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By Bracken King |
November 11th, 2010
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We talk often on this blog about the value of trying out software as a means of evaluating, rather than relying on feature lists or other "objective" measures. When developing software, however, there's a much stronger emphasis on rigorous testing that extends outside of the range of typical use. So why does this disconnect exist, and what's the right balance when developing or evaluating software?
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By Bracken King |
October 28th, 2010
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I've recently taken some time to try out a variety of different sports websites. During the process, I ran across a live game cast that I hated on first glance; after about 5 minutes of using it, however, it had turned in to one of the best game cast tools I've used. It's tempting to try and evaluate software from feature lists and "objective" analysis, but there really is no substitute for just trying things out.
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By Tyler King |
October 20th, 2010
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We all know that design is an important part of software, but it's a pretty broad category. In this post I break design into two different areas (graphic and user interface) and I explain the differences when it comes to software.
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By Tyler King |
September 15th, 2010
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Gliffy is a web-based flowchart tool. In this post, I compare it with Visio and LucidChart to see how it stacks up against the competition.
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By Bracken King |
August 17th, 2010
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How much is your software worth? Without devolving too
much into my poor grasp of economics, I'll explore two different ways to think about it.
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By Bracken King |
August 5th, 2010
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We recently put together a white paper about how customer management software can help small businesses improve relationships with their customers. Check out a brief summary of the major points from the paper, or read the full 7 page paper.
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By Bracken King |
July 29th, 2010
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We're often told that it's a poor craftsmen who blames his tools. While that certainly sets up a nice standard of personal responsibility, it can also get in the way of evaluating those tools. It's easy to identify missing functionality in software, but failures in other aspects, such as poorly demonstrating its use, can mistakenly be attributed as the fault of the user. When evaluating your software, leave the accountability behind and hold the software to a higher standard.
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By Tyler King |
July 28th, 2010
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You may have heard that the Los Angeles Police Department made a $7 million deal with Google to move their email from a Novell system to Google Apps. Both sides of this deal have been heavily criticized by the media, and every article I read about it makes me appreciate how lucky I am to work at a small business.
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By Tyler King |
May 31st, 2010
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AlternativeTo.net is a website that lets you search for software that you know about and see a list of competing products. So the next time you're fed up with your software, just got to alternativeTo and find something better.
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When evaluating software, nothing can replace a thorough test drive, but there are a few red flags you can look for to decide if an option is even worth testing. In my opinion, the biggest indicator of quality is the pricing structure. By looking at how a company prices their product, you can generally tell a lot about how much they believe in it.
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About this blog
This blog helps small businesses find and use easy, effective software. Most technology is meant
either for individual consumers, or huge corporations. We'll help you find the tools that are
powerful enough to help run your business, but simple enough that you can start using them by
yourself.
This blog is written by the co-founders of Less Annoying CRM. We build an
easy customer management tool
that helps small businesses organize customer information and track leads.
If you have any feedback about this blog, please feel free to
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