SO many admin works!

Recently, I found I got more and more admin work, I have to spend my first half hour at work for paying bills, salary and reply emails everyday. They are very annoying, well, that may be the life of your own small business.

Simple UI, light, not fat

The android app we built is using a very basic layout, which is very similar with the default theme. We are building apps for everyone, not just for those high end users. Thus, we are more focused to make the apk file as small as possible, and loading time is as short as possible too!

Busy with building Mobile app

After Android released 4.0, that is a brand new world for us. We need to rebuild all UI. This week, finally, we released our first android 4.x app, AdvGen Notes. Moreover, I got a lot of feedback to improve our UI and features request. I am so happy about that, now, we are working on the next version now!

Setup your work email in your personal mobile

I setup work email in their personal mobile for my friends, family members, workmate and even clients. They found this is very convenient. They can do their work outside of office. But the downside is you cannot get away from work. Even you are dinner with your family, you will have temptation to check your work emails.  Your work life is mixed with your personal and family life. Well, whether the technologies can help us or bring more pains to us?

IT support service is essential for you

A lot of people don't feel your IT infrastructure is essential for your job. That is not worth to spend on IT support service. They may say the business was running as usual in the time without computers.
However, imagine one day, your computer is out of order. You cannot use words and email. Maybe, your financial data is lost. Yes, you may get all important data from your paper based archive. You can use typewriters for writing letters to your clients. You can call your clients via phone lines instead of emails. You can go back to use paper and pen for tasks which used to be done by computers.
Well, in this scenario, you need to spend months for converting everything back paper based system. In addition, the paper based system is running less efficiency than computerized system.  This can cost hundreds times more than IT support service!

Beware the cheapest option

I am happy to choose the lowest cost solution, if it can fulfil my requirements.  That is no points to waste my money. 

However, I found the most of time the cheapest option cannot delivery a good enough quality. If it cannot do the jobs, that is useless to have that, even it cost less.

For example, I can use Voice on IP software on my mobile, if I use it, that is cheaper than a mobile phone call. But voice quality is not very good.Thus, I never use it to make some important phone calls. I need other side to heard every word I say clearly, I need to heard every word he/she say clearly. No misunderstanding between us! That is more valuable than the cost of a mobile call!

 I think you find out what you need to do, then finding which options cost the lowest and can do the job!

Does it look good?

This is my new work for Faithful Dental. Does it look good? I like it  a lot, that is very simple and clean! I can do creative tasks too, just about programming.

Lower Cost Option can cost you more

A lot of people believe the cheapest option is always able to delivery the best value.  This option can always save money! I cannot agree with them. The vendors can mark their price tags higher with grounds! They costed more, because they can delivery some extra values.
For example, I used a low cost internet provider before, the service is not very reliable. It could be out of services for a few hours. To end up, I need to find a 4G modem as a backup connection. Moreover, during the period of "internet back out", I cannot work from home. I went to an internet cafe for checking and replying emails. I wasted at least 3 man hours for that each times. That is not fun.
I believe lower cost options did not cost you money in their price tags, however, you need to pay the cost in other ways!

Tablet is a helpful tool for salesperson

Recently, I did some sales work for my company. I found Tablet is very useful. It is very handy. I can easily bring it to my client's office without a large carry bag. Although it has a keyboard, I cannot show some complex operations to my client, that is enough to show some website layouts and presentations to my client. I think nowadays tablet is a essential tool for a salesperson.

Alliance of technology partners

Some one asked myself whether we can provide computer hardware. Yes, we can. However, that is not our core business. We will get the hardware from our trustworthy partners.
We are not big enough to have everything. We prefer to put our efforts on the areas we already are serving in. On other hand,
We have other technologies partners are very good at those areas.  Moreover we have some long term relationship with them. We can still ensure the quality.  Finally we have a win win solution. They can get the business from us and we can get the services or products.

We still cannot get away from Search Engines

"Social Media" has became a hot topic during these recent years. A lot of people believe that is the way for online market. I believe that is very useful too. However, search engines is still the most helpful way to search for the information. We need to submit the websites to the search engines

Social Network is not very helpful for internet marketing

We, AdvGen, are managing a lot of local and IT news portals. I found the most of traffic are coming from the search engines, the traditional way. Yes, the segment of Social Network traffic is getting more comparing 3 years ago. That is not as powerful as some internet marketing said. They said the social network can get your website to be well known.
If you ask me, whether that is a good idea to use Social Networks for internet marketing. I must say "Yes". That is a good tool to bring some traffic and get other people to know your website. But you need to do SEO. You cannot only rely on Social Networks.

Going Social

During these recent years, a lot of companies paid a lot of attentions at social media. They setup twitter account, facebook pages and google+ page. Recently, some companies, even some of them are small business, are making some video clips to youtube. They are building their own video channels to promote their own products and services.  That is impressive!

A success story of Australia Software Company - Atlassian

This monday night, I was watching The Business on ABC. During the program, there was a section about A success story of Australia Software Company ,Atlassian. I have been their product JIRA for years, but I never know they are an australian company. I am surprised that is a local startup in Sydney. That was an interesting story. Thus, I paid attention to listen their story. I found they faced a problem which a lot australian companies are facing, Australia is a relative small country. Our local market is not big enough to reach a critical mass. They pointed out Internet is an opportunity for Australian companies to reach the global easily. They are selling their software solutions. I believe that will be a model for every software company in Australia to consider!

Brisbane Software Development Company have to go Globally

Recently, my Company,AdvanGeneration, setup an online store to sell our software, moreover, we have our account in Google Player to sell our paid app long time ago. The reason to setup them is we wish to go Globally. Brisbane is not big enough, that is too small! We have to sell our software to everyone, not just about Brisbane!

Selling products online is not free of charge!

Some people believe selling products is very low cost, even free of charge. In our example, I have a C# library, AdvGen SQL Backup, which can trigger a SQL backup via C# code. Some of friends believe, I just put the details of online and hooked up PayPal. Then my job is done, I can sit back and relax, lastly, waiting the payments.
My friends, that is not that easy. I need to do the marketing. I have to invest a lot of money for online advertisements. I even talked with a lot of people offline for the product promotion. In this case, our product is only a small project. If we put some major products online, even I need to put advertisements on some local papers, put leaflets into the local people mail box. All of them requires "$$$"(money). You can say comparing the rental cost of a physical shopfront. Running my online shop  is much lower! But that is not cheap!

Running I.T. Company is not easy.

Some people think that is very easy to setup an information technology company. You just need to do a business registration and buy a laptop. Then you can be the CEO of your own I.T. Firm. Yes, we don't need to a big office and even you can use a home office.  But, I wish to ask where we cam get customers. You may say the customers can find us from our company website. There are  thousands companies doing similar things with us. We still need to do marketing same as other companies. We posted advertisements online and local papers. They required to invest some money. Moreover , we needed to deal with accounting and legal matters. These requires other professionals to help us. Some fees are involved. These are not as simple as you thought

My first IOS application are still pending

I have spent around a year to build my first IOS application. That took too long. Well, that is because I need to learn a complete new language, Objective C. It took a few months to learn. Moreover, at the mean time, there were a lot of higher priority projects needed to be complete. Those slowed my first IOS application development. I wish I can finish it within a month, recently, I got some "free" time to do that.

I need Coffee

I am so tired now. During these two weeks, I worked around 10 hours per day(according to the standard in Hong Kong , that is very normal). I need coffee!

Most of my websites went normal

During last two weeks, some of our blogs went not very stable. I did some fixes. I upgraded them into the last version of blog software. I enabled all caching of pages where I can and enable cloudfare on all websites. Even I moved some blogs into a new web host. In addition, I asked more memory allowance from the web host too! I did a lot of work!
Finally, they are stable!