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Salesforce review
Technical Overview
- Webbased
- Outsourced, doesn’t run on our own servers, but on their servers
License
This product isn’t Open Source at all. Actually, you need to buy your subscription. It doesn’t run on our own servers, but on their servers. So all data is stored on their servers. This is just sooo scary. Why would a company use such a system? I want control my own information. And my information is private, I don’t want you (yes, that means you) to snoop around in mijn leads or oppertunities, why would I want another company to have access to this information?
I don’t want to use this product. But I came across it after hearing their talk at IT Conversations (actually, I’m listening to that podcast at this moment, the guy is telling me his blog is for his customers only). Not impressed, though.
Interface
Looks a lot like all other CRM systems. Messy and busy. Not impressed.
I’d like to take a moment here to explain what I’m looking for in an interface. Since I used to study Usability and Interface Design, I think I have a right to evaluate design and think about what it should look like. An interface should be easy on the eyes. Compare Squirrelmail screenshots with Hula screenshots and then with GMail’s screenshots. For the record, we deploy a lot of Squirrelmail webmail for companies and it works great and without hassles. But face it, we’re looking forward to Hula’s first really usable release, because that interface is plain better designed. But the optimal interface is GMail’s. “Less is more”, KISS, Occam’s Razor, etc. If you want people to actually use your products, KEEP THEM SIMPLE.
The first thing I thought when seeing Salesforce’s interface was “jee, this looks like SugarCRM”. Figures.
Workflow and Functionality
Can’t say a lot here. Why did I start reviewing this? Bah.
Conclusion
Absolute no-no. I don’t want to store my information somewhere else. I don’t want to use an interface that’s crammed with options.
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Loosely translated
There are only 4,294,967,296 different addresses in IPv4. In IPv6 there are about 340 trillion, trillion, trillion unique addresses. Loosely translated, that’s a whole lot.
Damn right!
Stuff. Just. Works.
I’ve been reading Winn Schwartau’s Mad as Hell series for about 45 minutes now (the appointment with the dog school is tomorrow, not today, doh) and I so wholeheartedly agree with his views.
Just before I started reading it, I upgraded my NewsFireRSS client, since it told me there’s a new version out. Can’t live without my rss aggregator. A few of the feeds I’m subscribed to are password-protected. Since NewsFireRSS is a real Mac OS X app, it stores those passwords in Keychain (scroll down a bit, until you can see the, well, keychain image). After the update, Keychain prompted me with a message (I’m really sorry I didn’t take a screenshot):
NewsFire has been updated. Do you want allow this new installation access to the same information that the previous version had access to?
(Probably not literal, but it amounted to the same thing.) That’s just great. I mean, that’s really great. You know. Stuff. Just. Works.
I’ll have to make sure that I don’t become to religious about this stuff. But it’s really great. Read the Mad as Hell series. I mean it, go read it now.
Dogschool
For more than a year now, Monique and I have been training Aagje ourselves. The last few months, we didn’t really work with her anymore, since my father decided that he didn’t want to use her for breeding. She had to go. After looking for a suitable family for her, my dad and I went talking and I offered to work with her. I’ve always wanted that, because Aagje is my favourite dog these days. She has so much spirit and so much love for working, it’s really adorable to see. But I didn’t want to spend a lot of time at training her if she would go to another family.
After a few weeks of talking, my father decided that I could have her. So we’ll be arranging to transfer her ownership to me for my birthday. Absolutely one of the best presents I can get. I’ll blog more about that later.
But today, in about 25 minutes, we’ll be heading to Honing’s Dogschool for an intake. I really want a school that fits to our needs and that respects the way I handle Aagje, because I’m very sure that I do a lot of things right with her. She’s so smart. One of the most difficult tricks for a dog is to sit during a walk. So that we walk, I tell her to sit, but without paying her any attention, I walk on. That’s very difficult. She did it after twice one hour of training.
I’m really expecting a lot from the dog school. I hope they fit the bill. Wish me luck!
