Make information technology work for you

PRESS DEMOCRAT: At home, how many different ways do you back up your data?

PANTTAJA: Never enough ways. I have a separate hard drive to periodically -- usually weekly -- back up all of my data files: e-mail, documents, financial data such as Quicken, databases, etc.

I will write a DVD of files for an important project every few weeks, and write DVDs perhaps quarterly to archive my email, financial data and other important data. I keep the DVDs in a fireproof safe. My Web site, wikis, and other project data are hosted by a third party -- and is backed up by them.

Online storage services are not required for everyone -- but if you have some significant work products -- even things like financial data (Quicken, TurboTax), it is a great way to make sure you always have a backup. Disk failures happen, fires happen, unwitting mistakes happen.

PRESS DEMOCRAT: As Web 2.0 continues to move into the mainstream, what innovations are happening with data?

PANTTAJA: I am particularly interested in sites that are using the customers to gather and create the data. Geni.com lets users enter their genealogy data. For Geni.com, the creation and sharing of data is its service.

Other sites and services are collecting traffic data from a variety of sources such as sensor data from CalTrans. Traffic data is shared among users of Dash.net's GPS devices.

PRESS DEMOCRAT: Data continues to migrate online -- everything from business transactions to government statistics. What are some good ways to make this information meaningful, such as visualization tools?

PANTTAJA: There are some great visualization tools becoming available, including commercial products, and new offerings such as Many Eyes (http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home) and Swivel (www.swivel.com).

Although a company may not want to make its sales data available, there is other data that may be useful to your customers -- or to partners. You of course have to be careful with privacy and security concerns.

Making data available may make your offering even more sticky -- tying your customers or partners to you more strongly -- as they figure out ways to analyze the data beyond what you have time to offer them.

I think that making data available needs to be a business decision and a privacy decision. There is some data that provides your edge -- and you might not want to share it. And there is sensitive data that belongs to customers and partners, which you may need to protect. But the more data you can share with your customers and partners - the more valuable you become to them.

PRESS DEMOCRAT: Do you use a remote desktop application to access your home computer while on the road?

PANTTAJA: Friday I went to Oakland. My wife was driving. I used my home computer in the car. I almost always have access to my home computer with me -- it is a laptop.

I haven't had a desktop computer in many years. My laptop has my work: email, Microsoft Office applications, of course a browser, and other personal applications such as finances, taxes, and genealogy research -- all the more reason to worry about backups.

PRESS DEMOCRAT: Both you and your wife have blogs (jim.panttaja.com and mary.panttaja.com), what benefit do you get from it and what lessons can you share about maintaining it?

PANTTAJA: Mary has been blogging for quite awhile, and I am new to blogging. They are really journals that may be of interest to others. Both of our postings can be viewed as a bit eclectic. Some of them are related to our business interests (we have written blogs about technologies and companies that we discovered or looked in to), about things we have done or seen, and about our travels (both mental and physical). The benefit is mostly personal -- an excuse to write on a regular basis, a discipline to organize our thoughts.

In terms of advice -- if you are interested -- just do it. You don't have to tell anyone at first. We use Wordpress as the tool to maintain ours, and we have it hosted so we don't have to worry about the everyday issues of the servers.

PRESS DEMOCRAT: You recently bought an iPhone, how well does it function as a business tool?

PANTTAJA: For me it has a number of advantages as a business tool, versus my previous phone, a Treo. Here are a few:

The ability to go through my voice messages in the order I want -- focusing on the key messages first -- is a time saver when coming out of a long meeting or plane trip.

E-mail management is also a time saver. I manage four different e-mail accounts, and I can quickly review and reply to messages on all four accounts. The ability to view standard attachments is very helpful. I still only send short replies to messages from the iPhone -- but that allows me to move things along quickly.

The maps are incredibly helpful. I can click on a contact's address, and see a map, or get directions.

I have to manage calendars with a number of other people. I have my calendar (coordinated with Google Calendars) always handy.

Being able to browse the Internet and do Google searches gives me valuable information -- and I use this several times a day.

PRESS DEMOCRAT: When spending money on technology, how much thought should go into scalability?

PANTTAJA: From the very beginning of a new system (I am architecting one right now), you have to walk a fine line. You have to think about scalability all of the time -- but not obsess on it. Obsession will keep you from getting anything done.

But you can't easily fix scalability later. You have to assume that the business or system will succeed -- how are you going to scale if you get the number of customers, orders, transactions, that you are hoping for? In fact -- how are you going to scale if it goes way beyond that?

In the beginning, you can't build out your systems to support the ultimate in scalability, but the architecture and implementation have to still work -- by adding a small, reasonable number of machines and network capacity.

This interview was conducted via e-mail by Staff Writer Nathan Halverson, who can be reached at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com.