Blog: September 2009

Today is the last day in our current office ... We've been in the same office for the past 12.5 years ... I guess it is time to move on ... our current space is WAY too small for us.

When we were four, it was perfect, when we were seven it was OK, we are now eleven with a constant need to grow (our plan is to take over the world. It will take time, but we are patient).

We decided it is time to move when the development team could not fit in any of the rooms but the boardroom (picture on the right) ... so for the past few months we do not have a "real" boardroom. The boardroom became the hub of development.

All that is going to change ! We are moving into a much bigger space with an amazing view of the Vancouver mountains (Finally I will be able to see those magnificent mountains whenever I raise my head from my monitors).

We are moving on Sunday. Everyone will help. We are actually moving one floor down from where we are, so we expect a smooth transition to the new place.

Next blog post will be much better because I will have the mountains as an inspiration.

I’ve been at Function Point for the better part of 5 years, although I wear many hats here at Function Point most of our clients will recognize me as the guy that winds up on the phone whenever anything QuickBooks related comes up. The Function Point system is built to encapsulate the time tracking and project management aspects of a Professional Services agency and to export relevant data to an Accounting System. My experience has been that creative agencies are better off managing invoicing/project management and accounting/payroll with separate applications. With QuickBooks being geared for Accountants and Bookkeepers we have a free hand to stream line Function Point for time tracking, tasking, estimating and detailed invoicing. Aside from work I like travel, watch movies and stay up to date on the political events around me. Take the recent news about a new U.S. policy on how the Internet works, I have been watching the issue media and I’ll do my best to explain what ‘Net Neutrality’ is without taking a political stance and hopefully without getting too technical.

First a quick explanation of what makes the Internet different then other communication systems. Take the example of how a voice message sent along a traditional phone system, the message will travel along one set route as one single piece of data. With the Internet the voice message will be broken into a million pieces (packets) by software and sent out along many paths to its destination where it is re-assembled by software again. An Internet transmission from New York to Los Angles can have part of the messaging routed through Canada, while another part of the message is routed through Texas while yet another part of the message was sent through Miami, and along each route the data can be in the hands of different telecommunications companies. Right now at every ‘intersection’ of the Internet ‘highway’ data packets are looked at by the Traffic Cops of the internet (routing servers) and are directed to which route has the least traffic. To do their job these traffic cops have to do nothing more then look at the “To Address” of the data packets, and that’s where Net Neutrality comes in.

With Net Neutrality the traffic cops will only be able to look at the ‘To Address’ and verify the content is legal. The telecoms want to look at more then the “To Address”, they want to know the computer program that Data Packet is for, i.e. is the Data Packet Voice(VOIP)/Video(YouTube)/Text etc. To understand why is the reason I explained how the Internet works first. With something like a text web page, if the page is broken up into thousands of packets and the packets arrive in a random order at their destination over a few seconds, the user will see the page load and the pieces will fill in as they come in from the Internet. With a voice or video transmission it becomes very important that the message comes in with the same order it left in, otherwise the message will be garbled. The telecoms want to look at the data type so then can send Voice an Video data packets with a higher priority then other data, or at least that’s their marketing position. Other companies like Google and Skype want to use the Internet to run their own phone companies over the Internet, they are afraid that Traffic Cops will be used to discriminate against the data packets sent by their programs because it competes with the core business of the telecoms. Telecoms control the traffic cops, without Net Neutrality they have a lot of control over how well every program that uses the Internet works.

Labels: Net Neutrality

Hi Everyone.

Well, it's been a few months, and I'm fully settled in.

The dev team is busy working on major system upgrades and some great new features, and I'm thrillled to say that I'm applying my expertise to some cutting edge stuff!

I can't reveal too much about what we're working on, but I can tell you we are integrating a modern web 2.0 experience with the simplicity and accessiblity of our current system, and adding stability and speed improvements all around.

All right, it's back to work for me!

Hi Richard here on a glorious Friday afternoon. I'm the "newish" business development officer here at Function Point. I started in June of 2009. My role within Function Point ties the marketing side to the sales side , while drumming up new business. Getting prospects excited about what we're doing at Function Point, and where we are headed is the name of the game. You still with me?

Ah yes, "the economy". When I started in June I had dig up as much new business as I possibly could in order to move into more of a business development role-basically the marketing side of my role was non-existent. June and July were two of the most intense months of my professional life. Cold calling up agencies --and constantly hearing the "economy" as the major reason for non-interest in my firm at time. The "economy" was also a factor when agencies where "cleaning house" so to speak.

Internally, we had to create a reason for agencies to get excited about our software. I personally felt like the term the "economy" was a subconscious defence mechanism --as if it's true meaning was now almost forgotten. In the beginning of August Chris-our CEO, myself, Marc Wilson and Tate Lillies came together with a plan -- and it worked

Now... I'm not going to reveal the strategy here but I wanted to note that if your role within your firm is similar to mine --THERE IS HOPE! The "cat and mouse" game around the new defence mechanism term known as "the economy" is exactly that--a term. We signed up 8 new clients in August alone and I'm looking up at our pipeline for the month of September and it looks like it's going to be matched.

Here sits my firm Function Point - that's gained 8 new clients, in one month, in a "bad economy". I just hope this gives that good ole' feeling of: "If we can do it! So can you!". On a side note, I'm really excited that hockey starts October 1st this year...who's with me?!
TGIF.

Let's start this post of my talking about me !


I have been working for Function Pointsince March of 2000. This was before the Function Point system was in existence. Back then we wrote custom FileMaker systems for companies. My current role as technical support at Function Point has me doing many different tasks.

Technical Support if you encounter a challenge with the system that's not user based, I'm usually the person that fixes it (despite what Ryan may tell you).

Developer when I'm not trying to solve problems I get to build things for the Function Point system. While Alon is usually building things from scratch so to speak, I'm usually taking his work and using it throughout the rest of the system. A good example of this will probably be the new list views. As part of development printout adjustments also falls in my realm of responsibilities.

Network Technician -- while we have our production servers located in a server farm in Toronto it's still nescecarry to do maintenance on them from time to time. As part of this role it's my job to update self-hosted clients to the latest release of function point. I get to support Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Function Point is designed and built to run on a LAMP server (linux apache mysql php).

Ok enough about work ...... let's talk about play

If I'm not working or sleeping then I'm probably out scuba diving. Living on the west coast has it's advantages like having the ocean in you backyard. I earned my PADI open water diver certificate in 1995 and have been very active in diving since then. In 1997 I earned by open water scuba instructor certificate. Since then I have been very active in the teaching of scuba diving. I love sharing my passion for diving with others. In addition to being a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, I am also a TDI Advanced Nitrox & Deco Procedures Instructor. I also dive an Evolution CCR (closed circuit rebreather) {hmmm something about being in over your head in more ways than one !}.

One of my favourite activities while diving is wreck diving. Here in BC we have a number of ships of varying sizes that have been sunk as artificial reefs. The Artifical Reef Society of BC is currently preparing the 371 foot destroyer escort HMCS Annapolis for sinking in 2010 as BC's next artificial reef. I have personally spent many volunteer hours on board assisting in the removal of potential hazards (to the environment and to divers). One way you can show your support to this project to fill out a letter of support to sink the former HMCS Annapolis.

One of the other things I do while diving is under water photography. You can see my photos on my website.

I think I will sign off for now. Hopefully you found it interesting and mildly amusing

Dennis Chow
Technical Support

The summer has been incredible. There is just so much going on and all of it really exciting.

On the big scale, Vancouver is gearing up for the Winter Olympics in February 2010. New highway to Whistler, the Canada Line subway to the airport and this years public school schedules being switched up to accommodate some extra time off for Olympic volunteers. The city is changing so much.

Our office is moving this month and we have spent the summer watching a new space get transformed. We simply can’t wait. A couple of big rooms, lots of sky lights and a great view of the city and the north shore mountains.

The team has grown by three people in the last few months and everyone is really contributing. Ryan, our new deployment manager has stepped right into the role and has been getting rave reviews from some of our newest clients. Trevor has brought his 15 years + of UI expertise to the development team just as we have needed it most and Sarah who has just graduated from UBC has totally excited us with her ability to take on complex challenges. All have added to the social fabric of Function Point.

With a new product launch, upgrades and further support tools in the works, these next month’s are going to be exciting. That is not to say without challenges, but with great talent pushing toward our common goal of building strong relationships both in office and with our growing family of clients around the world we sure to flourish.

I remember my parents musing about how the older you get the faster the years go by. Only if I would have been listening?

Wow, what a summer… where did it go!

Chris Wilson
President

Hi All,

First of all, a bit about my history with Function Point ...

I have been working as part of the Function Point team since 2002, right from FP V0.00001 pre Beta.

OK, that's it for the history lesson, back to now !

OK, enough with now, lets go to some real history ...

When I was 11 years old (just a few years ago), I got my first computer. It was a brand new Apple IIc with 128kb of Ram, a floppy disk, and a 7" monitor (green colors only).

My father told me that if I "just play with it" he will be very disappointed, so right from day one I bought booklets to learn BASIC (yes, that is a computer language), and that was when I fell in love with programming.

About a year later, I got an adapter for the Apple IIc that connected it to a real TV, and gee those 16 colors looked AMAZING, I thought that this is the where technology would end ... because who needs more than 16 colors with 128kb of RAM ???

A few years went by, the Apple IIc collected dust, and the new PC Clones replaced it ... the first one was an 8MHz with a "turbo" button to 16MHz (with a whole 20MB drive and windows 3.11), later a 32MHz, 128MHz, 512MHz, 1Ghz (win 95), 1.2Ghz , 1.8Ghz (Win 98), 2.6Ghz (Win 2000), 3.0Ghz (Win XP), 1.8Ghz dual core (Win VISTA) , IMAC 24", 2.96Ghz ...

Just a second !!! ... an IMAC ???? what's with all the PC's, and suddenly an IMAC ??

Well, I guess the latest and the greatest of Microsoft OS did not cut it for me ...

Let me tell you a bit about the transition ...

I have been using a PC since I was thirteen or so (just a few years ago), so it was not easy to switch. I started by buying a MAC, installing bootcamp on it with .... VISTA (yes) ... and Parallels running Windows XP Proffesional (just so I feel at home in both environments).

When I first started to use that setup, I kept logging in to the VISTA side, later I switched to spending more time in Parallels on MAC ... but slowly and surely I found myself using the Mac OS more and more (the VISTA Bootcamp partition is long gone) ..

The trick for me was to find replacements for all of the programs I used to on the Windows side ..

So here it goes, the golden list of programs I used on my PC, and switched to on the Mac:

1. Development PHP IDE --> Zend Studio (PC) --> Zend Studio (MAC)


2. Productivity --> Office 2007 (PC) --> Office 2008 (MAC)


3. Development / Subversion Client--> Tortoise SVN --> Syncro SVN


4. Email Client--> Thunderbird (PC)--> Mozilla


5. Browser --> Firefox / Safari (PC) --> Mozilla (again) / Apple


6. Maintanance --> Add / Remove Programs(PC) --> App Cleaner (Free)


7. Development / design --> Photoshop / Homesuite color picker --> Colorpicker Cannot find the link, email support team if you want it


8. Development / design --> Photoshop (PC) --> Photoshop Mac


9. Download Manager --> Free download manager --> Igetter


10. DVD / Disk Burn --> Nero --> Burn (Free)


11. Media Player --> VLC --> Flip4Mac Telestream / Apple (quicktime) / VLC


12. Reading Windows Help files --> Windows CHM reader --> Ichm (free)


13. Development SSH drive --> ExpanDrive --> Macfusion (Free)


14. Development SSH client --> SSH Secure shell --> Iterm (Free)


15. MySQL GUI Client --> EMS MySQL --> Navicat MySQL


16. Security --> Norton 360 (PC) --> Norton AntiVirus 11 (MAC)


17. File Split / Concat --> HJsplit --> Split & Concat (does not work on Snow Leopard yet ..)


18. Software KVM --> Synergy (PC) --> Synergy KM nice GUI for synergy (Free)


19. RAR Files extract --> Winrar --> UnRarX (Free)

It seems that one can find pretty much everything to use on a Mac.

Good Bye Windows, Hello MAC OS

Thank you for reading :-)

Alon Sabi

VP of technology