Salesforce acquires Etacts - about time.

I'm happy to see that salesforce acquired Etacts, because, I hope, it means that Salesforce should be refreshing its support & integration with Google Apps. Etacts has a browser plugin for Firefox and Google Chrome, which adds functionality to the gmail web interface.

Salesforce has always been good about bridging the gap between enterprise messaging apps, for example, Outlook and Lotus Notes. That strategy is crucial in providing a path to enterprise users into the SFDC cloud eco-system. It's well over due that Salesforce pays proper credence to integration with other Cloud players, such as Gmail/Apps. The balance is tipping from on-prem to in-cloud, which doesn't make their Outlook/Notes connectors irrelevant by any stretch of the imagination, but they have to better embrace their neighbouring cloud peers. I hope, this latest purchase is just that.

I'm curious if gmail has a set interface to allow for this integration, or if the Etacts plug in lives and dies by the Gmail upgrade cycle. I imagine the Etacts plugin model works similar to any old grease monkey script. I'm hoping that this little plug in will be retrofitted to work with Salesforce allowing users to display some Contact/Account info directly in gmail, as well as pushing emails into their SFDC org and associating said emails with Contacts/Ops/Cases/Custom objects.

Lets just hope the Salesforce/Etacts team can retrofit and roll this out in short order. I'm hoping they do some pilots, so us plebeians can get some hands on early on.

#Update#

I have found the GMail gadgets API here: http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/gadgets/ which is what Etacts must be using. It's the same API that tools like Rapportive also use. Rapportive is a similar product to Etacts, but it does not support Salesforce.com, despit seeing some comments from last year stating that they would support Salesforce.com in the future.

The Coroners Toolkit from ten years past.

I randomly found something I wrote ten years ago now; "An Introduction to The Coroners Toolkit". Fun for me, probably not so fun for any readers here.

The TCT project, authored by Wietse Venema, still appears to be semi-alive here.

ETL - Pentaho and Salesforce.com

I'm blown away every time that I use Kettle, especially with Salesforce.

The power and utility of this ETL tool is just brilliant, and the pain threshold to get running with this tool is actually really low.

I have been working on migrating my companies contract records off the Salesforce standard Contract record and over to the newer "Service Contract" object which supports the use of product line items.

The data I'm dealing with is not well structured. We have 30+ custom fields on the Contract object, typically service quantity and service price pairs, and some extra fields that all relate together in non-obvious ways. The idea is to do move to Service Contracts, and use product line items to quantify what services a client is entitled to, the price and the quantity.

The mapping of this is non-trivial, and one of those things that if you don't automate, you will have to scrap your work several times and start over.

The Kettle ETL tool let me create one bog ugly transformation, and re-peat the job again and again until I had incrementally built the whole thing out, and iron the bugs out.

I also use this same tool extract data from various source in the business, correlate and load (insert/update) those records into Salesforce.

Every time I mention ETL in the context of salesforce, people instantly say "Oh, so your using Informatica?". I have never used Informatica, and I know nothing about it, I have little interest in even looking because Kettle is one of the most solid items in my data toolkit, and it's free!

Unfortunately, Pentaho's other reporting tools do not seem to meet the same standard as Kettle has set.

If your doing ETL, and especially if it involves Salesforce, go check this out; http://kettle.pentaho.com/ Also known as PDI - Pentaho Data Integration

#Edit; fixed typos.

Measurement by the hour looses many minutes.

After reading this blog post I realize that I waste an enormous amount of time by measuring my 'work' by the hour rather than by the results. 

fuel suckage

I reinsured my truck this weekend gone by and went for a drive down to Bellingham. I got a nasty surprise in my trucks fuel consumption. The Low Fuel indicator went off while driving on the I-5, I was cruising at an average of about 110Km. In my past experience I normally get at least a good half hour of driving after the Low Fuel warning goes on, and even then I have never ran out of fuel. I don’t think we drove for even ten minutes before I lost power. Surprised, I pulled into the slow lane and let her coast. It wasn’t long before the engine cut out after I shifted into neutral. I thought we would be stranded on the I-5, but we happened to be on a long gradual gradient so we coasted for about 5 kilometers, and at the end of that grade low and behold we had an exit with a gas station. With my hazards on I blew through a stop sign breaking only slightly in an effort to preserve as much kinetic energy as possible. I even cut off the road and cut a corner through a gravel patch to get to the gas station. We came to a stop about 25 meters shy of the pump and had to resort to pushing the old beast the last bit of the way. I must say I have been close before, but this was the luckiest out of gas experience I have had.

After I filled up, I kept an eye on the gauge. The consumption is horrendous. Unfortunately I didn’t track mileage but I could practically see the gauge move downwards while driving. I remembered a little later that I had dropped my tire pressure for extra snow traction last winter when Vancouver got pummeled with snow. I’m hoping that this is the root cause of my dismal km/L’s. I have decided that I’m going to optimize the truck for fuel consumption, starting with putting the correct pressure in my tires. Other ideas include installing a real-time fuel consumption gauge, K&N air in take, electric radiator fans and possibly an after market exhaust. I want to do these optimizations incrementally so that I can see how much value each change gives me.

Pirates

The international outrage over the Somalian pirate problem is hard to take. Yes the pirates are doing wrong but to look at the effect without considering the cause is, as always, foolish. Two interesting writeups about sea-based-piracy.

In Defense of Pirates (The Old Time Ones)

You are being lied to about Pirates

And just for the comedic value: Vikings versus Pirates

2004 Ford F-150 truck 4.6 liter V8 4X4 XLT Supercab

I bought this truck from the Vancouver branch of repo.com in August 2007. When I bought the truck it had about 65,000 kilometers on the clock. It was mechanically sound when I bought it. It had a few cosmetic issues when I bought it. It had a pretty large dent on the passenger side door. For the most part this is only cosmetic. When I roll down the passenger side window, the window mechanism catches inside on the dent, which gives a bit of a clunk sound, but the window goes all the way down and back up again. I never bothered getting this fixed, as cosmetics things like that really don't bother me much. The rear fender was bent downwards by about 5 degrees. I had this bent back by Krangle Automotive in North Vancouver soon after I got the truck. The rear driver side window in the suicide doors has had problems since I got the truck. The mechanism seems to have detached from the glass inside the door, so when I wind the window down, the glass doesn't follow unless it's given a little push by hand, after which the glass just plops down without resistance. This isn't very good, because sooner or later the glass will probably break. I plan to open the door up soon and see what's going on.
The last problem with the truck when I bought it was a terrible smell of piss inside the cabin, and some of the upholstery was ripped.
I got JT Auto Detailing from Richmond to do a chemical clean of the interior, and it got rid of the smell for the most part. The interior is gray and a pretty light shade, so it stains easily.