Read The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. It's a really good book about starting up a company from writing a business plan to recruiting to raising capital. I just read it because I'm in the process of starting up my own company. It's a great guide and a good read.
You've touched upon two very different topics: design and programming. Making a website look professional requires a whole different skillset than writing the backend.
If you want to design websites, take a class on graphic design and be sure to read the Yale Site Style Guide. Also be sure to work on those Photoshop and Fireworks skills.
As far as all the backend stuff goes, get some good books on PHP and MySQL, which will quickly get you going.
I read Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines and I have to say he's pretty damn optimistic about what the future brings. (i.e., people uploading their brains to the Internet, nanobot swarms able to create anything).
But he's also invented some really cool technologies (poetry writing software that generates original poetry after studying a set of poems, one of the first OCR's for blind people).
A lot of people consider him a looney, but with the way technological change is increasing every year, the idea of a Singularity doesn't seemed too far-fetched.
You are planning on buying new hardware/software based on if it is visually impressive? I honestly would prefer to spend money on useful apps that will make your job easier and worry about impressing people who know nothing about data centers later.
Your data center isn't Disney World.
Function before form.
I've been dealing with a similar problem and came across dotproject, which looks like it would fit your needs. Allows for tracking companies (internal and external), projects, tasks, files, tickets, contacts and has a calendar.
Anyone read Ray Kurzweil's book Age of Spiritual Machines? That seems like a better picture of the future than Neilsen. There won't be anything called a 'computer' in the literal sense, your 'TV' could function as a 'phone' or as a 'word processor'. Hell, why would you want to use a screen when you can jack in like the Matrix using nanotechnology that stimulates your brain in all the right places? Kurzweil even predicts that 'humans' like we are today will no longer exist, everything will be digital. Either way, it should prove to be interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Read The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. It's a really good book about starting up a company from writing a business plan to recruiting to raising capital. I just read it because I'm in the process of starting up my own company. It's a great guide and a good read.
You've touched upon two very different topics: design and programming. Making a website look professional requires a whole different skillset than writing the backend.
If you want to design websites, take a class on graphic design and be sure to read the Yale Site Style Guide. Also be sure to work on those Photoshop and Fireworks skills.
As far as all the backend stuff goes, get some good books on PHP and MySQL, which will quickly get you going.
Advanced Time Reports is what I use. Very simple Excel-spreadsheet design, little to no configuration, report generation and there's a free version.
I read Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines and I have to say he's pretty damn optimistic about what the future brings. (i.e., people uploading their brains to the Internet, nanobot swarms able to create anything). But he's also invented some really cool technologies (poetry writing software that generates original poetry after studying a set of poems, one of the first OCR's for blind people). A lot of people consider him a looney, but with the way technological change is increasing every year, the idea of a Singularity doesn't seemed too far-fetched.
You are planning on buying new hardware/software based on if it is visually impressive? I honestly would prefer to spend money on useful apps that will make your job easier and worry about impressing people who know nothing about data centers later. Your data center isn't Disney World. Function before form.
I've been dealing with a similar problem and came across dotproject, which looks like it would fit your needs. Allows for tracking companies (internal and external), projects, tasks, files, tickets, contacts and has a calendar.
From Picasa's system requirements:
If at any time you get an "unable to authenticate" error, you should upgrade to IE 6.0.
Does this mean that Google and Microsoft are now somehow tied together?
Anyone read Ray Kurzweil's book Age of Spiritual Machines? That seems like a better picture of the future than Neilsen. There won't be anything called a 'computer' in the literal sense, your 'TV' could function as a 'phone' or as a 'word processor'. Hell, why would you want to use a screen when you can jack in like the Matrix using nanotechnology that stimulates your brain in all the right places? Kurzweil even predicts that 'humans' like we are today will no longer exist, everything will be digital. Either way, it should prove to be interesting.