Wine Technology Blog @ WineWeb.com

We've been saying for a while that our winery POS system runs on an iPhone, which makes it very portable. Now, with the release of the iPad, I needed to see how the POS would look and function on that device (at least that's the excuse I used to justify purchasing this new gadget).

As expected, the WineWeb point-of-sale application displays nicely on the 1024 pixel wide iPad screen. We made a couple of very minor tweaks to the software to optimize it for this display and proclaimed the software "good to go". However, connecting other devices to an iPad is currently an issue. In a POS environment, a credit card reader and a receipt printer, though optional, are typically used. Since the iPad does not have any USB ports, we need equipment that can connect via the charging/sync port or the headphone jack, or over Bluetooth. Based on some limited research, there are products either announced or shipping that will work. I noted a credit card reader that attaches to the headphone jack, a Bluetooth credit card reader and a Bluetooth card reader/receipt printer unit. I'm confident that the coming months will provide more options.

My impressions of the iPad have changed in the past few days. My initial thought was that it would be just a larger version of an iPod Touch and it would replace a netbook for surfing and email when traveling. I'm now seeing more for this device. After spending time with the Apple developer guides and their interface standards documents, I'm sensing that the iPad will usher in a new way of interacting with web content. The eBay app is a good example of how a more visual, touch-oriented approach can be applied to an application.

When we demonstrate our winery point-of-sale system, we tell people that it's portable anywhere there is an Internet connection. We also inform them that our POS can run on an iPhone, and we think it looks quite nice on that mobile device.

We usually joke that the only thing that our winery POS on an iPhone can't do is swipe a credit card. Now it appears we can't say that any longer as Mophie has announced an iPhone case that includes a credit card reader. Quite cool.

As I was sweeping snow off of the solar panels (again), I realized that I had never blogged about our solar project. Our photovoltaic solar array came online Dec. 29, in the midst of the holidays and the year-end crunch to get the tax credits. We can now claim that all the energy needed to power, heat and cool WineWeb's office space comes from the sun.

I'm still amazed at the ability of the solar panels to generate electricity in less than sunny conditions. Currently it's totally overcast (one of those rare days in Santa Fe) with a few snowflakes coming down, and they're generating 345 AC watts, enough to power a computer and lights. It's a grid-tied system, so excess energy is fed back to the utility. The incentives are great to install solar panels. 30% Federal tax credit, 10% state tax credit, net-metering for all energy sent back to the utility, and an additional credit for every kWh that we generate, regardless of whether we use it or give it to the utility. Our payback on the investment is about 5 years.

Of course we opted for the ability to monitor the system in real-time over the Internet. The monitor was installed over the weekend, and now anyone can see the statistics on our solar system by going to solrenview.com. I like talking about this to anyone who would listen, and am happy to see the results of many years of research.

I just received an email from Network Solutions stating that the domain names I recently searched for are still available and offering me a discount to buy them. I don't remember being logged in when I did those WhoIs searches (even more scary), but maybe I was. Anyway, the point is that Network Solutions (and maybe other domain name registrars) are tracking your WhoIs searches. In case you're not aware, all domain name registrars (Network Solutions, Godaddy, Register.com, etc.) provide a "WhoIs" function for you to see the details of who registered a domain name. It's a fast way to check on a domain name, but if you're looking for new domain names for your business, I'd advise against using that function. I've also heard of people who used WhoIs to look for domain names, only to come back an hour later and find that those domain names were just registered by a reseller.

What to do? If you want to research new domain names, login to your domain name account and use their search function, then be prepared to immediately purchase any domain names that you find.

To support Earth Day, we have purchased carbon offsets equivalent to the carbon dioxide generated by the electricity used to power our web and email servers. You'll notice the "CO2 Neutral" seals that appear throughout the website. Visitors will also see the seal on the shopping cart pages of all wineries and wine merchants that use our e-commerce system.

Purchasing the carbon offsets was easy to do, relatively inexpensive, and we encourage other Internet services companies to explore similar ways to offset their carbon footprint.

We've rebranded our blog as WineTechnologyWorks.com. The focus will be on technology in the wine industry: what works and what doesn't, with an attempt to focus on topics that may evoke (or provoke) discussion. WineWeb has always been focused on providing technology that works and that provides real value to its clients. We constantly see good stuff that we'd like to highlight, as well as items that make us scratch our heads in wonder. We've had that domain name for a while and liked the play on words, so we'll try to put it to good use.

Now if I can force myself to get this stuff from my head to the keyboard...

OK, so this isn't directly about wine, but sometimes a news item is just so amazing that I have to comment on it. The news was that Satyam, one of the large Indian software companies, had been misstating their revenues and cash. Having spent nearly 10 years directly competing with Satyam for outsourcing projects and having spent almost 10 years as a CPA with one of the Big 4 accounting firms, I feel qualified to comment on this.

The company reported a cash balance of 53 billion rupees (about 1 billion US$), when in fact they had only 3 billion rupees in the bank. It seems that a white lie made several years ago just kept growing until it was out of control, and they had to come clean. What's amazing here is that PriceWaterhouseCoopers missed it in their audits (and no, I used to work for Deloitte). I don't have to pull out one of my CPA textbooks to remember that verifying cash is one of the most basic auditing tasks. How do you miss a billion dollars?? Heads will roll at PWC, partners will be shot (or maybe should be). What a mess!

What's sad it that this situation will likely tarnish all Indian software companies. I'm a firm believer in leveraging a global workforce to provide value, quality and competitiveness in any industry. In my own industry, I've not been surprised at a company having to layoff many people after bragging about spenging $100/hour to develop a software application. Those economics just aren't sustainable in these times.

So, to happier times, and a Happy New Year. Cheers!

It' s been three days since Google released their web browser, Chrome. I attempted to do all my work yesterday using Chrome to see how it would perform and to see if it had all the features that I use in a typical day. I usually have numerous browser windows open as I setup new websites and test out new functionality on the website, so it was working hard all day.

Overall, I was pleased. I liked the minimalist interface and the address bar that is used for bookmarks, recent pages and search queries. I thought it was as fast as Firefox 3, both of which blow past Internet Explorer. Our point-of-sale application was faster running under Chrome than Firefox, probably due to Google's new Javascript routines, as the POS contains a lot of Javascript and AJAX. Chrome can make a web application run as a desktop application similar to Firefox's Prism product, which provides a very minimalist interface and more speed. I did have to load Firefox once because of a quirk with a form field, and I had to load IE once, only to see if IE was doing anything weird in rendering a new website design.

There's a lot of cool stuff under the hood that translate into improved security and performance. So, if you're still using IE, you now have two better browser choices in Chrome and Firefox. Happy downloading.

Recently we learned of a wine-related website that had been hacked at a particularily bad time (not that there is a good time to be hacked). While we sympathize with them on the effort required to get their site back up, we were a bit concerned as their site was running the ColdFusion software like ours. After some research, we're able to rest a bit easier.

The hack was a cross-site scripting attack, where someone adds malicious database code to a URL or a web form field. If the web program that processes the data expects an ID field in which to access the database, doesn't validate that it's just an ID field, and passes the entire field to the database access routine, then bad things can happen. Luckily our websites have several layers of protection to not allow this to happen to us.

We've noticed lately an increase in the frequency and sophistication of attempted attacks to our websites, but have considered them an annoyance to our schedule, as we typically alert the hacker's ISP of the attempted hack. Good programming practices and keeping up-to-date on server software is always a good defense.