designmudd

SugarCRM has got to be the most complete opensource project I’ve ever seen. It’s a web based Customer Relationship Manager which let’s you track your clients, projects, leads, sources… it’s all there. At first glance it seems like way too much, BUT as you play with this system, it very easily allows you to deactivate fields, tabs, alter the setup and so on. I’ve been using it for only a day, so please don’t understand my post as being the end-all be-all solution… more of a “Wow, i just stumbled on to this and it seems incredible”. I’m currently plugging in all my clients, projects, users, altering the applications layout and so on.

I’ve been involved in many discussions lately of finding a suitable CRM. I think the biggest problem in trying to find one has been we’ve all been calling these systems Content Management Systems when in fact there not. Content Management is a system to edit content. Customer Relation is the key.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. Enjoy!

UPDATE – I signed up for an account here but was very disappointed with the service. It’s nothing more than linkfarming which does very little for your site in terms of both ranking and relative content. My advice on this topic is to simply stay away.
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For the past few days i’ve found myself entirely caught up in SEO, Link Trading, and hooking in RSS Feeds into my sites. Basically I’m caught up in generating traffic. I have a good handle on optimizing sites to be search engine ready through use of Clean Document Structure, CSS, Meta-tags, Alt-tags, Title Tags, keyword rich content and so on. I also understand that a constantly growing document library is what makes sites big search engine players – the sites need to be constantly changing and constantly added too. What I didn’t realize to this point is that there are places (sites) where companies, people, organizations actually trade links at a very high volume. For instance, I’ve stumbled this site called Link Market. I signed up and all I can say is “Why the hell haven’t I known about this”. Well, I shouldn’t say that I didn’t know about link trading, but what I didn’t know was there was such a great place to do it and i’m sure there are more. We’ve got some big players in here, I think that’s the biggest surprise. There are sites in there with Alexa Rating of 200, 1300, 33,000 < - that's just a few that I saw, but point being they're high and they'll raise my rankings. So why am I so excited about this? Because this is the part i've failed to realize about SEO. See, I think I understand SEO just fine, I prepare the site and it's optimized and ready, but that's not enough. Engines Raise your rank based on your popularity - reciprical links. Of course content is very important too, but if you've got lots of good high ranking sites connected to yours, it will raise you. I think i'm definately seeing the light here and I'm thinking this is another one of those services to throw into the mix... Websites that actually bring in visitors. Christian was talking the other day about how he's studying and getting a grasp on building dynamic websites and how he's had more firepower with that, another tool, something that set's him apart from the rest - And I agree 100%, Dynamic is in Demand and that's where the money's at -> not to mention is just more interesting in general. But this is no different, we figure this out (this SEO business) and we’ve got ourselves jackpot… Dynamic Sites that actually pull in clients. Shopping carts that’s actually bring in Clients. Sky’s the limit and i’m feeling stupid about not knowing this already.

.mac account auto-renewed – This caught me by surprise – I didn’t need it. If you’ve got a .mac account but don’t plan on renewing, make sure to log into the account and turn off the auto-renew button. Luckily Apple gives you a refund before 30 days but I thought I’d give the heads up to the many millions of people who read this site. ;D

If you’ve auto renewed accidentally and are looking to cancel, you can go here a simply fill out the short form.
Dotmac Support Form.

(UPDATE) Got my refund as promised. Pretty quickly too. Apple Still Rocks.

Exciting news… I know.

First book sold was “Real World InDesign 2″ by Olav Martin and David Blatner. It was an OK book, but I had already known everything in it. Typically the “Real World” books are setup for the more advanced user, this one wasn’t so much… kind of started at square one. Well i’m psyched, all into ebay now. I’m Selling More! for anybody who’s interested. I’m gonna start selling everything!

None of my picture books though – you can’t have those.

Has anyone ever seen this? How strange.

WWDC was today and apple announced they will be dumping IBM chips for Intel. IBM’s roadmap was looking grim and so here we are. Do I care? Not really, the OS is what get’s me. Do I think this is a good move for Apple? Yes, I think this is a move that will increase it’s market share for a variety of reasons (but i’m too frigin tired to sit here and make bullet lists). A few funny things about the conference…

1) Apple has been secretly working on an x86 version of osX for 5 Years!
2) The Demo computer at the conference was actually running on an intel Processor

Ah, anyway… it will be another bumpy transition for most… but if I remember moving to OSX myself correctly, it wasn’t all that bad. I have to wonder how the poor little printshops will react to this news. Also noteworthy, although Windows won’t be supported on the mac x86, it will be doable. We’re talking about a machine that runs both platforms natively, that’s pretty hot.

My brother-in-law went on a trip home (Croatia) and took some shots. I felt the need to photoshop them, make them more dramatic. Here’s what I came up with.

croatia pictures

That was a scam too – unbelievable! Well not really, more of a misprint and cancelation on the sellers part. I ended getting myself a Digital Rebel XT (350d) for $800 (it retails at $999). Still a great camera, though not a 20d. It’ll get the job done, the Digital Rebel’s Image Quality between the 2 is close if not the same. The added features go deeper such as faster frame rates and such. Anyway, i’m happy and just glad it’s all behind me.

So I had to 1) upgrade my WordPress and 2) turn on the feature that only allows registered users to comment. I apologize to the very few people who do actually comment, but those spams… man – what a pain to go through and delete every one by hand. Again sorry, please comment though so it looks like i have friends.

It wasn’t nice & it wasn’t easy. I was trying to find a 20d at a good bargain on Amazon.com – Instead I bumped into the nasty Amazon 20D scam. Along the way, I ordered more than 10 cameras from more than 10 different sellers. Each and everyone canceled the amazon order & contact me offline via e-mail requesting my shipping info to complete the detail. Here’s how it went down… I would get a cancelation e-mail from “amazon”. The e-mail would explain that the seller has gone over the finiancial limit for the month and another means of payment would complete the transaction. The requested payment method was Western Union Wire Transfer.

Wire Transfer? I didn’t think much of it at first, the “amazon” e-mails looked legit. At closer inspection, they’re phony, and the only way you could tell was by looking at the e-mails long headers which show you where the e-mail was sent from. I looked and sure enough, these e-mails were not coming from the same smtp.amazon.com that every other amazon e-mail comes from. These were fake e-mails trying to get me to wire transfer money to some dude in Romania so that he could walk off with my money and send me nothing. Disgusting, i know. Did I mention that these cameras (20d’s which retail at over $1,500) were priced in the $365-500 range. I was hopeful, very hopeful that I could actually snag one at this price, but wire transfer was out of the question.

So I placed one order after another – through amazon – If the order got canceled, I tried again with another seller. In all, I placed easily more than 10 orders, all getting canceled. A few times after the cancelation I would get the offline email from the seller requesting my info, I eventually noticed alot of these sellers were the same person. In all I had more than $3500 pending transactions in my bank account. I just kept trying though.

I got one! I found a real seller, got the camera (with the crappy kit lens) for $500. It was a disturbing experience, but hey, got a good deal. Hopefully this thing is “like new” as advertised once it shows up at my door, but I went through amazon, and if it’s not as advertisied i’ll get the a-z guarentee. I’m thinking this one person selling at $500 had to be influenced by the fraud prices he saw on all the other cameras.

Man, disgusting experience. Beware of theoldseller@yahoo.com – He’s full of shit, and that’s the moral of my story.