Technology Archives – Page 3 of 4

16 Dec 2009

The iPhone is Ruining the Country

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:19:39-06:00December 16th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Technology|

A great tongue and cheek review (by John Dvorak) on how cell phones and all of the bells and whistles that come with them are really just time wasters.

Let's face it, goofing off is goofing off. Pretending otherwise is… well goofy.

The funniest part, many of the comments are arguing with him about how they use their iPhones to do things like fly over a friend's house as examples of useful productivity (the killer app).

Don't get me wrong, every tool has a purpose. But if you are goofing off, don't confuse it with productivity. Oh, and get back to work, the […]

27 Nov 2009

Information Overload – Blink

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:20:16-06:00November 27th, 2009|Categories: Books and Courses, Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation, Technology|

Your brain processes things at two levels: conscious and subconscious (not unconscious).

Conscious thought demands information, cost and benefit analysis, pros and cons. We demand more information. But more information does not equal understanding. Understanding vast amounts of information is very difficult. You can still draw the wrong conclusion, especially under stress.

Worst of all, decisions take a lot longer to make. What if we make a mistake? If I just had a little more information I could make a risk free decision. Analysis paralysis. You can also make a wrong conclusion and stick to it because that is what all the […]

12 Oct 2009

Automating Success (Measurement)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:40:12-06:00October 12th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Technology|

My last post (Measuring Success) was on measuring key factors before and after a change to determine if the change had the desired effect.

Just as important, if you want to be sure that measurement is easy and will not get put aside when things are busy; you need to automate the process of generating the measurements.

This follows the agile principle of automation for anything that gets done more than once. It is equally effective for businesses.

If you have managers or staff members whose job description includes manually generating part of all of a report or key performance indicator, you have […]

5 Oct 2009

Your Web Presence

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:25-06:00October 5th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Every business should have a web presence… it is a no brainer right? Maybe.

Actually, the first thing you need to decide is what you want to accomplish on the web. Whether your goal is: marketing, sales, connecting with customers, or something else….

You need to align your web presence with your company vision and strategies if you want to be sure you are not just throwing money out the window (and as a small business owner that is your money).

Don't spend any time or money developing a web site until you know what you want to accomplish.

3 Oct 2009

Knowledge Is Power

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:34-06:00October 3rd, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Technology|

Knowledge is power if you can use it to make better business decisions. The trick is to get the right knowledge in front of the right people at the right time.

Inside a business there are normally three key sources of knowledge:

Data,
Information or Document Repositories, and
People.

Chances are you have a lot invested already in each of these islands of knowledge… but they may not be connected or otherwise delivering the value you want. If the data does not already exist in a usable format, you may need to capture it.

Relying on Bob

Too many small businesses have critical functions that only one person has […]

2 Oct 2009

Sunwapta Message Update

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:50-06:00October 2nd, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Our latest iteration on messaging for our website.

What We Do For Clients

Data. Innovation. Software. People. Vision.

We bring meaning and life to complex data through innovative software solutions. This allows people to collaborate more effectively and make better decisions; faster and with more confidence.

Software, knowledge and people aligned with strategic vision drives competitive advantage.

We adjust our approach based on the situation and the people involved. Large organizations are inherently different than smaller owner operated organizations, we've worked in and with both.

No matter what your challenges are, we believe there is a better way of maximizing the return on your technology […]

24 Sep 2009

Web Site Updates

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:07-06:00September 24th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Technology|

Joomla 1.5

Finding quite a few undocumented "features" embedded in Joomla out of the box. For example, the default WYSIWYG editor does not appear to be generating proper HTML and there are a few 500 series errors generated by the admin site. The search engine optimization feature does not work if you are hosting on IIS instead of Apache, you need to acquire an ISAPI filter.

Don't get me wrong, Joomla has some pretty powerful capabilities and because it is open source, the price is right. But, there is a learning curve and work required to get it right if you […]

21 Sep 2009

Our Company Purpose

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:11-06:00September 21st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

As I have mentioned before, we have been working on our corporate web site. It is always hardest to work on your own stuff for some reason. Client projects, proposals and hundreds of other things get in the way.

We've been looking at what we are good at, our past projects for clients and where we want to be. I also wanted something strong that we can get excited about, fits in with where we are going right now with our products and goes with my strong interest in what makes a business succeed. In the end, we have come up with the […]

27 Aug 2009

Cloud Computing – Does Anyone Really Care?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:24:55-06:00August 27th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

Lately cloud computing has been getting a lot of buzz. It is a giant umbrella for either hosting your applications "out on the Internet" or acquiring software hosted by someone "out on the Internet".

It is actually quite funny in a way. An evolutionary happening is being sold as a revolution.

The cloud has been there for years. The hype is newer.

Reality

A large percentage of people don't really understand computers, hardware, software, networks and the Internet very well at all. They really don't care where something is running or where the data ends up as long as:

It is easy to use,
It works […]

18 Aug 2009

Continuous Improvement

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:11-06:00August 18th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

Web Site Update

Thought about it some more… need to just get things done so new Sunwapta Web Site version one will focus on content and not so much on being an unusual tech site. Just not enough time to do everything.

However, we have a product launch scheduled for September and I will be creating a brand new site for that. That is where I will focus my creative energies.

Convention over Configuration

This evening I went to a Calgary .NET User Group meeting and presentation by James Kovacs (MVP) on "Convention over Configuration". Another passionate presentation by a very talented developer covering a […]