Emerge Inc. Blog

Our brother Dan Skimin lives in Mumbai, India. Fortunately, during Wednesday’s terrorist attacks he was safely sleeping in his apartment 15 miles away.

Normally, we talk about how the Internet helps businesses and organizations achieve their objectives, connect with customers and change business processes. On Wednesday, it was different.

- The CNN breaking news hit my email box saying, “At least 26 people have been killed in several ongoing, coordinated attacks in Mumbai”

- I sent an email and text message and Mike called on his cell phone to Dan asking him to confirm he was safe, we did not receive an immediate response.

- I sent a Twitter and Facebook update to let others know, “Waiting to hear from Dan who lives in Mumbai, India. He’s likely sleeping (it’s 4am his time), but with the news – time to wake up and call!”

- With Google Maps, we discovered that the attacks were 15 miles away from his apartment. I twittered this to let everyone know.

- A friend emailed to say Dan was logged on to Skype. A good sign, but he wasn’t answering

- Through Facebook chat and skype, I stayed in contact with a number of people from around the world. As soon as Dan contacted one person, just about everyone would know.

- After about an hour of watching news, reading the Internet and communicating online with others who were interested in the situation, Mike received the call from Dan letting us know he was safe.

- We quickly updated Twitter and Facebook to let everyone know that Dan was safe.

In addition to this technology being amazing, it is also very personal. It is one thing to watch television about an attack 8,000 miles away. It is completely different when you share the experience with people from around the world in real time. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Mumbai attacks.

The Lorain County Association of Realtors® (LoCAR) recently held electronic voting for their Board of Directors, using an online voting application developed by Emerge.

The voting starts with an email sent to each Realtor, providing instructions and a link to the online ballot. When voting online, members are asked for their Realtor License number, this ensures that each member only votes one time.

Two separate secure databases are used. One keeps track of who has voted and to ensure anonymity, a separate database tracks the actual votes. As an added safeguard, an excel spreadsheet is generated that shows each vote cast and a timestamp. This enables a comparison with print copies of the votes.

Congratulations to recently elected LoCAR board members Tania Kegyes and Louise Woehrle.

Lorain County Auditor Mark Stewart’s website is now offering early registration for 2009 dog tags. When an owner purchases their tag online, they are removed from this year’s postal mailing.

The email to dog owners explains the benefits:

In attempting to lower our printing and postage costs, we are urging all dog owners to take advantage of this opportunity to purchase their 2009 tag now. Early registrations will potentially save taxpayers thousands of dollars and ensure that funds are available where they are needed most – for the housing and care of animals at the Lorain County Dog Pound.

While the early registration is new, online registration has been available in Lorain County since 2001. Emerge started working with the Auditor’s office in 2000 to accept online payments and added the Dog Registration option in late 2001, in time to purchase 2002 tags.

Based on the success of the program and Emerge’s experience with Lorain County, we have begun receiving calls from other County Auditors about implementing similar online purchasing around the State.

I enjoy fresh oranges, always have. But I don’t eat them as often as I should. Fresh oranges just aren’t that easy. They have to be peeled, you have to watch for squirting juices and unlike an apple, oranges take 2 hands (or you have a sticky keyboard or steering wheel when your done). Personally, I would eat a lot more oranges if they were easier.

The same axiom applies to websites. The easier a website is to use, the more people will use them (all else equal, of course).

This is something we have believed in at Emerge for a long time. But, we have been putting an even larger emphasis on this lately. As Emerge has grown, we have taken on larger projects, which often come with large lists of desired features.

One of my favorite aspects of my work is taking a complex list of features and distilling it into a website or web-based application that is simple, intuitive and easy to use.

By the way, a google search for ‘How to eat an orange’ provides 571,000 results including detailed instructions from wikiHow, eHow and 1,310 YouTube videos.