I was viewing Eric’s blog and came across the reference to the One Month App which was interesting project to determine if an application could be built in a month. They have used the Ruby on Rails framework and developed a nice looking cashflow application for small businesses.

Top marks for a clever marketing idea - both in getting some interest in the application, but more so, demonstrating that the guys at Clearfunction have got both a sense of style and an ability to churn out a great new application quickly. And no doubt they have plenty of click throughs to their site and their other products.

So, where are the other applications of this type of approach??  Could we see books written this way? Will we see commercial software sent to the global market for testing? Your comments are welcome, as well as useful links…..

Don’t let my 2.0 pun fool you, this is a seriously good book for anyone interested in how open source and collaborative models are now applying to so many different areas of business.

In one sense you might say that this is a bit of spin on a new flavour of collaborative outsourcing. However there is plenty of discussion on how the various models are being applied and where the innovation exists.

The essence - same of any outsourcing discussion - is in determining the key value you add in the value chain of your product and outsource everything else.

Check it out at

In the last few days and in various meetings I have had, it has clearly reinforced the challenge of getting people on the bus with software and information management initiatives.

Nowhere is this more difficult than in the growing beasts that are international companies. No longer does the mantra apply “think global, act local” explicitly in relation to software and systems, as organisations seek to refine the best of the knowledge they have into common ways of doing things.

So, there are some barriers to break down:

1. Not invented here. Obvious enough problem… but confounded further with Point 2.
2. The system we use was invented here, in fact, I invented it…. compounded further with…
3. I like the way our company did things before the takeover…. compounded further with…
4. Those guys are in another part of the world, and they think differently to us (these types of cultural differences are very real)

For more reading, see my post on people, process and technology.

Following on from my last post, Microsoft have a good article on this area, see this link

As with most vendors, a software solution is necessary - but putting in appropriate security plus the appropriate policies is good risk mitigation.

It does not take a lot of time for loans to turn into a bad credit loan. The money supermarket specially minds discrepancies regarding the personal loan a lot.