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Wave Accounting - How to destroy trust!

So, you decide on an accounting system. You put your trust in it. You even evangelize the system with your own customers…

And then that system changes at the most critical time of the year, and stops working properly…. Wave Accounting I am looking at you! Why would you do this?

To see what other people think of one of the worst updates to mission critical software I have ever seen…

https://support.waveapps.com/entries/22612382-where-did-it-go-some-changes-in-the-new-wave

The Rise of Social Salespeople

A really good article on Social Networking, and the effect it has on sales. Traditional “cold-calling” people just doesn’t work like it used to. If you sell anything, and you are not using Social Marketing Tools, you are losing out!

The phrase; “Go where you customers are.” has always been true and now it’s truer than ever. Your customers and prospects use social media. Their employees use social media. Their fans and detractors use social media, and they are ALL talking. 

Yeah, this DMCA ruling makes sense…

Legal head scratcher of the day…

Yup, Jailbreaking Your iPad Really Is Illegal

Motorola reneges on Ice Cream Sandwich software update

One of the reasons I am moving from Android to the iPhone 5

Turns out they were just kidding, and the Atrix 4G is stuck with Gingerbread.

I have really like my EVO 4G - over 2-and-a-half years later it is going strong, and when I upgrade to a new phone, it will become a “game phone” for my youngest son. But the upgrade policy of Android phones is really annoying. In order to get the latest and greatest features, most users have to jailbreak their phones - and then it is a real crapshoot. Luckily my EVO was a popular phone, is fairly easy to root, and there are great alternative ROM’s for it (Thank you XDA!)

But my wife’s Samsung Epic isn’t as well supported, and a pain to jailbreak. I also have friends who are disappointed by the lack of consistent upgrade policies. I love Android in theory - an open software development platform - but in practice, it seems to be a messy walled garden of developers loading up phones with crapware that is hard to remove, and reneging on promised upgrades, if they were considering upgrades at all. Phones that could easily run the latest software are abandoned, and if Google (the makers of Android) won’t upgrade their own phones…

Bad month for Mac software

This month is a big one for the Mac, the new cat is about to be unleashed ~ Mountain Lion 10.8 However exciting this might be, in the rest of the Mac software world, things seem to be going backwards, at least for me…

My list of “essential” mac apps are as follows:

1. Google Chrome - I work with Google Apps all day long, and this is the best way to go.
2. 1Password - If you are not using software like this for your passwords, you are asking for trouble…
3. Sparrow - The best Gmail client right now, but in the future…
4. Bento - I “rolled my own” CRM and client tracker, and Bento is/was the best way to track my clients websites and contact info.

It is these last two applications that have disappointed me.

Sparrow, for now works great, BUT Google bought the company last week, and the future of the application is in doubt. I am happy for the Sparrow developers, they released a great application, and were rewarded. However they have already announced that no new features for Sparrow will be coming, so effectively this application is End Of Life.

Bento, however is an even more frustrating story. FileMaker, the makers of Bento (and a subsidiary of Apple) have decided to remove the best parts of this software - the integration with Apple’s Address Book, the ability to access iCal, and the ability to access iPhoto. This is the only reason I have been a Bento user for years. So, if like me, you have created a Bento CRM system around the Address Book and iCal integration - this is now gone from the new iPad version, and soon to be gone from the Mac version.

Bento has just become useless for me. I don’t understand the move away from using the iCloud Address Book, and instead now having a proprietary “Bento” address book instead, let alone not being able to access iCal… Apple has said that “iCloud” is the future, yet one of their own companies won’t be using it. Frustrating.

So I guess the point my rant is simple. I love progress, and each version of most applications brings cool new features. I just find it troubling that with half of my “essential” apps, the opposite has happened - progress has meant that the applications are no longer as good as they were, at least for Bento, and most likely for Sparrow as well.

Apple wants U.S. manufacturing, but it ain’t that easy

There is a good lesson in here, if anybody is listening…

It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Click here for more

It’s Apple vs. Google vs. Everyone In The Mobile Payments War

Hopefully the winner in this is the merchants and consumers. Interchange, and the sometimes crazy markups by the processors hurts everybody.

Now to the trillion dollar question: who will be the resulting winners and the losers in mobile payments?

The problem with “Survey” numbers vs. real data…

It’s funny, we are about to get bombarded with “poll” numbers with the upcoming Presidential election this fall. How they get these numbers, and how accurate they really are is always in question. Here is a great article from Techcrunch in regards to iPhone vs. Android market numbers that clearly illustrates the flaws in “poll numbers”…

Here’s the real issue: this rapid swing in favor of the iPhone seems to have exposed some serious flaws in the way these market analysts get their data. They’re hiding behind vague technicalities on how their numbers could be what they say, but they still don’t add up.

The HDMI cable ripoff and why retail is really dying

They nailed it! This is exactly why I always recommend places like Monoprice to all my clients and friends.

Summary: Would you spend $100 for something when you can get it for $10? Of course not. What about $500, when you can get it for $2.50? No way. But chain retailers think you will.