Early in his career in the role of CEO, Dan led a profitable software business from startup to acquisition.

He offers professional consulting services in project management, strategic planning, effective teamwork, and Web application development to startups and large enterprises including many contracts at Microsoft Corp. and The Boeing Company.

At present, the system is used primarily in support of high-tech project management and the workflow related to medical billing, where patients’ medical information must be shared in compliance with Federal HIPAA requirements for electronic document sharing.

The workflow facilitation features worthy of mention in this quick summary include these:

• Request for Commitment — You can assign a task to another member. The system sends an e-mail notification requesting that they commit to owning responsibility for completing the task.
• Commitment Acceptance Notifications — When a member commits to owning responsibility for a task (or declines responsibility), the system notifies the person who sent the Request for Commitment (and, of course, the person who accepted or declined).
• Auto-nagging — The system can send a periodic reminder that you haven’t yet accepted or declined a Request for Commitment for a task assigned to you.
• Request for a Status Update — The system can send to the owner of a task a request that they update the status of the task so others can see a revised statement about its status.
• New Member Invitations — Each member can invite new members to participate in the secure workflow of their organization and/or project. The prospective member receives an e-mail notification with a link to the intake processing page where they authenticate a secure login account. This process insures that you always know who has access to what documents and Web pages. Privacy and security are the top priorities of the Demand! Management™ system!

For more information about the Demand! Management™ platform, visit this page.

Better Collaboration During Development

The MetaPage approach makes it easier to split the styling in cascading stylesheets (CSS) from the structural elements in HTML and data access %mdash% a longtime goal %mdash% so while the designer(s) work(s) independently on the presentation layer using HTML and CSS to craft a pleasant user experience, the technical developer can work on the data model and the logic of the application. Integrating data elements and application logic into the presentation layer is now dirt simple.

And multiple designers can work independently on a site without stepping on each other’s layouts.

Here’s how it works: In the beginning of the project, the participants agree on the <­DIV> IDs for the overall structure of each page, and they agree on the names for the CSS classes to be used. Their agreement is represented by …

• an HTML MetaPage template
• a site-wide CSS file
• a page-specific CSS file for each host page (the “parent” MetaPage) or component sub-page (a “child” MetaPage)

MetaPages Manage the Cascading of Stylesheets

Each MetaPage (including component MetaPages) can specify a page-specific CSS file. The site-wide CSS (the host MetaPage’s stylesheet) overrides or augments whatever is specified in the page-specific CSS files. The Micro-Agreements implementation of MetaPages is an effective rapid-prototyping approach in agile development … and a much more effective model for collaboration between technical developers and Web designers!  Project methodology support tools in the Demand! Management platform have been used and refined by Web developers for over 10 years.

MetaPages deliver a simple content management system. You can manage as much or as little of the content as you want in the application’s database supported by the simple workflow and project management functionality of the Demand! Management platform. The presentation structure for the content can be maintained separately from the content.

MetaPageCompiler.asp is a server page (the MetaPage processor) that reads the HTML “template” from tblMetaPage in the database, either as stored text or from a file (like “MetaPage_Quotations.htm”), the path to which is identified in the page metadata.  Here’s the text form of a MetaPage template for a page that displays quotations from the table tblQuotation –> Quotations MetaPage.  Note how references to data fields from the data source (which would be specified by the developer) are encoded — e.g., is an inline reference that tells the MetaPage processor to substitute the page title from the page metadata.  Note that delimit the HTML that’s to be repeated for each row in the recordset specified by the SQL query identified in the page metadata.  So %memQuotation% between %row_start% and %row_end% tells the MetaPage processor to substitute the value in the field “memQuotation” for the reference %memQuotation% in the MetaPage template, once for each row in the recordset for the MetaPage.

To present the following page, the MetaPage Processor reads the MetaPage template, substitutes the data, and applies the site-specific and page-specific CSS files –> MetaPageCompiler.asp?MetaPageID=Quotations

Here’s the page-specific CSS –> CSS/Quotations.css    (Coming soon: the ability to edit the CSS within the MetaPage editor in real time)

Notice how iteration through rows is handled in the associated recordset, specified by a SQL query in the page metadata (in tblMetaPage).    %row_start% delimits the beginning of the HTML which will be replicated to display each row in the SQL-specified recordset.   %row_end% delimits the end of the HTML to iterate for each row.

I’ll ask Cheri Calvert to create a nice layout with more styling for some of the basic MetaPages, like the dashboard,  as an exercise in elaborating this new process.  Next, I’ll add these capabilities through tagging that the designer can sketch into the page template:

• Provide a dropdown list that selects which author’s quotations to display.
• Bring the data to the page as XML and use JavaScript and/or AJAX to apply immediate filtering on the data displayed without any further calls to the database or further page refreshes.
• For fields that are foreign keys – e.g., the Person Responsible field in the Task table – enable the page to show a dropdown list of all the members in the master-data table – in this case, the members table — so the metapage can be used not only for displaying data with real-time filtering but also for updating data.

As I build new features into the Demand! Management™ platform, I intend to adopt this architecture as much as possible, which will force me to make it more adaptable in applying the prototyping principles where designers and developers can work separately and avoid stepping on each other’s work.    As an example, I needed a list of the MetaPages I’ve built in tblMetaPage.   After scratching my head about how to code a page to list the rows in that table (which usually takes me at least half a day), I slapped my forehead, then built a metapage that lists the metapages (in about 7 minutes) –> MetaPageCompiler.asp?MetaPageID=_MetaPages

And it’s JUST …  that simple! �

Renewable Energy in harmony with nature

Algae

Photo Voltaic

Systems Thinking

Let’s explore these relationships in a methodical way — that is, to examine them with our systems-thinking perspective from the outside and with our sensory memory from the inside.

• our selves (the identities we wear in our inner eco-system)
• our body
• our beliefs and thoughts
• our family members
• our lover(s)
• our co-workers
• our environment
• our possessions

• Deepening Sensual Connection video
• Systems Thinking
• links to other resources

TheGreenTrackers.com — Analysis about commercializing algae-to-biofuel technology
Netflix: Fuel (Fields of Fuel) — Change Your Fuel, Change Your World
Federal incentives for renewable energy
Solar roadways — generate electricity, demark lanes with lights instead of painted stripes, sense pedestrians and animals and flash messages in the roadway ahead of oncoming motorists
ClimateProgress.org — by Joe Romm, PhD in Physics from MIT — “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger” — Time Magazine
Yale Project on Climate-Change Communication
www.politifact.com — Rick Perry says more and more scientists are questioning global warming
PolitiFact has, once again, conducted an extensive review of the scientific research and questions around climate change, including how much is man made and the degree of consensus among scientists. That case has long been closed, despite the political echo chamber on the right. This is worth taking 5 minutes to read no matter what your existing beliefs are about the science around climate change.

Dan’s favorite jokes
Pretty Good Jokes from “Prairie Home Companion”
The Capitol Steps
The Onion
The Daily Show with John Stewart — The Colbert Report
Doodle.com — Find a time for a meeting by enabling invitees to show their best times
Create a Facebook Like button or Open Graph tags
Join.me — free group screen sharing
(For $30/month or $300/year, Join.me Pro enables you to use a branded, persistent address – e.g., https://join.me/DanWebb – as well as some additional features.)
What is “Scrum” agile product development? (video 8:00)
Geek Wisdom by Technology Entrepreneur Paul Graham
Google Reader for RSS feeds
Resources for Web developers — XML resources for developers — Live Face on the Web (for commercial promotion)
Android App of the Week — Browse the applications Dan uses on his Android phone
Synch your Outlook contacts with your Gmail contacts — CompanionLink ($40)
Synch your Outlook calendar with your Gmail calendar — Google Calendar Sync (free)
WebSharing — Browse the files on your Android device and download them to a local folder — Get the app
Learn About App Inventor for the Android operating system
Clock and stopwatch — in a popup window — a fun analog clock for stoners (IE only)
Search & Reference (dictionary & thesaurus) – urban dictionary, Wikipedia –
Google.com, HotBot.com advanced search –

Search the US Patent & Trademark Office’s public records — Excite photos

• Maps — Google maps, Yahoo maps, MapQuest — World Atlas — Holt, Rinehart, Winston World Atlas — satellite photos — Microsoft campus map
• Measures & Conversions — units of measure (conversion), world time converter, current time (accurate to .3 sec), time references, phases of the moon — currency conversions
• local free WiFi hotspots — wireless coffee shops
• King County Library System — Books24x7.com

Weather, Sports, Recreation & Health — 10-day forecast for Bellevue — hour-by-hour forecast — pollen forecast

Travel & Transportation — Puget Sound Traffic Map — Puget Sound Traffic Cameras
Washington State Ferries — Alamo Car Rental — Thrifty Airport Parking coupon — WallyPark coupon

News — Listen to NPR over KUOW — Windows Media — high bandwidth (20 to 135 Kbps)

Music — Pandora.com — KMTT.com (The Mountain) — KPIG.com — RadioTower.com — Radio-Locator.com

Financial Info and Purchasing

Intellectual Property Protection

Collaboration — Common Errors in English — the meanings and origins of phrases

Security and Privacy — Microsoft Windows Security Essentials (free malware protection)

my recipes

Other Handy Sites

• http://ADrive.com – Transfer large files
• http://YouSendIt.com – Transfer large files
• Qwest White Pages (people)
• Qwest Yellow Pages (businesses) – Opt out of Yellow Pages delivery to save paper and energy
• InfoSpace.com White Pages and Yellow Pages
• Ultimate White Pages
• Stop delivery of printed phone books
• Look up Telephone Area Codes and Country Codes
• Use an area code to find a location
• Look up Telephone Prefix Locations by Area Code
• country calling codes from anywhere to anywhere
• U.S. Postal ZIP Codes – Find a ZIP Code for an address – Find all cities in a ZIP Code
• Hold my mail while I’m away
• US Time Zones
• Time Zones Worldwide
• US Federal holidays
• Random quotes
• Roberts Rules of Order online
• Free Astrology Charts
• convert units of measure
• ZipInfo.com (latitude-longitude, time zones, etc.) – enter ZIP Code, return city – enter city, return ZIP Codes
• Create PDF files online
• Vixy.net — Convert a Flash Video (FLV) file (YouTube’s videos, etc.) to an MPEG4/AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP file online
• Check your own e-mail from anywhere with a Web browser — E-MailAnywhere.com 
• Check your Web browser’s capabilities
• Display all the Web server variables
• RealGuide — streaming media content