October 08, 2004
Voting Opens for AICPA 2005 Top 10 Technologies
The AICPA's "Top 10 Technologies" has become an annual tradition for many of us who live near Technology & Public Accounting. While it's changed in process over the years, it still has the interesting combination of committee deliberation followed by "good old democracy". Sort of like the Electoral College in reverse!
The committee worked long [really long, I watched a small part of it!] and hard to distill all things technological to some sense of reasonable balance and now it's ready for YOUR input. Please vote here today.
gll
BTW -- Anne Stanton and Dave Cieslak debating blogs HAS to be at least as engaging as Dick Cheney and John Edwards. Right?
09:25 AM in CITP, Hardware, Management Processes, Software, Web/Tech Permalink TrackBack (0)
October 07, 2004
Will storage ever catch up with file size bloat?
SanDisk, the preeminent storage manufacturer has upped the ante on highly portable, personal storage with the introduction of an 8GB CF card. It’ll sell for about $1,000 so you’ll not be buying them in bulk --- but just imagine what this means for a year or two down the line. All of your data, all of the time!
It's been said that 2 sure signs of old age are 1) a failure to appreciate modern music and, 2) becoming awestruck with technology advancements.
OK -- I admit it. I am officially old! I meet the criteria. I simply can't abide rap "music" and the idea of 8GB of storage in a CF [or SD, pick your format] card completely amazes me. I remember vividly an early-80s conversation with one of my partners as we gazed lovingly at our brand-new $8,000 IBM XT with a 10MB hard disk. We couldn't quite conceive of how we would ever use all that space and quickly concluded we’d be long-retired before we ever had to face the question. WRONG ANSWER! Even small firms now often have data stores topping 100GB and larger firms are beginning to plan in TB [terabytes].
Meanwhile, as an official “old guy” I have grown very used to my 512MB Cruzer Titanium flash drive.
What a world!!!
gll
03:49 PM in Hardware Permalink TrackBack (0)
October 04, 2004
John Higgins named to AICPA Business & Industry Hall of Fame
I was very happy to hear the my friend John Higgins, current Chair of the MIchigan CPA Society and co-owner of the consulting firm, CPA Crossings, had been named to the AICPA Business & Industry Hall of Fame. John has long been a proponent of the "virtual office" concept and practices what he preaches by operating his consultancy almost exclusively via ASP. His vision has helped many firms move up the productivity scale. Additionally, he is a fine reviewer and author, most recently having been published in the pages of The CPA Technology Advisor.
Yesterday's Detroit News business section carried a very nice article about John, and his partner Bryan Smith, helping local Michigan firms move to a less-paper environment.
Nice guy, good service, great vision AND he gives back to the profession through his leadership in the Michigan State Socety. It doesn't get much better than that.
Congratulations, John. Nice things DO happen to nice people!
gll
10:48 AM in Web/Tech Permalink TrackBack (0)
October 01, 2004
Move Over Google, Here Comes Clusty!
Well, I wasn't smart enough to have bought Google stock at the IPO (it's up 20%+ since then) but I have discovered a new entrant that I believe will [again] redefine the concept of Internet searching. One quick use will probably convince you, too. Vivisimo has a beta site up for it's service called Clusty. It's based on the concept of "clustering" the results into logical groupings with those groupings being dynamic and based on the results of the particular search.
My initial "vanity search" quickly summarized the 170+ hits into groupings including "Wine" (my prolific and name-sharing friend Greg LaFollette is a world-class vintner in the Sonoma Valley near Napa -- we've never met, but have exchanged emails and promises to do so, sometime), "Technology" (which included my writings, quotes, appearances, etc.), and the "Alumni Marching Band" (from LaFollette High School in Madison, WI). The beauty here is that the results were ORGANIZED and thus useful! I was able to very quickly zero in on only those that were in the group (cluster) in which I was interested.
As accountants go to an ever-expanding Web more and more for information, and we want and need that information quickly, I suggest tools like Clusty will come to the forefront. I suggest you give it a try. I also suggest you buy Google a few months ago.
gll
07:43 AM in Web/Tech Permalink TrackBack (0)
September 28, 2004
Intuit Announces Quickbooks: Simple Start Edition
Intuit has announced yet another product to join their ever-growing arsenal --- Quickbooks: Simple Start Edition. This latest entrant breaks the sub $100 MSRP barrier and is designed to capture primarily new businesses for whom the full version of Quickbooks would be "overkill". Simple Start will have TurboTax connectivity and will be readable by Quickbooks: Accountant Edition. Of particular note here is the bundling as "either/or" with a CD version OR the online version -- both in the same box! The online version includes a 12 month subscription, after that it's $10 a month -- well, actually it's only $9.95 but I'm tired of quoting prices at 5 cents less than the real price --- who's that dumb, anyway?
I spent an hour with Intuit's Rich Walker looking at the new product and must tell you that they (Intuit) have pretty well thought this one through. They recognize that Quickbooks has sufferred a bit of feature bloat over the past few years and, coupled with both PeachTree First Accounting and MYOB FirstEdge both selling at under $100, they needed another offering. Simple Start is just that.
Walker deftly declined providing a metric by which Intuit would measure success -- in other words he refused to tell me how many units they hoped to sell! The market space here is, IMHO, fairly tight between paper and pencil, Quicken & Money, and regular Quickbooks.
Let the games begin!
gll
08:30 AM in Software, Vendors Permalink TrackBack (0)
