Mar/Apr 2011
From the Inside Mar/Apr 2011
Welcome to the International Spectrum 2011 Conference!
Character Encodings
It's a small world and getting smaller, especially thanks to the Internet and web-enabled applications. Whether due to a business expanding into international markets or acquisitions by, or partnering with, foreign companies, many applications are finding a need to be multilingual, not just MultiValue. So how do you represent the different non-English characters?
Business Tech: User Ownership of Data
Gone are the days when the Data Processing department was both keeper and defender of the data and parceled it out to users on green bar reports where they could look but not touch. Today's users insist that data be presented to them in such a manner that they can manipulate it, summarize it, use it, and even lose it. This provides the modern IT department with a new set of challenges.
Sending E-mail from Your MultiValue Programs - Part 2 - Using IIS
Part 1 of this series of articles showed you how to construct an e-mail, including the necessary items in the header and body. So now you have it, what do you do with it? There are a variety of ways to actually send e-mail. We start by introducing you to SMTP using Microsoft's Internet Information Server.
MultiValue and QuickBooks, Part 2: Exporting to MultiValue
Many MultiValue accounting packages lack the GUI interface modern users demand or other features that are considered to be mandatory by anyone who has used a modern accounting application. One option is to replace it with an off-the-shelf commodity accounting package and share data between it and the MultiValue system running the core business functions. Part 1 dealt with getting data from MultiValue to QB. Now we go in the other direction.
First Steps to Securing Your Information in the Internet Age
While computer and data security is a large and complex subject, it is disconcerting how many MultiValue systems do not even take the most fundamental precautions to protect user data from unauthorized access. Just a couple of straightforward techniques can prevent that kid on the coffee shop WiFi from stealing your access codes and walking through your system at will.
User Interface Design: Defacto Standards and Unicorns
The green screen may be dead, but graphical user interfaces bring with them their own set of issues. Because of their flexibility, a set of GUIbased programs in an application written by different programmers, each with their own opinion and style, can be even more difficult to understand, use, and navigate than the old green screens. But do user interface standards appear magically?
Clif Notes: They're Everywhere! (Well, Not Quite Yet)
I see QR codes. But unlike the ghosts of dead people, these things are present in our external reality. And I'm not alone. Lots of people see them, including the attendees at the 2011 International Spectrum conference. You see them too. Look up at the top of this page. See that square checkerboard thing? That's a QR code.
Clif Notes: Ever Feel Like Just a Cog In The System?
A while back, our Content Editor, Shannon Stoltz, introduced me to a book by Rajesh Setty titled Beyond Code: Learn To Distinguish Yourself In 9 Simple Steps. It is targeted at the IT professional who wants to break out of the rut of constantly rushing to acquire another skill (programming in Python, for example) only to find out they have become what he calls a "commodity"— just another Python programmer easily replaced with any other Python programmer (at least in the perception of upper management).
