When it comes to a contact management program for the Mac you just cannot beat Daylite’s program. Last week when Marketcircle announced their beta versions of 3.9rc1 in the forum in anticipation of the launch of Daylite Touch I was ready to make the switch from 3.8

Previously, I had setup Daylite to run on my desktop Mac Pro and had it also installed on my Mac laptop. While I had purchased two licenses initially in the previous versions I found I really did not need them yet.

When I got up the courage to install Daylite 3.9 they had rc2 out, reading through the forum I really did not see any challenges to making the move. This time since I was going through all the effort of a major upgrade I wanted to move it to my Apple Leopard Server in preparation for Daylite touch.

In order, to take my existing database and move it to the new machine required a few extra steps. First I had to download and install the Daylite server on my current Mac Pro, then launch the program and convert the database over to 3.9, after adding my license to the the new database server.

Once the conversion was done, then I performed a backup of the new database. Next, was to install the Daylite server software on the Leopard Server. Once this was done, all that was needed was to restore from the backup I had made on my desktop.

The next step was to download the Daylite productivity suite 3.9rc2 on both the desktop and laptop. The next step was the moment of truth connect both to the new Daylite server. Talk about joy when everything just worked, it could not have been a simpler installation – migration.

Over the course of the week Marketcircle released rc3 and the updates went just as smooth as the initial installation. Today, Daylite Touch was finally released along with the final version of Daylite 3.9.

The Daylite Touch server is already installed when you install the server package, all that is needed to activate it is a license. At just under $50 per user I’m not sure how many people will actually want it, yet if they actually see it work on the iPhone I’m sure they will want it.

The phenomenal integration still amazes me, now it really does not matter where I’m at I have complete access to my customer – prospect lists just about anywhere. When using the Daylite touch program on the iPhone it seems more intuitive then that actual desktop program.

Overall I would have to give Marketcircle a two thumbs up for this latest contact management program and the addition of the Daylite Touch application just makes it even better, they have really raised the bar now when it comes to a well though out contact management system!

Moving two of my blogs to the Thesis WordPress theme now completed; I wanted to use my favorite blog software Marsedit.

The feature I really like is the preview function, being able to see what the post will look like.

This is where I ran into an issue with Thesis, I had pretty much left the settings to the defaults as far as font size etc… I did however change the font to use Arial. When viewing the preview in Marsedit with the Thesis theme, it would not display correctly.

The theme’s body was only about 80 percent of the width of the header graphic. I spent a few hours chasing CSS etc… trying to fix this display issue. I was finally able to solve it within Marsedit by changing the font size.

The font size in Thesis was set to Arial 1.4em, setting the Marsedit main preferences to Arial 16px fixed the preview display issues with the WordPress theme.

Of course changing the default font size also meant that my Drupal sites would not display correctly in the preview mode.

After a while of playing with the CSS for the Drupal sites, I arrived at a happy combination that finally displayed My Drupal sites preview almost perfect and my Thesis blogs as well.

I think using an external editor is the best way to go, especially if you’re using WordPress with its incessant pinging. While there are many different versions and manufactures of this software, if you’re a Mac user in my opinion Marsedit is the best.

One of the questions I often ask people who are involved in marketing and sales is if the product is so good would you recommend it if there was no monetary gain for you. Often we will buy a piece of software, that truly does make our lives much easier.

About one year ago, I moved to a new contact manager designed for the Mac. The contact manager I was using before had the dialer built into it so long as I had an internal modem connected.

With my Mac and new contact manager I wanted this feature up and running again, once you get used to a feature like this along with the tracking it almost forces you to do you don’t want to be without it.

The program I found is called Dialectic a Mac Telephone Dialer, it is without a doubt the best program I’ve found. In my opinion and John if you read this don’t take it personally but the price is to cheap, for what your offering.

As I’m writing this John still lists the price at twenty-five dollars. I mainly use the program with my contact manager as I’ve pointed out. If I’m doing a search for a local business on the internet, goto their contact page of course there is there phone number. In the past I would then dial the number, now I simply highlight the number send it to Dialectic and it does it for me, so ok call me lazy but it works.

The more I dug into the program, and believe me it integrates with quite a bit of software I discovered even more things I found useful. For example, what if I wanted to use my Laptop and cell phone it was possible.

I use an Iphone with the Macbook Pro via bluetooth to do the dialing, and it works great. I recommend you try it, you can download it and take it for a 14 day trial. You will have to take sometime to really explore what the program has to offer, but I’m convinced that you’ll see the same thing I did, just how useful this program is!

Life is all about change, just a few short years ago if we wanted training or to demonstrate something we would have to travel. As the Internet becomes more ingrained into people’s lives, we no longer have to do this costly travel.

If I’m not traveling I’m doing my part in being eco-friendly, no I’m not some left-wing environmental extremists. But, I do believe in doing my part to conserve the resources we have.

Up until just a few years ago I used a program by another manufacturer that provided a solution, yet when I switched my office to all Mac computers I found myself looking for a new solution. The manufacturer of that software did not provide a solution for the Mac.

During my search for a new solution for online web collaboration, I found a program called Yugma. What I found was an even better solution than the manufacturer I was using before.

What I found is one of the primary reasons that I switched to Yugma and will stay with it, this is its cross platform capability. Now I can have users that use Windows, Mac, or Linux, operating systems.

In the past I used to become completely frustrated trying to work and train individuals, often with-up to 100 people on a call. When you are trying to do this on a conference call and get everyone on the same page without them being able to see it, it is next to impossible. By using this software, It is almost like having them sitting right next to me watching and it does not mater what operating system they are using!

Now I can convey information in 1 hour that used to take months of weekly one hour conference calls. Where Yugma really shines is in its ability to share desktops quickly and reliably, as we can often utilize another individuals application for demonstration purposes.

Since I deal mainly with people in a home business environment, I work with them by helping them become more familiar with their version of contact management program. Basically just about anything that can be done over the internet on a computer can be demonstrated or worked on via Yugma.

Sure you can read the manual and get quite a lot out of it, yet often you wonder just who wrote some of the material. Then you have to really stop and ask yourself what is my time worth.

As a small business owner you often don’t have time to waste learning new software, you need to be able to implement this into your business quickly. This is where I think Yugma really shines, when you can bring to the table one-on-one personalized instruction.

When you can demonstrate to someone on their computer how to work their program, then follow that up by having them demonstrate and explain the steps back to you while you’re watching it live you are creating better value for your customers.

Personally I love running Yugma on a Mac. With the triple combination of the Mac, Parallels and Yugma, I can demonstrate just about anything I want to quickly and easily via a virtual machine.

Late in 2008, I finally upgraded to Parallels 4.0. Anyone with common sense, will do a little research in the forums to see what challenges have cropped up before updating any software.

I updated a Mac Pro and a early 2007 Macbook Pro, while you would think that both computers would have the same upgrade issues crop up in reality they did not. Both computers had similar problems, yet the MacBook Pro actually gave more indication of what the problem was in converting the 3.x version to 4.0.

Before we get into the issues with the upgrade, the question is was it worth it? In running it for awhile now I would have to say it definitely is if you need to run a version of Windows. With each update I’ve done it just gets better.

With Parallels 4.0, I found the graphics display to be a great improvement. I don’t use Parallels and Windows for gaming, just business applications that I’ve not found a replacement for on the Mac side. The upgrade really gave me the appearance that I was running the applications on a pure Windows Xp machine, not a virtual one.

This is important when using a program like ACT a contact manager. When you’re trying to read a Tahoma size 8 font, you really need it to be sharp and crisp. This was one of my major complaints with the earlier versions of Parallels.

The almost seamless integration between Mac and Windows makes it well worth it. Since I do a lot of tech support for individuals having a working copy of Windows Xp and Vista makes life a lot easier. Running Yugma on the Mac side gives me the ability to teach both Mac and Windows applications, this is extremely important!

One perception at least to me is that Vista seems to operate better via Parallels then it did on a PC, now that maybe just my perception of it. Windows Xp runs great as well. There is a huge difference in performance between the Mac Pro and the MacBook Pro, this is to be expected though. With 4.0 bringing multiple processors to the table it is an improvement over 3.x.

The Upgrade Nightmare

I have to admit, I experienced all of the same problems that everyone else did during the conversion from 3.X to 4.0. It was not until I was already about halfway through the process on both machines that the conversion problem was probably more my fault then Parallels.

I say this because, I had learned a few things during earlier upgrades. One of the major complaints everyone had was during the conversion the system would just hang, as if it were waiting for some action to take place. It was the MacBook Pro that actually brought this out into view. I should have remembered just two things, that I’m sure would have made this go much smoother.

1.) Un-install Parallels Tools.
2.) Un-install the Virus Software.

The Macbook Pro, was the machine that actually got back to Windows and sure enough that was what was hanging the conversion process up, the virus software! Sure I was pissed off but not at Parallels but at myself, I knew better. It may have even been in the upgrade instructions some place, yet we all know we don’t read the instructions right.

The second issues cropped up after the installations where complete, their where now two instances of Parallels Tools installed. The 3.x version and the new 4.0 version. Trying to uninstall the 3.x version failed with a message about not running in a virtual machine.

There are ways to get the earlier version of the tools removed, yet I’ll not cover them here. I don’t want to be responsible for trashing your Windows Installation. Since the initial release there have been a few updates, each one correcting bugs. With each update things only get better.

Overall I’m quite pleased with the latest version, it works just fine. There are still a few items I would like to see work better, on the integration side with Apples USB Modem which I use as a dialer for contact management programs

So if you’ve not upgraded yet, keep in mind about what I said about removing the old version of Parallels Tools and removing not just disabling your windows virus software during the upgrade.