Posts Tagged ‘Business’

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Gentoo ebuild for Lx-Office ERP 2.6.0 beta 1

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Finally, I’ve created Gentoo ebuilds for Lx-Office ERP 2.6.0 beta 1 and its dependencies. Lx-Office is a fork of the server-based open source accounting solution SQL-Ledger and customized for the German market (and to some extent, the Swiss and Austrian markets).

A screenshot of Lx-Office ERP 2.6.0 beta 1 showing the XUL menu:

Screenshot of Lx-Office ERP 2.6.0 beta 1 using the XUL menu

And here’s a flash video of Lx-Office ERP 2.6.0 beta 1 showing the XUL menu in action.

Lx-System (the company backing Lx-Office ERP) and LINET Services host a public demo of Lx-Office ERP 2.4.3 (user: demo, password: demo).

To install Lx-Office ERP 2.6.0 beta 1 on Gentoo, follow these steps:

1) Set up a local portage overlay (e.g. at /usr/local/portage), if you haven’t done so already.

# mkdir -p /usr/local/portage

In /etc/make.conf, set

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage

2) Download lx-office-erp-2.6.0_beta_p1-r1_plus_dependencies.tgz and extract it to your local portage overlay

# cd /usr/local/portage
# tar xzvf lx-office-erp-2.6.0_beta_p1-r1_plus_dependencies.tgz

3) In /etc/portage/package.keywords, add the line

www-apps/lx-office-erp ~amd64

(or ‘www-apps/lx-office-erp ~x86‘, depending on the architecture of your machine)

4) In /etc/portage/package.use, add the line

www-apps/lx-office-erp vhosts

5) Install Lx-Office ERP on your system by executing

# emerge -av lx-office-erp

Depending on your current portage settings and installed ebuilds, you may need to unmask additional ebuilds.

6) Use webapp-config to link your Lx-Office ERP installation to a specific host, e.g. by executing

# webapp-config -I -h localhost -d lx-erp lx-office-erp 2.6.0_beta_p1-r1

7) Follow the steps displayed on the screen to setup and configure Lx-Office ERP. Some of these steps might be automated in a later release of the ebuild.

8) Have fun using Lx-Office ERP on Gentoo! :)

(These ebuilds are sponsored by my company Printscreen GmbH, dedicated to the developers of Lx-Office ERP and Gentoo and released for free use under the terms and conditions of the GNU GPLv2 license.)

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Posted in Business, IT, Linux, Startups, printscreen.ch | 7 Comments »

Unternehmenssteuerreform II: Merci!

Monday, February 25th, 2008

A big thanks to those who voted for the Unternehmenssteuerreform II! Of course I also respect the opinion of those of you who generally like small and medium-sized enterprises but think that this tax reform also benefits those major stockholders of large companies with mainly financial but little entrepreneurial interests. With the USTR II being the result of a lengthy political process and according compromises, that’s true. Nonetheless it’s a positive signal for SMEs and the Swiss economy in general!

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Posted in Business, Politics, Startups, printscreen.ch | No Comments »

“Realising Dreams – strategies for deep design” by William Gosling

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

One of the about 30 something new books on my bookshelf – and a truly great one I just finished reading. Gosling gives a systematic insight into the matter of design and innovation. A very inspiring and useful, yet very concise framework!

“Realising Dreams – strategies for deep design” by William Gosling

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Posted in Business, IT, Science, Startups, Tech, printscreen.ch | No Comments »

Some practical advice for startups

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

“The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki. Not the latest, but a courageous and entertaining presentation worthwhile watching.

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Posted in Business, Fun, IT, Startups, Tech, printscreen.ch | No Comments »

ewz and (clever) opt-out

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

Though I generally favor opt-in over opt-out, the current opt-out invoicing by the Swiss power house “ewz” is a clever idea: If customers don’t explicitly opt for another “type” (source) of electric power, they’ll be sold “ewz.naturpower” (no typo, it’s German-English) electricity by default. “ewz.naturpower” is produced[1] using 100% renewable energy sources and only a neglectable bit more expensive than the less environment friendly product (ewz.mixpower) which also consists of electricity from nuclear power plants.

Most people probably won’t change the default suggestion and will thus knowingly or unknowingly support more environment friendly power sources in the future. The reason why I think opt-out is a good thing here is that if ewz would suggest the less environment friendly electric power by default, most people would probably go with that suggestion even if they favored the more environment friendly solution, considering that the two products cost almost the same. So, as long as prices don’t differ much, it’s merely a matter of negligence and lazyness which makes people stick with the suggested solution.

Note that there are even more environment friendly products like ewz.ökopower and ewz.solartop. Particularly for ewz.solartop, the price is distinctly more expensive, so having an opt-in here makes sense (besides, not everybody agrees that solar power is more environment friendly than power from other renewable sources).

[1] The word “produced” is a bit misleading here in two aspects: First, energy can not be produced but just transformed from one form into another form (unless mass is destroyed, but that’s a different story ;). Second, customers can not really distinguish whether “their” current stems from a nuclear power plant or from a solar panel – electricity is electricity, after all. Neither can the power company (I suppose). That’s even in the interest of environment conscious customers as there’s always some power leakage when “transporting” electricity over a long distance. So basically, everybody gets electric power from the source which makes most sense from an energetic point of view. The invoice thus rather determines future investments than the “real” source of the power currently used.

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Posted in Business, Politics, Science, Various | No Comments »

Per order vs. per volume

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

I like the new advertisement campaign by the Swiss bank MIGROSBANK. Among others, and that’s why I like it, it questions some of the antiquated banking practices which can hardly be “justified” in the age of e-banking, yet are still in widespread use.
For example, one of the advertisements questions why most banks charge commissions for stock market orders based on the transaction volume (or on a combination of volume and per order) instead of charging a flat fee per order.

The advertisement shows two identical pictures of someone hitting the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard. The text below the pictures reads (IIRC, in about): “Do you see a difference? We neither. That’s why we charge the same fee for every order.”
Some people might argue that customers who potentially gain (or lose) more money (by having higher transaction volumes) should also pay more of the costs of the e-banking system. From the perspective of managerial accounting however, it makes more sense to break down these costs into costs per order rather than per volume. If no paperwork and no other per transaction costs are involved at all, it might even make sense to charge a flat rate per participating customer only (neglecting the fact however, that the software and the hardware infrastructure need to be able to absorb the peak number of transactions per time). This of course only applies to orders given using the e-banking system. For any other, more traditional services like consulting, wealth management etc. customers shall be charged for separately.

So why do most banks still charge on a per volume basis (or on a mix of per volume and per order fees)? It’s because they can. Some people might not be fully aware of  how much IT changed (and will further change) banking. And most people lose their flair for “small” numbers once they deal with “big” numbers. Besides, it’s also a question of how people value their time.

Nonetheless, I hope the above mentioned bank will be able to stir up the domestic market a bit.

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Posted in Business, Various | 1 Comment »

September 14, StartupDay – Tag des Jungunternehmens

Friday, September 9th, 2005

START Up Day – Tag des Jungunternehmens

I probably won’t be able to attend the START up day festivities in Zurich that early in the evening. Nonetheless it’s cool and important that there is a day such as the StartUp day :)

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First Draft of RSS 3 Lite published

Monday, August 22nd, 2005

The first draft of RSS 3 Lite has been published:

First draft of RSS 3 Lite
heise online – Erster Entwurf für RSS 3

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Posted in Business | No Comments »

IT trends and IT governance in Switzerland

Thursday, July 14th, 2005

An interesting study by Accenture about “IT-Trends und IT-Governance
in der Schweiz” (unfortunately in German only):

cio_survey_1104.pdf

Security awareness and IT efficiency/productivity improvements are top topics among CIOs in Switzerland for the next 12 to 24 months. The fact that most CIOs prefer standard software in the back-office and custom SW at the frontend remind a bit of the “window polishing” phenomenon known from management accounting but are in accordance with general business developments in highly developed and saturized markets (like in Switzerland). The products’s cores become more and more similar while the “wrappings” make the difference for consumers.

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Contextual advertising on the web

Thursday, June 30th, 2005

An interesting study: Routes to success for consumer magazine websites (PDF) (Reuters)

Most sites have gained new advertisers on the web who do not advertise in the print products.
The proportion has risen from 53% in 2003 to 66% in 2005.
The web-only advertisers are attracted by a range of factors. These include the interactive
possibilities, the ability to receive sales leads or direct response, the size of the audiences
available, the new/different audiences on offer, and the measurability of the internet audience.
Speed of delivery and updating is another attractive feature.
20% of the sites offer contextual advertising – that is, relating the ads shown on-screen to the
keywords that surfers employ when using search engines.

Contextual advertising obviously gains popularity among advertisers.

(via Rogers Blog)

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