March 10th, 2010
I have read many times where offering a user too many options in software, can be a bad thing. When I look at other software in the industry it seems like many companies don’t care about how many options they offer. Take IE (Internet Explorer) for example. Just go to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced. Over 3/4 of the options listed I have no idea what they do and why I should ever change them. Obviously too many options do not apply here.
Is having too many options in software development really a bad thing?
Tags: automotive, software development, software options
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March 9th, 2010
I have had several discussions with other people in the industry as to whether or not paying for logo items is good for business.
You see them everywhere. Hats, shirts, golf balls, pens, etc. all sporting the the logo of some company.
The questions remains, does this make good business sense? Does it make good business sense for a software development company?
I have yet to find someone who can give me answer. Sure they all will say “Yes marketing is a good thing”, but I am trying to determine if the money spent on logo items is a good Return on Investment (ROI).
Give my your thoughts.
Tags: automotive, marketing, software development
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March 8th, 2010
Automotive Market has had major ups and downs in the last 5 years. Since we write software for the automotive market, this is a major concern for us.
We look at this as an opportunity to enhance our software to give dealerships an edge. The more I think about software and the more features we can add to it, the better it will be for everyone.
We added features into our software that people did not know even existed. Then one day I get a call from a customer telling me they found this feature in the software and it is saving him hours a week in work. He had no clue the feature was in there.
At first I was extremely happy for the customer. One because he is getting a better product that he originally thought and two because we were doing our job of making him more efficient.
Well after the initial excitement wore off, I began to think about how many more features might be in the software that people are not even aware of. How can we as a company teach people about everything the software can do for them? Is this possible without taking lots of time on our staff and the customer’s staff?
These are questions we are trying to answer. If we can teach others about our software making them more efficient, maybe more sales will occur due to good word of mouth. If you have an idea of how we can improve our product please let us know.
Tags: automotive, barcode scanning, software development
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March 5th, 2010
I heard a lot about these chairs. Even read about these chairs on other people’s blog site.
One night was talking with a friend and he was telling me that the chairs are so comfortable and a lot of the issues go away with the standard office chair.
I looked into the price and it seemed very high. Then I started to think about the price overall. These chairs come with a 12 year warranty. So take the price of a normal office chair and double it because it is not going to last that long. By the time you are done you are very close the price of one Herman Miller chair.
Let me say this. We bought 6 chairs and everyone in the office loves them. They are a great chair and well worth the price. One place you don’t want to go cheap is on an office chair due to the fact you are sitting for 4-6 hours a day. Check out www.sit4less.com. Very good prices.
Tags: auto, office, software development
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March 4th, 2010
I am sure every business from time to time has had to buy used office furniture. Sometimes just a table or chair.
A lot of times it is a really good deal. The other day a business was closing down near us. The furniture was extremely nice and the amazing part is it was so cheap.
We bought used filing cabinets and chairs for pennies on the dollar. Keep an eye out because there are some great deals. Look in the newspaper for businesses going out of business and you can find a lot of office furniture available at very reasonable rates.
Tags: automotive dealerships, office equipment, pc, software development
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March 2nd, 2010
IPS’s business model had to change with the time.
At one point it made sense to store all the web and email computers within our facility. All maintenance and support was done locally by trained people within our facility.
However as time has went on the landscape for data centers changed a lot. Now it seems there are thousands of data centers available all across the country competing for your business. Another amazing part of the data centers is they are no longer these huge facilities.
Touring a data center you typically find there is a lot of open spaces. What once took a computer to fill the spot can now be done with a blade server running several virtual machines on it. The size of the facility no longer needs to be enormous. Which I am sure helps cut down some of the overhead of the data centers making them much more affordable for even small companies.
IPS has moved all of its web, email, and other web based servers offsite. This has worked so well over the last 2-3 years we are renewing our contracts with the data centers. The days of hosting everything yourself and doing it all yourself, is long gone.
Check out the prices on data centers and you will they are a great value.
Tags: data center, offsite servers, software development
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March 1st, 2010
Here at IPS we use a lot of Virtual PC environments. We use both Virtual PC and VMWare, which both work extremely well. There are features I like of both.
The other day we got a report that our ScanIt Parts software was being flagged as a virus by certain virus scanners. After working on the issue for several hours we determined that the virus scanner was flagging us as a false/positive (meaning we are not actually a virus, but the scanner thinks we are).
After running testing in our office we determined that it was hitting on a certain EXE. Come to find out in the EXE, we wrote assembly code to detect if we were in a Virtual environment. We did this because we wanted the software to work a certain way, if we were testing (like not having to enter a password).
Well when the virus scanner, scanned our EXE it found the same signature as a new virus on the market. Come to find out the writer of the virus tests for a virtual environment as well. If the virus determines it is in a virtual environment the virus will become dormant. That way the virus is not as easily detected by the virus scanner company.
It is a real cat and mouse game. You have to love developers of viruses. They try to think of everything.
Tags: software development, virtual pc, vmware
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February 26th, 2010
Welcome to the IPS blog site where we will talk about all things related to the software development industry. We have a great deal of history dealing with software development. We have written software in many industries, but we are now focused mainly on the automotive industry.
We will attempt to explain why certain choices were made in the software design. We don’t want this blog to be completely about software development, because we have many other thoughts as well.
We will attempt to talk about the nuts and bolts of software development.
So let’s get into the world of blogging… Welcome.
Tags: barcode scanning, software development
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