February 14, 2013
Recently our culture was described as “for coders – by coders”. I’ve never thought of it like that before, but it is spot on. Makes sense too, considering my “corporate up bringing”. Work hard, reward employees and have fun My first “real job” happened when I was promoted to Junior Programmer at National Research Corporation […]
February 7, 2013
One of the prominent virtues of greatness is humility. Humility is the ability for one to remain modest regardless of his aptitude and potential. Here is an example illustrating what this means: If you’re an amazing dart player (like myself), you tend to win the majority of the time. However, simply because you possess the […]
January 31, 2013
There are two types of people in the world: those who take responsibility and those who shun it. I have always had a problem with those who shun responsibility – especially in the workplace.They are the people who place office politics and covering their ass over being productive.Not the kind of employees I want on […]
January 29, 2013
Need to specify an SMTP server in PHP, but don’t want to update the global SMTP settings in the PHP.ini file? We came across a neat little library that allows you to specify an SMTP server each time you send an email. No installation required, just drop it in the root directory and include it […]
December 7, 2012
Volano had the opportunity to participate in Gallup’s EAS program this year and I had the privilege to talk yesterday at the EAS Impact Summit. Here’s the five minute speech I gave. I met our guide, Sandy Friedman, in 1999 when I went to work for his company at the time Customer Service Profiles. I […]
October 8, 2012
I was talking to one of our consultants, Harry Berman, about coding the other day and he threw out something that I really dug: You should treat code the same as Boy Scout’s with the Outdoors – leave it better than you found it. So, being the Eagle Scout that I am, I went ahead […]
September 26, 2012
One of our clients, PeggyBank, was recently given a review by technology journalist Walt Mossberg. You can read the full article here – The Wall Street Journal | PeggyBank. PeggyBank specializes in the digitization of film and photography. For a fee, they will take old home movies and photographs and convert them into digital format […]
September 25, 2012
Over the years, and various employees, we’ve christened a few terms we like to use while playing darts. Each terms is named after an employee who had particular tendencies while playing. I would like to share some of them with you: The Smith – Busting on a triple/double when you only need a single to […]
September 24, 2012
After 2 years of loyal service to Volano we recently had to part with a valued member of our team. Losing a team member is never easy, and I would like to share a few thoughts regarding his stay with us. Volano has high expectations for all its team members, and his case was no […]
July 19, 2012
Water Cooler Margaritas! As you may know, the Volano team has a long standing tradition of being “awesome”. Keeping with tradition, today Don decided to modify our company hydration practices by replacing our purified water tank with four gallons of margarita. Here’s hoping that this becomes a permanent addition to the office.
June 28, 2012
It’s time to reflect upon one of the most timeless and essential tools of our industry. A device that has been utilized by man for over 2000 years and has still retained its basic and intuitive design. For your viewing pleasure, Volano has composed a listing of our favorite models of this fantastic writing device, […]
June 20, 2012
Something that really frustrates me is when I run into projects that give custom software a bad name. This could be because of budget, timeline, quality – or most likely a combination of the three. There are plenty of bad custom software development companies out there, but it seems the culprit is usually an independent […]