Articles by Curt Finch

When you're making a large investment in software, you want to be sure that you're buying from a reputable company that will be there to support you long-term Getting a short list of happy customers that your vendor has helped -- some references -- is a common part of most companies' buying processes, but there is a good way to check references and...

Imagine a world in the not-too-distant future where anyone can work from anywhere, using whatever communication device they have at their disposal (laptop, iPhone, etc.). This type of world is not hard for us to imagine After all, many professionals are finding that they have less and less of a need to be in an office to get work done, and the auto...

The spring of 1997 was a significant time for theFood and Drug Administration (FDA). An overhaul of the Agency's Good Manufacturing Processes (GMP) brought changes that had not been seen for a quarter of a century This overhaul resulted in FDA regulation 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 11, which places certain demands on drug makers, medi...

My company sells employee time-tracking software that automates client billing, project accounting and payroll. We have implemented these systems for customers repeatedly where the employees previously were unaccustomed to accounting for their time Occasionally, this has generated some intense emotions. Some people really don't want to track their ...

I've been writing software for a long time When I was 14, I got an HP programmable calculator that I taught to tell time by flashing hours, minutes and seconds repeatedly. It used a loop of null operations to take up the time between each second. Slight changes in room temperature would cause it to speed up or slow down the rate at which it perfor...

When the Internet burst upon the scene in the early 1990s, the concept of software as a service (SaaS) seemed an idea whose time had come. It got hyped along with everything else about the Internet and reached a massive peak of inflated expectations in early 2000, as venture capitalists funded dozens of nearly identical companies that provided various SaaS solutions...

The telecommunications industry is changing rapidly -- as is the Internet -- and they're creating a mutual feedback loop. This feedback loop is virtuous if you're a consumer of such services, but it's terrifying if you're a supplier in these industries Telecom is changing the Internet. The Internet is changing telecom. Let's start with the latter a...

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 is a congressional act passed to prevent future scandals of Enron proportion and is considered to be one of the most significant changes to federal securities law in the United States. The Enron scandal and other similar scandals damaged investors' confidence in the accuracy of all public corporate financial statements. Among the major provisions of the Act are criminal and civil penalties for securities violations, as well as increased disclosure regarding executive compensation, insider trading, and financial statements...

One of the original leaders of the open source movement, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, kicked off a blogosphere firestorm in late May by sending a cease-and-desist letter over the use of the term "Web 2.0," as his technical conference is trademarked by that name The complaint has since been withdrawn. Having open source gurus involved in tradema...