Technology

I can help you integrate technology solutions allowing you to reuse your information in the formats you need, when you need it, and how you need it. Why spend time duplicating the same information, creating the opportunity for mistakes and differences in information that changes over time?

PC Computers brought us tremendous tools. Software has been produced that can help us in most areas of business. As we move into new ventures or our businesses grow, our requirements become more defined and there is always that “how to cut expenses”.

Software and hardware tools can help, but trying to figure out the best ways to do things can be like finding your way through a maze.

For many years software was updated so often that many of us fell behind the learning curve of all of the new features. Others of us survived the growing technology by simply learning how to make the software work the way we wanted or learned just enough to get us by.

Learning features of the software you currently have, can help significantly, but the real power comes in the integration of different software along with the appropriate hardware.

Web sites are the most prevalent of integrated solutions yet over 85% of web sites do not meet the needs of the small organizations. And web sites only touch on the integration that can significantly improve your processes and "cut expenses."

It is finding your way through this maze that can gain what you need and want. This is where we can help. Look at several of our accomplishments and see how we integrated solutions or chose to use tried and true methods, when they worked the best.

Below are some of the software that I use on a regular basis and short descriptions of each. Many of the integration points between different programs I use may not be of interest to you or it would take many books to describe the solutions that you need or want. This is where our personal attention can help provide you the means that most medium sized and large companies have access to. We bring these possibilities to new and small organizations.

Software Descriptions

• Access – Microsoft Access is a relational database manger that is one of the easier database tools to learn how to use. I started using Access 2.0 because it was available to me and the other relational databases required too much coding for me to learn quickly. I continue to use it today in latest version, Access 2007.
  
  It is quick and easy to develop and prototype databases. Many of my clients have a copy of Access on their computers, so I can demonstrate on their computers how their database will work. Additionally transferring data and structures to other programs is easy and accurate, with a few exceptions. And the big plus here is the integration that can be built between the Microsoft Office products.
• Excel – Excel is a spreadsheet commonly used for calculating data. However Excel has grown over the years and many people have found many alternatives for its use. Although Excel can help manage large amounts of data it may the tool of choice for some to use as flat file database, or managing list of items.
  
  There is a point where managing information becomes more appropriate in Access or another database list. But Excel may be the tool of choice because it relatively easier to learn how to use than a database.
• Expression Web (formerly FrontPage 2003) – A web site development and management tool. You can see a quick first look at this program here.
• Microsoft Streets & Maps – An inexpensive tool that can be used to map populations of people contained in a spreadsheet or database. It can also be used to plan out delivery routes and provide the shortest routes to various addresses.
• One Note – One of Microsoft’s newer tools, One Note is intended to make it easy to capture, organize, find, and share notes. I've been using it for about a year and have found it really benefits me while doing research on the internet. When I cut and copy paste from Internet Explorer into One Note there is a reference to the web page where the text came from. What a time saver! Plus it allows to keep keep hundreds of notes in a single program that has great search functionality making it is to find the notes I want to access.
• PowerPoint – A charting and presentation tool. A great tool but one that is often misused because people want to put too much information in each slide of a presentation. It is fairly simplistic too use but does have a learning curve. It can also be used for simple charting needs that do not require the complexities of something like Visio. There are several ways to move your information from Word or Excel directly into PowerPoint without re keying it.
• Visio and Visio Professional – Visio is a diagramming program that can help you create business and technical diagrams that document and organize complex ideas, processes, and systems. Diagrams created in Visio enable you to visualize and communicate information clearly, concisely, and effectively in ways that text and numbers cannot. Visio also automates data visualization by synchronizing directly with data sources to provide up-to-date diagrams, and it can be customized to meet the needs of your organization. Visio Professional is a great to for modeling database structures and then using the program to actual make the database structure, an immense time saving tool.
• Word – A word processing software that most are familiar with. This word processor is a formidable software program with many functions yet most people probably use less than 25% of it's capabilities. Word 2007 tries to make more capabilities available to the general user, but it hampers those that were efficient with earlier versions. See my Hints & Tips for working with text in columns.
• Outlook - A contact, email messaging and calendar program that allows you you to manage appointments, meetings, or anything else you want to schedule along with handling your email along with your contacts. See how to set up an email account and this even includes directions on how to use another email address that is auto forwarded to your ISP account.
• Corel Draw - A vector drawing program and the most highly under rated software on the market. This programs excels past Adobe Illustrator and has since it's release. It's cleaner and easier to use interface, tools that are easy to find and use, multi-page layout capabilities and ease of use set it head and shoulders above Illustrator.
  
  The program can be used to make simple or complex charts, org charts, illustrations, newsletters, simple technical drawings and has been used for illustrations that compete with the best in the world.
• Corel PhotoPaint - A bitmap and photo editing tool that for years surpassed the infamous Adobe Photoshop. It's technical ability can accomplish anything that Photoshop can and produces every bit a quality graphic as Photoshop. With the changes in Photoshop CS and CS2 Corel Photopaint is starting to loose it's edge.
  
  Corel Draw and Photopaint combine to provide interactions between the two programs that Adobe has not yet achieved and Corel Graphics Suite can be purchased for less than the standalone version of Adobe Photoshop!
• Top Style Pro - The second best html, xhtml, css editor and web development tool on the market. Only Dreamweaver 8 excels past this program. The program cost nearly a third of price and lacks 80% of the functionality built into Dreamweaver. If you don't need the capabilities of Dreamweaver to develop web applications and are developing web sites and pages for xhtml and css then this is the tool for you. more here...
• Filezilla (FTP) - File Transfer programs are used to move files from one computer to another through the FTP protocol. Filezilla is free, stable and just as capable as WS FTP or any other commercial FTP program. more here...
• WS FPT - A commercial file transfer program. Generally recognized as the market leader. An early version of this program is what I used for years until I needed to upgrade it for use with Windows XP. more here...
• Nvu - A free what you see is what you get (WYSISWYG, pronounced wissywig) web authoring tool. A great program for free and is fully capable of meeting XHTML standards and previews of your pages. Plus and maybe I already said this it's free! When I have clients that want the means to update or make changes to their own sites this is the program I recommend. Plus it can run on virtually computer operating system! more here...
• HTML Trim / HTML Tidy - A one of a kind utility for cleaning up html and xhtml pages. It assist in making sure xhtml standards are met and can can do an effective job of cleaning all unnecessary code especially when dealing with Microsoft Word documents. When converting older web sites to xhtml you will find this tool a must. I recently completed updating a web site with over a thousand pages and this tool saved me nearly 500 hours of time. That's quite a cost savings that i could pass on to my client! more here...
• PHP Designer - A free pHp editor that has many built in functions to save the pHp developer time. I tried over 18 pHp editors and this was by the far the best.
• Acronis True Image - A program that makes disk images. What is that good for? It is basically a tool that can preserve and back up your data for you and then allow you to recover just one file, many files, or a whole hard disk. It can make an image of your hard disk, any partition on your hard disk, or just the files that you need an image of. The image is saved to your choice of recording media. I had one of computer hard disk start to fail and tried to use the tools built into Windows XP to recover the missing sectors, but to no avail. Buying another hard hard disk I tired several utilities to mirror my hard disk so that would not have to reload everything, but non e of them seemed to work. True Image 9.0 to the rescue! Since I have my clients purchase this software and make images of their hard disk. To date this program has saved three of my clients form disaster! more here...
• Extensis Portfolio - A media management program that manages photos, logos, collateral, comps and more — organized with precision, and makes the files easily accessible when they are needed. The best on the market. more here...
• Color Wheel Pro - a program that allows you to see color theory in action: you can create harmonious color schemes and preview them on real-world examples