Lulu.com and VioVio.com
Over the past few years, I have amassed almost six gigabytes of digital pictures and videos. Most of this collection is haphazardly laid out in random folders (basically, when the camera gets full I copy the 1GB or 2GB file onto a laptop and go back to taking pictures).
Although we have a nice HP Photo Printer (
model 7960), printing them out is a time consuming and tedious process. And although digital photos are fine for me, they don't hang well in the office or at the home. Today, we decided today to try printing out a photobook that would have a bunch of photos in them, and add captions (so that I remember what happened, and who was with us, in a decade).
I started with
ShutterFly (we occasionally use their service for individual prints) but found their pricing to be high.
VioVio.com was next on my list, but they have almost no layout or caption capabilities. I settled on
Lulu.com, and was able to upload and caption a photobook using their Java applet interface. I ordered an 8 page book for around $6.13, under $10 with shipping. I'll let you know about the quality when it arrives.
Are there any others that I should try?
ClearHealth Installation Going Live
It's official!
Resolution Software recently completed the installation, configuration, and customization of a
ClearHealth installation for two clinic locations in Lubbock.
Specifically, we have setup two secure networks (wired and wireless), using a
VPN connection to connect the two locations to our offices. Using our newly installed, and constantly monitored, T-1 connection from
NTS Communications, we have setup a file server, chat server, fax server, and a web / database server for their usage. This offloads all of their infrastructure into our hands, leaving them worry-free about their backups and server availability.
The clinic is using a modified version of
ClearHealth, which cost them about one-half of what a comparable
Medisoft /
EMR package (
SpringCharts or
SOAPWare), and about one-third to one-fourth of a
NextGen,
e-MDs, or
DoctorsPartner EMR software packages. Of course, had they purchased the software from
Uversa, or
SynSeer, the costs would have been similar to NextGen (around $30,000 for an installation).
We are currently putting together a
whitepaper and case-study for your reference. However, if you are interested in hearing what we learned, or would like to talk to us about hosting / customizing
ClearHealth (or its sister product,
MirrorMed), please
contact us.
Apache mod_rewrite
Years ago, the guru's at
Apache built the Apache web server. It's the most widely used web server available, and runs on several different platforms (including our favorite,
linux).
NetCraft claims that it has more than 60% of the market,
in their November rankings.
Today, while doing a server upgrade, we decided to stop allowing non-secured access to a client's website. We wanted to ensure that all connections were secured, using an
SSL connection. However, we could not disable access for those users who do not type in https:// in a connection string. We also would prefer that old bookmarks still worked on the site.
mod_rewrite is the answer. mod_rewrite is available with
Apache 1.3 and
Apache 2.X versions, and allows users to chain together regular expressions and rewrite the
URL's for the end user. Our solution only required a simple rule to turn all http:// into https:// for any requests to this particular domain. The code looks like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com$1 [R,L]
The first line turns on the mod_rewrite engine.
The second line requires that access to the system be on port 80 (for this rule to work).
The third line actually does the magic, and takes the URL and turns it into the https:// version.
(
A word to the wise: If you decide to use the above rules in a .
htaccess file, then there should be a / between the .com and the $1).
And that's it. Restart Apache, and there are no more non-secure connections.
Some more examples can be found here.
Bootstrappers' Bible Available for Free from Seth Godin
Seth Godin wrote a 103 page document designed for entrepreneur's and
individual's who are interested in starting companies and products.
It's available now, as a
PDF, for free through the end of December.
Get a copy here.
eScribe
Although there are many different kinds of EMR's, we prefer software (and EMR systems) that runs on Linux.
Over the past three or four months, we have evaluated several products for a local clinic. One of the products that we discovered, but did not have a chance to test (although we did inquire about their products, but did not hear back from them) is
eScribe.
I located
this case study done by
Capital Cardiology Associates (CCA), and
Lille Corp, the developers of eScribe. The case study profiles moving their networks to linux, not the difference or ROI of the linux EMR, but it is still an interesting read. They claim (and I agree) that linux is about 37% cheaper, per-year, than the equivalent Windows network.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out very much about Lille Corp in the past few years. Their website has gone cold, and has not been updated in at least 3 years.
NextGen and EMR Myths
Today I had a chance to review a promotional
EMR and
EPM video from
NextGen, one of the larger and more expensive physician / doctor packages available. We recently requested a quote from NextGen, for a non-profit clinic in the Lubbock area, but ruled out their software due to the extreme costs (including hardware requirements, software costs, and training time).
NextGen's DVD is solely a marketing and promotional video, and profiles two different clinics throughout the entire twenty or thirty minutes.
Interesting enough, the clinic and doctor (Dr. James Holly from
Southeast Texas Medical Associates) from the article I recently highlighted, in
HealthLeadersMedia,
Debunking EMR Myths, is actually the primary facility and doctor used in the
NextGen video.
It doesn't make the article, or the video, any less (or more) true. It is, however, ..... more Interesting.
Case Studies in EMR, PM, web applications, SEO, and others...
We are currently redesigning our marketing materials to attempt to highlight many of our recent projects, including the deployment of a complete (and customized) Electronic Medical Record (
EMR) and Physician Management package, several new websites, several
VPN and network installations, a few fax servers, a couple of new web applications, search engine optimization, and new keyword campaigns for several new clients.
Our team is hard at work designing and formatting this information, and we decided to look around at other companies and how they format their case studies. While looking at companies online, we discovered
WSI.
This West Texas Internet Consulting company is based out of Amarillo, and claims to have done some very impressive web design. However, some of the claims are just a little outlandish. For instance, the
Approach page talks about their Patent-Pending approach to building a web / Internet presence. Considering the amount of prior-art that exists in the building of web pages, and Internet sites, I cannot imagine their patent actually being worth very much. Of course, I'm not an attorney, but I've never heard of any
consultantcy (from a single one-person shop all the way up to
CSC or
IBM) claiming to have a patent on the process of consulting.
Additionally,
one of their case studies is Skyward Impressions, a screen printing company based out of Minnesota.
WSI claims to have built their website, and redesigned some of their content to double the company's revenues. However, if you visit the web site of
Skyward Impressions, at the bottom of the page, is a "designed by
AtomicForce" link.
Is it bad form to claim to do work on a website, and that website blatantly states that someone else did the work?
DropSend Killer .... Pando Reborne
Download Squad posted their
Download of the Day today, featuring
Pando version 1.2.
Pando is an interesting extension which integrates with common email programs and web applications (including
AOL,
Gmail,
Outlook, etc...), allowing users to attach files as large as 1GB in size. Users install a program (available for Windows or Mac), and if the attached file is bigger than the email format allows, then
Pando will upload the file to their system, allowing the end-user to download the file as a web link, not an attachment.
Think of
Pango as
DropSend, but even
easier.
Open Source Databases Save Enterprises Money
An article today, written by
VNUnet.com, describes in some broad strokes, that Open Source databases can be up to 60% "cheaper" than commercial alternatives.
The article takes aim at
Oracle,
SQL Server, and
DB2 which can be expensive to maintain, mostly due to their complexities and their licensing costs. Other software, such as
PostgreSQL and
MySQL (the most "common" Open Source databases) are mentioned, as well as
EnterpriseDB, a commercially supported fork of PostgreSQL. Notably absent from the article are a large number of commercial databases (including
Cache), and a large number of Open Source databases (including
Firebird). However, even with the omissions of some of the players in both fields, the article is correct.
If one of the Open Source databases has the features that you and your business need, your costs will be reduced by using the Open Source. In our experience, Open Source databases need less "tweaking", and tend to be more stable.
An example: One of our clients has an
Informix database (a commercial system) which contains almost 1GB of data, and the same client has a PostgreSQL database (an Open Source system) which contains almost 3GB of data. After four years of usage, the Informix database is averaging 2 major problems per year, including, most recently, an index corruption that forced us to drop several tables and reload the information. To date, they have had only one issue with PostgreSQL, in four years, which required an index to be rebuilt.
Debunking EMR Myths
Calyx, a provider of
EMR software for the medical industry, has
a blog which they post to on a semi-regular basis, usually with some very interesting information about the field of medical software.
Today they highlighted an interesting
article published in HealthLeaders Media, on the top myths of
EMR. In summary, the article highlights Dr. Holly, who has turned his practice,
Southeast Texas Medical Associates, completely electronic.
Dr. Holly's observations are all on point with our experience with
EMR's, but they also apply to technology in general. For instance, software is rarely the big cost. More often than not, the big cost is in training users, the hardware, and other "
ancillary" costs.
Form Building Applications
Building forms in HTML can be a
tedious process. Within the past few months, many new Web 2.0-styled companies have emerged, attempting to ease this particular pain with web designers.
We've looked at a few of these applications (we were signed up for the
WuFoo "Beta"), and are considering using something like a Form Builder in a new product we may be releasing.
If you have a need to build and/or host a web form on the web, try one of these:
Personally, I prefer
Icebrrg.
DropSend Did Advertise
Thanks to those who stopped by today to correct my post on
DropSend, and how
it is not worth $1 million.
One of those who stopped by,
dk, actually is from the UK, and took a picture of an ad that
Carson Systems ran in a magazine,
Creative Review. As
dk pointed out, he found this ad after Ryan Carson declared:
It markets itself - We spend zero money on advertising and DropSend revenue steadily climbs every month.Ryan himself stopped by to explain that he had forgotten about the ad, as it had been unsuccessful, and a slow month for CR; the ad was only 1800 pounds (how do you do the British pound symbol in Blogger?). Using current conversion rates, that works out to almost $3,400.
Considering the site has made under $70,000 in gross profit for the one year they've been in
existence,
this one ad was 5% of their income.If your take home pay is $5,000 each month, and you spend $250 on gas,
that is 5%. Do you ever forget that you bought gas during the month?
How do you just forget about that?
FVS328 VPN Setup
Over the last week, we have setup two new networks in the Lubbock area, for a local 501 (c) 3 charity.
They have two locations in town, and we are using our new T1 (installed by
NTS Communications on Monday) to host their software, including their network file shares (via
Samba) and a
Jabber server. We have connected all three locations (their two locations, and our office) using off-the-shelf
Netgear FVS328 VPN router / firewalls.
Although they are no longer made by
NetGear, I got these routers, as refurbished items from
eBay, and was able to pass the savings down to our client. The latest version of the router, the
FVS338, adds no special features other than, "much faster", according to their spec sheets. Since the system has no "speed" criteria, there was no reason to pay double the price.
We tested them in the office, and built a small network consisting three of the devices, and three computers. Two workstations, and a small server. I was able to configure an
IPsec VPN using a shared key, using the router's simple web interface, within a few minutes. Within twenty minutes, all three were talking to each other, and the network was running smoothly.
On Thursday, we found out that the devices perform slightly differently in the wild. Although users on all three networks could browse the Internet just fine, and we could make outbound ftp and
ssh requests, the
VPN connections were extremely flaky. For instance, I could connect to a remote server using ssh, but after a few seconds the connection would drop. In another attempt to use the
VPN, all attempts to access a web server at the other location failed.
We checked all of the equipment, low and high, and finally discovered that these
NetGear devices are very picky about the
MTU settings, which default to 1500 bytes per packet. We dropped the setting down to 1400, and they began working flawlessly.
Why DropSend is not worth $1 million
Recently,
Carson Systems announced that they were selling
DropSend on the open market. Good for them. They worked hard,
spent around $45,000 on the application, and it's been live for a year. They've had some really good press, and Ryan's leveraged some of his media contacts over at
Signal vs. Noise, and other places, and they've amassed about 57,000 users.
According to the numbers they've recently posted, they're growing at about 8.6%, compounded monthly, and are making about
$9,200 in gross revenue every month (now). Ryan tells me that they've had steady linear growth, for several months, at around 8.6%. They're also paying around $2,000 a month in expenses. However, they're doing very well for a site that cost about $45,000 to make.
Ryan feels that a "conservative" estimate for their growth in 1 year is a monthly gross
of $21,500. That's assuming almost linear growth, and would mean that they'd have made about $200,000 next year. The following year would be around $560,000, and the third year over $1,500,000 using his numbers. By year five, using his logic, the application would be doing over $1 million each month.
[Using that logic, it's absolutely worth $1 million.]Obviously, one cannot assume that
DropSend will continue growing,
unmetered and unchecked, for years on end. I don't think you can assume that it will do that for another full year.
What does DropSend have going for it?1. It's the most talked about file sending application around. Ryan's made it to the front-page of most of the major blogs, and has authored many articles about the product. This is resulting in a lot of new users, with a total of 57,000 users thus far.
2. The interface just works. It's a great interface, it's easy to use, and is cross-platform compatible. Windows and Mac have native interfaces, and everyone else can use a web interface.
3. It does one thing, and one thing well.
4. Maintenance and hardware are fairly low cost. With only $2,000 per month being spent on upgrades, bugs, and bandwidth / hosting (
DropSend owns their own servers), there's still a lot of cash free (as a percentage) to bring home as profit.
5. There are 57,000 users, and only about 1% are paying users. Which means there's a lot of possibilities with advertising revenues (for the free accounts), or cross-marketing capabilities. Of course, they haven't leveraged this at all, so it has unknown capabilities.
What does DropSend not have going for it?1. Any large player (
Google,
Yahoo, MSN, Amazon) could enter the market easily, and would be a deadly competitor. For instance, Google already offers more than 2GB of data storage through
GMail. If it offered a native upload interface through GMail, I would imagine
DropSend would simply die.
2. The product is simple. Because it's so good at doing the one thing, and only the one thing, the product is basically a commodity. Over the past year, more than a dozen competitors have appeared. A really good programmer could probably mimic the entire interface and functionality in just a few months.
3. Little or no advertising has been done for the product. This is paid advertising. Carson Systems has gotten a lot of unpaid advertising in the form of blog postings, press releases, etc... However, it's unknown what the costs would be to advertise for the software, and compete with all of the competitors.
4. It's not sustainable as a stand alone product. For the price ($1 million) that Carson Systems is asking, a conservative person would expect the software to be making at least low six-figures a year in net revenue. Traditional "bankable" multipliers are between 1-2X gross, and 3-5X net. So, a buyer should expect to pay between $140,000 and $460,000, between 1/2 and 1/10 of the asking price. A company (or person) purchasing this product would have to be willing to work for nothing for 5 - 10 years to pay of the debt of purchasing it.
5. The 57,000 users is not really correct. Yes, they actually have 57,000 users. However, the system makes a
new account for users who download a file, and then never use it again. Only 1% are paying users. Which means that the remaining 99% are either using the free account, and sending low volumes of small files, or they are people who signed up only once for one or two files that were sent to them. The real question is: What percentage of the 99% are active "Free" users?
So who would buy such a product?I've been thinking about this, and I'm not sure what type of company would buy
DropSend. The cash flow is not in the product to sustain itself. In fact,
Ryan explains that fact himself. He claims that it should be bundled with a larger player. Although that seems reasonable, I would think that a larger player who wants file uploading and sending capabilities could certainly build their own "
DropSend" for well under the asking price.
It will be interesting to see who scoops them up. Ryan says they
have 3 interested parties. I wish Carson Systems well. The lucky winner has a lot of work on their hands.
DropSend for Sale
Several days ago,
DropSend, a prominent Web 2.0 company specializing in "doing one thing well", went onto the auction block. The parent company,
Carson Systems, run by Ryan Carson,
announced the sale on Saturday at their "
Bare Naked App", which was the launchpad for their latest product,
Amigo.
DropSend has gathered a fairly large user base since they were launched a year ago; they have around
57,000 users. I've used the service several times, but not often enough to pay for the service, and have several friends who do the same.
On Monday, I contacted Ryan of Carson Systems to get some details about the sale, the asking price, and some figures to back up the asking price. He had some interesting numbers which made me think that his asking price is way out of line with reality.
More later on his numbers, and why they don't make a lot of sense .....
Labels: dropsend, software
Our First Utility Patent
On Friday, I mailed out our first installment payment to
Mike O'Neil. Last year, we retained him to file with the
USPTO for a provisional
patent for one of our inventions.
The expiration date on the provisional patent runs out soon, and we have decided to go ahead and convert our provisional into a utility patent application. Hopefully, in 18 - 24 months, we will be notified of an awarded patent.
Note: Our other option was to not file for a patent, and let the information lapse into the public domain.
