Barking

Just read a post about the new EU research to promote Open Source etc. I hope they sort out their website soon which returns an error as it is not the best advert in the world!

So having got up slightly earlier than normal yesterday (not a problem really as I am an early riser and a morning person) I braved the M6 and Birmingham city centre traffic to attend Open Advantage’s excellent Open Source Showcase where I was doing a short talk on our EGS software.

As always there there was a great selection of people there doing presentations and a great turn out. It was also good to see the usual faces and both Dave Goodwin and myself were even wearing suits - a sight I am sure is not often seen involving either one of us (feel free to correct me on that one Dave!) - I am a firm believer in the idea that people don’t need to wear a suit to go a great job - I think it would be safe to say I am the only person at Senokian that ever wears one and not too regularly either.

I also had a great chat with Paul Cooper which was really useful. He gave me a few really good ideas to think about regarding the promotion and launch of Tactile CRM [and related products], he also mentioned Loopfuse, the second time I have heard about it in as many days, a few blogs and a few other things.

As the MD/CEO of a small Open Source tech company I always value these conversations and ideas and am hugely grateful to Paul for his ideas, they may have seemed obvious to him but hearing them from somebody else is always good as it helps to reinforce ideas I already have and add new ones to the mix too - Scott and Elliott also had some useful pointers and thanks to everyone at OA for the event.

The OSSC was not meant exactly meant to be a forum for this sort of conversation - the Open Coffee Club I am trying to launch in Coventry is more aimed at this - it is just a shame there is not more of this in the Midlands and UK as I know that lots of people in similar situations find it hugely useful.

Tactile CRM is a web 2.0 hosted version of the CRM module of EGS that Senokian are in the process of launching. There is a new interface and lots of usability enhancements resulting in a user friendly system offering:

• Companies
• Leads
• People
• Opportunities
• Activities
• Notes
• Attachments
• Sales Pipelines and reporting
• and much more

We are currently looking for people that would like to join the private beta that will start next month. If you are interested in using CRM for your start-up, interested in web 2.0 applications, CRM or just curious - we would love to here from you. As a thank you we will be offering the first years use of Tactile CRM (on a normal fee paying plan!) to all participants.

Contact us today to find out how you can be part of this next generation application and the benefits it can offer you and your organisation.

I was going to wait a little while to write this post about Apple’s port of their Safari browser to Windows but after Joel’s rant about Safari I thought I would write a few words now.

As many people will now be aware Apple have released a new version of their Safari browser for both Windows and Mac (I am using it now to write this post). It has some nice new features and is incredible fast when compared to Firefox. I have even installed it on my Windows partition on my mac and had non of the problems described by Joel.

Now I have never been a big fan of Safari - I have always used Firefox on my Mac (and up until last night was running the latest alpha release of Mine Field) and it was the only non-Apple piece of software that I used. With this new release though the increase in page rendering times is visible quicker and has certainly been enough to switch me back to it in the short term - as I start to use it with more earnest I will report back my findings.

Now to Safari on Windows

This is one area where I am not sure what will happen - Apple has done well bringing its iTunes software to Windows but I am still not convinced that Safari will work. I am not going to make the mistake of saying it will flop as Apple will quite often succeed with this sort of things - I’m just not sure how they will wrestle Microsoft’s IE grip away when it there by default and faster page loads is perhaps not enough to get everyone to switch. However, Firefox have succeeded in denting IE’s market share, so good luck Apple.

One thing that I do think is useful is that web developers can now easily do initial site testing on IE, Firefox and Safari on the same OS without the need to keep dashing around to different computers.

Only time will tell if this will be a success on Windows - I hope it is, it would be nice to see more of a choice on the browser front and Apple’s brand [awareness] may just be enough for it to work. Who knows, if it all goes well, Steve may be announcing Safari on Linux at next years WWDC!