Business On Software

A link back to an article I wrote for CloudAve describing the irony of my thought processes of web applications versus Win32 applications.

It has been a bit quiet on this blog for a while now, and I must apologise.  This site is NOT becoming dormant by any means – I have simply been extremely tied up  with other work projects.  I have been fairly active on my personal blog lately at Posterous, as well as on Twitter, where you can follow me @dsabar.

I have also had another guest post up at CloudAve, relating to the communications outage we had here in Northern Australia last week.  In future, I will be linking more to my other guest postings etc. from here.

I still have a ton of articles on the back burner, and hope to refocus more on small businesses and software solutions in the coming months.

See you soon!

Image from ANDI2 via Flickr

This post is a bit off topic from software and programming etc., but it is an event that forced me to rethink things about the way the world works, and my place in it…

I was out on site at a client of mine yesterday morning, who is an egg wholesaler.  Normaly I go out there at the end of the week, when their deliveries have been completed and they need assistance with end of month etc., but this time I was out there early in the week, before they had made their deliveries and I was amazed to see their warehouse piled high with boxes and boxes of eggs.

I casually asked the manager how many eggs they move each week.  “Oh, about 40,000 dozen or so”.  What?? Forty thousand dozen eggs??  That is 480,000 eggs.  Each week.  This is in a small town of about 120,000 people.  That equates to about 4 eggs per week for every man, woman and child living here.  I would hate to think of the numbers that a wholesaler would ship in a bigger city elsewhere in Australia or the world.

It is just that I never ever thought about the number of eggs that would be consumed by our little town.  And if you are reading this, you probably cannot comprehend or visualise such a large number of eggs.  I know I couldn’t – until I saw for myself a whole warehouse packing shed piled high with boxes upon boxes of eggs.  It is mind blowing.

I even started thinking about the sheer number of chickens that would be needed to produce that quantity of eggs each week, and then the land and other resources to support that number of chickens…and on…and on.

Personally, I am not a big egg eater at all, and neither is our family.  We used to do a regular bacon and eggs fry up every Sunday breakfast, but not for many years now.  My wife in fact only purchases free range eggs nowadays on the occasional basis, however reading the definition of ‘free range’ these days doesn’t really make me feel better for the poor chickens.  Apparently as long as a caged, confined chicken can ’see’ a patch of grass it can be considered ‘free range’, which I don’t think is a fair call.

This experience has shaken my beliefs a little bit, and has made me less keen to consume eggs in the future.  If not the enormity of the numbers, then the memory of the smell there certainly will.  Have you ever smelt thousands of eggs in one room?

So apologies again for the off topic post, but I think that in this day and age, we need to take a step back and look at the rate at which we are consuming, and the resources, and animals which go into satisfying those needs.  Perhaps we need to go back to the old days when we have to hunt for our food again?

Image from SoulSense (Oscar Ordenes) via Flickr

It has only been a couple of days playing with the Windows 7 public beta, but I have tears in my eyes.  Tears of relief, that this debacle called Vista can finally be put down and out of its misery.  Microsoft has finally hit it out of the park with this one!

What is different?  Well, visually there is nothing really new to speak of, but I am finding the new taskbar style a lot better, and I like the thumbnail previews of open windows as you slide your mouse around the taskbar.  As someone who has worn out the [Windows Key-D] combination on his keyboard, I love the fact that when you move the mouse to the lower right corner of the screen, ALL your open windows are made transparent so you can see the desktop background and your little applets etc.

The biggest change I see is the speed.  Speed!  Things are finally positively snappy around here.  Click on anything and the windows blitz onto the screen.  No staring at an hourglass or an empty frame for 10 seconds or so as I do now with Vista.  Even opening My Network Places which used to take upwards of 20 seconds now happens near instantly.  This finally feels like a Formula 1 racer zipping around the track, instead of an overloaded WWII Bedford truck chugging around a mud track.

It used to be with Vista, I would get an idea or inspiration, but by the time I tried opening Notepad, or a new Outlook email or any other simple program, 30 seconds or more would go past, and I would rapidly lose my train of thought, as the operating system took up all my time and attention, instead of doing what operating systems should do, which is get the heck out of the way and let me get on with my job!

My biggest question is – Why could they not achieve this with Vista in the first place?  I mean, nothing has been taken out here.  It is still the same underlying OS, but it runs rings around ‘original’ Vista.  I tend to agree with Zoli Erdos that Microsoft should really be giving Windows7 to all current Vista owners and call it ‘Vista Final’.  The letter of apology to every user would also be a nice touch, but I think we have a snowflake’s chance in hell of either two scenarios happening!

Just a quick note to say that blogging on here will be very very slow during September, as I am in the US on business and holidays.  I am attending the Business of Software conference in Boston, and hope to come away with plenty of ideas and inspiration.

I look forward to stepping up the number of posts per month soon!

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Hi, and welcome to my new blog.  My name is Devan Sabaratnam, and I will be your host on here (in addition to some occasional guest postings).  I will be using this blog as a vehicle to discuss the most effective ways to run your business using computer software.

I will not be pushing particular software packages or online solutions, but rather I will maintain as neutral a view as possible whilst explaining the pros and cons of doing things in different ways.  I have had over 20 years experience in this field, and I hope to use this knowledge to assist you in your business.

Who is this blog written for?  Well, broadly speaking, it has been designed for business owners or managers, although software consultants, programmers and accountants will probably get some value from it – or not.  If it is the latter, then I hope you will provide some feedback in the comments, or via a guest post so that we can all benefit.