Am I the last in the world to know about this? What a great tool!  How often do you stare at a run control you are about to set up, or a configuration screen, knowing you are about to devote an hour or more of your time to creating new entries?  Or, your on row 86 of 230 repetitious tasks and your head is beginning to do the ‘bob and nod’.  Enter iMacros (http://wiki.imacros.net/Community_Editions), a free browser add-on that automates almost any task and away you go!

My current client adds 8-10 departments per month, and 5-10 projects per day into their PeopleSoft system.  Now the superuser has set up iMacros for each and runs them from an excel workbook as the additions come in.  She sits back reads her magazine while new data is loaded.  For an end-user, who doesn’t want to understand the intricacies of Excel-to-CI, this can be a simple end around for many monotonous tasks.

For testing it can take on larger meaning, as we develop scripting to load test data, and set up new configuration.  And it’s so easy to learn.

But we decide what is right, and what is an illusion.

What an education it is to begin something new.  I have few qualifications in starting web sites, or modifying them, or actually anything to do with them.  Way back in the 80’s, I had done some HTML work for a couple of small companies, but that was a while ago.  I didn’t even know that the WSYWIG software was now classified as CMS.

I bought a domain name that matched what I thought my company should be called.  I’ve since learned thats not the smartest path, but I’m running with it for now.  Oh and did I mention, I didn’t put the web site at the ‘.com’ level and so I’ve had to figure out how to move it.

Let’s see, once the site was up, there was the email to figure out.  It’s nothing like the slick Outlook email I’m used to, nor even cool like Gmail.  It’s quite usable, but because I’m not accustomed to it, I’m still not using it on a regular basis.

All this stuff should be categorized somehow and put into a tutorial of sorts.  So many mistakes have been made, yet the site is there and I can post to it and make changes and that’s pretty special.  Now if I can just get someone to view it, I’d be one step closer to making some money.

That’ll be my next lesson to learn.

Ok – I work constantly, so it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve gotten anything done.  I’ve crashed the site once, reinstalled the database 3 times, and played with all types of tools I don’t understand.  And I haven’t made a dime.  Actually, there’s been no attempt yet to make a buck, because I’m not sure what I’m even doing.

What constructive steps have I taken?

1) I named my site generically so that I’m not stuck in any particular direction yet.

2) A tag-line was created to keep me directionally oriented. 

3) Some Plugins were added to keep the site free of spam and more focused on the users who will be coming here in the future.

Is this ready for primetime – not a chance.  I’m not handing out the link yet, but it looks a bit better than it did.

Here’s to your future!!