Document Revision Numbers ( aka "Devon Doc Nums" )

I'd like to share with you a doc revision practice I started back in my early Apple days in Cupertino.  I got tired of document revision numbers that didn’t give any indication of the age of the document content and/or required numbers and dates to keep track of revision changes. I also didn't like document revision numbers having a similar format to software version numbers.  Having references to both software and document version numbers in the same emails, documents etc. can get confusing.

For non-software deliverables, like documentation, disk images, etc, I use a revision number format of ‘yymm-#’ where …

• ‘yy’ is the two digit year
• ‘mm’ is the two digit month
• # is the revision of the document within a month.

The document revision number provides an immediate reference to a point in time and a granular revision number for tracking document updates within the noted point in time.

So for example, the first revision of a document have been '0709-1', with this second revision you sent out this afternoon using ‘0709-2’ as the revision.   

Of course, just as in software version numbers, it’s clear that a document with a rev of “1.3” is newer than the same doc with a rev of “1.2”.  But it’s not immediately clear the age of either documents, relative to the current date or even each other.  

What really causes confusing is documents distributed with both a revision # and a date stamp on them.  How many times have you received multiple copies of a document with numbering like “1.1, September 2007” and “1.2, Aug 2007”.  what the heck?

Document revisions like “0703-2” and "0703-3” give us a lot more info at a glance.  A reader can still immediately identify that 0703-3 is newer than 0703-2, but they they also know both documents are from March of 2007.

Over the years this doc revision format has proved very useful and after seeing how the revision numbers increment, people catch on pretty quick about it.

 

 

 

cheers,

dEVoN

 

 

 

The Bourne Ultimatum

(aka The Bourne Nauseatum)

Imagine for a moment that you're watching the scene in "The Godfather" where Al Pacino sits down to dinner with Bruno Tattaglia and Capt. McClusky and your view of the conversation is in constant motion. The camera angle on each character is moving horizontally and vertically by small amounts and is in constant motion enough that you have a hard time focusing on the actors and the conversation itself. You're trying to watch the movie and the characters you're deeply entranched with and you can't stop thinking about the moving camera. What's going on here?

Now imagine you're watching Lt. Dunbar sitting down to talk with Kicking Bird and Wind in his Hair in "Dances with Wolves" and the camera bounces up and down on their faces as if the cameraman couldn't hold his/her bladder until the take was over. Regardless of the fact that you have very talented actors portraying interesting characters in entrancing stories, you can't stop focusing on the constant motion of the camera. It happens so much that you have to fight the ridiculous impulse to reach up and grab the screen in a sad attempt to get the camera to just sit still for a moment.

It's hard to imagine those scenes from both "The Godfather" and "Dances with Wolves" filmed any other way than how we saw them sitting in theater seats. Yet that is exactly the cinematography formula that was used in "The Bourne Supremacy" three years ago and repeated ad-infinitum in this year's "The Bourne Ultimatum". The style of filming the director Paul Greengrass uses has been hailed as leading the director to "Spielbergian levels" and flamed as being filmed by "attention deficit monkeys". I agree with the latter.

My wife and I actually went and saw "The Bourne Ultimatum" twice. The first time, the filming style was so nauseating that it distracted both of us from the guts of the movie. A few days later we watched the first two Bourne movies again and while watching the second one, it hit me! I realized that the third movie overlapped the second movie. Duh! I'm not normally this slow, so I'll blame it on the filming style. When we saw the Bourne Ultimatum a second time, we went knowing the filming would irritate us so we mentally set that aside and we really enjoyed the storyline and the acting.

There is a feeling of "ok, been there, done that", but if you liked the first two films, you'll like this third one. Bourne finds out more about how his training all started and seriously begins to face his demons. And man, he has a lot of them. One of our most favorite character traits about Jason Bourne is his methodical and systematic nature. He spends no time thinking about what to do in any given situation. He just does it and his timing is usually impeccable. In The Bourne Ultimatum, there's even more of this MO and it's really cool to watch in action. Here's a very small teaser for example. During a chase scene in Morocco, Jason is running through crowded city streets with vendors and people lining the streets and cops chasing him. Without breaking stride, he picks up a spray can from a vendor display and a few yards away he drops it into an open fire burning in a 55 gallon barrel. In the same casual move that tossed the can in the fire, he grabs an innocent man standing next to the barrel and pushes him backwards out of the way as the barrel explodes behind them. Jason lets the guy go and continues on his way down the street without as much as a glance at what's behind him. He already knows what's behind him, and what those chasing him will do in reaction to whatever he does next. Matt Damon pulls off this casual nonchalant mannerism of expertly. The character is a joy to watch.

The main criticism I can find with the movie is Paul Greengrass moves the camera so much and so often, especially during the fight sequences, that you don't get to see Bourne in action enough. A few days after seeing "Ultimatum" the first time, I read an interview with Matt Damon in Entertainment Weekly and all my questions were answered. This movie began filming and completed almost half of the principle filming schedule without a completed script! No wonder the filming style felt so hacked together. The best way to cover up the fact that the set designers didn't know what was being filmed the day after tomorrow is to keep moving the camera around so nobody can see imperfections in the scene. The best way to cover up fight choreography that was decided on-the-fly by stunt coordinators who didn't have a script telling them which way was up is to move the camera around so much the viewer can't tell. The best way to distract viewers from the fact that your actors didn't know where they're coming from or where they're going, is to move the camera around so much the viewer can't focus on any one thing long enough to second guess it all.

Very enjoyable movie. Jason Bourne is at his best. If it were not for the filming style, I would consider this a very good movie.


Copyright (C) 2007 Devon Hubbard

Healthcare Challenge to Candidates

Michael Moore posted a challenge to Presidential candidates on The Huffington Post yesterday. His blog post is here.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Mr. Moore. But I respect his right to free speech and he does dig into very interesting and serious issues. The accessibility of healthcare in the U.S. is definitely one such issue. I applaud his challenge to Presidential candidates! It's a great idea to ask our elected officials to take such a step.

I've worked in the health insurance industry multiple times in my 25 year career developing and managing software and systems. I've personally interacted with state and federal agencies for Medicare, Medicaid, and child health programs. I've worked on group health plans involving private and public corporations. I've personally seen how health care programs work, how the claims are analyzed and processed, and where some of the money flows. The state of health care accessibility in this country is a massive problem!

The number of layers of politics and bureaucracies involved in even the simplest health plan is amazing. Most people couldn't imagine the layers of companies, agencies, and people between a doctor visit and/or trip to the pharmacy and the final payment an insurance company pays out. In most health plans, by the time a single claim has been paid, there has already been unbelievable amounts of money that has already passed through countless hands. Healthcare in this country is a massive business with incredible amounts of money and concessions involved at all levels.

And in my opinion, the problem is not something that any Presidential candidate can solve with campaign promises and expensive television ads. No matter how sincere and valiant their efforts may be, the system didn't get where it is in 4 years and it can't be corrected in 4 years. Any candidate that promises to be able to solve healthcare in this country is blowing serious smoke up the behinds of naive American voters. The problem is not something that can be easily corrected without tipping a lot of boats. And we're not talking about just rocking a few. Most of them need to be capsized to even approach correcting the problem. And most Presidential candidates can't afford to capsize the boats that are directly or indirectly owned by the funds that got them elected. If you think the healthcare system is a big business. It's a dwarf compared to the political system.

Unfortunately, unless some gigantic wave of decency and sincere humanity hits the elected leaders of this country and all levels of the healthcare system, the system isn't going to change anytime soon. Anything short of that is just the aforementioned smoke screen.

Every single person involved at all levels of healthcare needs to be willing to agree that no matter what the cost, they will work together to provide accessible and affordable healthcare to everyone in this country. And 'cost' in this context should be clearly defined for what it really is. 'cost' is what all those involved in the healthcare industry will have to "give up"; not what it will cost them or the government to manage real healthcare costs. There's already billions of dollars spent every year to run healthcare plans in this country and it keeps going up every year. Covering true cost of healthcare is not the problem. If you remove all the concessions, palm greasing, kick backs, or whatever else you would like to call them, the actual cost of providing healthcare will, in reality and without a doubt, be a lot less then what it costs everyone today.

There is one single word that best describes how the state of healthcare in the U.S. got to where it is today. Greed.

And just to be clear about something here, I don't believe that doctors and medical providers are the root of the problem. Big business around them is. Although I'm sure there are doctors and medical providers out there simply in it for the money, I still like to believe that a majority of our doctors and caregivers do it because they're dedicated to positively affecting lives.

dEVoN

Quality Products - part 2 (aka How RCA Lost a Customer)

It's now April 2nd and here's an update on our RCA DLP support issues...

As noted in the first part of this story, the repairs attempted on our 61" RCA DLP by a local service center made the problem worse. The TV was picked up on Monday, 3/19. It's still in the shop. After almost two weeks of sitting in the shop, and now 5 weeks since we first reported the problems to RCA, we still do not have a working TV. Well, for that matter, we don't even have the TV.

About two weeks ago, it was finally determined what part needed to be replaced. RCA is doing what they call a "global search" for a replacement part. From what has been explained to me, once they locate the part they will send it to the service center handling my TV. If they cannot find a replacement part, they will then determine the best course of action for repairing the TV.

I have found it very interesting how long it takes RCA to determine what's wrong with the TV. Shortly after the first repair of the TV made the problem worse, I went online searching for information about similar reported problems. I found a great site for asking technical questions. FixYa.com. I posted a description of the problem, and within a few days got a suggested solution.

The suggested fix was to replace the color wheel, and the individual who posted the fix stated that RCA knows they have a problem with color wheels. Of no particular coincidence, on the same day the FixYa.com suggestion fix was posted, the RCA service center recommended the color wheel be replaced. The ball is now back on the RCA side of the court. The RCA customer relations rep I spoke to said that they are doing what is called a "global part search" to find the right part to send to the dealer servicing my TV. I was told this global search takes 2-3 business days. Is it just me, or is it reasonable to question why in this day and age of high speed global communications and corporate networks of information, a search for this part would take 2-3 business days?

Today is Monday, and we are now in the 5th week of repairs on our TV. 5 weeks and the TV is still in the shop with no definitive word on when it will be returned in working order. Remember, this is a TV that is covered by a full 3-year extended warranty direct from the manufacturer, Thomson Electronics, RCA.

The really sad part of all this is I have called RCA four (4) times. I have sent three inquiries and two complaints to Thomson Electronics via their customer support web site. To date, I have not received once single phone call back from Thomson/RCA. I have not received once single email response back. Nothing. Zip. Zilch!

The local RCA dealer has been helpful but unfortunately, they seem to have their hands tied behind their back following the warranty service procedures defined by RCA. Try this, then try that, then do this, and do that, etc, etc.

Regardless of when our TV does get returned to us, this experience has already soured me on ever purchasing an RCA television again; or any other Thomson Electronics product for that matter. The fact that their Customer Relations department has not returned one of my phone calls, one of my support email inquiries, and cannot give me any idea whatsoever about when the service for our TV will be complete, is disappointing.

I've provided technical support to customers off-n-on for over 20 years. Whether it be hardware or software, good customer support is important in a high tech world. High tech products aren't flawless. Things will break. Repairs will be needed. What keeps a company and their products in a good light in times of needed repairs is the customer service that company provides.

Why I think Apple TV is hot!

Here's a no brain prediction... Apple TV will be hot! Very hot!

Today, Apple has publicly began shipping Apple TV. Their newest consumer product in a continually expanding line of successful consumer products. I'm particularly excited about this one though.

I think the era of a digital library (e.g. movies, television, music, music videos, family videos, etc.) readily available on your home TV is here! Like a lot of what Apple does, the technology to do this has been around a long time. Apple has simplified it for the general public and consumers.

If you have spent any time on the road on a vacation or business trip, you have probably surfed through the content catalog on the TV in your hotel room and quietly wished you had something like that at home. Well, now you can! Using Apple TV is like looking through a catalog of what's available in a hotel room.

Apple's web pages about Apple TV have the tagline, "If it's on iTunes, it's on your wide screen TV." It makes sense that Apple would directly tie this product to iTunes. Continue to get your content there makes perfect sense for existing iTunes customers. Especially the customers who purchase movies and television shows off iTunes. But what I'm more excited about is a little more unadvertised purpose. The underlying technology that iTunes supports for video content is not specific to content purchased off iTunes. Since iTunes can display and play my own video content, that means Apple TV can too. This means that I can continue to legally copy DVDs I own to my computers by turning them into MPEG video files. (I use H.264 video encoding but the technical specs of the encoding method are unimportant for this discussion). Our family's DVD library of over 230 movies can now be readily available on demand any time we want to watch them without loading a single DVD into our DVD player. Wow!

Please note the bold typeface on the word 'legally'. The legal debates surrounding the content of digital libraries and consumers rights to use them in a manner not originally defined by the content owners continues to be an issue. I bring up the legal issue only because it does play a factor in how Apple can market Apple TV to consumers. It's a shame they can't pitch the product in a manner which shows off what you can really do with it in your home. What's a good example of what they could catch legal flack for marketing? What if you could insert a DVD into your computer and rip it to MPEG and add it to your library just like what you can do today with a music CD? Technically speaking, this is not a problem. Legally speaking, it's a solution that I can't imagine Apple providing anytime soon. If Apple's smart, and they are, they will leave that solution up to third party vendors and the Internet community to exploit for them. No sweat. Solutions for doing this are probably already being pulled together from various open source projects as you read this.

So the issues prohibiting Apple from marketing Apple TV for what it really can do for consumers is far more political than technical. Should consumers who have purchased a DVD be allowed to view that DVD after it has been installed on their computer? Should they be allowed to put that movie file onto a device like the Apple TV and watch it on their TV through a digital content library? I'm not a lawyer, but I believe the answer is 'yes'. I've bought these DVDs for viewing on my television with my family and how it gets from the DVD player to the TV is irrelevant, in my opinion. I'll leave the legal wrangling to the appropriate players. As a consumer, I plan to utilize Apple TV to it's fullest in improving the media viewing and listening experience for my family.

I currently have almost 100 of our DVD movies encoded as MPEG files that can be played on my laptop or iPod. Over time, I'll get our whole library in this digital format ready to be served up by Apple TV to our family at any time. No doubt there will be some playing around with file names and meta data tags (e.g. like movie/show names, year, etc) and playlist organization, but in no time my family will be able to sit down and quickly navigate to all Clint Eastwood movies in our library and pull up "The Outlaw Josey Wales" in a matter of seconds. That's nothing but HOT in my book!

If you haven't read about or seen Apple TV yet, please visit the following Apple web site:

http://www.apple.com/appletv/

Here's a review of Apple TV from Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal...

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20070321.html

Where have all the quality products gone?

A little over two years ago we purchased a brand new RCA 61" DLP HD television set. Our family enjoys movies like there's no tomorrow and this TV has been a blessing and a royal pain. A blessing in that it's big enough that friends come over to watch recorded shows and movies. Our kids bring friends over to our house to watch shows and movies. We have always encouraged our kids to bring people to hang out at our house. We know where they are that way. And with a big screen TV readily available, it quickly become the center of our movie viewing pleasures.

But then there the royal pain side of things. Shortly after it's 1 year birthday, the TV needed to be serviced. Good thing we purchased the 3-year extended warranty. The parts on this thing are damn expensive! Now a little past it's 2nd birthday, the TV is having more serious problems. It's currently experiencing a color problem that's incredibly annoying because the color not only goes completely whacky with negative-looking pictures and color, but the TV turns itself off after a few minutes of this wackyness.

POOF! The sound of everyone emptying their seats when the TV goes all goofy and shuts down.
POOF! The last sound we hear everytime one of our sons gets up and goes to somewhere else with his friends when the TV shuts down.
POOF! The sound almost 3 grand makes being spent on a TV that couldn't make it past it's 1st and 2nd birthdays without expensive repairs.

We have a 27" NEC TV in the garage. We purchased it over 21 years ago and it still works. It's been dropped and had the back plastic case cracked. It's lost the little door on the front covering the controls. The remote is long gone. But the TV still works and still shows a great picture.

Our recent escapade with this RCA DLP TV involves waiting almost two weeks for a new part to arrive that RCA technicians told our local service center would fix the problem. The part gets installed and the same exact problem appears again. So what is the suggested remedy this time? They don't know, but they would like to take the TV back to the shop and work on it there to get the problem resolved once and for all. Estimated turn around time? 3-4 weeks! And guess what? There's no comparable loaner provided while the TV's in for repairs. And oh, it's Friday and RCA service centers are closed for the weekend. So sorry. Gotta go. Have a nice weekend. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

So will this TV remain at the center of our family's entertainment life style? Will RCA do the right thing by their customer and send out all necessary parts to replace the major components inside the TV?

Stay tuned...

Shawshank Philosophy

Our family is into movies big time. Next to our library of hundreds of DVDs we have a Top Ten list tacked to the wall. On that list is The Shawshank Redemption. #4 in fact. Every member of our family likes this movie and voted to put it on our Top Ten list for their own reasons. We all agree it's a great movie. There is something about the movie that I particular favor though. It's something I like to call the "Shawshank Philosophy", and no it's not based on the famous "get busy living or get busy dying" line in the movie. It's something a little more subtle that occurs across several pivotal scenes during movie that stuck in my mind since the first time I saw it.

If a person follows the Shawshank Philosophy, they have truly come to terms with themselves and truly don't care what others think. They don't need the acceptance of others to feel good about themselves. No matter what they've done in their lives.

This ideal is weaved into the plot of the movie through several scenes, but the significance of these scenes is often missed by viewers. At least most viewers I've talked to about it. Several times throughout the movie, Red (Morgan Freeman) sits down in front of the parole board trying to get paroled. Each time he sits down and spews out what he thinks the parole board wants to hear. His regret for his crime, what he's learned, blah, blah. Each time he says the same thing because he thinks that's what they want to hear, and each time his parole is rejected. Only when Red has truly come to terms with his life and himself does he go before the parole board one final time and speak truthfully about himself. Yes he regrets the crime that put him in there. Yes he regrets the life he took and pain he caused and there isn't a day that goes by that he wishes he could go back and tell the younger version of himself how stupid he is. He tells the parole board, with complete acceptance of his past criminal behavior, of who he was and where it's led him in his life, to go screw themselves. As he says in the movie, "I don't give a damn!" And that's when he was set free. Figuratively and literally.

I have no insight or knowledge into what Stephen King's intentions were in writing The Shawshank Redemption. Nor do I have any insight into Frank Darabont's intentions filming any of these scenes. But the message I get from Red's ascension into true acceptance of himself and what he's done in his life, is something I think we all should learn from. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's spotless. We all make mistakes. And regardless of whether you're paying for those mistakes deep down inside or by sitting in prison, you have to come to terms with your mistakes, work to correct those mistakes, and accept that your behavior is not who you are. You can learn from it and move on. You can set yourself free. If you can't truly learn from it, grow up, and move on, you'll always be spewing out what you think people want to hear and you'll never get the results you want, or need, to move on with your life.

FireFox - An Open Source success story

I've been in the high tech industry for over 20 years now and have read about Open Source projects for almost as long. Although the core practices behind open source have their origins in academia and have been used for decades, the term itself didn't become widely used and referenced until the 90's. Almost a decade ago, I was lucky enough to sit in a room full of hacker professionals into the wee hours of the morning listening to John Warnock (founder of Adobe) and Eric Raymond (a strong open source advocate) in a friendly debate on the pros and cons of open source. I don't remember the exact words of the debate but I remember it all began when Eric suggested to John that Adobe should open source Photoshop. John's reply was, to paraphrase; "Now why in the world would we do that?" And thus began the debate.

It's been almost a decade since that night and this past week I was again lucky enough to be exposed to a sequence of events surrounding open source. On Feb 27, 2007, the Mozilla organization released a new version of FireFox to the world. A security update for two versions of the browser, 1.5.0.10 and 2.0.0.2. Within a few hours of the installing the update, other developers and I began running into problems running web sites we were developing or maintained. After some regression testing with different versions of Firefox to positively identify the 2.0.0.2/1.5.0.10 update broke web sites, I opened a bug on Mozilla.org for the problem. What happened after that has left me pleasantly amazed.

At 19:12PST on 2007-02-24, I opened the following bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371576

Within the first 30 minutes after opening the bug, the bug began getting properly categorized, flagged, was assigned to a developer, and 4 people attached themselves to the bug. Within a few hours a test case had been added to the bug, and the cause of the problem was tracked down to the lines of code in the source. By the next day the magnitude of the problem and its affects on web sites worldwide was identified. Within a couple days further isolation and regression testing identified the proper fix, and 5 days after the bug was opened the issue was resolved.

We had been experiencing the problem in sites using a specific AJAX environment, but within the first two days the Firefox developers quickly isolated the code level cause of the problem and reported that it would render a lot of web sites worldwide un-usable. (If you're really interested in the technical details behind the problem, read through the details and history in the bug link above.)

Like I mentioned before, I'm amazed! Amazed at the speed and thoroughness the Firefox team works. Within a week they verified the bug, created a test case, identified the offending code, created a fix regressed against other issues, and resolved the problem. Within a week! To put this in perspective, in the corporate world if an end-user customer like myself submitted a bug against a piece of commercially available software, I would be lucky to get a real-person acknowledgment of the problem within a week. A fix within a week would never happen. Try reporting and getting a fix that fast for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Or even Apple's Safari, and boy am I am Apple fanatic.

So why can't we expect that kind of response in the corporate world? Because in the corporate world the issue would have to get reported through proper channels, put into queues with hundreds and thousands of other bugs, discussed at bug review meetings, prioritized against marketing schedules for updates and new revisions, assigned to development, testing, and release teams beginning the path through all the processes all those respective departments follow. All that process takes time. Even at some of the most responsive software companies today, it still doesn't happen anywhere as fast as it does in the open source world.

Now, I should mention about this time that the actual deployment of an update to Firefox to resolve the problem is still in-progress. By "deployment" I mean the release of a publicly available update to Firefox for the world to begin installing. But one of these days real soon, Firefox users around the world will see their browser ask for their permission to update to a version like 2.0.0.3 (or 1.5.0.11 depending on what version they are running). Right now there are FireFox developers and courageous testers running patched versions with the fix to verify the problem is in fact gone and no new problems have arisen. Even if that thorough testing process takes another couple weeks, which I hope it does, the response time fixing this problem will still be amazing.

For all my non-technical computer friends out there, I won't begin discussing the pros and cons of open source projects. Cyberspace is full of hundreds and maybe thousands of articles, debates, postings, blogs, etc. about the ups and downs of open source. If you're really adventurous, Google "open source debates" or search for "open source" on Wikipedia and pull up a comfortable chair and begin surfing. When people ask me about my opinions on open source projects, I answer with the same initial sentence.

"Open source is not for every product."

Now I should follow that with an additional sentence. "But it does work and Firefox is the perfect example of a successful open source project." There's a good reason why Firefox has been successful around the world and enjoying a growing number of users every day. Firefox is worked on by a dedicated team of talented individuals who listen to their customers and respond accordingly. They are not tied to desks in the corporate world and they are empowered to make things happen. And they do that every day.

Kudos to the Mozilla Firefox development team!


(p.s. If you don't use Firefox, you should give it a try. Find it here)

What is Holonym?

Holonym is the name of the company I created a couple years ago to develop software and provide technical solutions in a fast paced Internet centered world. The word holonym is not a made up word. It's defined in most english dictionaries.

holonym
noun - a word that names the whole of which a given word is part; "hat" is a holonym for 'brim' or 'crown'.

From the moment I ran across this word in a dictionary I thought it would be a great name for a company. Lexically speaking, every company name out there is a holonym representing the people and products that make up that company. I'm a firm believer that the people who work at a company are one of it's most important assets. People help develop and produce the products or services a company sells and it is those people who represent the company when interacting with customers. Employees are part of a company. Products produced by those employees are part of a company. So what better name for a company than a word that itself defines a name for the whole of which a given word is part of. The fact that the name was available made it even more perfect.

One of the first Holonym products planned was a personal financial product called "Checkboox". In 2006 a prototype was created of Checkboox that illustrated the basic features and direction planned for the product. Demos were created and we began the search for investors to help get the ball rolling. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure funding to develop and deploy a consumer ready version of the product. One of the biggest questions investors asked me is actually still the biggest question other solutions now on the market still can't fully answer. Why would consumers trust their financial accounting to a web based product from a unknown named company? While I was playing around with a demo account on Mint.com, I found myself faced with th same question. When their system asked me for my bank account userid and password to log in and download my financial transactions, I found myself searching for the answer investors asked me the year before. Why would I give them the login information to my financial instutions? I didn't.

Holonym has also provided management consulting and project resources for our clients. These services are what has kept the lights on and the computers humming. We have helped several companies create software solutions in commercial and vertical markets. We have also helped companies evaluate their software development processes (or lack thereof) and define workflows that have helped improve project planning, product testing, and most importantly team communications. Effective communication across all members of a product team is essential to it's success. Even if there's bad news to share, it's important for people to be able to be open and honest about issues, schedule tasks, etc. Most teams can solve just about anything that comes at them if they're working together. If they are disjointed, not communcating effectively or working together as a team, things are going to fall apart pretty quick.

Holonym is currently developing some projects (Newstailor, and some iPhone apps) with the help of a couple of our sons. I would love for Holonym to become a family business. A couple of our sons are still going to college and we would like to see them graduate and find successful positions in their chosen professions. If the company continues to grow, I would like to be able to afford to have them continue to working with me to help ensure some financial security for them to pursue their dreams.


cheers,
dEVoN


p.s. If you're interested in our consulting services, please send an email to 'info@holonym.net'.