February 2010 - Tomorrow's World.

Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century. The last ten years have seen some rather large technological strides, particularly in relation to the now allpervasive Internet, though admittedly you might be slightly disappointed if by this point you expected to be whizzing around one of our lunar colonies with your personal jet-pack...

Read more...

December 2009 - Ghost of Christmas Presents Past.

It’s that time of year once more where hundreds of articles are written beginning ‘it’s that time of year once more’. The tree is up, the lights are twinkling and, if your house is anything like mine, the carpet is festooned with bits of tinsel which refuse to be sucked up the vacuum cleaner.

Yes, ‘tis Christmastime once more. In celebration, we decided to take a trip down Memory Lane (rather like Quality Street, but without quite as many orange crèmes) and see whether any gadgets or technology presents from Christmases past had stuck in the minds of the DBLogic team, and how they in part shaped their lives today. So, put on your rose-tinted spectacles, fill your thermos with lovely, warm essence of nostalgia and let’s take a trip back through the festive seasons of years gone by...

Read more...

October 2009 - Growing Panes.

No doubt you will have been inundated with articles trumpeting the release of Windows 7 and describing, in great detail, all of its virtues.

We thought, this month, it might be interesting to take a look back in time to the first release of the Windows operating system way back in 1985 and to chart it’s progress through the years. Before you ask “yes, I do remember Windows 1”. ...

Read more...

August 2009 - Who Do You Think You Are?

Last month’s “little puzzle” created the largest response to any of our recent articles. It appears that a bit of a “mental workout” over lunch is what was appreciated and as we always aim to give our customers what they want...

Read more...

June 2009 - All roads lead to...

There’s no article this month, just a little puzzle to get your teeth into over lunch. There are no prizes to be won, just a bit of a mental challenge!

There are four towns – Upper Monitor, Delete Quay, Serialport and Caps Loch – all located on the corners of a 100 kilometre-sided square. The various town councils have been complaining about the lack of access between them, so the Highways Agency decides it will connect them. As a government body it wants to spend as little money as possible by building the shortest network of roads...

Read more...

May 2009 - The Way of Support.

Every product offers some level of support, be it an information desk about the nutritional value of your fast food purchase, or the carefully crafted support lines of that expensive convertible vehicle. These support lines offer many and varied levels of support, from a simple phone line, online blog or forum to a team of dedicated experts deployed just to fix your own personal issue. No matter how you view it, in this day and age we do not consider the mere purchase of an item to be the end of it.

The customer is a fickle creature and one day will want to upgrade, change the item, or even just want to know a bit more about it or how to use it to its maximum efficiency, be it a recipe for a food item, tips and tricks for a technology item, or in our case the specification and instruction for their bespoke software package.

Read more...

April 2009 - Information Age Concern.

We are living in the Information Age, or at least that’s what people keep telling us. It seems rather hard to deny, as we sit at our computers, with Microsoft Outlook and its ilk spewing forth e-mails and appointment reminders with depressing frequency, and only a few mouse clicks away from the tangled morass of news, thoughts and opinions that is the Internet. The irony is that whilst most people would claim that they are deluged with information, if you were to ask the very same people whether they had all the information they needed to do their job, they’d claim not.

There’s a bit of a dichotomy here, and that’s what we’ll try to address in this article. When surrounded by information, how do we pick out what we need in the way we need it, and how do we ensure that it’s there in the first place?

Read more...

March 2009 - How to cope with e-mail overload.

Email: whether you love it or hate it, it’s become an intrinsic part of most people’s daily lives and an invaluable business tool. Yet many people are now feeling more and more stressed with the speed of modern communication as they feel under pressure from the constant barrage of messages. I’ve received two just whilst writing this sentence!

This month we discuss hints and tips which, hopefully, will help you manage your inbox more efficiently. The overriding theme is that by checking our inboxes obsessively we’re actually becoming less rather than more efficient.

Read more...

January 2009 - OnOrder - If the software fits.

What is good software? Some people say it's like a well written novel, others compare it to a painted masterpiece. Silicon Valley venture capitalist and marketer of the original Apple Macintosh in 1984 Guy Kawasaki goes as far as to say that "it's like pornography: very difficult to describe but you know it when you see it."

For most businesses and individuals, though, the crux of what makes a piece of good software is much more fundamental and utilitarian: it works. Sorry, perhaps that should be italicised. It works. The distinction is important. Even mediocre software will function, but only good software provides the means to enable users to complete their tasks in a way that enhances the way they work, not merely providing an electronic version of it.

Read more...

December 2008 - Prepare for the future.

Cut-backs, belt-tightening, redundancies, cost-cutting: these phrases seem to be all too prevalent in the current economic climate. It's easy to understand why - businesses are doing what they feel is necessary to overcome present problems with declining orders and shrinking revenues.

These actions can be effective, but arguably they are just short-term tactics to alleviate a current problem. Whilst you may not think it, now can be an excellent time to implement new business management strategies that can drive your company forwards.

Read more...