Well, I suppose it’s fitting that our final week in Fort Lauderdale has been interrupted by a tropical storm/hurricane! Ernesto is the latest annoyance (luckily, it’s looking like it will just be an annoyance, and nothing worse). We managed to ship our server out of Florida ahead of the storm, and over the next few days we’ll gradually get our operations back up and running in Dallas.
There has been some interesting industry news in the past few days. Google has announced an initial effort at offering a business software suite to compete with Microsoft Office. It only offers simple things like email, calendar, and chat so far, but I imagine they will offer other things (like a spreadsheet) before too long. (How about a true competitor to MS Access? That’s one thing I’d like to see….) Ebay and Google have announced a new partnership. And the New York Times has bought Baseline, a subscription database covering the entertainment industry.
A recent issue of American Libraries gave our friends at Lerner & Lerner a terrible review for their Real-Life Math title. This is the same book that got glowing reviews from other critics. It just goes to show that different readers (particularly critics) see different things, although rarely have I seen such wildly divergent opinions on the same book. For my part, the book seems like a valiant effort, and I hope we can work with Lerner & Lerner again soon. They’re good people who do good work.
As some of our writers and editors may know by now, Schlager Group is in the midst of relocating our offices from Fort Lauderdale to Dallas. In fact, I have just moved here myself, and am getting re-acquainted with the summer heat after an absence of about 20 years. (I went to college in Dallas.) Temps here have been around the 100 degree mark all of August, although it’s not as humid as in South Florida and thus doesn’t really feel any worse. The main office move will happen between about Sept. 1 and Sept. 8, so please bear with us through that period.
Some may wonder why we are moving the business again after only two years in Florida. Certainly, it’s not ideal to be moving so quickly (or at all). And in retrospect, if I had to do it over, we would never have made the pit stop in Florida. Of course, in the spring of 2004 we had know way of knowing that South Florida was on the verge of two consecutive, historic hurricane seasons. With experts now predicting that this trend will likely continue for another 10-20 years, and having learned some painful lessons about the woefully inadequate Florida power infrastrucure, we decided to get out while we could. Once the move is complete, we’ll settle back in and get back to work on our many projects for our various publishing partners–not to mention a few new projects of our own. One benefit of the move will be a new telephone system that allows our suppliers and customers to call one number to reach any Schlager Group employee, regardless of their location. Since we now have two employees who work from home full time, and will soon find ourselves spread out over three states, this will be a good thing.
Stay tuned for complete information on our new address, phone and fax numbers, and so forth. And thanks for your patience!
I’ve re-inserted a link to the Berkshire blog, as they have corrected their family of websites after being hacked last weekend. Interestingly, the same weekend the Thomson Gale site was also hacked–although I only found one page that was affected. Frightening for a small-business owner like me, but I’ve talked with John Wilson, our computer consultant, about ways to protect us from hacking. There is never any sure way to protect one’s site, of course, but John has given us some helpful hints about how to guard against as many attacks as possible.