitive, but once I figure it out it’s easy to navigate and use. Sometime’s it’s just hard to figure out :p I’ve already given a few design ideas to my JibberJobber dev team based on the interface I’m experiencing on the iPad.

There’s more I like, but I’ll stop here.

I don’t see this replacing my laptop (for on the road) and my PC, because they have different purposes, but it is really cool technology for someone who group up before cell phones, GPS and the rest of the amazing technology we have today.

I hope I can find some older iPads at discounted prices for my family… it’s pretty amazing!

CRM in the news

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Many of you know JibberJobber is a relationship management tool, designed off of traditional CRM, but stripped down to focus on RELATIONSHIPS instead of sales processes and jargon.

In the last almost-5-years I haven’t seen much news on the CRM front as far as aquisitions or anything.  Salesforce is the 8 billion pound guerrilla in the space, but I continue to hear they are way to complex and way too expensive (I’m sure they have their sweet spot in big companies, doing huge, huge deals).

Today I just read about two deals, though, which are pretty exciting.

The first is for GIST. I was actually on the phone with a GIST person a few months ago… I had tried to get in touch with them through their Contact Us methods but none of that worked. The phone call was okay.  The announcement of their acquisition by RIM (the company that puts out the Blackberry device) just came out yesterday.  No disclosure of how much the acquisition was for but according to TechCrunch they have taken in over $10M of funding… it’s said investors want a 10x return, which means they would have had to sold for $100M, but I’m guessing this deal was between $30M – $60M.  I have NOTHING to base that on, just a guess 🙂  No news on TechCrunch on this yet 🙂

The second is for Bantam, acquired by Constant Contact for $15M in cash. This is on TechCrunch here.  This is very interesting to me because it is a low purchase point, imo (even though, if they really did raise less than 2M, investors got about a 10x return (less what other owners got)), and because it was by Constant Contact.  My thoughts about CC doing this?  IT IS ABOUT TIME!  CRM is a great add-on for them.  iContact should follow suit and acquire their own CRM package, because this is so, so, so critical to their clientele.

As for me, I’m still plugging along, doing cool stuff with my CRM 🙂