Behold the Ninja Lion Sensei Master Cobra certification.

This guy might be a Ninja Lion Sensei Master Cobra.

It has been quite a week.  My last blog post hit a bit of a nerve and there was lots of chatter about my feeling regarding faux titles.  This prompted many people on Google plus to get together and joke around about weird titles they heard and make up a few of our own.  Today E₃ systems is proud to announce the “Ninja Lion Sensei Master Cobra” certification.

With our tongue firmly in our cheek, we created the Ninja Lion Sensei Master Cobra certification to recognize outrageous accomplishments of agile experience.  For example, if you have been trying to do an agile implementation and it has be obstructed by your executive team you might be a Ninja Lion Sense Master Cobra.

Please feel free to add other examples in the comments.

The hash tag is #nlsmc and we will have t-shirts at the Global Scrum Gathering in Phoenix.  I look forward to not taking ourselves too seriously in May.

Until next time.

What is so great about 2014?

Looking forward to 2014 are you?

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about 2014.  A new year is a clean slate and it firers up an organization with the inspiration to come out fighting; like a punch drunk boxer.  This week on the blog I want to talk about some things we are looking forward to as an organization.

First, customer outreach; E₃ systems has been making efforts to reach out tour local community.  We were concentrating our products to a very narrow market.  This year, we will apply our products to any business that can use fleet management or inventory control software. Contact us today and ask how our systems can help your business today.

Next, we are graduating from Microsoft BizSpark. Three years ago someon I knew in the Chicagoland Application Lifecycle Management group told me about the BizSpark program. This company could not have started without the generous help and support.  I am looking forward to the time when I will be able to boast about our success to the tech media.  There is a place in the start-up world for Microsoft Technologies and we are proof.

Third, the continuing maturity of BootStrap and MVC means that the web is catching up to our vision.  When, I founded this organization I wanted to build web applications which worked on a variety of devices. Thanks to the Twitter BootStrap library, it is not possible for more people to make that a reality.  This is a good thing because it will be easier for my little start-up to find developer who understand what we are trying to accomplish.  We are also excited about the release of MVC5.  The embrace of BootStrap by Microsoft along with the security improvements and Web API means that the web is only going to get more interesting and we cannot wait to see that happen.

Next, Google has better unity between YouTube and Google+.  When Google+ first came out it was hard to get pages and YouTube channels to play nice with each other.  This made marketing and branding efforts a huge headache.  Fortunately, Google listen to its consumers and now pages and YouTube channels work together seamlessly.  Thanks Google and stay tuned as we make improvements to our YouTube channel.

Finally, the general economy is improving and with it the chance to grow our customer base.  The last three years have shown tremendous growth in web technology.  We at E₃ systems have stayed focused on those improvements to provide the best product for our customers.  With customers willing to spend on technology solutions we will see an uptick in customer and business.

So that is what we have to look forward to in 2014, we hope you will join us.

Until next time.

Is your business ready for the next SharkNado.

Are you ready for the Next SharkNado Attack

It you missed it last week of the biggest events on Twitter in a long time was the premier of the B-grade monster movie SharkNado on the SyFi channel.  As the title implies, it was a monster movie featuring man eating sharks which sucked up by a tornado and then dropped on the unsuspecting population of Los Angles.  News anchors from cable television, celebrities of all stripes, and political figures chimed it to remark how awful the film was.  It generated so much buzz that the network decided to rebroadcast the film early because the overwhelming demand.  There is a lesson here for any business person.  The web and social media can be a powerful thing creating demand for your business.  In this blog post, want to encourage you to be ready when the next SharkNado hits.

The universe of social media is composed of many services; Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit being the largest and most influential services on the web.  Facebook acts as a global community for everyone from your parents to people who are interested in dressing up as cats to go for contact.  According to Yahoo news, about 1.1 Billion people call Facebook the place they go to share information with friends and family.  Twitter is known as a micro-blogging service and users can only type 140 characters at a time.  What makes Twitter so popular is the speed of how information is shared and it is also relatively unfiltered so it is the tool of Occupy Wall Street and rebels in Turkey.  Rumors and misinformation swirl about but within this river of information are plenty of nuggets of information gold.  Watching Samuel L. Jackson root for team USA during the Olympics was extremely funny and I highly recommend Jack Tapper’s feed from CNN.  Finally, Reedit acts as a clearing house of blogs and photographs on the web. They also have an “Ask Me Anything” or A.M.A feature which has become the place for politicians and other thought leaders to try out new ideas.  For the sake of disclosure, I use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn as my social networks to promote this business.

So what does this mean to you a small or medium sized business? It means you also need a presence on social media web sites; at the very least Twitter and Facebook.  You can promote specials and talk about your business in an unfiltered manner.  If people like your content they will share your tweets and Facebook messages extending your reach.  It is also cheaper than advertising on radio, television, or newspaper.  This makes it a low cost means to promote your business.

We at E₃ systems understand this strange world and would like to help you.  We leverage Facebook and Twitter and can show you how to do the same.  Please contact us and we will show you how.  So the next time a SharkNado hits you will be able to use it to boost your business.

Until next time.

If it ain't broke, then what?

It is not old school to be using junk to
manage your business.

One of my colleagues as a joke posted this article on his Google+ feed.  It seems that a manufacturing plant has been using the same IBM 402 system to manage its payroll since 1948.  Let me put it this way, they have been using the same computer for 65 years to manage accounting.

At first I was dismissive of this article saying they should get a more modern system.  Then it dawned on me this is what my company is up against when I am attempting to sell my company to other businesses.  Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas would rather manage its accounting with punch cards and form feed paper than upgrade to a more modern system like J.D. Edwards or SAP.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View California sent a group to ask Sparkler Filter to donate the old system for the museum.  The company politely said no claiming that everyone at the firm understood punch cards and the last sixty year of reports were formatted for the IBM 402 system. To this company, the system was not broke so they decided never to replace it with something more modern and efficient.  A PC with the standard version of Quickbooks could run circles around a device like this but because they are comfortable with punch cards they are going to keep it.

I run into this situation all the time when I am attempting to deal with companies which have thirty year old AS/400 systems.  It happened that fear and inertia are making it hard for people to upgrade their corporate systems.  This is going to get scarier as many of the people in the Transportation and Logistics industry retire and are replaced by this generation’s current supply of employee.  These are individual’s accustomed to smart phones, cloud based computing and social media so when confronted with green screens and systems they cannot access via their phone are going to enter other lines of work.

This, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” mind set is holding back economic growth and technical innovation.

A trucking company today would not dare use vintage 1970’s trucks to transport products today just because today’s trucks have better gas mileage and provide direct savings to the company.  The same holds true for software and services.  Today, thanks to cloud computing a company can have the computing power of a Fortune 500 company at a fraction of the cost.  With contemporary systems you can reduce administrative costs and enhance customer service without having to hire more people.  This gives you the gift of time because you are spending it in the office tracking down paper work; instead, you are selling customers and spending time with you family.

This is why I founded E₃ systems.  We want to give you the means to make more money and save time by having technical systems which will make you swifter than your competition.

Until next time.

Funny Squares that Replace Business Cards

What better way to show off.

The life of a technologist is spent relearning there job every eighteen months.  It is just the nature of the profession.  This week I spent my week receiving training as a Certified Scrum Master.  While I was at training, I broke out of my shell of meetings, code, and sales calls to talk with other technologists who share the same passion for Agile business practices that I do. In spite of all technological skill in the room we still swapped business cards like we were part of the cast of Mad Men.

I firmly believe that the business card will help archaeologists understand the operation of the contemporary corporation five hundred years from now.  They contain personal information about a person, how to get in touch with them and their relative position within the organization.  They will also chronicle how businesses have tinkered with the English language as Sales People have transformed into Account Executives.  It is a universally accepted custom in business that when you meet another business person there is an expectation that you will receive their business card.  It is such an accepted custom that it was brutally parodied in the book and film American Psycho.

It is always nice to hand out business cards and to network however in this age of smart phones and Google Glass why does it have to be so cumbersome.  When I receive a business card, I want to place that information into my smart phone right away.  The sad reality is that I can't.  I either have to go on my e-mail program and enter the information in my contacts or I have to go to an online service which will sync the information with my phone.  It just seems wasteful.

It would be nice if a technology exists which makes it possible to instantly scan a business card and place it in our phone's contacts.  The good news is we already possess this technology.  It is courtesy of Microsoft and it is called MS Tag.  Thanks to MS Tag you now have an easy means to allow people to enter your business card into their smart phones.  The application is free from Microsoft and once installed easy to use.  Just point the camera from the smart phone at the square code and it creates a contact for your phone.  That is it.  No muss and no fuss.

E₃ systems will provide this service free to you or your business.  We offer lots of other services to our customers but this is our way of introducing ourselves to people who may not be familiar with business automation or using technology to streamline their business.  Contact us today and we will show you how.

Until next time.

Don't Panic, it is my dream.

Thanks for the inspiration Douglas.

March 11st was the 61st anniversary of the birth of Douglas Adams.  Google made a big deal about the affair with a doodle on their web site and everyone had a story to tell about Adam's and his cultural impact.  I want to remember him as someone who came to his success later in life.  I also see him as a great writer and someone who could always make me laugh.

As struggle to keep my business running.  It gives me comfort that a misfit science fiction author can succeed and have cultural relevance.  I am sure that every time he heard 'Yes' in his life he heard a 1,000 no's.  If he can do it then I suppose that a lowly software developer can build a company which can help other business people be more productive. 

It is my dream and I am entitled to it.

Until next time.

Predictions for 2013

We are looking forward to the new year are you?

In spite of being a technical professional and owning and operating my own software company, I still can't do my own car repairs.  This gives me an opportunity to spend some time at the local car repair shop talking with other people who can't fix their cars.  The conversations inevitably turn to our careers and when others find out that I run a technology company they ask what they can expect from the world of tech.  I tell them that my opinions are not gospel but that I have a pretty good idea about what is coming up in the immediate future.  This week in the spirit of looking forward to the New Year, I want to make some predictions.  Hopefully, I will not look too foolish when some of my predictions don't come true.

In 2012 there were two major trends which could not be ignored; first, the rise of mobile computing and finally the ascent of the cloud as a computing platform.  When I first discussed the subject in earnest back in December 2011, I was looking at a trend that was just starting to grow.  Now you cannot go anywhere without hearing the term cloud.  People have even started developing myths about cloud based computing.  For 2013, I continue to see this trend grow and it is a perfect opportunity for a firm like mine to help small and medium sized businesses learn to compete with the big boys. 

Next the line between mobile computing and desktop computing is blurring.  This has driven all sorts of changes in 2012.  More and more of us get our information over phones and table devices so web developers, technologists, and even CIO's and learning if they are going to survive they will have to adapt to this mobile world.  Again, this major trend in the industry finds this firm perfectly positioned to deal with the situation.  Our applications have to work on computers, smart phones, and tablets otherwise we are doing a disservice to our customer.  I also feel that young people are even more comfortable with mobile technology than current business leaders so if we are going to tap this customer market we are going to have to build software they are going to use.  Microsoft with Windows 8 is a huge gamble on this front and while the news wasn't good early going I think they are perfectly positioned for a renaissance in the coming year.

Here are some other predictions that I think might take place in the New Year. 

• Cash is not going away:  We have all seen the articles about how debit cards, NCF, and Google Wallet are going to make cash obsolete.  Don't count on it.  We are going to need cash for night clubbing, casinos, children's lemonade stands, and groceries.  Cash will become less important but it will not become obsolete. 
• Agile will continue to grow in the startup community and face obstacles in established businesses:  I am running into this problem now in my day job.  It is clear that business leaders for large firms are frightened by the cultural changes and organizational changes necessary to make Agile work so it will take startups and big dogs like Facebook, Google and IBM to show them how it is done.  Until a company fully embraces Agile and starts squashing the competition there will be a deep reluctance on the part of other large firms.  Then it will be up to us to deal with the copy cats.
• QR Codes and MS Tag will find a home- in logistics and manufacturing:  QR codes and Microsoft tag came from manufacturing and they will return to their roots because marketing firms have been horrible at using these technologies.  I am pretty proud that we are leading this trend.
• E3 systems will be expanding our focus:  We will continue to support and market our Sully 2.0 software but we are branching out with other software offerings.  We are also going to start providing Business Solutions Architecture for small and medium sized businesses.   I am going to talk more about Business Solutions Architecture in our next blog. 
• Finally, E3 systems will continue to be a partner in the Agile Community on Google+ and a member of the Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management community:  We learn so much from these groups and in exchange it is nice to share my wisdom with them so we will have a continuing partnership with them.  

This last year has not turned out like we expected.  However, I am deeply grateful for the experiences and support we have received from the community.  I hope that 2013 is a breakthrough year for us and that you will be along to share it with us. 

Until next time.

Google Makes Another Smart Business Move.

The Cloud and Google are about making
money on the web and this is a good thing

Things happen for a reason in business.  This week is a classic illustration of that maxim.  Google announced that they were going to start charging for its online application suite which includes Google docs and Google drive.  This does not surprise me and I want to take some time out and explain why.

Many people outside the technology industry wonder how companies make any money building web sites and providing services.  During the first dot com boom, it was a simple strategy.  Generate lots of web traffic and buzz.  When that happens sell advertising to clients who are paying for those eyeballs.  It was a great strategy but it burned through millions of dollars of venture capital.  It also created spectacular failures like Pets.com; which generated loads of attention but lost eighty cents for each bag of dog food it sold online.  I still keep a few trinkets from the company to remind me how not to run a business.

More recently companies like Groupon have done a similar dance with death.  They have lots of attention but in doing so they have not figured out a means to make money with all that attention.  With the advent of cloud based computing and companies like E₃ systems, we have turned to a different model for making money.  It is a subscription model.  Servers, technical professionals, and infrastructure cost money and in order to pay for it we charge a low monthly subscription.  Google does the same with their Ad words product and the numerous numbers of services they provide.  Now they are treating Google docs just like any of the other for-fee services they provide. 

Being a Microsoft partisan, I still think that Office and Office 365 are superior products to Google Docs.  However, if you are a business person who is struggling to pay for licenses from Microsoft then Google Docs is a good option.  What Google is doing is keeping their product in line with the Microsoft and providing another stream of revenue. 

I am not surprised by this.  Google became the 600 pound gorilla of the web by providing and fantastic search engine and charging customers using the old model of revenue during the glory days of the dot com bubble.  Then something changed.  They started diversifying with their Android mobile phone system.  The Chrome browser is now an accepted standard on the web and they have made tentative steps into social media with Google plus.  What this creates another means to generate revenue and sell advertising.  Google Apps are different because there was no really good means to sell advertising.  So they could give the product away as a means to destroy Microsoft or they could charge a nominal fee and increase their profits.  If I am Larry Page, I know what I would choose and that would be more money for my organization. 

So what you are seeing is business people using the web in a much more sane fashion than during the dot com days.  Gone are the lavish parties and millions of dollars in corporate losses replaced with slow and boring revenue growth as more people use the web as the backbone of their business.  As someone who owns his own business and is following that model, I think this is a positive development. 

Drop us a line and find out about us.

Until next time.

Olympic Perspective

Technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last twenty years.  In 1992, you couldn't follow the Olympics online.  Tim Berners Lee who invented the HTML was still pioneering ideas which today we take for granted.  If you even knew what on-line was back then you had to settle for Prodigy service on a 1300 baud modem or if you were lucky on 2600.  Gosh how times have changed with live feeds from NBC, the BBC and countless tweets and updates over the web it was difficult to escape the Olympics.

These changes took place because of the hard work of countless engineers, scientists and shulbs like me who spend their lives creating and taming the digital wilderness.  The change is moving faster all the time and the next great frontier is going to be mobile devices.  What hammered that point home for me was an article my friend posted on Google plus.  He mentions that over 5% of web traffic comes from iPhones and another 3% comes from Android phones.  This is doubling the web traffic of this same time last year.  I anticipate as this trend continues that by the Olympics in Rio in 2016 those figures will be about 25% for the iPhone and 15% for the Android system.  I also think that Microsoft is going to be a huge player with Windows 8 but I just don't know where they are going to fit into this growth. 

All of us at E₃ systems are excited to ride this wave of innovation and have written programs which work on PC's, tablet computers and mobile devices.  We are particularly proud of how we use the Microsoft Tag technology to get your mobile device to communicate with plain pieces of paper to bridge the gap between the digital world and the real one.  Our Sully Inventory Management system makes that possible and you can find out more clicking here.

I can't wait for the next twenty years and what we are going to accomplish.  I hope you will be along for the ride. 

Until next time.

Our New Website

Dude Nice looking website.

Rebuilding a web site is a big deal.  It is not undertaken lightly and usually includes a committee of people attempting to be creative.  I hate redesigning web sites because everyone seems to know how a web site should look but many people do not understand how to make it happen.  This leaves me confronted with power point slides and Photoshop graphics with marketing people telling me that it should look exactly like the file they sent me.  Thoughts about cross browser compatibility and how the site should look on a mobile phone seem like secondary considerations.  It was a website redesign which finally pushed me over the edge and convinced me that I should be an entrepreneur.

It has been almost a year since I formally founded E₃ systems.  When I did I had a clean and easy to understand website which leveraged the latest web technologies and looked good on all the major browsers.  I decided to ignore IE6 because Google and Yahoo decided to. I was pretty proud of it but I knew as we were reaching our one year anniversary we needed a refresh. 

I took inspiration from Microsoft's MSDN website.  The good folks at Redmond are getting ready for the fall release of Windows 8 and are slowly changing over their web sites to have a more metro look and feel.  I decided that I should do the same.  This biggest challenge was finding an easy way to create the tiles and icons used in a Metro layout.  Searching around Microsoft's blog network, I was pointed toward a company called Syncfusion and they had a tool which manufactured Metro style tiles.  Armed with this tool I began the site redesign. 

To avoid making the swap too jarring, I decided that I would only change the front page of the web site and keep the remaining pages in the same format with Metro style flourishes.  I also wanted to make sure that users of the web site had access to all of our social media venues including our YouTube channel.  I also wanted to see if I could leverage the grid 960 css frameworks.  It was like putting together a complicated puzzle which would better appeal to our customers. 

The results speak for themselves.  The landing page contains all the information which old landing page did.  The social media icons are not as distracting.  Users do not have to scroll through the page to digest all the content.  It also looks good on tablet computers and PC's. 

Look over our web site and let us know what you think.

Until next time.