Year: 2005

Managing customer relations with open source

If you are looking for CRM software, make sure you try SugarCRM. It is professionally done piece of software which is available both as a commercial option and free software.

Free version has practically all the functionality of the commercial one. Commerical version features more reports and statistics, interface translated into a number of languages, and some more plugins and extensions. It is also officially supported by the company.

SugarCRM is written in PHP and works nicely with MySQL and Apache. PostgreSQL is not currently supported to the best of my knowledge. The interface is professionally designed and is also very flexible with themes and menu configurations. The installation is very straight forward and troubleless. I didn’t even have to read a line of documentation to do it. There is an option to fill the database with sample data, which makes understanding all the features so much faster.

SugarCRM supports management of contacts, appointments, phone calls, clients, bugs, notes, and a whole other bunch of stuff that is needed in the business world. Projects and leads are organized by the customer and makes it really easy to see what has been done with the client and up to what degree.

SugarCRM also features nice portal building utilities with RSS feed integration and website bookmarks, which can be either private or global. It comes with an excellent selection of about 400 feeds that one can start reading immediately. These can be, of course, edited and delete, while the new ones are easy to add.

One of the surprising features is the plugin for MS Outlook. It allows one to work with SugarCRm from the familiar interface of MS Outlook, as well synchronise meetings, contacts, emails, notes, and other stuff.

Overall, it looks like a very nice piece of software. I really wish there was support for PostgreSQL backend and LDAP authentication. Other than that everything looks perfect. I will probably be spending some time with this software in the near future. I’ll let you know if I will find any other strong good or bad sides to it.

SCIgen

SCIgen is an automatic Computer Science paper generator. It is one of those tools you wish you had in the first year of college, when a whole bunch of useless homeworks were given to students of you class just to drive some of them away.

SCIgen is very easy to use. It asks only for the names of authors for the paper. After these are submitted, it generates a complete paper with graphs, charts, and analysis. The papers are so good, that they could have actually improved my CPA back than. I know, you have to be nuts, to read one from the beginning to the end, but what can I do – I had a few nutty professors.

Update: Apparently, papers generated by this tool are so good that one of them was even accepted for the conference. Slashdot coverage is here.

Upcoming birthday party

As some of you know and some of you don’t, it is my 27th birthday tomorrow. No, I am not getting older. I am getting wiser.

I am used to celebrating my birthdays with parties and friends and presents and all the usual stuff. This year though will be different. I simply cannot roll out a proper party. Maxim flexi-schedule kind of screws up any plans I might build. I also can’t bring too many people to my place due to noises, carantine, needed overall cleaning, and other reasons associated with the baby. I also can’t afford a party outside due to my financial situation. And I don’t want this birthday to pass without celebrations. This date is important and I will tell you tomorrow why.

So, you can imagine I was doing a lot of thinking on how to solve the problem given all of the above. And, as usual, if I work my brain the right way, I can find the solution. What I came up with is a rather simple plan. Tomorrow, I will go to one of the good pubs out there. I am thinking Molly Malone‘s. If that won’t work out, I’ll move to the neighbooring Chesters. I will inform a whole bunch of people about the time and place that I will be at (this is one of the reasons I am writing this post). And everyone who wants can come. It is not a birthday party. It’s nothing actually. If you feel like having a pint with me, come and join me. If you feel like bringing a present, please do so. If you feel like saying a few nice words to make me feel good – be my guest.

I know a few people who will come for sure. And I am good with that. I’ll be glad to see you there, but I won’t hold it against you if you won’t make it.

I will post exact details of place and time tomorrow. If you need something to plan around, think around 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening in the Molly Malone’s.