AfterTheDotNet

Increase your willpower by practicing it

Lifehacker is one of the website which I consider a treasure of knowledge. What makes Lifehacker so good is that the tips and tricks that are blogged are useful for all kinds of people. Gina does a great job.

Recently I came across an article called Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind - New York Times on Lifehacker which reviews the article of the same name on New York times. The article in New York Times has been written by Sandra Aamodt, the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, and shares results of various studies done on willpower. The article discussed various studies though it is not mentioned who undertook the studies and neither the detailed findings are shared. In the studies it has been observed that if a person uses will power when doing a particular task and does not exercise his will power on other tasks he might be involved in while doing the primary task, a person would be able to exercise self control better. For example if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy.

Willpower grows like muscles. The more you practice higher the success in exercising will power. It is not known whey willpower grows when one exercises willpower more, though the trick is to exercise willpower in the long run to grow your willpower.

[From Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind at NY Times]

Saas in 2008 and beyond

Though Phil Wainewright predicted last year (2007) that 2007 would be year for SaaS. Though SaaS did gain momentum but it did not penetrate enough so that one could say that there has been a major shift. At the start of this year (2800) Phil Wainewright predicted a huge surge in the SaaS industry. I agree with him.

Phil observes that the main reasons for the surge are

1. SaaS is a service based industry. SaaS makes it easy for teams that are spread apart to work together without huge setup costs as web allows you to do that. Over the years the SaaS detractors have decreased because SaaS model is making sense.
2. Software vendors are shifting to SaaS. Software vendors are adopting SaaS. SAP and Oracle are one of the few software vendors who have shown keen interest in the SaaS model.
3. Economic conditions. With the fears of recession plaguing the world organizations are switching are looking for cheaper options for the expensive software they use. Since SaaS is a pay as you go model it seems like a good alternative as long as ISV’s can deliver.
4. Growth of SaaS platforms. There is a race for SaaS platforms. Earlier this year Genesis was launched as a platform for SaaS at the SaaS week. Companies like Oracle and Microsoft are in the process of making their products SaaS compatible which suggests that they also see a growth potential in this field.
5. Growth of virtual working. Increasingly people are working from different locations which will help boost SaaS development as it provides a cheap way to work from different locations.

Phil Wainewright’s article which has greater detail can be found at http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/wp-trackback.php?p=432. Another respected commentator on IT trends Jeff Kaplan has another post which outlines the reasons why SaaS can be successful which makes interesting reading.

Powerpoint cheats, tips and tricks

Some of the cheats (tips and tricks) for Powerpoint

1. Do not use bullet points
   More  information is at http://lifehacker.com/software/presentations/take-your-powerpoint-slides-beyond-bullet-points-266156.php
2. Zoom and Call Out Sections of Your Screen 
   You can use a third party application like Zoomit.
3. Dim the clutter
   If you want the viewer to focus on one thing dim out the other things on that slide. If you want to go further  then you can use clutter cloak for windows to highlight portions of a screen.
4. Screenshots with bigger fonts
   If any screenshots have to be added to slides then bigger fonts should be used in the screenshots to make them legible.
5. Do not embed too many objects
   Too much of anything is bad!
6. Spell Check
   Use it - it is a helpful!
7. Use color sensibly
   This is web 2.0. Use color where it is understated.
8. When presenting concentrate on your computer’s screen
   Do not look up to confirm what is shown on your computer is being shown on the screen. Technology and history tells us that it will be the same.
9. Turn off the screensaver on the computer you are using to project
   Unless a developer of a screensaver pays you for advertising his screensaver make sure you switch off the screensaver you are using to project your presentation.
10. Using Powerpoint at all
    A lot of people believe that presentations can be more interesting without Powerpoint. If you have  a strong reason to do that then go ahead.

The presentation on slideshare by ham which can act as quick reference.

| View | Upload your own

If you are interested in enhancing your Powerpoint skills here are some helpful links

Presentation Zen - A resource for building professional presentations.

Powerful Pointers for Presenters : A great article and reference to online resources for building Powerpoint presentations.

Beyond Bullet Points - Link to the blog of Cliff Atkinson who is the author of "Beyond Bullet Points", a book on how to develop powerful presentations.

Really Bad Powerpoint - A PDF by Seth Godin talks about Powerpoint mistakes and how to fix them.

Garr Reynolds - The person behind Presentation Zen.

If you have some tips on Powerpoint presentations please share them.

Development platforms for SaaS (Software as a Service)

Force.com has been marketed as a platform for services for those who want to provide software as a solution. With the backing and experience of Salesforce.com, force.com is attracting a lot of attention.

The question as to why people believe that force.com has the probability of success as a development platform for SaaS as compared to others? Industry experts believe that force.com will succeed as a lot of internal team is big organizations and corporates are using Salesforce.com which is a CRM solution built by force.com. Over the years Salesforce has evolved into a trusted CRM solution specially for small and medium businesses because of its ease to user, scale and monitoring ability. The Salesforce.com development has also managed to build addons for different businesses which has kept the interest alive.

Success of Salesforce.com has ensured that SaaS based CRM’s for different verticals are likely to use Force.com as a development platform. This has been proven by launch of  VBioPharma Primary Care Edition CRM application which is targeted at the Life Sciences organizations. Every SaaS based CRM developers dream is to replicate Salesforce.com’s success even though it might be unintentional. 

There are others who have a different view on this. Renee Boucher Ferguson who is a senior writer at Ziff Davis Media, reports that ISV’s (independent Software Vendors) have snubbed Salesforce as a development platform. She refers to a situation which developed after the Open Source SaaS summit 2008 when Znet’s SaaS blogger Phil Wainewright conducted an impromptu poll where 250 ISV’s respondents were asked the following questions

1. How many people were considering building a SaaS offering using their own development tools and having it hosted by a 3rd party?

2. How many people were looking at a software+services approach?

3. How many people were considering Salesforce’s Force.com (this is the fun one)?

The results were surprising. Only 2 respondents said that they are looking at force.com. 40 respondents said that they would develop their own development platform and 10 respondents were thinking about using another developer platform. This is not good news for force.com given the fact that this poll was conducted by someone who is a known person in the SaaS vertical and the fact that it has been reported across the Internet does not help force.com. The main reasons why people do not use force.com is that it is expensive, not a true platform and the vendor lock in.

In the end one can say that there is great potential in development platform services as the development platforms would be used by SaaS developers based on the functions of the service.

Software as a Service - The fundamentals

Ever since online software like Google Docs and Zoho have been introduced the threat to Microsoft and other developers of office suite software has increased. In fact the IT world has coined an new phrase for the online software which is "Software as a Service". According to Wikipedia "Software as a service (SaaS) is a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a web-native software application and hosts and operates (either independently or through a third-party) the application for use by its customers over the Internet. Customers do not pay for owning the software itself but rather for using it"

SaaS was initially thought of as a low cost alternative for a business to gain access to commercially licensed software. However, that is not the case anymore and this amply clear from the launch and success of Windows live page and Office Live Free Website. Some of the areas where SaaS has been effective is Customer relationship management, Video Conferencing, Human Resources, Accounting and Email. SaaS is different than ASP (Application Service Provider) as in SaaS the focus is on what the customer wants and not what the application developer can deliver.The success of Salesforce.com, which started in 1999, and has 390,000 subscribers has proven that SaaS can be a successful model. In fact nearly all the major IT companies have staked claim to the space as observed by Rick McGee, vice president of SaaS strategy for IBM Global Services.

There are many reasons why SaaS model is a popular one. One of them is the cost and work associated with deploying a SaaS model software. The cost of migration to a new version of a Software is a big cost for corporates and usually results in delay of work. This is not the case in SaaS. In case of SaaS model the burden of software deployment, maintenance, and availability is that of the service provider which makes it easy for the company deploying it.

There is criticism of SaaS model and there are some rightful concerns. The biggest one being data security. A post at Rocket Matter does deal with these questions. In the end you have to careful as to who is offering the service and how secure is your data with them before subscribing to any given software.

Software as a Service model has caught my fancy for sure. It seems SaaS is practical as it has a strong revenue model. In days to come I will be writing more on SaaS. If you have any thoughts please share it with me.

Recession Proof Jobs

In the last little while there has been a recession across the world and people have been fearing pay cuts or loss of jobs. However, some parts of the world like China and India, though these countries have more than half of the manpower of the world, have not been hit by a recession that badly. One thought that comes to mind is “are there any jobs which are not effected by recession?” as is the case with some businesses where some businesses are less effected if a recession is on. Some of the examples of businesses which are less effected by recession are healthcare, the federal government, technology, information technology and sales and marketing (to some extent).

While looking for answers on the Internet (my favorite hunting ground) I came across this article on the Payscale web site. Payscale is a website which provides information on salary trends across industries and it was reviewed earlier on the AfterTheDotNet blog. A study done by Kristina Cowan has tried to identify recession proof jobs and businesses. In another post Kristina Cowan discusses how to recession proof your present job.

While conducting research on jobs not effected by recession Jon Bender, managing partner with PrincetonOne, a New Jersey-based recruiting firm observes that recession proof jobs are there where people require goods and services regardless, like healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Therefore anyone who makes or saves money for the company is safe in a recession.

Federal jobs though not easy to get are usually safe as usually an employee is transferred if the services that he is giving are not required during a recession. Moreover, the add-ons of Federal jobs are tremendous. However, one should try and look for federal jobs when the recession is not there since the chances of getting a job during a recession are tougher.

During a recession one should concentrate on the job work harder and take less risks and not make any drastic decisions. One needs to ensure that his contribution is noticed by the seniors during the meetings and the monthly, quarterly and yearly reports. When meeting the seniors or managers you should say where you are doing good, where you can improve. All these practices should be put in practice in the good times for if your attitude changes during a recession it will not have the desired effect as someone might construe that you are insecure about your job.

Experts believe that to identify recession proof jobs or industries is more difficult than it was 15 years ago. The best way to recession proof your job is to ensure that the management sees value being added because of you in the organization. Sometimes you have to be proactive to ensure that the management sees value in your job. If you have not been doing it in the past start practicing it right now and in a couple of years you will feel that your job is recession proof. How recession proof your job is directly proportional to the ability to multi task. The more ability you have to multi task the more recession proof your job is.

The lesson in the end is that ensure everyone sees value of your work in the organization and everyone recognizes your ability to multi task. So get working on these values before the recession really sets in.

Suggested readings

1. An excellent article on how to make yourself and your job recession proof
2. A article by AOL jobs team on how to prepare yourself in case of a recession
3. This post on the Babalu blog argues that we are not headed for a recession
4. More articles and white papers by Kristna Cowan

My favorite and top blogs

I’m sure a lot of you do follow some blogs regularly. I must admit it has become addiction. Though I can survive a couple of days without reading the RSS feeds but after that I will get the withdrawal symptoms and the first indication is when I start feeling that the world is whizzing past me. Some blogs do outgrow me (though I would like to believe that I outgrew them) and after some time I have to go hunting around for more. This time I thought I will share them with my readers (even though they are imaginary but you know every now and then I have to feel that I’m the God’s gift to mankind ). I have been using Google Reader to subscribe to the RSS feeds of the blogs and I have no complaints except that once in a while you do need to read the feeds offline and that does not work very well for me with Google Reader (though they have built a feature for offline reading of posts but it takes ages for the reader to sync with the Google Reader. So here is the list I have created recently.

1. Angryblackbitch
2. Becker-Posner Blog
3. Click Opera
4. Cosmic Variance
5. Diary of Samuel Pepys
6. El Guapo in DC
7. Eurotrash
8. Go Fug Yourself
9. 1000 Difficult Lessons
10. In the Middle
11. Ironic Sans
12. Johnny I Hardly Knew You
13. Julia (Here be Hippogriffs)
14. Language Log
15. Matthew Yglesias
16. Midnight in Iraq
17. Ninapaley.com
18. Old Hag
19. Radio.Uruguay
20. Rootless Cosmopolitan
21. The Rest is Noise
22. The Smoking Gun
23. Under Odysseus

How about you guys letting me know your favorite blogs by commenting on this post

Manage your online MS Office documents at Google docs

Till Google docs came by it was not convenient to create, edit and store your office 2007 documents online. With a  reliable company backing Google docs (Google bashers please excuse) the security risk is considerably less. The good thing with Google docs is that development has not stopped. Upgrades and additional features are being added by the development team which makes the service more usable and also keeps people interested in the service since there is something new after a few days. Some of the new features are

• Google had added a presentation tool to the Google docs service. Now you can store the slides as PDF’s which can be used to recreate the presentation quickly later if needed online or offline! If you want to do a presentation offline you can do it by using the PDF’s saved in the presentation
• Deeper directory structure can be built. Earlier users were restricted as far as creating sub folders. This restriction has been removed (source Google docs blog).
• Renaming of folders and documents is possible now from the toolbar itself is a great improvement from earlier method where one had to go to the folder or the document to edit it.

• Forms is another feature which is very usable. Now you can create forms within Google docs and send it via an email to anyone. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. The responses are added to the spreadsheet automatically. In fact using Google gadgets one can put this on any website as well and maintain the form from there.

• DocSyncer is another tool which is a very usable and beneficial. Once you have a Google Docs account and you install DocSyncer after downloading it from here, DocSyncer searches your documents and desktop folder for office documents and automatically uploads them to your Google Docs account. In fact later it keeps syncing the desktop and ‘my documents’ folder so that you have the latest versions online. You can also choose which documents to sync and you can also add other directories and folders to the syncing queue. The tool is free to use. Similar tools can be found at OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension and OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension.

• Google has released a simple one-purpose application called Google Uploader that lets you upload multiple documents at once to a Google Docs account, as well as add right-click uploading options for all the document types accepted by the free online office suit. Earlier the same could be done by sending emails to your Google Docs account but restriction on size and types of file was there. Google Uploader is a simpler , effective tool, and it seems to work pretty quickly. Google Docs Uploader is a free download for Windows only and requires .NET Framework 2.0.

With these additional features Google Docs is good system to store files which you might need to access away from your computer. I’m certainly going to start using Google Docs as a backup for my MS Office files.