#Automated Scheduling System

[milo-is-rambling]

Okay I have an interview at Office Depot on Tuesday at 3:30

[1auditmanagementsoftware]

Audit Management System Software

The "Audit Management System Software" in 1Audit is designed to support and simplify the audit process. It allows for seamless management and monitoring of audit files anytime and anywhere. With features like document control, collaboration, professional compliance, and cloud-based access, it ensures efficient task management and secure document storage. The software helps streamline audit workflows by automating essential processes, managing user permissions, and supporting communication among audit teams, ultimately improving the audit's accuracy and effectiveness.

[benjokovar77]

Exploring the Future of Smart Homes: The Benefits of Automated Blind Systems with SwitchBot

The smart home industry is rapidly evolving, and one of the standout innovations is the automated blind systems offered by SwitchBot. These systems not only enhance convenience but also improve energy efficiency in our homes.

Imagine being able to control the amount of natural light entering your space with just a tap on your phone or through voice commands. SwitchBot’s automated blinds allow you to set schedules, ensuring your home is always at the perfect brightness level, whether you're at home or away.

Additionally, these systems can contribute to reducing your energy bills by optimizing the use of heating and cooling throughout the day. By investing in SwitchBot's automated blind systems, you're not just making your home smarter; you're also making a positive impact on your lifestyle and the environment.

What are your thoughts on automated blind systems? Have you tried SwitchBot's offerings? Share your experiences!

[vivencyglobal]

Streamline School Schedules with Web-Based Bell Solutions

Discover the future of school time management with our cutting-edge Web-Based School Bell Solutions. This innovative system allows seamless scheduling and management of school bells via a cloud-based platform. Easily customize bell schedules, integrate with PA systems, and access remote control capabilities. Enhance punctuality, reduce manual errors, and ensure smooth daily operations with a user-friendly interface accessible on any internet-enabled device. Perfect for modern educational institutions aiming to optimize efficiency and embrace smart technology.

[artisticdivasworld]

Save Time and Reduce Cost with Automation

Let’s talk about something we all wish we had more of in the trucking industry: time and money. It’s no secret that running a trucking business is tough. Between keeping up with the endless regulations, dealing with unexpected repairs, and managing all the paperwork, it feels like there are never enough hours in the day. And let’s not even start on the costs piling up. But what if I told you…

[inextcrm]

Easy Meeting Scheduler Tool for Better Team Coordination

With automated reminders and real-time updates, never miss a meeting or double-book again. Whether you're managing a remote team or collaborating across time zones, InNextCRM's meeting scheduling tool is your key to boosting productivity and fostering collaboration. Start simplifying your scheduling process today and make every meeting count.

[practicestaff12]

🚀 Unlock Efficiency: How to Save Time While Growing The Practice! (Good Tips )| @StafflessPractic

Watch video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGL7DTdRcI

The key to effective time management is a combination of strategic planning, leveraging technology, and fostering a culture of efficiency within your practice. Continuously assess and refine your processes to adapt to the changing needs of your growing practice. Growing a practice, whether it's a business, medical practice, or any other professional service, requires effective time management and strategic planning.

👍 Don't forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more insightful content!

[hocalwire]

Hocalwire - A Holistic Digital Newsroom CMS

Hocalwire is a world-class CMS for the digital need of a dynamic content platform Our product & tools allow for multidimensional growth.

1) What is Hocalwire?

2) Why Hocalwire?

3) What are the Products & Services Hocalwire provides?

4) Hocalwire New CMS Demo

5) Key Features of Hocalwire

6) Strategic SEO Integration

What is Hocalwire?

Hocalwire is a Digital First Newsroom management system and CMS for managing the Digital properties of a Media House. The products and services on the Hocalwire platform are tuned for regular dynamic content. The focus is to enable our clients to do the heavy lifting with tech and product while they focus on Content. With a global vision to become the gold standard for Newsroom CMS, Hocalwire is already being used by more than 140 Newsrooms and reaching out to more clients.

Hocalwire offers a free demo plan, Schedule for Demo

[1auditmanagementsoftware]

Auditing Software for Auditors

1Audit is an intuitive auditing software designed for auditors to streamline and simplify the audit process. It offers features like secure cloud access, document management, team collaboration, and compliance tracking, helping auditors efficiently manage audits and maintain high-quality standards.

[fly2workapp]

Fly2Work

Fly2Work is your complete workforce and travel management system to help to improve your manpower scheduling, workflows and travel bookings.

It’s a fully automated and integrated platform that streamlines all tiers of business travel management services for companies with FIFO or DIDO workforce.

Fly2Work offers features such as accommodation management, driver safety, booking management, reporting, and staff messaging.

With its advanced automation capabilities, it eliminates the need for manual processes, and provides real-time visibility into the entire travel management process.

It allows for easy management of travel and accommodation logistics, real-time tracking and reporting, inventory management, and live tracking of employees.

Phone Number: +617 3063 2295

Business Email: support@fly2work.com.au

Website: https://www.fly2work.com.au

Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/Fly2Workapp

Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/fly2workapp

LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fly2work-pty-ltd

Working Hours: 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Address: Level 5/123 Eagle St, Brisbane City QLD 4000, Australia

[vivencyglobal]

Experience the Ultimate in School Bell Services in Dubai with Vivency's Automatic Bell System

Step into a new era of school bell management with Vivency Technology LLC's Automatic Bell System, renowned as the premier choice for school bell services in Dubai. Crafted specifically for educational institutions, our system offers:

Tailored Bell Schedules: Seamlessly adapt to your school's unique timetable.

Streamlined Announcement Management: Simplify school-wide announcements with precision.

Automated Bell Routines: Ensure consistent and punctual bell schedules without manual intervention.

Flexibility and Scalability: Grow effortlessly alongside your institution's evolving needs.

User-Friendly Interface: Navigate and control with ease thanks to our intuitive design.

Integration Capabilities: Harmonize with existing educational platforms for enhanced functionality.

Elevate your school's efficiency and reliability with Vivency's Automatic Bell System. Discover unparalleled excellence in school bell services today! Learn more

[loudstarfishcat]

Automated maintenance scheduling

##https://tech2desk.com/##

##https://tech2desk.com/##

Tech2Desk

The tech2desk Automated maintenance scheduling X3 maintenance application has spearheaded a technological revolution within the IT industry With its cost-effective options, use service as a one-time fix or as a monthly subscription,

IT maintenance solutions

Automated maintenance scheduling

AI-enabled maintenance application

Remote technician support

Cost-effective IT services

Proactive system maintenance

[friendlyneighborhoodshark]

"How to Life" Masterlist

Cleaning and Tidying

Make your bed in the morning. It takes seconds, and it's worth it.

Reset to zero each morning.

Use the UFYH 20/10 system for clearing your shit.

Have a 'drop-zone' box where you dump anything and everything. At the beginning/end of the day, clear it out and put that shit away.

Automate your chores. Have a cleaning schedule and assign 15mins daily to do whatever cleaning tasks are set for that day. Set a timer and do it once the timer is up, finish the task you're on and leave it for the day.

Fold your clothes straight out of the tumble dryer (if you use one), whilst they're still warm. This minimises creases and eliminates the need for ironing.

Clean your footwear regularly and you'll feel like a champ.

Organisation and Productivity

Learn from Eisenhower's Importance/Urgency matrix.

Try out the two-minute rule and the Pomodoro technique.

Use. A. Planner. (Or Google Calendar, if that's more your thing.)

Try bullet journalling.

Keep a notebook/journal/commonplace book to dump your brain contents in on the regular.

Set morning alarms at two-minute intervals rather than five, and stick your alarm on the other side of the room. It's brutal, but it works.

Set three main goals each day, with one of them being your #1 priority. Don't overload your to-do list or you'll hit overload paralysis and procrastinate.

If you're in a slump, however, don't be afraid to put things like "shower" on your to do list - that may be a big enough goal in itself, and that's okay.

Have a physical inbox - a tray, a folder, whatever. If you get a piece of paper, stick it in there and sort through it at the end of the week.

Consider utilising the GTD System, or a variation of it.

Try timeboxing.

Have a morning routine, and guard that quiet time ferociously.

Have a folder for all your important documents and letters, organised by topic (e.g. medical, bank, university, work, identification). At the front of this folder, have a sheet of paper with all the key information written on it, such as your GP's details, your passport details, driving licence details, bank account number, insurance number(s), and so on.

Schedule working time and down time alike, in the balance that works for you.

Money

Have. A. God. Damn. Budget.

Use a money tracker like toshl, mint, or splitwise. Enter all expenses asap! (You will forget, otherwise.)

Have a 'money date' each week, where you sort through your finances from the past seven days and then add it to a spreadsheet. This will help you identify your spending patterns and whether your budget is actually working or not.

Pack your own frickin' lunch like a grown-up and stop buying so many takeaway coffees. Keep snacks in your bag.

Food and Cooking

Know how to cook the basics: a starch, a protein, a vegetable, and a sauce.

Simple, one-pot meals ("a grain, a green, and a bean") are a godsend.

Batch cook and freeze. Make your own 'microwave meals'.

Buy dried goods to save money - rice and beans are a pittance.

Consider Meatless Mondays; it's healthier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly.

Learn which fruits and vegetables are cheapest at your store, and build a standard weekly menu around those. (Also remember that frozen vegetables are cheap and healthy.)

Learn seasoning combinations. Different seasoning, even with the exact same ingredients, can make a dish seem completely new.

Misc

Have a stock email-writing format.

Want to start running, but find it boring? Try Zombies, Run!.

Keep a goddamn first aid kit and learn how to use it.

Update your CV regularly.

Keep a selection of stamps and standard envelopes for unexpected posting needs. (It happens more regularly than you would think!)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cleantech has an enshittification problem

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit – lots of it.

But no matter how much public transit we install, there's always going to be some personal vehicles on the road, and not just bikes, ebikes and scooters. Between deliveries, accessibility, and stubbornly low-density regions, there's going to be a lot of cars, vans and trucks on the road for the foreseeable future, and these should be electric.

Beyond that irreducible minimum of personal vehicles, there's the fact that individuals can't install their own public transit system; in places that lack the political will or means to create working transit, EVs are a way for people to significantly reduce their personal emissions.

In policy circles, EV adoption is treated as a logistical and financial issue, so governments have focused on making EVs affordable and increasing the density of charging stations. As an EV owner, I can affirm that affordability and logistics were important concerns when we were shopping for a car.

But there's a third EV problem that is almost entirely off policy radar: enshittification.

An EV is a rolling computer in a fancy case with a squishy person inside of it. While this can sound scary, there are lots of cool implications for this. For example, your EV could download your local power company's tariff schedule and preferentially charge itself when the rates are lowest; they could also coordinate with the utility to reduce charging when loads are peaking. You can start them with your phone. Your repair technician can run extensive remote diagnostics on them and help you solve many problems from the road. New features can be delivered over the air.

That's just for starters, but there's so much more in the future. After all, the signal virtue of a digital computer is its flexibility. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing complete, universal, Von Neumann machine, which can run every valid program. If a feature is computationally tractable – from automated parallel parking to advanced collision prevention – it can run on a car.

The problem is that this digital flexibility presents a moral hazard to EV manufacturers. EVs are designed to make any kind of unauthorized, owner-selected modification into an IP rights violation ("IP" in this case is "any law that lets me control the conduct of my customers or competitors"):

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

EVs are also designed so that the manufacturer can unilaterally exert control over them or alter their operation. EVs – even more than conventional vehicles – are designed to be remotely killswitched in order to help manufacturers and dealers pressure people into paying their car notes on time:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Manufacturers can reach into your car and change how much of your battery you can access:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

They can lock your car and have it send its location to a repo man, then greet him by blinking its lights, honking its horn, and pulling out of its parking space:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

And of course, they can detect when you've asked independent mechanic to service your car and then punish you by degrading its functionality:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/06/26/two-of-eight-claims-in-tesla-anti-trust-lawsuit-will-move-forward/

This is "twiddling" – unilaterally and irreversibly altering the functionality of a product or service, secure in the knowledge that IP law will prevent anyone from twiddling back by restoring the gadget to a preferred configuration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

The thing is, for an EV, twiddling is the best case scenario. As bad as it is for the company that made your EV to change how it works whenever they feel like picking your pocket, that's infinitely preferable to the manufacturer going bankrupt and bricking your car.

That's what just happened to owners of Fisker EVs, cars that cost $40-70k. Cars are long-term purchases. An EV should last 12-20 years, or even longer if you pay to swap the battery pack. Fisker was founded in 2016 and shipped its first Ocean SUV in 2023. The company is now bankrupt:

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker called its vehicles "software-based cars" and they weren't kidding. Without continuous software updates and server access, those Fisker Ocean SUVs are turning into bricks. What's more, the company designed the car from the ground up to make any kind of independent service and support into a felony, by wrapping the whole thing in overlapping layers of IP. That means that no one can step in with a module that jailbreaks the Fisker and drops in an alternative firmware that will keep the fleet rolling.

This is the third EV risk – not just finance, not just charger infrastructure, but the possibility that any whizzy, cool new EV company will go bust and brick your $70k cleantech investment, irreversibly transforming your car into 5,500 lb worth of e-waste.

This confers a huge advantage onto the big automakers like VW, Kia, Ford, etc. Tesla gets a pass, too, because it achieved critical mass before people started to wise up to the risk of twiddling and bricking. If you're making a serious investment in a product you expect to use for 20 years, are you really gonna buy it from a two-year old startup with six months' capital in the bank?

The incumbency advantage here means that the big automakers won't have any reason to sink a lot of money into R&D, because they won't have to worry about hungry startups with cool new ideas eating their lunches. They can maintain the cozy cartel that has seen cars stagnate for decades, with the majority of "innovation" taking the form of shitty, extractive and ill-starred ideas like touchscreen controls and an accelerator pedal that you have to rent by the month:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

Put that way, it's clear that this isn't an EV problem, it's a cleantech problem. Cleantech has all the problems of EVs: it requires a large capital expenditure, it will be "smart," and it is expected to last for decades. That's rooftop solar, heat-pumps, smart thermostat sensor arrays, and home storage batteries.

And just as with EVs, policymakers have focused on infrastructure and affordability without paying any attention to the enshittification risks. Your rooftop solar will likely be controlled via a Solaredge box – a terrible technology that stops working if it can't reach the internet for a protracted period (that's right, your home solar stops working if the grid fails!).

I found this out the hard way during the covid lockdowns, when Solaredge terminated its 3G cellular contract and notified me that I would have to replace the modem in my system or it would stop working. This was at the height of the supply-chain crisis and there was a long waiting list for any replacement modems, with wifi cards (that used your home internet rather than a cellular connection) completely sold out for most of a year.

There are good reasons to connect rooftop solar arrays to the internet – it's not just so that Solaredge can enshittify my service. Solar arrays that coordinate with the grid can make it much easier and safer to manage a grid that was designed for centralized power production and is being retrofitted for distributed generation, one roof at a time.

But when the imperatives of extraction and efficiency go to war, extraction always wins. After all, the Solaredge system is already in place and solar installers are largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the reasons that a homeowner might want to directly control and monitor their system via local controls that don't roundtrip through the cloud.

Somewhere in the hindbrain of any prospective solar purchaser is the experience with bricked and enshittified "smart" gadgets, and the knowledge that anything they buy from a cool startup with lots of great ideas for improving production, monitoring, and/or costs poses the risk of having your 20 year investment bricked after just a few years – and, thanks to the extractive imperative, no one will be able to step in and restore your ex-solar array to good working order.

I make the majority of my living from books, which means that my pay is very "lumpy" – I get large sums when I publish a book and very little in between. For many years, I've used these payments to make big purchases, rather than financing them over long periods where I can't predict my income. We've used my book payments to put in solar, then an induction stove, then a battery. We used one to buy out the lease on our EV. And just a month ago, we used the money from my upcoming Enshittification book to put in a heat pump (with enough left over to pay for a pair of long-overdue cataract surgeries, scheduled for the fall).

When we started shopping for heat pumps, it was clear that this was a very exciting sector. First of all, heat pumps are kind of magic, so efficient and effective it's almost surreal. But beyond the basic tech – which has been around since the late 1940s – there is a vast ferment of cool digital features coming from exciting and innovative startups.

By nature, I'm the kid of person who likes these digital features. I started out as a computer programmer, and while I haven't written production code since the previous millennium, I've been in and around the tech industry for my whole adult life. But when it came time to buy a heat-pump – an investment that I expected to last for 20 years or more – there was no way I was going to buy one of these cool new digitally enhanced pumps, no matter how much the reviewers loved them. Sure, they'd work well, but it's precisely because I'm so knowledgeable about high tech that I could see that they would fail very, very badly.

You may think EVs are bullshit, and they are – though there will always be room for some personal vehicles, and it's better for people in transit deserts to drive EVs than gas-guzzlers. You may think rooftop solar is a dead-end and be all-in on utility scale solar (I think we need both, especially given the grid-disrupting extreme climate events on our horizon). But there's still a wide range of cleantech – induction tops, heat pumps, smart thermostats – that are capital intensive, have a long duty cycle, and have good reasons to be digitized and networked.

Take home storage batteries: your utility can push its rate card to your battery every time they change their prices, and your battery can use that information to decide when to let your house tap into the grid, and when to switch over to powering your home with the solar you've stored up during the day. This is a very old and proven pattern in tech: the old Fidonet BBS network used a version of this, with each BBS timing its calls to other nodes to coincide with the cheapest long-distance rates, so that messages for distant systems could be passed on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

Cleantech is a very dynamic sector, even if its triumphs are largely unheralded. There's a quiet revolution underway in generation, storage and transmission of renewable power, and a complimentary revolution in power-consumption in vehicles and homes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

But cleantech is too important to leave to the incumbents, who are addicted to enshittification and planned obsolescence. These giant, financialized firms lack the discipline and culture to make products that have the features – and cost savings – to make them appealing to the very wide range of buyers who must transition as soon as possible, for the sake of the very planet.

It's not enough for our policymakers to focus on financing and infrastructure barriers to cleantech adoption. We also need a policy-level response to enshittification.

Ideally, every cleantech device would be designed so that it was impossible to enshittify – which would also make it impossible to brick:

Based on free software (best), or with source code escrowed with a trustee who must release the code if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

All patents in a royalty-free patent-pool (best); or in a trust that will release them into a royalty-free pool if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

No parts-pairing or other DRM permitted (best); or with parts-pairing utilities available to all parties on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best);

All diagnostic and error codes in the public domain, with all codes in the clear within the device (best); or with decoding utilities available on demand to all comers on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best).

There's an obvious business objection to this: it will reduce investment in innovative cleantech because investors will perceive these restrictions as limits on the expected profits of their portfolio companies. It's true: these measures are designed to prevent rent-extraction and other enshittificatory practices by cleantech companies, and to the extent that investors are counting on enshittification rents, this might prevent them from investing.

But that has to be balanced against the way that a general prohibition on enshittificatory practices will inspire consumer confidence in innovative and novel cleantech products, because buyers will know that their investments will be protected over the whole expected lifespan of the product, even if the startup goes bust (nearly every startup goes bust). These measures mean that a company with a cool product will have a much larger customer-base to sell to. Those additional sales more than offset the loss of expected revenue from cheating and screwing your customers by twiddling them to death.

There's also an obvious legal objection to this: creating these policies will require a huge amount of action from Congress and the executive branch, a whole whack of new rules and laws to make them happen, and each will attract court-challenges.

That's also true, though it shouldn't stop us from trying to get legal reforms. As a matter of public policy, it's terrible and fucked up that companies can enshittify the things we buy and leave us with no remedy.

However, we don't have to wait for legal reform to make this work. We can take a shortcut with procurement – the things governments buy with public money. The feds, the states and localities buy a lot of cleantech: for public facilities, for public housing, for public use. Prudent public policy dictates that governments should refuse to buy any tech unless it is designed to be enshittification-resistant.

This is an old and honorable tradition in policymaking. Lincoln insisted that the rifles he bought for the Union Army come with interoperable tooling and ammo, for obvious reasons. No one wants to be the Commander in Chief who shows up on the battlefield and says, "Sorry, boys, war's postponed, our sole supplier decided to stop making ammunition."

By creating a market for enshittification-proof cleantech, governments can ensure that the public always has the option of buying an EV that can't be bricked even if the maker goes bust, a heat-pump whose digital features can be replaced or maintained by a third party of your choosing, a solar controller that coordinates with the grid in ways that serve their owners – not the manufacturers' shareholders.

We're going to have to change a lot to survive the coming years. Sure, there's a lot of scary ways that things can go wrong, but there's plenty about our world that should change, and plenty of ways those changes could be for the better. It's not enough for policymakers to focus on ensuring that we can afford to buy whatever badly thought-through, extractive tech the biggest companies want to foist on us – we also need a focus on making cleantech fit for purpose, truly smart, reliable and resilient.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

Image: 臺灣古寫真上色 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raid_on_Kagi_City_1945.jpg

Grendelkhan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_mounted_solar_panels.gk.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[practicestaff12]

🚀 Unlock Efficiency: How to Save Time While Growing The Practice! (Good Tips )| @StafflessPractic

Watch video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGL7DTdRcI

The key to effective time management is a combination of strategic planning, leveraging technology, and fostering a culture of efficiency within your practice. Continuously assess and refine your processes to adapt to the changing needs of your growing practice. Growing a practice, whether it's a business, medical practice, or any other professional service, requires effective time management and strategic planning.

👍 Don't forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more insightful content!