October 2008
A few years ago a book about change called “Who Moved My Cheese” made the rounds of discussion groups and best seller lists. Not being a terrific fan of this little money maker for Spencer Johnson, I would often refer to it by various other titles, such as “Hey, Give Me Back My Cheese”. A quick search of the internet just now tells me that I was being kinder than some critics. Besides, I prefer a cheeseburger anyway.
However, change is part of the stuff of life, and in technology, it plays a leading role. We've been making more changes than usual here at GSS lately, and so it seems appropriate that I take just a moment to acknowledge them, to thank you for occasionally having to run through the cheese maze to get what you need in our software, and to let you know that more change is coming.
And we continue to work on our total upgrade for MissionBase and UMCData.com, which we have now code named Falcon. Very soon we will be releasing the second mini-app that will eventually become a part of Falcon. (The first was our "Signs of Fruitfulness" administrator demo application, that we announced in May and which has a live version in active use by the Missouri districts).
The second Falcon mini-app will be a tool for use by our event registrars, which will allow them to post events directly onto their registration web sites. It will be distributed in Adobe AIR format (see Jacob’s article below).
As we continue to travel the path toward a fully internet-enabled comprehensive conference software solution, we will soon be providing an opportunity for you to contribute your ideas to the project as well. Thus you too can help to move some of that cheese; but reverting to my old title-changing games, I prefer to think of it as “Hey, Let’s Make More and Better Cheese!”
For more information on any of these modules, contact lori@greatspirit.com
Our new Mailroom Module offers current mailroom processing tools to help you maximize delivery rates and discounts on your bulk mailings. It is scheduled to be released by the end of this month. It includes the following elements:
Completed postal forms are produced for submission at your local post office.
For more information, please contact lyndzie@greatspirit.com.
Too much to list! But start with checking out our new:
For your convenience, these are the dates GSS staff are "out of the office" and/or unavailable.
| Al Fifhause: | Bill Johnson: |
| Lori Smith: | Nov. 4-9 |
| Jacob Fifhause: | Nov 7,10 |
| Lyndzie Fifhause: |
Single address certification is now active for most customers. Many of you have already seen that an addresses will be certified when you attempt to save it or move to a different address in the contact information tree.
Note that for address certification to work, an active internet connection is required. When you work with addresses, MissionBase will attempt to find your internet connection. If the connection is not found, address certification will not function. You can still work with addresses and run labels and lists, but anything requiring address certification such as single address, CASS or pre-sort will be disabled.
If you use a dial-up technology for your internet connection, you would need to first connect to the internet, then start MissionBase (or close and restart if MissionBase is running) for any address certification to work.
A far stretch from the drama or excitement Hollywood has to offer… but perhaps a bit more useful for your everyday work responsibilities. OK, so they really aren't movies at all… just short video clips, but I got your attention. :-)
Last month I did numerous trainings on our new addressing features, repeating the same information again and again to the point that my voice seemed constantly scratchy and hoarse. I decided there had to be a better way. Then the idea occurred to me to produce short video clips of procedures within MissionBase for which our users seem to be repeatedly requesting assistance. Of course, like everything, a video takes time to create, so currently this is a library of… one. But that’s a start! I look forward to our video clip library growing steadily, providing our users with one more resource to assist them with the use of our program. Sometimes you just need someone to show you… STOP, rewind, and show you… STOP, rewind, and show you… OK. You get the point.
So
grab the popcorn, or at least that cold Diet Coke, and pocket the savings from
the latest BlockBuster release. Check-out (click to view) a video from the
GSS library! And amaze your co-workers with your ever expanding knowledge of
MissionBase!
The GSS Training Video Library
(PS… cell phones do NOT have to be
placed on silence during this video presentation.)
Back in the June Eagle Eye I wrote about Adobe AIR and its advantages as to why we have chosen it as the platform for redeveloping MissionBase into a “web-based” product. Since Adobe released the AIR technology early this year there have been a great number of very useful AIR based desktop applications, some of which I have put on my computer and have been enjoying how they have simplified some frequent tasks. As it is quite difficult to fully explain what AIR does in words, I would like to share some examples of AIR applications out there that you can download and check out.
Which one is best? Well, I am not going to answer that for you, but this is a question many people are asking as they consider computer options when the need arises. This article is not meant to sway you in one direction or the other. What I will do, however, is let you know that MissionBase can also be made available for use on your Mac.
We currently have a number of users with Mac computers and I want to ensure everyone is aware of how MissionBase can be run on a Mac. MissionBase requires a Windows operating system; however, Mac computers are capable of running Windows-only applications in a number of ways by installing the Windows operating system (OS) on the Mac computer as well. The first is Boot Camp. Every new Mac today comes equipped with Boot Camp, which allows you to run Windows "natively" on the Mac. When using Boot Camp you are required to use either the Windows OS or the Mac OS at any given time. Your second option is to install a program that will allow you to run Windows side by side with Mac OSX. Two such programs are VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac. These two do not require the user to restart the computer in order to use the Windows operating system while running Mac applications at the same time. You are able to run your Windows operating system and applications in a separate window from the desktop, otherwise known as a "virtual machine."
We have had great success with MissionBase on Mac computers running VMware Fusion on both customer computers and my own. However, Parallels Desktop for Mac has been incompatible with MissionBase to date.
In the end, the decision of which option is best for you is better determined by your computing needs. If/when you are asking yourself the question, "should I buy a PC or a Mac?" We would be happy to answer any questions you may have on the subject as it relates to MissionBase.