The Gnucash mentor students

Gnucash, a free accounting program for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh OSX, had its second opportunity to mentor students in the Google Summer of Code program this summer. Two of our three students successfully completed their projects.

Muslim Chochlov wrote unit tests for several critical modules of Gnucash’s core Query Object Framework. This is an important first step to some necessary refactoring of the framework so that Gnucash can move from an in-memory processing model to a transactional database model allowing simultaneous multiple user access.

Nitish Dodagetta extended the experimental Qt GUI “Cutecash” (Gnucash’s primary GUI is Gtk+) by writing a unified accounting transaction entry window. The Gnucash development team is investigating Qt and C++ as a future direction for Gnucash, and this struck a chord for Google Summer of Code students: half of the proposals we received from the student applicants prior to the start of the program were for Cutecash projects.
Overall we were pleased with the progress we made this summer; we found that the successful students leveraged the work of their mentors and moved forward some important aspects of the project. We’re continuing to work with the students this fall, integrating them into the regular development team. Mentoring up-and-coming programmers is very rewarding, and we enjoy encouraging them to use their skills for altruistic goals.

The iPhone Siri & Changes in the Local Search

 

With Apple’s announcement of the release of the new iPhone 4s and iOS5 came the expected announcement of the tight hardware and software integration of their Siri natural speech technology. It appears to be integrated at the highest level of the user interface.

Mobile search on the iPhone has been broken. Google offers up voice search but it is by no means a hands free affair and takes way too much screen interaction to provide a result. Google’s product has been quirky and buggy on the iPhone and crashes frequently. Since the discontinuation of Goog-411, the 411 service on the iPhone has been only marginally functional due to a weak data sources for even the simple task of call completion.

Hopefully tight integration of voice with the phone will change all of that. The voice recognition system will read back texts, allow you to schedule an appointment AND do local search.

How does it do with local search? And where will it get its data?

The answer to the first question is that voice search on the existing Siri app is far better than Google’s voice product or the built in 411. That is a step in the right direction but passing the hurdle set by Google on the iPhone is not that difficult. It does a good job on the recognition side and it currently has an easy to use interface which will improve with integration and returns reasonable results.

Interestingly the current Siri app pulls data from a wide range of data sources to answer your questions. That is true with business listing data as well. Depending on the local search it might show results from Yelp, Yahoo, CityGrid, Localeze or BooRah. I presume that it uses even more sources than I have so far discovered and it appears to be agnostic as to where it gets its data. Siri also seems to mix and match sources when necessary.

Ultimately local will be almost 100% about mobile. That battle, at least for now, is Google vs. Apple. In local data that appears to mean Google vs. Everybody else (that Apple partners with). Does Siri solve the mobile search problem?

It is in the very early stages and users behaviors are not yet defined. Testing and time will tell if it offers up enough substance to be fluidly integrated into every day phone activity and local search. Here’s hoping.

Help With Google Places Dashboard

 

I wanted to show a typical, current Dashboard screen shot. The screenshot demonstrates both the lack of meaningful help and the problems that still exist with seeking it out by the small business person.

 

I am glad that Google has improved their Help system with a guided approach to solving problems. Google refers to these steps as “escalators”. I think that they will be helpful to many BUT there is still much that could be done in creating a customer service environment that is customer friendly. Much could be done even if a self help only approach to customer service was the only support Google desires to provide.

The contextual help in the dashboard, while present, is not as thorough or as helpful as it could be. The single Help link at the top of the page quickly scrolls off the screen in favor of other Google products. If you do click on the Help link, it is still at least 4 clicks to an answer and the answer is not totally informative.

And this screen shot just deals with the help that is provided INSIDE the dashboard. What about the many forms of support that can only be achieved by a link on the Places page. Why should an SMB need to go to two places for help? But then there are certain support issues that can only be dealt with in the forums? Why should they need to go to a 3rd place for support? And of course, if you do end up in the help forums filling out one of the new forms, will any one answer?

I think Google can do much better. They could do better in contextual, automated help and they could do better designing a comprehensive customer service experience….if they wanted to.

The problem is that I have been saying this same thing for as long as I have been writing this blog. These issues have been ongong for 5 years. While these new help files are a step, and a good step, in the right direction, the still inadequate help environment strongly suggests that they don’t want to.