Some improvements will be obvious from analyzing the necessary data, and others will take more planning and thought, but there are certainly improvements that can be made by any business, no matter the industry or sector. The more information we have collected on our operations, the better we will be able to streamline our processes, and in turn, cut down on costs. Any time we can lower overhead and increase production will result in increased profitability.

Computer software has the ability to help businesses better track performance, organize operations, and ultimately improve efficiency. I would say that in most industries, using a performance tracking software is necessary for success. One software supplier I have found that offers a range of business software solutions is called IBS. They offer supply chain management software which can help your business remain competitive by collecting and providing the data that your business needs in order to work in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

One thing I noticed while browsing the IBS website, is that they offer distribution software which is specifically tailored to companies looking to improve the efficiently of their warehousing operations. The software is designed to help businesses better optimize their warehouse by better managing delivery orders, managing large volumes of transactions, and helping to eliminate errors in the order entry process. The software is able to span multiple warehouses, and has a large range of functions which will be useful to the business owner or warehouse manager.

IBS also offers software solutions for other types of businesses, so check them out if you’re looking to improve the efficiency of your business operation.

Google has officially unleashed their Android source code for the world to see! They unabashedly proclaim that “this is probably the largest repository of open source code that has been released at any one time” – with the code being a very large 2.1GB, that could certainly be true.

In case you were wondering (and out of the loop), the iPhone is a closed-book kind if gadget, with Apple taking a completely opposite approach from Google. In fact, this is the only instance where a mobile’s complete OS code has been released. Geeks are certainly rejoicing.

The code is all-inclusive from the Linux built OS to the Java applications, which include a web browser, email, and instant messaging clients. The Android website provides further details and instructions.

The beauty of the internet is that when you write about things you’re interested in, you get to meet other people interested in the same things. A few days ago I wrote a few thoughts about “geocontent,” and a user named “deprimer” commented on my article and pointed me toward Socialight.

Socialight is probably the closest thing yet to what I’ve been writing and talking about for years. It’s a site that allows you to easily link content to a specific geographic location. Within 3 minutes of arriving on the site, I had an account and had created my first “sticky.” A sticky is a way to say, “Hey, this content is useful to this location.”

There are several things Socialight is doing right. You can mark information public or private. It’s very simple and intuitive to use. There are “channels,” which allow you to create or find stickys related to a certain topic. And of course there is the social side built into the site, you can follow other people’s stickys or channels, rate stickys, and tag them.

I’ve just played with the web side of Socialight, but they have a JAVA and WAP version that apparently works on almost any phone.

As far as what Socialight might be able to improve upon… Currently you can only add text and images. I’d love to be able to add audio, video, or a link to relevant content already on the web. I know that there will be some issues involved with bandwidth trying to pull down video over a cell phone, but ultimately this is the goal. I also wonder if there might be a way to sync up stickys before you leave on a trip. You could pull down the audio and video on your broadband connection, and then sync them up with your cell phone.

I’d also love to see Socialight automatically sync up all of the Wikipedia articles that have GPS data already built in. This would probably be a time/effort intensive project up front, but once completed, would prove invaluable. Many articles already have GPS coordinates or street addresses, so it would merely be a matter of downloading Wikipedia, stripping out all the articles that don’t have this information, and slapping them all up on the map. Of course, there are some articles that don’t have GPS data that would still be useful to link up. The article on George Washington, for example, could be linked to the place he was born, where he is buried, where he lived, etc.

And while I mentioned the site was very easy to use, and intuitive, I did find there were a few user interface issues that seemed a bit clunky, but they are almost not worth mentioning.

Finally, I think there is one other thing I’d like to see, but I’m not quite sure how best to describe it. I think Socialight is a great step toward seeing geocontent really take off, but it needs something more. As I’ve thought about what that more is, I asked myself why I’m not anxious to go and add a bunch of stickys. Finally, I have a site that does just what I’ve wanted a site to do, so why am I not online creating a bunch of geocontent?

I think the answer lies in ownership. When I create a web site, I own the content. I know that I can take my files from one hosting service to another. I know that if my hosting provider goes down, I’ve got the files and can put it up somewhere else. While I may put my pictures on Flickr, I’ve also got them on my hard drive, and can put them up on Panaramio, or Picassa online. For me personally, when I create these geocontent items, I want to keep them. I want to be able to put them on a disk and give to my kids, or friends. I want to be able to use them in one program or another, just like a .html file can be opened with dreamweaver, a browser, or even notepad.

Maybe that is what I want, is a file with an extension that can be read by Socialight, by an application on my desktop, or on my phone. While I will very likely use programs like Socialight to share my geocontent, for me I also want to have a backup just in case. Because I feel like a lot of the content I will be creating will be something I’ll want to pass down to my kids. And to just put them up on a website doesn’t seem secure enough. If I interview my father about the town where he grew up, I don’t want that information lost.

And if the platform is “open,” meaning people can take and tweak what can be done, then you start to get a whole slew of really cool applications that start to evolve.

I don’t want to end on a negative note. I think Socialight is very slick, and you really should go check it out. Add “firemeboy” to your friends list, and let me know if you set up an account. I’m looking forward to the many cool things that are going to happen as we link up content and location.

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.

The browser wars have been heating up lately with the recent releases of Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5. As a long-time Phoenix Firebird Firefox user and recent convert to Opera Mini (which is excellent, btw) on my Treo, I thought I’d run these two through their paces to see what they are made of. The hits and misses after the jump.

Opera 9.5

Opera 9.5 actually came out about a week or so before Firefox 3, so it was the one I tried out first. Opera takes a kind of “kitchen sink” approach and is arguably the most feature packed browser out there. For the most part, this approach works really well. Most browsers couldn’t duplicate the functionality of Opera, and it would take dozens of extensions (which often don’t work when new versions of Firefox come out) to try to pull off the same effect in Firefox.

Here are some of the notable features built-in to Opera:

• Built-in browser sync (even to Opera Mini on my Treo!, try that with Weave)
• An excellent download manager
• Built-in ad content-blocker
• Session management
• Wand (auto-form filler on steroids)
• Web development tool
• A unique trash can approach for recently closed tabs
• A novel speed dial start page

The best, and most notable, “feature” of Opera is its speed however. It really is incredibly fast. It starts almost instantly; actually everything happens pretty much instantly. It is easily the fastest full service (i.e. not K-melon) browser I’ve ever used. Opera also has a pretty good security track record and is even more obscure than Firefox (smaller target for hackers).

While I really appreciate that I don’t have to basically roll my own browser (I’m looking at you and your extensions Firefox), Opera may suffer from a few too many features. Does a modern web browser really need an IRC or email client? Both clients are just average implementations, and the really odd part is how they show up as tabs in the browser right next to web pages. That said, you don’t have to use or enable them if you don’t want to.

The biggest problem I have is with the rendering in Opera 9.5. While most (>95%) of the sites I visited rendered fine, quite a few blogs and Netflix didn’t look right. Even though most of the blogs probably suffer from poor HTML coding and lack of compliance to web standards, it is still something that was a bother. Firefox has always rendered quirky sites well.

Firefox 3

Now onto the reigning “alternative” browser champ, Firefox; here is the quick take on its latest installment. The good: all of the features of Firefox 2. The bad: not really anything new since Firefox 2. The speed has improved a bit and it hasn’t crashed on me yet (should that really be a feature?), but I really have to ask myself what else Mozilla has been doing during the almost two years between Firefox 2 and 3.

Here are the only features I’ve found notable in Firefox 3:

• Scales/zooms images using a higher quality bilinear (or maybe bicubic, see image to the right) method instead of using a low quality “nearest neighbor” approach (finally someone did it!)
• Download manager back-end has really been improved (resume actually works now), it is too bad they ruined the front-end UI for it however

There really aren’t many other new features but most of them fall under the “different, but not necessarily better” category for me. Yeah, yeah, the bookmarks use a database now, but I’m still trying to figure out how that benefits me or why I should care, the “AwesomeBar” is a bit short on awesomeness, and the one-click bookmarking is only easier if you never organize your bookmarks.

The Verdict

The verdict? I’m still using Firefox. The page rendering problems and something about the Opera UI just doesn’t suit me well. Other than that though it is clearly the better browser; I will definitely be following its development. I am probably just too used to Firefox really; especially the keyboard shortcuts for tabs. If I was already an Opera user I could not think of a single reason why I would switch to Firefox though. If you aren’t happy with your current browser you should definitely check Opera out.

…one more thing about Firefox

Back in the day one of my favorite web browsers didn’t really improve much for a long time, remember it? It was Netscape 4 and they weren’t even the underdog. If Mozilla wants to maintain their momentum they need to bring their A-game, there is some stiff competition these days (Opera, IE, Safari) who are all actually innovating.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

The problem with the Internet is that any whacko with a connection gets to throw out his/her opinion, however wrong it may be. The Internet’s saving grace is that other whackoes can point out just how wrong the first whacko is.

Charlie Barratt wrote an article over at GamesRadar in which he points out that Wikipedia is nothing more than a haven for nerds. Sure, there may be millions of articles, but they are all about nerdy things. Wikipedia lacks real meat.

Well, Mr. Barratt is either completley oblivious or just likes to poke fun. In the very first “example,” he points out that the Call of Duty video game has more words than the entry for World War II. Ha ha, very funny, but does he have any idea that Wikipedia has length guidelines? There are hundreds, if not thousands of articles related to World War II, Barratt just didn’t bother to find that out. He combines the articles for all of the Call of Duty video games but doesn’t bother adding up the hundreds of articles for World War II.

Wikipedia seems to be everybody’s favorite whipping boy, but rarely do folks stop to take a good look at just how remarkable a resource and phenomenon it is.

Think Wikipedia is a second rate web site? Go ahead, try to write an article and get it to featured status. It’s probably easier to write a dissertation (thought I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never done either).

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.

It’s been almost one year to the day since I posted my article on TechConsumer about why “Web 2.0″ wasn’t enough, and how “geocontent” might just well be the next big thing.

I’ve yet to change my opinion.

During the past year I have seen many strides taken by many companies in the effort to link content to location. Google is interested; Yahoo is interested. We all know the latest iPhone will have GPS. It is no longer a question of if it will happen, but rather, the question is when will it happen. And who will be the big winner?

I’ve noticed that there are several companies trying to get their foot in the geocontent arena by hopping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Take Loopt, for example, or ByNotes. Loopt says they are connecting people and places. ByNotes looks to be a Twitter/blog/GPS mashup. But these companies are working on “Geo 2.0″ before “Geo 1.0″ has been built.

Look at how the Internet came to be. First there was nothing. Then there was a little bit of content. Then there was a boat load of content. Then there was so much content we couldn’t wade through it all. At that point, Web 2.0 suddenly made sense. We now have social networks, other humans, to help us sift through the billions of blogs to find the really good stuff (think reddit, Digg, etc.).

But the geocontent arena hasn’t hit this critical mass. We don’t have massive amounts of really good content yet. We don’t have a way for people to create interesting content around locations. Or even tie exisiting content to locations. Until this happens, geocontent 2.0 will likely take a back seat as a sparkly bobble. Something fun to look at, but not as important.

It is my prediction that someone, somewhere will come up with a very slick and easy way to tie content to a location. It will need to be easy to do with a phone or a desktop. It will need to be easy to access from a phone or a desktop. Once this happens, prepare to see an explosion of all sorts of wickedly cool apps.

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.

                                                    
Today’s big announcement comes from Rhapsody, the online music service previously known for its subscription-based streaming music for a monthly fee. Well, turns out people are more interested in owning their music rather than renting. So now we have another major competitor for iTunes and Amazon MP3.

I’m already a fan of Amazon MP3. And considering Rhapsody is slightly more expensive (in line with iTunes at $.99 per song and $10 per album), I need something to justify that difference. Switching music download services is easy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a reason. Rhapsody’s answer: full song previews. The only catch is that this is limited to 25 full previews per month.

The other area where Rhapsody might be better is in its interface. It’s too early for me to tell, but I can say that it wouldn’t take much to beat Amazon MP3. Amazon’s interface isn’t horrible, but Rhapsody’s could easily be better. Other than that, the free album promotion going on right now is probably the most pressing reason to give Rhapsody a try.

Again, it’s too early to tell if these reasons will be enough to make me switch on a more permanent basis, but Amazon definitely has a worthy competitor for music shoppers interested in content from the big four labels. Whatever the case, Rhapsody is yet another reason to avoid iTunes’ premium priced restricted music.

It’s been nearly a week since I installed Firefox 3. And though the end result is largely positive, the process wasn’t free of complications. As I’ve discussed before, sure enough, my major issues revolved around the Firefox catch-22: extensions.

The first issue is that Firefox 3 doesn’t check to see if your existing extensions (from Firefox 2) are compatible until after it’s installed. It installs itself, replaces your working copy of Firefox 2, and then basically says, “oh, by the way, here’s a list of extensions you were using that won’t work now.” How hard would it be for Firefox to give you that list before it’s overwritten your working copy of Firefox 2?

In my case, my favorite theme was not compatible (Blue Ice) along with half a dozen extensions I use daily: copy plain text, delicious complete, dictionary tooltip (this is the extension I found so useful, I paid for it), AVG safe search, and Google pagerank status, to name a few.

Leaving that problem aside for a moment, I also realized that my bookmarks did not transfer properly. How frustrating. After some searching, I found the problem to be that Firefox 3 does not import your bookmarks from Firefox 2 if, at anytime in the past, you used the Firefox 3 beta. So since I tried the Firefox 3 beta back in January for two days, it meant a big headache for me now.

For a moment, I was frustrated enough to go back to Firefox 2. But once I found the fix for my bookmarks problem, I decided to look through the available extensions for Firefox 3 in hopes to find some that might be able to replace the ones I was used to having in Firefox 2. This is where the good news finally came.

I was able to find extensions that had the same or better functionality than all but two of my previous extensions. The two in question are copy plain text (makes it so that any text copied from within Firefox is stripped of its formatting) and dictionary tooltip. Luckily dictionary tooltip released a new version a few days after I installed Firefox 3. So that leaves me, as of now, with only one piece of missing functionality.

As for not having my favorite theme, I’m actually impressed enough with the default Firefox 3 theme that it doesn’t bother me. As I’ve said before, Firefox is my browser of choice mostly via its extensions. But when I have to take two steps backward (broken extensions) before taking one step forward (new features), I’m disappointed. Luckily, this time around it feels its only one step backward and dozens of steps forward.

This version of Firefox is much faster. While Firefox 2 would lock up on me a couple times a week with even more occurrences of slow downs, Firefox 3 has not locked up or slowed down on me once! And that’s even with instances of 30+ tabs open and the browser not being closed for days at a time. In fact, new benchmarks out today confirm that Firefox 3’s performance is better than pretty much all other popular browsers.

Huge improvements were also made to the address bar (now called the “awesome” bar), which allow you to type in practically anything (not just an official web address) while it tries to read your mind based on your recent browsing activity and bookmarks. Speaking of bookmarks, the system is much more easy to use and organize.

Other little improvements are nice too, like the way you can browse for new extensions from within the browser itself. And when the browser asks if you want to save a password, it’s not obtrusive like it used to be (used to be a popup you had to answer before you could do anything, now it’s an out of the way drop down question that doesn’t get in the way of browsing).

Overall, I’m hooked. This is the best browser I’ve used to date. If only the initial upgrade process were better…

                                                    
Ever find yourself shopping online and see something you like, but you don’t want to pay full price for it? Wish you had a way of knowing as soon as it goes on sale? Enter Savvy Circle. The site loves a bargain just as much as you do and tries to satisfy all you sale-loving, window-shoppers who shop smart.

To use Savvy Circle, you simply add the button to your browser and start shopping on any of the 100+ supported sites. When you see something you like, but don’t want to pay full price for, you click the button and the item is saved in your Shopping List. When the item goes on sale, the site sends you an email notification with a link back to the item so you can buy it. The idea is for you to never miss an online sale for items you’re already interested in.

Overall, Savvy Circle allows you to comparions shop while saving time and money. The service is super easy to use and fairly practical especially considering the current economic environment.

A few days ago TechMeme picked up a story at Search Engine Land about how Firefox doesn’t make you choose a search engine. Firefox 3 was recently released, and as always Google is still the default search engine. Sure there are some other search engines you can select but why doesn’t Mozilla give you choice? The answer…after the jump.

Money and Self-Preservation

Of course the reason Mozilla doesn’t make you choose a search engine (like Internet Explorer does) is because if they did, they’d lose almost all of their revenues. Mozilla’s number one (and nearly only) source of revenue is an advertising revenue sharing program it has with Google. Of course Internet Explorer used to default to MSN Search, but they were forced to ask users after companies like Google started suing them over it.

Corporations are just like people; they are extremely interested in their own self-preservation (read: money, for corporations). It is easy for Google and Mozilla to talk about building an “open web platform” when that is in their best interests. You can see that they aren’t always for openness and choice, though.

Case in point, Google sued Microsoft because Windows Vista’s search can only use Microsoft’s own built-in search (Service Pack 1 changed that because of the lawsuit), but does Gmail let you use a different search? Nope. Does Google Talk natively support any other IM networks? Nope. Does Google Earth allow third-party search results? Nope. But I thought they were all about choice and openness?

Mozilla doesn’t even list Live Search (which I recently switched to and actually prefer now) as an option. If they were truly for openness then surely the number three web search would be included above “Creative Commons” (who knows why that is there) right? Firefox also makes itself the default web browser when you install it; again Internet Explorer makes you choose.

I’m not saying Google and Mozilla are the devil, just that their motives are the same as Microsoft. In truth, it could be argued that Microsoft’s products are now more open to choice than either of these other companies. Google is at the stage where they are following all of the big bad anti-competitive things (exclusive OEM deals, suing companies to damage their products, etc) that Microsoft used to do.

When companies are still new and small(ish) it is easy to say you are truly for openness and the consumer. But as soon as they are established at all, the game changes. Firefox came out nearly four years ago, and no matter how plucky Mozilla tries to act, there are a lot of people who only truly care about protecting their jobs and the core product of the company they work for. If that means ensuring a Google (their #1 customer) search engine monopoly, then so be it.

Honestly, I wish everyone would stop suing and just compete on the quality of their software. One of the main weaknesses of Vista versus Mac OS X is that it would be illegal for Vista to have that level of integration. Everywhere you turn in Vista it has to ask you which search engine you’d like to use, what music store, or if you want Windows Media Player to be your default music program. Do you ever see that in OS X? Nope.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.