Category Archives: Technology

Converting MS Money to Quicken – Intuit Falls Down

The short version: Quicken says it can convert MS Money files to Quicken, but it can’t. The Quicken support team can’t help you.

The long version: Like many post-college types, I had problems keeping track of my finances. I found that Quicken really helped. I think I started in 1998. I’ve tracked everything since then – cash, checking, credit cards, investments, stock options, everything. It helped me see where I was spending. I used that information to get out of debt and save money. A few years ago I bought a new computer and MS Money came free, so I gave it a try instead of Quicken. MS Money wasn’t as good. I struggled sometimes to get transactions recorded the way I wanted, the reports weren’t as good, reconciling monthly statements was harder. I was lazy and didn’t bother buying Quicken; I struggled along with MS Money for a few years.

Last month I bought a new computer and was ready to switch back. I bought Quicken at the same time as the computer. Before I bought Quicken, I made sure I could convert my files. Quicken’s FAQ assured me that I could. It got to be bill time, so I copied my MS Money data to the new computer, opened Quicken up, and told Quicken to open my files. It turned out to be not that easy. Quicken can’t actually read the MS Money files. When you search the help, you find a utility that needs to be installed. And, the computer has to have both Quicken and MS Money on the same computer. I crossed my fingers and hoped that it didn’t really need MS Money, only Quicken. I installed the converter utility and ran it. After a couple seconds, it threw an error – “CreateQWPAManager could not be found in qwutil.dll”. I sighed.

So, I installed Quicken on the old computer (Windows XP, the new one is Vista). I downloaded and installed the converter. I carefully followed every step in the instructions. I ran the converter. Same problem – “CreateQWPAManager could not be found in qwutil.dll”.

I did a google search. I found other people with the same problem, but no solution.

failed chatI opened a chat with Intuit chat. I typed in all of the error codes and information and opened the ticket. 30 seconds later, the guy disconnected without saying anything other than “Hi dan.”

chat twoI opened a second chat. I typed in all of the error codes and information and opened the ticket. I walked through the problem with the support person. The support guy gave such gems as “The issue is because of the critical configuration related,” whatever that means. The end result is that Intuit wants me to export each of my accounts, one by one, and import them into Quicken. I have 55 account! (Yeah, I know I told the support person 60. I’m a dirty person. I still don’t want to do 55 exports, 55 imports, and the manual clean up of each account, 55 times.)

I know this problem exists on multiple operating systems; I can prove it to you. I know that other people are seeing the problem. I guess I’m idly curious whether this converter works at all – I’ve got at least 6 data points that it doesn’t, and no sucessful data points outside of the Intuit site. (I even found this post – but note that the person admits they haven’t tried it themselves!). Quicken’s marketing team is way out in front of what it’s tech and support teams can deliver.

Bottom line? I’m unhappy. MS Money doesn’t do what I want. Quicken doesn’t do what I want. My bank keeps sending me those paper ledger books with my checks – maybe I should use them?

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

I’m pretty far from my physics classes, but I still track the “science news” here and there.  Garrett Lisi has written a paper that, on the face of it, links the “Standard Model” of the universe with gravity.  If the paper turns out to be right, (and the jury is still out), that would fill a huge gap in our understanding of the universe.

The paper itself made my head hurt by the time I got to page 4.  But someone pointed me to this explanation of E8 geometry that cleared quite a bit up for me.

iPhone as iBrick

I never actually posted about it, but I got an iPhone. I didn’t wait in line or anything crazy like that, but the Saturday after the launch I picked one up at the Cambridgeside Galleria.

I’ve really liked it. The UI is very slick. The screen is gorgeous. Feature-wise, it’s been very nice to have phone, email, browsing, mapping, and my music with me at all times. Of course, it hasn’t been perfect. Sometimes data is a bit slow, I can’t type quite as fast as I’d like, stuff like that. But the good things far outweigh the bad. It’s been great.

Saturday night, the phone suddenly stopped working. All it would do was tell me to connect to iTunes. I was traveling and didn’t have internet at the hotel. When I got back on Sunday, iTunes didn’t help. I’d start a restore on my phone and the restore would fail. I found a discussion on the Apple boards that says activation was down, so I decided to wait. Monday I still couldn’t restore. I was getting near 2 days with an expensive paperweight, and I went to the Apple store. They tried the same things I did, and then gave me a new phone. I took it home, activated it, restored it, and I was back in action.

I didn’t expect my iPhone experience to be painless. It is too new of a product. Apple did the right thing, and I’m still a happy customer. I like my gadget.

The Perilous Product Launch (Or, How Your Employees Might Sabotage the Launch)

Fenway Park’s concession stands were sporting a new technological gadget when they opened this year. Every cash register was fitted with a MasterCard PayPass reader. It’s like the Mobil Speedpass. Just wave your credit card (or key chain fob) near the reader, and the transaction is done. For transactions under $25 (like buying a pretzel and a couple beers) there is no signature required. It looked like a great idea to me; I don’t want to wait in line at Fenway, I want to watch the game. A faster transaction should mean a shorter line.
paypass.JPG

A couple weeks ago I was at a game and I noticed that the readers were hidden behind the cash register, face down. I asked the guy pouring the beers if the system was down.

“No, we just hate the things. We get screwed on tips when people use them.”

MasterCard presumably spent a lot of money studying the market and deciding where to launch it. If you look at the list of participating banks, it’s very focused on ballparks. MasterCard is going to look at the data from Fenway Park, and they’re going to be disappointed. There will be fewer users. They may even decide to kill the product because people didn’t use it.

The unresolved question, though, will be whether the problem is apathetic consumers or poor design. MasterCard has to know that it needs the vendors on its side, or at least not as an active enemy. By failing to make tips easy, MasterCard earned the enmity of the vendors while simultaneously shrinking the average transaction size. But do they even know it? Do they see the sales data, kill the project, and call it a day? Or do they have the savvy to survey vendors anonymously?

As a part of my job I collect and analyze data about what new products are working and which ones aren’t. Things like this make me break out in hives.

Why HP Bought Tabblo

The New York Times ran an article today about how HP’s printing group is working on making it easier to print from the web.

I’ve had many friends ask me about the details of HP buying Tabblo.  I’ve given a number of different cagey, redacted responses because I didn’t know how much was public and how much was confidential.  I’ll say it now: most of what I know is in that NYT article.  If you want to know why Tabblo got bought, just read it online.

It’s been interesting to see the reaction to the article.  We’ve had several emails come into the customer service queue that say “I saw in the Times that you make it easy to print pages on the web.  Can you help me do that?”  The answer we give is “Not today.  But just wait.”

I Can Spend Hours On This

The web provides such powerful ways to display data, and I’m delighted when people take advantage of this.  It looks like this one came out almost a year ago, but it’s new to me – and maybe new to you.

Gapminder let’s you look at various statistics about countries.  It’s incredibly rich.  Press play and you are simultaneously looking at how each country fares in two statistical measurements, the relative population size, the geographical region – as they vary over time!  Make sure you click on the axes and see the different statistics you can see, click a couple countries for highlighting, and more – the 1-minute demo you get from the help link shows a number of features.

And once you get over the data display, you can even learn from the data.

ITAC Milestone

On Thursday the Arlington Information Technology Advisory Committee reached a significant milestone. We’ve been working for more than a year on a “technology needs assessment.” We interviewed department heads, town employees, and citizens, wrote reports, collated data, and synthesized common themes. Without claiming that it’s finished, we reached a point where we could share the work we did so far and make sure we were on track. So, on Thursday, we discussed the results in a meeting of the town’s department heads.

Here’s a quick rundown on the process:

  • We asked people what they wanted in technology and what they already do with technology. We didn’t stop there; we also looked at what people actually do and worked to find things that they might not have thought of.
    • We looked at information. What information do they store? What do they share internally? With other departments? With citizens/customers? With the state/federal government?
    • We asked about applications and technology currently in use.
    • We collected copies of forms used.
    • We asked about disaster planning? Fire? Power outage?
    • We asked about attitudes towards technology.
  • Based on these interviews, we wrote up a needs assessment for each department.
  • At this point, we were able to identify some common themese with confidence. We outlined the categories, and then went back through each needs assessment. We classified the various deparment activities into one of the categories.
  • We looked at the resulting categories and department activities. You can see them here. The categories are across the top, the departments are listed down the left, and the individual activities are bulleted. Some of them need more explanation. If you look at the columns, you can see some commonalities. For instance, many departments collect small amounts of cash, and most log the information by hand – that might be a place for the town to add technology and improve efficiency.
  • We outlined several areas where the town could invest that would help several departments at once. I’m going to list the bullets here, and I’m looking for the longer explanation.
    • Training
      • Utilizing existing software
      • ITAC has identified a need from all departments for more training, especially in the software packages that are already installed throughout the town and school.
    • Support
      • Software
      • Hardware
      • ITAC has identified a need to provide more support to all departments both on software issues and hardware.
    • Cross-departmental Business Analysis
      • ITAC has identified a need for all departments to work regularly with each other and the Information Technology Department through a collaborative process on identifying common technology needs.
    • Data and Applications sharing
      • Based on address
      • Later based on people
      • ITAC has identified a need for a common depository of information that each department can use in unique ways. An example of this is a shared GIS system.
    • Information Technology Department
      • Business analysis
      • Requirements gathering
      • Synergies – departmental
      • Data and application sharing
      • Internal customer service
      • Technology planning (budgetary)
    • Continuity of Operations
      • ITAC has identified a need to improve the Information Technology Department in the above areas.
    • Empowerment (culture change)
      • ITAC has identified a need for the employees to participate in the changes that, through technology, will improve the work product.
    • Small monetary transactions (automation)
      • ITAC has identified that several departments deal with small monetary transactions which could and should be reviewed for automation.
    • Customer Service Response
      • ITAC has identified the need to enhance our customer (internal and external) service response through technology.
    • Hardware
      • ITAC has identified the need to constantly review the hardware available to the employees to insure that it can perform the functions that we require of them.
    • Records Management
      • ITAC has identified the need to insure that our records comply with the state law and that every record is also in an electronic version for back-up and retrieval.

We shared all of this with the department heads. We got good feedback in return. They showed us a few places where we had missed things. We quizzed them on what they perceived as the priorities. I think our only notable failure was that we’d managed to omit several of the library functions (I’ve got the updated information and will put it on the grid shortly). Overall, the meeting was a successful exchange of ideas.

Most of this needs assessment and analysis will find its way into the report to Town Meeting. It will also be used to help inform the to-be-hired town information officer. I also intend to make it a part of the budget process for ’08 and going forward.

I think at our next meeting we’ll review what we learned with the department heads. Then I think we’ll start fleshing out how to meet the highest-priority needs that the process has identified.

I have two disappointments. The first, as always, is speed. I wish we were moving faster. Some progress is better than no progress, of course, and we’re definitely making progress. The second disappointment is that some departments did not attend the meeting. There are some offices in town that desperately need technology updates, and they were the ones least likely to attend. I hope that they will notice the improvements as they are implemented and get involved.

Updated 1/30 with detail on the draft priorities