For the most part I prefer looking forward as I like the view better. However a new year gives a brief opportunity to look back and reflect on the events of the past year. New employees Mike — Production Director Kirsten — Designer Alex — Developer Employee Role change Brandon full-time Web strategist Engagements Dave [...]]]>

For the most part I prefer looking forward as I like the view better. However a new year gives a brief opportunity to look back and reflect on the events of the past year.

New employees

• Mike — Production Director
• Kirsten — Designer
• Alex — Developer

Employee Role change

• Brandon full-time Web strategist

Engagements

• Dave & Andrea Coblentz
• Brandon & Elizabeth Winstead
• Jessica & Jordan (this one “developed” right under our noses)

Babies

• Kami Rackley
• Claire Rundle

Increasing Worth Awards

• Christopher
• Matt
• Louisa
• Alex
• Chris

Memorable Company Events

• Charlotte Bobcats game
• Chocolate Shoppe Cookies
• Lake Day
• App Day
• Even MORE office space
• Ping pong table
• Cheesecake Day
• WII Fit
• Monday morning project meetings (Mike’s the Man)
• Chicken minis
• GSATC  & NextStart sponsorships

Stats (for those who like numbers)

• 145,315,900,000 bits of customer information served
• 6.4 TB of customer information stored on our Greenville network
• 3,468,960 non-spam emails successfully delivered
• 41,627,520 spam emails successfully blocked

Amazing all that can be accomplished when a small group of people choose to band together for a common purpose! Now we look forward with the confidence of past success to a 2010 of unlimited opportunities!! Happy New Year Worthwhile Team.

We’ve seen an explosion of social spaces during the past couple of years – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Many organizations have built their own social space to provide the communication needs of their people. I live in several virtual worlds or neighborhoods, some public and some private, and I just got bit by an ugly [...]]]>

We’ve seen an explosion of social spaces during the past couple of years – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Many organizations have built their own social space to provide the communication needs of their people. I live in several virtual worlds or neighborhoods, some public and some private, and I just got bit by an ugly downside of this!
I teach one MBA class in which we use an online world that includes many of the social networking tools including email. I teach that class one semester every other year.

Recently, unknown to me, a whole bunch of new people moved into this world. They represent a group that I’m very, very interested in — prospective students! They are the life blood of a teacher. No students. No one to teach. No reason for existence! One of the new kids on the block decided to send me a communication via this space. Since I’m not teaching the MBA course this semester, I don’t frequent that space and completely missed the communication. Until today, when I was notified that a major change had been made to the space, so I decided I should make sure I still exist in that space. Upon entering the space I was greeted with a 2 month old message from a perspective student! Horror of horrors! Not a good way to impress such a person to invest tens of thousands of dollars to come to my institution for a 21st century liberal arts education!

Communication is a key aspect of this type of education. We sell it. We brag on it. We promote it. We teach it. But in this case, it seems obvious that WE MISSED IT. Or at least I missed it. It never dawned on me that a prospective student even had access to that space.
What’s the solution?
•    remove myself from all these extra spaces? not going to happen
•    spend time in each space every day? not enough time in a day!
•    notify everyone everywhere that I prefer to receive my communications in a specific space? while I would like this, I don’t think everyone else would like to have to keep track of which space I prefer!

In my opinion, as a seasoned bit builder, and keeping in line with Alan Cooper’s exhortations about software interfaces in his outstanding book The Inmates are Running the Asylum, the only reasonable solution is to improve the software! The space should, recognizing the importance of communication, give me the option of having my emails automatically forwarded to another space. There are other variations I can think of on this option, but I’ll leave those for the interaction designers of this world to decide. May their very small tribe increase so we can free the inmates from running the asylum!

A word to businesses – be careful to instruct your people to know which spaces they are in and make sure they don’t miss any important business related interactions in those spaces! Poor communication is not good for business.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at http://woosters.org/dan/?p=584

One of the joys I experience as a bit building professor (aka computer science professor), is taking teams of students to intercollegiate programming contests. Asked once what these events were like, I said imagine a huge multiplayer chess game and then take away the chess board! In other words, very mentally challenging, but definitely not [...]]]>

Recently I had a communication challenge with AT&T. I hope to learn from this experience so that as Worthwhile grows we don’t frustrate our great customers like AT&T frustrated me. I’m fairly confident that no single person that I interfaced with the past 2 months at AT&T intentionally tried to frustrate me. But I think [...]]]>

Recently I had a communication challenge with AT&T. I hope to learn from this experience so that as Worthwhile grows we don’t frustrate our great customers like AT&T frustrated me. I’m fairly confident that no single person that I interfaced with the past 2 months at AT&T intentionally tried to frustrate me. But I think challenges come when “the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing” which seems so often the case in giant companies.

Our goal was AT&T’s new UVerse service for our office. Rather than bore you with the day-to-day details of my 2 month journey, I’ve decided to simply outline the highlights.

• AT&T first refused to process our request until we went directly through them because our main AT&T line was through a 3^rd party.
• AT&T installed our new line then told us UVerse isn’t available in our area.
• For the next two months I got the run around from at least 20 people.
• Finally, I reached a helpful representative who signed us up for UVerse. She went beyond as well, and asked me to confirm my address (which was completely wrong in the records).

Because of her great service, we now have UVerse service at the office.

Lessons

• Communication is the key to all successful relationships, whether you are the vendor or the customer.
• As a vendor, always look for problems the customer doesn’t perceive. Making information assumptions (like correct phone numbers and addresses) causes problems.
• As a customer, persistence is priceless!

I hope Worthwhile will always be sensitive to our customer relationships and will do all we can to avoid making it difficult for folks to do business with us!

The full entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 — http://woosters.org/dan/?p=545

Living in the information age has lots of exciting benefits and challenges. I like to think that working with bits, which are the basic building blocks of digital information, is a lot more fun than building with atoms, relics of the past industrial age. One of the challenges with so many bits is how to [...]]]>

We all get frustrated when things don’t work. Even in the BIT world. The world of ones and zeroes. Information. Computers. Websites. Logins. Security. All of the stuff of which the bit business consists. This morning I hit yet another frustration which got me thinking about how my company (Worthwhile) can help our customers and [...]]]>

We all get frustrated when things don’t work. Even in the BIT world. The world of ones and zeroes. Information. Computers. Websites. Logins. Security. All of the stuff of which the bit business consists.

This morning I hit yet another frustration which got me thinking about how my company (Worthwhile) can help our customers and their customers avoid frustration. I am a member of ACM, a professional group of people interested in advancing computing as a science and profession. They have a very extensive online book store. There was a new book called The Twitter Book which I wanted to order. We’ve had lots of great discussions recently about the value of social media and how to bring real business and personal value using it.

It had been a while since I had logged into Safari Books Online. Unfortunately, when I attempted to login, I couldn’t. No errors, no warnings, no entry, NOTHING! I simply couldn’t get into the store. Now, I teach an e-commerce class to MBA students and one of the “big ideas” we discuss says “when there’s a person who wants to give you money MAKE IT AS EASY AS POSSIBLE!” Well AMC wasn’t making it easy for me to give them money! I got to thinking about the parallel in the atom world (brick and mortar). If I hopped in my car — and you should see my new Crossfire SRT6 sometime – wow is it sweet, and drove to Barnes and Noble, I could see right away if there was something keeping me from getting into the store – there could be crowds, the road could be closed for construction, traffic lights could be out, the store could be closed or out of business — any number of things would serve as visual aids to tell me why I couldn’t get in.

But things are often not so simple in the bit world. Though if enough creative thought and energy went into it, I believe they could be! I have absolutely no idea why I couldn’t get into the Safari store. Was it out of business? Was my car out of gas? Was it too crowded? Were they closed for inventory? I have no idea. I find that to be very frustrating.

The lesson – when building interfaces and websites and plug ins and apps and you name it, for the bit business, you need to have a team with experience and dedication to think about how to present interfaces in such a way as to minimize or even eliminate user frustrations.

Original posting: This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at http://woosters.org/dan/?p=478

Yesterday I posted a blog on “9 Qualities of Good Software”. Today I’d like to expand on #9, security. A good piece of software should “protect the information it is responsible for.” It should “secure the bits.” I have found one of the best ways to gain insights into computer technology (the bit world) is [...]]]>

Yesterday I posted a blog on “9 Qualities of Good Software”. Today I’d like to expand on #9, security. A good piece of software should “protect the information it is responsible for.” It should “secure the bits.” I have found one of the best ways to gain insights into computer technology (the bit world) is to look for parallels in the “real world” (the world based on atoms). Once one understands the major differences and similarities between bits and atoms, it is much easier to understand how to live in a world filled with bits.    

As a husband and father, I take seriously my job of protecting my house and those in it. I’m protecting things made of atoms. I can see them. As a bit builder, I take seriously my job of protecting my clients’ information. In some sense, they cannot be seen or felt. They are intangible, though in many cases extremely valuable. One of the major differences between bits and atoms is that atoms can be seen and for the most part, bits cannot be.

Why do I say “for the most part.” Bits cannot be seen by the “naked eye,” the untrained eye. But with the right tools, a trained individual can sort of see the bits. In my 28 years of teaching computer science, I have noticed those that are inherently good with numbers can usually see the bits in their head. That’s because they are good with numbers. Securing bits has everything to do with understanding numbers. Its a “numbers game”.

In the atom world, we secure things in layers. The number and strength of each layer is determined by the value of the item being secured. For example, most of us secure our money in a bank. The bank secures it in a vault. The vault has layers of protection and so on. Now one thing worth noting in the atom world, which is also true in the bit world, the tighter I secure atoms (i.e. the more layers), the more difficult it becomes to access them when I need them. For example most of us use keys to gain access to our cars. Without the keys, accessing the car’s functionality is considerably more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. If I live in a neighborhood in which car jacking has become a way of life, I probably also want to install other layers of security on my car — steering wheel locking bar and LoJack come to mind. An interesting thing to note about the locking bar, it is fairly easy to find something that will “hack through” this layer of security, such as the BUSTER — removes steering wheel locking bars (which, btw, I found in the same google search I used to find a locking bar, so take note — even the crooks use google!). Which brings up an important point about information security — any bits I can secure, can be made unsecure by someone else.

Rule #1 — securing bits is a numbers game

Rule #2 — any bits that one person can secure, can be made unsecure by another person willing to put enough effort into it– beware of anyone telling you they can guarantee 100% security!

Rule #3 — increasing security decreases usability (makes things more difficult even for the honest folks)

Rule #4 — like securing atoms, securing bits is best done in layers

Rule #5 — it is harder to know something is secure when you cannot see it is or not

Rule #6 — securing stuff (bits or atoms) requires being able to think in advance of all the bad things that can happen

It is rule #6 I find to be the most challenging. Consider the events of 9/11. Prior to these events, not many people considered the extreme vulnerability of tall buildings! Now everyone is aware of this. In the early days of websites which had databases on the back-end, not many people considered the extreme vulnerability of SQL injection. This is a technique whereby someone can do unexpected things to your bits in a database — change them, get a listing of them, or simply delete them! Now any developer worth his/her weight in bits is well aware of this problem. In addition, a growing number of tools we use to build web-based software takes this into account to help the developer create systems which avoid this vulnerability. There are hundreds of these types of vulnerabilities to which web applications can be exposed. If you want more details, I recommend CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors.

At the heart of computer science is of course the computer, but at the heart of the computer is SOFTWARE. To be an expert in the field of computer science requires an in-depth knowledge of software. What is it? How does it work? How is it created? How does it interact with the computer? What [...]]]>

At the heart of computer science is of course the computer, but at the heart of the computer is SOFTWARE. To be an expert in the field of computer science requires an in-depth knowledge of software. What is it? How does it work? How is it created? How does it interact with the computer? What makes one piece of software superior to another piece?    

Software, in my opinion, is the most valuable intangible product in the marketplace today. Everyone needs it. Everyone is impacted by it. Very few people know how to create it. And no one is able to create it with perfection! To emphasize the intangible nature of software, the term I like to use the process of creating software is “bit building“. At its most base level, software is nothing more than a string (a very long string — millions and billions) of binary digits. Ones and zeros. I am in the business of training and developing “bit builders”.  Here are 9 qualities of good software I use to help motivate the thoughts of my bit builders:

correctness — does the software do what it is suppose to do (according to the design specs)?

robustness — how does the software respond to unexpected conditions (wrong input)?

user-friendliness — is the software easy to use by users from the intended audience?

adaptability — how difficult is it to modify the software to adjust to an ever-changing world?

reusability — can parts of the software be easily reused to build other software systems?

interoperability — does the software interface with other software systems?

efficiency — does the software make good use of its resources (memory, disk, CPU, network)?

portability — can the software to easily ported (moved) to other operating system (or in today’s world, browser)?

security — does the software protect the information it is responsible for?

To excel in the process of bit building there must be a clear vision of what makes one set of software bits better than another set. While I don’t claim that this list is exhaustive, I have found it to help me analyze and think clearly about the quality of a piece of software.

The greatest strength of computers is that they don’t have a specific purpose for their existence. We call them general purpose devices and never before in the history of man have we ever created a device that wasn’t designed for a specific purpose. Cars, microwaves, typewriters, televisions, washing machines and airplanes were all designed with [...]]]>

The greatest strength of computers is that they don’t have a specific purpose for their existence. We call them general purpose devices and never before in the history of man have we ever created a device that wasn’t designed for a specific purpose. Cars, microwaves, typewriters, televisions, washing machines and airplanes were all designed with a single purpose in mind.

But computers, what’s their purpose? Some would say they exist to frustrate us, while others might say they were designed to compute. What determines how a computer is used? The software — those mysterious arrangements of 1’s & 0’s determine what a computer will do. This amazing flexibility is not only a computer’s biggest strength, it can also prove to be its greatest weakness, depending on what really needs to be accomplished.

For instance, a few weeks ago I invited my MBA students to join me for an early morning Bible study @ Worthwhile. I was showing a DVD series called “Business by the Book” which studies how to run a business built upon timeless principles taught in God’s Word. I setup my Macbook to the DVD. Connected it to the big screen and brought in a small sound system. It took about a half an hour to get all the connections just right. It was a most frustrating and somewhat humbling experience!

The next week I decided to go for a simpler, machine specific solution. I bought a $50 dvd player which took all of 5 minutes to open the box, setup the player and start the dvd! An amazing contrast with the 30 minutes required for the general purpose device.

For me this underscored the truth that “less is more”and “simpler is smarter”. I have noticed in my 28 years of teaching computer science that those of us in the field seem to look for solutions that involve using this amazing general purpose computer. I guess that’s natural for a computer scientist. But the lesson I learned was that specific purpose devises might just be a better solution.

So next time you go looking for a solution and everyone is telling you the computer is the answer, it might be worthwhile for you to ask a different question!

In most atom-based problems, the cause of the error is located relatively close to the observation of the error. For example, if your hair dryer shorts out and blows a circuit, chances are pretty good that the problem is located in the outlet into which the dryer is plugged. If not, it is almost certainly [...]]]>

In most atom-based problems, the cause of the error is located relatively close to the observation of the error. For example, if your hair dryer shorts out and blows a circuit, chances are pretty good that the problem is located in the outlet into which the dryer is plugged. If not, it is almost certainly in the breaker box located within the house. It would NOT be located miles away in the power company’s electrical grid!

One of the challenges in the bit business is that many time this proximity of error doesn’t happen when it comes to bit-based problems. Understanding this phenomenon and learning how to solve these types of problems is key to success in the bit business. Here’s an example which derailed me this morning for about an hour!

My home computer network is a little more complex than the average due to its connection to our company network. Recently my network engineer installed a special network appliance which encapsulated most of the complexity allowing him pretty much a single point of connection to resolve network problems in my home. One of the services this appliance handles is VPN (virtual private network) to allow the bits between my house and the company network to travel with “police escort” for security. Technically this is called packet encryption. Well, as of yesterday packets stopped flowing freely and it turns out the problem had been created several moths ago! Why did it wait until yesterday to surface? This is an example of there being little or no proximity of error in computer networks.

A couple of months ago my network engineer was making some modifications in our company VPN. These modifications affected how my packets traveled back and forth. It turns out the configuration was incorrect, however, the network devices would not start using the misconfiguration until they were rebooted. You guessed it, the reboot didn’t take place until early Monday morning! After the reboot the packets were unable to flow between my house and the company network. It took us about an hour to figure it all out and get it fixed. The fix was simple, about 5 seconds. Finding where to fix it was the challenge, due to lack of proximity of error.

So, next time you replace light bulb in your house, be thankful that it is highly unlikely this will cause toilets to start leaking, thanks for proximity of error in the atom business!