Electronic Voting Project A Lesson In Business Processes

After the recent municipal election I met with Dean Smith, President of Intelivote Systems Inc. of Dartmouth, the company behind the online voting engine.  I was looking for some good lessons that I could relate to business situations, such as insights on data security and system integrity, but I quickly came to realize this story is more about  business processes and procedures than about technology.

Smith and his team spent a year setting up the election using their configurable system, making custom changes to handle unique situations, running proofs of concepts, testing over and over again, and even suggesting legislation changes to permit online voting.

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LinkedIn – a “Facebook for Business”

In a recent article on Social Media, I discussed the power of online personal connections and mentioned the phenomenon that is Facebook. There is another social media tool which is similar to Facebook but is more intended for business contacts. It is called LinkedIn.

This service allows you to create a profile much like you would on Facebook, and to make connections with other people who you can then keep informed of business activities. Note that these are called “connections”, not “friends”.

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Product Review – Three Smartphones and a High Speed Network

I recently dropped three new smartphones on the desktops of our technical support representatives at Nicom IT Solutions, and they immediately went to town with them. The devices, compliments of Andrew Sherbin of Rogers Communications, are the Nokia N95, the Blackberry Bold, and the Apple iPhone. All three were configured to work with Rogers’ 3G high speed wireless network that was launched this spring in Halifax and Moncton.

Nokia

The N95 is geared for multimedia. It comes with built-in stereo speakers, wires to hook it up to your home entertainment system, and a whopping 5 megapixel camera. It has a slide-out tray that contains multimedia controls on one side and a keyboard on the other. The keyboard is of the type where one key can stand for multiple letters.

The N95 even comes with a tiny clip-on remote control with the same multimedia controls as on the tray, connected via a wire to the main unit.

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A Dozen Web Sites to Add to your Summer Reading Program

As we enter these dog days of summer, why don’t you take a break and visit some of
these interesting web sites to see if there are utilities you would like to use to
make your life a little easier.

I thank the folks at Nicom IT Solutions, particularly Barry Milne, for sharing these
with us. (The sentences in quotations following the web addresses are how the companies
describe themselves.)

www.xobni.com – “Drowning in Email? Find People,
Email & Attachments Instantly.” Xobni  is “inbox” spelled backward. This
is a clever little utility you can download and plug into Outlook to help you manage
your email traffic.  It keeps track of email conversations and organizes them
by person and topic. It identifies with whom you converse the most and what’s the
best time of day to find them at their computer.

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Are You Managing Your Online Message?

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Omar Khayyám

I recently attended an interesting talk at the World Trade and Convention Centre presented by Carman Pirie of Colour. Pirie made a statement that really stands out in my mind: The online conversation is going on with or without you, so you may as well be part of it, and help shape it.

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