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Dynamic Development

Archive for November, 2009

Making benefits distribution easier

Monday, November 30th, 2009

“Clarion care helps organizations lower health care costs by making administration and distribution of consumer directed health benefits simple. “

It is amazing what one sentence can do to guide a vision. It is true that we are having a health insurance\health care crisis in this country. Premiums are going up 10% a year, it is the fastest growing line item in the vast majority of businesses budgets, and there is this intense feeling that we are all getting less while still having to pay for more; this angst is where the dream of Clarion Care came from. While WebOnyx is a software and application development team we felt that there was a market opportunity in making it easier for corporations to educate their employees and offer them consumer directed health care plans such as a health savings account coupled with a high deductible health plan.

Making Consumer Directed Health Plans Easier

Making Consumer Directed Health Plans Easier

It really is amazing the savings that can be had with a health savings account, by our calculations a company with 150 employees who pays $9,000 a year per employee could save over a half a million dollars by just giving $5,000 a year tax free to their employees and letting them find their own high deductible health insurance. The $5,000 can be used to cover the deductible so the employee has their deductible covered, and the insurance it’self is not that much more then the employee portion that they currently pay for employer sponsored health care.

Soon companies will no longer be trying to offer more and more expensive insurance, they will attract new talent by stating how much money they are willing to put in to a health savings account for new hires. And Clarion Care will be here to help educate employees and make the administration and sign up of those accounts simple and easy. How? Because we make great software that is easy to use and that the end user finds valuable.

Seattle Software Company

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

WebOnyx is proud to be a Seattle software company. Seattle has some of the best entrepreneurs and idea people in all the world living under our cloudy skies. According to a 2007 report from the Milken Institute Seattle is the second best place to be a high-tech company. Having been in business for a while WebOnyx can second that opinion as we have had the pleasure to work with some of Seattle’s best and brightest individual and corporate entrepreneurs on their high tech web-based software ventures. Companies like knowberry and produxs who are always on the cutting edge of great ideas. Corporate clients like AT&T who are leveraging social knowledge management tools to create a better way of communicating and storing information. These are just a taste of what Seattle has to offer, and being a proud Seattle software company we cannot wait to find more people with great ideas.

The great thing about WebOnyx, if I may toot our own horn for a moment, is in the way we help these visionary customers. To be a successful software company in Seattle you not only need to understand your client and be able to translate their dreams and vision into code, but you need to partner with them, really understand what their end goal is for the custom web application so that you can suggest different, or better ways to accomplish their goals. Being a partner means that you are not just writing code and kicking it back to the client, but you are looking at the desired goal and asking the appropriate questions to make sure that the client is going to receive maximum value in their investment. Because there are so many great high tech thinkers in Seattle a software company like WebOnyx needs to offer more then just being a code junkie, they need experience in how users interact with a program, what has worked in the past, and even how to market their software if needed- all things that we do, and do well.

Maybe it is all the rain that keeps us in doors more then we should be, maybe it is the inspiration from our beautiful surroundings, maybe it is just in our northwest DNA, but with out a doubt Seattle is one of the hot beds for great technological ideas in the United States, and that is why WebOnyx is proud to Seattle Software Company

The New Guy

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Hi my name is Damian Gibbs. I am the new ‘Intern’ here at WebOnyx and have been tasked with, well, doing things that others do not have time to do. One of those things is to use this blog to share what we do here at WebOnyx. To give updates on what kind of new products and services we are providing; as well as the occasional insight on how it is to work for a custom web application company in Seattle Wa.

I am still getting up to speed on all of the things that are going on in the office, but I do know that welcoming a new member into a team of people is not always the easiest thing to do. So I must say that as the newest member in the office that the crew here at W/O has done a fantastic job of bringing me on board, and showing me their ropes. I will admit that it was a little easier to be brought on board and up to speed because I have known two of the other team members for quite a few years, but even if I had not known them there are a few things that all companies can do to increase the comfort of bringing new people on board any team or company.

  1. Set up a workstation and an area for them to work in before they get there. ie: Pens, paper, printer connections, logins etc…
  2. Even if you don’t know exactly what the new employee is going to do make sure that you have a couple days worth of ‘easier’ tasks for them so that they have a reason to explore the systems that you have set up.
  3. Walk them around and introduce them to everyone.
  4. Illicit feedback after the first week. Encourage their thoughts on the way that you do things, they may have questions on process, or even come up with a way of doing something better.
  5. Make sure that they know who to contact when they have problems
  6. Take them out for a beer at the end of the week (ya hear that boss! ha!)

Anyways I am excited to be part of WebOnyx and spreading the word on what we do and how we do it.

KnowBerry: Location Based Event Notification

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

A project we’ve been working on for a while called KnowBerry is now live and at a usable state.  The hosted application offers a way of discovering emergency and social events based on a person’s location.  Users are able to subscribe to an interesting group and get custom notifications for events, or they may create their own groups and invite friends and family to view.  Also, a new feature to the site is an RSS reader that automatically creates location based events for feed items (This only works for feeds that include location data).

Applications of KnowBerry range from receiving immediate emergency notifications to discovering social clubs and meet-up groups in the area. Many more uses are being thought up every day!

Some of the technologies used include Google Maps APIs, a custom site scraper to grab emergency and traffic events, and Amazon’s web services for notification and automatic event creation queuing.

There are many new features planned for the near future, so I encourage you to check it out and sign up for free at KnowBerry.com.

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