Using serial numbers is the most common way to unlock applications in the market today. Microsoft made that part of our life (us developers and isv) easier using serial keys all over their product lines. This has made final users and customer familiar with the term and how the should use them to activate their applications and that’s why we use them in our .net licensing product LicenseSpot. One aspect to keep in mind about generating serial numbers is to keep them unique. In the function below we’re using GUIDs to generate serial numbers as we know for sure that they’re unique. The...

When we first launched LicenseSpot one of the most frequent request we would get from customers and trial users was why we wouldn’t offer more than one product in our starter plan. One of the features of the product is the ability to configure products that will be later licensed. This way you could track how many licenses you’ve generated by product and also what products or versions any given customer have bought. On that starter plan, only one product could be configured. But I was asked myself, why if you’re starting out a company software, why would you want to create another...

Everyday new online services are launched and must of us don’t even notice but a few of them. I’ve found that the majority of these few start with a freemium model or a beta test mode to attract users and subscribers. I don’t find anything wrong with this, but personally, the first thing I do when exploring a new service is to find the pricing page to check if I can afford it. For me, there’s no personal benefit to subscribe and start using an application day on and day off, configuring the service, entering my data, so when the owners think they have a large...

A lot has been written about how the top three mobile companies should configure themselves. I’m talking about Apple, Google and RIM. Which one is better and which one is worse, who should die first and who’s second. I think all those views (although have some degree of veracity in them) are too absolutist in the sense that things are not black and white. But also, it depends on the point of view of each person and their own experience. All platforms have their own strengths, if they didn’t, neither of them would reach to the place they’re right now. Some value is the end user...

A few weeks back I needed a control that allowed me to upload multiple files to a SQL database going through an ASP.NET ashx handler. Also, the whole control needed to be implemented client side and the best option if using jQuery. I spent lots of time trying to find some good control that didn’t used Flash. Most of the controls available out there were pure based Flash applications or a combination of jQuery + Flash. None were pure jQuery and supported the option of multiple files. Then I found Andrew Valums jQuery upload control. It was pretty easy to install and configured. The only...

As part of the development process of RequestSpot, our help desk software for multiple departments, we’ve created a tool that lets users capture a region, a window or the full screen of their computers and edit the image as needed. With the edit options, you can: Create rectangles, circles and lines Arrows Markers Everything with the colors you need After editing you can save the image in JPEG format or copy it to the clipboard for further processing, send it to an email or paste it on a document. The best part is that we’ve made the tool, the screen capture software, available for...

Why is it that sites that provide localization always try to assume that the best content for you is the one based on your location? Most people sometimes aren’t in their hometown. They could be on a trip to Asia or the middle east, but this doesn’t mean that when researching for a site or information, they want to see these sites in mandarin or in Arabian. I may say that the majority of users try to look information first in English because the majority on sites are already in this language. You have more probabilities in finding what you need when querying in English. What I’m...

With the hacked of Gawker Media sites and the release of a list of users and passwords stored on the sites, people all over the Internet started reacting to the news and offering techniques on how this can be resolved. Some of the proposed techniques include getting rid of the user database implemented on many websites and let an external application handle the customer login using credentials from others sites like Twitter, Facebook and OpenID. In my personal opinion, I really don’t like any of these mechanism because I really don’t trust these companies. Your could...

When I start developing and throwing out code, I can tell you I’m too concentrated in the features and how I want things to work out. Always testing and debugging and running around different possibilities in my head on how that piece of code could go wrong. When writing elements on the interface, I just tend to place the needed controls or the html tags on web pages and add the labels to the respective controls. The labels just pop out of my head without even noticing what I’m writing. Most of the time I’m just thinking how the feature is going to work with the control. So, when your application...

I’ve been trying in last few months to reduce the level of interruption I get while working. When I really get focused on doing things, I can achieve level a of productivity that sometimes is difficult to get. Somethings I’ve done include turning off Outlook email notifications, not entering twitter and avoiding as much as possible using Instant Messaging while totally focused. The findings have been great. It turns out not all email needs to be answered immediately (it’s even better if you wait as you can think of a better response). Also twitter can wait, I can answer...

What ever happen to getting to know each other? Those early conversations about what you do, what are your plans and helping me out with one thing or another? It seems all that is gone by now. Yesterday I received an email from a vendor which we bought a software product about two years ago. The subject said something about their social media sites. When I read the email, they were simply sending a link of their twitter and Facebook site asking me to click on the link and follow them or to just like them. I just though, what? Just like that? I though about running into a high school friend that I...

Today there are several mechanism available on the Internet to reach your clients and everyday seems to be more. But I still consider business blogs to be one of the best ways to really communicate the audience what your business is about. Other venues get you to interact with clients, get to know them and they get to know us (sometimes maybe too much) but you can’t get an idea out there in 140 characters. That’s why your blog should be your command center for transmitting and developing your thoughts. Consider this: Twitter is great way to get to customers and them to you, but with the 140...

As you’ve already know from my last post, we’ve launched a new site that gives an overview of the Santo Domingo public transportation system. It’s the first time we launch a service like this and we’re excited on watching the results. We’re aiming at least in covering the hosting costs. The site basically shows a Google Map with the principal Santo Domingo buses routes in the city in combination of the Santo Domingo metro (subway). For now, the subway only has one line (the red line in the map). This forms the official Santo Domingo Transportation system of the city and is...

I really like experimenting with maps and playing with streets and avenues and trains. So, if you are planning to visit Santo Domingo when you get your latest vacation in Punta Cana, Bavaro or Samana, then take a visit to Santo Domingo Transit Map. You will find all the official bus routes in the city and also incorporated the recently created first subway line. Leave any comments on the same site’s contact section.

Since the beginning of computing someone had the brilliant idea that for storing files and documents the best way to classify them would be to create a hierarchy and structure of folders or directories and begin dumping them in there. Today we have end up with hundreds and hundreds of folders in our hard disks with lots and lots of files. Sometimes I don’t even remember where I created a folder and even further what the files inside there represent. And a simple explanation for this is that we as human beings don’t think like a hierarchy. Our memories are not stored in a hierarchical path that we...

Some months ago Microsoft had a program called SQL Server Front Runner in which different companies submitted their product to be tested against SQL Server. It was a very good program because the tests were conducted by VeriTest, a famous third party company dedicated to testing software. We submitted SkyXoft Procx and got our certification of good to go!

Yes, you have to do it. No, don’t ask more questions about it. Yes, you will need to learn a couple of things, and some of your colleagues are going to refuse using it, but you have to. In the long run, you will increase your organization productivity and you won’t be able to live without it. Some of the things you’ll get: Central document repository: no more storing files on your local hard disk or on a shared folder in the network. With SharePoint you will be able to store documents in a repository accessible via web. When some other person needs to collaborate on the document,...

Productivity has been key factor of growth of companies now days. When organizations can’t reduce more costs and you have others rising, in which you cannot have a direct influence, the only way to increase profits is getting into productivity. When people ask me to define productivity, I respond a four word sentence: do more with less. That’s it. Process more insurance claims without increasing personnel, find company documents and information more easily without wasting time, automate processes and relocate employees to perform value added activities in the business, handle more loans...

How can you really know how your company is doing if are not measuring processes? Do you know how many support requests are you getting from users per month? From what area are they coming? If you go to the customer service representative, do you know how much time is lasting for giving the customer a definitive answer on their problem? There is no way we can improve these type of services if you are not taking measures of the process. By doing so, then we can think about augmenting our customer satisfaction index or reducing the amount of errors that a product has when going out to the streets. In...

We’ve been working hard in these previous weeks getting version 2.5 of Procx out on the streets. Most of the new features comes as part of the feedback we’ve been getting from our customers. The winner feature of all was a better web client interface. So, we dedicated the majority of the time in developing a new client with all the features requested. Here’s a preview of what’s coming: 1. The home page: The initial page welcomes every user with a summary of tasks pending and overdue for him. Also, a small calendar shows the tasks a person has for today by default. (click for...