At Duo we utilize a number of different site search solutions, among them:

• Freefind,
• Atomz,
• FusionBot and
• Google Mini appliances

GoogleOperatingSystem has a nice writeup about Google’s latest product, Google Custom Search Business Edition. At $100 a year for sites with less than 5K pages it appears to be a bargain. Stay tuned for details …. drink some more g-aid.

Great article (The Lack of Difference between Priority, Severity, and Urgency) about abuse of descriptors in software problem reports. I especially (seriously!) like the suggestion that a bug can be labeled “CFO priority”. Fast, cheap or good; choose 2. Via reddit.

We’re trying to get this implemented at Duo. This is a great, short article at SQLServerCentral.com.

A view of our bay while on vacation in Treasure Beach, Jamaica last Fall:

This was just a test to see how quickly I could leverage Amazon S3 as a cdn. I took all of 3 minutes to upload the file and drop the link into WordPress. Neato.

We are overloaded with data. Where to store it? How to manage it? How to analyze it? While there are lots of great platforms out there to store data (MySQL, SQL Server, Excel, etc.) and Excel/ODBC makes for a pretty nice reporting/analysis package in the right hands, I came across Swivel this past week and is looks very interesting. Their byline is Upload and Explore Data. I found some data to play with at Statemaster and attempted to mashup the percent of the population with tooth decay vs. the number of dentists licensed in the state. Here is my first crack at it: % Toothless and Dentists by State. Not bad for a 30 minutes of tinkering. This could be a very interesting tool. I hope they create new ways to source data besides cut/paste and file upload.

Update: I just learned about Many Eyes, a project at IBM that allows people to analyze and share data in a visual manner. Thanks to Jon Udell’s blog for this tool. It seems to be a below average temperature summer here in Chicago as well …

I’ve been starting a blog for about a year now with limited success. Actually none.  I do a lot of reading online and off-line that I believe is interesting I am going to try to recap and categorize what I’m reading and learning and will venture to opine on occasion. So here goes …