The team at Jelecos is having a blast hosting IT professionals for informative lunch seminars!

If you missed our February date on website usability, check out the presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/JohnStuifbergen/website-usability-11516397

John's presentation included action items that you can do before 5PM today to improve the usability of your website!

We are planning our March lunch seminar now - watch for updates on topic & place! Email Sarah to be sure you are on the invite list: stucker@jelecos.com

 

 

    Jelecos would like to welcome Toby Korensky to the team as our Director of Service Delivery.  Toby has over 20 years of information technology, customer service, operations management, project/program management, and business consulting experience.

    Korensky started his career in information technology in the U.S. Marine Corps. Following his service he was hired as the Director of IT Operations for Inacom Corporation. He has also been a cofounder/principal in two companies, eFrame and 3EP, a program manager with Physicians Mutual, and most recently served Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska as a consulting program manager.

    He brings diversity and a wealth of experience to the Jelecos team and oversees the delivery of the company’s infrastructure as a service and web application offerings. We are excited to have Toby onboard; his presence has already made an impact on the growth of Jelecos as a company!

When a company first embarks on the journey to build a business intelligence solution, there are predictably several unexpected and unplanned for challenges.  I’ve worked with several companies in my tenure at Jelecos and have always come across the same scenarios that can be frustrating if you’re not braced for them.  So, be forewarned…

You will discover your data is very dirty.

Chances are, you will be working with source systems that have been around a long time.  Business rules naturally change over time and there will be existing data that does not conform.  Many times I’ve encountered current data that does not conform to current business rules.  All of this data will need to be managed.  

You will need to make business process changes.

A lot is written about the collaboration between business users and IT and this is one of those moments when it is critical.  Typically, there is a report requirement that will require a view of the data that just doesn’t currently exist.  This generally is due to a lot of manual manipulation of data sets.  The reason the manual manipulation exists is frequently because a change in the process is needed.  Now is a good time to make those business process changes.  Sometimes these business rules can be managed through the data cleansing process, but that’s not always the case.

You will need to store data that is not being captured by any existing system.

This data can range from public data sets like commodity prices or internal data that is currently being manually collected in a spreadsheet or through email.  There are generally some data elements that are not collected but are static that will be needed to slice the data into a product or business hierarchy, for example.

IT involvement will be greater than expected, despite all efforts to minimize their role.

Most businesses look for a solution that will remove IT involvement in the analytic process.  These efforts are not in vain especially if you involve the business throughout the project.  However, for about the first year, you will see more effort put in by your IT department as the buzz for more data and new views of the data are requested.

Data validation will take much longer than you think it should.  

Partly this happens because the reports that you are using for validation (the reports that are currently used to track business activities) contain filters you are not aware of and need to be tracked down.   The validation process is generally where many of the business rules are discovered.  It’s not unusual to have to rebuild parts of the ETL during the validation process; however, typically minor tweaks are all that is necessary.  

You will have a difficult time getting the business users to trust the data.

People are naturally suspicious of change and you’ll be asking business users who are deeply involved in creating current reports with  reports that come from a black box.  They will need more hand-holding than you expect to get comfortable with the new process.  The first few months are critical to prevent them from regressing to their old processes.  

What all of this means is that you will have scope creep.  Unfortunately, convincing budget managers that progress is being made can be difficult since nearly all the creep will happen before you get to creating reports.  Tackling a small subset of data first and setting small milestones along the way will minimize the scope creep and you’ll have something tangible to show.   Also, plan for extra effort for the challenges I’ve mentioned here.  In the end, you’ll have happier business users and a solid platform to build on.

 

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

Executive support is one of the biggest factors that predict your BI initiative’s success.   They should also be some of your most loyal users, so it’s important that you present them with a successful product.  Unfortunately, this group of users could be the hardest to please; they are unique and require some additional consideration.  In my experience, I’ve found a few key actions that will help win them over.

Executives’ time is precious, everyone wants time with them and they frequently travel.  So, you’ll want to avoid giving them free range of all the reports that you’ve just built.  They likely won’t take the time to log into a system and search for multiple reports to get the answers they need and this could just frustrate them.  Their reports should be in a single spot, easily accessible, clearly titled and contain only the information they need.  

The reason Dashboards and Scorecards are so popular is because they display exactly the information needed, in an easy to decipher format.  It’s a very good idea to first build them a powerful dashboard that they can review on a mobile device that within 3 minutes of looking at the report, provides them a complete picture.  Dashboards should be subject-specific and should guide the recipient to actions that need to be taken.  It’s through mobile dashboards that business decision makers will be managing their business.  Scorecards are also a great reporting tool for executives as they are the primary monitoring tool of the business.  A weekly or even daily report that will instantly highlight problem and success areas will provide enormous value for your execs.

Finally, don’t forget to ask them what they want!  You can build the most amazing mobile dashboard or a perfectly useful scorecard, but if it doesn’t provide him/her with the information they need, they won’t use it and you will potentially lose their support.  Keeping them involved while you are building and implementing BI will result in a more successful project in the end.

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

"To measure is to know."

"If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."

Lord Kelvin is the orator that is credited with uttering these two quotes.   Logic follows that “If you measure it, you can improve it.”  This premise has the been at the core of many new businesses and initiatives.  I am an advocate for this philosophy.  I liken it to having a race where the runners are separated from each other.  During the race, none of the runners know how they are doing in the overall race.  It’s true that you perform to the strength of your opponent.  If your opponent is better than you, you play better as you strive to play as good as them; if they are worse than you, you make less of an effort knowing that even your low effort will win in the end.

Many businesses operate without knowing how they stack up against their competitors.  Businesses generally set business goals each year.  These goals are generally broken down into smaller parts, monthly, quarterly, etc.  These goals play the same role as a competitor:  if it’s a tough goal, you work harder to reach it; if it’s an easy goal, a minimal effort is all that is needed.
 
Now imagine an employee that doesn’t know how they are performing compared to their goal or don’t even know what their goal is; they are just like the runners in a race with themselves.  They perform at a reasonable level, but not at their peak performance level.  However, if you tell them what their goal is and how they are measuring up against it on a regular basis, the employee will work as hard as they can to reach the goal.

There’s no question that “to measure is to know”  and “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Indeed, it’s not magic, even Lord Kelvin might say “it’s physics!”   Do you know what your goals are?  Do you know who is winning?

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

The typical organization these days has data all over the place; in some cases, it’s strewn across the globe and in multiple languages.  While these ERP systems are essential to keep your business running, reliance on the data they generate and the need to access it quickly is critical to your overall success.   Even more desired is having peace of mind that the data you are delivering is accurate, timely and actionable.    

There’s really only one way to reach this level of utopia:  a central data store.  Consolidating your data into a single system will accomplish several goals.  

1. Your odds of delivering the right data to the right people improve considerably.   When you have a central store for all your data, you have a single point of failure for data being delivered.  Your ETL, managing your business rules and auditing, gives you piece of mind that the data is correct.  This means that you can easily generate the right reports for the right people.  
2. The overall quality of your data improves dramatically.  Managing your business rules and applying them through an ETL will streamline much of your data.  This ensures that your data sources plays nicely with each other.  The auditing of data quality and data cleansing through your ETL ensures that no data is being left behind.  Confidence in your data increases.     
3. The application of your business rules will be applied consistently across the enterprise; so when you see “Profit” on a report, you know all the reports are showing the same definition.  
4. You’ll have a much easier time staying on top of the activities of your constituents and will be able to compare them with each other in a simple format.   Your reports can put each location’s sales side by side in a graph and with centrally applied business rules you know you are comparing apples to apples.

A side benefit of having a data warehouse is that through your ETL, you have a daily view into the operations at all your locations; if a process isn’t being followed at one location the data will reveal it.  Audits will alert you to problems in a timely manner.   This is a side benefit because the primary purpose of a data warehouse is to centrally manage data and by doing so you give yourself a strategic, competitive advantage over your competitors.  

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

Real-time data

Site Catalyst can report on activity within seconds of the event.  With Google Analytics, you could wait up to 24 hours for activity to show on your reports.   You can also schedule and send hourly reports through Site Catalyst; this is handy when you are tracking a specific event and need to stay on top of hourly activity.
 

Importing external data  

If you have an ecommerce business this feature could prove invaluable.  Instead of having to export your web stats, you can import external information that isn’t being collected from your site and have a complete BI system within Site Catalyst.  With Google Analytics, you would have to export the data and then rebuild the same reports in an external system if you wanted to see a report like “sales by region.”
   

Custom variables

Continuing on the theme of building a BI system within Site Catalyst, you are able to create nearly 200 custom variables.  You get just a handful in Google Analytics;  not enough to completely customize a reporting solution to meet all the needs of your constituents.

In conclusion, if these three functionality are vital to your web site analytics, you should definitely be checking out Omniture’s SiteCatalyst.  If these things don’t matter to you, then a free Google Analytics account is probably the way to go!

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

1. Data cleansing.  Data is notoriously “dirty” for just about every organization.  The extent to which data needs to be cleaned up seems to catch people off guard.   This could be due to changing processes, poor management of the data or a lack of controls on the database or ERP.   When you are planning to implement BI for the first time, include extra time to clean up your data.  You just never know what you’re going to find.
2. Changing processes.  Along with data cleansing, there could very well be some core processes that will need to change.  Once you put that spotlight on your data, you see how dirty it is, and you find processes that are broken or non-existent.  
3. Business rule definitions.  I had a client tell me once that before we started their BI project they’d never even heard of business rules, and now they find themselves using the term all the time!  Understanding how business rules effect your BI data is a surprise to most people.  A deep understanding of business rules and processes is a critical component for architecting your data warehouse and making sure the right constraints and processes are in place in the organization.
4. User trust.  Your users won’t trust  your data.  They are used to seeing their reports in a specific format, typically spreadsheets, and a more visual report that cuts out the data set will be intimidating to your end users.  You need to prepare them very early on in the process; this is why it’s so important to have stakeholders who are not in IT.   Then you need to check in with your users frequently to gauge perceptions and fix problems early.  Your BI project relies on the users trusting you and the data you are putting in front of them, so be certain you spend a lot of time making them happy.
5. “Net sales” doesn’t always mean “net sales”.  Reports that are currently used to make business decisions nearly always have obscure and unexpected filters on them.  So while everyone believes they are looking at apples to apples metric comparisons between departments, turns out to be an apples to bananas comparison.  
6. It’s not an IT project.  IT is heavily involved in a BI project implementation, but IT is there to help the business users through the process.  The real stakeholders, users and benefactors of BI aren’t in IT, it’s the business users and executive team.

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

A term thrown around a lot in business intelligence circles is the concept of “dirty data.”  People frequently ask me what dirty data is, where it comes from and what to do about it.  I will address these questions at a high-level in this post.

First of all, let’s define it.  In a nutshell, dirty data is data that doesn’t meet the business rules for its data element.  For example, let’s say the “Customer State” element has a business rule that every customer address must have a 2-digit US state abbreviation that matches a pre-defined list.   Dirty data refers to those Customer State records that:

a.   Are missing a state
b.   Have a state code that is something other than 2-digits
c.   Are not on the list of state abbreviations

Now you’re asking yourself, if the business rule exists, then how can there be records that violate the rule?  This happens all the time during data warehouse implementations.  It’s possible that the business rule has changed over time, so historical records will still be stored following old rules.  Since the data comes from multiple sources, there could be limitations and differences to how the data is entered; in one application the end user may select the code from a list, in another it’s entered manually.  There are numerous ways data can become dirty and in most cases, before it can be loaded to the data warehouse, it needs to be cleaned.

When I come across dirty data I generally go through a step-by-step process.  My first choice is to “fix” the data in the original source system.  This isn’t always possible due to restrictions in operational applications and the various roles they fulfill.   If a process is causing the bad data, then I recommend that the process gets fixed.  Sometimes this is as easy as sending a memo to educate those who enter the data of the business rule or adding load restrictions to the application.  Other times it may require a larger initiative that the business isn't able to tackle right away.

My second choice is to fix the problem during the data transfer.  There are many ways this can be implemented depending on how the data is getting transferred: as the data is selected, as the data is being inserted into a stage table or a similar process.

Finally, if none of the prior options are feasible--updating the source system, changing the process or cleaning the data as it is being transferred to staging--then the ETL is where the data must be fixed.  The final resting place for the data, the data warehouse, must be corrected or you run the risk of errant reports.

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

To have a successful business, you have to have complete knowledge of your competitors and understand your strengths and weaknesses in comparison.

In BI, there is a method called SWOT analysis.  It measures the following:

• Strengths: characteristics of the business or team that give it an advantage over others in the industry.
• Weaknesses: characteristics that place the firm at a disadvantage relative to others.
• Opportunities: external chances to make greater sales or profits in the environment.
• Threats: external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business.

 

You need a strategy, and the ability to measure the success of your strategy. 

The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals

 

You have to know where you are currently and monitor your progress.

The executive dashboard provides a quick, visual perspective of where you are on a project, a time period or overall for the company. 

 

You need to be able to predict future moves

Predictive analytics is the branch of data mining concerned with the prediction of future probabilities and trends. The central element of predictive analytics is the predictor, a variable that can be measured for an individual or other entity to predict future behavior

 

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

We are what we deliver. Be sure you understand what the customer needs and wants. Then blow away those expectations with brilliant customer-focused solutions that make their day, and their business, better than they ever thought possible.

At the end of the day we are in the service industry – please take a moment and read through this conglomeration of service related goodies.

Customer service (VERB): The degree of assistance and courtesy granted those who patronize a business. (credit)

“The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.”

“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.”

- Lewis Carol

Do you dazzle?

Seth Godin always has a unique perspective.

Be Remarkable – GREAT tips!
(Personal favorite from the above blog: #2 Suggest blowing out the dust … :) Love it!!)

Don’t do this!

When you get right down to it, it’s all about results. In reality, last week’s results are like last year’s newspaper - nobody remembers the headlines or the box scores. To stay relevant and win long term, we must actively seek out new ways of doing and thinking. Every day. Never stop.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

“The Gate of Change is Locked on the INSIDE.”
In any organization, continuous learning means growth through learning events and experiences. It can be applied to individuals, team, and organizations- a process that will help them to achieve their overall objectives.

Undergoing a continuous learning process entails change; one cannot learn and still be the same person, team, or organization. There is a constant evolution in the way we think and act, brought about by new understanding, new knowledge, and new skills.

One of the worst phrases that any person or entity can say is “I already know that” because this can very well destroy any chances of continuous learning. And when there is no learning, there is no growth.

Read more

Trust and a common purpose – things that make good teams great. Our teams are strong because they are built with people who know their stuff. Refrain from working in a silo. Bring your experience and knowledge to the table, and know that you can expect the same from the rest of us.

 

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

 

Be fearless, show respect and be yourself. Make it easy for others to do the same. Bottom line – don’t be a jerk.

What matters most is that we communicate openly and honestly. It’s up to each of us to share the knowledge and information we have, and to seek out what we don’t. We won’t always agree, but pulling in the same direction is an essential component of our success. So speak up!

Best communication song of all time

How technology has hurt our communication skills – and – what we can do to get those skills back

You may not get it right the first time. But the only certain way to get it wrong is to do nothing. Be decisive, move fast and completely own your choices. Then share what you’ve learned, no matter the outcome.

We can’t initiate the next great idea (see Core Value #9) if we aren’t empowered to make decisions and act on them.

“You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.”

“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”
Strong Employees Thrive in an Empowered Culture

Decision Making Tips & Secrets
There is a really good passage on this page that’s worth calling out:
Most people want to know how things will pan out before they make a decision. This is a decision mistake and is usually counter-productive. The world is chaotic, unpredictable, and unexpected things happen. It's much more useful to take things one step at a time. To make a decision, you only need to know what the single next step is that will get you closer to your outcome. Then, having taken this step, you make your next decision.

Further Reading-
Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business - by Josh Bernoff
Check out this podcast about the book.

Don’t sit on the sidelines. Do something that’s meaningful to you. Something that’s bigger than you. Make our company, our industry, our community better than you found them. Make a difference.

“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”

Do something you're passionate about

Employee Engagement

88% of fully engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organization’s products and services. (source)

Companies in the top 10% on employee engagement bested their competition by 72% in earnings per share during 2007-08. For companies that scored beneath the top quartile, earnings fell 9.4% below their competition. (source)

Never stop learning. To stay in the game, you must continue to build skill on top of talent, to test old ideas, and find new answers. Feed your sense of curiosity. Challenge yourself every day to realize your potential.

Some quotes, links and other references for value #3.

- A. E. Hotchner

- Vince Poscente

Pushing Your Limits (PDF download)

Is workplace stress always bad?

Talent vs. Success

And if you really want to go all in, try this!

At Jelecos, we know when it’s fun, it’s better. And when you care, it’s better. It’s more creative. More customer-focused. More efficient. More effective. So in all you do, bring passion, smarts, grit, and the audacity to laugh when others would cry.

 

Here are a variety of resources that pertain to our Make it fun & make it count value!

 

“We're here to make good things happen for other people. Do that... and you'll make good things happen for yourself.”

At Jelecos, we recognize your beliefs, your health, and your family are what make you a force of creative and technical talent – ready to enrich our company and delight our customers. So take care of first things first. Then come to work ready to get down to business.

This is one core value that has served as a foundation in our culture since as far back as I can remember. I’The strength of each item is directly related to the strength of the item preceding it. Although this specific value is unique to the Jelecos culture, the concept isn’t groundbreaking.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
If you have read through a psychology book, you no doubt have learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Customer Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s theory has then been tweaked by the Phelon Group as the Customer Hierarchy of Needs (Download the PDF). This is certainly a great supplement to our core value as well as a great model for us as an IT Services organization.

Pyramid of Success
My personal favorite example is from the great John Wooden. The Pyramid of Success. He developed this just before becoming head basketball coach at UCLA. How did this work out for him? Oh, 10 championships in 12 years and 4 undefeated seasons.

I’ve always been a fan of his dedication to excellence, which certainly transcends basketball, and into the business world and just life in general.

At Jelecos, we’ve always believed that a company’s culture can make a good company great. Being the best at your business doesn’t mean much if your employees aren’t happy and your team isn’t strong. Jelecos has always valued the importance of an environment that is not only fun but that drives personal and professional growth. 

 

 

After a few employees attended a presentation by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, we were inspired to turn this nebulous idea of core values into a written statement to help guide our decisions in the future. We have always known our culture was different, but had never before endeavored to capture it in written form.

Our process for coming up with these values took several months. Everyone shared their personal insights into what our culture is now, and what it should be. The final product is a list of 10 values that we feel are integral pieces of what makes Jelecos an amazing place to work.

 

 

 

The Jelecos Core Values:

Faith > Self > Family > Jelecos.

Make it fun & make it count.

Push your limits. Grow and learn.

Contribute. Get involved.

Make decisions & own them.

Be open & get on the same page.

Show respect & be real.

Invest & trust in the team.

Initiate the next great idea.

Deliver more than expected.

 

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned! Over the coming weeks we will be sharing insight into each of these values and why they made the list!

Does your company have a core value statement? What does it mean to you?

 

 

 

As the local green guru, I feel a need to avail you of my green dogma… just kidding.  I wouldn’t subject you to that (unless you asked, of course). What I would like to do is encourage you to dine at one of my favorite, local, green restaurants for Earth Day or any other day.  

The Blue Planet    “Love the food that loves you.” 

Some might say I love the Blue Planet because they supplied me with free, amazingly delicious coffee for a couple of months last year.   But in reality, they indeed have healthy, fresh, delicious food.   Perfect for lunch or a light dinner, you can order Online or call in an order.   They support Meatless Mondays and have a “soup bar” on Wednesdays!   My favorites there are the Thai Bowl, Mac & Cheese and their Fries (which aren’t fried).  Oh, I almost forgot… they also have organic beer and wine!

McFoster’s Natural Kind Café   

When I have a craving for restaurant-prepared chicken I head to McFoster’s because they serve free-range chicken.  They have an extensive vegan menu and encourage you to bring your own take-home containers.  The menu is huge and deciding on something is really difficult.  It’s a great place for lunch, dinner or even just for a coffee, smoothie or beer.  

Twisted Cork Bistro   

As their name might suggest, wine is a specialty of theirs. They source local growers where they can and are savvy on where their food comes from.  They have a nice, small, bistro menu and I’ve had only one thing from it:  the Twisted Cork Burger.   When I crave red meat (which isn’t often) I head over to the Twisted Cork for lunch.  Their burger is from a local producer and is a mix of pork and beef.  It’s so good, even the Food Network crowned it the best burger in Nebraska.  I hear other things on the menu are also fantastic, but I just can’t pass up the burger.  

 

Daily Grub “good food / fresh juice”   

Chef Elle Lien puts together a unique bistro menu every day based on what she finds locally (even in the middle of winter!).  Their menu changes every 4 or 5 days and it’s available on their Web site.   They are very involved locally and encourage you to bike to the bistro or patronize local establishments like Film Streams.   

The Grey Plume   “A Big Helping of Sustainability”  

This locally-grown and seasonally-driven menu is frequently updated; however, you won’t really know what’s on the menu until you sit down.   Chef Clayton Chapman puts together some really wonderful dishes;  I encourage you to make reservations and enjoy your meal with a nice wine.   They are the “Greenest Restaurant in America” and have the certification to prove it!

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

If you're like a lot of Facebook app developers out there, you're probably getting frustrated on how horrible Facebook's documentation is when it comes to how to use their PHP SDK. We here at Jelecos want to be proactive and help others who are struggling to get their apps up and running. One of the biggest concerns is how to create a "fan-gate" for Facebook users, meaning users visiting a specific page will be displayed different information depending on whether they are fans of the page or not. This use to be fairly simple with FBML, but since Facebook has deprecated it and switched completely to IFrames, the process has gotten a bit more complicated.

Using a "fan-gate" is becoming a very popular way of getting Facebook users to "like" pages and increase the number of fans your page reaches. Unfortunately, there is very little documentation out there to accomplish this without using a Facebook app. So let's get started and get this fan-gate app up and running!

Assumptions:

1. You've already gone out and set up your facebook app. If you are still at this step, click here.

 

Step 1: Create your pages and folder structure

In the main root folder of your site, create the following pages:

1. index.php
2. becomeafan.php
3. fanpage.php

Create a folder called "library" and put your facebook.php (you can download it here) in it.

Step 2: Add PHP code to index.php

Copy the following code into your index.php page:

<?php
require_once 'library/facebook.php';
$app_id = "APP_ID";
$app_secret = "APP_SECRET";
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
'appId'  => $app_id,
'secret' => $app_secret,
'cookie' => true
));
$signed_request = $facebook->getSignedRequest();
$page_id = $signed_request["page"]["id"];
$like_status = $signed_request["page"]["liked"];
if($like_status){
header("Location: fanpage.php");
exit;
} else {
header("Location: becomeafan.php");
exit;
}
?>

Step 3: Add PHP code to fanpage.php and becomeafan.php

This is simply for you to be able to see the fangate work. In the fanpage.php, add the following code:

 
<p>You are a fan</p>
 

And on becomeafan.php, add this:

 
<p>You are not a fan</p>
 

Step 4: Load your facebook app on facebook.com and watch the magic!

When you load your app, index.php will look to whether the Facebook user likes the page or not. If it returns a null object, then the user is not a fan and it redirects them to becomeafan.php. Once you get this far, you can add your HTML markup to each page.

 

I hope this quick walk-through is helpful!

If you are wondering whether or not you should be investing in mobile BI, I’ve done some research and found some compelling statistics that may convince you.   Mobile electronic devices are a preview of how we will be functioning in the future.  Isn’t it better to be ahead of the pack rather than trying to catch up later?  

Forrester discovered that 25% of business email traffic for those who use a smart phone at least once a week is conducted through a smart phone.   Nearly half (45.5%) of wireless subscribers in the US own smart phones (ComScore).  This trend is expected to grow over the next few years.  

Decision makers everywhere are currently using smart phones and the volume of users is expected to increase dramatically over the next few years.  Coda Research Consultancy forecasts that the number of smartphone owners in the US will rise to 194 million by 2015.   Just last year the use of mobile web grew 110% in the US (Quantcast Mobile Trends report).  Not all of these users are business users and not all of the business users are decision makers, but many of them are and some of them will be.  Mobile growth in 2010 was 10-15% - this could grow to 80% five years from now based on what we know of these kinds of trends.

You won’t have any problems finding choices when you look for mobile BI applications; all the major BI reporting tools have a mobile component, and many of the smaller BI reporting applications are focusing solely on a mobile app or are developing both a mobile and a web version.  Compass Intelligence predicts US businesses will spend $11.6 billion on mobile app development by 2012!

Are you convinced?  I believe the focus of 2011 is going to be on mobile business intelligence, the statistics are all pointing in that direction.  The time is now to get on board and gain an advantage over your competition.

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

We here at Jelecos lost a friend on Monday. Jack, our company mascot, greeter of clients, shedder of hair, and friend to all for the past 8 years, passed away after an illness. Jack was Leon’s dog, but at least on weekdays, we were all part of Jack’s pack. We’ve put together some brief remembrances and happy thoughts about him. If you knew Jack, we’d love to hear anything you’d like to share in the comments below. He will be greatly missed.

 

 

 

My name is Chevelle Herring, I’m the marketing/sales intern with Jelecos.  I graduated from Creighton University with a degree in Public Relations and played for the women’s basketball team. Currently I’m in graduate school at the University of Nebraska at Omaha working on my masters in Communications and should be done with that in about a year and a half!

I’ve been with Jelecos for almost two months now and am looking to gain some experience in the marketing field. I’m not quite sure about a dream job yet but I am a huge sports fan so anything in that field would be pretty fun.

As for the internship experience thus far, I’d like to start by saying how much of a relief it is to know that there are companies to work for like Jelecos.  Being fresh out of college with a few jobs here and there, I’ve experienced some work environments that I’ll just say were less fun.  With past jobs and accounts from friends starting the real world, it seemed inevitable that I’d be in the zone of all work and no play in no time, and I would just have to deal with it.

Here everyone from Amy in the front office to the owners of the company are so nice and willing to help in any way they can.  I have seen anywhere from Nerf bullets fly across the office to cardboard unicorn castles.  The balance here is obvious, what the company has accomplished already speaks for itself that you can be extremely productive and still have fun while you’re at it.

While I’ve learned quite a bit so far, one of the most important things is that I want to love my job like everyone here seems to.  But what I can’t tell yet is if working here will be a good or bad thing in the coming future, it can go one of two ways…

One, I will settle for nothing less in my future endeavors, leaving me homeless.

Two, I will settle for nothing less in my future endeavors, leading me to a job I love!

I’m going to go ahead and take that risk and just hope for the latter.

Imagine driving down a road.   The route has been pre-determined and the road itself is pre-defined.  You are expected at your destination at a specific time, but you must follow all speed limits and you are required to follow the predetermined route.  Periodically, you stop at road-side rest areas and check on your progress to make sure you’ll make it to your destination on time.

This is my analogy for business intelligence.  It’s very simple.  

•   The deadline to reach your destination is your goal.
•   The road is the path you’ll take to get there.
•   You use a scorecard when you stop at the road-side rest area  to see where you are at that point and to determine if you will or won’t reach your destination on time.  
•   A dashboard is like a street sign.  It will tell you if a detour is coming up, when the speed limit changes, if an exit is closed.  The dashboard gives you information that you need to make a decision… do I take the detour, do I need to recalculate my trip based on the closed exit, and so on.
•   A report shows you where you’ve been.  You can look back and see that you made it across Iowa in good time, so going across Nebraska should be on-track as well because the terrain is similar, as are other factors. Or you’re going to cross Iowa now but the last time you did it, there was a blizzard.  So perhaps a slight adjustment needs to be made.
•   Alerts can prepare you for different things.  The check engine light indicates that conditions are such that something is wrong with your engine, whereas a low fuel warning tells you exactly what’s wrong.  Both require action, some potentially more urgent than others.

•   Predictive analysis reports will help you decide which road to take when you reach a fork.  If I take the left path how will that effect my trip, will I make it to the finish line earlier or later?  If I take the right path, what else will I need to do to finish on time?   Will my gas tank make it?

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

 

 

Jelecos Senior Networking Engineer, Steve Mills, was quoted in an article this week: IT turf wars: The most common feuds in tech.

 Have you experienced friction in your IT department? How have you worked to quell the tension?

At Jelecos, we appreciate the finer things in life; reading a good book, watching a summer sunset, hanging out with friends, and totally destroying someone’s first day back from vacation. For years we have been trying to find ways to mess with our employee’s work areas while they are out on vacation. These pranks have varied from the simple, to the very complex. Employees are getting to the point where they lock their office or their drawers to avoid having pranks pulled on them while they are gone. This does not stop us from trying to have some fun at their expense.

Here are some examples of some of the pranks that have gone down:

Foiled Office – Almost every piece of this desk has been wrapped in aluminum foil. As you can see, we put some detail into the wrapping. Each item should look normal, just with a silver shine to it.

Christmas Cheer – If you like to open presents, this is a good prank to have pulled on you. Can you believe it, I got an iMac for Christmas. I opened one item at a time throughout my day to extend my present opening experience.

Princess Castle – We had some large boxes sitting around the office when Mark went on vacation for a week. We could not let these boxes go to waste. We built a castle around Mark’s cube complete with a bubble wrap moat, flags on each corner of the castle and a door for him to go in and out. No castle is complete without the family crest painted on it.

Airplane Enthusiast – 365 days of paper airplanes. We had a one-a-day calendar that made a paper airplane each day of the year. After a while, that starts to add up. Rather than keeping them stored in an overhead bin, we placed them all over a desk while the employee enjoyed their vacation. This one was pretty easy to clean up. You get to remove them from your desk and watch them fly around the room, what fun!

Shredded Paper and Fireworks – For a down and dirty, quick prank, we loaded an overhead storage bin full of shredded paper. We also rigged some pull-fireworks and snaps to an office chair. When the employee pulled his chair away from his desk, we got a bunch of snaps and pops. Quite the surprise when you are not expecting it. The bin full of paper was the topper. The last thing you want when having a bad day is a bunch of paper dropping out of your overhead bin onto your desk.

Crickets – One of the best inventions ever; the annoy-a-tron. This ingenious little device emits a sound at random intervals. Our favorite is the cricket sound. This device is easy to hide, and hard to find. The next time you hear a cricket in the office, maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to call an exterminator.

These are just some of the pranks we have pulled over the years. Each time we do something, we try and out do the previous prank. Everyone enjoys going on vacation, but they need to be prepared for their return to work.

Brant Cruz, Vice President of Chadwick Martin Bailey, predicted that within two years a common metric on executive dashboards will be “number of Facebook Fans.“  Some of his reasons were that Facebook is ubiquitous, and it provides a level playing field for brands.  The number of fans, while a bit imperfect, is also easily measured.

It makes sense.  There are more than 500 million active users on Facebook; of which 50% log in daily.  According to Facebook Statistics, more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month.  If you want your brand in front of people, Facebook appears to be a good bet.  In fact the Chadwick Martin Bailey study quoted Facebook fans answering a question on what it says about a brand that is not on Facebook or Twitter.  They say things like “it’s EXPECTED that a company have some digital face… “ and “it shows they are not really with it or in tune with the new ways to communicate with customers.”  

The report also indicates that page fans are more than 50% more likely to buy and recommend a brand after becoming a fan.  Every day social media growing in importance.  Does your brand tweet or have a page on Facebook?   Check out Jelecos Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Find the whole social media report here.   

 

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Jules Clement is a business intelligence team lead and has been with Jelecos since 2005. She has been certified in MicroStrategy and enjoys being the “Green Guru” of the office. As a regular Jelecos blogger, you can find her sharing her insights on Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Enterprise Reporting on the last Tuesday of every month.

Not that long ago, in front of a computer very similar to where you’re sitting at now, screen resolutions were a major problem in web design. You see, computer displays were not always the large, wide screen versions that most of us enjoy today. Low resolution screens, even some as low as 640x480 (gasp!), were in wide use, and we designers had to take a lot of time to create layouts that were accessible to the lowest common resolutions. In fact, it was only 7 years ago that 800x600 screen resolutions held nearly 50% of the market share!  The most common design answer to this problem was to design websites with a fluid/liquid layout, where widths were set as percentages of the total browser size rather than a strict pixel dimension. This allowed web-users to interact with our designs regardless of what resolution their screens were. The latest statistics, however, have shown us that these lower screen resolutions have almost completely died off (Most likely because higher-resolution monitors have become cheaper and standard with new computer purchases). The W3School has a nice chart showing how resolutions have evolved over the past 10 years.

But out of the ashes of the old problem, comes a new one. Even though almost all web-users browse the internet using resolutions of 1024x768 or higher, what happens as monitors continue to evolve and get bigger and better? Setting widths based on percentages may work great for 1024x768 monitors, but what about the growing percentage of users using, for example, 1920x1200? At this higher resolution, content areas may stretch paragraphs over 1000px wide, making reading text much more difficult, if not impossible. Specifically designed elements with specific spatial relationships will lose their effect if layouts are stretched out to a maximum. So what do we designers do to prepare our designs for ever-improving displays? The answer is still being “widely” debated (I know, kind of on the nose).

For my money, I would side with setting a specific maximum width and letting the user decide how they would like to view the design. A layout can be flexible to the extent that content can expand and contract based on how large the browser window is, but rigid enough to consistently display the design as it was intended. Content areas can widen to allow for greater and greater resolutions, but there should always come a point where that flexibility stops so that overall functionality isn’t lost. Some designers will argue that having a rigid structure on a high resolution monitor will make their designs look “small” with all the whitespace around their layouts. While there is no argument that there will be additional whitespace, I would argue that this whitespace does little to detract from a well-planned, well executed design.

Take this site, Web Design Tuts, a blog that I regularly browse through. When I set my browser window to 1024x768, the layout appears like this:

If I set my browser to be 1280x1024, the same site looks like this:

Do you see the difference? The sidebar on the right has expanded to account for the higher resolution, while maintaining a consistent left content area that keeps the main content readable. So what happens to the layout if the screen resolution is higher than 1280x1024?

Nothing! The designers for this website created a layout with specific readability and usability standards in mind. Expanding the layout past the designed structure to adjust for higher resolutions would only take away from the layout, making it seem visually disconnected. While there is no technical limitations why the layout could expand to fit a higher resolution browser, there is absolutely no reason why it should.

My thinking is really based on one basic idea: Any designer worth their weight in salt designs with intention, meaning that every graphic, paragraph, and link is placed specifically to maximize its usability. The whitespace around a design on high-resolution screens might bother some designers, but for me, the area of the design that contains the content is most important and keeping that look consistent is what needs to be worried about. There could be 10’ of space around a layout and I wouldn’t care as long as the visual relationships of the core design stay intact.

To conclude, there is no doubt that in the coming years the web will evolve and with it, so will the screens we use to view it. But just because resolutions continue to improve and more data can be viewed at once doesn’t mean that the standards that we have developed for good web usability go by the wayside. So make flexible layouts if you see fit, just not so flexible that they break altogether. Create those liquid layouts, but not so much that your designs erode away completely. In the long run, you’ll thank yourself, and so will your clients.

Happy New Year!

Hi! I'm Marika, Project Office Team Lead for Jelecos and this is my first crack at a blog. Let me know what you think!

I recently decided to give a new time management method a try – it’s called a personal kanban.  Kanban got its start at Toyota, in an attempt to add a level of clarity and transparency to the work that was being done.   Personal kanban has the same goal applied on the individual level, and while much of its beauty is in the simplicity and flexibility of the method, there are two basic rules:

• Visualize your work
• Limit your work in progress (see this site for lots more information)

 

At its most basic, a personal kanban gives you a quick, visual representation of the following:

 

•  Tasks you know you need to work on
•  Tasks you’re working on right now
•  Tasks you’ve completed

 

My kanban is nothing more than a white board and Post-It notes.  A standard personal Kanban has three columns:  Backlog (anything I know I need to do but have not started yet) Work in Progress (abbreviated WIP, this is the 3-4 tasks I am actively working on) and Done.  I create a Post It note for every item I have to complete and add it to my Backlog column.  At the start of each day, and as needed throughout, I move 3-4 Post-Its from Backlog to the WIP column.  When I complete a task, I move the Post-It to the Done column, where they stay all week as a nice visual reminder of all I’ve accomplished that week.

And a Kanban can be personalized.  I, for example, have added a fourth column: blocked.  This gives me a place to organize work for which someone or something out of my control is keeping me from completing.  Once that block is removed, it moves back to WIP or Backlog, depending on my schedule that day.

So far (I’ve been doing this for about a couple of months), I’m really happy with this method.  Visualizing my work means knowing what to do next is as simple as a glance at the board.  Getting it out of my head and onto something physical means I can analyze and prioritize my day.  And limiting my work in progress allows me to focus on a few key items every day, and measure my progress.

Have you ever tried Kanban?  Or do you have another personal time management technique you use?  I’d love to hear from you!

Additional resources:
http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/
http://thecriticalpath.info/category/kanban/

I was recently speaking with a customer about his experience with Jelecos and our Asigra-based offering.  He indicated he had every intention to renew and wanted to see some thin wood to sign.  When asked what he enjoyed about our service, he simply stated, “Agents suck.  Your solution is agentless.”.  Not the usual, “Your support rocks” or “You treat us to rainy golf events once a year”.  While I always knew agentless technology was great, his insight into the trenches of IT life out in the field forced me to think about this topic in depth.

Backup agents are a major woe for both the board room as well as the IT war room.   Here are some of the challenges we hear from prospective customers:

• Non-scalable and unpredictable IT spend.  First you need to deal with the capital expenditure of the license then pay maintenance on it year after year.
• Bloated servers and VM templates.  Everything seems to require an agent which in turn requires updates, memory and disk footprints, and regular maintenance.
• Propriety interface to applications.  Each backup vendor, when utilizing agents may utilize propriety functions to access applications.  This results in a slower adoption rate for new technology.

Asigra answers these concerns with an agentless backup and recovery architecture.  The solution utilizes vendor-supplied APIs for backing up and recovering critical application such as Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, DB2, and many others.  Asigra also sports the following features, all in an agentless capacity:

• Constant Data Protection (CDP)
• Locked-file backup support
• Server discovery

A logical data model is a diagram that shows the information you want to analyze in a project and how that data is related. It's called a logical model because it's based on the logic of the data within an organization and generally makes sense to the most basic of end users.

Typically a logical data model will contain dimensions and within those dimensions are a series of hierarchies that together form the logical data model.  The logical data model is a visual definition of the data elements and business rules.  It is the first step in architecting a database.  Frequently the logical model will expose business processes that conflict with business rules and indicate a need for process improvement.

The activity of building a logical model guides business users through several phases of the data modeling process. The conceptual model gradually becomes the logical model and finally the physical model is finalized and the database is built.

 

Jelecos is very proud to be affiliated with our new partner: Telerik and the Sitefinity Service Partner Program. Our development and design teams have been utilizing Sitefinity as our preferred Content Management Solution for many months in order to provide our clients with a scalable, intuitive, and simple platform for their web presence.

Check out some of our very happy clients that were built on this ASP.NET architecture:

Schaefer's

John Atkinson Foundation

and even our very own,

Jelecos.

In our quest to take over the world of business continuity, we often hear prospective customers talk about their traditional backup systems failure to keep backup windows short.  The challenges with having backup windows run rampant are:

1. Additional load placed on business systems during business hours.
2. Longer RPOs (recovery point objective).  The point in time when your backup completes is the most recent point in time which you can say your business can recover.
3. Increased risk.  This is probably the most critical.  What if a database crashes during that 24 hour backup process?  You are reverting back to the previous full and the most recent incremental from that.  Sounds stressful.

The good news is there are solutions out there that mitigate these risks with a different way of approaching backup.  DataVault powered by Asigra utilizes deduplication and incremental forever technologies that allow you to protect massive amounts of data in a short period of time. 

The DataVault, powered by Asigra approach:

 

Incremental Forever:  Never do a full backup of existing files again.  DataVault powered by Asigra will only backup the changed blocks of that file, not the entire file.  Additionally, DataVault will quietly skip over files that haven’t changed and only back them up when they change. 

Deduplication:  DataVault will only store unique files within the vault.  This is pretty handy when your users are accustomed to saving that PDF attachment to their network drive that the President sends out to every employee.

Stay tuned for our next part in the series of backup and recovery woes.               

Do you ever call tech support and they ask you to do something but you don't know how? Here are a few instructions on some commonly used tech support short cuts.

 

1. How to send a screen shot:

 

If you want just the entire screen it's a single key press. If you have the Print Screen button on your keyboard then that's all you need. It is usually in the top row and displayed as 'PrtScn'. Press it and your computer will take a snapshot of your display and put it on your clip board. Now all you have to do is paste it in either Microsoft paint, word, or another compatible program and email it.

 

You can also hold down Alt when you press Print screen to get just the active program. However for tech support reasons I would suggest using normal print screen as there may be other indicators in the background they can see.

 

2. Short-cut to bring up a run dialog:

 

To bring up the run dialog press and hold the windows key and press R. The windows key is the button that has the "Microsoft" or "Windows" logo/flag on it.

 

This is great if you know the name of a program and want to bring it up quickly without having to go through the start menu or use your mouse.

 

3. Right click without using your mouse:

 

There are actually two ways to do this with just the keyboard.

 

There is often a key on your keyboard located near the Alt, Windows, and Ctrl key that looks like a rectangle with some lines in it. This is sometimes called the shortcut menu key, popup menu key, or something similair. All you have to do is press this key and you will get your shortcut menu.

 

If you don't have this key, then your other option is the shift+F10 combo. Hold down your shift key and press F10 at the same time.

 

4. Jump to your browser's address bar:

 

You can jump to your browser's address bar (where you type in the website that you want to go to) by simply using a keyboard shortcut.

 

The shortcut you have to use will depend on your operating system and your web browser, but here are a few. If your browser is not on this list try the help documentation and search for "address bar shortcut" or "keyboard shortcut".

 

Windows:

Internet Explorer - Use Alt + D

Firefox - Use Ctrl + L

 

Macintosh/Apple:

Firefox - Use Command + L

 

Just press the appropriate combination and you jump to your address bar. Then type the address you want to go to.

 

5. Controlling your cursor position with the keyboard:

 

Basic:

To move your cursor around a block of text a character at a time you can use your left and right arrow keys. To move up or down a line you can use the up and down arrow keys.

 

More advanced:

- To jump to the start of a line press the home key.

- To jump to the end of a line press the end key.

- To jump to the top of the page press ctrl + home.

- To jump to the end of a page press ctrl + end.

 

Bonus Tip:

If you hold down shift and press any of the keys to move the cursor you will highlight the text from where the cursor was to where you just told it to move to. So holding shift and pressing the arrow keys can highlight text a character at a time, or entire lines at a time. Holding shift and pressing ctrl + home will highlight everything from where you were to the top of the page.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.defcon-5.com/noc/

 

By: Angela Mahler

A recent research report by Aberdeen Group showed that making operational decisions based on bad data is the number one pressure pushing companies to invest in an analytical strategy, namely a business intelligence system.  The research was released in August and was based on a questionnaire sent to 260 companies that were then identified as Best-in-Class, Industry Average or Laggard. 

Specifically, the study found a high correlation between the best-in-class companies and their use of operational business intelligence.  Operational BI is information that is delivered in real or near real-time.  The best-in-class companies were more than 2 times more likely to have operational BI that is delivered to right people at the right time.  They are additionally four times more likely to adopt a formal KPI methodology such as balanced scorecards, five nines reliability and six sigma.  They have a successful collaborative relationship with IT and executive level support, among many other interesting traits revealed in the report. 

You can download the report for free at the Aberdeen Group web site.  Also included in the report is a link to an assessment so you can compare your company to the best-in-class, industry average or laggard.  Then you can heed the tips within the report to move your company to the next level.

With the scheduled release of Sitefinity 4.0 coming in the first part of next year, I figured it was a great opportunity to tell our readers how this new version will improve the already robust Sitefinity infrastructure (for those already using the tool) and explain to future clients why Sitefinity will be the content management system for them.

To start, for those of you out there that are woefully ignorant to what “Sitefinity” is, here is a quick overview. Sitefinity was created by a dedicated and innovative company Telerik with the intention to produce a high-end, high-speed and highly precise content management tool. The goal was to allow companies to easily build complex websites without having to wade into the deep-end of .NET development. Site admins can add pages, templates and content as well as adjust site structure on the fly without having to go through a complicated release process or HTML coding.

As with all tools however, early versions of a product have some limitations, and Sitefinity wasn’t any different. Layouts had to be highly structured and rigid to make formatting easier. Forms had to be developed and coded outside of the Sitefinity shell and inserted manually by using custom modules. Image and video support was basic at best with limitations on how to categorize, group and display this type of content.

That is all changing with the release of Sitefinity 4.0, which promises to be a complete revamp of the tool. The Telerik team has done an amazing job listening to their user feedback and turning out a new product that will greatly enhance Jelecos’ ability to deliver a top quality tool to our clients. Here is a quick list of what to expect in the new version:

Fluid layout builder

• Dropping content onto a page used to be highly restrictive to the “Master Template” the page is using. Content areas were predefined by the web-developer leaving the client with a limited ability to define where content would be placed, positioned and structured. With 4.0, the Telerik team has aimed to change all that. Each content area now has a “Layout” feature which allows several content items to be placed inside of it. What’s more is that each of these content items can be adjusted on the fly to display at different widths, making the amount of different layouts a client can create limitless. Want to add a sidebar to that main content? No problem! Just add a new content module, set the width to whatever you like, position it wherever you like, and you’re on your way.

Custom Form Builder

• As a designer and developer of many websites that use Sitefinity, this new feature is the most exciting. Sitefinity 4.0 puts the power of form building in the clients hands and simplifies the process so that anyone can do it. Forms can literally be built within minutes without knowing any HTML or backend coding. Labels, help text, dropdown lists and text fields are all drag and drop modules that allow users to customize what is required or not. As an extra perk, the layout functionality previously described also applies to forms as well. This enables users to make the form look how they want it. Forms can be stacked vertically or horizontally based on the client’s preference. (Future Sitefinity versions have promised to add validation rules that can be toggled to apply to specific form elements, i.e. email validation, phone number,etc…)
  
  Form submissions are also automatically stored, categorized and easily reviewable by the client, making responses quicker and more manageable.

Web Analytics Integration

• This is an amazing new feature that fully integrates Google Analytics into an easy-to-manage, easy-to-use interface. Just one click will pull up in the full Google Analytics API reports that would usually have to be visited outside of Sitefinity. In addition, Sitefinity allows for permissions to be set on these reports so that different users can access different information. 4.0 also sets the framework for annotating reports based on changes through the CMS tool itself. This will allow clients to see how content changes effect how web users interact with their site.

Advanced Search Mechanism

• Sitefinity 4.0 comes with a query builder which allows you to define advanced search and filtering criteria. This can  especially be useful when operating with large amounts of data where limiting results can be extremely beneficial.

Enhanced Performance and Improved UX

• Sitefinity 4.0  is completely “ajaxified”, resulting in a considerable performance boost. No more waiting for the page to reload and populate with information. The administration area has also had a facelift making it easier for admins to navigate through the site and make changes quicker.

Sitefinity 4.0 beta is already available for download, so if you’re curious on how these new additions work you can go out and check it out yourself. You can also watch the overview video of the new Sitefinity here. If you are reading this as a potential customer looking for a customizable CMS solution, I would highly encourage you to contact Jelecos today. Our Sitefinity clients have been extremely happy with the tool and the customization that Jelecos can provide. With 4.0’s release only months away, the timing couldn’t be better!

I suppose you could say we are settled into our new offices.

Moving offices is a lot like moving to a new house, but worse. There's self-inflicted pressure to unpack and stay engaged in your work at the same time. There are a lot more people in your way. You watch frantic co-workers search for the proper phone cords and supplies to call back that client that needs attention, pronto.

Through the periods of brief chaos however, we triumphed! Many clients didn't realize we had completed the move as their service was never interrupted. I'm proud of this team for accomplishing such a major feat so seamlessly.

To celebrate, last month we invited employees families to an open house at our new office. Over 20 children arrived to eat cookies and shoot Nerf guns at any innocent bystander! I believe I can speak for the entire team when I say it was an absolutely delightful evening. The kids (as evidenced in the below picture) had a blast!

If you haven't had an office tour yet, stop by!

Congratulations!

Jeff Wilke, co-founder and part owner of Jelecos, has made national news this week. Thursday he called the Omaha World Herald to submit a wedding announcement for his daughter, Kristy Wilke and her partner Jessica Kitzman but the request was denied. Jeff immediately began a campaign on Facebook to help encourage the newspaper to accept same-sex wedding announcements. The campaign ballooned in one weekend and on Monday, the newspaper released a statement changing the previous policy.

Jeff was able to achieve a victory for his daughter and we know his main goal is to see true change in our community. We applaud him for his efforts!

Congratulations to Kristy & Jessica!

Check out a brief synopsis of the coverage here:

• Huffington Post
• Media E Coder
• HRC
• Metro Weekly
• KPTM
• Passport Magazine
• Advocate
• Minnesota Public Radio
• Media Matters
• Chicago Pride
• Channel 3
• Jezebel

In terms of value, a dynamic and relevant website is nearly incalculable. With the additional options of integrating social media into your website, businesses of any size can produce significant ROI’s (Return on Investment) from online initiatives. Social media can help your company stand out and keep your products or services on the minds of your consumers in a way that wasn't possible even a few years ago. What many companies fail to consider, however, is that you should understand the do's and don'ts for reaching customers on social platforms, or your social media campaign can backfire in as little time as it takes to click ‘unfollow’. Your goal should be to create a sense of friendliness and transparency that makes customers feel comfortable. While your corporate website may be limiting in the amount of casual interactions it allows for, social media can be the perfect platform for customer service and friendly connections, showing your customers the more personal and down to earth side of your business.

One of the biggest mistakes a lot of businesses make when it comes to social networking is developing a "look at me" complex. It's a common mistake and easy to make. The harsh truth is that your customers don't visit your Facebook page (or even your website) to read about how great your company is. They are primarily there to find out how your products or services can benefit them. No one wants to log onto their Facebook page to find a barrage of spamy posts from a company. They just want to interact with their friends. The companies that are most successful in the social media realm understand this and consciously work toward a friendly interaction with their customers rather than just a business relationship.

It seems simple, but it's easy to forget. I've seen countless Twitter pages with tweets such as: "We're now offering iced coffee," or "Our travel rates are cheaper than the competition." It makes the point, but fails to relate the message to the consumer. Something like "Our new iced coffee is a great way to cool down when the weather heats up!" or "Could you use a vacation? Our low travel rates make getting away easy," are much better ways to create content that is relevant to the customer. Throw in a few random-but-relevant facts or tips such as "Did you know that black coffee with no sugar contains no calories?" or "Our top fifteen must-see attractions in Chicago. What's your favorite?" and now you've got your audience coming back not just to hear about your products, but to hear what interesting thing you're going to say next. Nobody likes listening to that friend who loves to go on and on about themselves, so think of your fans and followers as friends, not dollar signs. Start asking questions and creating conversations, and suddenly you have an actual relationship with your customers on a personal level.

Integrating social media into your online presence can be an amazing way to relate to your customers, but you can't approach it as a way to make a quick sale. Successful integration means connecting with your customers and forming a sense of friendship and trust, providing them with relevant information that helps them make a decision, affects their daily life, or broadens their knowledge. If that leads to a larger bottom line in the long run, than you have a successful social media campaign, but you can't jump straight to the results without putting in the work. Keep it in perspective, and it’s easy to have a social media integration that really benefits your customers and your business.

Last week I wrote about my trip to Canda for the Asigra conference. Below are some other fun memories of our trip!

Our fun night out was a trip to the CN Tower.  The ride to the top takes 58 seconds.  To top that off, there’s a glass floor in the elevator.  Asigra spoiled us at the top with very delicious hors d'oeuvres and beverages.  Three hours later we all pile back into the buses for a trip back to the hotel.  Sitting in front of us is an Asigra partner from Memphis, Tennessee chatting to her colleague about her HTC Incredible.  Leon, being the relentless gadget guru he is, couldn’t resist to strike up a conversation about his experiences with the device.  He gave her a few pointers and ended up striking a great conversation about CEO-type-things and Nebraska Football.  Turns out she has family from Omaha and comes up every year for a game.  Small world!  She gave us her version of the Nebraska fight song.  Good times.

For further details on the other antics on our trip such as Trent’s magical quarter-pounder-with-cheese disappearing act and Leon’s philosophies on glassware, look one of us up at the next I.T. Matters or drop me a note.

 

Leon Thomas (CEO), Trent Williams (Systems Administrator), and I had the opportunity to visit Toronto for Asigra’s 3rd Annual Partner Conference.  The first thing I’ll say is that we had no problems with travel.  Usually I’d have a story to tell you about some screaming child, lost luggage, or a mystery meat food poisoning incident.  Unfortunately (for you), that didn’t happen.  We saw the top of CN Tower, met new friends, and learned how a Stella Artois beer can be a hot (read: hawt) drink… oh, and we also learned a few things about Asigra.

The partner conference was separated into two tracks: Technical and Business.  Our group attended both and swapped notes between sessions.  The business track was a wealth of information on marketing and sales strategies and the technical tracks provided expertise on using and supporting the product.

1. How to stir up interest in our market.  I mostly wear a technical hat but attended the business track to expand my expertise.  I learned a lot of new marketing and sales concepts.  A refreshing reality was that we (Jelecos) are on the right track.  We have the right ideas and are deep in the execution phase of a strategy that was collectively put together by a diverse team at Jelecos.
2. The conference center likes it cold!  The hotel where the conference was located must have thought the conversations were going to be dull because they had the room temperature just below meat-spoiling temperature.  I couldn’t drink the coffee fast enough.  I had to go outside a few times because I felt hypothermia settling in.  Maybe Stella would have helped.
3. The Asigra support staff are superstars.  Trent filled us in on all of the great things Asigra implemented in v10 and features to look forward to in future versions.  We discussed how their support and engineering staff is among the best we’ve ever worked with.  Consider the challenge of supporting a product that interacts with numerous operating system and numerous database platforms:  you need to be an expert in all those platforms to protect and troubleshoot any bumps in the road.  They routinely meet and exceed my expectations on their technical knowledge.
4. Their partner program is one of the best.   Another common theme is they listen to their partners.  They implement ideas from their partners who, in turn, get these ideas from their customers.  Asigra is the only vendor where I have experienced this type of interaction. 

***Stay tuned next week for more of Terry's experience at the Asigra Conference!!!!***

Great design has a lot of faces. It can be as simple as a few words on a sheet of paper that take up space in an interesting way, or as complex as a fully fleshed-out, interactive web experience. No matter what kind of design theory you use: what separates average design and great design are the details you add to them. A subtle gradient, texture or graphical piece can really elevate design without adding hours of work. Here a few quick examples that can help you spruce up any design.

Add some noise

A common, yet sometimes ill-advised, solution for making designs “pop” is to use a lot of drop shadows on different elements. I guess the thought is that by doing this these areas will draw more attention to them by how “3D” they look. While this can work in some situations, the technique is so overused that it can make a design look amateurish. I’ve seen this in a lot of my own work and especially in my early project drafts and compositions. What I like to do is take a step back, get rid of the drop shadows and find new ways of making things standout. One such way is by adding a bit of noise to background colors. Take the two designs below for example:

 

The image on the left has a bit of added noise; the change is subtle and can often be overlooked by the average user.  Giving flat colors a little texture (often only 1-2% of noise will do) can have a much broader effect on the design in general and give it that “little extra something." And since it only takes a fraction of a minute to add or take away, it is definitely something you should try out.

Make the button a BUTTON

Often times, when the hours are getting long or I’m running close on a deadline, I’ll simply throw a quick style on a submit or search button in my design and call it good. However, taking a couple extra minutes and doing it right can really expand the usability of the button. Adding a border, a slight CSS gradient and some graphical effects can really make buttons standout from the rest of the design and help the button say “Click Me!”

Go Negative and Break Out

It easy to try to make an eye-catching design by cramming a lot of great textures and imagery into it, but often, the opposite can be just as effective. Take this VW print advertisement as an example. No boxes; no lines; just clever use of space to convey a stronger message.  Negative space can sometimes be just as an important part of a composition as actual content, but many designers are afraid of taking advantage of it. Part of it may be that the web box-model system we use makes us want to design inside specific areas and constrained dimensions; breaking design out of this box will enhance your designs’ message. Take these designs as examples:

Howdy! I’m new to Jelecos and thus new to blogging with you.

Quick Intro: Sarah Tucker, Director of Sales & Marketing since May 19, 2010.  Book nerd, mom of a whole bunch of kids, Twitterer (@tuckersarah), professional chef wanna-be and food lover!

Statistics show that the average person between the ages of 18 and 38 changes jobs 10 times! That’s a lot of adjusting-learning to operate new telephone systems, scoping out close-by lunch spots, navigating parking arrangements and thousands of faces to learn. (The important things, right?!)

My first 6 weeks at Jelecos have reminded me of some pretty valuable tips to navigating the imminent career hop/skip/or jump.

Thankfully, I have a very valuable mentor in my life. He operates in a similar position at another company and has provided lots of guidance for me during this process. He recommended a book that’s braced me for a lot of what’s been thrown my way: The First 90 days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, by Michael Watkins.

This author speaks my language:  quick hits of lists and tips.  I was reminded that the first few months in a new position are critical because you are proving yourself anew every day.   It's also important to be excited – you changed jobs because you wanted too, right?!

Here are the three tips to ease your transition:

1. Read and LISTEN. A new position often comes with a new industry, new philosophies, and a new culture. Learn everything you can about the organization. Watkins suggests building a Learning Plan template to keep you on track.
2. Identify. Determine quickly a need that you can address and secure yourself an early “win."  Whether it’s a process change or a new client you can add to the roster – your commitment to success can be proven with some quick action.
3. Balance. Watkins speaks often about avoiding vicious cycles; bad habits and patterns develop quickly. Determining priorities and finding the proper balance to achieving those goals are the keys to success!

Our President, Leon Thomas, was interviewed recently on how companies can prevent growing pains from an IT perspective.

Check out the article in Processor Magazine!

Drywall is being secured, carpet has been selected and the new coffee pot has been ordered.

Our moving date has officially been set for August 1st!

Our new address will be:

450 Regency Parkway
Suite 200
Omaha, NE 68114

For more info on the move see our press release.

 

Congratulations to John Stuifbergen and Eric Karmazin on their recent graduation from the American Institute of Management GRO program!  John heads up the Jelecos Professional Services team and Eric heads up the Jelecos Managed Services team.   The American Institute of Management is a professional leadership and management development firm serving small to mid-sized businesses since 1989.   John and Eric recently completely a nine-week leadership workshop with AIM.  Nice work guys!

One of the hottest topics in business technology today is Business Intelligence, or BI. For the uninitiated, BI is catch-all term that attempts to encompass all of the tools, processes and outputs required to make all the data your company collects more valuable. In other words, properly implemented, a good BI strategy gets the right information to the right people at the right time to enable better decision making in less time.

Admittedly, BI is a broad topic and we often encounter the question “we know we need something, but where do we start?”. Jelecos and MicroStrategy have teamed up to bring you Intro to BI, a free workshop to introduce BI concepts and some of the tools that people use on a daily basis to make their companies smarter. Join us on June 9^th to learn how to get more out of your data. Seating is limited and we’ll fill up quickly, so please don’t wait! Click Here to read more.

Jelecos is pleased to announce their acquisition of iAppeal Media, an award-winning provider of interactive design services.  Jelecos has acquired all intellectual property, assets, and staff of iAppeal Media in a strategic effort to expand interactive media design and development services.

iAppeal Media has built a stellar reputation in Omaha and the surrounding region as a leading interactive media design studio. They have also won numerous awards including Small Business of the Month, AIGA Design Awards, American Design Awards, Diversity Business Award, and back to back ADDY awards.

This acquisition will enhance the interactive design offerings for current and prospective Jelecos clients, while providing a host of new online business optimization, integration and managed hosting offerings to the iAppeal Media client base. President and CEO of Jelecos, Leon Thomas states, “As we continue to grow, we are always looking for ways to deliver more business value to our clients.  This was a natural extension to our service offerings due to our shared philosophies and proven track records.”

As Jelecos relocates to the 450 Regency building this summer, iAppeal will join them under one roof. This newly renovated building will provide the optimal environment for creative collaboration. Tom Sailors, former owner of iAppeal, now Interactive Account Executive for Jelecos, states, “I can’t think of a place in Omaha that I’d rather go to work to each day.”

Jelecos is a consulting and services firm focused on helping businesses leverage and align technology to maximize business value.  They have been honored by INC magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the United States and named a Top 25 Company in Business Excellence by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. To learn more visit: www.jelecos.com

Six years is a long time to wait. But after all that time we are finally on the verge of a major change in how the web works. Later this year, if all goes to plan and the published schedule holds, HTML5 will finally be recommended by the W3C and be supported in most major/modern browsers (sorry IE8, you don’t count). This 5th revision of the core language of the World Wide Web introduces new features based on researched and prevailing standards and practices. Special attention has been given to making HTML5 have clear conformance criteria, laying out clear guidelines for modern and future browsers to follow.

The aim of HTML5 is to streamline markup and to add new functions that will reduce development costs by making precise rules on how to handle HTML elements. Some of the most exciting features will include:

<article>

Defines external content. It could be an external news article, blog, forum post or any other content coming from a third party.

<audio>

Supports music and streaming audio. Also supports attributes such as autoplay which will play the audio once it is ready in the browser; controls will display standard pause, stop and play functionality; and preload that loads audio on page load rather than after it.

<canvas>

Already supported in Firefox, Chrome and Opera, the <canvas> tag is used to display and draw graphics. Inside the tags, variables, dimensions, and animations can be defined.

<header> <nav> <footer>

Simplifying the usual coding for HTML seems simple enough, but these additions go a long way to standardizing how coding is done across the board. These elements can also be used multiple times in the markup without ID duplication errors, making designing subsections with their own <header> and <nav> elements much simpler.

<video>

Similar to the <audio> tag, the <video> tag comes with a library of attributes that handle embedding video onto a page a snap. Instead of using a third-party tool, like Adobe Flash, to present videos, HTML5 puts the functionality right into the browser. You can specify multiple video files, and browsers that support HTML5 video will choose one based on what video formats they support. This solution uses no JavaScript whatsoever, and it works in virtually every browser, including mobile browsers.

What is nice about HTML5 is that the team that has been working for the better part of a decade to create it had the AMAZING initiative to make it backwards compatible. Unlike the XHTML2 that the W3C was working on before jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon, this new markup language won’t break older markup.

Now, if you look around the internet and search for “HTML5 release date” you’ll see a lot of articles saying that it won’t be fully supported until the year 2022. While this date seems a bit far-fetched it is important to note that HTML5 is being rolled out incrementally and will continue to be developed in the years to come. Look at it like the continued development of Jquery or Ajax scripts. They continue to rollout new versions that support more elements and variables, but degrade well for older versions that people may be using. HTML5 is by no means a complete project, but modern browsers are already supporting many elements and there is a time in the not so distant future when HTML5 will be much more the standard then the exception.

Mobile devices are becoming more and more popular for browsing the internet and getting stuff done online.  Users are able to get online with their smart phone or other device which is driving more people to try and get things done while away from their home or work computer.  Websites need to be made mobile friendly to allow for users to be able to navigate the site in a way that is not completely frustrating.  Here are four key tips and trends to get your site ready for mobile devices.

1. Keep it simple:  sites should be scaled back so they get users to the information they need quickly and easily.  If there are unnecessary navigation items or fancy flash elements, remove them. Chances are, if someone is visiting your site on a mobile device, they are looking for something in particular and need an easy and quick way to get to it.
2. Avoid over-crowding:  Mobile device screens are pretty small, so you do not want to overwhelm users with too much information in that small space.  White space is a necessity and should be used carefully.  A balance of information and white space is crucial in the design.
3. Minimize image use:  Connection speeds are slower on mobile devices, so reducing the amount of images used will help the site load faster.  A text based mobile site will load much faster and will be easier for the user to navigate than a site that uses a lot of images.  Leave the fancy designs for the computer browser.
4. Consider the domain:  There are multiple issues a company should consider when deciding the domain of the mobile site.  A sub-domain keeps everything in one domain and reduces the chances of confusing visitors.  A separate domain for the mobile site will help the user know they are on the mobile version.  Depending on the device being used, the user may not know if they are on a mobile version or regular version of the site

There are many challenges in designing sites for mobile devices.  One of the major problems is there is no consistency in screen size.  There are a multitude of devices available today and more being released all the time which makes it impossible to have a standard.  Devices are rapidly changing also.  Some mobile devices run a full browser that can view a site like normal or view the mobile version.  Even testing mobile sites is a challenge.  There is no good way to test for all devices, so care should be taken to make sure the design is flexible so it will work for different devices.  Spend some time deciding which information is essential.  You'll want to slim down the site as much as possible without removing vital information.

Mobile sites are being utilized more and more every day.  Creating one is not an easy or overnight project.  If you are considering a mobile site, do some research into the topic to make sure your site will be useful and decent representation of your website.

Links are a very important part of your website.  Links help the user get to where they are going in your site and navigate the web. Without links, all we would have is a lot of one page sites with a lot of information crammed into them.  Needless to say, links are crucial in all websites.  This is why styling links can make or break how your site works.  Most users scan a website instead of reading word for word.  If a link does not stand out to the user, additional information or pages can easily be missed during the scanning process.  Here are some tips to keep in mind when designing a website.

1. Make your links stand out from other text. Everyone recognizes underlined blue text as a link.  If this does not fit into the design of your site, you need to make sure the color you choose for your links stands out from the rest of the content.  Try and designate one color as your link color.  Also, avoid underlining any text that is not a link.  Underlined text as a link has been around for a long time and is considered a link by most users.
2. Change the style of visited links. When you have a site with lots of links, it is helpful to change the color of visited links so users can easily see where they have been. The color difference can be subtle, but should be noticeable at a glance.
3. Use a call to action. If you need a link to really stand out, style it to stand out on the page.  Have link look like a button or add a graphic that entices the user to click on it. 
4. Have meaningful link text. The text used for the link needs to clearly convey to the user what will happen when they click on the link. Avoid using “click here," it's better to have the link text explain what the link does. For example, if you are linking to a registration page the link text should be “Register Now."  The more descriptive the link text, the better for SEO and the user.  Adding title tags also gives the link a description and are essential for screen readers.
5. Hover state styling.  Changing the style on a link when it is hovered over is a good visual cue that the text is a link.  Adding a hover state is feedback to users that they are currently hovering over a link.
6. Appropriate Icons and images.  Adding the destination site logo helps the user recognize at a glance where the link will take them.  You see this a lot for the gamut of social media sites.  This is also good practice for links that link to a PDF or other kind of document.  This will help the user decide if they want to click a link that will download a document or take them to a new page.
   
7. Link the site logo to the homepage.  Generally, users know to click on the website logo if they want to return to the homepage.  This rule of thumb applies even if you have a home link in the navigation.  The only time you don't want to do this is on the homepage.  That way, the user knows they are on the homepage.

Well styled links on your site will result in a better user experience.  Users will be more likely to return to your site if they had a good experience rather than a bad experience.  You may only have one change to make a good impression on someone that happened across your website.

Our long search has come to an end... we have new office space! We will be moving just a hop, skip and a jump away from where we are now and our entire team will be back under the same roof. As soon as we can, we'll be posting photos of the construction progress. For details, what follows is our press release about the new office.

Jelecos, Data Media Solutions, and Heimes Resources are pleased to announce their new and expanded office space. The owners recently signed a lease for the 450 building at Regency.

In 2005, the companies wrote a growth plan and leased office space accordingly. Fortunately, exponential growth has required the companies to lease multiple office spaces across the city.

The owners of the three companies attribute their success and growth to both hiring incredible talent and enforcing their employee motto; “Faith - Self - Family - Work.”

Their philanthropic involvement in the Omaha community has included work for the American Red Cross, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, United Way, Special Olympics, and the YWCA, just to name a few. Jeff Wilke a partner in all three companies states, “Tim Schmad told me years ago that the most successful companies in Omaha are the ones who are able to evolve into the total fabric of our community and thus we strive for that reputation.”

This new location will allow for all Jelecos, Data Media Solutions and Heimes Resource employees to collaborate again under one roof.

In addition to adding new space for all of the companies employees, the 450 building offers a unique, sophisticated and contemporary design featuring a 4 story atrium with skylights and a 40-foot waterfall.

The companies anticipate an August 1 moving date.

Jelecos, a technology consulting and services firm has been honored by INC magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the United States and named a Top 25 Company in Business Excellence by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

Data Media Solutions provides custom IT procurement solutions for their clients. Focusing on superior customer service, this woman-owned company has served Omaha and all of the mid-west since 1999.

Heimes Resources, an IT staffing company, is the newest addition to the family of companies. Heimes Resources specializes in placing executive IT professionals in both short-term and permanent positions.

 

 Web designers are always looking for a simple ways to speed up design processes and improve their code in general, and one of the best ways to start is with a solid HTML/CSS framework. When designing a website from scratch there is a lot of extra time needed for creating the html markup and semantic styling. Fortunately for us designers, there is a plethora of great frameworks already out there that are based upon a well developed understanding of web design and web standards. Here are three of the best found on the web:

EASY

This framework, developed by user interface expert and self proclaimed “front-end ninja” Alen Grakalic, is an amazingly diverse framework that not only sets a solid foundation for HTML markup and CSS, but also for JavaScript. It includes built-in (jQuery powered) interactive functions that are so easy to use that you really don't have to know first thing about JavaScript. It also includes a library of preformatted and precoded CSS/HTML content blocks that you can simply paste into your master template. You don’t have to worry about browser rendering issues for certain elements in your code; Easy takes care of it for you.
The website has a lot of documentation and demos as well to help in cases where you need to go beyond the default settings. You can check it out here: http://easyframework.com.

960 Grid System

960px wide design has become more and more common in modern web design as web users have switched over to wide screen displays. What 960 Grid System does is give the designer an editable CSS and HTML framework that is contained within this web standard dimension. On the site, www.960.gs, there is a custom CSS generator as well as a HTML layout generator. Designers can walk through their designs on a wireframe basis, adding elements and containers, and then have 960 generate their custom HTML that can be placed into the master template for the site. The same goes for the custom CSS generator. Once dimensions and number of columns are chosen, 960 generates the CSS using easy to use semantic markup that is cross browser friendly. And if the design changes and element dimensions are altered, a few changes to the CSS are all that is needed.

Blueprint

One of the most widely used frameworks since Web 1.0, Blueprint fulfills all of the same CSS and HTML standards that the previous frameworks have but also includes a reset and print style sheets that are extremely helpful. All web designers know that a solid reset.css file can make all the difference when trying to get good cross browser styling. Older browsers that aren’t built upon new web standards need to have this “reset” so that they act appropriately when designers start adding their own styles. Blueprint also adds a print.css file that is often overlooked by many designers. Without it, printing a page from a website will pull all the “screen” styles from the browser and waste a lot of space and ink, which can be pretty annoying. The print style sheet removes all the background images and colors, resets widths and heights to ensure quality margins on the printed page, and has a solid cross browser performance (Yes, different browsers don’t just display website differently, they print them differently as well… go figure.)

You can find Blueprint here: http://www.blueprintcss.org.

These are only three of the vast amount of frameworks that are out there, but they are the ones that I’ve personally used on projects and have found extremely useful. Other frameworks include:

• YUI Grids
• YAML
• CSS Boilerplate
• Tripoli
• Molio

If you’re not sure which framework to use, I would suggest just trying them out. Each has a lot of good qualities and will get you farther, faster than if you didn’t use them. Play around and find a framework that you like the best. Once that is done, you’ll find that your design times can be cut in half and the quality of your work will vastly improve.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is widely used in current web design.  Style sheets allow designers to create a site and make changes to the look of the site by changing the style sheets rather than having to change each and every page.  CSS is a powerful tool in creating websites.  Recently CSS3 was introduced with some new and exciting features.  For example, instead of using images, we can now use some of the new features instead; the fewer images a site has, the faster it will download--an important requirement for end users.  My top four new features are:

1. Border Radius – Before CSS3, if designers wanted a box to have rounded corners, they would need to create images for the corners of a box or use some javascript to manipulate the box.  Border radius allows the designer to set the corner radius of a box or each individual corner.
2. Box Shadow and Text Shadow – This is another feature that used to require an image to create.  Usually it required transparent images, which opens a whole other can of worms in older browsers.  This feature will set a shadow in the designer's choice of color and size.
3. Transparency – CSS3 allows elements to be transparent.  Again, this will reduce the amount of images needed to create some designs.  The less images needed, the smaller and faster the site will be.
4. Custom Fonts – Currently, there are only a few web safe fonts.  With the new @Font-Face feature in CSS3, designers will be able to add fonts to their site which will be included with the site.  This will allow the font to display on a computer that does not have that font installed.  In the past, this would require images or javascript to allow a site to display different fonts than the standard web safe fonts.  This new feature brings up some copyright issues, so some care needs to be taken if trying to use special fonts.

These are many more new features in CSS3.  They are exciting for all designers that use CSS in website creation.  The only downside of these new features is that they are not all supported by today’s browsers.  Internet Explorer in particular does not support a lot of them.  Designers need to make sure some backup options are in place for features that are not supported.  One nice thing is that most of the features will gracefully degrade in browsers that do not support them.  Users will just see some differences in the design depending on which browser they use rather than a complety broken site.  Another downfall is that these new style sheets may not validate since CSS3 has not been fully adopted by site validators yet.

CSS3 is still a work in progress, and I am excited for the day it is fully supported by all browsers.  These new features will give designers the ability to create some great designs in new and more web optimized ways.

Message Sizes and Attachments

• Attaching non-text files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, for example), graphics (JPG and GIF, among others), and multimedia elements (like video) to an e-mail message can quickly overwhelm a recipient’s inbox and/or the mail server. As these attachments result in significantly larger message sizes, avoid using them unless absolutely necessary.
• Be aware of the size limitations enforced by the company’s email administrators, and govern your activities accordingly to ensure all messages get through.
• Use alternative methods, like FTP and network-based file services, to transfer files that exceed these limits. Do not use the email system as a quasi-file management system.
• Also consider posting the message to a web site, then e-mailing the URL to your recipient. See the URLs section below for specific guidelines.

File Formats

• If you do have to attach a non-text file to a message (for example, a Word document or an Adobe Acrobat PDF file), make sure that the recipients have access to software that will be able to read the file. Do not assume, for example, that everyone can read the file format you are using.
• In particular, if you are using a relatively new version of a package, ensure that the people to whom you are sending the file are also using that version. Older versions of the software may not be capable of reading files created with the upgraded program.

URLs

• Although most mail programs allow the reader to double-click on a URL to open the Web page in the default browser, do not assume that this is universally the case.
• Consequently, spell URLs out completely, each one on its own line and separate by sufficient white space above, below, and on either side.
• When using links, it's best to copy and paste them into the e-mail message. Avoid manually typing them in, as even one mistake can render the URL useless.
• Follow the same process for email addresses and other Internet-specific addresses.

This blog is part of the Email Best Practices Series.  Check out the other blog posts in the series: 

• Sending Email
• Maintenance
• Smartphone
• Security & Spam
• Forwarding & Redirecting

Email messages that have been forwarded or re-directed a number of times can get confusing for the recipients. There will likely be numerous sections and multiple authors. There are a few best practices you should follow when forwarding and redirecting an email chain.

• Each section should identify the author.
• Be careful that the entire message you are forwarding is “appropriate” for all the new receivers.
• Forwarded messages can grow in size, particularly if several different people have forwarded it and added comments. Be aware of this if you edit the message.
• As a courtesy, before forwarding messages you might consider notifying the sender of the message.
• A message that has been forwarded or re-directed a number of times have topic changes. As a topic changes or is focused consider starting a new email or changing the subject of the email.

This blog is part of the Email Best Practices Series. Check out the other blog posts in the series:

• Sending Email
• Maintenance
• Smartphone
• Security & Spam

Security is paramount to keeping your email safe. A good rule of thumb is to always assume anything you send or receive via email is not secure. Ask yourself would this e-mail cause you or the company concerns if it were posted on the company bulletin board?

Spam and unwanted emails are also a security concern. See the tips below to make sure you are doing what you can to keep your email safe. If the volume of spam becomes unmanageable, contact your email administrators to help reduce the amount of junk mail and spam that reaches your inbox. Jelecos uses Google’s Postini Message Filtering service, your email admins likely use a similar application. Frequently quick changes in the spam filtering can solve a spam overflow..

Security

• Any message – even if it is strongly encrypted – may be read by others.
• Anything you receive may not have originated from where it says it does as mail headers are easily forged.
• Do not open a message that seems suspect.
• Never disclose anything confidential, such as your password or a credit card number, in an email message.
• If you suspect your email has been compromised in any way, contact your email administrator immediately.

Junk Mail or Spam

• Spam is defined as unsolicited commercial email and it virtually never has anything to do with your business function.
• Never reply to junk mail.
• Never give out your email address to an un-trusted source. Be cautious when using your corporate address for signing up online. Spammers harvest these lists for valid addresses, and pretty soon your inbox will be full.

This blog is part of the Email Best Practices Series. Check out the other blog posts in the series:

• Sending Email
• Maintenance
• Smartphone

These days it feels like everyone has a smartphone! It's hard to keep a conversation going when your pals are constantly checking their email on their iPhone or Blackberry. Smartphones have opened the floodgates for people to receive, read and respond to email from virtually anywhere. It's becoming more and more common to expect someone with a Smartphone is always available to read and respond to emails, and that they do so. Email has taken the place of other more appropriate means of communication. If you need an immediate response, consider calling over email or, if possible, a face-to-face conversation.

If you reply to emails from your Smartphone be cautious of misspelled words and your use of abbreviations. Take a moment before sending and read through your email to be sure everything is spelled correctly and can be easily understood by the reader.

One last tip: if you have a Smartphone you should protect it with a password. This helps secure not only your emails but all the contact information stored in the device.

This blog is part of the Email Best Practices Series. Check out the other blog posts in the series:

• Sending Email
• Maintenance

 

Since 2004, when the phrase was first coined, Web 2.0 has been the buzz word of the entire internet community. We’ve heard how it will make the internet better, faster and more collaborative than we ever thought possible. But what is Web 2.0 exactly? If you ask 10 different online professionals you’ll probably get 10 different answers. The reason why is that Web 2.0 is still a developing idea--a mixture of many ideas and interactions for where the internet is moving. In this blog, I want to give an overview of this transition process and look at the progress of Web 2.0 over the past few years.

To understand where the web is going, we first need to understand where the web has been. Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the web was mainly used as an information gathering tool. This web, Web 1.0, was accessed through dial-up modems with 50k bandwidths. Websites were static advertisements for themselves, rarely updating their content and functioning very similar to the billboards we drive by every day. Essentially the traditional approach to print marketing and advertising was applied to the web in a “top-down” approach.

 

Users were going to websites to consume content rather than being an active participant in creating it. What user controlled sites there were manifested as “personal” sites, where <blink> and <marquee> tags were the norm (Remember Angelfire? Geocities? Don’t deny having one. We know you’re lying). This was the “Old Web” and nearly every site created during this time period was entrenched in it.

Web 1.0 was about:

• reading
• corporate sites
• dialup
• top-down
• home pages
• structure and labels
• being edited and produced
• banner ads

With the advent of Web 2.0, the web was completely flipped upside down. The transition began as a result of technological improvements in connection speeds (broadband) and web browsers. It was further pushed on by the wider use of Flash applications and the invention of Ajax. Within the past few years, applications like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have revolutionized how people experience the web. Websites are no longer static for months at a time but constantly shifting based on what users want. (Sites like Digg.com create their content completely based on user input and what is important to them.) Personal sites have been replaced by Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts that allow users to connect with people from around the world in real time. Instead of the top-down approach of the old web, content today grows organically from everyday users, posting on message boards and blogging from home. Users like you and I have become the chief content writers on the web. Web 2.0 has moved the internet from only an information-gathering tool to an interactive community experience that we control.

 

This movement is not done yet. As I wrote earlier, Web 2.0 is still a developing idea. While many large corporations have taken hold and used the new web to their advantage, we are just now seeing the mid-sized and smaller companies take steps to bridge the gap. And as new technologies continue to develop the web experience and integrate it even further into our daily lives, there will be a growing demand from these smaller businesses to get in the 2.0 game.

Web 2.0 is about:

• collaborative writing
• blogs
• sharing ideas and content
• web applications
• broadband
• communities
• bottom-up

Your organizational leaders are challenged with ensuring employees are properly trained in maintaining appropriately-sized email stores.  Anything you can do to keep your email account organized helps. A well maintained email account also ensures you are taking action on received emails in a timely manner. Below are a few tips for maintaining and organizing your email account:

• Read mail frequently, daily if possible but at least several times per week.
• Reply to mail promptly. Even if you don't have the time to compose a full response, a quick message to acknowledge receipt and set expectations for a more detailed response is always appreciated.
• After taking any action needed, file the message in an appropriate folder or delete it. Do not maintain a long list of in limbo messages in your inbox.

This blog is part of the Email Best Practices Series. Check out the other blog posts in the series:

Sending Email

E-mail has rapidly become the standard by which business communicates. In many cases, entire business processes can be adequately managed exclusively in e-mail. This new medium, however, imposes a number of significant communication challenges because of its text-based nature. To obtain the most utility from this resource, I've put together a series of best practices for you to use and regularly self-evaluate your use of e-mail to ensure you are using it in an optimally effective manner.

Sending Email

• Send messages only to relevant people who must be involved in the specific communication. Avoid the temptation to over-distribute.
• Always fill in the SUBJECT: field with a brief description of the message.
• Use the CC: (copy) field to send FYI-only messages to certain recipients; An individual identified in CC (copy) field on an e-mail should not be expected to take action as a result of this message.
• Do not list a recipient in the TO: field unless he/she is expected to act on your message.
• Be brief and on-topic. Long, rambling messages tend to be ignored and deleted. They also stand a greater chance of being misunderstood.
• Minimize the amount of quoted text included in any given message, as this can make for a lengthy read. If the quoted source is available online, consider embedding URLs to keep the message short.
• If the message becomes overly long and complex, edit it into a simpler package, or consider other means of getting your message across. E-mail is not always the optimal communication channel.
• Watch your tone. The written form lacks the subtle nuances of in-person conversation. Avoid humor, sarcasm, and irony unless you are absolutely certain the recipient will understand your meaning.
• THE USE OF CAPITALS IS THE EMAIL VERSION OF SCREAMING! To avoid a misunderstanding, don't use your Caps Lock.
• Avoid using e-mail to send large file attachments.
• Keep messages as structurally simple as possible. Avoid using fancy features, as not all recipients’ e-mail software will be able to decipher them. In many cases complex e-mails with special features will not pass through a company’s firewall. Simply-structured messages are also much easier to read in printed form.
• Avoid using the confirm receipt feature unless absolutely necessary. Not all systems support it, and not all recipients appreciate these notifications.
• Remember that email is not instant message or a phone conversation. If the subject requires an immediate response email may not be the appropriate means of communication.

This is the first blog in a series.  Be sure to check back next week for more email best practices!

Friday, January 22nd, Leon Thomas was part of a panel of ecommerce experts at First National Merchant Services Merchant Days. Other members of the panel were Matt Price from Visa, Tyler O’Brien from PayPal, Tim Spear from Tangible and Carla McAnulty from Authorize.net.

The first question to the panel addressed common issues that merchants face when starting an ecommerce site. The first answer was “knowing their customer”. When starting a small brick and mortar store, merchants can see their customers and do some screening by sight. With an ecommerce business all transactions are done without ever meeting your customer. Some things that merchants can do is monitor for suspiciously large orders, special payment terms, and many new accounts being opened in a short period of time. The next answer was “education”. Opening an online business requires knowledge of ecommerce practices, PCI compliance, payment options, and more, which merchants often overlook. The last three answers agreed largely with the first two, with the additional advice to do more outsourcing when accepting payments, allowing vendors to assume the risk of payment acceptance.

Other points of note from the panel were:

• The industry is working towards eliminating all card data after the initial authorization, rendering stored data useless
• Hosted payment forms are a good alternative for PCI compliance
• Merchants need to consider purchasing pre-packaged solutions and integrating with best of breed applications
• Merchants often don’t understand what a payment gateway is, it is important to get educated and use one for all transactions
• Online credit card fraud has declined by 18%, but has increased that much and more in areas such as electronics

Ways to drive online sales that were mentioned were:

• Online advertising
• Product feeds
• Cross polication with other sites
• Don’t limit how people give you money (studies show that adding alternative payments can increase conversion by up to 14%)
• PayPal
• Bill me Later
• Direct credit card
• Usability studies
• Make ordering simple and fast
• Subscribing to third party security services that give you seals to place on your site can encourage customers to buy
• Extended Validation SSL’s are a good way to show you are securing your customer’s data

There were many good questions asked from the audience as well as from the moderator. I felt like the panel was full of knowledgeable people with a lot of experience in the industry. I could have asked questions about the future all day! I’m interested to see what is in store for online payments in 5 and 10 years. Today I still see the main challenge as education. Most of our clients do not understand PCI compliance, nor are they concerned about it – but they should be. They often do the minimum possible to stay in business online. That is scary if you are a frequent online shopper.

 

A few months back I was privileged enough to attend “An Event Apart- Chicago”, a two-day conference centered around learning new and upcoming techniques to, in short, make websites function and work better. Speakers ranged from content strategists and CSS3 styling gurus to hard-nosed database developers and CMS programmers. These are the guys that literally wrote the books on how I design for the web (not ironically I have 4 of those books sitting next to me as I write this).

One of the speakers at the conference that weekend was Eric Meyer, a leader in web design and CSS, who used his time to talk about how “Javascript will Save Us All”. His point was two-fold:

1. First off, we designers can stop waiting around for browser makers to give us what we want. We can use javascript and start using the advanced CSS we’ve been hearing about for years.
2. Secondly, we can accelerate the process of weeding out elements that don’t work or aren’t applicable in real world situations.

The brilliance of this idea is obvious. For designers, javascript WILL save us. Adding a couple of scripts to our code can dramatically improve how we go about our day to day work.What is less obvious, however, is how javascript will save the internet in general and help improve the things that are important to our clients; i.e.search engine optimization, user interface design and mobile web applications just to name a few.

What’s amazing to many people is that these technologies are already being widely used, they just never realized it. Javascript, itself, dates back to the mid-1990’s, and has been an integral part of websites since. It has gone through multiple enhancements and revisions throughout the years (JScript, Ajax, etc.), but it has only been in the last few years that it has become more mainstream and widely used by front-end designers.

Wait a minute, that isn’t flash?

Only a few years ago, Flash websites were all the rage. Since browsers couldn’t support the design and function that we wanted, we turned to out-of-the-box programs like Macromedia/Adobe Flash that enabled us to get the dynamic interaction we were looking for. The problem was that unless you went to extreme measures and took a lot of extra time; most of the flash we were creating was dead space to search engines, leaving our clients with a slick looking site that no one could find.

Enter jQuery and Mootools. Both are javascript libraries that are designed to make it easier to navigate a document, select DOM elements, create animations, handle events, and develop Ajax applications. jQuery is the most widely used, with about 20% of the top 10,000 websites in the world using the library in some form. The best part about these tools is that they are extremely light-weight and easy to customize. Data can be retrieved from the server without having to reload the page, which decreases lag and helps boost site performance. Advanced styling and animations are contained in a few lines of code and can be changed quickly without the hassle of reworking an entire flash file. Using javascript, content isn’t hidden from search engine crawlers, giving a huge boost in site searchability. The content is also accessible to web users with visual impairments who use screen-readers, where before they were left out.And just in case you’re worried about these libraries working in older browsers? Don’t be. They even work in Internet Exployer 6+.

As an added bonus to clients, using these javascript libraries allows them to easily interact with Content Management Systems (CMS). A client with little to no experience in the web can now enter in their content through their CMS tool, save it, and javascript takes care of the rest. Dynamic features are handled inside the browser itself, and clients don’t have to get their hands dirty with writing markup, letting them focus on the most important part of their site: the content.

The mobile revolution is at hand…

As long as javascript has been around for the web, to mobile-web devices it is still a relatively new feature. New libraries are being developed, many within the past year, that enable designers to incorporate javascript based, mobile applications into our sites. However, these tools are still in their infancies. Many new devices coming out have javascript support, but code has to be specially customized to work inside mobile technology and significantly slow performance when enabled.

But help is on the way. Mobile development communities are springing up everywhere. The “Web App” craziness surrounding the iPhone has pushed the development of the mobile-web farther in just the past year than it did the nine years before, and javascript has had an integral role in moving the ball forward. Within the next few months and years, at the current rate of improvement, mobile devices will support full javascript functionality without the hit and miss we’ve become accustomed to.

The leaps and bounds that javascript has come since its inception has been amazing. It is an important tool for every web designer. In recent years it has become lighter, easier to use, and more dynamic than anyone would have dreamed of only 15 years ago. As we move forward, and as more and more technology looks to tap into this powerful resource, javascript will continue to revolutionize the web design and development business; making websites faster and more accessible for our entire web community.

We had our holiday/year-end party this year in the Scott Aquarium at The Henry Doorly Zoo. We enjoyed a catered dinner in the Shark Tunnel; various fish, sharks and turtles swam over and around us. It was a fantastic location for our annual event.

After dinner, the 2009 Jelee Awards were announced. This year there were two awards given: one selected from the past years’ quarterly winners (AKA the Super Jelee); the other was based on over-all continuing excellence, and was nominated by peers

Super Jelee Award Recipient
The super Jelee,award was given to Mark Mori. Mark has been a great addition and made a tremendous impact to the Jelecos team since he came on board almost 18 months ago. He brings in a top-notch attitude everyday and his work consistently leaves lasting impressions on both client and internal projects. Mark has also been a great resource during client meetings, so much in fact a few clients have requested that he’s in the meeting to discuss items that are completely unrelated to the creative portion of the project.

Continued Excellence Award
The Continued Excellence award was awarded to Terry Davis! Terry is integral part of the Jelecos and Managed Services team. Whether it is supporting DataVault, assisting on a sales call, or troubleshooting an issue, Terry is always willing to lend his assistance. Terry’s drive has helped Jelecos deploy new technology including Log Management for our PCI Security project.

This year both award winners won a trip to Las Vegas (airfare and lodging) along with a day off to enjoy during that trip!

Read our post about last year's winners!

Last week I went to the MicroStrategy World conference in Las Vegas. It was a jam-packed full two days of learning and networking. It was also my first time in Las Vegas as an adult. Truly, there were a lot of new experiences for me!

The kick-off general session began with a Gwen Stefani impersonator who fooled most of us in the audience into thinking she was the real thing. We should have known, we were in Vegas, after all!

I spent most of my time in the technical sessions learning more about Intelligence Server and administrative components like Integrity Manager and Enterprise Manager; in the evenings we explored Las Vegas in all its glory and exchanged notes on what we had learned that day.

I love going to conferences. I think it’s because I love to learn and am always looking for ways to improve the work I do with my clients. After any conference I have a long list of new things to try and I feel rejuvenated and excited to get back to work to put all my new found knowledge to use! This conference had an added benefit in that MicroStrategy just released a new version of their software and each session was focused on showing all the cool new stuff it can do! It helped me expand my knowledge and showed me how to take advantage of the new features. Of course, I also gambled $2 and came out ahead $1.37 – but I had to spend $1.99 on a package of band-aids for all the blisters I attained while walking down the Strip…. But I still think I came home a winner!

Be sure to visit California Pizza Kitchen at One Pacific Place in Omaha on the following Tuesdays:

• January 19
• February 16
• March 16
• April 20.

They will be giving 20 percent of your check to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation! You MUST print and bring the flyer at the link that follows for the CFF to receive 20 percent. Philanthropizza.pdf (19.63 kb)

Enjoy pizza for a good cause!

There seems to be a lot of activity on the BI front these days. As the world emerges from its recession darkness, BI is there to welcome it with open arms. BI bloggers all over the blogosphere are making predictions for the new year and touting their top 10 trends and predictions for 2010; most of them share common advancements: cloud BI tools, improved analysis and advanced visualization.

I’ve been glancing through these articles and started to consider what the future might look like in a sci-fi world. So, taking these three advancements into account, this is my vision of Sci-Fi BI.

Cloud BI tools exploded into the market in 2009. They combine the appeal of getting data out there quickly with a visual dashboard that contains the results of the analysis. Dashboards contain all the classic elements of gauges, bar graphs, pie charts and the like, with some cool Flash widgets that make a dashboard super cool. In a sci-fi world, this concept would be taken to the next level.

Let’s consider the advancement of data visualization over the past few years; I recently wrote a blog about a few of my favorite data visualizations. Using tools like Adobe Air or Microsoft Silverlight allows for a more flexible and dynamic visualization application. In the sci-fi world, data would be continuously added to a database/data warehouse or, even better, read directly from transactional systems; analytical tools would process the data and feed its results to a free-standing or web-based visualization application. This application would be accessible through your computer or your smart phone; or a big screen in Times Square.

The visualizations that you would be presented with would go way beyond the pie charts and gauges of a typical dashboard today. Your business intelligence would be presented like a news ticker complete with advanced visualizations, and, at any time, you could glance at the images and get a feel at that moment for what’s happening at your business. The tools might even “ding” you when something significant happens and you could immediately see what’s afoot. Imagine your BI reporting in the same way news is reported. You could even have a full-time analyst that adds BREAKING NEWS tickers.

That’s how I see sci-fi BI. I’ll finish with a J.G. Ballard quote “Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”

In an earlier post, I discussed our favorite lunch spots in Omaha. Two of our favorite spots will be donating a percentage of their sales on January 5th to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. CFF is one of our favorite charities; we've blogged about our work with them previously with Great Strides and the Nebraska Golf Classic. We encourage you to dine out on January 5th at Bailey's or Shucks (or both) to benefit this worthy cause.

January 5th a percentage of the proceeds goes to The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Bailey's 

120th & Pacific

open 7:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Shucks Fish House & Oyster Bar 

119th & Pacific or 168th & Center

open 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 a.m.

Confused by:

• Clouds?
• Thin clients?
• Virtualization?

Read these great articles from Forbes.com and get caught up.

Virtualization Versus the Cloud
The Death of the PC
Demystifying Cloud Computing: Five Things Every CEO Should Know

Happy Learning!

It is an exercise that every company in the Western world engages in every year: the eternal search for cutting costs. Since data storage and backup tends to be an area that so few people understand, it is often overlooked as a possible money saving source. The reality is that many companies spend way too much on data backup because they are slow to update their methods and they don’t take into consideration all of the elements involved to reflect total cost of ownership. Here are just a few ways technology is helping companies everywhere save money, while improving restore time objectives, minimizing risk and ensuring compliance.

Two Winning Strategies

Duplicate data is a problem. Old, useless data is a problem. Solve both of them by utilizing data de-duplication technology and establish a data retention plan. Both of these methods will help to save you money in different ways. First, data de-duplication is the process of using markers that point to duplicated data instead of simply backing up everything over and over again. This advanced system of data storage can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes your company to back up all of their data each and every day – and more importantly – reduce the amount of time to restore the data when it is needed. By recording data once and then using a simple marker system that points to that one piece of information instead of recording it again, your total backup and restore windows can be reduced significantly – not to mention the amount of storage required to house that data.

Data retention plans are not new...we all know the IRS requires us to keep certain data for a specific amount of time in order to prove our innocence, should we ever get audited. In business, it’s different. Different types of data have different values and different compliance concerns associated. A data retention plan, if implemented correctly, should place a value on different types and classifications of data, allowing a company to align the backup and restore processes with those classifications. This process ensures the data that is the most critical to the operation of your business is highly protected and readily available, while old, useless data is either purged from the system or stored on less expensive media, such as tape or slow disk. This alone can provide a significant cost savings relative to backup and recovery tools.

Block By Block

In addition to the data retention policies, block-level backups can save even more time and money. A block-level backup is different than a file-level backup because it only backs up information that is new and information that has changed. For instance, let’s say you have opened up a 100 page document and made a change on page 43...traditional backup systems will see that as a new file and back up the entire file. Block-level backup systems will only store the small blocks of data that make up the change, greatly reducing the amount of space required to protect both document versions. The result is a greatly reduced backup window, faster restore times and lower data storage costs.

I was recently sitting down with a pro bono client who is preparing to run for public office in the state senate. We discussed some design pieces he would like created, a general theme to his upcoming campaign, and what he’d like to see as an end-product. I sketched out a few ideas and even had some time to show some designs I had worked up. As I showed him my ideas for what one of his yard signs would look like he said to me:

As a designer, this isn’t new. In almost every project there is always a difference in how you see a design unfolding and how your client sees it. What really struck me in this case was a reminder that design has to work for more than just me personally. The design has to have the “legs” that can support other interpretations and viewpoints.

 

Upon further reflection, I think it is easy for us designers to become too comfortable with our work. We wall ourselves behind a certain style of design, building layers of safe guidelines that we feel work and then rarely venture beyond those barriers. I, for example, have come to feel as though I know what good design looks like. I have a style of my own; a sense of layout and spacing that works me and I seldom stray away from it. I stick to what I know and, sometimes then end up having to “sell” a design to clients that don’t get what they expected.

Now I’m not saying that as designers we have to bend to every expectation a client throws on us and I’m definitely not saying to design things you’re not proud of. In the end, our clients are expecting us to be the experts. That’s why they’ve come to us in the first place. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a client say,

What I’ve failed to realize sometimes is what a great responsibility that is. I may have designed a layout that is attractive to both the client and me, but the design I’ve sold them on might not be the best way to get there. We sometimes forget that our main purpose as designers is to serve the client’s needs, not our own artistic needs. The walls that we have built up to keep our designs “safe” have restricted our ability to design for each client individually.

These walls also keep us from seeing other points of view when it comes to our creations. Many times, a suggestion or critique on our work will be met with a curt,

There is a certain amount of pride we have in our design decisions, and, if you’re like me at all, we don’t like to hear that we’ve done it wrong. I like what I’ve designed. It is easier to keep what I’ve designed. I’m the designer after all. What do you know about it?

This type of arrogance is easy to fall into and is something that many designers, myself included, have to wrestle with. The walls that we’ve built not only keep our designs “safe” but also keep out worthwhile suggestions and perspectives. In essence, it is easier to defend what we have designed than realize that our interpretation might have been wrong in the first place.

So what is my point? Let me summarize:

1. The rules and guidelines that we believe are creating good design can sometimes lead to us building layouts and web systems that don’t serve the client’s interest in the best possible way.
2. Remember that the client trusts us with their identity on the web. Our expertise is what they are counting on. Creating a layout that pleases you should go hand in hand with creating a design that works for the broadest number of your target audience.
3. As designers, we cannot, should not and must not design on an island. A good designer should always be able to review his or her work with a grain of salt and understand that no design is perfect. Critiques are essentially good, no matter who is lending their advice.

I recently accepted an invitation to receive an award from the Heartland Chapter of the American Red Cross. The actual luncheon is in April 2010. The award is for being a “Heartland Hero”. Now many of you who read this blog know me pretty well. And I doubt “hero” would come to the top of many minds if asked to describe me. So what did I do to deserve this honor? The way I see it, nothing! The way they see it I am a hero.  

It started out kind of small actually. I decided one day to give a pint of blood. Naturally I went to the Red Cross, on Dewey St, for our Omaha readers, and gave a pint. No big deal. The nurses were fun to chat with and the volunteers were a delight to hang out with afterwards while drinking some juice and eating a donut.

After a few donations I was pretty fed up with needles (by the way nobody likes needles) but by then the volunteers and nurses had become kind of a family. And one day one asked me if I was interested in donating platelets. I had no idea what a platelet was. But upon an explanation of the process I decided I’d give it a try. When I first began donating the process took about three hours. Needles in both arms withdrew a pint, spin out the platelets and put the rest back. Pretty cool! Actually miraculous! Whoever made this contraption seems like a hero to me.

After a year or so of hanging out once a month with some of the most courageous nurses on earth one of them asked if I’d be interested in signing up for the National Marrow Donor Program? After explaining that all I had to do was sign up. They then would simply test the blood I was already having drawn in preparation for my platelet donation for possible matches. The odds of matching I was told were like winning the lottery. I never win anything the decision was easy.

Three months later I got a call from Paulette the National Marrow Donor Program registry coordinator for the Omaha area. She informed me I was a “potential” match. Pretty common I was told to get picked early but usually on further “blood typing” most are eliminated. They were seeking a six out of six antigen match. Or a “perfect” match.

I went to the Red Cross and was counseled on the process. It took an hour or so. They had fruits and snacks and made me feel like I was pretty special. They said if this process continued I’d be responsible for the other person’s potential for survival. For another person’s life! They said there would be a “point of no return” near the harvest:  when I said yes, one last time, the recipient of the bone marrow harvest would not survive if I turned back or was physically unable to donate. No skydiving, scuba diving, motor cycles, etc. But, of course, there is no guarantee of survival even with a successful harvest. I kept going.

They continued their tests while I pretty much forgot about it all. Then a month or so later they called. I was a six out of six antigen match. A perfect match! I was overwhelmed with emotion. I thought “what have I gotten into?” I never considered for a moment not donating but I just went from “potential donor” to donor”. What’s up with this? I wasn’t planning on getting picked.

The harvest was delayed a couple times because of the fragile state of the recipient’s health. Then as we got closer to harvest I felt more and more how I think an expectant mother might feel. I felt like I was living for two of us. I knew my recipient was in his thirties, like me, and married with two children, like me. I was informed as to the type of cancer he had. I was told survival was not likely even with a successful harvest. Some well intentioned friends pointed out the risk benefit analysis to me. Why donate if success was unlikely? The answer was easy; I wouldn’t want my wife to bury me knowing there was a chance. Plus, science wins a little even if it fails.

The Registry is anonymous for many good reasons. Neither party knows the other’s identity. You can inquire as to their well being and you can meet after one year if both parties agree. The Red Cross facilitates all of this once all agree. I never got the chance to meet my recipient. He passed away.

Fast forward a few months and I get a call from Paulette. I am a match. This time they know I am a match because in the process of the unsuccessful donation the DNA typing they did let them know me pretty well. Oh, and six out of six antigens. A perfect match! Two!

There was no harvest. The recipient did not survive to receive one.

About a year later I get another call from Paulette. I am a match. Six out of six antigens! Three! This time I gave antilogous blood for my own recovery. When they harvest marrow you can lose a lot of blood so they took my own to put back in.

Sadly, after I gave my units I received news that the potential recipient had passed away. No harvest.

I matched a fourth and fifth time over the next couple years. Six out of six both times! No harvests occurred and I never learned why.

The sixth call came in 2003. Paulette told me a young boy, 11 years old, had cancer. I asked her his chances of survival, more from experience and curiosity than from any other reason, and learned they were not good. I also learned that the odds were based on yesterday’s knowledge and that now we’d be harvesting stem cells. Not bone marrow. What’s up with that? Advances in technology taught us stem cell transfer may work better. Only catch was that in order to get my stem cell count high enough to get a good size harvest I would need to take a protogen enhancer. One not approved by the FDA. The drug was experimental.

After the sixth call from Paulette I had an intuitive feeling that to this day remains a mystery. I just knew this kid would make it. I took the drug for a number of days; I recall a week. I had some awful flu like symptoms as side effect leading up to harvest. I prepared a note to the recipient and sat down in a chair and they stuck a needle in my arm and in a couple hours I felt like normal. No flu like symptoms. Back to my old self. I looked at that bag of yellowish fluid and asked God to please help with His part and all would be fine.

I got regular updates on my recipient's progress for the next year. He survived! He has had a five year clean bill of health. We met in Omaha about a year after the transplant. He has my DNA now. He has my allergies. He likes my favorite foods. He'd never eaten peanuts, yet he asked for them while being transfused with my cells, even before his family read my letter telling him he may grow to like peanuts. My letter also told him we would not fail. And we didn’t. He’s a cool dude. We’re Facebook friends. I went to Chicago to meet his entire and extensive Irish family. I think about him every day. I love them all and vice versa.

So who’s the hero?

Not me. I am sure of that. I’m just a guy who got involved with some very loving, caring, smart people who spend each day saving lives of our loved ones. The scientists, they’re heroes. The doctors of oncology, they’re heroes. Can you even imagine the life of a pediatric oncologist? They’re heroes. The Red Cross nurses, they’re heroes. Brent is a hero. He took the beating of his life and never, never, never, gave up. His family, they’re heroes. The great volunteers who share the time with whole blood donors as they recover, they’re heroes.

Me, I am no hero, but I am glad the Red Cross thinks I am, because it gives me a chance to say thanks to the real heroes. I thank God for you all.

Your dashboard design needs to be simple and clean with a focus on the data. Your challenge is to display all the required information on a single screen in a way that can be instantly digested and with minimal distractions. The idea is that the less the business user has to think, the better your dashboard design.

There are a lot of theories about the layout of dashboards, but there are no hard and fast rules. The basic tenet is that a dashboard needs to be customized for its purpose, well organized, concise and free of distractions. There are some elements that need to be considered:

• Windows: If you have too many windows the mind can’t focus on any one of them. Generally good dashboard designers don’t use more than 6 windows in a 3 x 3 symmetrical layout. The windows should be equally sized to be the least distracting.
• Widgets: The widgets you use need to make sense based on the data it’s representing and be easy to read and understand. If you have animation it should be controlled by the business user rather than run automatically or in a continuous loop.
• Colors: The color scheme should be neutral and if you’re conveying information with color, check it out in black and white: 10% of us are color-blind and different monitors render colors differently

It's a good idea to perform user testing to be sure the dashboard is user friendly, particularly if you have a lot of interactions. Finally, make certain you get input from your business users; they know what they need and like.

Metrics for a dashboard are tied to a target or have an acceptable range. Reporting on them in a dashboard then generally expresses how they differ from the target and where they fall for an acceptable range. These metrics are designed to instantly tell the business user where they stand on a goal, plan or problem resolution. To select the metrics, you should start with the event that is your dashboard focus. Working through the event takes you on a path through the data and eventually you’ll find the metrics that support your dashboard focus. The business users know these processes better than anyone and need to be heavily involved. You can help them by starting a dialog and prompting them to answer some key questions.

Questions to ask:

• What is the business question that needs answered?
• Why is this question important/necessary?
• Who creates the data, what is the process?
• What action or decision can be made with this information?
• At what granularity do you need this data in order to take that action or make that decision?

After working through these questions, a set of metrics will emerge. You’ll also be able to determine how the data needs to be presented—a percentage, a specific value or simply a thumbs up or down. Keep in mind that the metrics you choose need to have the following characteristics:

• Easy to understand
• Relevant
• Provide context
• Lead to positive action

Finally, they need to be tied to a target or a range. You may need to collect data for a while before the optimum target or range is determined. Review your metrics every few months to be certain they are still relevant.

My "adopted daughter" wrote a compelling article for online retailers; she is the Marketing Coordinator for 90octane. I think you'll find this article informative and timely!

Visit this link to read the article.

A dashboard is a visualization tool that consolidates data and displays it in easy to digest graphical views. The purpose of a dashboard can vary, but the presentation generally follows a simple rule – present data in a visually concise and simple manner. Building a dashboard is no small feat and typically is fairly time-consuming. Achieving the promised benefits requires the up-front investment. Here’s what you do:

1. Determine the business objective, goal or problem you hope to achieve or fix with your dashboard. Keep it simple and narrowly focused.
2. Determine the metrics and data that “tell the story” of your dashboard theme. You need measurable, timely, relevant data that defines the success or diagnosis of your theme. The metrics you choose should have a target or boundaries.
3. Now you need to find the right qualifiers; this could be regions, time, people or all three. The higher the level of data that you present, the cleaner your dashboard will look. For example, instead of tracking a metric by days, track it by months.
4. Create a prototype of your dashboard layout. This includes selecting the best visualization for your metrics and assigning an importance to them. Where you place the metrics on the dashboard can make a difference; people tend to look to the top left corner first so this is where you want to place the most important metric.
5. Build your dashboard! Revisit it every few months to be sure it’s still relevant and achieving its goal!

Creating a dashboard isn’t difficult, but the more preparation you put into it, the better your end result will be.

I really enjoy data visualization. I am a visual person and love the patterns and beauty that can be found in many of them. Data visualization refers to a visual interpretation using graphics, animation - just about any multimedia tool - to present and summarize complex, multi-dimensional data. They are frequently called maps (although few are actual geographical maps) and display data and their relationship to each other.

I recently discovered that there are many data visualization tools and examples out there that are very fun to explore. Here are a few of my favorites.

Newsmap

This map takes all the headlines from Google news and maps it out on a heat map. It’s color-coded based on the topic, and sized according to how many related articles there are.

We Feel Fine

These guys track emotions across the internet and map them into a series of what they call movements. Open the applet and browse each one.

Twittervision

This shows a map of the world and tweets as they happen. It’s great for a laugh, as you see these tweets completely out of context.

Visual Thesaurus

This is probably my favorite. Look up a word and it will show you graphically how other words relate to it.

LivePlasma

If you’re a movie or music lover, you’ll spend a lot of time on this site. Pick a movie, director, artist or actor. You’ll get a grouping of related songs, movies or artists that are similar to help you find other movies or musicians that you also might like. Keep clicking around to find more related items.

If there is one universal truth in today’s business world, it is that everyone is looking for ways to reduce costs. Many people fail to examine their data handling processes as a potential cost cutting target – or they examine it and aren’t diving in deep enough.  The reality is that data backup and recovery total cost of ownership is often significantly more than people think. Here are four sure fire tips your company can implement to help significantly reduce your data related costs.

Define critical and important data

Regardless of the age of your business, you likely have far more data lying around then you need. When you perform your data backups, a significant portion of that data doesn’t need to be saved because it has no value to the business, which means you are throwing away time and money. The first step is defining what business value different categories of data provide. In other words, what do you absolutely need, what would be nice to have and what wouldn’t matter at all in the event of a system failure or disaster. Admittedly, this isn’t an easy task for most companies and very few do it well, but if you can get your arms around this concept, there are a number of opportunities for cost savings and operational improvements. Define categories such as critical, important, sensitive, valuable and low value – note that you may want certain data to belong to more than one category...certain client data, for example, may be low value, but it could also be sensitive due to a confidentially obligation. Critical data is the data that your company can’t operate without or data that is subject to certain laws or regulations. If everything crashed tomorrow, what information would you need - and how fast would you need it - to get up and running again. Once you have your data dropped into these buckets, assign separate expiration dates to the different categories and define restore time objectives. A restore time objective is usually measured in hours and it reflects how long you would be willing to wait before getting the data back in the event of a data loss or a disaster.

Automate your data retention policy

Simply categorizing data by itself doesn’t do much to cut costs – you now have to apply the retention policy, which can be an arduous task without some technology to automate the process. By implementing a data retention policy and automating the process, you are basically pruning your data and reducing the amount of data that needs to be backed up and restored. Lower data volumes mean less storage and lower restore time objectives, which both translate into lower overall costs.

Implement data de-duplication technology

The next area to examine is data de-duplication. Using technologies such as block-level backup and data storage, duplicate data can be identified and only be backed up and stored once. If you’re backing up 10 Windows servers, do you really need 10 copies of the operating system? Instead of backing up duplicate data, this approach identifies redundant information and simply places a marker that points to the original data wherever duplicate information appears. This means that no single piece of information gets copied more than once. Your storage costs are reduced, your restore time objectives are easier to hit and your company saves money. If your current data backup solution doesn’t offer data de-duplication, look for a company that does.

Centralize administration of remote locations

A shocking portion of the costs for some companies comes from administration costs at remote locations. If you’re an organization with IT operations in multiple places, chances are you had two choices when determining how to backup data and systems in each place – you either put in massive amounts of communications bandwidth or you put a tape backup system at each location. Problem is, neither of those solutions make sense considering technologies available today. The cost of implementing, administering, upgrading and monitoring multiple systems can get out of control quickly. I know of one company that had 23 small locations within about a 150 mile radius – they had a full time person that was responsible for rotating tapes, all they did was drive location to location every day – true story. A solid backup solution should allow for multi-site management through a single central location...including the process of getting the data offsite.

There are some areas in which a company can simply make cuts blindly and other areas in which cuts need to be done with surgical precision. Reducing data backup costs is important, but if you aren’t careful, you may end up doing more harm than good.

Many of you know that Jelecos feels strongly about giving back to the community.   We recently conducted an informal survey and found that about 40% of us regularly volunteer or are involved in local fund-raising organizations.  All of us willingly donate our time or money to better our community and all Omahans.

I am active in the Susan G. Komen foundation.  Since October is Breast Cancer awareness month, I recruited my co-workers to raise funds for my cause.  As the team captain, I organized jeans days, a raffle and a contest or two along the way.  We all got involved and our team wore pink for our final day.

We set our fund raising goal pretty high, and yet we managed to exceed our goal by 113%!!  It's great to share your workplace with such fun, like-minded people.

The entire technology industry evolves at an incredible pace. What was once state of the art quickly becomes yesterday’s news at an almost shocking rate. If your business backs up all of their data to an off-site location or has engaged in any type of strategic planning around data storage, you may have heard of data de-duplication. This process, which changes the way that data is stored has been getting a lot of attention lately and it is fast becoming the industry norm. Before you jump on the data de-duplication bandwagon, however, it is important that you understand how the process works and how it impacts all data management processes, especially backup and recovery.

Simply put, data de-duplication decreases the total amount of data by examining the building blocks that make up individual files and comparing them to an index of previously stored data – if the data is recognized, then a marker or pointer is inserted to the original block of data rather the actual data. The result can be a significant decrease in total data storage and a cascade of ancillary benefits such as decreased backup and recovery windows and better overall storage utilization. Let’s look at some benefits you can take from data de-duplication.

Cost
Because you are now able to store all of your data within significantly less space than before, you flat-out need less space – less hardware is a good thing, right?

Efficiency
Because you are moving less data back and forth from backups to restores and back again, the process is significantly more efficient. You aren’t wasting time backing up the same data over and over again, so your servers spend less time being down and inaccessible and you can get more work done, either remotely or in your office. As they say, time truly is money and with more efficient backup systems in place, your business can do more business.

Speed
Less data means less time to complete familiar tasks, which means that the total backup and restore times are significantly reduced. And productivity is significantly increased.

Bandwidth
Less data means less bandwidth to complete the same process in the same amount of time. Less pressure on the network means you can meaningfully plan network capacity requirements and right-size the infrastructure. Before, you were required to managed to the highest denominator – often backup and restore processes.

Time
While all of these benefits are clearly interrelated, time is often the driving reason to consider de-duplication. Assuming you keep the same infrastructure, same bandwidth and same number of tasks, benefits manifest themselves in decreased time for data processing. More aggressive restore time objectives, smaller backup windows – more time to do more productive things.

It is no secret that the world of technology changes at lightning speed. Just as you seem to master one operating system, one form of media or one backup and recovery technique, a new one comes along that is supposed to be better, faster, and cheaper. But new technology means new learning curves, new processes and new challenges. For many businesses out there, tape backups have been a way of life. However, significant advancements in the world of data storage, backup and recovery have rendered tape backups an endangered species. Let’s look at just a few of the ways in which tape backups are on the way out.

Speed

While there are many variables that factor into the speed of a backup and recovery operation, the most notorious are those tape drives. While tape drives were once state of the art and allowed for an incredible amount of data to be stored, those days are long over. Sure, advancements have been and continue to be made in the areas of tape backup – but we’re really just postponing the inevitable. Just as no one uses floppy disks any longer, tape drives should be considered the snails of the computer world. If you are attempting to back up your entire system every night, you likely have a dedicated backup window that is much of the night. Thankfully, you don’t have to any more. With off-site backups that use secure internet connections and block-level delta processing, you can condense backup windows significantly. When you switch from tape backups, provided you select the appropriate disk-based technology, you gain hours in productivity from improving both backup and restore times.

Capacity

It truly is amazing how much larger our data storage requirements are today than they were just five years ago. Larger data storage requirements mean larger backup and recovery capacities. Tapes were once thought to be an incredibly accommodating form of backup, but by today’s advanced standards, they simply don’t cut it. Many businesses that rely on tape backups often have offsite storage facilities – or they should. Mishandle one and your entire organization can come crashing down. By using a more advanced form of data backup and recovery, space simply becomes a planning exercise to ensure you have enough disk space. How many times in the last 10 years have you had to upgrade to a new tape format for capacity reasons? And guess what...you now have to either migrate the old data to the new tape format or keep the old drives around – that sounds like fun. Not to mention the media costs alone...if you’re using a best-practice-based tape rotation schedule, those just keep adding up. It can be a difficult transition for some companies to move from an older way of backing up data, but tapes are simply not a good long-term strategy.

Recovery

Isn’t the entire purpose of data backup to ensure you are able to restore? 99% of all restores are non-disaster related. Meaning, something much more basic happened – user error being the leading cause, hardware failure coming in at a distant 2nd. With most tape systems, you have to get your hands on the appropriate tape(s), drop them into the drives and you might even have to let the system read the index before you can even begin the restore process. With new, more advanced remote backup solutions this same process is kicked off with about 3 clicks, and individual files, folders and even complete systems can be restored in a fraction of the time. Think about that...how long do your users have to wait for a single file restore if the tape is already offsite? If you add up the time they waste waiting, the time it takes IT to deal with the restore request and the time it takes to actually do the restore, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand the productivity issues associated with tape recovery. You owe it to yourself and to your company to provide the best data backup and restore capabilities possible – if you haven’t considered an offsite backup solution, you’re not delivering.

Leon Thomas is the CEO of Jelecos, a proven provider of best-in-class data backup and recovery solutions. For more information about how to make the switch from tape drives to better backup solutions, visit Jelecos Data Vault.

Last Monday, October 26, 2009, I came home early not feeling well.  This Monday, November 02, 2009, I do not feel much better and have had:

• Chills
• Night sweats
• Aches beyond aches
• Headaches
• Nausea
• Diarrhea
• Light-headedness
• Fatigue
• Sleep going on for hours a day
• And an abnormal appetite

The debate is “swine flu”. Do I have it? Did I have it? Was I contagious? If so, for how long? Where did I get it? Will my co-workers get it? Will my family get it?

Hold it. I do not have the swine flu. I have a bad cold.

Colds never act like the symptoms I had. I do have the swine flu.

No I don’t.

Yes I do.

It seems that everyone wants to know. I may find out this afternoon. After 8 days of the above, I am going to the doctor. And no I will not pay a co-pay. He’s a friend who does ENT work. He wants to listen to my lungs. He has always liked the sound of my lungs I guess.

Why didn’t I go to the doctor a week ago and pay to find out? Because if I do or don’t, did or didn’t, the results and treatment remains the same - lots of rest and water. A visit to the doctor would have cost hundreds by the time the insurance industry was done doing their magic. Uncle Sam owes me for pain and suffering.

One interesting aspect of data warehouse design is the use of surrogate keys versus natural keys. Natural keys are those unique identifiers that are used in operational systems. For example, your business probably has a core table that stores data about your customers. Each customer gets a unique identifier that identifies that customer in that system. For the most part, natural keys are only used once and are unique across at least one operational system. Surrogate keys, on the other hand, are a unique identifier in your table or database. A natural key may not be unique in the data warehouse environment and require the use of surrogate keys. These surrogate keys are then used as the unique identifier throughout your data warehouse.

In my experience, natural keys can be anything from numbers, to text, to a combination of numbers and text. I have also seen different natural keys coming from different operational systems that refer to the same entity (for example Customer A in one system may have the identifier of 123 but can have the identifier of 987 in another). When you build a data warehouse the natural key is not sufficient for long-term storage of data nor for company-wide reporting purposes. At some point, these keys will have to be reused or on the flip side, a customer may have to get a new natural key. Plus, you‘ll want to track some historical data on customers, and this is most easily accomplished with the use of surrogate keys (aka slowly changing dimensions).

The question then becomes what type of surrogate key should be used. If you are using SQL Server, you have essentially three choices: GUID unique identifier, 4-byte Integer identity and 8-byte integer identity.

A GUID is globally unique. Globally, means exactly that: you won’t come across two GUIDs that are the same. This is due to the complex algorithm used to generate these IDs; typically, it includes the unique system identifier where the application is installed. This sounds great and is very useful if you are sharing or moving data across applications and data bases. However, this is a 16-byte data type which takes quite a bit of space both in storage, indexes and computing power. It’s not a key you’d want to use in an OLTP application and could be too cumbersome even for a data warehouse, but to ensure ultimate uniqueness and for higher security, it’s a good choice.

Integer identities can be either 4-byte or 8-byte. These identities start at any integer within their range, positive or negative and are assigned in sequential order at an interval you choose. The benefit of integer identities is that they are small and easily indexed. They will not be unique even across a database, but if all you’re looking for is a unique row identifier, this is your choice. The difference between the two is the range, starting at -2,147,483,648 for 4-byte and -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 for 8-byte. Typically, integers start at 0 and increment by 1, but you get double the total number of unique ids if you begin at the minimum with an interval of 1. Choosing between a 4-byte and 8-byte depends on how you’ll be using the IDs and how many unique rows you expect to acquire.

I hope this explanation will help you next time you’re deciding which surrogate key to use.

If you thought the swine flu was your biggest concern this season, you may need to re-examine your relationship with data.

Symptoms of information overload include:

• Your inbox is frequently over the size limit due to daily reports being emailed to you
• You spend more than 5 hours per week deciphering the spreadsheets that are filling your inbox
• You are constantly distracted working with the data to the point of missing date night with your spouse
• You experience anxiety if you don’t receive your 10 gigabyte report

Sound familiar? You may be suffering from this pandemic.

According to the Xerox Information Overload site 53% of people believe that less than half of the information they receive is valuable and 42% of people accidentally use the wrong information at least once per week.

The cure lies in your business intelligence tool, you just need to put it to work! Your first step is to sift through those data sets once and determine what decisions you are making from the data. If the answer is “none” then stop getting the report - you should have your BI tool do the analysis for you so you only receive the data you need. For example, if you are a sales manager your time is best spent selling. Chances are, your BI tool is designed to analyze data; it should be delivering decisions to you in easy to digest bits, thereby freeing up your time and removing the stress of doing the analysis yourself. This is why the dashboard has become so popular in recent years. A dashboard presents you with massive amounts of data in 5 or 6 little visualizations that help you decide within minutes your course of action.

The cure for your information overload is to let your BI tool analyze your data and transform that data into actionable intelligence that will improve your planning and decision-making. This is your vaccine that will give you a sustainable competitive advantage.

In general, predictive analytics is an area of statistical analysis that deals with extracting information from data and using it to predict future trends and behavior patterns. For example, your credit score is determined through predictive analytics; it uses variables based on how you and others in your same situation behaved through time and predicts how you will behave in the future.

There are a plethora of different techniques used in predictive analytics, and which one you should use is determined by the data you have and what you are trying to predict. Probably the most common technique is regression modeling. Regression models generally take historical variables and calculate the relationship between them. To get predictability, you apply the relationship from the historical variables to the current variable and voila! Predictability.

Predictive analytics in the framework of a business intelligence application is typically used in customer relationship management. Amazon is a great example of this. As you browse a product, they give you information on the likelihood that you will purchase that product based on past customer behavior. They also provide you recommendations based on what others have purchased along with the product you are shopping for (aka market basket analysis). The key is identifying how customers have behaved in the past and applying that to the current situation to predict future behavior.

Predictive analytics give you a competitive edge that will increase sales, improve customer satisfaction and enable more targeted marketing campaigns, just to name a few benefits.

Web users are everywhere. They come from a wide variety of places, speak thousands of languages, and come from every step on the socio-economic ladder. They are you. They are me. And together, WE make the Web go. We each bring to the table a unique vision of the Web and what is “usable” to us. And that is the best part: No two Web users are alike. Each user experiences the Web in their own way. While one user may look at a site’s home page and see boring text columns and a lack of creative gravitas, another will see a well thought out composition, beautiful in its simplicity. Such dichotomy is a good thing and when we tap into these users and ask for their honest opinions, we can find a whole host of opportunities on how we can better communicate with them through our Web sites.

Web users are honest. Generally, if you ask Web users to give their opinion on how a Web page looks, they’ll be straight, and sometimes brutally honest. Designers can focus too much on the “bells and whistles” of a design. Developers can code too much into a simple application. The hard part is that it isn’t easy to see these flaws from the inside. That’s where usability testing can come into play. (And don’t worry; it doesn’t have to break your budget to do it.) Find a friend, a family member, or just a person sitting next to you at Starbucks. Ask them to take a look at your site and then just let them talk. You’ll find out more in 15 minutes of usability testing than you would’ve imagined:

“I wish this button looked more “clickable”.
“This navigation is confusing. How do I get to the store?”
“I like the design, but why do I have to fill out this form to see more content?”

This kind of feedback is amazingly helpful when you’re looking to improve your site.

I always encourage having a “face-to-face” discussion with the participant while they’re testing as opposed to using an online service. There are a lot of sites out there that offer online usability testing (Usabilla, Open Hallway, etc…). While these sites are able to gather valuable data that you can use, they are disconnected from real interaction. You can’t ask probing questions. You can’t see the participants’ body language or expressions. You can’t physically see the mouse clicks and the time spent on each page. That’s the kind of information that will truly help you.

To conclude, no matter how long you’ve been in the business, Web design and development isn’t easy. Years of studying and real world experience can’t ensure perfect Web usability (if there is such a thing). Taking some time to do even some light usability testing, and it will go a long way to ensuring the profitability of your site and the success of your business.

I came across an interesting article at Fast Company.  Dan Heath, the author, advises how to approach your boss when you’re certain your company’s Web site needs replacing!

In my opinion, the ultimate purpose in having a Web site is so your customers can find you.  I don’t know very many people who still go to the yellow pages to find out about a business when a Google search will generally elicit much more information.   This is the key.   The message your Web site is sending can make or break that customer relationship.   There have been times that I have gone to the internet to find a specific business, not found it, and ended up going somewhere else.  So, having a Web site is the first step.  If you think yours isn’t up to the task, then you should put your site through a few usability tests to make sure your customers are finding you and want to do business with you.

An easy usability test is as simple as finding a handful of people that your business targets, and having them play around on your site for a while before answering a few questions.   These are the specific questions that Dan Heath covers in his article:

• What does [our company] do?
• Who do we serve?
• What makes us different from [the giant in your space]?
• Talk me through what you picture us doing.

Beyond that, it’s up to you to convince your boss!

 

I’d like to invite you to stop and see us at this year’s Buy the Big O! Show.  2009 has been another exciting year for the Jelecos family and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone!

We are constantly working to build and enhance our services portfolio and deliver more value to you, our customer.  In times like these, it becomes more important than ever to sharpen the focus on ROI – we get it, and work hard to deliver.   To that end, Jelecos continues to evolve and improve based on your feedback.   Have an idea of how we can deliver more value?  Stop by and visit us at the Buy the Big O! Show or give us a call.

At Jelecos, we are committed to helping our customers extract the maximum amount of value from their technology investments.  The technology is the easy part.  Translating the technology into value takes experience, the right people and a thorough understanding of your business – it takes a partnership.

Most of all, thank you for your continued business.  We value our relationship and look forward to serving you well into the future.  Your success ensures ours.

Please download your complimentary ticket here!  Note, this will open a PDF document in a new window.

The landscape of ecommerce has changed dramatically in the past few years. The explosion of social media has led to a change in expectations of ecommerce sites by those who visit them. Since all of this has come about in such a short time, it's hard for many ecommerce site owners to sort through all the changes and figure out what they should be doing to improve their ecommerce site. I've compiled a list of five additions to your site that you can implement to bring your ecommerce site into the new world that includes social media.

1. People like to see the product in action or being used. Add a short video or flash demonstration of your products or services.
2. Remove any annoying banners that flash or play sounds. If you must have sound, make sure you include the option to mute it.
3. People love giving their opinion, adding a simple section for your customers to add a review or comment makes them feel valued.
4. Think about creating a community on your Web site.  Create a rewards program for customers who join and include a newsletter that contains prizes and rewards.
5. Finally, be sure you have a "fan page" on Facebook; it is now the third most visited site in the U.S. Also, be sure to provide a way for your customers to become your fan or follow you on twitter directly from your ecommerce site.

Jelecos is sponsoring the Heartland Developers Conference (HDC) Opening Party at The Mattress Factory.

 

The HDC is a regional conference held every October in Omaha, NE and attracts software designers, developers, engineers, analysts, architects and team leaders from all over the mid-west region and the nation. The goal of the HDC is for IT professionals to network with each other and to gain new skills and knowledge.

The first HDC was in 2003; this year marks the 6th annual event! It has earned the distinction of being one of the top independent developers conferences in the country. Event organizers say it is more than just a technology conference: “It’s a mechanism for learning, sharing, and connecting the creators that are defining and building the digital world. “ There will be 68 conference sessions, 4 keynote speakers and two full days of learning, sharing and connecting.

Jelecos is proud to sponsor the Opening Party and we hope to see you there!

I am a BI Engineer and therefore naturally love numbers, data and facts (trivia to be more precise). These days I find myself more and more in discussions about Twitter and my non-believer friends still think it's a waste of time. This post won't address that directly; instead, I'll share some interesting facts that I've come across. Enjoy!

1. Most Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009. In a year-over-year comparison, the number of people using Twitter in March 2009 alone jumped a dramatic 3,000% (compared to the same month last year).
2. How many tweets should you have in a day? The total number varies, but 85.3% of Twitter users tweet less than once every day.
3. From the curiosity file, 21% of users have never tweeted.
4. If you're wondering about how you measure up against fellow tweets and their followers: 93.6% have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.
5. The average Twitter user has 126 followers.
6. Where are all these tweets coming from? At one point, 75% of all tweets came from just 5% of Twitter users.
7. You're getting a lot of traffic to your web site from Twitter: 1 out of every 350 visits comes from Twitter.
8. You may not see them on your Google Analytics since only 20% of tweets come through the Twitter website.
9. The other 80% come from third-party programs used on smart phones and computers.
10. Tuesday is the most popular day for tweets; the most popular time on Tuesday is between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Bonus trivia: During President Obama's inauguration in January, Twitter recorded more than 300 tweets per second!

I was pondering recently all the different kinds of BI reports that exist. I've worked with several businesses at various levels of business intelligence and have identified my own pattern of report progression. These aren't necessarily a maturity model, nor are they mutually exclusive. Read my report generations and let me know what you think!

Generation One
These reports are collected and delivered by an IT department from data stored in a transactional system. They are typically run weeks after the event. For example, a department store runs a promotion. The promotion ends and relevant data is transferred to IT from the point of sale system. Someone in IT gets a massive data set and does some “black box” manipulation of the data. Eventually, multiple datasets are delivered as “reports” and after a bit more manipulation, the success of the promotion is determined.

Generation Two
We’re still getting reports directly from the transactional system, but now, the reports are closer to real-time. Snapshots of the previous day or extreme detail of transactions are available. There’s no analysis going on, simply reporting. These are the types of reports we all get when we log into an online store and take a peek at our order history.

Generation Three
There’s a big leap between Gen 2 and Gen 3. At Generation 3 we now have moved away from the transactional system and are getting our data from a data mart or data warehouse. These reports are essentially the same Gen 1 and Gen 2 reports, only now you consistently get them “on-demand” and can perform some simple analysis on the data sets you receive. The reports are very close to real-time, typically within a day or a week at most.

Generation Four
Here’s where the fun begins! Reports are coming from a data warehouse, only now you have a BI tool that is providing you analysis on the data. No longer are you getting long, cumbersome data sets, now you receive concise bits of data that provide you with actionable information. This is where your Scorecard exists as well as grid reports with red, yellow and green “traffic” symbols. You might also be getting operational data in real-time. This is when you are monitoring transactions and receiving alerts to your Blackberry. Gen 4 reports provide pretty sophisticated analytics that do all the thinking for you, and send you only the information you need.

Generation Five
Some may consider this to be the same as Gen 4, but I consider visual dashboards and other data visualization techniques as Gen 5. At this level, you are receiving volumes of complex data analysis in very easy to digest visualizations. When you look at a visual dashboard, the action you need to take and reason why are immediately apparent.

So, those are my Five Generations of Business Intelligence reporting. Share with me your thoughts on the topic!

Another way BI helps business is that it can give you a competitive advantage. Below are just the top 5 ways you can become what your competitors without BI can only wish for!

1. Decrease your reaction time with tactical alerts.
2. Discover external variables that can be effectively taken advantage of before your competitors do.
3. Monitor the effectiveness of promotional and marketing campaigns, and change direction if necessary.
4. Obtain immediate analysis on massive data sets; what used to take weeks or months now takes minutes or hours.
5. Monitor your competitive advantages and gain ground in those areas where you may lag.

Web Analytics can provide you with information about the way visitors interact with your site. Analytics provide you with the tools you need to improve site usability and increase traffic to your site. You can identify where visitors leave your site and which pages and links they click on most frequently. Analytics will also tell you which sites referred visitors to you and which keywords were used in a search engine to find you. You can analyze your visitors to see how many are new and how many have visited your site before, or by geography which can help when planning future business.

There are a lot of analytic tools for you to choose from. Google Analytics is available at no cost and others, like Smarter Stats, require a license. These tools can be placed into two major categories based on how they collect their data. Smarter Stats, an application that many of our customers use, works by analyzing server log files. Google Analytics, on the other hand, works by using JavaScript callbacks from the users' browsers. Both approaches have pros and cons. Their statistics will always differ due to the fundamental differences in how they collect data.

Log analysis (Smarter Stats)
Smarter Stats gets its data from server logs. Because of this, there is less Web site overhead and very little set up time. A plethora of information is stored in the logs which means you can use that data for analysis and you can start reporting at any time. All the resources on your site are accounted for, including images and RSS feeds. Plus, you can report on server-side information such as specific error codes. However, visitor counts will not be entirely accurate. Using IP addresses could both over count and under count depending on how the visitor network is managing IP addresses. Frequently bots and spiders are counted as visitors, and cached pages can be missed in the counts as the visit doesn’t hit the server.

JavaScript callbacks (Google Analytics)
Google Analytics is a free service provided by Google. To set it up, you have to copy a bit of code into your site; this is very straightforward and hardly takes any time. Once the code is in place, Google Analytics begins collecting data and storing it. It takes about 24 hours for you to be able to see any data collected from your site. Because it collects data from each page, this could cause your site to load more slowly, though so far, I haven’t seen any impact from adding Google Analytics to a site. The other drawback is that data updates aren’t instantaneous: it’s updated daily. It also doesn’t track any server-side information as its specialty is tracking browser data.

Google Analytics has pre-built in-depth reports and you have the ability to create custom reports. You can also add filters to your data, for example, excluding visitors coming from within your own company. Because of the method of collecting data, you get a more realistic and accurate count of visitors, plus you get information about the users’ browsers. You’re able to see where your visitors navigate on your site and at which point they leave.

Remote data backups can be an essential component of a disaster recovery plan for many companies, yet there are common challenges that often pop up after a solution has been selected. With the right information when you select your remote data backup provider, the risk of these road blocks popping up can be greatly reduced. Often, simply knowing these potential pitfalls ahead of time allows you to alter your plan to minimize potential impact. Here are five usual suspects that you should anticipate when implementing remote back up solutions.

Different Databases

Many business environments utilize multiple databases in the course of day-to-day business. These range from DB2 to Oracle to SQL Server and everything in between, never mind the issue of different versions – oh, and don’t forget the proprietary databases out there. Often times remote backup services only support a small spectrum of the available databases being used in the real world, requiring you to implement workarounds or other technologies to successfully backup.

Before you implement, be sure to understand not only the technology compatibilities, but the version limitations as well.

The Dreaded Initial Backup

So let’s look at an example. You have 800GB of data you’re trying to protect. Your office has a 1.5 Mbps connection (around a T1 speed). How long is that initial backup going to take? Well, if we assume the data processing and encryption process isn’t the bottleneck (you are encrypting, aren’t you?) and the sun and the stars are aligned so you actually get the promised speed, then that backup would take roughly 1,213.63 hours…50.5 days! Of course, we’re also assuming you don’t actually need that internet connection and that none of your data has changed since the backup started.  I know, completely realistic, eh? So how in the world can this work?

There are a couple of things we can look at to make this more tolerable. First of all, you want to select a solution that uses every method imaginable to reduce the amount of data that needs sent. Compression and deduplication (discussed later) are both essential components of any good data backup solution. Second, your provider should allow you to ‘seed’ the system with the initial backup data. Seeding is the process of capturing an initial backup of your system to a local hard drive or drives, usually a USB drive of NAS device, and shipping it to the remote data storage facility. From there, the provider imports the data into the system. Next, the software controlling the backups at your site examines your local data and sends only the changes that have occurred since the initial data capture. The end result could be as little as a few GB of data that need transferred.

Time to Take It Back

As with any remote backup protocol, your company will have to plan a procedure for getting the data back at some future time – either for testing purposes or a real data loss event. If you were paying attention when you read the last section and didn’t nod off, I’ll bet it won’t be hard to understand why this poses a problem – especially if your company has backed up massive amounts of data with the offsite backup provider.

Don’t despair. There are actually technologies out there that address this problem. Most providers will allow you the option of the performing the seeding procedure we discussed earlier, only in reverse. You request the restore and the provider should be able to dump the data to a local device, drop it in a shipping case, and send it your way. Need massive amounts of data faster than the overnight express can deliver? There are also ways to get that done. One method is called local storage or local replication. In this scenario, during the process of backing up the data a local copy of the most recent backup is stored at your site. This functionality allows you to do an immediate (ok, ok…line speed) restore of the latest version of your data. No waiting for the delivery truck to show up or the download to complete. If quick recovery of significant data volumes is a requirement for your business, make sure you have the option to store data locally.

Seeing Double

Duplication is one of the more common problems in both on- and off-site data backups. I rant about the absurdity of this in another article, so I’ll attempt to stay on topic here. The point is, all that excess data consumes space and resources that could be used for more critical information. Duplicate data can also get in the way of certain business processes, especially those related to security, validation and perhaps the most important - restores. At a minimum, it’s going to take longer and cost you more.

Not all providers provide deduplication technology and, of those that do, results vary widely. Make sure you understand if your provider does deduplication, when in the process it’s done and how well it works to avoid having expectations that can’t be met regarding restore time or data validation.

Protecting Policies

Every company that relies on technologies and electronic data should have clear-cut goals like recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO and RTO, respectively). These goals define the allowable time for data to be inaccessible and how long it should take for that data and everything relying on it to get back online.

Several measures can be employed by both your company and your offsite data backup provider to ensure those goals are met. In general, the more effective the data volume reduction capabilities of your provider, the easier it will be do meet your objectives on an on-going basis. In another article, we’ll discuss how important data retention policies can be in helping you get where you’re going while controlling costs and data growth. Suffice it to say, these policies can save companies a considerable amount of money and pain relative to offsite data restoration.

Although consumer backups are common technologies, enterprise-level remote data backup is an entirely different animal. This doesn’t mean enterprises don’t or can’t benefit from remote data backup services – quite the contrary, it simply means the selection and evaluation process needs to take additional things into consideration. Defining your goals ahead of time and being aware of the potential pitfalls is the best way to a successful implementation of remote data protection services.

In the highly competitive world of Web design, development and data storage, the type of company you are can often times be as important as what your company can offer and at what price. Web businesses, large and small, are competing over the same pool of potential clients, offering expertise and service at different prices, and selling their company as the best possible solution.

So how do you differentiate yourself from the pack? How can you stand out? What can make the difference between a satisfied customer and a dissatisfied one? Simply put: Communication, Communication, Communication.

Communication is what the World Wide Web is all about. There are news sites communicating stories; blogs communicating opinions; businesses communicating their products and services. Everyone and everything is trying to tell/sell us a story. We, as Web companies, are in the business of helping our clients communicate to their customers amidst all this chaos, and to do it with an expertise that provides a positive return on investment for everyone involved. But before we work out site maps, design schemes and run through the gambit of data analytics and business intelligence, we must first develop a well-founded relationship with our clients by communicating our mutual goals and expectations. Without this, a business partnership can fall apart overnight, leaving both sides scrambling to salvage their needs independent of one another.

Sitting down with a new client to talk about an upcoming project can be a very exciting experience. As a Web developer, my creative juices are flowing; my attention is at an all time high; I’m eager to show the client that I can do any job they put before our company.

But hold on there. Slow down a minute. Stop. Think.

There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to fulfill and satisfy your client’s requests, but realize that there has to be a plan in place before you move forward, a plan that begins with setting and communicating expectations with your client. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down in a meeting with a client, talked about their needs, and walked away with the same understanding of what is expected as before I walked in the door. Often times, clients aren’t quite sure of what they need until they start talking through it. Things change. Functionality that wasn’t considered before is needed. The scope of the entire project changes.

My fault in past meetings has been to pull the “bobble-head” maneuver. Any new requests or expanded functionality is met with my head bobbing up and down as if it were a buoy rising and falling in the ocean. I want to say “Absolutely, we can handle that. No problem!” What I have sometimes failed to see is how that new request can change things on our side. Budgets have sometimes already been formed, hours allocated, resources standing by. These new requests have changed the expectations of what the client needs and that, in turn, can stretch our business’s ability to assure a mutual profitability on both ends of the relationship.

The worst thing to do when a situation like this presents itself is to not communicate this concern with the client. We must understand that these are two businesses meeting together and forming a partnership with one another. Creating a positive and profitable experience for your client should go hand in hand with creating a positive and profitable experience for your company too. If a client requests more work than what was expected, don’t be afraid to renegotiate and reform the terms of the partnership. It is reassurance for both parties that everyone is starting on the same page and will move forward together.

And that is just the start of it. Communication allows the client to really feel like they’re part of the process. Deadlines are met. Materials delivered. When there is the inevitable “hiccup” during a project, the relationship that has already been established will allow for flexibility and understanding, rather than flared tempers and hard feelings. And once the project is completed, you’ll have a very satisfied business partner, who has been an important part of the process, and has felt that their needs were heard, met and exceeded. These are the types of clients we all want and are definitely the clients that help expand our business to new areas and higher levels.

What to take away
Communication is the basis for the success of your company. Having this skill will not only help your relationship with your client grow, but will promote a feeling of trust with the client, knowing that your company has its best interest at heart.

If you are trying to justify the investment of implementing business intelligence, you can find returns in the form of customer satisfaction. Using predictive analytics and tracking data will help you attain the following and more!

1. Offer personalized products, services and discounts.
2. Meet and exceed your customer expectations by implementing policies based on your analytics.
3. Develop new, innovative products and service offerings based on customer insight.
4. Engage in more effective and efficient publicity targeting your market group.
5. Be alerted to opportunities that you can share with the right customers at the right time.
6. Predict customer behavior and take advantage of positive trends.>
7. Prevent a crisis by identifying negative trends.
8. Diagnose where improvements can be made through internal monitoring of employee-customer relations and customer satisfaction.

An OLTP and OLAP designed database serve two different functions and therefore, logically, need to be built with different design objectives.

An OLTP database is designed for real-time business operations. These databases are used to take in data instantaneously, update data throughout the day and purge data generally on a daily or weekly basis. These databases are designed for writing data. If they are used for reporting, they generally provide a snapshot of the business process it supports.

An OLAP database is designed for storing and reporting on data. These databases assimilate the data from the OLTP databases Typically the data is transformed by applying business rules and historical data is maintained. Data does not typically get updated once it’s been loaded. These databases are designed for efficient analytics. Their primary purpose is to support the Business Intelligence system.

There are numerous theories for designing both types of databases but there are some best practices that are generally followed for OLAP design. While an OLTP system is highly normalized and contains a plethora of tables, a data warehouse will generally have fewer tables and will be less normalized. The star and snowflake schemas are two types of design schemas for OLAP database design. A typical data warehouse will fall somewhere between the two; it won’t be fully normalized yet also not fully de-normalized. Transactional systems will generally show a very low granular view of data, for example at the transaction level. The OLAP system is optimized to provide aggregated data over a period of time, like a month or a quarter. More sophisticated BI systems will deliver predictive information after applying calculations to the summary data. Where data in the OLTP system uses natural keys and mixes dimensional and factual data in the same table, an OLAP system willcontain separate tables for dimensions and facts and will employ surrogate primary keys.

You can see that these two systems are quite different. It’s generally considered good practice to design and build a data warehouse specifically to support your Business Intelligence initiatives. The option of going directly to your OLTP systems for BI will likely cause your reports to be frustratingly slow to return results while they simultaneously slow down the business process they support.

Below is a table that compares the differences side by side.

OLTP System Online Transaction Processing (Operational System)		OLAP System Online Analytical Processing (Data Warehouse)
Transactional data, used primarily for writing and updating.	vs.	Consolidation data, used primarily for extracting information.
The purpose is to manage real-time business operations.	vs.	The purpose is to analyze business measures and for decision support.
Data is constantly being created and updated .	vs.	Data is loaded during pre-defined intervals such as daily and isn’t typically updated.
Space Requirements can be relatively small and historical data is typically archived.	vs.	Space Requirements are large due to the existence of aggregation structures and historical data.
Highly normalized with many tables.	vs.	Typically de-normalized with fewer tables; use of star and/or snowflake schemas.
Current data or limited history.	vs.	Full historical data plus iterative data when appropriate.
Supports thousands of concurrent users.	vs.	Supports few concurrent users.
Primary keys are natural keys.	vs.	Primary keys are surrogate keys.

1. Never duplicate content on different pages of your Web site.

 

Duplicated content can be a real SEO killer. Many search engine crawling programs will simply stop indexing pages because they’re finding too many copies of the same content in different locations/URLs. Most engines won’t index the pages at all in this case. The reason behind this is two-fold: one, search engines don’t like displaying the same pages in their results and, two, indexing pages that are very similar eats up valuable resources and time that is better spent elsewhere. Unique content is incredibly important if you want to have your site start popping up at the top of search results.

2. Create unique titles for all of your pages.

 

Having looked at thousands of sites, you might not realize how big of a problem this is. Many sites out there simply title their pages by their business name. Big mistake. Page titles have a significant impact on website searchability and many sites hurt themselves by not giving unique titles to each page. The title can be simple, just the name of the current page, or more complex, a sentence describing what’s on the page. The current SEO guidelines supported by Google put the max number of characters in the title at 70. Sites can go over this number if they choose, but much more than 70 and the search crawler programs will give up and move on.

3. Use Header tags correctly.

 

In a previous blog post, I talked about using header tags instead of creating a new CSS style for them instead. This is not only a smart idea for writing good markup, but also important for SEO. As search engines crawl a site, content wrapped in header tags are given more importance since they show up as “keywords” in their search results. This makes header tags, especially the H1 tag, very important. A site that uses its header tags wisely can significantly improve its searchability. Key phrases (often searched terms) and action words are all good information to include in these tags.

4. Build a solid tree-structure and don’t leave any dead-ends.

 

Whenever possible, a good rule to follow for the structure of a site is that two clicks should get you to any page. Crawlers and bots won’t dive much more than two layers deep into any site: it just isn’t practical. So the more pages that are linked together the better. The worse thing to have happen is to have a page that requires the user to use the browser back button. These dead-ends not only hurt user experience but also SEO. Intra-site links are important because it helps the crawlers move through and index pages quicker.

5. Avoid “Negative” SEO factors

 

There are many ways that sites can hurt their SEO. Presenting text in only graphical format without any content on the page is has a negative effect. Also there is the “Over Optimization Penalty (OOP)” that can occur when sites try to stuff too many keywords into their headers or overuse the H1 tag on a page. There are more obvious ones as well, like using SEO “poison words”. These words range from terms referring to death or drugs to profanity. If you’re interested in seeing a complete list, just search for “Google poison words” and you can read it in full.

Someone, I don’t recall whom, once taught me a little technique for ensuring I was effectively caring for my family and the companies I work for and happen to own a bit of. The companies are, of course, Jelecos and Data Media Solutions.

The premise is that if I stepped off the curb and into the path of a bus, rendering me deceased, would things go on without me successfully? We all know that we are replaceable. Yet this question goes to something deeper: have we appropriately grown our businesses with high quality, intelligent, caring, loving, committed, honest, team oriented, fun, ambitious, and effective leaders?

The answer is a resounding YES!

It is interesting being in the technology industry but not really understanding the ones and zeros of the field itself. It is a highly complex business in a highly demanding arena. It is an industry of transparency, meaning when you disappoint your clients, both internal and external, there is no attempt to deny or shirk the responsibility.

Our associates were recently put to an arduous test. We had a technological glitch - (trust me, Jelecos will have a more detailed forensic analysis of what happened and procedures for ensuring it never happen again) - we were down. Yet can anyone really guarantee 5 nines of redundancy? We try. We just got nailed. We won’t hide behind excuses.

Throughout the entire “episode” this co-founder, part owner, chairman, and sales guy has been “up north” with my wife on a planned retreat with friends. I was regularly updated and was always confident that we’d prevail. And we have.  And without me in the middle messing things up.

I am proud to say that where Jeff Wilke is concerned Jelecos is “Bus Proof”. We have the best team in the industry. And I am as proud of each and every one of you as I am my own children.

Thank you to all.
Gratefully,
Jeff

PS. I hope being bus proof does not mean they put me out to pasture too soon. I love hanging out with such energetic folk.

You've heard the sales pitches for offsite data backup before, but are there really concrete reasons for you to pay good money for someone else to handle your organization's data? Certainly every organization’s backup and data protection needs are different, but here are three that the CTO should know about.

1. Data storage is difficult

Storing last month's accounting data might not be a problem, but cost effectively storing all user data for dozens of departments or locations for a five to seven year period can present numerous challenges. Most companies are forced handle significant amounts of data and deal with year over year data storage growth requirements of 25% or more. Keeping all that data on your company's own infrastructure can become resource intensive. Storage media, engineering time, adequate hardware – all of those cost money, and we haven’t even discussed lost productivity issues when a restore request takes 12 to 24 hours to fulfill.

Remote data backup, meanwhile, is becoming a contender when compared to legacy solutions. In many cases, it proves more cost effective simply by considering the hardware, software and media components of the data storage cost equation. Most backup service providers provide scalable solutions that allow capacity to grow as you need it instead of your IT department trying to guess what storage needs will be in 3 years by throwing a dart at a board (with their eyes closed).

At the same time, remote data backup providers will often give your data an extra layer of protection of three point data replication that your company would probably find hard to cost justify. Your data should be protected by a SAS 70 Type II audited storage facility with continuous power, and that knowledge alone can provide value in peace of mind.

2. Security is complicated

While data such as that email forward you received from your aunt is relatively invaluable, there are also certain groups of information – employee records, for example – that must be kept secure and confidential. Some of this data may be accessed by particular people, but definitely isn't for the eyes of majority of the organization. Compliance standards carefully set these standards and you need to be able to prove you are following them. Many remote backup service providers have tools to facilitate compliance in this arena.

On-site storage can present challenges in this area unless you have significant security policies and in place and a secure environment for your technology to reside. In addition, on site data is subject to the risks of breach or destruction by that maligned employee (not that it would happen in your company, of course).

Offsite data backup helps mitigate this risk by storing all your important data at a location that's literally hundreds of miles away in an encrypted state. To further increase security, your CTO can choose to give just a select group of people the access approval, which can easily be audited. Meanwhile, the remote backup provider adds its own security measures to the data that you send, making unauthorized access risks very low in a well-ran provider environment.

3. Working with a provider improves efficiency

Companies often backup the same data multiple times. Tell me again why we thought it was a good idea to do weekly backups of everything we own if we didn’t change it since the last time it was backed up? Oh yeah, then repeat the process monthly? Think of how much space that picture of the 46 pound cat you received in 2001 via an email forward is taking up…good thing you can restore than if you need to. Or can you? The reason we all were conditioned to think repeat backups were a good deal is simple…tapes fail at alarming rates. So, in other words, you’d better have a backup to your backup that you’re backing up. Sounds expensive to me. I’d be surprised if your organization isn’t guilty of this too. Whether it's input from different departments or outdated data that's not disposed properly, all that extra data consumes additional resources, takes longer to backup, longer to restore – all of which chip away at your bottom line.

Most off site data backup providers offer to process the data you send to eliminate redundancies using advanced deduplication techniques in order to minimize storage requirements – or at least the good ones do. When you want to access your data again, you get a much more streamlined process that takes less time and resources.

Yes, remote backup for your company's data will cost your organization money, but in many cases, it’s probably less than you’re paying now.

In the world of Business Intelligence one of the primary goals is to ensure a single version of the truth or “SVOT.” Typically this is obtained by the creation of a data warehouse. Before loading data to the data warehouse, data is extracted from a variety of sources and then goes through a series of transformation tasks where business rules are applied. By ensuring that you have a single version of the truth you ensure that your reports are consistent and data does not conflict.

1. Assuring source data validity and calculation integrity, your analytics will have a much higher level of confidence.
2. Business decisions will have a greater impact because they will be based on valid data.
3. Operational tactics will benefit from a consistent and improved strategic decision-making process.
4. The elimination of manually maintained Excel spreadsheets will reduce not only the data consolidation and manipulation efforts, but also the volume of costly errors.
5. You’ll benefit from the consolidation of query, reporting, analysis and analytic applications.
6. Reporting on financial and regulatory compliance will be improved by assuring the validation and distribution of reports.
7. The velocity of reporting and visibility will be improved, reducing report time from weeks to minutes. You’ll have real-time visibility into the impact of pricing and promotional strategies on corporate profitability, for example, and compliance reports will come together quickly in order to meet audit demands.
8. Timely business decisions can be made with accurate, current and relevant analytics available when you need it most.

The U.S. Government, in an effort to be transparent, is embracing Business Intelligence. As part of the Recovery Act, if an agency receives funds, they are then required to provide a quarterly detailed progress report on how they are using the funds. This requirement will mean that many companies will need to implement BI, if they haven’t already. The data these companies pass on will then be reported to the general public. Data transparency is a hot topic right now, and clearly the best way to get there is by adopting business intelligence.

A few months ago, I happened upon a Recovery.gov Dashboard based on data from Recovery.gov and built on the MicroStrategy platform. This dashboard compiles data about once a month and gives you several different views of how and where the stimulus money is being spent. It's an excellent example of MicroStrategy dashboard capabilities and presents the data in an easy to use fashion. Take a look! IBM and Oracle both have government BI tools, but I wasn’t able to find any public dashboards.

UsaSpending.gov also has a dashboard. This one is built using a variety of tools: Fusion Charts, Google Motion Charts and JuiceKit.  This one is really more of a Web application than a true dashboard. Its Frankenstein-like components are all available for free and together produce a very visually appealing data-driven application with drill-down capabilities. It's also worth checking out as it's an excellent example of a BI dashboard built with free tools!

If you'd like to do your own analysis and build your own dashboards, the data is available. Data.gov provides several ways to access a number of datasets.

I’ve recently gone through the process of purchasing a house and I found that all the questions you ask yourself, your realtor and the banker reminded me of the questions that should be asked when searching for the right solution for your business’s Web presence.

1. Land (server - physical or virtual)
Several questions apply to the land you choose to build a house on – location, size, what’s already on it, is there room for growth, cost, etc. These same criteria apply to the right server for your Web presence. Where will the server be located – in a data center or under the desk in your office? How big and fast does the server need to be? As you think about the other questions you’d ask about buying land for your house, remember – the investment into your Web presence starts with the server - the foundation everything is built on.

2. Address (domain)
When you invite someone over for dinner, you give them the address of your house not the parcel number that is on record at the courthouse. The street address of your house is provided as a usable identifier, instead of a bunch of random letters and numbers. The same is true for the domain you choose to be your address online. Will your customers be able to find you on the Web with the domain you choose? Is it simple and easy to remember?

3. Building structure (application architecture)
The 3 little pigs built their houses from straw, sticks and bricks. Whatever your house is made out of, it needs to be sturdy. What application structure will hold up your Web application – ASP.NET, Java, SQL, Oracle? Most likely there will be some combination of applications that build your structure, just like most houses are a combination of materials.

4. Front porch (what your client sees)
People drive, walk or run by a house, and something about it catches their eye. Hopefully it’s something positive that they see…a nicely painted, manicured and landscaped lawn, etc. If what people see on your Web site is appealing, chances are higher that they will want to stay and see what you’re all about. If you have an over-grown lawn and weeds in the flower beds, there is a chance the potential client might move right past your house to your competition’s.

5. Utility Room (Administrative Tools)
The heating & cooling system and water heater are vital appliances to keep your house comfortable. Typically they are kept in the utility room away from everyday life and visitors, but you and your handyman have access to keep the rest of the house running smoothly. You can imagine the tools that you use to keep your Web site up-to-date the same way. They are accessible online only to the people that need to know they are there to manage the site your customers see.

6. Garage (data center)
Where do you store the things you want to keep but don’t use on a daily basis? The kids’ bikes, Christmas decorations, camping gear…I keep mine in the garage where I know I can get to it if I need it. This is true of the data center where your equipment for your infrastructure is kept. You don’t need to physically access it regularly, but you know you can if you need to. It is added space to keep the physical assets of your Web presence secure, but out of the way of the everyday hustle and bustle.

7. Fence (security infrastructure)
The point of a fence is to keep something in or something out. Implementing a ‘fence’ around your Web presence is the same concept – to keep your business’s confidential information confidential and your client’s information private, as well as keeping potential hackers from compromising the integrity of your data.

8. Security System (monitoring)
ADT and Brinks Home Security are examples of home security systems that if programmed correctly will sound the alarm when the boundaries of your home have been breached. Because of the time and monetary investment you’re making in your presence online, you should take a look at how you will know if the information you’re protecting with your ‘fence’ is compromised.

9. Handyman (developer/engineer)
Every house needs a little TLC to keep it looking nice and functional for your family. The same is true for your Web presence. As your business grows, it is important to have someone you trust to work with to ensure your Web presence accommodates your growth and business needs. This trusted partner should be a person or company that will care as much about your business as they do about their own. This will free up your time to focus on growing your business.

10. Thermostat (business intelligence)
There is a saying in the Midwest that as seasons change, you’ll use the heater in the morning and air conditioning in the afternoon. As easy as it is to change the temperature on the thermostat for your house, do you have that same luxury with your business? Having the right tools in place to know how hot or cold you business is running is vital to being nimble in the current economy.

People in the technology industry have a tendency to speak their own language, and just like any ‘foreign’ language it helps to see a common picture. Hopefully these analogies help demonstrate the importance of understanding all the various aspects of your Web presence.

Remote data backup is just one service of many that make up the operations of a business, but it's a crucial one for your organization – perhaps more critical than you realize. All remote backup services are not created equally and you should take care to choose a provider that suits both your needs and budget. Most importantly, can you get your data back from offsite storage when you need it? To help you gauge potential providers, here are three questions you should ask – and they should be able to answer.

What kind of software is used?

Software is a very large part of the remote backup industry because a lot of the features available are dictated by the software used. You should ask potential service providers for a very thorough tour or explanation of the software that they use on their hardware.  For example, does it provide for bare metal restores, or restores of failed servers to new servers? Many don’t, which means you have to rebuild the server manually and then do a data restoration to get back up and running.

Do they require software agents? And If so, how does the price vary with the number of servers? Agents are generally small software components that facilitate the process of backing up a remote device. And while they can be made to sound very beneficial, programs that use agents are also largely proprietary and require you to touch every system you want to protect. That means you're tied to that service provider's software, and switching data over to another system could be extremely complex. Technologies have emerged allowing for more efficient remote data backups without the complexity and overhead many agent systems introduce.

What security measures are employed?

Besides just backing up your data, security is one of the most important benefits of off site data backup. The security features offered, however, vary greatly from provider to provider.  You need to understand exactly how it is protected and who has access under what circumstances – and how that is enforced.

Encryption is the most commonly utilized methods, yet there are a lot of 'flavors' for this component. Providers can use different complexities of encryption ranging from 128-bit to 448-bit; a higher number means that it'll be harder for someone to access that data without proper authorization, but it could also alter the speed at which the data can be backed up or restored – more might not always be better.

Data is also encrypted at varying points of the remote data backup process. Some providers will give you just encryption before the data is transmitted or after it has reached its destination. The best ones, however, will encrypt your files both before transmission and while the data is stored on their servers. That way, your data is continuously protected from unauthorized access.  You also need to know how that data can be decrypted. Can the backup service provider decrypt it?  If they’re good at what they do – the answer should be ‘No’. You should hold the golden key and only you and authorized personnel should be able to use it.

How do I get my data back if I need it?

This is extremely important – after all, isn't that why you backed up the data in the first place?

The provider's answer to this question will say how well their systems will work with your company's own IT policies. For example, if a provider will only be able to send data back on regular working days, that'll likely be a road block for your organization's data recovery goals. The best providers would be the ones that can offer 24/7 support and fast system recoveries in case of crashes and downtimes.  Enterprise-class providers allow multiple methods of data retrieval ranging from replicated local copies or point and click restores to full server staging and shipping. You absolutely need to know your options here.  Make a note of which ones make the most sense for you in a few different scenarios.

Choosing an offsite data backup service shouldn't be taken lightly. Your company's most sensitive data could be compromised simply by a service provider that doesn't have the right resources for your requirements. For off site data backup, you should consider not only the providers you can afford but also the ones that can meet your company's goals and standards.  You should be able to answer the question: What happens if I come in tomorrow and our systems are completely destroyed?

This list was compiled to give you a sampling of what you can look forward to when you implement business intelligence. Already have a BI system? Check this list to see if you are using it to its full potential.

1. Receive instant answers to all your what if questions for insightful decision making.
2. With the right BI tool, the analysis is done for you, which is an enormous time saver.
3. As business and economic profiles change, you are still able to report on new metrics in a timely manner.
4. Understanding your most profitable regions, products or customers keeps you well-informed.
5. Uncover latent issues by tracking data you currently don’t have access to.

The Jelecos Managed Services team held its first annual Managed Services golf outing this year at Indian Creek Golf Course in observance of System Administrator Appreciation Day. Actually, it wasn't annual until I just made it so, publicly, on our blog. There's no sense in having such a great event just once! But, since driving company policy isn't in my job description, this will probably be my last blog post. We kicked Friday off right by receiving the Professional Services team at our office for some breakfast that they diligently prepared in our honor. We appreciate their efforts very much and look forward to breakfast again next year (yes, that just became annual too).

We rolled out of the office at approximately 11:30 AM and headed to the course. Kathy Palmer, our recent addition to the team as a Help Desk Technician, graciously offered to stay behind for the remainder of the afternoon to ensure our customer's needs were met. We divided the six of us into two tee times. With most of us being engineers, we decided to over-engineer the golf process. Since we all wanted to have a chance to play with each other, we decided to rotate a player at every par 3. Greg Mooney, Angie Mahler, and I were grouped together on the first five holes. Steve Mills, Eric Karmazin, and Trent Williams made up the other group.

Now, I mentioned this was a golf outing, but it was more of a landscaping convention. We dug holes in the fairways, tested the density of the water in a few of the ponds, and modified the depth of the bunkers. Mooney took it upon himself to climb a tree and inspect it for proper trimming. Ok, that deserves some explaining. Mooney shot the game of his life. We'll just call him the Cinderella boy here on out. After he rotated to the other group on the first par 3, any time I had a chance to see him drive off of the tee box, I let him know I was there and cheering him on with some well placed yells and screams during his down swing. Let's just say he doesn't do well with pressure and noise. Finally, on the tee box on the 6th hole of our second nine, the Cinderella boy was lining up for what was sure to be a beautiful 275 yard shot right down the middle. Eric and I pulled up behind them and sat under a tree, politely waiting our turn. I was very excited for him and decided to let him see how much I appreciated his stellar golf game by cheering him on, again during his down swing. Unfortunately, my cheers didn't help his shot. I couldn't tell you where his ball ended up because I was ducking at the impending doom headed for me in the form of a Callaway driver. Fortunately for Eric and me, the Cinderella boy's discus-style golf club throwing abilities match his golf game under pressure and instead of wrapping it around my head, the club landed on some branches in the tree we were parked under. POW!

It turned out to be a great day. Weather was good, beer was cold, and phones were quiet.

On July 9th, after listening to a speaker discuss the serious implications of cell phones and driving, we awarded our 2nd Quarter Jelee awards.  It took some time to get the company meeting livened up again, but Chris and Kristyl managed to do it!  They presented the awards to: Amy Allbaugh for Teamwork and Marika Birkby for Customer Service.  Amy supports the entire team in her role as executive assistant, somehow managing to keep us all happy!  Marika recently had two happy clients come back for new projects, and sing her project management praises!

Amy and Marika received a ½ day off, a $50 gift certificate, and an engraved cubic placard.  In addition, each received a surprise gift!  (These are probably as much fun for the crowd as they are for the recipients!)  Amy’s surprise was 2 kettle chip kits and Marika’s was a horse racing game.  Each winner received a Japanese puzzle with instructions actually written in Japanese– we have yet to see them solve the puzzles – wonder why?!

It was announced that the Jelee program is being enhanced to encourage nominations!  Each time a teammember makes a nomination, their name will be entered into the nominator’s lotto.  One name will be pulled from the lotto, and the winner will receive a gift along with the Jelee award winners!

For previous winners, see the following posts:

     Quarterly Jelee Awards April 2009

     The Jelee Awards 2008

Jelecos has recently joined the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You may have noticed our Twitter widget on the lower left of our blog page.

Businesses are rapidly joining social media sites to get to know their customers better.  Anderson Analytics recently conducted a survey of social media user habits.  They estimate that there are currently 110 million Americans using social networks and these users are no longer just teenagers and college students.   Facebook members, for example, are more likely to be older than those belonging to other social networking sites.

Here at Jelecos, we hope to get to know our customers better and have some interesting conversations!.  So please check us out on any of the sites below.

• Follow us on Twitter; we are @jelecos
• Become our fan on Facebook
• Check us out on LinkedIn

The immortal words of Carl Spackler (Caddyshack, 1980).  Will he be the Masters Champion?  Someday.  This week, would he settle for Cox Classic Champion?  Definitely.

I would like to introduce Brady Schnell, professional golfer.  He is playing in this week’s Nationwide Tour event, the Cox Classic.

Born in Iowa, Brady went to high school at Millard West and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 2008. After graduation, Brady joined the Dakota Tour where he topped the money list.  From there, it was the grind of Q school.

2009 brought new opportunity for Brady on The Gateway Tour where he is 11th on the money list and recently he joined the Canadian Tour.

After being granted a tournament sponsor’s exemption to this week’s event in Omaha, Brady looks to make the best of his situation.  A top 25 finish in Omaha will land him a spot in the next Nationwide Tour event in Columbus, Ohio.  And from there?  Brady is taking it one day at a time.  Success in Omaha could pave the way to several stops on the Nationwide Tour.  He will try again this fall to earn his tour card at Q School.

What is this all about you ask?  Earlier this week, Jeff Wilke played in a pro-am event with Brady.  Later at dinner, the two discussed the possibility of Jelecos sponsoring Brady for the week.  And the rest was history (check out the World Herald picture, article and KPTM 42 video).

Of special significance to this story is family.  Jenn, Brady’s girlfriend and caddie, is giving up the bag this week to Curt Schnell, Brady’s Dad.  Doing well in front of friends and family suits Brady just fine;  it means he would be playing in Columbus OH next week.  If he does not make it to Columbus next week, he will still be on a golf course.  He will be looping for Dad.  Curt, a PGA professional himself and director of golf at Okoboji View Golf Course in Spirit Lake, IA, has already qualified for the U.S Senior Open Championship next week in Indianapolis.

So, if you are at the Cox Classic this week and you are looking for someone to follow, look Brady up (tee times for Thurs ).   Best of luck to Brady at the Cox Classic and to Curt at the U.S. Senior Open.

The great scientist and mathematician Lord Kelvin is quoted as saying, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."

Using Business Intelligence to measure processes and performance in the workplace can have significant impact on the workplace.  Here are a few ways this can happen.

1. Gauging the success of business processes leads to process improvement.
2. When employees feel empowered to create, manage and distribute ad-hoc reports, they feel more engaged in the business and workplace.
3. Benchmarking performance indicators provide employees with a yardstick which they can use to improve their output.
4. Employees can align their objectives with corporate goals and track their progress through personal scorecards.
5. Distributing intelligence about the business increases transparency and trust with employees.

It might seem that remote data backup is just one more thing to add to your company's expenses, but the service could provide more value than initially perceived. Here are seven reasons why off-site backup might be worth mentioning at the next board meeting.

1. Security is tighter. No matter what your company's niche or industry might be, you still probably handle data that must be kept secure or confidential. That's a little harder to do if your storage is exclusively on-site; human factors and physical proximity add to the risk. Storing data at an off-site facility in an encrypted state with solid physical access controls is exactly what the auditors ordered.
2. Emergencies aren't such a big problem anymore. Whether you're afraid of tidal waves or terrorists, you have the assurance that there's at least a copy of all your data somewhere out there. And because there are hundreds of miles between you and the storage facility, it's highly unlikely that your main office and your backup data will be facing the same threats.
3. It improves productivity. Sure, IT productivity is improved because they’re not rotating tapes or chasing down a tape to perform a backup job; but what about the users that are waiting for that file recovery? If a tape has to be retrieved from an offsite facility and catalogued before the restore can take place, you’re talking an average of 4-6 hours. With remote backup services, a single file can be restored in a matter of minutes and your people can go back to work.
4. Less maintenance worries. Keeping and maintaining local data storage is a big expense for any company. Power has to be continuously fed to the hardware, the software must be regularly updated, the facility itself must maintained– the list of necessary tasks goes on and on. With off site data backup, however, the service provider takes care of all those concerns for your company.
5. Accessibility is improved. Because data transfers are done over the Internet, remote backups make it easier than ever for executives, systems administrators and IT employees to access crucial data even outside the office. In the event of a disaster such as a fire, information can be accessed and restored to another facility.
6. The technology is mature. You won't have to worry anymore about losing out as an early adopter. And because both the hardware and the software have matured as technologies, finding remote backup services on a less-than-abundant budget shouldn't be too difficult.
7. Overall costs are lower. When you look all the various tasks and responsibilities undertaken by the remote data backup service provider, you'll find the equation very favorable. Instead of focusing so much money and effort toward creating and maintaining your own backup system, you're handing the job over to someone who can do it much more efficiently.

Obviously, off site data backup comes with a cost. But most successful businesses look at ROI, not cost alone.

At Jelecos, we believe strongly in giving back to the community. In a previous post we discussed our involvement in the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This is a charity that is close to our hearts, and our own Leon Thomas is on the board of the local chapter.

Leon is also co-chair of the upcoming Boomer Esiason Nebraska Golf Classic. This is a very popular annual event that draws hundreds to the golf tournament, banquet and silent auction. This year the keynote speaker will be Barry Switzer! Omaha Magazine recently had an interesting article about Coach Switzer.

Every year, many of us from Jelecos volunteer at the auction, so please join us and contribute to a worthy cause.

Are you in a business you wish you weren’t?

Is it IT?

I am frequently asked “what do you do?"  And my general response is “I am in the technology business.” (In actuality I am an entrepreneur.)  Either way, the ensuing conversation has exposed a real challenge: insurance agencies, doctors’ clinics, hospitals, distribution companies, banks, credit unions - you name it - are all reluctantly in the “technology business”; and many are scratching their heads. They wonder: how did we go from a (you fill in the industry here) to a company whose annual IT budget is staggering, and has no idea if they’re doing the right stuff with the right value?

Annual budgets in the tens and hundreds of thousands get approved each year by entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, writers, administrators and many more without a strong sense of confidence that those numbers are the right numbers.

But here’s another question: if your company suffered catastrophic data loss due to fire, flood, vandalism or simple hardware or software failure, would you still be in business? That’s a question many business people are not asking.

As a partner in two technology businesses I’ve learned the value of knowing what I know and what I don’t know. I cannot configure a server or a switch. I have no clue how they make it all work. And that’s okay. Our associates do. We at Jelecos and Data Media Solutions have spent the last decade getting really good at what we do. And what we do is have you covered in what I refer to as the “ones and zeros space.”  That’s technical jargon for digital information.

At the beginning and ending of each day, businesses are subservient to the “ones and zeros” and the machines on which they ride. If all your “ones and zeros” evaporated overnight, could you continue to run your business?  If so, how long would it take to restore normalcy?

If you are running a business which has reluctantly found itself in the technology business and this blog makes you queasy, then call a trusted friend and ask for some advice. We’re always available to chat.

Not everybody’s “got milk?” but every business has ones and zeros.   Are yours safe?

Business Intelligence (BI) provides you with better insights into all aspects of your business. Tracking markets and customers, as well as your suppliers, inventory or competitors is quickly and easily accomplished with the addition of a BI system. If you act on the analysis BI delivers, then your overall business environment will improve. Here are just a few of the advantages.

1. Lower costs and raise profits
2. Boost customer satisfaction
3. Gain competitive advantages
4. Expand market share
5. Identify and reduce incidents of fraud and theft

As web application developers, one task that can be challenging is testing. We are always working on improving our processes and testing is one area that gets a lot of focus. There are two ways to do testing: manually or automatically. After doing a little research, I found a product named Selenium. This is a web application testing system; basically an automated testing tool.

What really caught my eye about this application is the fact that it is a Firefox browser add-on. Essentially, it creates testing scripts; once installed, you simply go to the site you are testing, and it will record your movements and allow you to save them to a script. With this saved script, you can either run the script to test functionality, or you can manually modify the script to build a suite of tests. After you run a full suite, Selenium builds a report indicating a pass or fail for each script.

The benefit of this tool is that you can be sure that key functionality is consistently being tested while you are doing complete end to end testing. Each use case can have its own script which can be added to a shared scenario so everyone on the team has access to the same testing steps. How awesome is that?

The priorities in life often get muddled when you're in the midst of turmoil. I'm sure you've experienced this at one time or another. The pressures of work can overwhelm your life, and you don't have much left for yourself or your family.

I worked in a company before coming to Jelecos where the priorities were emphasized as Faith, Family and Career. The thought behind this was that if your faith was strong, all other aspects of your life would fall in line. Second, your Family is the reason for your Career. They depend on you for love and support, both emotional and financial. Lastly, Career…. But do you work to live or live to work? When you find something that you're passionate about and you love to do everyday - it's hard not to confuse these. But, ultimately, your career wouldn't be as necessary if it weren't to support the one's you love - your family.

In my first interview at Jelecos, without hesitation, Jeff Wilke said these words to me: “Our priorities for ourselves and our employees are Faith, Self, Family and Career.” A little shocked and awed by this, I immediately reflected on this same lesson from my past. Only this time, there was an additional priority…Self. Ah, yes. How can you possibly take care of your Family or your Career if you don't first take care of yourself? (Ponder this for a minute. Let it sink in.)

Let's take a step back and look at these priorities.

Faith. This doesn't mean you have to believe in God. But do you have faith in something greater than yourself? Faith by definition is the belief in something without proof. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Do you believe you get what you get, because that's the way it is? Or do you have faith that there's something more in store for you?

Self. Taking care of yourself obviously means eating right, exercising, etc. But, it also involves doing whatever you need to so that you feel good in your own skin. Everyone deserves to pamper or indulge themselves in a hobby (obviously moderation is key when it comes to indulging in some activities). Buy yourself something nice, call up a friend to spend time with, go fishing – whatever you need!

Family. The people who depend on you the most. Kids have school activities, sporting events, they get sick - all sorts of thing happen when kids are involved. Spouses and significant others have needs and expectations: that you’ll be home for dinner, help with the kids, do house work, or whatever needs done to maintain the family rhythm. No matter what happens at work - going home to my family is the greatest joy I have in life.

Career. The career we have could be by choice or chance. Mine happens to be by chance, but all the same it is work I enjoy doing.

Now that I've been part of the Jelecos family for over 4 years, I have definitely experienced these priorities in action first hand. I am truly grateful and blessed to be working for such a forward thinking organization.

This morning I attended a National Safety Council breakfast meeting. Our topic was distracted driving. Forrest Gump tells us that “stupid is as stupid does,” or at least his mama told him that. He’s right. As I sat at the meeting, I recalled my return yesterday from the lake country of northern Minnesota. I make the trip regularly, and I’ve even managed to turn my F-150 into a mobile office. Since Ford and Microsoft teamed up to help me make my mobile office even better, I can now use the Sync feature to load my Blackberry database into the truck. Add in text messaging, email, a diet Coke and you have “productivity”.

Our speaker this morning enlightened us with statistics on driving distractions and cell phone use. I got kind of sick to my stomach. I’ve got a $12,000 cell phone rolling down I-29 and I have unwittingly increased my likelihood of not living to make any more trips by four fold. Bob Glissman, of the Omaha World-Herald captures the story quite well this afternoon (read the story).

Suffice to say, this blogger will refrain from texting and driving from this point forward. I am still arguing with myself over the use of the cell for just talking. You cannot explain stupid, but admitting it is a first step in correcting it. I’m stupid when it comes to driving and texting and talking on my cell. Other drivers, my friends, colleagues, and most especially my family deserve better.

As I was adding new functionality to one of our webapplications, I ran into a situation I wasn't familiar with. Immediately, I went to a search engine and typed in my question.  Within the first 5 search results, I found a community based site where someone else had a similar problem and shared their solution.  I was able to take this solution, modify it to fit my specific situation, and go on with my day.

A few days later one of my colleagues, a generation older than I, was referencing a book from his stack of technical books.  It made me wonder if our generational difference is an explanation for my instinct to use the Internet, and his instinct is to use a book, or if this is a sign that the end of printed mediais looming. Historically, we’ve seen thedeath of many forms of media by new technology: VHS was replaced by DVDs and now Blu-Ray DVDs are in the mix.  Newspapers are reportedly on their way out,and with the popularity of gadgets like the Kindle and the Sony Portable Reader, are other print media also on their way out?  When I’m out with my friends, I can text a service that will answer any reference question I have.  I think it’s possible that printed reference material might be next on the chopping block. 

What do you think?  Is the Internet going to replace printed reference materials?

Robert Kaplan and David Norton first introduced the ‘Balanced Scorecard’ in the mid-1990s. Their scorecard tracks business success over time, based on a set of key performance indicators (KPI). These KPI are derived from the outcomes of the business strategy or mission statement. It focuses on balancing four key areas: Customer, Financial, Process, and Employee Learning and Growing. In essence, it translates the mission statement and strategy into specific, quantifiable goals and transforms the performance into a score that can be compared across the board.

The “balanced” part of the balanced scorecard refers to several different distinctions. First of all, the four key areas ensure that a scorecard is balanced across the strategy of the organization. Secondly, your KPI should be a balance of historical, current and future measurements. Finally, your KPI should be reported using a similar scale so an overall score can be determined; weights are assigned to the KPI based on importance, with a weighted average index serving as the metric within the Balanced Scorecard.

Balanced Scorecards should provide sufficient information so that action can be taken on unacceptable performances. The ability to drill down and see what is going on is important for problem solving.

Balanced Scorecards should reflect a balance between generic types of measurements and measurements that are unique to the organization. Measurements should relate to critical areas for future success, such as maintaining a competitive edge. For example, if a company’s competitive edge resides in innovative products, then there will need to be some measurements focused on product innovation.

Balancing the Balanced Scorecard is a challenging task when building the scorecard. Ensuring that the weights are accurate, and that there is a fair representation between historical and future measures, as well as measures from all key aspects of your strategy, will all help make sure that your balanced scorecard is indeed balanced.

Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work by Robert Kaplan and David Norton is an excellent resource for further information.

In an industry as security-sensitive as that of offsite data backup, it shouldn't come as a surprise that standards and compliance are a big part of the game. Choosing a remote backup service provider can be an important step towards compliance for some companies. Here are three of the most common compliance requirements you should know.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

A policy drafted to prevent incidents similar to the 2002 Enron scandal, compliance with the SOX standard is basically a company saying “we're honest and transparent with our records.” To pass a SOX audit, a company has to keep extensive records of events and transactions in order to reconstruct the steps that produced an outcome; not only what the steps are, but who took them and when.

What does this mean for you relative to remote data backup? For one thing, you'll want to be sure the provider is storing your data in a facility that has passed a Statement on Audition Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) Type II audit. This ensures your data is being stored within a facility that has the appropriate controls in place to effectively manage change and the security of your data.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Originally intended for the sensitive information related to medical records such as personally identifiable health information (PIH), HIPAA has also become an important consideration when managing offsite data storage. Backup providers can't explicitly get certified for HIPAA compliance due to the level of interpretation embedded within the act, but they should have specific policies and procedures in place to manage encryption keys, access to data and physical access to the facilities where your offsite backup data is being stored.

Just one section of the HIPAA legislation – that pertaining to Group Health Plan provisions – can apply for offsite data backups. To summarize, a provider that can claim compliance with HIPAA requirements must ensure that only authorized parties can access your data at any time, and that any disclosures are accurately recorded and reported. Aside from encrypted data transmission, HIPAA-compliant providers usually employ passwords, client-exclusive access to data and measures to physically secure the remote backup facility.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)

Established by the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, GLBA standards were established to protect customers' financial information. This is a particularly important standard for you if your company collects financial information like billing addresses and credit card data from customers at any point in time.

In the world of remote data backup, a provider that is GLBA-compliant should have a minimum set of policies and procedures to ensure standards are met. The GLBA covers many stages of the process from collection to storage and even to maintenance of stored data. Remote backup services range from personal online data backup solutions to enterprise remote data backup services.  Most enterprise-class systems will meet these requirements and more, however, personal online backup services aren’t always compliant.

Although some of these standards have significant overlap, they also have subtle nuances that make each one unique. It’s a good idea to look for an offsite data backup provider that complies with as many of them as possible. Each standard tends to cover up where another is lacking, and security is one area where offsite backup data shouldn't have any holes.

You've all seen it. You're browsing the internet one day, innocently searching for that new 90% rayon necktie that you know your father will just love, when you stumble upon a link that seems applicable. You click the link, a growing feeling of joy slowly building up as you anticipate all the necktie wonderment you are about to enjoy, and BAM!, the site appears.

The joy is gone. Your eyes glaze over. Your brain begins to scream questions: "Is that an animated gif?! What is that music playing for?! Is that picture STILL loading?! Why is that text blinking at me?!”

No doubt, you've all experienced a site similar to this in one way or another. In the highly competitive world of sales and internet marketing, content and usability are king. How a site is seen and used by consumers is the root of whether it will be successful or not. It only takes a moment for a user to click the "back" button and that potential customer is gone forever.

But fear not. There are some simple ways to improve the look and quality of your web interface that take a minimal amount of time and effort. These ideas are by no means original, but they’re some things that I've seen through the years that have worked.

1. Please, oh please, do away with animated images, background music, and blinking text.

If you’re an experienced web developer, these "effects" should already be taboo, but you'd be surprised how many sites out there still use them. For what it's worth, these types of effects do grab the attention of the user, but, in most cases, not in the manner it was intended. Sure, you’ll notice the bright, neon pink text blinking at you: "Sale... Sale... Sale...", but you’re much more likely to find it annoying as you try to read the surrounding content. The same goes for background music. Unless the site was created especially for a music portfolio or warehouse, leave it alone. Besides, it increases the load time of a site and most users will turn their speakers off rather than listen to whatever’s playing.

2. Create a textual hierarchy that is simple, consistent and accessible.

A good rule to follow: The bigger the text, the more important it is. Using typography to your advantage can have an immediate and positive result on a site's usability. Use HTML/CSS to your advantage and avoid adding unnecessary classes and IDs. Wrap headlines in <h1> tags, sub-headers in <h2> tags, and body copy in <p> tags. Not only does this automatically give you a good start at creating a hierarchy, but it also makes your site more accessible for users not using CSS or those using a screen reader. One of the biggest mistakes made by novice designers is using too many classes to adjust the size and weight of their text. Stick with the basics and you'll be well on your way, just remember: Keep your 'h1'ead out of your 'class'!

3. Optimize all images and content for the Web before using them.

Again, most designers understand this, but this can particularly be of interest to sites using client-side content management. Ideally, images should be no bigger than 1160 bytes so that users using slower connection speeds can still access the site quickly, but this fact isn’t always obvious. Nothing can be more frustrating than having to wait for an image to load because it was saved at 300dpi and is 4.5 Mb. Jelecos, like most good web companies, educate their clients about these practices. A tool I like for testing usability is www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/. Simply type in the URL of any site on the Web and it will quickly give you download times for connection rates, number of http requests, and usability recommendations.

 

MicroStrategy announced today that it is offering a free reporting software package for departmental BIapplications. The MicroStrategy Reporting Suite includes up to 100 end user licenses, two developer licenses, access to their knowledge base and documentation plus 60 days of free online support. For more information about how you can start using MicroStrategy today visit http://www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware/.

For more information on today's announcement, visit PR Newswire to read the Press Release, "MicroStrategy Announces Free Reporting Software Package for Departmental Business Intelligence Applications."

With the College World Series upon us, let's talk about baseball. Imagine taking a baseball and throwing it to the strike zone. Where did the ball hit? Was it off to the right or left? Was it high or low? Or did you hit the strike zone like a bullseye? If you hit the strike zone, congratulations, you are truly a talent. However, if you missed the strike zone, what was on your mind as the ball left your hand?

One of my favorite movie quotes, from Columbia Picture's 28 Days, uses pitching as a metaphor for control and focus. Viggo Mortensen's character, Eddie Boone, explains to Sandra Bullock's character, Gwen Cummings, that when throwing a baseball at a mattress with a strike zone outlined on it, she shouldn't be thinking about the strike zone. When you put all your focus and concentration on the target, it starts to look like the size of a peanut and you start to psych yourself out of the game. Instead of thinking about the target, think about the things that you can control - your stance, your balance, the release and follow through.

The same is true for everyday life, when things are coming at you from all directions - the phone ringing, emails piling up and other interruptions, and you have deadlines to meet. Take a deep breath to collect yourself. Remember to focus on the things you can control, and take it one step at a time. Confidence will emanate from you as you gather your thoughts and focus on the little things.

The passwords you use on the Web are the gatekeepers of your online presence. Bank accounts, Social Security numbers, and investment information are only a few examples of the highly sensitive data that exist on the Web. In the past few years, there has been an influx of malicious programs and spyware intended to steal unsecure personal information. While there are a variety of security measures Web users can take to keep their information safe, passwords are still the front door and easiest access point for a hacker to slip in. Taking the extra time to ensure that your password is as secure as possible is extremely important. Luckily for us, there are a lot of helpful tips that can point us in the right direction:

1. Make your passwords longer. Most sites require that a password be at least 6-8 characters long, but don’t limit yourself to that measurement. 14 characters or longer is ideal.
2. When able, use a “pass-phrase”. A lot of systems out there allow the spacebar to be used in passwords. This makes it possible to create a phrase made of multiple words that is much harder for an attacker to guess. Another nice thing about pass-phrases is that they tend to be easier to remember than a simple one-word password.
3. Always mix upper/lower case and numbers into your password. As an example: “password” is not very secure, but “Pa55w0Rd” combines different cases and replaces some letters with numbers. However, hackers are smart enough to know that people do this often and often look for common replacement methods like this. Increasing the length and mixing up the spelling will help your password’s strength.
4. Add more complexity to your password by using special characters. Exclamation points, dollar signs, ampersands: all are great to use.
5. Make sure that your password appears to be as random as possible and only makes sense to you. Many sites suggest taking an easily remembered phrase and taking out the first letter of each word to create your password. For example: “Mark likes to eat two dozen hotdogs a day” would translate to “Mltetdhad” using this method, which to anyone else looks like a random sampling of characters.
6. Test your new passwords using a password checker. There are several non-recording applications out on the Web that can tell you the strength of your password. The one that I like to use the most is through the Microsoft site.
7. Avoid using the same password everywhere on the Web. If your password was hacked, all other information protected by that password would also be at risk.
8. Always avoid sequences of numbers or letters. They may be easy to remember, but they are also easier to hack.
9. It may seem like common sense, but never reveal your passwords to anyone, including family and friends. Don’t send your passwords through email or reply to an email request that is asking you to verify your password. There are a lot of “phishing” scams out there trying to get at your information in this way.
10. Finally, change your passwords every once in a while. Longer passwords, over 15 characters long or so, should be secure for a few years, while shorter, 6-8 character passwords should be changed much more frequently, every two to three weeks.

In the late eighties, I was a mid-level manager at a glass company. It was a big company for sure: about ninety million in revenue on the way to almost a billion. I was having fun; winning, selling a lot, and making no friends along the way. Of course I was oblivious to the latter.

I regularly ruffled some fellow workers’ feathers. Always pushing the envelope. Challenging dogma. Pushing slower, non productive people to the side and doing their work and mine. I was the “wunderkind”.  And I knew it.  Wow, was I special.

Then came a call from Minneapolis, our headquarters. The president wanted me, yes me, to fly to Minneapolis to meet with him. Imagine my triumph, my glory, my overwhelming sense of accomplishment.

You see, I do not have a college degree. I was the only employee to ever reach the level of management, at the time, without one. It was the late ‘80’s. America was getting it swagger back and I was getting mine for the first time and it felt GREAT.

So I flew to Minneapolis; I think it cost a fortune. I rarely flew in those days; it was reserved for the elite in my mind.  But I was arriving. I took a cab to HQ, took the elevator to the TOP floor. I was escorted to the Prez’s office. This is cool stuff huh? I walked in and sat down and across from me sat the President. For all my heart knew, he could have been President of the United States of America. Wow.

We sat and exchanged the weather watch chit chat.  Then came the big moment.  Was I getting a huge promotion?  Maybe SVP at 28 years old???? And then he said it.

“Wilke, you’re a jerk, nobody respects you.”

That was an expensive trip for that message. Damn, he could have phoned that nugget in. Now I was thinking I had to fly back to Omaha unemployed. Ick.

What went wrong? I asked. He talked. I paraphrase, for the years take a toll on one’s memory.

He said: “Jeff, I like you. A lot actually. But not too many others do.  (I was crushed.)  I like you because you know how to make money, and lots of it. It seems to motivate you. Presidents like employees like that. But Presidents do not like turmoil, and you create a lot of that on your way to making our shareholders wealthy.  I don’t think you know you alienate others. In fact, I am sure you don’t.”

At this point I blurted out something like, “If you’re going to fire me, you could have done so on the phone and saved everyone time and money.”

He explained that I was not fired yet, but that it might come to that. He went on to enlighten.

Leadership does not come from being the best at throwing the ball, or catching it, or running with it. Leadership starts with blocking and tackling. Leadership is getting others motivated, attempting  the greatest of challenges without being frightened to do so. He convinced me that while I had a track record of success as a money maker, I had no legacy of building others’ resumes. I was breaking a lot of glass.  Others were weary of cleaning it up.  I needed to learn to create champions for worthy goals.  I was going to “attitude adjustment school.”

There is a wonderful business in the Twin Cities called PDI. Personal Decisions International. They assess and fix flawed executives, among other erstwhile services. I was given a scholarship and a message.  Pass or move on.

With two young daughters and a wife counting on me, all of whom I had apparently and gratefully spared the wrath, I was, as they say, MOTIVATED.

PDI sent me through a barrage of tests and role playing scenarios. Along the way I learned that being good was irrelevant if you alienated all your co-workers along the way. Eventually I learned that good, quiet, effective co-workers will get you fired if you remain an obstacle to their success instead of a vehicle thereof.

I learned that while my heart may have been in the right place, my actions needed some attention.

I graduated with a passing grade and a challenge from my instructors. “Always strive to create champions, within and beyond your personal boundaries.”

My PDI training had a number of interesting dynamics to it, many of which I still use to this day. Consider this an invitation to ask me about my experiences at PDI. I always have a story and always love to share it.

In summary: Be kinder than necessary to whomever you’re working with. Everybody has something they are dealing with.

Other posts in the Lessons Learned Series:

Whose lawn are you mowing?

Malware is a combination of the words malicious and software and refers to a type of cybercrime.  This is a type of software whose sole purpose is to cause harm to a computer system. Types of malware include viruses, worms and bots. If your computer is affected by malware, it may have been infiltrated by a bot (short for robot) and used without the your knowledge: your computer is now a zombie. Frequently, the botmaster will use the bot to connect your zombie to other zombies, which creates a botnet.

These are all very clever and interesting terms, but in reality, they pose a real problem. Malware has become one of the most pressing security problems on the Internet. Cyber criminals use these tools to send spam mails, to launch denial-of-service attacks, and in the worst cases, to steal personal data such as mail account or bank credentials.

There are ways to protect your computer from becoming a zombie. If you use a Microsoft operating system, be sure and install the updates you receive. They typically contain security patches that combat the latest "hole" found by the masters. You should also invest in anti-virus and firewall programs and keep them up-to-date.

How complex are your passwords? Malware can very easily crack simple passwords; so make sure you avoid dictionary words (not just English), make sure it's at least 8 characters long, and toss in a few numbers and capital letters.

Finally, exercise discretion when browsing the Internet. Be choosy about the sites you browse and if you don't trust a link in an email, don't click on it.

If you haven't tried out the new "knowledge engine" from Wolfram called Wolfram|Alpha, you really should spend some free time asking it questions. This search engine of sorts was released to the world earlier this week and I spent some time asking it questions. If you haven't heard of it, this is how it's described on their web site:

"[This] is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer."

While I was asking it questions it occurred to me that there must be some fantastic Easter Eggs, so I found a few. I'm not going to tell you the answer, you'll have to go ask Alpha yourself. Enjoy!

Easter Eggs on Alpha

1. To be or not to be?
2. 88 MPH
3. What's the speed of an unladen swallow?
4. Flux Capacitor
5. What's the answer to life? 
6. How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
7. Licks to the center of a tootsie pop?
8. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

If you just need to know what Alpha is, you can have a conversation... Hello. How are you? What are you? Can you help me?,etc.

If you find any hidden gems, be sure to let me know!

In some ways, web development is like building a house. The architect makes blueprints and submits them to the contractor to be built. The blueprints contain all the information necessary to build the house. When a Web site is created, the web developer sends a set of "blueprints" to a browser. These web blueprints contain all the information necessary to build the Web site.

After a contractor is done building the house, it pretty much matches the architect’s design. However, after a browser builds a Web site, it doesn't always match the developers plans! One difference between the contractor and the browser is that the contractor has a set of standards that he or she works from; a browser has some standards, but depending on which browser displays the site, it may not be aware of all the recent standards, or may just choose not to follow them.

Let me explain. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an organization that determines web standards. For the most part, the W3C’s standards are accepted and followed around the world. At the end of April 2009, seven different browsers were used by 99% of web users (according to w3schools).  Four of the seven browsers are W3C compliant. The three non-compliant browsers, all versions of Internet Explorer, make up 42% of all web users - a significant chunk that cannot be ignored.

Unfortunately, having a standard-compliant browser doesn’t mean that it will work EXACTLY the same as all the other browsers. Each software vendor takes small liberties with the standards or even, in some cases, misinterprets what the standards mean. The Acid3 test checks for compliance against the blueprint. Click here to run the test on your browser. Chances are very good that you will not get a 100/100 score since none of the currently released browsers earned that distinction.

Web developers must always consider these differences, and create multiple sets of blueprints to get as close as possible to that 100/100 mark on every browser.

1. The first popular web browser was called Mosaic and was released in 1993.
2. According to CyberAtlas, it took just 5 years for the Internet to reach 50 million users.  This same milestone took radio 38 years, and took television 13 years.
3. There are over 1 billion Internet users worldwide; that's 20% of the world's population.
4. In 2008, the United States spent $214.4 billion online.  Internet purchasing is increasing at a rate of 7 percent per year.  (comScore reports)
5. Technorati tracks over 133 million blogs on the Internet.
6. Social networking is the fastest growing part of the Internet. There are 70 million active users on Facebook (the 8th most popular site in the world), and more than 14 million photos are uploaded daily.
7. In January, 2009, the average user spent 10% of all his/her online minutes on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
8. The English version of Wikipedia has more than 2.3 million articles. Over one third of US adults consult Wikipedia.
9. One in five of the world’s Internet users visits YouTube each day.
10. Nielsen NetRatings indicates that the average Internet user, in one month, will visit 59 domains, view 1,050 pages (allocating 45 seconds for each page) and will spend about 25 hours doing all this net activity! Each surfing session lasts 51 minutes.

We had our quarterly Jelee awards at our April company meeting.

The winners are:

Customer Service: Trent Williams
Teamwork: Laura Samson
Efficiency and Innovation: Jules Clement

Congratulations to the winners, they definitely are deserving!

The recipients of the awards received a ½ day off, a $50 gift certificate to GiftCertificates.com and a surprise gift. The surprise gifts were definitely the hit of the meeting, as everyone was excited to see what they were! The most exciting for the crowd was Trent’s gift: Shock Tanks. These are fighting tanks that shock the operator of the remote control when their tank gets hit!

Saturday, May 9th is an important day for Jelecos and for patients and families that are affected by Cystic Fibrosis. May 9th is the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s annual Great Strides walk to raise money for vital research initiatives, patient care and ultimately, a cure for CF. The walk is a national fund raising and awareness campaign that takes place in nearly 600 locations.

In 2008 alone, nearly $37 million was raised to support important foundation initiatives. Jelecos is a corporate sponsor for the Nebraska Chapter Great Strides event and also has a walk team each year. Significant progress has been made in the development of treatments to further our mission of curing CF in just the past 6 months! If you’d like more information, or would simply like to join the fight against CF, visit our team lead's page.

In an earlier post I wrote about the basic differences between operational BI and classic BI (read the post). In this post, I’m going to explore the differences between operational reporting and operational business intelligence. This is a hot topic in the world of Business Intelligence.

Operational reporting is generally managed by the teams who are most familiar with the applications that capture the operational data. Typically, the operational applications provide their own reporting and the capability of making slight adjustments to the reports. This follows the typical process: an employee enters data to an application, the application provides that data at a later time in the form of a report. This is very typically operational reporting. At any business there could be one application that tracks customers, leads, prospects; another application tracks timesheets; and another one tracks the warehouse shipments. These applications are very good at reporting on the process they are tracking. The downside is that there are multiple places that an end user has to visit to get these separate reports. This is operational reporting.

Operational business intelligence is about bringing the data from these separate operational applications onto a single platform, unifying and sharing data when it makes sense (an employee table for example) and providing reports. The data from the applications is refreshed on a regular schedule throughout the day – every hour, twice a day—and is analyzed. Reports are then pushed to the end users based on how the metrics are performing compared to business rule thresholds. These reports are typically very specific and provide the end user with an action that needs to be taken rather than presenting the end user with the requested data set from the single application reporting site. This is operational Business Intelligence.

There is a lesson I learned as a child that I continue to re-learn throughout my life (yes, I'm slow). When I was growing up, I mowed lawns to make money. One of the lawns I mowed was very large, it had a lot of trees and I had to mow the entire lawn with a push mower. Thankfully, the owners only had me mow the back yard, they mowed their small front yard on their own. One day I mowed the back yard and the mower wouldn't turn off when I finished. I decided I would just keep pushing until the mower ran out of gas and thought the owners would be thrilled to come home and have their front yard mowed too. So I mowed the front lawn as fast as I could, hoping with every step that the mower would run out of gas, not considering if I was doing a quality job or not, just thinking it was nice of me to do something extra. Eventually the mower did run out of gas, I cleaned up and went home.

The next day my mom told me we needed to go visit the owners of this lawn, that they wanted to talk to me. I was sure they were going to praise me for the extra work I had done! When we got there I found out it was the opposite. They took my mom and I out and showed us how poor the front lawn looked. They explained that I only did the back yard because they liked to have the front lawn grow longer and they used a mulching mower so it would look nicer. I had used the wrong tool and worked too fast, and it showed.

The next time you feel like you are going above and beyond helping someone, consider whether or not you are crossing the boundary to the front yard. Understand your area of expertise and focus on being the best, that's where you have the right tools, skills and knowledge and where others expect you to put forth your best effort. If someone asks you for help with something that isn't within your boundary, let them know that they need to talk to the person in charge of the front yard. They will be much more satisfied with the solution if they get it from the right person and in the end you both will be happy with the outcome. We are all best suited to use our strengths, not our weaknesses!

According to Climate Savers Computing there are three simple steps you can do to be more eco-friendly with your computer at home and at work.

1. Use power management. They say half of the energy consumed by a desktop computer is wasted as heat.  Power management features are easy to implement and can save nearly half a ton of CO2 in a year.

2. The next time you’re in the market for a new computer, buy one that has the Energy Star seal of approval. The most energy efficient computers are Apple Laptops, called MacBooks. Simply by purchasing Energy Star computers and equipment could save more than $1.8 billion in energy costs over the next 5 years.

3. Finally, invest in a “smart power strip.” These are power strips that will automatically switch the devices on or off depending on how you have them plugged in. They have an “always on” section. When electricity is not needed by peripherals not in the “always on” section, then power is cut. For example, your printer would not draw any power until your computer sent something to be printed, then the smart strip would power up. Climate Savers Computing says you can save as much as 10% in your energy bill by using a smart strip.

One final tidbit: there is a font that uses “up to 20% less ink” called Ecofont. This will save you in ink cartridges and ink toner which means fewer empty cartridges going to a landfill.

This post is part of our Earth Day series. Other posts in this series are:

• The Truth About Eco-Friendly Web Hosting
• The Truth About Eco-Friendly Web Design
• Easiest Ways to Go Green at Work

Type “eco-friendly web hosting” into Google and you will get a plethora of sites claiming to be green and eco-friendly. Primarily these companies do little in the arena of energy conservation and a lot in the arena of marketing. The buzz words “green” and “eco-friendly” are big sellers these days, and just about everyone has jumped on the bandwagon.

I did a little research on eco-friendly web hosting. The easiest thing to do, and the preferred method for most of the companies in your Google search results, is to purchase carbon offsets.  This means they pay someone else to plant trees or use renewable energy sources instead of doing it themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, but to me it feels like cheating; plus, there’s no guarantee that the people they are paying to reduce their carbon emissions are actually doing so. It is, however, better than doing nothing.

Jelecos is more eco-friendly due to our advanced efforts in energy efficiency at our data center. Our first step is maximizing server usage by implementing virtualization. So, instead of having 10 servers each only using 5-10% of their capacity, using electricity and producing heat 24/7, we have one server running at 50-90% capacity, using the same amount of electricity and producing about the same amount of heat. This allows us to have the same number of web sites running on fewer servers. To date, we have replaced 20 less efficient servers with five! Not only does this save us in electricity usage, it also means less energy spent on cooling.

Ultimately, virtualizing reduces our space footprint and our overall Watt usage at the data center. This reduces our power usage and in turn reduces the amount of cooling required by the data center. But, we didn’t stop there. We also made the cooling system more efficient. Along with other changes, we implemented hot and cold aisles. This means you keep the cold and hot air separated by enclosing the server cabinets and forcing the hot air into the ceiling (where it wants to go anyway) cooling it and returning it through the floor to cool the servers. This simple change showed a 60% reduction on the air handlers at the data center. We continue to monitor the energy usage by server rack to ensure we maximizing our energy usage.

Overall, a good eco-friendly web hosting company will track and actively reduce their actual energy consumption rather than just purchasing carbon offsets. In reality, more energy is consumed by excess power on your personal computer. We’ll examine that topic next!

This post is part of our Earth Day series.  Other posts in this series are:

• The Truth About Eco-Friendly Web Design
• Easiest Ways to Go Green at Work
• Three Computer Energy Savers

About a year ago, I heard that if Google changed its background from white to black, from a site called Blackle, it would save some 750 Megawatt-hours of energy in a year. This interesting tidbit stuck in my head and I assumed that the darker a web site is the less energy it consumes and therefore the more eco-friendly it is. I knew I needed to investigate this claim.

For the most part, the amount of energy used can be traced back to the color the monitor is displaying. Numerous places in the blogosphere cite The Department of Energy’s statistics on how much electricity a CRT monitor uses to display a solid color. It ranges from 59 watts for black to 74 watts for white (although a thorough search could not find this information on the DOE web site). Some clever bloke even designed an eco-friendly palette that is both attractive and eco-friendly. His blog site uses this pallet.

I also came across multiple people who decided to put this theory to the test. They all found basically the same thing: CRT Monitors have varying energy usage while Organic LCD Monitors do not. The one stat that was frequently quoted was that in 2006 to 2007 about 25% of computers still used CRT Monitors. I have two comments about that: first, I could not verify that statistic and second, that was at least two years ago (if it was true) which is an eon for computer technology.

So, what’s the truth about eco-friendly web design? That color doesn’t really matter. The real savings (of both Energy and the Earth) happen behind the scenes at your hosting company and on your own desktop or laptop.

This post is part of our Earth Day series.  Other posts in this series are:

• The Truth About Eco-Friendly Web Hosting
• Easiest Ways to Go Green at Work
• Three Computer Energy Savers

In honor of Earth Day our posts this week will have an Earth-Friendly theme. To start off the week, I've put together a short list of the easiest things you can do at work to be more eco-friendly. They are small, easy changes that add up to big returns!

Turn out the lights An empty room with a light on is wasted energy. Turn out the lights when you leave the restroom or meeting rooms. Adding task lighting at your desk and turning out over-head lights is another great way to save some green!

Use reuseable containers instead of disposables Keep rubbish out of landfills by keeping your own reusable plate, bowl, silverware and glass at your desk.

Bring your lunch to work Instead of driving home or driving to a restaurant bring your own in reusable containers that you can take home and refill each day!

Set your default printer settings to duplex First of all, try to get by without printing. But when you do print, make sure you are using as little paper as possible! Setting your default printer settings to duplex saves every time you print!

Turn off (at least) your monitor when you leave for the day Even better is getting a smart strip, but the easiest is just shutting off the power

Bring a plant to work Plants are natural air filters and produce fresh oxygen! Plus they add ambience! The three best plants for offices are the Areca Palm, the Snake Plant (a.k.a. Mother-in-law's tongue) and the Money Plant (a.k.a. philodendron).

This post is part of our Earth Day series.  Other posts in this series are:

• The Truth About Eco-Friendly Web Hosting
• The Truth About Eco-Friendly Web Design
• Three Computer Energy Savers

Such a loaded question. How many times have you gone from office to office trying to find someone with a halfway reasonable lunch idea - preferably, someone already committed to going out and getting said lunch, or at the very least someone who can be talked into fetching it by cashing in a favor, bribery, blackmail or any other marginally effective means. Seems like a daily event in our offices. Fortunately, both of our offices are located near some quality dining establishments, so nobody really ever goes hungry for too long. Here are a few of the always reliable favorites. If you’re in the Omaha area, make it a task on your list to check one of these local places out:

• PepperJax  Arguably the best philly cheesesteak in Omaha. Make sure you order it “fireballed”
• Shucks   Attached to a fresh fish market (yes, planes fly to Nebraska daily), this place has the best oysters and fish ‘n’ chips we can find.
• Bailey’s Ironically, owned by the same crew as Shucks.  The Reuben is nothing short of amazing. (did you know the Reuben was invented in Omaha?)
• McKenna’s Blues, Booze and BBQ Friday take out: Softshell Spider Sandwich and a cup of gumbo – delightful
• Stokes Bar and Grill Sharon’s chicken enchiladas – impressive and only about 1600 calories (we think)

Of course, there are many more Jelecos team favorites. Food is always a central topic of conversation. We just completed the first round of the biggest loser – I knew it was over because there were extra cheeseburgers on the “community food” table this week. If you have any tried-and-true methods of conning your colleagues into running out for lunch, please let us know…we’re running low.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “operational business intelligence” thrown around by the water cooler. My guess is you’re not quite sure what it is; I’m here to help you understand. I’ll assume that you have a working knowledge of business intelligence and the role it plays in an organization (if not, read one of the earlier blogs about Business Intelligence). What follows is a comparison of the typical BI application compared to the typical operational BI application.

In a nutshell, operational BI employs the same classic business intelligence methods to manage and optimize daily business processes. Classic business intelligence uses tactical, strategic and predictive analytics to assist upper management with business decisions. The reports from a classic BI system analyze data and identify trends; it does this on multiple levels – customer, company, factory, or product – and it enables strategic decision making to continue positive trends and curb negative trends. Operational BI, on the other hand, uses the same tactical, strategic and predictive analytics but does so at the business process level and delivers information to the frontline workers who then take action to improve the process. These improvements then lead to the desired trend that is then reported on in classic BI reports. Operational BI improves or even steers an operational process while the process is still ongoing while classic BI reflects the trends at the end of the process.

Below is a comparison that helps illustrate the differences:

Classic Business Intelligence		Operational Business Intelligence
Reports meant for senior management	vs.	Reports meant for front-line and supervisory positions and executives
Data collected after the process is completed	vs.	Data collected during the process
Outcomes crucial for analytics	vs.	Analyzes and drives intra-process details
Dashboards at end of the month	vs.	Scorecards daily or weekly
Reports on how many late shipments there were last month	vs.	Alerts supervisors to potential late shipments to prevent them
Historical time-frame	vs.	Current time

Hopefully this helps answer some of your questions about operational business intelligence. Organizations that are able to successfully support both a classic and an operational BI system will maximize their business performance. These organizations will improve processes before they lead to negative trends which in turn saves time and money; two critical success factors.

Philanthropy has always been more than a line item in our financial statements. It’s one of my favorite things about being an employee of Jelecos - being able to witness and take an active role in giving back to community organizations – Nebraska Golf Classic, Project Harmony, Nebraska AIDS Project, Girls Inc., The Rose Theater, to quickly name a few. In light of that, I wanted to share some of my experience on a handful of best practices that nonprofit sites should follow.

Cater to the people
Who is your audience? What are they looking for? Are the visitors to your Web site in search of information, entertainment, involvement or are they there to make a purchase or donation? This is an essential question to answer so you can cater and hone your content to the type of visitors the site will attract. Put yourself in their shoes and brainstorm the types of questions they will be looking for your site to answer.

Information Clarity
Now that you have defined your audience, how are you going to organize the information in way that is easy for them to obtain? Have clear and effective calls to action on every page – if you offer online donation, can you easily see the donate button on every page? Create short and scannable pages. If you need to present a lot of information, start off at a 10,000 ft. view and let them drill down.  Make sure to include subheadings and lists to help the reader scan through to the information they’re searching for – Internet users don’t like reading large blocks of text.

Tell a Story
Storytelling is such an amazing way to get your message across. Make sure that it’s stressing the impact that your organization has made. In this way, you are using the voices and words of the those you’re impacting.  Some pretty clear examples of storytelling that are out in the world right now is kiva.org. According to their site, “Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.” After a quick tour of their site, you quickly see that each entrepreneur has a story and how your micro-investment will be put to good use.

As I said, these are just a handful of the best practices to keep in mind with your site. If you’re interested in discussing how we could help you organization grow on the Web, schedule a meeting with our team!

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox post on March 30, 2009 should be required reading for any organization taking online donations.

Like most usability tests, his return results are pretty common sense – at least in hindsight.

Potential donors want to understand the purpose of the organization and how donations will be used. If that information is not readily available, people will often pass. Of course, frequently an online donor is an existing supporter looking for an easier mechanism to donate; either way, there are still several items that donation sites need to get right.

Most importantly, the donation area needs to be easily identified. If taking donations is one of the Web site’s most important goals, the link to donations should be one of the first things a visitor sees. It should clearly stand out as a call to action, but it should not look like an advertisement (people subconsciously ignore page elements that appear to be ads).

The site also needs to make the process as quick and painless as possible. This includes form building best practices such as only asking for the information you really need and making the form as simple as it can possibly be.

Finally, if you are affiliated with a national or international organization, visitors to your site must be able to clearly identify that affiliation. This provides credibility to the local chapter site by helping to answer the “what is your purpose” question.

For more information about this topic, check out Nielsen’s Alertbox post - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nonprofit-donations.html.

204.4 lbs. 20.44 lbs.  30.66 lbs.  10%.  15%.  180 lbs.  36.  38.  Into the 170's… 

Oh yeah, $650. 

These were all numbers that have run through my head in the last 12 weeks.  I started in December thinking I would like to lose some weight but didn't know much about exactly how I would get this done.  I didn't know how much I thought I wanted to lose; just lose weight.  This would have been my first mistake in my diet - my first diet, ever.  Similar to many stories, I was 146 pounds when I graduated from high school in 1988.  21 years later, I weighed in at 204.4 to open our Biggest Loser contest at Jelecos.  There was 13 of us who contributed to a 'winner take all' pot of $650.  I thought I had a chance, but never having been on a diet before, I entered with a little hesitation.

Where I Started
I got to 204.4 and a 38" waist, my heaviest ever, by eating anything I wanted, as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted.  I was active, sort of.  I rode my bike from time to time on a 3.5 mile route in our neighborhood - in the summer, when I had time.  I played a little golf, but always used a cart.  I used to play baseball in an over-30 league, but that was a few years ago.  I walked through car shows in the summer, but usually carrying a beer or stopping for a burger along the way.  I guess I didn't get nearly as much exercise as I thought I did.

I would clear a plate of brownies or cookies, or could eat a good portion of a cake without any trouble or worries about my weight or health.  I just figured “I am active enough, it will be OK.”  I ate ice cream of some sort every day, EVERY DAY.  My favorite was a large Goodrich chocolate malt.  

My Goals and How I Met Them
I wanted to lose one more pound than I needed to win.  I knew that it would probably take at least 10% to win, or 20.4 pounds lost.  I wondered if I would need to lose 15% to win, which was 30.6 and thought that would be tough in 12 weeks.  10% put me at 184 or so.  That would be great.  I started really well.  I was excited and this contest was just the thing I needed to get this done.  And there was some sort of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  I figured something out right away.  I do not enjoy exercising a lot so it would have to be done by eating better.  If I eat right and lose weight, great.  If I force myself to exercise, that is just all the better and more weight loss, not to mention the ability to get into an exercise routine.  I tapered a little as I started allowing a brownie back in or a Girl Scout cookie; damn thin mints!  I learned the art of moderation.  Well I started losing weight and now my pants were too big; I went from a 38 inch waist to a 36 inch waist.  I drank a lot of water and no soda.  I ate multiple times per day but smaller portions.  This helped my metabolism work harder and burn the fat, I think.  I passed the 10% mark and was hovering around the low 180's for a while and thought that if I worked a little harder, I could be in the 170's.  My goal changed multiple times.  First it was 10%, then I wanted to get into all my suits that I was too big for, then into the 170's.  It was fun to have a moving target, as long as it was a better goal and not a consolation goal if I started to fail.  I finished at 179.2 on April 2nd and went to get a Goodrich Chocolate Malt, a small, but it was the only thing I wanted or missed during the 12 weeks.
 
The Hardest Thing to Change
The hardest thing for me to change has been not eating ice cream.  I have figured out that I can have a brownie or a small bit of cake and ice cream at a birthday party but not 15 brownies or cookies.  I still would like to have a bunch of brownies, but I know now that this is what got me to where I was.

The other day I was leaving the office and had my coat and shoes on and my laptop bag over my shoulder with files in it.  I know how much 25 pounds 'seems like' but I had no real idea how much weight was now shed from my body.  That laptop bag was heavy and when stepping on the scale, I weighed in at 203.2; 1.2 pounds less than I weighed in on January 6 with no shoes, laptop bag, or phone.  I was amazed when I could hold in my hand, my lost weight.  I feel better and want to stay this way.  Now I need to convince myself that exercise is not a bad thing and get moving.

The Contest
So, I am lighter, have less body fat, feel better, and have a little more money in my pocket on top of it all.  Two great things happened in this contest.  First, by virtue of me being on a diet or focusing more on what I am eating, meant that we ate meals a little differently at home.  I have a friend whose wife is a vegetarian and we tease him how that makes him a vegetarian.  My wife also participated without making a lot of effort and was able to lose weight.  Second, my brother who is 6'4" and has been skinny his whole life also found himself fatter than he used to be.  This is probably attributed to his new cabin and the kegerator he installed out there.  He started after I did and has lost 24 pounds to date.  Not to boast, but I felt like I was the impetus to both losing weight and more importantly, eating more healthily. 

The Money
For my efforts, I won the pot of $650 and I will be giving the money to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  Incidentally, I am planning a huge fundraiser barbeque this summer with all proceeds to go to CF.  It will begin with a hot rods/bikes cruise and then we’ll head to the party to watch some bands, eat some food, maybe have a little beer, and maybe a few more little items I am working on.  All of my coworkers are invited and encouraged to bring friends.  It should be a fun way to have a lot of people in one place helping support a great organization. 

At the beginning of the year, 13 Jelecos employees joined together and launched the Jelecos biggest loser contest. Since then, every Tuesday, we grabbed our weigh-in buddy and found the official scale for our weigh-in.

The rules were simple:

1. Surgery for weight-loss was not allowed
2. Two missed weigh-ins meant you were out of the contest
3. The winner was the person who lost the greatest percentage of weight

Amy started and coordinated the contest. She sent us reminders and encouraging articles to keep us going throughout along with an update every Tuesday with each contestant’s percent loss. I think we were all gung-ho in the beginning but as a clear winner emerged before the half-way point, we lost some of the wind in our sails. But, we all continued to the end.

Congratulations to “The Biggest Loser” at Jelecos: Cale Furstenberg! Cale lost an astonishing 12.3 % of his body weight! He earned the kitty that we all contributed to when we joined the contest. Our next post will be Cale’s story and how he managed to win this contest.

In total we lost an average of 9.96 pounds per week added up to a total of 120 pounds. That's the equivalent of losing a whole person in weight! Everyone in the contest learned better habits and are ready for Round Two!

There’s the old adage “Give credit where credit is due”; I feel that we’ve always made a concerted effort at recognizing the efforts of groups and individuals who have performed well at their jobs. But it’s an area where an organization can always improve, right? This year, we rolled out a new way to formally recognize these employees – we call them the Jelees – think Oscars, Grammys, Dundees (for all you Office fans).

The Jelees consist of a handful of categories: teamwork, customer service, innovation, continued excellence and efficiency.  We feel that these specific categories exemplify the characteristics that have made Jelecos, as a technology services company, what it is today and what it will continue to be for years to come.

The recipients of each award are announced at the end of the year at our holiday party.  Last year we presented 4 awards:
       Continued Excellence: Renee White
       Continued Excellence: Theresa Williams
       Customer Service: Greg Mooney
       Teamwork: Ryan Broermann

If you have had the opportunity to work with any of these individuals, I think you would agree that each was deserving of being recognized.

Oh, one last award that I forgot to mention… the Lifetime Achievement Award. With every other lifetime achievement award, a video is necessary to recap the recipient’s achievements and to have those who’ve worked with him/her speak to their contributions to society.

So without further ado, the 2008 Jelecos Lifetime Achievement recipient:




Web 2.0 is not a recent term, it was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to describe the transformation of Internet use. It’s a collective term that describes how usage of the Web has changed since its inception.

Originally, the Internet was used primarily for information that may or may not have originated in digital format and sharing it; for example, scanned documents, photographs or a simple web page that announced an event. The interaction with visitors was reading and viewing. Gradually, that model of the web grew into what is now called Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is about collaboration and Web communities like social networking sites, Wikipedia, blogs and RSS feeds. It’s also about using the Web as a platform for applications, as opposed to using your desktop computer as the platform. Many applications required a download and installation of software on your desktop computer, and some had an optional Web component. Web 2.0 is only that optional Web component – but now as the full application. Think of the evolution of products like TurboTax, iTunes and email.

Visitors to your Web site now expect to interact with or contribute to your site in some way: through a blog conversation or posting, a review of a product, or by subscribing to content that is regularly and frequently updated. It’s more about the users owning data on the site and exercising control over that data, or at least being able to give their opinion about it.

O'Reilly describes classic Web 2.0-oriented applications as those that exist only on the Internet and derive their effectiveness from inter-human connections. His examples include Craigslist, eBay and Facebook; I would add the recently popular Twitter.

I hope this helps to shed a little light on Web 2.0; let me know if it helped!

I enjoy telling people I’ve just met that I am in “Business Intelligence.” I watch their face as they try to decipher the term. They know about the Central Intelligence Agency, they understand Military Intelligence, and of course they know James Bond, but they have never heard of “Business Intelligence.” I think they envision me running around office buildings in stiletto heels flashing my BI badge and acting cool while I sniff out wrong doers.

In reality, Business Intelligence is probably the most powerful tool a business can have. It utilizes applications, technologies, practices and processes in order to provide the information necessary to make competent, fact-based decisions in a timely manner. In short, it is the thumb on the company’s pulse. The term Business Intelligence is an umbrella term that includes other umbrella terms; most notably: Business Analytics, Data Mining, Decision Support, and Enterprise Reporting. In my opinion this over arching definition can cause confusion.

Frequently, at the core of BI is a Data Warehouse or Data Mart. These relational databases contain either multiple subject data (data warehouse) or single-subject data (data mart) optimized for data storage (as opposed to supporting a transactional application). The subjects depend on the business and are typically Sales, Marketing or Production. A reporting application gathers data from the data base and distributes it through reports, dashboards or scorecards. Distribution can be any number of venues: a Web or OLAP application to view and manipulate reports, via an email address, blackberry or printed and manually distributed.

A huge value of having a BI program is that the decision makers in the company are receiving the data they need in a timely manner. I’ve helped companies with legacy systems where they don’t see fiscal year-end data until several months after the end of the fiscal year. The BI program delivers fiscal year-end data and analysis the day after the year ends or closes. Fraud prevention obviously benefits from receiving timely results. By setting thresholds of a normal transaction, when those thresholds are exceeded then the information is delivered immediately and action can be taken.

Everyone in your organization can benefit from a BI program. It’s clear to see how Executives benefit by making business-wide decisions with a concise Dashboard, for example, but a very popular trend in the BI industry right now is what’s called Operational Business Intelligence. This addresses daily operations and delivers reports in real-time or near real-time to all levels of employees to improve business performance. Information Builders has a very good flash graphic that depicts who uses and benefits from BI.

In a future blog, I will discuss the steps needed to implement a BI program. I hope the information I provided here has helped you understand why you’d want to implement BI.  Please comment if you have any questions.

Is it a distraction or a team builder? Who are we kidding? It’s both, it’s necessary.

With the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament soon approaching, Jelecos would like to challenge our clients and friends to a friendly competition. The winner earns bragging rights for the year and free drinks at 7th Annual DMS/Jelecos Customer Appreciation Golf Outing.

To make the scoring unbiased, we will use the CBS Sports Bracket Manager site and their Bracket Challenge Rules.  Sign up and setup your personal bracket or build a department bracket with your coworkers and friends. We recommend you read Bracketology for help setting up your bracket. Once you are signed in, join the Jelecos group with the password Partner.

Check back in and see how you're doing at the Jelecos Team Site.

Tips and trash talk welcome…Good Luck!

So I’m fifty years old and I am the co-founder of two technology companies which are 10 years old, as of March 1, 2009. And I am writing a “blog”.  I have no background in technology, I have no traditional college degrees and I’m not an expert on all we do or how we do it.  So what’s up with that?  Let me share a little secret: it is all about the people.

On March 1, 1999, I walked into a building at 69th and Grover in Omaha, Nebraska and officially opened Data Media Solutions Inc. (DMS).  My wife, Heidi, our two daughters, Kiley and Kristy, and I made up Team DMS.  I recall phoning Heidi that first morning and telling her I had never- I was forty at the time- felt more exhilarated in my life. We did not have a Web site or Internet access.  We had two computers, not networked.  We’d never heard of such a thing.  We were ill prepared for success.

So you have a forty year old, former meter reader, former janitor, former laborer, former coal handler, former heavy equipment operator, former glass salesman, former warehouse manager entering a business most competent folks would say I had no business entering.   So how’d we get this far?  Why have we succeeded, to the degree we have (we have a long way to go), when most small business start ups fail?

Why?

People!

Now I could end this blog here and you could probably figure out what I mean.  But, I will share what my experiences have taught me and why “people” are the keys to our success.

DMS is a provider of all things technological, from a floppy disk to a server.  Remember the floppy? We used to sell them by the pallet. Ask your dad if you’re not sure what they were.  The “floppy” is a perfect vehicle for illustrating this point. We sold floppy disks to people who soon purchased CDs.  We sold truckloads of VHS tapes to folks who then switched to DVD.  We sold them too; as well as DAT tapes and all sorts of hardware and software necessary to make “peoples’” businesses viable.

I digress. Oh yeah, people. There are so many.  But we’ll keep it simple.  Let’s start with Bob.  He introduced me to Allen. Allen helped me put the organizational parts of DMS together.  Our first client, Carrie:  She purchased a Zip drive and some Zip disks. Tim, he told me that any business worth owning needed to be part of the total fabric of our community.  We are.  Larry (not his real name), he introduced me to Leon just prior to heading to prison.  Leon taught us what computer networking was, and high-speed, and the Internet and so on and so forth.  He also became the co-founding partner of Jelecos; an acronym for Jeff and Leon’s Companies.  Theresa saved the whole enchilada by coming in several years ago and cleaning up the mess that people like me make in business.  People like John, Renee, Craig, Andy, Todd, Kristyl, Kristy, Jules and more contributed.  Oh, and Jack.  He thinks he’s a person.

I am told that today people working on a four year degree in IT will be taught things in year one which will be obsolete by year three. With scenarios like this unfolding across the world it is easy to discern that people are the key to success.

This is part one of a series of ramblings from an old man - old man by this industry’s standard.  Stay tuned for part two…

Employee job satisfaction is very important to Jelecos along with a good work/life balance. Our company motto is "Faith, Self, Family, Career" in that order. In this difficult time of cost cutting, it is important to help employees and their families handle stress. In the Sunday print edition of The Omaha World Herald Jelecos was featured in an article about our focus in this area.

We have started a book club here at Jelecos.  Participation is voluntary, but the idea is to choose a book that will apply to each department with a topic we can learn from and then have a group discussion about it.

The first book chosen was Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.   Filled with humor, wit and insight the 12 chapters, or 185 pages, of the second edition made me think about how I should not be thinking.  The topic of the book is web usability; an important but often overlooked portion of a web site design.

This first chapter of the book, also entitled Don’t Make Me Think, starts out describing the main topic of the book, and wastes no words on useless information (noted as a future chapter).  When the user of a Web site has to think about how to proceed (when links aren't clear, if the site design changes, or complicated searching) this causes internal chatter, slowing the user down and giving them second thoughts that the site they are on may not be providing the services they need.

The author explains that what a site is designed for is never how it is used.  People don’t read pages, they scan them; users don’t make the best choice, they select the first “good enough” solution.   Happy text should be eliminated and navigation should be clear and implicit.

       “In general, if you’re a designer and you think a visual cue is sticking out like a sore thumb, it probably means you need to make it twice as prominent.”

With plenty of graphics and screen shots for examples and comics to lighten the mood, the book is a quick read.   Even though it is concise, it will give insight to how an expert judges web design and will adjust your thoughts and impressions as well.  I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has thought about website design from a web designer or developer on up to that level of management who just wants to make one small change to the home page.

The National Bureau of Economic Research officially put the start of the current economic decline in December 2007. Since then a crescendo of media attention to interest rates, unemployment and the imminent and complete failure of key industries has reached a fever pitch. Panic appears to be settling in the minds of most businesses, so it seems prudent to investigate the role Business Intelligence plays during the economic slowdown.

Business intelligence is the process of gathering and storing information about a business. It includes a broad range of applications and technologies to assist in gathering, storing, analyzing, and distributing that information so decision makers can make more efficient and timely business decisions. The over-arching purpose and goal of Business Intelligence is to provide the data and analysis necessary to the right people within the business or industry so timely action can be taken and the best-informed decisions can be made.

A recession is a period of decline in the national economy characterized by a general business slump along with falling prices and unemployment. For businesses, this means demand drops as consumers lose their jobs and lose faith in the economy and that naturally results in a decline in production and supply.

Businesses need to persevere throughout this period of decline, which calls for a proactive strategy. If a business cannot seize opportunities or maintain their customer base they will fail in the economic downturn; insight into key performance indicators is critical to survival in the current climate. A good business strategy starts with the right technology and includes components such as analysis, reporting and planning through the use of Dashboards, Scorecards and predictive analytics. Aligning the strategy with Business Intelligence tools will provide visibility into key business drivers and maximize efficiency; it is essential that time be spent on analysis, forecasting and decision making rather than the compiling and reconciling of data.

At the same time, some cost cutting is inevitable. With a suitable Business Intelligence program, management can make tough calls regarding assets, resources, products or customer relationships that may no longer be sustainable. The ability to assess how the downturn is affecting key performance indicators and adjust accordingly will keep the business healthy and will position the company to prevail when the economy eventually improves.

The bottom line is that when it comes to Business Intelligence programs, organizations should consider investing in or expanding an existing program rather than cutting back. A Business Intelligence program is an essential business tool that will guide effective decision-making and success particularly during an economic slump. The most reliable way to find trends and deviations from the norm and rapidly take action is with the help of an effective Business Intelligence program. If you have the right tools, you will survive the recession.

If you think members of the media might be browsing your site to research a potential news story, you should take a look at research recently released by the Nielsen / Norman group.

They worked with 40 journalists around the world – doing user tests on 42 Web sites that were varied in size and industry.

Some things I took away from the study were:

• Journalists use old computers, so avoid cutting-edge plugins and make sure the site works well on older browsers (Nielsen / Norman suggest making sure they work on software that is 2 versions behind).
• Journalists prefer standard html pages to PDF files.
• Logically, journalists are skeptical about content on a corporate site, so make sure you link to any stories published in independent publications to increase your credibility.
• Make sure it is easy to find the Public Relations area of the site and make it very easy for a journalist to find a PR contact.
• Like most people, journalists ignore fluff text – make sure the area where you are discussing facts and figures is devoid of that type of content.
• Provide useful content that the journalist can use in his or her story – including facts and figures, illustrations, relevant photography, etc.
• Work hard to increase your rankings in Google in the areas you want to push with the press. Like most people, journalists begin by searching there.

Most of the bullets in the list above represent widely-known facts about how the general public uses the web. People are generally driven for a particular purpose when they’re online. Journalists are the same way. They just happen to be on deadline and they are determining whether they should cover your story.

Since a PR department’s job is often to be a resource for journalists covering your organization, make sure your Web site is helping – not hindering – you in these efforts.

Even though Jelecos has clients spread across the United States, we’ve always been heavily involved in the Omaha business community. We decided to make a statement about our commitment to Omaha by including the Chamber’s “Say Yes, Buy O!” logo in one of our new advertising pieces. The Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce recently featured us in an article about this effort.

You can read the entire article on the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce Web site!

Every once in a while, our team gets a little restless and gets the itch to have some fun together after work. What this typically means is a scheduled “Game Night”. It’s a pretty simple concept; a few of us bring in video game consoles – Wiis, Playstation 3’s and Xboxes. Add some wings, pizza, your favorite after work beverage and some fun and interesting things can occur. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are mainstays, if not expected. Wii Sports, Mario Kart and some sort of dodge ball game round out the usual suspects. It’s nice to be able to walk away from your computer at the end of the day, turn off the Blackberry and walk into a conference room and see the president of the company jamming out to some of the greatest songs that 80’s hair bands had to offer.

Of all these popular games that have multi-million dollar R & D and marketing campaigns behind them, one surprising dark horse emerged as a new office favorite. PAIN is a downloadable game from the PS3 store. Its premise – hurl the protagonist through a number of living environments via a giant-sized slingshot.  Each shot creates some interesting and humorous results as the character is slammed into buildings, billboards and smokestacks. At its very least, the physical torture provides some great entertainment - not only for the person holding the controller, but also for the revelrous onlookers.

I can’t help but stand Rock Band and PAIN side by side. On one hand you have a game where you need the guitars, microphones and drums to get the full effect; overall investment = approx. $200. On the other hand you have a $10 download from the online store. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Rock Band type games. In some ways, it’s probably not even a fair comparison, but it’s always nice to see examples when simplicity wins over and less = more.

How usable is your Web site?  It is important to have a good looking site, but it is more important to have a usable one.  If your customers visit your Web site and cannot accomplish what they came to accomplish, they may not return to your site.  I have compiled what I believe to be the top 5 guidelines to a more usable site.

1. Navigation should have consistent placement and should be predictable in nature.  You do not want your users guessing how the navigation works or where it might show up on different pages.   Users need the navigation to browse the site, so you want them to be able to do so easily.  Typically the navigation is located along the top of the page or in a column on the left side of the page.
2. Recognizable Links need to be easily and quickly recognized.  Designate one color for links that will stand out from the rest of the layout colors.  Underlining links is an easy way to make links stand out and is widely understood.  It is also good practice to have the link color change once the link has been used.  This makes it easier for the user to know if they have already visited a page which reduces wasted time on your site.
3. Error Messages should help the user resolve the error quickly.  The error message should tell the user exactly what needs to be fixed to continue.  Try and keep all error messages in the same location on all pages so the user does not have to search for the error.  The message should also stand out from the rest of the layout.  Red is the color that is most often used for error text.
4. Forms should only include information that is necessary.  Users do not want to fill out a bunch of unnecessary information.  If you want to have some optional fields, group them together and place them at the end of the form.  Let the user know this is optional so they can skip it if they want.  It is also good practice to group similar fields together.  This makes the form easier to understand.  Required fields should be marked and there should be a legend telling the user what that mark means.
5. Easily Scan-able Pages are the most user-friendly.  Users do not want to spend a lot of time reading large blocks of text.  It is best to have smaller blocks of text that can be scanned to find the information the user is looking for.  Using this technique, you can also use white space to draw attention to key information on a page.

If you keep these guidelines in mind when creating a site, they should help make your site more user-friendly.  Usability cannot be summed up in just five simple steps, but these are some good guidelines to start with to point you in the right direction.

The return on implementing a Business Intelligence solution is a frequent concern for companies who are considering an implementation. After working in BI for a few years, I have seen the returns that companies reap. They can be concisely grouped into a handful of categories and whittled into a single statement:

The business value of BI is the insight and analysis provided in a timely manner regarding markets, customers, vendors and internal processes. Decisions based on the analyses will lead to higher profit margins, increased revenue, reduced cost plus more satisfied and loyal customers and a competitive advantage which leads to greater market share.

Better Customer Relationships
BI opens the door to understanding and predicting the behavior, wishes and possibilities of the customer and that leads to new revenue streams, a better company image and targeted, more successful marketing strategies. You are able to meet or exceed your customer expectations based on factual information and greater customer satisfaction.

Improved Productivity
BI can have an enormous impact on productivity. No longer are there pockets of information in the form of Access or Excel that produce reports a few weeks after data is collected. Instead of manipulating data manually, employees access a report that takes just a few seconds to run.

Performance measurement and monitoring sometimes referred to as “Operational Business Intelligence” leads to improved business processes, greater satisfaction for employees over their work and optimal time management.

Timely, Improved Decision Making
BI makes it easy for decision-makers to get critical information anytime, anywhere through the Web, mobile device or email. Cutting down on reaction time turns into dollar-savings and gives you a competitive advantage. Fraud prevention that used to take weeks to track now can be monitored throughout the day and identify fraudulent activity instantly.

Single Version of the Truth
When analytics lead to decisions, data integrity is paramount. Decision-makers must be confident that the decisions they are making are based on valid data. Moreover, having a single set of definitions and terminology improves communication and leads to more consistent, efficient decisions.

Data Visualization
Data visualization is analysis everyone in the enterprise can understand. Employees across the enterprise can easily keep track of key performance indicators and gain a better understanding of how the business or the individual is performing against the business strategies. When Information in easy to interact with, people are better able to analyze and evaluate it, resulting in well-informed, insightful decision making.

Enterprise-wide Data Share
BI lets you share and manage information in a security-enhanced web environment with a central location to monitor your reports and analyze your data. You can combine and cross-reference important and valuable data currently being captured by internal and transactional systems to enhance your reporting. You are able to produce analyses and reports on all aspects of the business.

Welcome to the official Jelecos blog. My name is Jules and I am not only a Business Intelligence Engineer, I am also the Jelecos Blog Editor in Chief. I’m excited for the opportunity to expose you to the vast range of expertise we have at Jelecos. In the coming weeks you will find posts that cover just about anything that affects our company, our industry, or our customers. We’ll be keeping you informed with announcements, major company news and even some peeks behind the scenes. So, please bookmark or subscribe to our blog and join in on the conversation. Our authors are all employees of Jelecos and would love to respond to your comments and questions.