And the third time I’m importing the same database over and over again. On step 3 of 5 I found some inconsistencies. It looks like we have a lot of contact details with missing data.

The biggest problems is that people don’t want to fill the information. They don’t care about internal structure (well, it’s not their structure, after all, it’s just mine).

So even if you set up some fields as “mandatory” in the forms, people will come with huge XLS-sheets of data to import. Where, of course, there will be no structure and a lot of data missing. You have to implement nazi-style policies in order to keep the information available for analysis

Well, the good thing is that after the migration the data will be clean after all.

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Today I’ve started another migration of company data from one CRM to another. Last time I did it from Goldmine 6.0 to MS CRM 3.0. This time the task is much easier: from CRM 4.0 to CRM 4.0.

List of Things to migrate:

• customisations and special fields
• account data with all account details, notes and contacts (this one is still running while I’m writing this post)
• accounts hierarchy
• all additional and non-account related contacts
• order history

It’s almost always easier to break all the old data to small pieces and combine them into the new structure. At the same moment you can delete garbage and old data and even analyze, which parts of the CRM structure were more useful than another.

After already 3rd generation of the same business model I can see that some of the features of CRM are used by sales people and which aren’t. The most important for them by far are contact details and notes. Sales love notes, it allows them to store information without thinking about business intelligence models. Of course, sometimes they ask questions like “which resellers perform better in 2009, than in 2008″. For such questions you should have all order history stored in a neat structured way. Even if nobody is enjoying it every day.

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Last two days were spend in futile attempts to merge a PC, PlayStation 3, LED TV, AV-receiver and 5 speakers into a working system. I think I finally got the Dolby sound working at the end, although without sub-woofer there isn’t much difference comparing to the TV stereo speakers.

I still need additional small table for all 3 big remote controls and I have to select the movies with a Sony game-pad. Universal remote solutions like Logitech Harmony don’t support PS3, it looks I have to wait for HTPC.

Also I’ve downloaded demo versions of best-of-the-best PlayStation 3 games:

• God of War 3, Dante’s Inferno and Bayonetta - very, very nice games. A lot of mindless violence and sex. That’s what digital entertainment is for!
• Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 – also nice, but much more difficult. For once, in hack-and-slash games the enemies don’t appear to be disabled.
• Uncharted 2, MGS4 - I didn’t like those much. I don’t like Middle East. Also, aiming with a game-pad is much more difficult, then with a mouse.
• Heavy Rain – interesting and addictive. But I have to play a couple of other games with game-pad first. It seams I have to know all the buttons by heart to be able to follow the action on the screen.
• Curse of the Monkey Island – Sorry, I could’t even start. The main hero is just a stupid asshole, sorry.
• Folklore - just downloaded it yesterday, haven”t started yet.

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The first question after buying a TV was: what exactly am I supposed to watch? I’ve never actually watched any broadcast TV-channels in by life. Of course, I love TV-shows and movies, I just don’t like the channels itself. Too many commercials, not enough choice. I prefer to get the content via the Internet.

This makes the problem  a bit easier : how to transfer different audio/video content from a hard disk of a desktop to a TV?

There is, of course, technology, especially created for that – HTPC – Home Theater Personal Computer. It’s a Wintel-based computer, sitting next to the TV and using the TV as a big monitor. Only HTPC guaranties, that all the movies with different codecs and subtitles could be watched without glitches or delays. But it jas a disadvantage  - you need a separate device.

However, the TV itself and, for example, a game console like Sony PlayStation have a possibility to play audio-video content via DLNA protocol directly from a PC. At least you get this solution for free. You must be able to install the DLNA-server and connect it to your TV. The Media Player on Windows 7 actually could do it, but I was not able to install it properly. Free solutions from Internet were not very stable: they crashed and gave strange error messages.

The solution with PlayStation looks much better. First of all, the software, which can stream video to the game station – PS3 Media Server looks much more stable.  At least I was able to watch an episode of Fringe yesterday. Second , it’s possible to send the 5.1 sound not to the TV-speakers, but to an external 5.1 amplifier. The disadvantage is – you have to use a game controller to watch movies (or buy a special remote control for it).

All the solutions have their advantages and disadvantages. Probably I’ll have to try them all before choosing the best one.

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Last weekend we’ve spend cycling in the northern parts of Rhine-Westphalia, an industrial region in the center of Germany. A friend of mine has developed a 165-km 2 days trip through the picturesque fields between Duisburg and Munster.

Here are some photos I’ve made:

This time I’ve tried to mix German beer and cycling. Surprisingly, it went really well!

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It finally happened! I’ve bought my first own  TV-set. After just 8 months of waiting. Actually the whole process of selection and purchase was very interesting.

Every year every manufacturer likes to deliver new versions of the products. With anti-viruses normally you have right for a free upgrade. With TVs, of course, it doesn’t happen. New models are coming to shelves and you have to buy it if you want it.

But what happens with old models of the TVs? Logically, they must drop in price. Well, from what I’ve seen, Phillips has found better solution.  Please, note, that the following is not an inside information, but an attempt to analyze the situation. I may be wrong. But anyway, that’s what happened:

• Phillips normally have names for they models like this 46PLF9704H/12
• The first 2 cyphers are the size, in inches. I’ve chosen a big 46″-47″ model with “normal” 16:9 form factor.
• Phillips has several model lines, 3000, 5000,7000,8000 en 9000 for that.  Number 9 after PFL shows the model line.
• 4 in 9704 means that it’s model, made in 2009. On the site of Phillips there are also the 5-models, of the 2010. But they’re not in the shops yet. And, honestly speaking, I don’t trust all these 3D-propaganda. It looks like they just simply putting the 3D-logo on the newest models of year 2009 and increasing the price. So, year 2009 looks like a good choise.
• /12 means it’s made for European market, that’s the only things you can buy here.

So, after choosing the model I had to find it first. Phillips.nl doesn’t sell the 9000-line online, only via distribution. But it looks like Philips is making a smart move with this models. When the 46PLF9704H was new, the price was around €2600. In year 2010 you’d expect the price to drop a little bit. And after the launch of 2010-models the price should drop dramatically. However instead of that, this model simply disappeared from all the Benelux distributors at the beginning of the year. I was ready to pay the money in January, but it simply was not available. Currently, in July, the new 2010-models are still not in the shops, but the 46PLF9704H already disappeared from phillips.nl. And from all the shops.  I guess when the never version of this model hit the shelves, it will also cost the same 2600 euro.Very nice trick, which allows the vendor always to keep the price on the top-line models high, while replacing them every year.

I’ve tried to search for it on the best Dutch price-comparatives site Pricewatch on Tweakers.net. I did find it only on one e-shop, and not the biggest one.  After calling them I found out the secret – their storage was in Germany, so, most probably it was not cleaned yet. And they really had in on stock. And even reduced the price a little bit on the day I’ve ordered it.

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The last 3.5 days I’ve spend in a hot hills of Czech Republic. It’s my first time, and actually, it was only work, work, work. No time to sightseeing. The only thing’s I’ve noticed are:

• It’s a very clean and bright country. Apparently they’ve spend a lot of money, cleaning the centers of old cities in the last 10 years. They look very fresh and beautiful
• Very nice food, mostly meat with vegetables and beer. Every evening we’re tasting Pilsner Urquel and local brands: Bernard, Starobrno
• Absolutely awful American-style coffee everywhere
• Very few crowds outside of Prague. We haven’t been to the capital, so I don’t know how it’s there. But no traffic jams on highways.

The only picture in this post was made from 15 floor restaurant on the outskirts of Brno. You could see the main road to the old center and Moravian hills on the background. Hopefully next time I’ll have more time for pictures.

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This weekend we came back to Brussels to finish some chores and have a nice evening out with our friends. However at the time we wanted to go to a nice restaurant, the +36 degrees heat suddenly changed to a thunderstorm. We do wanted to go somewhere nice with good cuisine, but didn’t want to leave house.

For my amazement, there was a solution. A new online service Resto Presto in Brussels turns expensive fancy restaurants to take-aways (also expensive and fancy). They have a list of 40 decent restaurants (and there are a lot of decent restaurants in Brussels), ride to them, pick up the food and deliver it to your house.

The nerds are getting older and their tastes improve. Now we can order gourmet-level food without unplugging from the Internet connection  at home!

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It’s very good that Netherlands has won semi-final. The whole country is busy with celebrations and the spirits are high. I’ve just send a special discount mailing to all our clients with a present for the championship.

At mininum we have 2 more days of the “orange champions” spirit, until the final game against Spain.

Of course, I really hope Dutch win, then the conversion of this mailing will be enormous!

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