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Greetings and Happy Spring! Welcome to our Newsletter! We wanted to share the many photos we have taken of places, people and things throughout the country and beyond. Each month our headline photo will be something new and different. The caption will present a small explanation. We hope you enjoy. Keep in mind, we don't want to waste your time. Articles will contain generally less than 250 words. Please have a look and give us your feedback. By all means, forward to a friend using the link at the bottom of the Newsletter. Thanks. Questions? Send me an email!

How are You Using Your ERP System?

Wikipedia will tell you that ERP provides an integrated view of core business processes, often in real-time, using a common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources; cash, raw materials, production capacity; and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments (operations, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions, and manages connections to outside stakeholders.

All too often, ERP Systems are used for operations and billing, but fall short in offering business intelligence, customer relations management, resource planning or analysis.

Think about the information that goes into your ERP system and how you can make use of or enhance that information to better communicate and manage staff, vendors and customers, contain costs, market your strong and profitable strengths and cut out your losses.

Think about real time profitability tracking and sales forecasting. Consider possible service improvements and customer satisfaction programs. Add new and valuable information that will help you evaluate things that work vs. things that don't. Think out of the box when it comes to collaboration and cooperation between members of your team. Enhance your use of your ERP system elevating it to a single integrated application all team members to use for customer and vendor management, operations, service, collaboration, review and analysis.

A Fresh Look at Apple vs. Google War

In technology-time, the mobile smart phone war has been brewing for eons. Apple had a head start, but Goggle and the Android operating system made incredible strides and overtook Apple in market share. That said, Apple revenue is still ahead of Google. Way ahead! Apple has revenues of 40 to 50 billion per quarter. Google hovers around $15 Billion.

Google has a market cap of 378 Billion as compared to Apple's 565 Billion.

In the end, the war is fought in the field by passionate users who love their device. I lean towards the intuitive design of Apple mobile devices although I recognize the benefits and attraction to Android.

It isn't really an issue any more because every important App is available for either device and it is the Apps that provide the real value. Without the Apps, they are just phones and similarly functional.

Time to move on to other technology fronts, this war is over.

Adjusting Focus After You Shoot?

The Lytro Illum is a Light Field Camera, What is that? It is a camera that has a sensor that captures the color, intensity and direction of the light rays flowing into the camera. It allows you to change the focus of your photo AFTER you take the picture. That means you can modify the subject of the photo after the photo is shot. Change the focus from forefront to background and you see a completely different picture. See a video of what this means here. It is extraordinary.

Sporting a uniform F/2.0 and a 30-250mm zoom the options are framing and that's about it. Until after you shoot the picture.

Per Lytro, "During image capture an interactive depth feedback display shows the relative focus of all objects in the frame, allowing composition in three dimensions. A real-time color-coded overlay of the live view lets you know which elements of the picture are within the re-focusable range."

They continue: "The Lytro desktop tools also give you the ability to transform pictures into dynamic animations that can be experienced on desktop, mobile devices and in 3D. That means every nuance, dimension and emotion as envisioned and authored by the photographer"

I am not so sure about this. It is a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking. Today, we take a picture focusing on what we think the subject should be. Tomorrow, we will just take the picture and decide later what the subject really was. It is hard to wrap your head around what the new process will be like. Where is the art?

The Illum will be available in late August, but can be pre-ordered now. Have a look for yourself. It is really very cool.