Brian Sweeting

I’m in San Francisco this week for the Future of Web Apps Summit.  I’m looking forward to networking and hearing from great speakers over the next couple of days.

Time to get a better handle on the family finances. I immediately thought of using Quicken, but then I remembered what bugs me so much about the software. Quicken’s business model is to sell a new version of Quicken, with a marginal set of improvements each year. Quicken 2006 is the current version, with Quicken 2007 just around the corner. I did some research on Quicken 2007 only to find that it won’t be a Universal Binary, meaning it will run slower on my Intel-based MacBook. Given this news, I looked into an online version of their software, perhaps something available under a subscription model. Evidently Quickbooks has an online version, but a web-based version of Quicken is non-existent. This prompted me to wonder why no one has created a web-based Quicken competitor. Is it because they are in fear of being stomped when Intuit jumps into the game? Perhaps it’s because the primary financial file exports from most financial institutions are proprietary? Whatever the case I hope that someone tackles this. I don’t want to be tied to a specific computer every time I need to view my financial standing.

Here is my wishlist for a web-based personal finance software:

• Simple interface – I don’t need a lot of features, just something to show me where I’m at.
• Transaction Register
• Support for multiple types of accounts (Checking, Money Market, Savings, Credit Card, Debit Card, etc).
• Budgeting
• Recurring Transactions (both fixed and variable) for both expense and income transactions
• Integration with my financial institution – I really hate having to download a file, and import it into an app, then do the reconciliation. Why can’t software just connect to my financial institution (password protected of course) and securely download a record of my financial transactions? If I can’t have that, it at least needs to be able to import a .csv file.
• Fairly priced – I am willing to pay a subscription fee for this type of service, but it has to be reasonable. I can get Quicken for $70.
• Bottom line, all of the “essential functions” of Quicken with none of the fluff.

Seth Godin hits the nail on the head with 13 things designers wish their organization knew.

Science and Art of User Experience at Google

I guess I’m trying to set a record for the least timely write-up of a conference. A couple weeks ago I attended SxSW 2006 for the first time. I have to say that it was basically what I expected.

The Panels

Do not go to SxSW thinking you are going to get a lot out of the panels. I hate to say it, but most panels were pretty lackluster. I think I prefer a speaker vs. a panel. Speakers seem more engaging. The panels just seemed too disjointed.

The People

This was one of the better parts of SxSW. I really enjoyed meeting many people from my blogroll in person. There are too many to name individually, but it is nice to interact with these people beyond a comment on their blog or through email.

The City

Austin is a very cool city with much to do. I doubt it was just because of SxSW, but the place is loaded with venues hosting cool parties, concerts, and comedy shows. It’s a place I wouldn’t mind visiting again.

Things I learned from SxSW

• Take business cards, or something to give to people you meet that will allow them to contact you…the more memorable the better.
• Stay at the Hampton Inn. We were six or so blocks away at the Marriott, and I was not impressed. For a place that charges a couple hundred bucks per night, they offer no perks. We even had to pay extra for internet access.
• Eat local. There were a bunch of great places we ate at that are local to Austin: Stubbs, Daddy’s, The Iron Cactus, Paradise, Moonshine, The Salt Lick. Don’t go to Austin only to eat at Wendy’s.
• Take a small digital camera vs. a DSLR. I took the Canon 20D and basically it was too cumbersome to pack around so I ended up not taking hardly any pictures.
• Unless you have to, arrive Friday Night/Saturday Morning and leave Tuesday night. We were there from Friday afternoon to Wednesday morning and that was just too long.

Wrapping it up

I liked SxSW, but I’m not sure I would attned again on my own dime, unless I had a product/service/business to promote.

When I worked for Novell, I used iFolder to keep my laptop and desktop files in sync. iFolder uses a central server model where it keeps all of your files and then the client, that runs on your computer, continually sends changes to this server. On other machines, the client is continually polling the server for changes so all of your files stay synchronized between multiple machines. Ever since I left Novell, I’ve been needing something to do this.

Enter FolderShare. This is a product that was bought by Microsoft last Fall and made part of it’s Windows Live services. FolderShare works similar to iFolder, but instead of having a central server, it is Peer2Peer. Meaning, that when I change files on my PowerBook at work, it sends notification of what files have changed to a central server. Note that it doesn’t send the files. My PowerBook at home is running the FolderShare client and is continuall polling for changes. When the server responds that files have changed, my PowerBook at home initiates a transfer of files from my PowerBook at work. The files are not stored on a central server, but are distributed between all the clients instead. Therefore storage isn’t an issue for Microsoft, and transfer really isn’t either, because the files are being exchanged between my computers, using my own bandwidth.

Some other cool features of FolderShare is that you can use Spotlight or MSN Desktop Search to search files on any of your computers. It also allows you to share folders with other FolderShare users, and access your files remotely through the web interface. FolderShare authenticates via RSA and encrypted via 256 bit AES over SSL. FolderShare also has no problem working behind firewalls or through proxies.

I highly recommend FolderShare. It is free, so download a client and get syncing!

On Saturday, we had some plumbing problems at our rental property. I called Brent at Utah Valley Handyman Services, and he was there within a couple of hours. This guy has the handyman skills that every wife wishes her husband had. He is very thorough, and really explains what he’s doing as he fixes the problem. This is the second time I’ve called him in a pinch, and he saved the day both times.

If you’re in Utah County, and need a handyman for rental properties (or even your own home), I highly recommend calling Brent at Utah Valley Handyman Services (801) 830-0068.

Guy Kawasaki, entreprenuer and author of The Art of the Start has started a blog. He only started it at the end of December, and I’ve hardly found a post so far that isn’t worth linking to. Great posts on entrepreneurism, venture capitalistism, innovation, Apple Computer, presentations, and life.

I love my webhost. They are constantly giving me stuff that I don’t have to pay extra for. Just this month they doubled the diskspace quota and quadrupled the bandwidth quota for all of their customers. They have a page of features where their customers can suggest (and vote for) new features to be added. And they reward their existing customers through a generous rewards program, and by increasing your diskspace and bandwidth every week that you are with them.

This company really has a formula for success: Cut costs and be smart to reduce your costs, and then pass that benefit on to the customer. And then keep adding value at no extra charge. The funny thing is, I doubt ‘ll use 1.6+TB of bandwidth per month, but it’s the goodwill of them just giving it to me for free that solidifies my loyalty to them. I only wish the insurance companies, financial institutions, and other organizations I do business with regularly took the same approach.

I’ve been penning a couple of posts recently, that I just don’t think are well thought out enough. So until I get them in shape, I wanted to catch up so here’s a hodge-podge of notable things that I’ve ran across lately.

Microsoft Gets Agile

The WSJ has a great about Microsoft realizing the mess Windows was in and how they made the call to drop the legacy code and start fresh with their flagship product.

Windows was broken and Microsoft has admitted it. In an unprecedented attempt to explain its Longhorn problems and how it abandoned its traditional way of working, the normally secretive software giant has given unparalleled access to The Wall Street Journal, even revealing how Vice President Jim Allchin, personally broke the bad news to Bill Gates.

Allchin is co-head of the Platform Products and Services Division. “It’s not going to work,” he told Gates in the chairman’s office mid-2004, the paper reports. “[Longhorn] is so complex its writers will never be able to make it run properly. “The reason: Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Thousands of programmers each produced their own piece of computer code, to be stitched together into one sprawling program.But Longhorn/Vista was too complex: Microsoft needed to begin again, Allchin told Gates.Allchin’s warning recognised a growing threat from Google, Apple Computer, makers of Linux and corporate buyers – the latter horrified about security problems. Allchin and a small team demanded a revolution in how Microsoft works.

Read the full article.

Have a strategy for your website

A great article by Greg Storey in issue 205 of A List Apart. Something I wish all my clients would read. Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia (or Build a Website for No Reason)

AJAX Dialog Windows

Not a “how-to” but a “what for” for designing AJAX dialog windows by Luke Wroblewski. Quoting Edward Tufte…

“The border of an active window should be light in value (to avoid clutter with other windows), yet deeply saturated (to provide a conspicuous signal). Yellow is the only color jointly satisfying those conditions, and therefore proves valuable for bordering windows.” -Window Research: Color Guidelines

Looks like there’s as more importance to the “yellow” than the “fade” in the “yellow fade technique” .

TypeTester

TypeTester allows you to compare fonts for the web, tweak them to your heart’s content, and then export the CSS. This is a must for designers working with developers.

My Kingdom for a good Web-based RSS Reader

I have been a bloglines user since it’s inception. The problem I ran across lately, is that they do not support RSS feeds that require authentication. So I’ve been hunting around for something else. I tried NewsGator’s online aggregator since it seems they are becoming an RSS Reader empire. They do support authenticated feeds, and the interface is pretty, but there isn’t enough separation between the blogs I read when viewing entries as groups of feeds. I also wish the category/feed navigation was either in frames, or it floated along as I scroll down the page.

I’ve also tried Rojo. Didn’t like how it only allows a flat listing of feeds (gotta have my folders). Google’s Reader, but I could only get it to import about half of my RSS feeds and it doesn’t seem to support authenticated RSS either.