Well, this month I’m fortunate enough to have a small cameo in “The Goods” section on page 54 (see the crm review online). In it, I talk about the merits of Fat Free CRM over a few other customer relationship managers tools I’ve used in the past.

Thanks to Inc for the interview. Given this exposure, I’ve expedited a plan that was in the works to go live in the 1st quarter of 2010. BME now provides hosting services for Fat Free CRM. To learn more, see the hosting fat free crm website or contact me for more information.

I really hope this adds a ton of value to new or established businesses looking for more efficiencies in their web-contact-to-deal-close processes.

The plugin installs just like any other Wordpress plugin. It should be pretty intuitive to anyone that has even limited experience administrating a Wordpress site. The plugin can be downloaded from Wordpress or at my repo on github.

Fat Free CRM is a great customer relationship manager (CRM) I’ve been using for a little while now instead of Highrise. I used Highrise for a little while before I grew frustrated by its hosting costs and lack of features. The guys at 37signals don’t seem to update it very often either.

For the rails project, I forked the repository and made a few minor changes like adding access via an API key. I also added a few usability options in the view codes to make integration with the plugin seamless.

For new businesses that are just implementing a CRM solution, I’d be happy to host the CRM application on my servers for a nominal cost. Feel free to contact me for more details. (hint, the contact form is an example of the plugin in action )

To use the plugin and CRM together, just follow these simple instructions:

1. Download or clone the CRM from my github repo. Install on my servers (contact me for pricing) or on your own
2. Download and install the fat-free-crm-lead plugin either from Wordpress or my github repo
3. Configure the plugin with the URL of your CRM and an API token (details are provided in the admin interface of the plugin)
4. Watch the leads come rolling in and enjoy not having to copy and paste from emails any longer

Hopefully, this is really easy. If you run into any problems or have feature requests, please feel free to contact me.

====UPDATE====

The plugin has been accepted into the WP plugin directory. Take a look at the fat-free-crm-lead-form at Wordpress.

There Are No HTML/CSS Programmers

Markup languages are not programming languages. They can’t do math and neither can be written to create more of their own code. I’ve met a few people in my years of experience who have described themselves as HTML and/or CSS programmers. These developers have usually turned out to be disasters on my team. Overwriting changes on production servers, bloated markup and wonky css are just a few of the frustrations experienced with these lower level developers.

I don’t mean to disrespect other developers at all. I consider it a starting point for developers to get a strong command for html markup. Like good writers, I require anyone working on my sites to use only the markup required and take everything else away. It makes for a good looking site that is quick to load in the browser and simple to make updates to six months later.

HTML and CSS are also languages that developers and designers can unite over. Both designers and developers should have a strong sense of how to create good markup and style since it is one of the few things that overlap each others’ talents. So, while CSS and HTML are markup languages, they are not programming languages and both designers and developers should be rock solid on both before moving on to more advanced languages.

Just Making It Work Is Dumb

So many times I meet developers who have created superfluous html markup or javascript because they’ve hacked together a solution. A hacked solution is a bad solution. When we come back to that solution in six months, the process for arriving at that solution has long been forgotten and we spend way too much extra time just trying to figure out what we were thinking when we created the hack.

It should work, but it should work in a way that is not hacked together and makes sense now … and in six months when we need to make edits.

The Best Solution Is The Simplest Solution

This may be redundant, but I think the approach to software design as an engineer is very personal. Just like I don’t like a lot of extraneous markup, I also like to limit the number of moving parts in an application. Keeping as much logic in a single language for example helps to create an overall simplicity to the project.

Take, for example, an application written in Ruby, using MySQL and Apache for data storage and web serving respectively. Say the application uses a lot of stored procedures or triggers in MySQL for some data processing. This could be done in the ruby application language, but for whatever reason, it was written in the MySQL framework. Now say the business has a compelling reason to leave MySQL and move to another RDMS. If the data processing had been written in Ruby instead of MySQL, then the port would be relatively simple and quarantined to only the database classes. Instead, new code must be written in the new RDMS language.

This example is fairly trivial but illustrates a point that I like to keep the engineering of an application simple so it can be nimble and respond to changes in business practices and usability.

Source Control is a Must

I’ve led development on projects a few times and I’m always disappointed when other developers look at me blankly when I mention git or svn for source code management. For developers, their use is fairly intuitive. For projects, their use is a requirement. Source control makes sure that a group of developers and designers on a team do not overwrite each others changes and it provides a means to revert bad changes that inevitably make it into a staging or production environment. It’s also a great accountability tool to see which developers are contributing most to the source code.

Designers I’ve worked with often pick up how to use git or svn pretty quickly limiting disruptions in productivity and creating a secure, backed up, developing environment.

Beyond the benefits of automatic backup and accountability, source control also offers an easy way to scale web applications. When your site gets to the point that one server isn’t enough, source control allows for pushing changes in source code over multiple servers quickly.

Zune article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/the-day-microsoft-zunes-stood-still/

IE losing market share: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123092719894149695.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments

I don’t particularly agree with the bailout of the auto industry. Sure I have some nostalgic love for Ford, GM and Chrysler, but my beef is that we the people are supporting a broken business model that is destined to fail even after our taxes prolong the inevitable death. After reading this article in the Wall Street Journal (as well as a few other articles) I’m willing to pronounce that one of the most efficient uses of government bailout dollars, outside the banking system, is to provide short term financing to small businesses.

What’s the Real Problem?

The real problem is not necessarily a lack of customers or progress. Mainly, it’s a short term cash problem. Business A is waiting on their accounts receivables to come in so they can pay their bills to Business B. Business B is waiting on A so they can pay C. The phenomenon continues in this cascade of capital lockup.

Businesses are largely not reporting crippling sales declines or other top line dangers. Small businesses are also some of the most efficient companies in the world so their bottom lines cannot get much leaner. They’re also the types that capital freezes affect the most.  The true problem is the working capital needed to sustain their operations while the A/R – A/P cascade (above) continues.

Can The Business Models Survive?

My beef with the auto industry bailout is that the business model has been in trouble for a long time. Honda, Toyota and Kia, to name a few, have solid businesses that are using US labor and moving the cars out of the showrooms into our garages. The Big Three have labor costs that are way out of whack with the actual value the labor provides the business. Further, innovation from the Big Three has been limited in comparison to foreign auto makers.

Tangentially, saving Chevy based on the promise of the Volt is a risky bet. It would be best served by spinning the Volt off into its own company and then pursuing venture capital to execute that new business model. Venture capitalists have the stomach and smarts to fund companies with millions of dollars based on the promise that a business model will emerge when the product goes to market. Venture capital is not necessarily a responsible use of our tax dollars.

But I digress. The main point that should be made is that the business models of the Big Three auto makers is antiquated and insolvent in any economy, especially a tough one.

The Government Should Fund Robust Business Models

Banks are pulling small business lines of credit because of their own tight cash flows. This is a major contribution to the crunch on cash flow of the small business. If the government is to rescue any industry, it has the responsibility to invest wisely in businesses that will be around in a year to repay their bailout either as a loan or as a contribution to a growing economy.

Small businesses, taken as a whole, are on a growth path and are limited by short term working capital. Loaning this working capital at reasonable interest rates not only ensures these businesses survive, it is also a more diversified and responsible investment.

Small businesses are 99.7% of all private enterprises in America and employ 50% of all private sector employees (source). Rather than focusing billions of dollars on failing business models that support a fraction of American labor, I propose a more diversified, responsible investment into companies that represent the sweat and tears of America’s gutsiest.

The article was profound in explaining Linux’s potential power play in the netbook arena; netbooks are small low power laptops. They’re great for surfing the web, doing emails and many other normal, everyday, tasks. Their low power makes them very affordable but has a major shortcoming when it comes to loading an operating system. Without a lot of memory (Ram) or hard drive space, large operating systems with many background processes would cripple the tiny netbook and render them useless.

Enter Linux. Linux is a highly configurable dream of an operating system that technologists love to play with. Because of its configurability, it’s a perfect candidate to run on a netbook. Processes that are never used can be shut off automatically. Shutting down processes means 1) more memory to do web surfing 2) more processor cycles for web surfing and 3) less space taken up on the hard drive.

Another very important consideration is spyware/malware. Linux is a very secure system by its very nature. The kernel (the brains of the OS) is more protected by its very design. Because of its seemingly insignificant market penetration, spammers and malware developers don’t have any incentive to develop their bugs for this OS. Linux wins again.

Finally, slapping Linux on the netbook follows a bigger trend in the commodization of hardware. Computers are getting cheaper and cheaper as business processes become more efficient and components become less expensive. The operating system has become a bigger slice of the total purchase price of a system. As hardware continues to become more of a commodity, vendors like IBM, HP and DELL will look for ways to jettison the proportionately higher cost of the OS.

As netbooks become more popular, Linux will become more familiar. This familiarity will enhance a seemingly insignificant player in the consumer operating system battle and that could really change the game.

original link:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/2009-year-linux-revolution

link: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/selling-ideas-t.html

The article can be read at http://gigaom.com/2008/12/11/economy-has-angels-pulling-back/