Mike Schorah

For years I've battled to get rid of problems. Now my attitude is different. It's not realistic to try to remove problems, life is always full of challenges and outright difficulties. Instead, I'm trying to make sure that this  week's problems are different from last week's . That way, there's a real measure of progress. You see, if all I do is go round in circles trying to fix the same old problems then nothing much is being achieved, and it's costing a lot in the process. But if I knock some problems on the head and move on to the ones that follow then great! One of the best ways I see this working is when the problem of needing a customer gets solved with an order; then the problem becomes one of growing capacity to resource that order ... That can start off a virtuous spiral of activity through which growth occurs; but always with problems to solve on the way. Get more like this

Sadly maths is not my strongest point. Can you check my calculations? With a 58% cost saving this customer will have paid for the iPad and software in much less than 200 data entry operations... One of our customers measured their data input operation at 6 mins/form conventionally; vs 2.5 min with Red Starfish .  So that’s 10 forms/hour conventionally; 24 forms/hour with Red Starfish.   At their admin cost of £26.50/hour that’s a Data Input processing cost of £2.65 / form conventionally and £1.10 / form with Red Starfish ... So Red Starfish costs 42% of the conventional approach; or is 58% cheaper! If they're saving £1.55 every time they do data input via the iPad rather than conventionally then the iPad and software is paid for in rather less than 200 cycles. Am I right? Get more like this

Many of us are familiar with RAG traffic light indicators on our reports: Red  indicates that there's a problem Amber  shows something that's partially complete, stuck or needs attention Green  is what we're headed for - an All OK status But what about adding Blue  also for something that's taken care of but, say, is in an 'Outbox' waiting to be reported? This is an extra status that quickly shows the user that they've mostly done the work, but no one else is aware of it yet because they've not completed the report-back phase of work. Get more like this

Thanks, Graham Coppard , for drawing my attention to this fab video showing the potential for Google Glass to assist workers on a shop floor with all sorts of added-value information while keeping their hands free for tasks. However, what are the privacy implications of having Google's microphone permanently on, transmitting everything it hears for processing in the cloud? That's what we've got with the latest version of Android devices. Google Glass adds video to the sound. I can't imagine it's a great idea in a sensitive manufacturing environment, for example. Get more like this

I like LinkedIn . I use it most days and find it very valuable. But I only use it through a browser, and with care. This week's launch of their Intro product is really, really clever. And extremely   dangerous for the corporate customers they're targeting. And most won't know about the difficulties until it's too late when there is a spectacular PR disaster for LinkedIn. As TechCrunch has helpfully explained , for Intro to work the user has to trust LinkedIn with the username and password for their email account; and allow a copy of all incoming and outgoing email to go via LinkedIn's servers. Frankly, anything could happen to it there. Trouble is, most users won't know about the security and privacy implications of this, until it's too late. And with the trend towards BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) it's entirely possible that many, many corporate workers will download and install the Intro software blissfully unaware that they could be inadvert...

Are we moving to a world where not sharing our data becomes a matter of suspicion? (and higher premiums!) For the last year or two I've been using RunKeeper to keep track of my runs.  I've got a couple of years' use True Weight  celebrating my healthy BMI because it's easier than graphing weight loss manually.  And I've recently started to use Fitbit which records - in near real time - the number of steps I take, and when, with a pedometer. If I choose, I can record what I eat and drink. And it's oh-so-tempting to add a WiFi-connected scale (like the Aria from Fitbit or   Withings ) so that my weight is logged in the app with no effort. If I had an appropriate health issue I could add a blood pressure , heart rate or glucose monitor , etc. But I know that the Terms and Conditions I have to sign up to use most of these services allows the provider of the app to sell and share my data with advertisers and insurers. Is that OK? And what happens to my ...

One never expects (or hopes) to use insurance. But it's vital that it's there, in case it's needed. A month ago, on 8 June, my great friend and colleague Barry Brown died unexpectedly at age 42 while playing basketball. Read more . Barry had been responsible for much of the technical design and production (writing software) of several of our company's products and his loss is a huge blow professionally, as well as indescribably personally. So, we're currently testing our Business Continuity Planning  in practice. We're too small to have had a fully-worked staff team and cyclical planning process! But we're so grateful that we're not just thinking about these issues for the first time and with hindsight. We have a practice of continually assessing risk (What's the Impact? What's the Probability? Plan appropriately for the resulting Priority combining the Severity of Impact * Probability) And we hadn't stopped there: we had determined...