The great founder of modern mathematics – Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi – would surely have been delighted with spreadsheets. It was he who first defined the idea of an ‘algorithm’ (an adaptation of his Latin name Algorithmi), but he never formalised … Read More
Author Archives: bill
Azquo creates a new structure for programming
The spreadsheet is a method of programming for non-programmers. You do not have to understand classes, strong or weak typecast, interpretive or compiled languages, SQL, or any of the usual IT skills to program a spreadsheet. You only need … Read More
Spreadsheets – separating the data from the logic
There is a good reason why there are two indispensable application in Microsoft Office – Word and Excel. They are simple to learn, extraordinarily powerful, and ubiquitous. But there is a major difference in the use of these two packages. … Read More
Spreadsheet minefields
It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that there are problems with spreadsheets – others have done so better than I can – for instance here or here. But if spreadsheets are so dangerous, why do managers continue to use … Read More
Business dementia
I recently was on holiday with friends, one of whom was in charge of a hospitality business. She complained that the CRM she was using was so badly designed that, when she put her own name in, she could not … Read More
Some thoughts on SEO – make your page interesting!
It is a great pleasure not to be concerned about SEO. That is not to say that I don’t want anyone coming to our site (or anyone reading this blog), but rather that there are relatively few people who would … Read More
Identifying names from different sources
Extraordinarily in this world where information is ‘global’, there is a growing need to consolidate data from different sources where the identification of the people, products, or places involved is not obvious. Typically this is in order to create the … Read More
Migrating to a new database
We all know that, whatever size of house we have, sooner or later we’ll run out of space. At least that’s what will happen to most of us, except those infuriating people who are so well organized that they take … Read More
On specialization
I found myself in an embarrassing position the other day – I was pitching to a potentially important client, and he mentioned ‘Data Discovery Tools’. I had to admit that I had not heard of this term, despite the fact … Read More
Azquo- the story so far
Fifteen months ago the founders of Azquo, Dave Williams, my son Edd, and I left Feefo and founded Azquo. Azquo was a new company, but the product was not new. It was a development on a previous product of mine, … Read More