An Eye-Opening Trip to Japan and China

By Larry Laux
President and Founder

I have just returned from a trip to Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai. Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to have visited those cities. If not, or if it has been more than 2 years, I can tell you that they are all undergoing building booms. In the Chinese cities, it is a BOOM!

It is almost unbelievable how quickly new buildings are going up. One ‘small’ 40 story building was 1/3 done, and I was told each remaining floor would be completed in 1-2 days per floor.

I saw the ‘Bird’s Nest’ in Beijing, where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held for next summer’s Olympic Games. The Beijing subway has 3 lines now, but by next summer is expected to have six more completed or underway. They completed a 6 lane 100 km ring highway around the city in 2003, and have already completed another 4 lane one, 5-10 km further out.

And Shanghai gives credit to the world’s expo of 2010, but only a fraction of the new construction is directly related to that event.

All of this will impact your company. There is opportunity in these markets. Get there in person if you can and be amazed. Even if you can’t get there, get your products and services there, soon.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

By Tom Bowe
VP of Product Marketing and Engineering

I love watching high-tech action movies and shows. Many times I’ve seen the “hero” poring through hundreds of high resolution images of the bad guy or instantly pull up a comprehensive background check displaying address, contact and employment history with a big picture of the suspect’s face at the top.

After working at Siebel/Oracle for many years, I realized how difficult these scenarios really were….even with the fastest databases and servers available, enterprise-class software applications take a major speed hit when they try to display large pictures and rich graphics.

Well…things have changed. New technology from Microsoft enables us to embed not only pictures, but also video clips, slide-shows, graphics and other file types and display them immediately on the UI without performance degredation. It’s really cool…valuable too! Want to see it? Ask for a demo of our new app…Metrix 5!

Metrix 5's 'Smokin' User Interface

By Larry Laux
President and Founder

There’s a ton of things to talk about from our recent Metrix 5 product announcement. Some of you have asked me about it, and I think this blog is a useful vehicle for responding to some questions.

This first set of points relates to the User Interface (UI) of the new product.

If you’re so proud of your UI, why are your screens fuzzy on your website?
Yes, those screen shots are fuzzy, and it’s not a problem with your computer. We intentionally set them up that way. We now have an advantage, a big advantage, against all competitors in our space with our new smokin’ UI (footnote – marketing wouldn’t let me call it smokin’ in the press release, but I have more leeway in the blog).

We decided that legitimate prospective customers can, of course, see the UI in a demonstration. Even that will be given only after we have qualified the prospect and understand that they have a project, that we fit the needs of the projects, etc. But there is no sense in letting the competition see it for free. They have to figure it out on their own – we did.

OK, so what’s so ‘smokin’ hot about it?
Very tricky, ask for the goods without a demo. Well, there are several items that fit the ‘smokin’ category. First, it utilizes the NET 3.0 Windows Presentation Foundation toolset to present content on the screen in a visually appealing, easy-to-look-at way. Transparency, zoom animation, color and other Vista Aero benefits are leveraged so the user can focus on the content, not the UI.

Also, the segments of the screens work together logically. If the user focuses on a particular subset of information on the screen, the software ‘understands’ that they might also want related info, and is ready to make that info available and easy to view.

And the concept of work done recently is used in a common sense way. For example, if a user had certain information on the screen fifteen minutes ago, they can ‘jump back’ to that point very easily. This ‘remembering’ feature should be a big productivity boost, as compared to existing software that makes the user remember (and even worse, type key information in again) to go back to where they were just a few minutes before.

There’s more, but that’s enough to get you started..

Do I have to upgrade all my PCs to utilize the new UI?
You do NOT have to have Vista to use Metrix 5. Of course, to gain maximum benefit of the Aero and other features native to Vista, you need Vista. Another method of running Metrix 5 is directly from your Web browser. And the browser-based version isn’t some scaled down version of the full application - in a browser you’ll see exactly the same UI and have access to all of the same features and functionality you have in the installed version.

So what’s the point?
As with most work we do here at Metrix, the point is either letting you save money, or make more money, or both. This UI should let new users train up more quickly, be more efficient doing their jobs, and provide more accuracy in your data. All of those things should make more money for your company (and as a byproduct, make your employees and customers happier, too).

Tom Bowe, Metrix’s Vice President of Product Marketing and Engineering, and I will be writing more about Metrix 5 over the next weeks and months. As always, your constructive comments and questions are most welcome.