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  <title>Topaz Web Solutions Blog - Home</title>
  <id>tag:blog.topazws.com,2007:mephisto/</id>
  <generator version="0.7.3" uri="http://mephistoblog.com">Mephisto Noh-Varr</generator>
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  <updated>2007-09-25T02:46:06Z</updated>
  <entry xml:base="http://blog.topazws.com/">
    <author>
      <name>mzslater</name>
    </author>
    <id>tag:blog.topazws.com,2007-09-25:10355</id>
    <published>2007-09-25T02:42:00Z</published>
    <updated>2007-09-25T02:46:06Z</updated>
    <category term="accreditationhelper"/>
    <link href="http://blog.topazws.com/2007/9/25/accreditation-helper-debuts" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <title>Accreditation Helper debuts</title>
<content type="html">
            &lt;p&gt;For the past several months, the majority of my time has gone into a web application for a startup called &lt;a href='http://www.accreditationhelper.com'&gt;Accreditation Helper&lt;/a&gt;. The marketing site went live today, and next week the product will be shown publicly for the first time at the Medtrade show in Orlando.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;This web app forms the heart of the business for Accreditation Helper, which assists home medical equipment companies in getting accredited. The application manages a master set of policies, forms, tasks, and resources, which are customized by each client.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;From a business perspective, what I find interesting about this application is that it enables the delivery of what is essentially a services business. It allows a handful of centrally-located consultants to deal with hundreds of clients, thanks to the efficiency of having the web application manage all the documents and workflows.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;There&#8217;s a lot of complexity in this application that isn&#8217;t immediately apparent, all in pursuit of user simplicity. For the technically inclined, to give you an idea of the size of the application, there&#8217;s 38 controllers and 42 models.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;See our &lt;a href='http://www.topazws.com/portfolio'&gt;Portfolio&lt;/a&gt; page for more information.&lt;/p&gt;
          </content>  </entry>
  <entry xml:base="http://blog.topazws.com/">
    <author>
      <name>mzslater</name>
    </author>
    <id>tag:blog.topazws.com,2007-08-31:10290</id>
    <published>2007-08-31T04:56:00Z</published>
    <updated>2007-08-31T05:15:11Z</updated>
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    <title>Start of a new blog...</title>
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            &lt;p&gt;I&#8217;ve been blogging for about a year over at &lt;a href='http://www.mslater.com'&gt;www.mslater.com&lt;/a&gt;. That blog ended up being, well, eclectic, as it reflected diverse areas of interest to me. In the interest of making my blogging more reader-focused, I&#8217;m in the process of splitting my blogging up into a few different blogs.&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;p&gt;This blog will focus on my major business activity: developing custom and semi-custom web sites for service businesses using the Ruby on Rails framework. I&#8217;ll have another blog, to be announced shortly, for nitty-gritty technical topics; this one will focus on how the web can deliver much more value for small and medium businesses.&lt;/p&gt;
          </content>  </entry>
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