As you all know, I recently created an AMI which allows a user to instantly launch a Magento ecommerce site using Amazon’s Cloud Computing Technology. So that brings me to two very different points (I should probably break this into two posts):

Point 1: Magento Rules the Ecommerce World

Magento is now more popular (at least more visited/searched) than other major open source ecommerce web applications (Checkout Google, Compete). Currently, I believe Magento is leaps and bounds above any other ecommerce system out. If you don’t agree, I urge you to show me a more fully featured, open source ecommerce system.

Point 2: My Personal Backup is still Jungledisk

I’ve been developing with Amazon’s AWS services for about a year. They’ve really been leading the development of “cloud computing” applications. Their API’s are pretty straight forward and although I have a few complaints, it’s a pretty nice system.

The Amazon S3 Network (which allows you to store data on Amazon’s cloud) has been my latest love. Amazon’s “pay as you go” pricing model makes it competitive even when you compare it to a DIY project.

After checking this out, I wanted to start running my personal backups onto Amazon’s S3 network. I thought I’d have to develop something but then I found JungleDisk. JungleDisk is a Windows and Mac backup system that stores all of your data on Amazon’s S3 network. That means, if someone steals my laptop, all of my data would still be safe. JungleDisk currently costs $20 (one time fee) and Amazon’s S3 network costs me about $6 per month for around 40GB worth of a data.

I’m real happy with JungleDisk and I’m proud to recommend them. Its automated, fast, reliable, and cost-effective. But, they have a few things that they should be worried about… They were recently bought out by Rackspace (Amazon’s cloud computing competitor). Although you can choose to use either Amazon or Rackspace, I’m usually scared to commit to a vendor unless I know their future intentions. I hope things aren’t going to change (JungleDisk claims nothing will change), but you never know. Also, JungleDisk has a very strong competitor in Mozy (Bought by EMC which also claims nothing to will change due to their buyout). Although I have used the mozy system, I stuck with JunlgeDisk b/c of it’s performance and the Amazon’s S3 network. But now, Mozy only costs $5.00 per month! For $5.00, its definitely worth trying. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Mozy and Jungledisk.

My recommendation: personally, I don’t care which backup system you use. You can continue to use 3.5″ floppy disks… but please… please… PLEASE BACKUP. I once had a client pay $10,000 for data recovery. Seriously.

      

So, we’ve purchased a new apartment complex in Jacksonville, AR. It’s 46 units and is currently full (no discounts given to facebook-friends). It should be a good deal. I’m 100% confident that we bought it at a great price, the cash flow projections look good, the management is solid, and the occupancy rate is high.

We’re doing a good job at aligning our properties such that they are relatively close, the management is getting better as screening tenants, contractors are more understanding of our terms, and most of the properties have similar goals.

With any organization there is a “culture” that everyone buys into… that includes the owners, contactors, employees, management and even the tenants/customers. If you can’t get everyone to buy into the culture, you either have to change the culture or change the people.

The guys at the top typically define the culture… the guys at the bottom have to buy into the culture… if you’re at the bottom and you want to change the culture, you get repromanded… thats why turnover is so much higher at the bottom…. thats why you hear of so many employees that “just didn’t work out.”

If you want to change culture, the guys at the top have to change… and I mean they have to be replaced. Changing people is too hard to do.

      

I have a hard time on small stuff. I know… “don’t sweat the small stuff”… But I can’t help it. One that I ran into last week was trying to determine who should do simple data entry that nobody wanted to do. We had two programmers that were equal, paid equal, and had an equal work load.

The difference between a large company and a small company is that in a small company you have to wear many hats. Sometimes its the “visionary” hat and sometimes its the “trash man” hat. Large companies have a trash man set aside for cleaning, small companies have owners that are sick of seeing trash around the office.

The end of the story is this… I did the simple data entry that nobody wanted to do. And although I hated every second of it, I was reminded that sometimes I have to take off my “I have more important stuff to do” hat and wear my “things have to get done” hat.