Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Some Linked Open Data cool applications

In no particular order, more as a personal reminder, I list below some of the coolest LOD mash-ups I've seen on the web. Other suggestions are more than welcome (please add links in the comments).
Enjoy!
  • Where does my money go Launch the Flash Dashboard for an incredibly effective view of how UK public money was spent by the British governments in the last years. Source of data: data.gov.uk
  • DataMasher Many mash-ups of US data (from data.gov). You can also create, and save, your own personal mash-up
  • Health Maps Wales Plenty of very detailed analyses regarding health-related issues in Wales. Try the Analyses tool: select an issue and view the map. Very effective! Source of data: data.gov.uk
  • Comparing US (USAID) and UK (DFID) Global Foreign Aid Interesting mashup of foreign aid data (represented in US Dollars) from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK Department for International Development (DFID) for the 2007 US Fiscal Year. DBPedia is also "mashed-up" in some way.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Any good Project Accounting software to recommend?

I urgently need a Project Management software with a good and effective accounting feature. Basically I need to:
  • define a project in terms of tasks/work-packages (WP)
  • provide an estimation for each of these WP
  • allow personnel to insert the hours worked on each WP
  • a decent (and extensible) reporting module.
I need to track project costs/progresses on a 360° basis, so not all the WP will be directly related to the production of software: e.g. I'd like to keep track also of the hours spent in managing the project, in the contacts with the customer, for installing and configuring the hardware and the software I need to develop on, etc.

It occurs to me that a huge number of companies are using for this job a software built in-house or tailored made (like it was the case with Ksolutions, the company I've been worked with for 15 years). The fine guys of Hyperborea are now, apparently happily, using Teamwork, a project management software that, amongst many others functionalities, seems to have also a decent project accounting feature.

Teamwork seems an OK product, only a bit too "one size fits all" kind of software for project management: in fact it sports a remarkable number of features to cover all main aspects of PM. Its cost is quite reasonable anyway: also the company behind it (Open Lab) is Italian too (it is based in Florence) which undoubtedly helps.

Anyway I'm more than open to suggestions. Please let me know, commenting here or via Twitter (my account is "lucadex") any opinion that you might have on the topic, including software suggestions or experiences with Teamwork.

TIA!