I’ve been blessed with several wonderful mentors in my professional life, including legendary tax expert, author and instructor, Sid Kess, and retired CCH Editorial Vice-President and former boss, Jim Rooney. But the person who has made the greatest impression on me is a 79-year old plumber from South Chicago. A child of the Great Depression and an orphan by the time he was age 11, this self-made man overcame tremendous obstacles in his life to become a master plumber, a father of six children, and a great role model for me and countless other people. This special person is my Dad, John Gornick. Read further >

Recently I made a post about creating meaningful user experiences in a multichannel world. That post talked about the issues of leveraging a single content asset over a variety of devices. I am an early adopter of mobile devices and my personal collection has expanded to include an iPad, iPhone, and Kindle Fire for personal use and a Blackberry for business use. I use Blackberry, by the way, only for email and phone calls. The recent addition of the Kindle Fire has made me look at the issue of multichannel user experience in greater depth. Here are specific examples of the issues: Read further >

I was one of the many participants at the Clinical Solutions Innovation Lab webinar, held on November 22. In his last post, Howard Strasberg has already given a great overview about the project and the solution. I would like to review two of the various remarkable aspects I saw in that presentation. Read further >

Financing or refinancing a mortgage in the United States is a paper-intensive process, especially when it comes to borrower disclosures. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services  has made the process “as easy as pushing a button” for its customers. By working directly with mortgage lenders Financial Services developed Disclosure Manager, a complete solution that automates the initial disclosure process from generation of compliance document packages and secure electronic document delivery to borrowers, to outsourced print and paper fulfillment. Read further >

I just sat through a presentation of a practice management software application that transformed the way people worked and functioned. Innovation according to Wikipedia is the ”creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society.” It is interesting to note that innovation differs from invention where as the former is relating to use of a new idea or method and latter is the creation of the idea. Read further >

I assume you have heard about Flipboard, and bet that if you own an iPad you may be a Flipboard user just like me. For those not familiar with Flipboard, think of it as your very own personal social magazine. The Flipboard app pulls information from the web, both from news sources and from your friends pages and services, like Facebook and Twitter. All this information is presented automatically in an appealing magazine-like format. Needless to say the content of your magazine is updated continuously.

Personal settings travel with you
Recently Flipboard released a new version and introduced Flipboard Accounts. I believe this is a big deal in those environments and households where not every single individual has its own iPad. With Flipboard accounts you can share an iPad but still have your own very personal Flipboard magazine. As the company states; “With Accounts, your reading preferences stay with you no matter how you access Flipboard. For example, families and friends who share an iPad can log into Flipboard and find their favorite sections.” Read further >

Some days ago I stumbled upon some thoughts on key trends in the publishing and information services industry and tried to reduce them to six main points. In the overview below you can see how I distilled them. Read further >

While big breakthroughs and transformative innovations with new products and services are always hoped for, incremental improvements and enhancements implemented over time do add up and can make a big difference in product/service quality, sales success, increased retention, and customer loyalty. Read further >

When I started preparing this post, just like with any of the other posts, I told myself not to forget to add tags to support findability and SEO. So, my attention was directed to the tagging systems and their usage. I would like to share with you some thoughts on this topic. Read further >