Latest Posts - Page 134 of 198

December 7, 2018December 1, 2018 Free and Low Cost Tools

Time Tracking Solutions – Free and Low Cost

We all need to measure how much of our life is spent working. Thus, time tracking is one of those features that we all can make use of. The good news is that this is a problem that can be solved at a low cost and in less intrusive fashion than in the past. There may be a few “do you want to allow application X to do Y” questions to answer but otherwise, these tools can be quickly installed and utilized. Clockify.me Address: https://clockify.me/ This is free to get started and easy to set up. I registered, created a project and was tracking time in minutes. It is team focused, so a lot of the features make it easy to... Read more

December 5, 2018November 25, 2018 Patterns of Software Design

Software Design – The Proxy Pattern

We continue a look at the structural patterns with a look at the proxy. This is much like the flyweight we reviewed in the last episode. However, it has a different focus. The flyweight can be used to implement a form of proxy but is a solution to a large number of instances where this is a different goal. The Proxy Pattern Defined As always, we will start with the “Gang of Four” intent to set the stage for our discussion. “Provide a surrogate or placeholder for another object to control access to it.” That, once again, provides a short and simple description of our pattern. The proxy saves us from having to instantiate an object before we start using it. The proxy... Read more

December 3, 2018November 25, 2018 A Summary Of Amazon Services

AWS Machine Learning Services

The AWS machine learning services are more examples of the newer offerings. Nevertheless, these are growing fast and can help you embrace cutting edge technology. Machine learning is a recent technology in general so the time you spend understanding these services may help you land that next job. Amazon SageMaker This service provides a method for building, training, and deploying machine learning models at any scale. This is a great way to try out machine learning. The time you spend here is good to use on your next resume update. You do need to put some data on S3 to analyze and then check out the use cases. There is a free tier for the first two months. Amazon Comprehend Quick... Read more

November 30, 2018November 20, 2018 Free and Low Cost Tools

Mail Services – Free and Low Cost

This week we look at mailing and communication tools. These mail services have a wide range of features and focal points. That is just part of the reason why we also have a much longer list than typical. These applications are not quick to evaluate. Therefore, you should expect it to take weeks or maybe even months to truly find the best option for you. Common Features Most of the mail services we are looking at in this episode offer a way to build and maintain a list of recipients. There are also templates and automation or scheduling included with most and some simple reports. After that, the features go in different directions as some focus on the CRM side while... Read more

November 28, 2018November 20, 2018 Patterns of Software Design

Software Design – The Flyweight Pattern

We continue a look at the structural patterns with a stop at the flyweight. This pattern is one I find ignored more often than it should be. In particular, the large number of data items we typically model in modern applications are often best handled through this pattern. The Flyweight Pattern Defined As always, we will start with the “Gang of Four” intent to set the stage for our discussion. “Use sharing to support large numbers of fine-grained objects efficiently.” Short and sweet. This intent is to model large collections in the best way based on data needed and memory considerations. A flyweight is an object-oriented approach to data modeling that is practically an index. We only keep up with the... Read more

November 26, 2018November 25, 2018 General

Maintaining Focus At The Year End

The Holidays bring their own set of challenges to our business lives. One of the most significant is the impact to maintaining focus. We have days off, co-workers on vacation, customers at parties, and vendors taking time off (or a mix of those situations) to contend with. We also tend to have tasks that need to get done before year end. All of this can make the final weeks of our year a stressful period. The Way Forward Every time I run into an obstacle like this I find it best to step back and simplify things. We usually need to start this season by acknowledging our limits. It is almost impossible for us to get everything done that we want... Read more