If you’re here, you can see that we’ve retired our blue and white logo, along with our little friend Chip. Don’t be sad for Chip, he’s traveling the world and doing shots with Count Chocula.
If you don’t want to read about our rebranding (who could blame you), just know that we are the same Ripple you know, but with a new logo. If you’re the curious type and want to know more, read on.
A good friend of Ripple (and a client, natch!) wrote a post about asking for the best price. That’s always a good idea, of course, but I think there’s a question to be asked prior to that question: “How do I get the awesome version?” Not for everything, mind you, but for the stuff you care about, the stuff that matters, searching for the lowest price first almost guarantees that you will get what you paid for.
Asking “how do I get the awesome version,” even if it’s only rhetorical, helps you and anyone you talk to establish the starting point, continue reading
If you follow password security guidelines, you should have a unique password for each online service you use. That way if one service provider does get compromised and some ne’er-do-well in Russia gets your password, he can’t get into all the other online services he might guess that you use. But a study from 2010 reveals that 75% of people use the same password for social media sites that they use for their email. Why? Well one obvious reason is a false sense of security, but a more practical reason is convenience. Who wants to (or can) remember dozens of unique passwords? Some folks keep a text document or spreadsheet with their various passwords in it. But typical desktop software has notoriously weak password protection, so instead here are 2 better ways to do it, one for Mac and one for Windows. continue reading
One of the great aspects of cloud computing, or software-as-a-service, is that it scales efficiently (making it a good strategy for operating in tough financial times). Paying per mailbox per month for email hosting, for instance, scales down gracefully when your summer interns go back to school. But if you had an internal Exchange server you would have had to purchase Exchange Client Access Licenses (CALs) for those interns to have mailboxes, CALs that now sit idle for 9 months, money wasted.
With the introduction of Creative Suite 5.5, Adobe has introduced Subscription Licensing, whereby you can pay per month for the software you need, rather than buying the licenses outright. This makes a lot of sense for creative companies who might have some number of permanent creatives on staff and bring in contractors and freelancers on a project basis. Bringing in a freelancer for a 3-month project? Not sure you’ll still have enough work in a couple of months to keep that new designer you just hired? Don’t shell out $1,700 for CS5.5 Design Premium, “rent” it instead for $139/month.
IT is often seen as an expense. It’s treated as an expense on most income statements, and most companies work as hard as possible to minimize it, like any other expense. Except that IT is not an expense, any more than hammers are an expense for carpenters, or factories are for manufacturers. continue reading
"How can I help you?"
There are a lot of skills companies look for in IT people. Smart, analytical, experienced. Windows, Cisco, Dell. The one most often overlooked is Nice.
When I started Ripple, it was in no small part because of the way IT people were acting. Busy, smug and secretive. So I set out to build an IT company with a culture of being nice, friendly and approachable. Pretty regularly people will say to me “well, that’s neat, but does it really matter?” Yes, and it’s a meaningful IT skill. Here’s how I know: continue reading
I was interviewed for Smart Business Magazine a while back, and we discussed The Cloud. These were my thoughts: SBM: The cloud seems to be everywhere. What should businesses be thinking about? Is the cloud right for everyone? Me: The short answer is: Yes, it’s right for everyone. The long answer is: Maybe not right now, and not for everything. continue reading
IN June, I was asked by the ROWE honchos at GoROWE to write on their blog a little bit of how Ripple became a ROWE. Here’s what I said: ______________________________
A guide to make work *not* suck
Let me put this out there: I am a Work Utopia guy. I want people to come to work and feel like it’s more than a job. I want them to feel a deeper sense of meaning, connectedness, and engagement. I have implemented many, many ideas that would help make Ripple a Work Utopia. So when I read about ROWE in 2006 I was struck by how Work Utopia it was. Complete freedom! A Results-Only Work Environment. How much more Work Utopia could something be, really? Even with a Work Utopia mindset I still struggled with the perceived loss of control. I wondered: “How the hell could that even work?” continue reading
![By Glenn Fleishman from Seattle, Washington (Behold the iPad in All Its Glory) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/IPad-02.jpg "iPad")
Image via Wikipedia
The last time I was an early adopter of technology was when I blew 1100 bucks on an Apple Newton. I was convinced it was the future, and showed it to everyone. I tried like hell to make it part of my normal life for about 6 months before realizing the effort required wasn’t justified by the payoff. It was the future, but not until it was 75% smaller and had a Palm logo on it. These days I wait months, sometimes years, for a new product to prove itself before I’ll spend money on it. So you can understand that I was in no hurry to buy an iPad, and only have one (actually two!) because my generous Apple evangelist boss gave them to all of us as end-of-year bonuses. Having used one for about 4 weeks, I can tell you continue reading
A while back I answered some questions for Smart Business Magazine about Macs in a PC world. Here’s what I told them:
"A little short for a Stormtrooper, aren't you?"
How is it that Macs have gone from being the computer of choice only for graphic designers to becoming a popular choice for mainstream computer users in business? Well, Macs always had a reputation of being easy to use, but, for a variety of reasons, lost the business market to Microsoft after the release of Windows ’95. It really wasn’t until after the iPod that things began to shift. Everyone started using iPods, then iPhones, and a ‘Halo Effect’ started making people curious about Macs. That led to an increasing use of Macs for people at home. For a lot of people, they started wondering why they couldn’t use their Mac at work. So it was, in many ways, a home-user invasion of business. So why would a business want to take a look at Apple? What are the advantages? continue reading
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