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A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

The situation is more serious than I initially thought when I wrote this article. IBM has repeatedly savaged governments around the world for sums up and over $1 billion dollars for systems which don't work and have to simply be discarded.

Winning megaprojects with low initial bids and then turning a $20 million project into a billion dollar con of the client appears to be an artform at IBM. Governments all over the world have suffered, tax payers have paid for senior IBM bonuses. Ordinary citizens have gone six months or more without their paycheques.

This behaviour appears to be IBM policy and not an accident. This very grave situation cries out for a deep investigative long form feature. Together the governments of Canada and Australia and Pennsylvania (just the ones I've found so far) likely have a case of deliberately malicious business practices.

Apparently IBM has made USD $780 million building a payroll system for the Canadian Government which does not work.

Potential Savings on Payroll

The idea was to save money by eliminating jobs. Canada has about 260,000 public servants. Over 1200 people were working on payroll (accountants, bookkeepers and managers mainly with some IT guys thrown in to make it work). This is about half of one percent on payroll. Payroll is about one third the cost of accounting in our company. I'm unable to bring our accounting costs much below 3% of turnover on a sub-million dollar turnover despite strong efforts and automated software like Freshbooks.

Keep reading A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

How to Setup LastPass On Subdomains

What is LastPass and why you should use it

As they say, the only secure password is the one you can't remember. This is the idea that keeps password managers like LastPass going. With LastPass, you only need a one super-strong master password (there goes the name—"the last pass you'll ever need"), which can be a line from your favourite song translated to a different language you speak, a quote from a movie, or any other phrase that is not too easy to hack.

Once you've entered the master password, LastPass will let you access your credentials for every other account saved in LastPass (Facebook and Twitter logins, e-mail, etc.) or do the autologin (If you activated it. Don't do it.). This way, you can use strong generated passwords for your accounts, without having to remember them or writing them down.

The great thing about LastPass is that it stores your data encrypted online and the data is only decrypted locally in your browser with your key, which even LastPass itself does not have. This way, LastPass users are protected from hacker attacks like the ones that happened to Adobe or Apple users.

Keep reading How to Setup LastPass On Subdomains

How to write an ideal service notification

Editor's note: Service interruption notifications are the unloved sibling of newsletters and welcome emails. They just don't get enough love—and for the most part are fairly terrible, anonymous, vague and menacing messages, often from a no-reply address. There is a better way.

While software is our main business now, we have some hosting clients for special services. Every once in a while of course there is either expected or unexpected downtime. We strive to let our clients know about these issues in advance (planned) and in real time (unplanned). We don't try the tricky move that many hosts do of just trying to hide downtime.

Keep reading How to write an ideal service notification

How to set up a Mac securely on OS X 10.11 Sierra (El Capitan)

We've recently upgraded our computer stock with a bunch of new (old) Mac Pros. These are the last computers which Apple built which can be upgraded (storage, memory, GPU, CPU in order of complexity). So I've updated our guide on deploying new Macs. I've often been asked about our special sauce for securing Macs and deploying them quickly so I've publishing this as a starting point for others.

Despite the title stating that this covers how to set up a Mac securely on OS X, it hasn't really been possible to secure a Mac since the App Store came into being (OS X 10.6.6 I believe). OS X 10.5.8 may be the last really secure full version of OS X ever created. Coincidentally Apple joined Prism in 2012.

Still one can make a good effort to make one's computer far less chatty. If you really want to be secure, don't use the app store at all and download your OS X updates. If you want to be a little bit secure, you have to avoid iCloud completely. Just ask the beautiful Jennifer Lawrence how iCloud turned out for her (I had no idea she was so sexy until those pics showed up). 

Keep reading How to set up a Mac securely on OS X 10.11 Sierra (El Capitan)

How Observer Status in Teamwork.com project management allows Foliovision to handle more projects

Many of you may know that Foliovision began as a client service agency and not a software company. Our first big service was migration from Typepad to WordPress. We were literally doing dozens of migrations a month at one point. Project management in bulk was essential to the premium client experience we wishes to offer.

We started with Basecamp but eventually outgrew it (there's a long post about our Basecamp to Teamwork migration) and moved to Teamwork (back then TeamworkPM). Teamwork Projects at the time had a much worse design than Basecamp (latest version looks pretty good and even allows CSS customisation) but lots more tools (recurring tasks was a big one for us) at the time. As happy as the upgrade in features made us at the time, there was still one key feature missing. Later we called this feature Observer Status.

Keep reading How Observer Status in Teamwork.com project management allows Foliovision to handle more projects

Markdown Quick Reference for (Foliovision) Clients

Foliovision now uses Markdown for formatting text in fields in our MLS listings software. You can use Markdown in either short or long description. Markdown also works throughout our project management system if you disable the WYSWIYG. This is a really quick practical guide to using Markdown without all the complicated advanced syntax only geeks need.

Micro Markdown Syntax Reference

Headers - ###
Bold - **word**
Italic - *word*
[link text](https://domain.com/page.html)
Numbered lists - 1., 2., 3.
Bullet point lists - *, -, +
Blockquote - > Quotation text, could span multiple lines and sentences.
Image - ![alttext](http://domain.com/image.jpg)

Short Markdown Syntax Guide

The page below contains examples of Markdown syntax.

Keep reading Markdown Quick Reference for (Foliovision) Clients

Markdown Editors Shootout: Support for Tables, Footnotes, Strikethrough

We use Markdown everywhere at Foliovision as our main project management software Teamwork offers excellent Markdown support. For some of our internal documents we desperately need tables. This was preventing us from switching everything to Markdown. I'd heard there was decent support for tables in Markdown but trying to edit Markdown tables long hand was not fun at all. This is what Markdown tables look like as plain text:

| Application - Markdown Support | Active | Preview | Price     | Non-app store version | Writing Experience | Footnotes | Strikethrough | | ------------------------------ | :----: | :-----: | --------: | :-------------------: | :----------------: | --------- | ------------- | | Typora                         | Superb |   Yes   | Free Beta |          Yes          |        ++++        | Weak      | Two Tildes    | | TableIt                        |  Yes   |   Yes   |       $19 |          Yes          |        N/A         | N/A       | N/A           | | Marked 2                       |   No   |   Yes   |       $10 |          Yes          |        N/A         | Yes       | Yes, GFM      | | BBEdit/TextWrangler            |  Yes   |   No    |  $50/free |          Yes          |         ++         | No        | No            |

So I went looking for a Markdown editor which supported tables well for my team. In the process I discovered a lot about Markdown and even editing. I invite you to join me on my journey. As I use OS X and most of our team does as well (we have some Linux and a few Windows users: we have fewer people using Windows than Linux at this point), this article focuses on OS X Markdown editors. Our overall winner is a cross-platform application (OS X , Windows, Linux) built on HTML5 technology and we do cover other Windows Markdown editors at the end of the article.

Keep reading Markdown Editors Shootout: Support for Tables, Footnotes, Strikethrough

The best Pandora client for OS X: Hermes

As some may remember, my favourite music service is Pandora (Deezer used to be a close second until they removed the "Hear This" feature). I listen to a lot of new music and discovery is important to me. That doesn't mean I want to explore a lot of genres I hate. There's a lot of good music in the world (in the sense of appealing to me) and I'd like to spend as much of my life as possible discovering those artists who will change my life for the better.

Pandora gets you there faster than anyone else. I'm currently listening to Carla Bruni radio. I only like Ms. Bruni's music about a 7 out of 10 but Pandora offers a mainly French female singer diet (way too much Ella Fitzgerald at first), leading me to discover four or five artists I didn't know. Pandora is also low-maintenance (it keeps playing without requiring adjusting playlists) and lets you tune your channels to your own tastes (no more Ella Fitzgerald much less Bossa Nova, lots more Indila, Andrea Lindsay, Thievery Corporation and Coeur de Pirate).

Keep reading The best Pandora client for OS X: Hermes

What GitHub brings to open source development

Recently we struggled with a difficult issue in WordPress Multisite. We take care of a network of sports weblogs. Each is for a different sport and not all the domain names sound the same.

We have a master install at say worldrecords.org (sample name, not our client's site). Logins only are SSL and all take place at worldrecords.org. An account at any site gets you access to all the sites. Hence login and password takes place at the master domain. Most visitors are not even aware of the domain switch during login.

When people would lose their password, the password reset email would not come from skatinggolds.org or lugegolds.org but from worldrecords.org. Many people would not recognise the domain and would delete the email without clicking and finishing the password reset. Worse yet the email might be considered spam by spam filters.

Keep reading What GitHub brings to open source development

HHVM vs PHP7 for WordPress: One Year Later

A year ago PHP7 launched. Those already using HHVM ran a bunch of benchmarks and came away with the conclusion that HHVM is much faster and is indeed the secret sauce of their superior pricey hosting. While scouting for hosting for a very high traffic site, I heard this from WPE, from Pressidium and from Kinsta. Out of the three principal advocates of HHVM, Kinsta's offer was the only one which made any kind of financial sense.

Since then, we've been using HHVM for that project with no end of grief in surprise collapses in the middle of the night or the middle of the weekend. Are the instability and incompatibilities worth it? For a smaller web publisher, certainly not. For a middle-sized web publisher (think top 2000 website in the US), probably not. For a very large sized web publisher (think Facebook or another top 100 website in the US) quite possibly. Here's why.

Keep reading HHVM vs PHP7 for WordPress: One Year Later

Why is Firewire target mode on a MacBook Pro so loud

Anyone who owns more than two Macs know it's a real convenience to be able to use target mode for transferring files. You just restart your MacBook Pro and hold T down and you're in Target Mode. This lets you copy files on and off the target computer as if the disks inside it were external drives.

The issue lately though is that MacBook Pro's when in Target Mode make a terrific amount of noise:

I have a new Santa Rosa MacBook and when started in Firewire target disk mode, the fan runs at a high rate all of the time. This is even when there is no disk activity. Is this normal?

Keep reading Why is Firewire target mode on a MacBook Pro so loud

How to flush DNS on Windows, Apple OS X and Linux

After moving a website from one server to another, it can be difficult to get the new site to show up immediately even with very low TTL (time to live) times on the DNS server. It’s usually because of DNS cache.

As we have to test with all kinds of OS and different versions, I’ve put together how to flush DNS on each major OS (and even on Google’s tricky Chrome which maintains its own DNS cache) in one place for our own reference.

Keep reading How to flush DNS on Windows, Apple OS X and Linux

Image Resizer Faceoff OS X: JPEGmini vs Adobe Photoshop vs PhotoBatcher vs ResizeMe

Today's challenge is how to quickly turn this finished 5760 x 3840 10 MB photograph into a a high quality and compact web version:

For years I output my photos for web and email with Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. Since Adobe went cloud only and non-purchase, I've been working hard to put together workflows which don't include any Adobe and work on 10.6 forward. Adobe Lightroom 4 (last version which runs on 10.6) already forces one to convert originals to DNG (data loss) to be able to use the latest cameras.

Keep reading Image Resizer Faceoff OS X: JPEGmini vs Adobe Photoshop vs PhotoBatcher vs ResizeMe

How WordPress developers treat publishers like suckers and marks or why I’m now ashamed to be a WordPress developer

In a conversation at WP Tavern (a Matt Mullenweg official property) about the problems with maintaining recent WordPress versions (say anything post 3.7), a very lively debate took place about whether major new features in WordPress should come enabled by default with no option to disable them.

The feature in questions was oEmbed this time but it could just as easily have been emojis or  XML-RPC (which recently took thousands of WordPress websites down in a major hack exploit).

Keep reading How WordPress developers treat publishers like suckers and marks or why I'm now ashamed to be a WordPress developer

Unotelly makes Netflix great, Unblock-US sells your email to dating services

Netflix only offers between 2000 and 6000 films available per market at any one time, but internationally there are about 14,000 feature films available. A good DNS redirection service gives you access to all 14,000 films. The difference between a VPN and DNS redirection service is that the VPN takes over your whole network, sending all data via the remote location. DNS redirection services send only the DNS data via the remote location, leading to much faster file transfers (in theory).

Keep reading Unotelly makes Netflix great, Unblock-US sells your email to dating services

Saying Goodbye to Dropbox: BBEdit crashes on launch

We've been slowly removing American cloud services from Foliovision, as the extent of American duplicity about privacy and industrial espionage becomes apparent. One of the services with which it was relatively difficult to part was Dropbox.

Regardless, with international state terrorist and Bush security czarina Condoleeza Rice on the Board of Directors, Dropbox had to go. To the Dropbox founders credit, the requirement to openly appoint Condoleeze Rice on the Board of Directors suggests someone felt that founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi needed very close supervision. I would love to have been inside those meetings, before and after. "Remain professional everyone. We all have a job to do."

Keep reading Saying Goodbye to Dropbox: BBEdit crashes on launch

What’s the best CRM software for Startups?

This essay originally started on Quora. I was so dismayed by the other answers, recommending startups spend many hundreds if not thousands of dollars every month on over-hyped sales CRM. Sales are not made by software but by people. Yes you need good tools but there are some very affordable ones out there. Here's an overview of CRM software Foliovision have tried first hand.

If you are a startup, especially a bootstrapped one, you should care about the amount of money you spend. A lot of the contenders in this space want $50/month/user or more (Salesforce I'm looking in your greedy direction right now). http://close.io is another one in that category ($59/month). While talking about greed, even Salesforce doesn't hold a candle to the credit card hammerers over at InfusionSoft (do not even think about it).*

Keep reading What's the best CRM software for Startups?

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