One of the questions some of our new letting agents ask us when learning about Letopedia, is where they can get the “download” or CD for their computer. To which we reply, there is no download, Letopedia is a webapp, also known as software as a service (SaaS), well what′s SaaS?

SaaS is a more modern way of accessing the software tools that you traditionally use to run your business. Traditionally, software is installed and run on each individual machine, however the companies that produce this type of software have mostly disappeared, as they can't compete with newer technology, such as SaaS. Their customers have also outgrown the capabilities of that software, such as being able to access the software from home, or on their mobile.

Some traditional application providers have attempted to make their legacy desktop software into a SaaS type system, and have miserably failed. One example is a company that provides a desktop software for letting agents, that provides some of the function that Letopedia can. In an effort to make their closed system available online, they introduced a remote desktop version, whereas, they host the software on remotely hosted machines, and then you setup a new terminal session to use it. This is not SaaS, this is remote access, it demonstrates that their software cannot be adapted to modern needs. Remote access in this method is very slow, and you still require a PC to access it, Macs or mobiles are not compatible.

Unfortunately, these companies rely on the average letting agent not knowing enough about the technologies available to make an informed decision about what they should be able to do with their software.

We′ve included this video which explains what SaaS is, how it came about, and how it differs from traditional software, we've included the key points to think about…

• You pay for SaaS on a subscription basis, rather than as a one-off purchase or with a license.
• The SaaS will take care of maintenance, security and backup for you. You don′t need to worry about the issues as you would with installed software.
• The SaaS will always provide the latest version with bug and security fixes for you, rather than you needing to download and install them on each machine.
• The SaaS is accessible on any device that can access the Internet, PCS, Macs, or Mobiles. Most software for letting agents is for PC only, and only a few of them work on Windows Vista, or the new Windows 7.
• In the SaaS, your data can be manipulated with custom modules that can be shared through the use of an API, so the SaaS can meet your custom needs. This is not possible, or is at best very expensive, in traditional software.
• There are also many environmental benefits to using a SaaS compared to traditional software.

People are moving in and moving out, all the time, these signs tell us that people are on the move. This movement is the livelihood of the letting agent. But they are also a subtle reminder of the state of our economy. Those empty offices and homes, unwanted, spell a downturn for the economy. The closed shops is the end of someone′s business dream.

From anyone who has lived in rented flats knows, these signs are either never taken down after you move in, or show up 3 months before you move out!

These ‘To Let’ signs appear on the side of buildings, in our streets, up and down the country, and even overseas like the picture above. As a monument to them, we've created a rather niche group on Flickr, simply entitled ‘To Let Signs’. There are literally thousands of photos on Flickr alone of To Let signs, many of them comically defaced to become ‘Toilet’, it is a challenge for photographers to take something so ubiquitous and make it look good, in the way that photography does.

Considering how common these signs are, you would have thought some effort would have gone into their design, the sad fact is that they are all nearly identical, and very same. Perhaps it is time that someone came up with a fresh take on the sign.

Many people react to these signs as being a sign of the times. With all this recession and economic down turn, especially in property and housing, these To Let signs have sprung up everywhere. Even once large corporations now have shrunk down their offices. For example, BP closed down its Environmental department that had it's own office and moved them into their HQ, because there was so much spare office space left there after all the lay-offs.

The feedback so far has been fantastic, the group is less than 15 hours old, and already has over 100 photos added by it's new members. We′re going to add a rotating feeds of the new photos to our journal in the sidebar.

Join our Flickr group ‘To Let Signs’ and add your To Let Sign photos.

Here are some favourites...

The guys over at fixoutlook.org have sent a clever message to Microsoft complaining over their choice to use Microsoft Word as the HTML renderer in Outlook 2010. Their decision to effectively cripple their Outlook software has angered developers, as the result is that Word does not support standards based HTML, and will make our lives very hard, if not impossible, when it comes to sending formatted emails to Outlook users.

In just over 3 weeks, their campaign has gained the support of nearly 25,000 people, including Letopedia, but Microsoft continues to back their decision. Although we only use web-based email systems in house, and have had a very positive experience with Google Mail for Google Apps Premium, we would never go back to using Outlook, but many people we email as part of the use of our software will be using Outlook.

The mosaic is being sent to William Kennedy, VP of Office at Microsoft, in an effort to reverse his decision; it is composed of all the avatars of all the users that took up the issue, and our Twitter avatar will be in their somewhere, we wish them good luck with their campaign.

This is our avatar as it appears on the mosaic.
follow us on twitter to see it!

In response to the article Can Enterprise 2.0 Afford to be Boring? by Venkatesh Rao...

I have mixed views to your article.

I agree, that all standard business/enterprise work is boring, but I don't think Enterprise 2.0 is boring, if anything, it should make things more interesting (when done properly).

There are 2 things that Enterprise 2.0 software should do to make work less boring.

1. It should replace a human task, and the software should do it itself. This includes crunching numbers, analysis. For example, a company ordering system that automatically places a new order with the supplier when stock is low is an example of something done by Enterprise 2.0 systems, that before would have had to be done by a human, and that is a boring task.
2. Enterprise 2.0 software should also make work transparent, as in the data and information we manage as part of our business lives should be seamlessly connected between our daily tasks, and between our colleges. CRM systems, online billing sites, call centres, sales peoples mobile devices are all able to connect and share the same data with Enterprise 2.0 software, something that was impossible before it came about.

Even the the UKs biggest supermarket Tesco has an API for people to write software for now, an Amazon has had one for years, and in their case has resulted in additional sales. The UK popular bookseller Waterstones, actually used Amazon to run their own branded website via an API for years instead of running their own, this is an example of something achievable with Enterprise 2.0 semantics.

So work is very boring yes, but Enterprise 2.0 can be a solution to that. Good interfaces are the beginning of jazzing things up.

The user interface in typical corporate software has always been very, very, poor. The demand for software with features, and implementing those features in a projects time frame and budget has had the result of eliminating the features that also make a good user experience. The resulting user interface is often complex, dull, and no real thought has gone into the way tools are laid out, or how they could be used any better.

Some examples of the features that are often excluded from traditional management software include...

• Normalizing inputted text such as recognising URLs and making them into clickable links, correcting capitalization in names.
• The ability to search across data stores with multiple parameters all from a single text box.
• Being able to categorize text and objects with custom colour-coded tags, that are meaningful to the user.
• Having a consistent experience, regardless of weather the user is online or offline, or if they are using a mobile device, such as an iPhone.
• A user interface that doesn't need to wait for a task to finish processing before allowing the user to move on to their next job.
• Interfaces that are fluid, and streamlined, and enforce data activity with visual animations and feedback.
• Interfaces that allow one person to work with a colleague in real-time, and to collaborate and share data and documents in a variety of formats, such as Word Documents of PDFs.

In Anthony Ha's recent post for VentureBeat, "Has enterprise software always been terrible? Gnip’s Eric Marcoullier says yes", he talks about how the tools and technology designed around the consumer end users have left behind those of the corporate user, and now that we use more sophisticated and simple tools to organise our social life, we're also asking why we can't have those same tools and technologies to organise our work life.

This is essentially where the Enterprise 2.0 catchphrase originated, bringing the technologies that created Web 2.0 into the realm of the office. Those technologies have rapidly evolved and revolutionized the way people communicate socially, and now they are being applied to business scenarios, and the gains are being seen, but this time in productivity, accuracy, and throughput.

Letopedia has always had a fast, intuitive interface; but now we're updating it (see partial screenshot) for an even better experience. The interface now loads quicker, runs faster, and all the tools are standardized in a modular format for a consistent experience. The commands are simplified, and help is always available on screen. The interface also allows for real-time collaboration, and silently synchronises in the background, and highlighting any changes being made by your colleagues. If your are also using a modern HTML5 compatible browser, such as Firefox 3.5, then you also will have the ability to work offline, and still have secure access to all your management data.