June 2007

Freshbooks has an API

June 30, 2007 General

Great news. Freshbooks has an API and has already integrated to Basecamp. That ups the game considerably and means that developers can create new applications using two of the fastest growing business applications on the Internet. To put it into perspective, Freshbooks has more than 185,000 registered users and Basecamp is well over a million. This from Mike McDerment’s blog:Because the API allows you to manage clients, create invoices, and record payments, it’s easy to slide it into your existing billing system. Don’t go through the agony of learning how to mail invoices, negotiate with payment gateways, and track those delinquent customers yourself! You should only have to worry about your own business.That’s the sort of things a good API should do. Congratulations to Mike and the team for getting this done.

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Cost control innovation at CIX

June 30, 2007 Innovation

Tom Raftery is building a carbon neutral data centre in Cork called CIX…. Data centres can be pretty dull topics of conversation – unless you’re interested in conserving energy…. Even so, I managed to understand the basic principles involved.I won’t go into the details (there is an excellent white paper here) but in essence, Tom and his team have turned the problem of air and temperature control upside down to come up with a solution. I asked Tom if this meant additional construction cost compared to traditional solutions but apparently there is no cost impact…. That means in the initial stages CIX will be more expensive than other data centres…. Despite the cost disadvantage, Tom tells me he’s had enquiries from customers prepared to pay a premium so they can be part of this innovative carbon neutral experiment…. Given Silicon Valley faces an energy crisis, I wonder whether anyone in the US has thought of this…. If you care about the environmental impact of running your IT infrastructure then it might be worth giving Tom a call.

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LeWeb 3 presentation document released

June 30, 2007 Innovation

Loic LeMeur has released the first version of the LeWeb 3 presentation document. If you want your voice heard then check the LeWeb3 group on FaceBook. I’m not a conference junkie but this is one event I plan to attend.

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Taxing idiots

June 30, 2007 General

Richard Murphy seems to have had a fun couple of days at Oxford with a bunch of folk mulling over tax issues. From what I can gather, the conference was attended by a few idiots. Who other than a total numbnuts would come out with pearls of wisdom as:Andrew Dilnot thinks small businesses are bad businessesSmall businesses, he suggested are simply bad at what they do. They have to be or they would not be small Andrew Dilnot, Principal of St Hugh’s College Oxford and the university’s pro-Vice Chancellor. Grant Thornton – tax is just cashTax is just cash. I can’t see nay link between that and things like hospitals or those sorts of things that people like to claim.Heather Self, tax partnerWho other than a idiot would come out with such statements in the company of a tax blogger?But in the interests of balance, it’s worth quoting this gem on the issue of transparency:What would be really useful would be if the companies did, or were even required to publish their Revenue risk rating in their annual accounts. That would be very valuable information indeed.

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The Loïc and Den vidcast

June 29, 2007 General

Loïc LeMeur and I talk about Facebook and Twitter for business.

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EditGrid and D2C to hook up, EditGrid readies for Facebook

June 28, 2007 Innovation

David Terrar tells me that he’s inking a deal which sees his company D2C acting as the corporate sales channel partner for EditGrid in the UK…. The next thing will be to get EditGrid integrated to Twinfield…. EditGrid has already created a plug-in for Atlassian’s Confluence wiki…. For those that don’t know, Atlassian has a strong customer base of some 7,400 in 88 countries. When they get this tidied up then it will be one more step on the path to offering a content and knowledge management system that professional accountants can use as a replacement for proprietary offerings. So for example, they could keep client stats, contact history, documents, you name it, all in one easily searched repository, accessible by anyone who needs to know what’s going on. EditGrid is also working on a gadget for Facebook – another smart move and a genuine step in the right direction for what I see as business use of the FB platform. It can only be a matter of time before the Facebook people wake up to the business potential rather than simply relying on ad support. As an aside – this is what I see as mashup innovation at Internet speed.As a further aside – I worked out the story through Skype conversations with David T and David Lee, MD of EditGrid.

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Three important events

June 28, 2007 Innovation

I couldn’t care less because it’s only available in the US. From what I can gather, while Walt Mossberg likes it, Tom Raftery thinks they’re on a hiding to nothing…. Well done Tom :) It is also the day when Michael Moore’s Sicko is released though you can already download copies via BitTorrent sites. It’s probably one of the most important documentaries you’ll ever see, providing a great insight into just one aspect of corruption in America…. Guess where that leads.Sicko could become a part of tomorrow’s conversation with Loic LeMeur…. He’s recording our conversation where we’ll talk about the business importance of Twitter and FaceBook…. As an aside, I learned from Anne Zelenka about Connected Mode: Multitasking for Productivity – via her Tweets…. There’s one immediate business use plus I’ve shared Anne’s story on Facebook for the other 144 people in my network to consider. And on a completely different note, I’m enjoying listening to TWIT, courtesy of James Brewis who really does need to get a FaceBook group going for WebExpenses – IMO.

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More on value pricing

June 28, 2007 General

There is something delicious about poking a stick in the eye of traditional practice thinking. Here’s another one for 2020 Group’s master salesman Gordon Gilchrist to suck up. This time – I’m drawing from a super smart lawyer who really doesn’t pull punches. But because some readers are a bit sensitive about some of the things I say, I’ll restrict myself to this one snippet from Christopher Marston’s post entitled Pricing and Service:Phone Call and Photo Copies!If you bill for either you are either dangerously stupid or simply don’t care about your clients!!!! I deal with CEOs of companies and they don’t bill me to talk to me! If you fall into the category of dangerously stupid, read on:– Let me enlighten you: CLIENTS HATE IT!… Every shred of information in the market shows that clients are absolutely enraged by this process. Now, you are on notice, so if you continue this practice you have effectively graduated from “dangerously stupid” to “I simply don’t give a damn about what my clients want” What was it I heard on that podcast?

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WebExpenses on a roll

June 28, 2007 Innovation

James Brewis, MD of WebExpenses and I had an interesting discussion over Skype this morning. His company has just completed an extensive online survey among around 2,000 of its customers. Apart form the fact this is an exceptional response rate, here are some of the highlights: 94.1% of employees who submit or approve expenses claims preferred the web-based software solution over the traditional paper process and ranked the top reason for their preference as follows: 1.Ease of use (60% of respondents) 2.Speed of entry (10%) 3.History and reports (7%) 4.Access from anywhere (7%)100% of accounts staff surveyed preferred the web-based software solution over the traditional paper process and ranked the top reason for their preference as follows: 1.Ease of use (29% of respondents) 2.Interface to accounting software (13%) 3.Ease of administration (13%) 4.Reports (10%)I’m impressed by the results and the fact that James knows how to interact in this brave new world we’re occupying.

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