Posted by mbos on Jun 1, 2009 in
CrowsNest,
General,
News,
Recommendations I was forwarded an excellent article from a Twitter friend the other day, called The Next Wave of SaaS. The article does a great job of explaining how SaaS functions, its benefits and why it is becoming so important to business large and small.
Excerpt:
Mon, May 25, 2009 —
Network World — Software-as-a-Service (
SaaS) has gone from a curiosity to the mainstream in just a few years as businesses turn to the technology to take advantage of the inherent economies of scale. Yet that’s only the beginning.
Tags: article, saas, software
CrowsNest Assessment System
We are making excellent progress on the CrowsNest application! We have completed the private launch, first release, and are working on finalizing some significant changes that were made to the base functionality of the system. By the first of July we are looking at opening up a beta program for the Assessment portion of CrowsNest.
If anyone is interested in participating in the beta of the assessment system, please contact us. The assessment system is geared towards creating and delivering online assessments/tests.
Primary features of the assessment system include:
- Ability to create a question bank
- Ability to show images with individual questions
- Ability to categorize your questions
- Ability to add custom proficiency levels to your questions
- Create manual/custom assessments, save in bank
- Create random assessments using the generator
- Ability to define grading systems
- Ability to assign point values to individual questions
- Automatic scoring/grading
- Assign time limits to an assessment
- Customize and assign documents to an assessment
- Invitations
- Instructions
- Case Studies
- Closing Notes
- Ability to group multiple assessments into a “Course”, save in bank
- Schedule assessments/courses
- Skip question functionality
- Timer functionality
- User Management
- Customer Management
- Review Scorecards
- Terminology customization
- Interface customization
Tags: CrowsNest, development, News, software, update
Posted by admin on Apr 7, 2009 in
General,
Recommendations We have started using Ring Central as our phone provider. Rather than have a dedicated, physical phone, we decided to get virtual phone numbers, which we can then manage and have forwarded to which ever number we choose, whether land line or cell.
Ring Central
After looking at numerous services that provide this functionality, we ended up settling on Ring Central. One of the main reasons is the ability to have extensions for your number. And, you can have multiple virtual numbers that can all be managed in the same way.
One cool offer that Ring Central had, was the ability to get a vanity toll-free number. Yes…vanity…we are vain 
However, the ability to get 877-U-MUTINY was just too much to resist.
Tags: Services We Use, software
Posted by admin on Apr 4, 2009 in
General,
Recommendations 
Code Spaces
We have just started using codespaces.com, and so far, I am highly impressed. Beyond the Subversion hosting, they offer the ability to create multiple projects, and each project has its own complete area. Features include forums, wiki, document storage and task management, in addition to the subversion functionality and hosting.
The only thing I would like to see added here, is a time tracking system, even though I know it isn’t technically a part of the system…but they have offered so many other features, that that would be the icing on the cake!
Tags: Services We Use, software
Posted by mbos on Feb 27, 2009 in
General,
Recommendations As a web-based software development company, we come across a lot of other web-based services. We use some of them. We would only recommend a company/service, that we ourselves use and appreciate for it’s value.
One recent service that I would HIGHLY recommend, is Clarity Accounting. We started using Clarity after starting up MutinyWare, and have been using it to handle all of our accounting needs.
Clarity has done a phenomenal job at providing an online accounting system that is functional, efficient, user-friendly, and beautiful! Not too often do you come across a system that has all of those features, but this one does. I honestly cannot say enough about it, other than to recommend it.
I looked at a lot of other accounting systems, and found most to be either much too complicated for a small business, or not nearly complicated enough. Clarity has found the perfect balance. In another life, I used to be a bookkeeper for a company I worked at. Since then, other than to track invoices, and keep receipts, my bookkeeping skills have been severely neglected and restricted. When I started using Clarity, I thought at first that it would take a ton of re-learning, however the system has proved to be so intuitive that my lessons and skills came back quickly, and with little pain.
For any small business or freelancer out there, you can’t get better than Clarity Accounting. Their prices are extremely reasonable ($10/mo or $100/yr). Also, I can’t help but mention the fact that their site is very well done, and I love reading the Clarity blog!
Huge congrats to Clarity for doing it right!
Visit Clarity Accounting here: http://www.clarityaccounting.com/
Tags: Services We Use, software
