The Technorati Monster

On the advice of Glen Feechan, I decided to sign up to Technorati.

Trying to hook that up to this blog, I saw what I think is one of the funniest error messages I've ever seen:

"Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again."

Underneath that were two sentences explaining,

"We are currently experiencing back end issues and are working to resolve them as quickly as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience."

Now why couldn't Sage Live have said something like that? Quick, easily readable and instantly understandable.

Wake up Sage

Duane Jackson mentioned on his blog yesterday that Sage Live was no longer live. They'd taken it offline to fix some security issues.

I decided to check this out for myself.

So off I hopped to the Sage Live website (which appeared on Google BELOW Duane's blog post - somewhat worrying).

The website itself wouldn't have encouraged me to try Sage Live. It's very wordy and the text is in tiny print.

And it took me several clicks to find the "try now" button - and when I clicked on it, the website just hung.

Now I am not anti-Sage like the owner of this site is anti-QuickBooks. I've done the Sage accreditation, for Pete's sake. And when properly used, Sage is not a bad product.

But I have to say that I think Sage are being a bit clueless here.

For one thing, if the Sage Live offering is going to seriously compete with the likes of KashFlow, WinWeb, Xero and all the other small business online accounting software that's out there now, its site needs to be a lot more user-friendly. No long paragraphs of tiny-printed guffy text.

And for another thing, if they've (very sensibly) taken the beta trial down while they repair its security features, then they should surely put a page on their site to say it's not available, not just leave the site hanging?

Come on Sage, you've got good competition out there now, smarten your act up.

UPDATE: I just went back to the Sage Live website and they have now put a page to say the beta isn't available. But their text, again, is very guffy.

And, it doesn't actually say anywhere that the site is down!!

Here it is:

Sage Live is beta. This means that we’re going to continue to develop our service to make sure we give you the best possible experience. This may mean that, from time to time, we have to make changes to the site in response to your valuable feedback, and where required, this may mean that we have to take the site down while we work on it.

If you need to create invoices while the site is unavailable, we have some new invoicing software that is completely free of charge, so why not give it a try.

We’re working hard to make sure that we offer the best possible experience through Sage Live. We hope that you’ll continue to use our service, and we’ll let you know once the site is back up and running.

If you have any questions about Sage Live please email us support@sagelive.co.uk

Turn the clock back 80 years...

Just watched the BBC's docu-drama "1929: The Great Crash". It's here on iPlayer till the weekend.

Similarities are being drawn all over the place between that crash and the Great Depression that followed it, and the current financial situation.

As I watched the programme, these were what particularly struck me as similarities:

- In the late 1920s, before the crash, there were no rules about how much people could borrow. Stock was bought with borrowed money and credit was easily obtainable.

- The Hoover government said everything was fine, the market just kept going up, and the best thing they could do was to leave it alone.

- In the early stages of the crash, the bankers tried to shore up the existing system by providing funding.

- In the aftermath of the crash, there was no short-term commercial credit available, and businesses closed down because of that.

- One of Roosevelt's strategies to try and help ease the situation was to guarantee bank deposits.

History has repeated itself with a vengeance.

M

Garbage in, garbage out!

A site that's called "No More QuickBooks" just had to be worth investigating.

Here it is.

It also interested me because it has some short reviews of various other pieces of small business accounting software, mostly online ones (scrub that - it's all online ones), and reviews of online payment methods like WorldPay.

I found my way to this site via a post from UK Business Forums. A new company was looking for accounting software recommendations. One very sensible accountant called Aaron pointed out that, whatever software the company uses, it

"will only be as good as the data you input"

Absolutely right!

Putting your data into the computer doesn't make it right. I've seen plenty of sets of records kept on the computer - mostly Sage, but one or two others - which have been an awful mess.

So the warning is - choose your package carefully, and get some training on it!!

M

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

...when officialdom gets hold of paying one's staff!

As a new employer, I received a bumper pack full of information and forms from HM Revenue.

Thankfully I know my way round payroll. But I could imagine that anyone who'd never seen all these forms before would be completely at sea. Umpteen forms called P-this and P-that. A big flow chart to work out which NIC table you should be using.

Why do people make life so complicated for themselves? HM Revenue are people. So people made these forms up for other people to fill in. Argh!

And when I came to load the CD-ROM and run the calculations...

I got the CD-ROM loaded on my computer and opened it. Then looked for somewhere to put in the company and employee details.

Instinctive it wasn't.

In the end, I found it under "Database", which would be the last place I'd have thought of looking - I'd have thought the Database would contain things like NIC tables and tax rates and codes.

Once I'd found where to put the details in, entering them went quite smoothly.

Has anyone else tried using the HMRC CD-ROM? What's your experience of it been?

M

Do you like Excel 2007?

Since my post yesterday I've spent a bit of time working with Excel 2007.

I really like the look and feel of it. It's bright and cheerful and looks less boring than the old version (spreadsheets do have a nasty habit of turning into huge long columns of numbers, and when they're surrounded by dull grey borders, they look even worse).

But what I don't like is that lots of functions and options have been MOVED!

In a lot of ways, the new layout is more logical, but yesterday I had to spend ages trying to find out how to change the range of data that a pivot table looks at.

In Excel 2003, there's a pivot table wizard, and you can just right-click on the table and go back into the wizard if you want to change anything in the table.

In Excel 2007, the wizard has gone. You just click on Insert and then Pivot Table. That's in itself confusing when you're used to clicking Data to start a pivot table.

Which means that changing anything in a pivot table can get fiddly.

And the answer to how to change the range is... go to Options!! I'd tried just about everywhere else before I even thought of looking there.

Have you tried Excel 2007? What did you think of it? Have you switched from Excel 2003 yet?

M

A very non-comprehensive trial!

I decided to have a look at Excel 2007.

There's a free 60-day trial available on the Microsoft Office website. Great I thought.

Problem 1) You can't try just Excel 2007 or Word 2007 or PowerPoint 2007. It's all or nothing. OK, I downloaded the Small Business Edition free trial.

Problem 2) The trial version of Excel 2007 has so many of its features disabled that it's practically useless. I couldn't even save a file, or create a new file. And as for trying out a pivot table, forget it!

What a pile of old rubbish! How do Microsoft expect me to try a program out when they'll hardly let me use any of its features?

What experience have other people had of this?

M

UPDATE: Tom Gleeson posted on Twitter that the trial version should be fully functional. So I opened it again... and lo and behold all the features were there.

So a half apology to Microsoft, because I'm still not impressed that I had to open the program twice before I was able to use all the functionality.

But at least I've now got something to play with.