Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

The
Ultimate
Business Machine

Technology, business
and innovation.

And, not least, about
the Mac.

Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Mon 03 Mar 2003

Luca - The Romance of Double-Entry Bookkeeping

Category : Commentary/luca.txt

I had been thinking about a name for an accounting system we had developed. While reading "Jamming" by John Kao, I came across Luca Pacioli, a lesser-known Renaissance figure who used the newly-invented printing press to popularise double-entry bookkeeping.

A quick search through Google turned up fascinating pieces about the man himself, The Romance of Double-Entry Bookkeeping, and a very interesting article called Accounting for Knowledge Management, from which I quote :

The task of the accounting profession, in relation to intangible assets and knowledge-based enterprise, is less about counting than it is about giving an account - telling the story of both tangible and intangible assets in meaningful ways, for both managers and markets.

"Telling the story of the figures in meaningful ways". So, Luca is it.

Posted at 9:04AM UTC | permalink

Fri 28 Feb 2003

How Businesses Could Use Macs

Category : Commentary/UseMacs.txt

A Mac Business Toolbox simply lists the tools available on OS X. But it may not have quite succeeded in showing how they can all come together to work for the good of a business. So I've tried again - this time through depicting a scenario in which each of the tools could be brought into play. Maybe this will do better.

Posted at 12:44PM UTC | permalink

Thu 27 Feb 2003

Are developers coming back to the Mac in droves?

Category : Commentary/developerdroves.txt

Back in the Amelio days, you're always reading about how developers are leaving the Mac platform like rats from a sinking ship. How about the reverse - when developers come back in droves? That somehow doesn't seem equally newsworthy. But the signs are there.

James Duncan Davidson reports on the audience interest after his talk at the Austin, Texas, Lone Star Software Symposium :

"The using Mac OS X talk went over well - it always does and I have so much fun when I give this talk. I had a good share of the total attendance of the symposium, people asked great questions, and the crowd left visibly more enthusiastic about the Mac as a platform than they were when they walked in.

"The subjects that really caught everybody's attention were Rendezvous and Cocoa. Programmers that grew up with Java and Windows development tools always drop their jaw when you show them the quick and efficient Interface Builder style of development. And they always ask the questions that I asked when I first played with IB: "Why hasn't any Java IDE or toolkit done the same kind of thing? Why wasn't Swing designed so that it would complement being developed using such a tool? Especially given that the concepts have been around for so long!""

Why, indeed? But the smart ones won't wait. Look for gems at Version Tracker (and laugh at the duds at Perversion Tracker).

Developer interest drives innovation and makes the platform as useful as it's ever going to be. This is a good thing.

Posted at 6:28AM UTC | permalink

Zen and the Art of Weblog Maintenance

Category : Commentary/zen.txt

I don't know who reads this weblog. But I'm doing this as much for myself, as for others.

I think more people should try writing weblogs. It shouldn't be self-indulgent but should at least contain things that are worth people's time reading. You'll need discipline to keep to a subject matter. But that will enforce clarity in thinking. If, by writing a weblog one learns to think clearly, that will be its own reward.

Now, it's so hard to chase those ideas before they disappear, the last thing I want is to let technology get in my face. Once I'm done, a quick

rsync -tvr -e ssh /path/to/weblog/docs user@domain:/path/to/weblog

(triggered from BBEdit's menu) is all I need to get this on the weblog.

Looks ugly, but it keeps the weblog on the "real" server synchronised with the copy I have when I'm not on-line.

Reminds me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. You can find beauty in technology.

Posted at 5:02AM UTC | permalink

Bluetooth

Category : Technology/Bluetooth.txt

Saw a couple of postings in Mean about using a T68i to control presentations on a Bluetooth-enabled Mac. That's why I monitor the discussions at Mean. It often throws up gems like these. The value is in knowing what had worked for others within the local setting - in our case, Singapore. There are people on the bleeding edge at Mean.

Digging deeper, I found this link from MacSurfer to TechnoHappyMeal - "OK, I admit it... I'm a Bluetooth junkie". It's a useful, concise survey of the current state of the art. Includes the link to the cool Sony Ericsson Clicker app referred to above. A killer app? Makes you want to buy both a T68i and the latest 12 inch PowerBook right away.

Posted at 2:53AM UTC | permalink

Wed 26 Feb 2003

Perversion Tracker

Category : Commentary/perversiontracker.txt

For a start, the name - absolutely brilliant. Perversion Tracker is hilarious. Until you realise your next software release could join their hallowed ranks. So go ahead. Foist your software monstrosity on an unsuspecting public and feel the wrath of the good folks at Perversion Tracker. It'll make Version Tracker a safer place.

Posted at 3:12AM UTC | permalink

Tue 25 Feb 2003

A Mac Business Toolbox

Category : Technology/BusinessToolbox.txt

I've created a guide to sites that people might want to look up if they're thinking of using OS X to create business applications.

PCs are already doing a very good job in business. (Here's someone who thinks Macs won't make it in the corporate world. But Mac-Mike is fun. It's worth looking him up now and then.) So when I say that Macs can do a better job, I must remember that there are quite high standards the Mac has to surpass.

I believe the problem is : the PC industry doesn't understand that we're really in The Understanding Business, rather than in the technology business. Technology is a means to an end - to help people understand information better. But that tail has been wagging the dog for far too long.

With OS X, former Unix/Linux/Java geeks are re-discovering the sheer tactile joy of using a Mac, notably Titanium PowerBooks. Will the venerable Macintosh Way of good interface design inspire these people to create applications that are not only powerful but simple and usable by normal people?

Remember how Steve Jobs placed a BMW motorbike and a grand piano in the lobby of the place that served as office for the original Mac team? They were meant to inspire, to serve as examples of great design. When you work on an iBook or a PowerBook or an iMac, you see little touches that remind you that there are people who still care about craftsmanship. It's a bit of a let-down if you put in sloppy work in return.

Businesses like to talk about excellence and delighting the customer. It means that spriritual things, like care and craftsmanship, do make business sense. So, if you take this thought through the end, we have to suffuse everything we do in business with the care that come from good design - from design of business processes all the way down to the design of technology. That's why the Mac matters. When you buy into the Mac culture, you buy into a certain way of looking at the world. A way which can infuse a business with a vigour. And wouldn't that be good for business?

Posted at 11:16AM UTC | permalink

Mon 24 Feb 2003

Taking Stock

Category : Commentary/takingStock.txt

I hope to show how the Mac is, in fact, the Ultimate Business Machine. No less. Yet I've given two examples, so far - how to turn on the built-in web server, make it accessible via a domain name (even with a dynamic IP address), and then how to set up a weblog. But that's really just another desktop publishing scenario, isn't it?

That's not getting us very close to using a Mac for business. But the point of the exercise, so far, is that one learns faster when doing something. These are fairly simple things to do, and they get something useful done - without needing to visit the command-line. To do more, we'll need to get friendlier with OSX's Terminal.app.

The thing about the PC world is this : it's the amount of tinkering at this level, with software, that produces its enormity of solutions.

The PC world may be boring. But you've got to put yourself in the shoes of a business owner - to understand how it came to be so.

Let's say, you own a wine company. When you prepare to ship a case of Bordeaux to a retailer, you've got to complete a set of transactions in its entirety. You've got to deduct the stock in the warehouse, post into accounts receivable, recognise this as income, generate a bill, initiate a GIRO transfer if applicable, initiate a re-order, initiate a delivery order, among many other things. The point is : if any single transaction in this set fails, for whatever reason, you've got to have a system that knows how to roll back all the other transactions in the set, so that the database remains consistent.

Otherwise, the system will soon produce financial figures that bear only a fictitious relationship to reality.

FileMaker has never been able to cut it. The thing is : if we want to be able help businesses solve their problems, we've got to be able to take that responsiblity - produce data that is an accurate representation of the business. And inter-operate with other businesses.

The PC guys have never been shy to take that responsibility. And when they say, they have no interest in that other platform, it's hard to fault business owners when they concur, especially when it looks like some money saved. But what we've seen is that they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Businesses also need to communicate ideas well. When you want to write well, you don't want technology to get between you and your idea. The Mac has always been great for the creative people. It's no secret that people like Stephen King and Michael Crichton use only Macs. But that's the baby in the water that the PC guys can't see, won't see, and never will.

But that doesn't mean the baby isn't important to the business owner. Once you've got the data, it's also a critical business advantage to know how to organise the data, put a context around it, and present it so that everybody can draw the right meaning out of it.

The techies are only concerned with the technology while the creatives know that it is the information that matters. If you can use a technology that unifies these two objectives, in the sense that both parties willingly agree that good design matters (and the technology constantly reinforces this by the beautiful way in which even tedious things get done), then you may have a business force to reckon with.

Communicating well is also important to business. Only, to them (if you pardon a quick switch of metaphors) it's considered the sizzle, not the steak. So, the thing to do, if you follow this logic, is to be willing to take responsibility for solving their first problem. Building business systems may seem un-cool, but it is not necessarily so - not if you're using a Mac running OSX. It's got free, Open-Source, world-class business solutions in spades.

The best we can do, if we succeed, is to get the best of both worlds - solve real-world problems in the funnest way possible. If not, we should at least work towards seeing the end to hearing "Oh, Machintosh (sic), hah? I'm sorry we only support PCs". Can't get no respect? Don't wait for Apple to do it. They can't do everything, even if they want to. They've delivered the power without sacrificing their usual standards of usability and craftsmanship. It's quite enough to get going.

Posted at 3:04AM UTC | permalink

Fri 21 Feb 2003

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

Category : Technology/blosxom.txt

If you've made your Mac a server, you can set up a blogging system quite easily. Within 15 minutes, in fact. Blosxom is the one to use. You don't need to know how it works. Once installed, your weblog is automatically published. If you can create text files, you can easily add to your journal.

Posted at 8:58AM UTC | permalink

OSX Browser Compatibility with Banks - Good Times Ahead With Safari?

Category : Technology/BrowserCompat.txt

For connecting to a bank, Netscape 7.01 and Mozilla 1.2 onwards are currently the only alternatives available for people on OSX. Other browsers, like OmniWeb, Opera and iCab, have very weak support for Javascript and lack that most important piece of software, the bridge between Javascript and the Java applets the banks use to ensure security, called LiveConnect, a technology derived from Netscape.

But Safari is proving most compliant in terms of Javascript compatibility. See report - "Javascript in Mac Browsers". Apple has seeded Java 1.4.1 to developers. There is cause to hope that the second part of the equation - LiveConnect support - may be solved. Then we can ditch everything else except Safari, if we want to.

Posted at 4:55AM UTC | permalink

PDF Workflow

Category : Technology/PDFWorkflow.txt

Noticed this when Apple released 10.2.4. Came across this bit just now that suggests how one might take advantage of that. PDF Workflow allows you to create, channel and otherwise work with PDF documents, with no need for further human intervention, once you set things up properly. The afore-mentioned little tidbit does something useful with very little work. It hints of further possibilities. Systems integration work on OSX is going to get fun.

Posted at 3:09AM UTC | permalink

Thu 20 Feb 2003

Weblog

Category : Commentary/intro.txt

After posting something to Me@n a while back (which I repost below, for completeness sake), I got a message from Kian Chai (iceberk@mac.com) asking if I'd like to write something about running a small business with Macs.

I think I'd be delighted to, though it may entail a bit of work. For one thing, Macs are suitable for large enterprise, too. It really scales well. I think I can prove it. But let's start small.

Ok, so I've set up this weblog on my server by cobbling stuff from a few places which I'll explain more about later.

I'll put things on the side bar that people can try. Between the commentary here, and the reference/tutorials at the side, I hope to convey a feel for the power that is latent in the machines we have grown to love, though most people, I gather, still only use them for word and digital media processing.

I believe we'll only receive better service as Mac users when Macs return as a force in business (look at this recent article as a sign that times are a-changing). And I'm going to do whatever I can to help make this happen sooner rather than later.

Posted at 7:03AM UTC | permalink