August 29th, 2008 Rusty
I hate to be critical and negative but someone ought to benefit from the half day I lost evaluating a tool that stinks like yesterday’s chili at breakfast.
I installed SugarCRM yesterday as it appeared to be the tool for Crm in the Open Source space. I was also excited that it supports MS SQL Server. I liked the idea of being able to use my comfort tools for digging through the data.
When I launched the app, I noticed that it was pathetically slow. I mean, s l o w . . .
I tried all my tricks to speed it up but the reality is that there are just too many huge include files. The server tends to respond in less than 10 seconds for the most complicated pages (less than 1 second for some) but no page loads in less than 6. Most pages take more than 30 seconds!
Using firebug, I measured the download of several pages. I installed on Windows IIS using SQL Server with the demo data installed. I was the only user hitting the server.
I clicked on "Create New Opportunity" and the page note indicated: "Server response time: 2.54 seconds." However, the icons and images took more than 20 seconds to finish loading.
Granted, I could probably have used the page after ten seconds but that is far too long to wait considering I expect early users to have to click a few times to find what they are looking for. 3 clicks at 30 seconds is not acceptable.3 clicks at 60 is completely unmanageable.
I tried clicking on Dashboard and "Server response time: 12.48 second" but the page took more than 60 seconds to display content.
I tried to reindex tables and set content expiration on the themes and includes directory but this didn’t help much at all.
Using Firebug, loading the "Emails" default tab, the total is:
140 requests 2.25 MB (0 b from cache) 33.8s
That is HUGE. a plain refresh results in: 39.77s
Oucharama!
I am now trying vTigerCrm…
perhaps salesforce.com is worth $9/user/mo? Probably!
Posted in Open Source, Windows | 1 Comment »
August 29th, 2008 Rusty
I’ve been busy and haven’t blogged for a while. Our resident investment analysts have kept the blog-o-sphere fresh with posts on our Investment Research Blog. There you’ll find financial market commentary and investment research editorial. If you are an individual investor, its a great place to gain expert insight into the markets and the economy. If you’re a professional investor, take a look, I think you’ll be quite impressed.
I’m a tech guy and this is my first foray into the financial industry. One of my primary motivations for taking this position is the incredible expert leadership and constituency in the Ockham / Global Access Holdings staff. While my previous positions provided me with job satisfaction related to my technical competency and opportunity, I felt the business sector in which I was developing did not contribute to my own personal, individual growth. Joining Ockham Research is like a transmission mechanic joining the Mario Andretti racing team because he want to improve his personal racing skills. My brother told me once, "no one will care about your financial health and return on investments like you do." He was right and that meant I need to learn about investing. Ockham Research is an entity dedicated to bringing proven investment analysis to investors and investors to volatility and opportunity. I’ve already learned a ton about the financial industry, so much that I’m excited to come to work each day. When’s the last time you could honestly say that?
Bringing financial analysis to the masses
Sites like Reuters and Google Finance provide an abundance of information regarding equities and investments but they don’t provide sentiment. There are a million ways to evaluate and attempt to predict future stock performance. Some of them look like they work (until they don’t) while some of them actually do work (at least for now). Some of them just don’t. In fact, somewhere around 80% of investment professionals under-perform the benchmark (not sure what the exact figure is) . That means your better off buying guaranteed return bonds than investing in the stock market using the principles that most investors subscribe to. So, unless you really know what you are doing (or think you do) the most logical thing to do is to invest the majority of your available capital in sure things like bonds. Investing in "things you believe in" is a good way to dabble, but you’re going to be at the mercy of the media. What about those equities that are in a position to really grow? What about those companies who, for whatever reason, are under-valued and are very likely to perform well in the coming months? For that, you can log into http://www.ockhamresearch.com to find ratings and analysis on over 5400 equities.
Learn and Grow
Now that I’ve have shamelessly proudly plugged my new company, I’m excited to get back to work. If you also wish to learn some of these golden gems of finance, keep an eye on our investment blog.
This week, the Ockham Research Staff (our chief guru, at that) has prepared an article on Simple Investment Principles.
My expectation is that this company is going to be a household name in a few years and all that money that gets slid my way will be soundly secured for my children’s future using the principles I learn each day building these exciting tools.
Posted in Finance | No Comments »
August 19th, 2008 Rusty
I ran across this, quite by accident, and it was spot on: http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2008/07/06/iphone-sdk.aspx
I have family to pay attention to, having spent way, way too much time trying to write an iPhone app, so I’ll be brief and to the point.
The iPhone is probably the most disruptive, innovative and important personal technology device in the last 10 years. It changes everything. It is worth paying attention to and worth investing in.
That being said, the platform for developing iPhone apps is far from ready for prime time. Innovative and thoughtful early adopters will profit, most certainly, but most apps are going to fade into oblivion.
The sdk, Objective C, XCode and the entire iPhone development toolset is disappointing. This is probably underscored by my recent experiences using Microsoft tools. The recent development of Asp.Net MVC from Microsoft has brought web development into the realm of productivity and satisfaction. I thoroughly enjoy building web apps using the modern tools and language features and can’t say enough positive things about it. Jumping off to xCode and iPhone development has been trying to say the least.
First, and foremost, iPhone sdk documentation is pathetic. The best one can find are a few scattered tutorials where some teen age kid is putting together a UI that gets the intended screens in place but wreaks of the most costly and short sighted practices I’ve seen since VB 5. Yes, you can point and click and cut and paste until your heart is content but the minute you wish to change something you will be paying the price for your technical debt to bad architecture and design. If I google something in Asp.Net MVC, I find 10 resources immediately. Its still a preview technology. iPhone is out, released, production. Googling basic issues results in nothing. Part of that is the Apple “must be logged in to see this” nonsense. Please, Apple, stop it. Take the passwords off your documentation. Let Google bring me to the resources I need. When I do find tutorials, they are often based on the last drop of the sdk and they don’t work. This is very frustrating. If there were documentation or tutorials that worked, then I’d accept it. But there aren’t any.
Finally, there is this Apple iPhone MVC thing that is supposed to provide a pattern for implementation. However, I can’t seem to figure out how to actually implement MVC for the iPhone sdk! There are xib files and UIView classes. These make up most of the outlets and actions. Then there are UIViewControllers but they don’t receive nor host the actions. Then there are delegates. It seems to me that we’re in a more event driven UI-centric environment where nothing is documented and you are supposed to just discover the right path. Inevitably, the wrong path leads to the screen you need and some high-school kid with more time then foundation puts together a video tutorial and explains, in his braces enhanced D&D DM narrative, how to wire it all up.
The last thing I want to point out is that tabbed Visual Studio is amazing once you see what happens when Windows get loose all over your desktop. Holy crap can you get lost with Interface Builder, xCode, and all the little windows it manages strewn all over your desktop.
So, where credit is due: thank you Microsoft….and where work is needed, Apple, please consider improving your documentation and tutorials and doing some consumer research with developers who have never touched cocoa before.Let me close by saying I still LOVE my mac and absolutely think Apple does amazing things. I’m your biggest fan! But then I am also a Microsoft fan so that makes me “different”
Posted in Mac, iPhone | 4 Comments »