First, there was MapQuest. In 1998, if you wanted a map or directions, it was the website to visit. Online maps were fairly small images, the zooming in and out feature of the map was time consuming as you waited for the page to refresh, but it was neat to get directions from point A […]
When building custom software to solve a specific business problem we are often working with people that have limited technical experience. In these situations, it is not uncommon for myself or my colleagues to explain a technical issue in non-technical terms. We give reasons as to why a specific change may not scale well, or […]
A couple of us attended the sold out Canada on Rails last week, the first ever Ruby on Rails conference. It was a good conference, and I was surprised to see how far people had come for a relatively small event. The conference was two days long, and most of the core Ruby on Rails […]
In the spring edition of the MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business School associate professor Andrew McAfee writes about the emergence of web 2.0-esque collaboration technologies within enterprise settings. Tools typically used on the web are starting to be used in the enterprise collaboration platform-space (otherwise known as intranets and/or portals). Used internally for companies […]
I’ve been responsible for producing a lot of estimates over the past 10 years. I’d have to say it’s probably one of the most stressful times in the entire project for everyone involved. Regardless of the length of the engagement, everyone is the same when making a big purchase: tell me how long it’s going […]
Welcome to if/then, the OpenRoad weblog. This will be a place for us to discuss topics on software, information architecture, design and anything bright and shiny that happens to capture our attention. Watch this space!
Working with partner One Intranets, OpenRoad is proud to announce the development of its wiki-inspired intranet product, ThoughtFarmer. Many business leaders are frustrated with how difficult it is to maintain an accurate, up-to-date, engaging intranet. Likewise, many employees consider their company’s intranet irrelevant to their day-to-day jobs, and therefore use it infrequently. ThoughtFarmer Intranet solves […]
Like many organizations, St. Louis IT staffing firm NetEffects had built a website in the mid 1990’s, using static HTML and a simple information architecture. As the organization grew in size, the site grew with it. Content was created and contributed to the site by various staff members and published on an ad-hoc basis. By […]
