Our language, Clarion, is alive and thriving – Q&P Newsletter October 2004
From Dave’s desk
Last month Judy and myself spent a week at the Clarion 2004 Developers’ Conference and Training course in Florida. We managed to arrive at the same time as hurricane Ivan and left two days before hurricane Jean arrived.
Clarion is the name of the computer language that Quote & Print Software is written in. We went with two aims in mind. The first aim was to quickly get up to speed with some of the new improvements in the language and the second aim was to determine the long-term viability of Soft Velocity the company that is responsible for the development of the Clarion programming language.
I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. The Clarion programming community is alive and well with over 30,000 Clarion programmers worldwide. Clarion itself is being used by a diverse range of companies; government departments, educational institutions and non profit organisations. At the conference the attendees were developing vertical market applications across a wide range of industries including medical, legal, tourism, hotels, hospitals, manufacturing as well as printing.
Soft Velocity is a dynamic company who are spending a lot of resources ensuring that Clarion remains up to date (i.e. keep up with Microsoft). They have committed themselves to keeping Clarion compatible with the new .NET standard. They are developing code generating templates that will produce code that will run even more efficiently over the internet.
We are working on the finishing touches for our Spring Release. Included in this release are the following features:
Last month Judy and myself spent a week at the Clarion 2004 Developers’ Conference and Training course in Florida. We managed to arrive at the same time as hurricane Ivan and left two days before hurricane Jean arrived. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Internet Sales Take Off
In the first quarter of this year we have sold more Internet modules than for the whole of the last financial year. The reason? It is all customer-driven, your customers are asking you, their printer, to supply an easy to use internet interface so they can do business over the web.
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Do you have more users than you are licensed to use?
To check the number of licences that you have click on Help/About/Registration/Users. How many users should you be licensed for? A good rule of thumb is that the number of licences you need is roughly equal to the number of your employees divided by three, e.g.
Are you running under your correct registration name?
The licence name displayed next to the Copyright Notice at the top of the screen should be the same as your company name. Your licence details will need to be correct for future versions of Quote & Print to operate correctly. It is important that you are not running under a Demonstration or some other company’s licence name. If you have queries about licencing or number of users then email Judy Bell judy@quoteandprint.com.au .
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Technical Tip – Spyware
by: Mark Komatina, PMPC Networking
Spyware is a problem which is becoming a bigger issue with the adoption of broadband internet connections. Not many people know of it but they are very familiar with the results of having spyware on their system - the pop-up window.
Spyware is software that is installed either automatically by a website or unknowingly by yourself. You may have received an email that describes an upgrade to your web browser or email program and you end up installing it.
You may get a pop-up window on the internet that looks amazingly like an error message or some other “official” looking notice that you need to install some update or patch in order to hide your computer IP address or similar message. By clicking OK on those windows you are agreeing to have their software installed on your computer.
Software that watches your actions on the internet and sends that information off to advertisers so they can send targeted advertisements to you.
Apart from being really annoying, there are other drawbacks to having spyware on your computer. Most spyware packages cause stability and performance problems on the computers they reside on. If your computer has started slowing down, crashing a lot and the system tray (the row of icons in the lower, right hand corner of the screen) has a lot more icons that it used to, you probably have spyware problems.
The good news is that there are some freeware programs (such as Spybot and Adware) out there that are great at getting rid of these malicious programs. These programs should be run whenever you notice anything out of the ordinary happening with your computer.
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Module Review
Shop Floor Data Management: The benefits of shop floor data collection are twofold.
Just do it!
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Volunteers Required
We are improving our JDF functionality. If you wish to increase your use of JDF functionality and would like to help then please contact us. The first user to contact us with a unique application, eg CREO or FUJI or AGFA will receive the JDF module free.
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Dealer News
PRINTEC SOLUTIONS VIC & TAS Ph (03) 5967 2488
New staff member at Printec
Many of you have already noticed that we now have another team member aboard at Printec Solutions. Ben Hamnett has been “poached” from a leading Management Accounting firm, to learn the ropes of Quote & Print. Ben’s main task is to enhance your usage of Quote & Print in a number of areas.
A few of you have already benefited hugely from sessions with Ben. One business owner running Quote & Print had this to say regarding Ben’s assistance:
"We now have the ability to accurately rely on our General Ledger reports every month, and compare this to our projected profitability through Quote & Print. As a matter of routine we can now go through the range of our production efficiency reports, highlighting problems that require immediate attention.
"This detailed analysis now helps me to really keep my finger on the business's pulse, as well as enabling me to take future business directions based on firm evidence"
Should you also like to benefit from Ben’s expertise, please contact us to arrange a visit.
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BEAUT SOLUTIONS NSW/ACT/SA Ph (02) 9747 9099
Beaut Solutions has recently become the authorised distributor of Quote & Print Software for South Australia responsible for sales, support and training. This is in addition to our similar responsibilities in NSW & ACT. This change for South Australia was effective from 10th August 2004. Our South Australian customers would be familiar with many of our staff particularly Ron Pelley, Brad Trudgen and Chris Clear, and we look forward to renewing and deepening those relationship.
Internet Business-to-Business:
Since July this year, five more customers in New South Wales and South Australia have moved ahead by investing in the Quote & Print Internet B2B module. As you would appreciate, we are unable to list their names here because some of them don’t want publicity for competitive reasons.
To find out how your company can benefit from our integrated Internet B2B solution, please contact Robyn on (02) 9747 9088 or email robyn@qandp.biz to arrange a time for your company to have a one-on-one Internet B2B session.
At this stage we have set aside Monday 8th, Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th November for these sessions, which usually take about 60 to 90 minutes.