Another SaaS vendor is out of the game.

Is it possible to build a profitable business around just one client? Well, don’t jump to conclusions right away. What would you say having US goverment as a client?

Blist is now Socrata.

This is the official position of the company stated by Jon Byrum, Senior Product Marketing Manager, on Get Satisfaction site:

"Socrata will continue to support access to your blists. We will not, however, continue to build features with a focus on CRM, Project Management, and online database solutions. We are dedicated to delivering the best social data discovery solution for governments and have prioritized our resources on that goal."

You can also find out more about it on the official blog of the company.

The first sign of what can happen could have been noticed in January 2009.

I think in such difficult times blist investors pondered it for a while and decided they’d rather stake on money of the government. Cause the chances to make some with the government are a way higher than trying to do the same thing hoping to build a profitable business model on online database solution.

What current blist users will do now? This is what they are offered:


The thing is the service will not focus on online database solution development and current users can’t count on growth in this direction anymore. Anyway, in case they decide to migrate to another system I think the situation will be much the same Coghead users had to deal with.

There is one more interesting thing with Adobe Flex blist was built on. Actually, I wasn’t a fan of Adobe Flex use, and the fact that developers decided to limit the use of it in Socrata is very interesting. It really makes me wonder why?

Well, things are changing and I really wish Kevin Merritt and Socrata best of luck achieving their goals.

Is there a way to calculate running total in WorkXpress?

There are some key features in any service the help in driving success. To my opinion Running total really add to this. This is the reason I pay attention to how it works in any web based system.

To calculate running total in WorkXpress let’s get back to our standard example with Date and Amount:


At first I tried to calculate running total myself. But after few steps were taken I reached a deadlock, so had to ask Workxpress guys to help me out. Treff LaPlante (WorkXpress President & CEO) was there to assist me and answered my question:

"…running totals is a feature that we’ve supported in WorkXpress in previous generations of the platform; however, we’ve just released the support for this current generation of the platform."

This is how it is tuned. I’ve added the second field Amount on the list through Reuse tab on the Block Creator:

It allows you while editing this field to set up an alternative name using "Use Local Field Label" property:



To calculate running total on "Currency and Number Settings" tab set up "Alternative value to show" property into "Running Total".


After saving the data we’ve got needed result:


In case you need more detailed instructions you may check out the info here.

Conclusions:

Actually, I think the user won’t have any problem configuring how to calculate Running Total in WorkXpress. If talk about systems I’ve tested the implementation of this function in WorkXpress is one of the easiest regarding set up from business user standpoint.

There is one more interesting thing to learn from this case, the same situation happened while trying to find out how to import data into Zoho Creator. This can be a moot point, but as the matter of fact it shows the system immaturity. Some developers rush to add features to the product in case of missing functionality. On the other hand this can be considered as the "Reality Check" of the product.

Any chance to use TrackVia globally?

Taking into account the transparency of boundaries in business world today one should really know if web-based system is capable of serving globally.

Sometimes it takes a while to find out what can be done in each particular system in this respect. But with TrackVia things are pretty obvious at once.

Just starting with TrackVia pay attention one can select from a limited set of symbols for currency and there is no way you can control Date/Time display:


The good news is all timestamps will be converted to time zone preseted in your personal information:


In case its ok with you, be ready for another surprise. Even though the system allows to input the data in different languages:


It’s not capable of displaying it correctly:


Instead of sorted data I’ve got encoded character codes.

Conclusions:

Despite all my tries and efforts to go globally with TrackVia all I can say is the system is not ready for such use right now.

Who the heck can really keep it simple?

The value of any product can be estimated right away you start using it. I mean if there is no need to beat up your head with how to get it off the ground and make it work for you this won’t even come into question.

This is exactly the case.

The moment I had Flip MinoHD camera in my hand was one of those when you just take off your hat to the developers that really took a good care of the simplicity, as well as quality of the product. Well done guys!

What do we have with web-based solutions? The more I am trying to delve deeply into the structure of these systems, the clearer it gets so few at least try to make and keep it really simple for users. When it’s about solving real life issues I’d hardly name at least any vendor that would have any reason to say come on, we can really do that for you, keeping it SIMPLE!

Nope…

What if use QuickBase worldwide?

Let’s get back to trying out how web based systems handle the issue of worldwide app use. This time I am about to check if QuickBase is good at it.

I start off from scratch by importing the data in different languages in order to clear up the systems works smoothly.


As the matter of fact QuickBase turned my data into such scribbles.


So, I decided to create necessary fields and tried to input the same info through form for record editing:


Unfortunately, I’ve got the same result.


The thing that QuickBase is not capable of recognizing the data in different languages really surprised me, so I decided to check my settings to make sure everything was ok.

I found out my IE7 default encoding is different from unicode . Just for experiment as the page was displayed I managed to set up unicode and after doing so the text in different languages was correctly recognized.


Let’s see how QuickBase handles globalization issue. In QuickBase time zone is set up for the whole account. You may check out how to change the Account time Zone here.


As I changed the time zone all Data/Time fields were correctly recognized for a new time zone.


It turned out this was the last good thing what can be done in QuickBase in case you want your app to go global. I didn’t manage to find any settings that allow changing Date/Number format according to the country.

Conclusion:

Even though it’s possible at a stretch to create the app for a workgroup outside of the US that will use different language and Time Zone as well, there is a limitation. One can use just one time zone and language, but date and numbers can be edited only in the US format.

In case your team members are in different time zones, let alone the data input in different languages, QuickBase can’t help you here.