We here at TCG have always known that in IT, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. However getting businesses and individuals to actively consider system management and maintenance can often be a daunting task. It’s easy to forget that computer systems, networks, and software are like any other equipment and require regular maintenance to operate and peek performance and to help avoid costly downtime.

With this in mind, we are considering offering an economic incentive to businesses and individuals to help them keep up this vital regular maintenance. On-going maintenance can often be a complicated and confusing endeavor for both the receiver and provider of services. We have looked at several ideas for ways of providing this service, and have come up with a plan we feel is very cost effective for our clients. Before we implement this plan, we wanted to present it and ask for comments about it. After all, while we feel it’s a good idea, we also feel that our clients should have input in the process.

First, some background. Our rates for service have been he same for many, many, years. We’ve never gone in for complicated billings arrangements. Our fee structure is VERY simple: flat hourly rate, billed in half hour increments, and we don’t bill for time that is not productive. This has held us well all these years, but the higher level of expertise we have now, combined with the higher costs of doing business have conspired to force the issue of a rate increase. Starting January 1, 2010, we will have to raise our service rates. We are currently in negotiation with our sub-contractors and other service providers to keep the increase as low as possible. One of the ideas that came up was to try and “normalize” our business by moving from a “reactive” to a “proactive” model of service. This would allow us to have greater control over our work flow and better budget our resources.

Simply put, under our current “reactive” model, when something breaks, we go and fix it. The danger here is that if too many things break in too many places, we are unable to react in a timely manor. There is also the strange (but very real) fact that things happen all-at-once. We spend several days doing very little, then become inundated with calls.

The Plan:

To promote good system maintenance, and to help avoid costly downtime, we are asking our clients to consider retaining us as professional IT managers. The arrangement is very simple, we ask for a monthly retainer equal to the amount of time it would take to preform normal system management and maintenance. The amount will vary from business to business based on individual needs.

On a scheduled cycle we will perform these normal system management tasks and maintenance as needed. This will not only accomplish the routine tasks, but also give us “hands on” time with the equipment so that we can spot trouble and correct it before it becomes a serious and costly problem.

These normal system management and maintenance services include things like anti-malware, OS updates, software update, physical system cleaning, hard drive integrity testing, backups, extraneous software removal, and system optimization for all IT systems, servers, printers, connected devices and even cell phones.

Our Retained Services Clients will also continue to receive the same hourly rate ($50) and the same “at cost” arrangement on parts for anything they require above and beyond normal system management and maintenance. We will also be providing a 2 hour incident response program that will have one of our specialists at your location within two hours of your call for those times when emergencies arise. As we have in the past, we intend to be very open and giving in regards to our services, so our clients never have to worry about “nickel-and-dime” invoices for things not maintenance related.

In addition to the tasks for normal maintenance, we will offer two additional services to our Retained Services Client, “remote support” and “backups”.

With “remote support” we will be able to asset our clients with many simple questions either over the phone or via remote access to their system. Our Retained Services Clients will have access to our specialists for assistance over the phone or by remote access at no additional charge.

The sad reality is that no matter how much maintenance is given, all things man-made will fail. Unless your data is backed up on a regular basis it will be lost. We want to make sure that your data is backed up regularly both at your location, and in a secure offsite location in the event of fire or flood. We have over the past year created and perfected a means by which your data can be securely and safely stored in both your office and our data center in Cumberland County. While there are many “online” solutions that claim be be able to provide offsite or “cloud” backups, these are limited in space and/or can have high monthly costs. We have always felt that for proper security, data needs to be stored in a location where you as the client can walk-in and be given your data in person, working with people you know and trust.

The Cost:

Starting in January we will be contacting our key clients with details and estimates. Until then we would genuinely like to get feed back from our clients and friends as to this new strategy. We hope that it will lead to lower IT costs and greater peace of mind for our clients, as well as better management of our own resources here at TCG.

I’ll start off by saying that ANY of the current voice recognition systems out there today fall short of perfect (or even usable). I think we as a population have been lead to believe in the Star Trek model. The ideal that we can speak simple directions to a computer, and it will carry out those directions. The reality is that it’s a massive technical challenge for a machine to understand the human voice, but some machines do it better than others.

For the most part I love my iPhone. There are about 5 or 6 nit-picky things that I would like to see, but for a mass market device, it’s almost perfect. On the iPhone 3GS there is an option for Voice Control. The ideal is that you can press a button and “speak” some basic commands to the phone. The commands I think most people use concern making calls. So on the iPhone I can activate Voice Control, say something like “Call Kristen Tabor on Mobile”, and the iPhone will find Kristen Tabor in my address book and call her mobile number. Simple, except when the iPhone doesn’t quite understand me and calls my sister-in-law, Christina Tabor, by mistake. Fortunately, the iPhone does gives me back confirmation that its are calling the wrong number, but leaves me scrambling to terminate the call before I have to explain (again) to my bothers wife why I called her.

Now as I said, no voice recognition system is perfect. But I have used some that are better than the iPhone Voice Control. Not in terms of actually recognizing my voice, but in terms of usability. For a few years Microsoft has had a voice recognition system for their mobile platform called Voice Command, and I used the system when I was a Windows Mobile user. While I can’t really compare the quality of the voice recognition between the systems, I can say that Microsoft’s usability was I feel better than that of Apples. While it took a few more seconds to make a call on Microsoft’s Voice Command, the chances of making a wrong number call were much less.

On Microsoft’s Voice Command, a call was made like this:
1. Press Button to active Voice Command
2. After tone, I would say “Call Kristen Tabor on Mobile”
3. Voice Command would ask “Call Kristen Tabor on Mobile Phone?”
4. I would say “Yes”, and dialing would start.

While the steps 3 and 4 confirmation were simple, they dramatically reduced errors in dialing. Should the phone have miss-interrupted my voice and said “Call Christina Tabor on Mobile Phone?”, I had the option to say “no”, and the phone would prompt me to try again.

Additionally Microsoft’s Voice Command could give me more information than Apple’s Voice Control. Voice Command could tell me my schedule, next appoint, battery and single levels, control the media player, and announce incoming calls. Aside from dialing, Voice Control only has limited iPod operations. Of course Microsoft’s Voice Command was $50 add-on software package where Apple’s Voice Control is free with the iPhone 3GS.

I like the fact Apple is taking some initiative in this area, but having be burned by false dialing and missing the call announce feature, I’m going to hold off using Voice Control until it matures a bit.

Here’s a term that long time computer users may not know, “Presence”. In a multi-tasking operating system like MS Windows or Mac OSX, the active or front most program (know as a “window” on all platforms) is said to have “Presence”. This means that keystrokes and mouse clicks are sent to this program/window.

What has always bugged me about “Presence” is the way the operating system handles it. As a power user I am often apt to start a new program while still typing into another. Even on a fast computer, some applications take several seconds to load. Knowing I will need a slow loading app in the near future, I will go ahead and start that app, then return to complete my pervious task while it loads. The annoying part is when the operating system suddenly gives “Presence” to the new loading application. The REALLY annoying thing happens if my previous app happens to be a word processor or text editor. For a moment when “Presence” shifts I am blinding sending keystrokes into the new application. This has on more than one occasion caused strange things to happen. I’m not quite sure why it happens, but some applications take “Presence” on opening while others do not.

Speed changing applications is one thing that while it annoys me, it’s narrowly my own fault. A very real design flaw is the pop-up error message that takes “Presence”. There have been many times that I have been happily pounding away at my keyboard and see the flash of a dialog box. But because my fingers are outrunning my head, I will hit a key that clears off the message before I have a chance to read it.

I have written in the past about the impending death of store front retail. This new story from the Wall Street Journal, seems to both confirm my prediction, and lay out what I feel is a cleaver transformation for the world’s largest physical retailer, Wal-Mart. (Sorry for the link to Gizmodo rather than directly to the WSJ. It seems Rupert Murdoch doesn’t understand the internet, and puts his content behind a paywall. In any evert, there’s no need to read the WSJ story anyway, other places have covered it quite well)

The plan by Wal-Mart is to fight Amazon by allowing customers to “pick up” their orders via a drive through windows. Someone could order stuff online via wal-mart.com and then pick it up conveniently at their local store.

Of all the ideals I’ve heard in the past two years about saving “traditional” retail stores, this is the first one I feel has real merit. But this ideal is not completely new. Best Buy has had a “buy online, pick up in store” system for a few years. The difference is that Best Buys system required you to enter the store and “check out” much in the same way you would have to do if yo had just gone into the store in the first place.

Best Buy, like most Big Box electronics retailer are located in store fronts that necessitate a small hassle to transfer your purchases from the store to your car. I feel for most shoppers the effort of parking, hiking into the store, and lugging your stuff back to car, completely overshadows the “convenience” of Buying Online. If you are going to go through the effort to enter a store, why not browse while you are there?

Wal-Marts approach of having easily accessible drive up locations for product transfer I think hits the mark. For me, I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. I think despite their “low low prices”, the thought of having to park 1/4 mile from the store, hike in with a sherpa guide, and fight crowds in a 4 to 6 acre orgy of consumerism doesn’t inspire me to part with my dollars. However, the thought of being able to place a long detailed order in a website, pay for it, drive up and have a guy (or gal) in a blue smock load it in my trunk, that is enough for me to want to do business with them. I think the key term here is “long detailed order”. If this scheme is limited to a big things or a “few select items”, then the plan becomes gimmicky will not work. (In much the same way Wal-Mart has a gimmicky iPhone App that only does electronics.)

In some ways this harkens back to the days of local grocery/drygoods/hardware stores. I remember as a kid my grandmother calling up a small store near her house and placing an order. A little while later we would go into that store and the clerk/owner would reach behind the counter and pull out a brown paper bag with the stuff she had asked him for. While I think it would be creepy for Wal-Mart to have that same level of customer intimacy, the thought of picking up a bunch of groceries on the way home and not having to spend 45 minutes walking through the store is worth my dollars.

Well, it’s been some time coming, but we have finally upgraded the telecommunication services around here.

Our Primary phone number for EVERYONE at TCG is now: 800-705-4043

Why the toll free 800 number? — Well, we are still based in Crossville/Cumberland County but our clients come from all over the region. We felt having a toll free number made it easier for our clients not in the Cumberland County local dialing zone to reach us. Of course for our clients in Cumberland County, the toll free number works just the same.

Does the 210-3138 number still work? — Of course, that number has been used to contact TCG (or McKinley Tabor) for over 12 years, we’re not letting that go anytime soon. If you call 210-3138 you may get someone directly, or it will go to the new system.

Faxes? — The Fax machine was invented in 1947 by Alexander Muirhead (though AT&T had a previous detected wire system in 1924), and while Fax is a very old system, we understand that people still use it. To that end our new number, 800-705-4043, will accept faxes just fine. There is no “official” standard for color faxing, so it only does black and white.

Does the New System use an Automated Attendant? — Sadly, yes, the new system does have an “Automated Attendant”. For those unfamiliar with the term, an Automated Attendant is one of those pre-recorded, “Thank you for calling, if you know your parties extension you may dial it now” systems. Because we do not have a full time secretary/receptionist we had to use one of these systems so that our clients could reach the right person here at TCG. Don’t worry, all our “extensions” are given right up front, and the system allowed we to bring back the “Patton Theme” from our first generation system (we lost that when we all got iPhones).

What are some of the technical details? — First, the system is what is called a “Virtual PBX”. People who work in multi-person offices often times will have either a “key system” or a “pbx” for thier internal phone system. PBXs are often used in somewhat larger installations, like hotels or hospitals, while key systems are more familiar to most office workers. A “Virtual PBX” has all of the features normally associated with large PBX systems, but it’s paired down for smaller offices. It’s also the perfect system for “mobile” persons like us. Here at TCG, most of our people do not spend their days lounging around the office. We are out seeing clients. Like most people, we ALL have cell phones, but cell phones are a disconnected thing. They are not part of a cohesive and integrated phone system. Having an integrated phone system allows features like passing a call from one person to another, putting a call of hold, or having all the companies voice mail in one place. For years we struggled with the ideal of having an integrated phone system but still keeping the mobility that cell phones provide. A “Virtual PBX” lets us do just that. When a client calls our 800-705-4043 number, and then dials one of our extensions, that client is then “transfered” to the mobile phone of the person hey are trying to reach. If that call needs to be transfered to someone else, it is possible then to put the call on hold, and then “pass” it to someone else’s mobile phone in TCG. The client never needs to hang up and call someone else. If the person in TCG in not available, then the “Virtual PBX” voice mail takes the message, and not the individual cell phone carrier.

It’s been a great system in testing, and we are looking forward to seeing how well it’s going to work full scale.

I logged into Google Maps this morning, and to my surprise, I saw some new lines. It turns out that Google now has property line data for Crossville. In looking at the maps however I notices that some of the property lines don’t quite jive with the road lines.

But in the end, it’s still good to see more information.