Envision Blog: Todd Kwon-Do

Enough about the economy already!!!

2009-07-17T20:34:00.003-04:00

I opened up CNN today and almost every story was about the economy. I was standing on a dock on the coast of MA and the launch driver was talking about the economy. I had a great dinner tonight, and everyone at the table next to us was talking about the economy.

I have had it with this topic.

I am also really tired of people that ask if I think it’s going to get better.

I sailed back to RI today. The weather Sucked (with a capital S). The waves on the ocean were supposed to be 2-4 feet, but they were worse than expected. On top of it, every half hour or so, a set of 6 – 8 foot waves would come through and throw the boat around. I was seasick, and wanting nothing more than to get through it…. just like most of us are with the economy right now.

The thing I always have to remember in weather like that is that if there is any one constant, it’s that there IS NO constant when it comes to the weather. It WILL change. Guaranteed.

It may get worse, but in the end, it is absolutely going to get better.

Sure enough, when we made the turn into the Sakonnett river the waves died down, the wind was across our beam, and we had a brilliant sail to the mooring.

So if you are seasick and just trying to get through the economic storm, remember that every once in a while you are going to get that set of really large waves that scares the crap out of you. That’s the cycle. It’s nothing to be afraid of. At some point, we will all make the turn into the bay and things will start to get better. Things change. They have to. It’s what things do. Especially the economy.

And when things do get better, I am SO gonna buy a soft ice cream machine for the office :)

What is "green"?

2009-07-15T12:55:00.009-04:00

Are hybrid cars green? Maybe... until we have to dispose of all the highly toxic batteries they contain.

Are fuel cell cars green? Perhaps... unless you wonder where are the hydrogen they use comes from (strip mining coal in case you are curious).

Are offshore windfarms green? Could be... as long as you don't mind the total disruption of marine eco-systems and ocean currents.

Is solar power green? Certainly... of course those darn batteries we have to store the power in are an issue again.

So. What is Green?

Here is a list of Green things I have encountered on my vacation so far:

Seaweed that I pulled out of my shorts after swimming.
Seaweed that I found in the cockpit of the boat after the dog went swimming.
Seaweed that I found in my bunk (presumably put there by my dog)
Seaweed in the sailcover (put there by a seagull I think)
Seaweed on the sushi I had for lunch on Tuesday (I love irony)

This has been the summer of seaweed for me. Is there a way to turn this into renewable energy? No. What does this have to do with the beginning of this post? Nothing. Why did I rant about renewable energy? I needed a segway to talk about seaweed.... get off my back already.

But seriously, we do need to work on some of those renewable energy issues....

“Best Practice” doesn’t make perfect

2009-07-11T18:09:00.013-04:00

I spend a lot more time than you would think, questioning technology. Yes, I am an IT professional...but I don’t necessarily believe in technology for the sake of technology. In fact, even when I do think a technology is important, I question the way that it should be deployed.

Some of the best, and ultimately the most productive, conversations and/or arguments that Envision’s engineers have are about how and when to deploy technology. I take my role as CTO at Envision very seriously, and find myself playing devil's advocate and often forcing my peers to reconsider what they think they know to be "best practice".

I have often felt that one of Envision’s biggest strengths is that we don’t take "recommended deployment guidelines" for granted. In the end, these are always written to serve the vendor’s best interest, and they rarely take into account the interaction between disparate technologies. So, when one technology’s "best practice" runs contrary to another technology’s "best practice" what do you do? Did you even see that coming in the first place?

If you work at Envision, you probably did because we spend a lot of time looking ahead and planning for the future. However, not every tech company is like that. In fact, we have worked on numerous systems whose primary problem was that a prior vendor just drank the coolaid of some manufacturer without thinking much about it.

What has me thinking about this? Mostly it’s that my boat just got a little more "techie".

I generally resist the addition of technology to my boat. Oddly, I am saying that as I sail south with a computer on my lap and a connection to the internet :)

Nonetheless, I don’t have an electronic chart plotter, or GPS integrated electronic navigation software, or even a color GPS display. This boat has always been my oasis from the technological. I still use paper charts, a compass, and a divider to plot my courses; and I have never pushed a button that would raise a sail. However, as I said, my boat did get more techie this season. I have installed a hydraulic autopilot, and I have named it Otto.

That is right...this boat can now drive itself.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like this, but I can now say (without hesitation) that this is the single coolest, most rock’n-ist, ultra-mega-awesomest, bomb-diggity thing I have ever installed on the boat. I just totally love riding along without having to man the wheel every two minutes. I want one of these in my car. In fact when I am old and / or lazy (er), I may even install one on my powerchair.

This is an example of the right technology at the right time.

Long live Otto!!

Your Company's Facebook Page - Now Showing Up on Google Search Results

2009-07-09T11:19:00.009-04:00

Facebook has so much search engine value, that if your company has a Facebook Page, it will most likely show up on the first page of search results for a search of your company. How many people are Googling your company? That many, huh? Well they will now see your Facebook page. Better make sure it's a good one.

A Facebook Page is a public profile that allows you to share your business and products with Facebook users, and now search engine traffic. You will want to make sure that your Facebook Page represents your company or organization in a positive manner. Most importantly, you will want to make sure that someone in your company created it, and is maintaining it!

Creating and maintaining a Facebook Page for companies/organizations is easy for people already using Facebook. Create a Facebook Page for your business here.

Envision the Awesome - 10 Reasons Why We Are The Best Place to Work in RI

2009-06-19T11:50:00.021-04:00

Last evening, Envision attended the 2009 Providence Business News’ ‘Best Places to Work in Rhode Island’ awards ceremony, where we were honored to be recognized in the Small Business category.

Of the 10 companies recognized in this category, we ranked number 4, which is incredibly cool for our first time on this list. Still, regardless of our exact ranking on this list, the employees of Envision Technology Advisors’ know that this is THE best place work in Rhode Island and we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

So why, exactly, are we the best? Since everyone loves a top 10 list, we thought we’d put together some of the reasons why we love where we work. Now, keep in mind that this list is what we think sets us apart and what makes Envision where we all love to work (as you would expect, this list was compiled from suggestions from Envision’s employees), so while it is true that we have an open door policy, are flexible with employees' schedules and empower employees to effect change and make Envision an even better place to be, those are qualities that many of the other companies on this Best Place to Work in RI list boast as well. So what makes Envision stand out?

10 . Random Acts of Lunchness – While we have scheduled lunches for special occasions like many companies, we also randomly enjoy impromptu lunches to reward everyone’s hard work. Nothing like coming to work with a ho-hum lunch of leftovers and being surprised with a smorgasbord of flaming chicken wing goodness!

9. Assorted Officewide Silliness – This is a fun place to be, bottom line, and that oftentimes manifests itself in randomly silly ways. Like when a 5-foot cutout of Brian from Family Guy just appeared in the office one day (and still remains here 2 years later) or the day when we had a ‘very important staff meeting’ suddenly called so we could all see a SNL ‘Taco Town’ video. Envision is fun – and if you don’t think so, we have a drawer full of rubber slingshot-like frogs that we will pelt you with until you recognize!

8. Hot and Cold Liquid Refreshment Stations – Like most offices, we have a coffee machine (which, as of this writing, boasts 16 flavors of joe, 4 varieties of tea and hot cocoa), but for those days where a hot beverage is just not what you crave, we also have a frozen slushie machine! We are a virtual cornucopia of beverage choices!

7. Josh Defreitas

6. Pet Friendly Environment – Our office is routinely shared with our four-legged friends, Nemo and Griffen. We also have sea monkeys, making for a well rounded, pet-friendly workplace.

5. Happy Hours and Summer Fridays – We all work hard, often times putting in late hours or weekend time, so it’s nice to work for a place that recognizes that extra effort and does something to help us relax a bit. Regular happy hours, complete with food, drinks, movies and, at times, massive office-wide video game tournaments, help us remember that no matter how hard we work, we always have time for some fun as a team. And during the summer, we get out 2 hours early on Fridays so we can enjoy the season and start our weekends early.

4. Ceiling Tile Project Gallery – Our Web design team is proud of the work we produce. While we always add recently launched projects to our online gallery, we have also created a program that allows the lead designer on a particular project the chance to create a ‘ceiling tile’ for their design. This allows us a few hours to reflect on a job well done and design something to showcase our work in our office – and the fact that we actually place these in our ceiling as tiles is great, if for no other reason than it is fun to see visitors to our office crane their necks and look up at our overhead project gallery!

3. Todd’s Horn of Information – Ever wish you knew what your boss was thinking? Wish you had a window into his mind? Well, with Todd’s Horn of Information (which is basically a coat hanger bent into a piece of headgear complete with a sticky note that acts somewhat like a thought bubble - patent pending), Envision employees always know exactly what our CEO/CTO has on his mind! Is he in a good mood? Check the Horn of Information. Bad mood – same story, check the Horn. They don’t call us Information Technology for nothing.

2. MVPs – It’s always nice to be recognized for a job well done. At Envision, you are routinely thanked for your hard work, but for those who go above and beyond (or contribute a particularly amusing Email that week), we have our MVP program, complete with silly t-shirts supplied to the lucky winner! One example would be a bright red ‘Hanging with my Gnomies’ shirt featuring a duo of heavily bearded garden gnomes. A pat on the back and ‘thank you for the hard work’ is great, a t-shirt that says ‘I (Heart) Lamp’ is even better.

1. Our People – Impromptu lunches, frozen slushies and silly t-shirts are all great, and they make Envision a fun place to be, but the number one reason this is the Best Place to Work in Rhode Island is the people who work here. We have been using the tag line, “Better Technology Solutions Start With Better People” for about a year now and it’s a message that really summarizes the culture at Envision. No matter how hard you work, the person next to you is working just as hard and everyone is doing what they can to continue to build Envision and ensure it remains a fun, exciting and challenging place to be.

So there you have it – 10 reasons why Envision employees are proud to work where we do and why we consider Envision THE best place to work, hands down.

On a side note – congratulations to all the companies recognized with these awards and at last night’s ceremony. It’s great to be in such illustrious company and confirming to see how many of the other companies on this list are actually Envision clients or partners, including Cox Communications, Kahn, Liwtin, Renza & Co. Ltd., Amica Insurance, Falvey Cargo Underwriting LTD, Vibco Vibrators and the United Way of Rhode Island. Congrats again – we hope to see you all on this list again next year!

Envision's Trade Show Booth Design: Effective, Memorable or Wacky?

2009-05-12T13:38:00.024-04:00

Envision recently presented at the 2009 VMWare User Group Conference (VMUG) in Newport, RI.

What could make our 3 sessions on assessing, monitoring and managing the virtual environment memorable? Giant rabbits of course!

Why rabbits?

Creating a VM (virtual machine) is cool - in fact, it's like a magic trick. The first time someone asks for a VM, you pull the rabbit out of the hat. Magic.

The next time someone needs a VM you pull another rabbit out the hat. More magic.

This is all good and very cool, but after time, rabbits being rabbits, they will begin to multiply. You must find a way to feed and care for these rabbits or left unchecked, those rabbits will multiply until they take over entire islands in Australia.

The session that Envision presented at VMUG focused specifically on ways you can get your virtualized environment under control.

Why is this important?

We don't want Australia to be renamed Easter Bunny Island.

You want to be sure that the promise of virtualization is fully realized and that your virtual environment is a healthy one - this was at the core of our presentation as part of our VHEALTH 360 solution.

The rabbit analogy at the heart of this blog post and our trade show display was something that Todd Knapp had mentioned early on as part of what he would discuss in his VMUG session. Using that analogy as a starting point, Envision's creative department ran with the rabbits theme and churned out a booth design that definitely made people stop and take notice (it's not often you see 6-foot rabbits set against a brilliant orange background). Bonus points that the display also helped illustrate our point in a fun and memorable way!

Check out photos of our booth in action:

Where is this Link Going? Click Here.

2009-02-27T16:36:00.002-05:00

If I see click here one more time on a web site, I am going to scream. (Welcome back to those of you who just saw a cute Pug licking the screen.) Are there big arrows on a steering wheel? Of course not. Users do not need to be told to "click here".

Since this usability mistake has been going on for 15+ years, Google will have indexed billions of web pages for this search keyword. Want to know what site ranks #1 for "click here"? I am going to contradict myself and ask you to click here.

Congratulations Adobe Reader! Many sites ask users to click here to download Adobe Reader to view PDFs. See the impact hyperlinked text has on search engine rankings?

Hyperlinked text does 2 things:

It lets the user know that the link goes to a page with content related to the hyperlinked text.
It lets search engines know that the linked site is related to the hyperlinked text. This is one of the 3 major factors in search engine rankings. For example, the following link to the Envision home page lets Google know to rank our home page for the search keyword "Envision".

So, if you have "click here" links on your web site, you are annoying users and hurting your search engine rankings. If you do 1 thing in 2009 for your web site, please remove every instance of "click here" unless you are linking to ClickHere.com or a clicking game. You'll be glad you did.

Established Conventions Are Your Friends

2009-01-23T15:12:00.010-05:00

7 to Save - 9 to Delete

Without fail, every time I try to delete a voicemail, I end up saving it instead. The reason for this is simple – I have two systems that I receive voicemail at (my work phone and my cell phone) and while both systems allow you to either delete or save a message, they do so in exactly opposite ways. My kingdom for some standardization!

The phone system at my office requires me to hit the number ‘7’ to save a message and the number ‘9’ to delete it. My cell phone uses the exact opposite method, you hit ‘7’ to delete and ‘9’ to save the message. I can never seem to remember which is which, and inevitably I guess wrong every single time. That cold, robotic-sounding female voice saying ‘message saved’ is like some cruel taunt from the telecommunications gods reminding me that I have guessed wrong yet again!

This problem could be easily fixed if there were some standards that governed how phone systems operated. If ‘7’ to save and ‘9’ to delete was a universally accepted standard, there would be no need to remember which method is used on the device I am currently interfacing with – because they would all be the same. Work phone, cell phone, house phone, any phone – 7 to delete and 9 to save. How wonderful a world that would be.

Conventions Make Life Easier

The concept of established conventions, specifically in regards to Web sites, has come up a number of times recently in my conversations with clients. Conventions and standards can make a Web site user’s experience easier and more enjoyable because they allow visitors to quickly understand how to use your site by taking advantage of things they already know and understand. Knowledge gained from past experiences is leveraged so there is that much less that is ‘new’, which means that the things that are new (like your company-specific content or applications) are easier to find and interact with because they are framed by things that are already familiar.

An example of this would be the cursor. When using the Web, users have come to expect their cursor to appear as an 'arrow' until they rollover a link or clickable area – then it becomes a little 'hand'. Users know exactly how to position their cursor to access the link and make that click. This is a convention.

I was recently asked by a client if we could change the default cursor on their Web site to a graphic that represented their company/services. While the answer to this is ‘yes’, that is certainly possible, I suggested against this change. While the cursor replacement might be a neat visual trick, whatever novelty it offered would be quickly replaced by annoyance as users try to navigate the Web page and click links using this unfamiliar cursor instead of one they have grown incredibly used to.

Web users are an impatient and often fickle lot and the surest way to drive someone away from your site is to confuse or frustrate them. Breaking away from a convention they have come to expect is a pretty good way to do both.

Conventions and Creativity Can Play Nicely Together

I have heard some argue that adhering to conventions or standards saps creativity and innovation. I don’t think that is the case. I would never argue against creativity, but you need to weigh the benefits of breaking away from an established convention against the consequences of forcing your users to relearn how to perform an action (such as clicking a link).

If you’re going to innovate, understand why you are doing it and make sure it is the right choice. If your change is well thought out and executed (and if it provides value to the user or adds to the site in some real way), your users will take the time to learn this new convention-breaking method. Innovate because it is the right thing to do and it makes sense – not only because it ‘looks cool.’ As much as the designer in me hates to admit it, ‘looking cool’ is rarely a legitimate reason to break away from a convention and potentially frustrate users.

Share Your Conventions

Are there any Web conventions that you find particularly helpful and have come to expect from sites you visit? One I always make reference to is the company logo being placed in the upper left corner of the site (allowing users to easily find the company branding in a place they have come to expect) and also being linked back to the site’s homepage, kinda like a ‘start over’ button.

Feel free list some conventions you find useful – in the meantime, I have a number of voicemails that I need to get rid of since I never meant to save them in the first place!

Dear Candy Person

2009-01-16T14:48:00.010-05:00

We found this note taped to our candy machine. It's too funny not to post!

Kudos to whoever crafted this. Like Obama, he or she demanded change.

Gas Costs How Much These Days?

2008-12-01T12:14:00.007-05:00

I pulled into a gas station last week to fill up my tank and marveled at the fact that gas was down to $2.02 a gallon. Or was it?

The price indicator directly above the ’89 Octane’ selection button showed the price as $2.02 a gallon, but the sign above the gas pump itself listed the same product as costing $2.13 a gallon? To further confuse the issue, the giant road-side sign advertised the gasoline for $2.09 a gallon. Three different signs, three different prices for the same product. Nothing like a little clarity in your advertising.

As I was pulling away from the station (the actual price was $2.02 by the way), I thought about a recent conversation we had with a client regarding search engine Pay-Per-Click campaigns and the need for clarity in that type of advertising.

The conversation was about landing pages and when I think about it, the concept is all about clarity in advertising. It breaks down like this:

You have a term you decide to bid on as part of your Pay-Per-Click efforts, typically a term centered on a specific service or product you offer. A user types that search term in the search engine and your sponsored link appears front and center. This is great – your link (along with an appropriate title and short description for that link) is now in front of someone actively seeking what you offer! So where do you send them when they click your link? If you answered your home page – sorry, but in all likelihood you just lost that lead (and paid for the click to boot).

Your Web site is more than just your home page

Many companies view their Web site’s home page AS their Web site. When they think about their Web presence, they inevitably think about that single home page rather than all the subsequent pages that make up the bulk of their site. That being the case, it makes sense that they would want to target Pay-Per-Click links to their home page. But that doesn’t make for a successful Pay-Per-Click strategy or an enjoyable user experience.

Think about your site’s home page for a minute. It already has a lot of work to do. When done correctly, your home page needs to welcome new visitors to the site and quickly let them know:

What the company does

What sets the company apart

What the site offers

What they need to do next

It also needs to establish the site’s visual identity and, consequently, the online identity of your company. It needs to do all these things quickly and effectively without overwhelming your site’s visitors. That’s a tall order as it is, so the home page can not be expected to also focus on every single individual service or product that your company offers. That’s where the sub-pages come in.

The sub-pages are the rest of the site. Where as the home page is somewhat broad and general, the sub-pages are more focused, concentrating on key areas as users drill down deeper into the site. These sub-pages that are focused on individual services or products are what can become landing pages. You can optimize these pages for specific keywords that are then presented to search engine users via your Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

What do you want to see when you hit ‘Search’

Think about the process when you conduct a Web search yourself. You fire up Google or Yahoo or your search engine of choice, you type in a term and hit ‘search’. You then see the results of that search laid out before you, likely with the sponsored links prominently displayed on the page, you make a choice and click one that looks good to you. What do you want to see next? Do you want to see a company’s home page and have to find the specific information you are looking for by clicking through the various pages of their site? Or would you rather skip that maze-like exercise and be brought directly to the page on their site that deals specifically with the information you were searching for in the first place? I know which one I’d prefer and I know which one makes for a more effective Pay-Per-Click strategy.

Getting users to your site is important, but it’s only half the battle. Paying for sponsored links will give you exposure atop the search engine results pages, but sending searchers to a page not relevant to their immediate needs (meaning what they just searched for) will ultimately result in lots of clicks to your site, but few will turn into actual leads for your organization.

An informed approach to Web marketing results in qualified leads for your business

It’s all about that aforementioned clarity in your messaging – from the message of the Pay-Per-Click ad itself right through to the landing page you send a search engine user to once they click that ad. It needs to all be consistent and related to attract qualified traffic that will result in actual business.

I’ve talked to many companies in the past who have tried Pay-Per-Click campaigns and weren’t happy with the results. Those results, or lack thereof, can almost always be traced back to an improperly managed approach to the campaign itself. Realizing that online marketing can benefit your business is great, but you need to make sure you are doing it correctly for it to be effective. Envision Technology Advisors works with our online traffic generation clients to ensure that the Pay-Per-Click traffic you get is qualified traffic that leads to increased business.

Will your customers 'fill up' or will they drive away?

On my way into the office today I need to fill up again and I saw that gas was down to $1.87 a gallon, or at least that’s what the road sign said. The little sign above the pump still said $2.13 and the digital display (and actual price) was $1.85. Despite this lack of clarity in the station’s advertising, I still filled my gas tank, but would visitors to your Web site be as forgiving if you had a similar lack of clarity in your site’s advertising? Or would they drive off and take their business elsewhere?

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

2008-11-20T15:08:00.003-05:00

This funny video by Hubspot personifies Inbound Marketing (SEO and PPC) vs. Outbound Marketing (cold calling and telemarketing). Did you laugh?

Sure it's a rip off of the "Hello I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" television ads, but the message is true. Customers no longer need to be accosted to learn about your product or services. There's a reason the Do Not Call Registry exists!

If people want your product or service, they will contact you. How will they find you? Look around. It's hard to not find somebody more than 6 feet away from a notebook computer, desktop PC, BlackBerry, iPhone or iPod. When they're not watching people dancing on YouTube, they're searching the web. Let's hope they can find you!

Indecent Exposure (pictures included)

2008-11-13T10:29:00.008-05:00

A total stranger exposed herself to me recently. It happened after a shopping trip to my local super-value-mega-warehouse-club store. All I wanted to do was buy a phone, but I got so much more.

I have a picture of her exposing herself to me. I though you might want to see it too...

[CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICTURE]

Are you confused? I was too.

The explanation is that I bought this new phone at the store. I brought it home and thought, "I want to try my new phone". I plugged it in.... so far, so good. Then things got wierd.

Even before it was connected to the wall a computerized voice announced, "YOU HAVE NINE NEW VOICEMAILS". I thought, "Hmmm... my new phone is psycic. Let's hear these phantom voicemails". I clicked play and listened.... Message 1

"Hey Sherri, it's your sister Patty, I just wanted to call and say happy birthday! I miss you! Call me soon."

Message 2

"Hey Sherri, It's your brother Walt. Happy Birthday! I hope you are having a great day. By the way. I wanted you to know that since you come over so often anyway, I am leaving a house key for you under the plant on our porch. No we won't have to go through what we went through last week again. Call me later! Bye."

Message 3

"Mrs. Johnson, this is Dr. Green's office. He asked me to call and let you know that he has called your prescription into the CVS in Coventry. You can pick it up anytime you like. If you have any questions give us a call. Thanks."

I listened and listened for about 10 minutes. By the time the messages were all played, I had heard from her two sisters, mom, brother, doctor, husband, and one of her kid's school teachers. Of course, like you, I now knew that I had purchased a phone that had been previously returned. So, after deleting the messages I started trying to erase all other evidence of Mrs. Johnson; I checked the caller ID on the phone.

Not surprisingly, there were about 20 caller ID's listed. All of the names and phone numbers of the people that had left messages were there as well as one attorney, citizens bank, and a bunch of blocked calls. That is when it hit me. I had bought a phone AND this woman's identity.

I now had:

Her full name

Her closest relative's names and phone numbers

Her birthday

Her doctor's name

Her husband's name

Her kid's name

I knew where she banked

I knew where she filled prescriptions

I also knew where to find a key to her brother house and that he obviously isn't home much!

A quick superpages search gave me her address, and a Google search showed that her husband runs his own business in East Greenwich. On top of it, Google even offered to sell me a criminal record search on her for $40 (a small investment when you realize that this will most likely return her SSN).

By now, the moral of the story should be clear. We all use portable electronic devices, and we all potentially expose a huge amount of personal data every day.

Are your flash drives and memory sticks encrypted?

Do you protect your email account password?

When you log into your email from a cafe, hotel, or at Starbucks are you careful to actually LOG OFF rather than just closing the browser window?

Do you shred your mail before disposing of it?

What if you lose your cell phone, what information could someone get about you even if you cancel the service?

Identity protection is about more than not giving out your social security number. Think carefully about how you expose yourself. You may not be as lucky as Mrs. Johnson was. I am not a crook, and in fact, I even changed her name in this article just in case.

From her point of view, all she wanted to do was exchange a phone. Fairly simple huh? Unfortunately, by not thinking, she really rolled the dice. I wasn't the only one buying phones that day.... and the guy standing next to me looked a little sketchy :)

Using the Web to Survive (and Thrive) in Today’s Economy

2008-11-06T09:11:00.012-05:00

So I was walking the streets of New York City a week or so ago when I saw a massive ‘Going Out Of Business’ sign emblazoned on the storefront of a 5th avenue art/antiques shop. Ten minutes later I saw a similar sign, followed by a third one a short time after that. Three gigantic billboard-like reminders that the economy is hemorrhaging right now. Granted, this is a bit misleading since these stores are actually named 'Going Out Of Business' (targeting tourists looking for a closeout-type deal no doubt), but the huge sign still made me think about where we are right now and wonder how long before stores need to put signs like this up not because they have strategically decided to name their company this, but because they really are going out of business.

The state of our economy is probably not news to anyone who lives here in the real world with the rest of us. You can’t turn on the TV or the radio or visit any news Web site without being assaulted with headlines that run the gamut from alarming to downright terrifying. Many companies are finding it difficult to conduct ‘business as usual’ as credit becomes nearly impossible to come by for their own business as well as for their customers. It’s a vicious cycle as consumers are spending less, which mean businesses are making less – a fact that compounds the problem of not being able to get credit in the first place.

In times such as this, marketing budgets are typically one of the first things that businesses cut. That doesn’t make any sense to me and quite frankly it seems counter-productive to surviving in this type of an economy.

Consumers are looking for your business…are they finding it?

Let’s start with consumers. A down economy obviously affects consumers and how they spend their money – but they ARE still spending money. Belts may be tightening, but consumers (and I am including other businesses when I say ‘consumers’) still have necessities and they must spend at least some money to acquire those necessities. What has changed in this economic climate is how willing consumers are to shop around and find different companies to get those necessities from.

In good economic times, many buyers are unlikely to search for new service providers so long as they are content with the ones they have. Notice that I didn’t say ‘happy with the ones they have’, I said ‘content with the ones they have’. They may be aware that there are better prices out there and even better overall services, but the hassle of finding a new provider, making the switch, and changing their lives or businesses, even in a small way, to accommodate this new relationship keeps them from shopping around for alternatives. As long as the services or products they are currently using aren’t bad or grossly overpriced, odds are they’ll keep the status quo. In a down market, however, this changes as consumers look for better prices or, at the very least, more value for their dollars. This means that business that may have been closed to you in a good market is suddenly within your reach, but you need to realize this opportunity and act upon it to attract this new business.

As I said earlier, your initial reaction in challenging times like these, like most, is to scale back on advertising to save money. Your competition likely has made the same decision, cutting back their own ad dollars. But while that may save you money now, it is costing you business both today and in the future!

There are buyers out there who are actively in need of your company’s services, buyers who are shopping around looking for better prices, better services or better values. They are looking for YOU, but you’re not in front of them because you have scaled back on your advertising! So who gets that new business? Those companies who see this as an opportunity to expand their reach and attract new customers through carefully selected advertising channels, specifically those that funnel users directly to their Web site.

Investing in your Web site makes the difference.

Investing in your Web site is one way that you can survive in the current market conditions by actually increasing your customer base, putting yourself in even better shape for when the tide turns and the market rebounds.

When I say ‘investing in your Web site’ I am referring specifically two areas:

The methods used to drive visitors to your site. We call this ‘Online Traffic Generation’ and it includes search engine optimization, Internet marketing, online community building and more.

The effectiveness of the site itself. Getting users to your site is a big part of the equation, but we also need to be sure that when they get there, the site meets their needs and reinforces the goals of your business.

In July of this year (2008), Web users made 12,000,000,000 (twelve billion) search requests using Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines. That’s all searches combined, so let’s look at a more specific, targeted search like ‘realtors’. The real estate market has been one of the hardest hit by this economic crisis, but in July there were still 16.6 million searches done for that one term alone. While that number of searches is undoubtedly lower than the same time last year, that’s still a large number of queries from consumers looking for that certain service. Even a market like real estate that has been hit hard in these times can benefit from investing in their site. If they can grab even a small percentage of those 16.6 million searches they are going to see some positive results in their business coming from the increased traffic to their site. Companies that have invested in their Web sites and their online traffic generation strategies and are positioned well within search engines will directly benefit from those strategies as consumers shop around looking to stretch their budgets and explore their options.

Practicing What We Preach

We’ve realized this opportunity here at Envision and have recently invested heavily in our own Web site and marketing efforts. In addition to updating our branding and marketing materials, in the past few weeks we have launched a brand new version of our site, making sure that it focuses on the key solutions that we offer and provides clear, compelling content for our users (like our Blog!). We’ve also continued to look at our online traffic generation campaigns and our online community building efforts (which this blog is a part of). Ultimately, we have taken this time to focus on the items I have listed above: how we drive people to our site and what we present to them once they are there. We’ve made these investments because we know that the customers are out there and now is a great time to be in front of them.

Times are tough, there’s no denying that, and I am not advocating a haphazard approach to spending your marketing dollars – that will not work in any economy! I am suggesting a measured approach that evaluates your Web site and the traffic generation methods used to drive users to it, realizing that this approach can help you gain customers and increase business even in today’s economic landscape. And when the market rebounds and business picks up, you’ll have increased your customer base and be in a better position than you were before the crisis.

So what kind of sign are you going to hang outside your business? One that declares the end of operations, or are you going to do what we’ve done at Envision – invest in your site and hang a different sign out front, one that says ‘Open For Business’.

Welcome to my Web site…now get lost.

2008-10-28T17:36:00.008-04:00

I hate being lost. Being somewhere new and not knowing your way around is a feeling of powerlessness that, at least in me, often leads to panic. My sense of direction is decent, but whenever I get lost, the anxiety that sets in negates whatever natural wayfinding sensibilities I may have. You would think I would have learned by now that I’m never really ‘lost’. Sure, I’ve been confused many times on my travels, but I’ve never been so lost that a full blown search party had to come out to rescue me from my own navigational ineptitude. No, if I just push the panic aside, focus on my surroundings and get my bearings, I can generally get back on track quickly enough. Still, the fact remains that I hate being lost – which is why I love visiting New York City.

As you can imagine, my fears of being lost most often manifest themselves when I travel. Being lost in my home state of Rhode Island is one thing. The entire state takes little more than 45 minutes to cross from end to end, so you’ve never really all that lost in RI. Being outside of my Ocean State comfort zone is another thing. Traveling and feeling lost definitely go hand in hand for me, except for in NYC.

I visited New York City, specifically Manhattan, for the first time this year. I’m not sure if my fear of travel/getting lost kept me away from the city all this time, but whatever the reasoning, I finally made my way to New York a few months ago. Prior to my trip, a friend of mine had loaned me a map of Manhattan so I would be able to find my way around. I studied the map prior to my visit, hoping to squash the anxieties of travel prior to even stepping off the train and into the heart of the city. I only had the map open for a few minutes when I realized that whomever had planned out the city and been responsible for the naming convention of the streets was a genius.

New York is laid out in a giant grid. In that it is similar to other cities, but the naming convention used for these streets makes it incredibly easy to get around, even for someone who is prone to panicking in new places like me. The streets in one direction use names such as 34th street, followed by 35th street, 36th street, 37th street and so on. Cross streets are named 5th ave, 6th ave and so forth. The streets are numbered sequentially, making it a simple matter of counting for me to get from where I am to where I need to go.

So here I was, new to New York City and ready to panic, but I never did because I never felt lost. A quick glance at a street sign and I knew where I was and had an immediate sense of where I needed to go next to reach my destination. As big and daunting as the city was, I always felt in control and aware of my location. If only navigating the Web was so easy!

I returned to New York City this past weekend, this time without the aid of my friend’s map. I didn’t need it. So long as I knew where I needed to go, it was a simple matter to figure out how to get there. As I walked from my hotel on West 32nd street to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd street, I compared the ease of navigating the city of New York with the often times nonsensical way of navigating Web sites. How can it be so easy to get around a metropolis as vast as New York City, yet so difficult to find what I am looking for on the average company’s Web site?

I’m sure you’ve had an experience similar to what I am talking about. You visit a Web site looking for something very specific, but finding that kernel of information is like trying to find your way through a labyrinth. It makes you feel as if the site’s designers intentionally made it difficult to use the site! How many times have you visited a site, waited for it to load and thought to yourself, ‘What the heck is this site about?’ or perhaps ‘What does this company even do?’ I know I ask myself that question many times a day as I visit new Web sites. Not only do I not know how to find the information I need, I can’t even figure out what the company does or if I’m on the right site! I find myself digging into pages looking for information, yet not really being sure if I am on the right path at all. Basically, I’m lost in the site and the easy to understand street signs of NYC are nowhere in sight. Help me!

It doesn’t need to be this way. None of us like to feel lost in a Web site, do we? Then why would we subject the visitors of our site to a similar experience? When I’m away on vacation and I get lost, I have no choice but to figure out where I am and how to get where I need to be. On a Web site I don’t have that same limitation. If I am confused, I can just leave that site and look for another one that meets my needs. I can click off your site and so can your users. If your site doesn’t meet their needs, quickly and easily, you risk losing their business to a competitor’s site.

Every Web site has a purpose. When we design a new site or work on a redesign, there is a goal that the client has in mind for the site itself (and if there isn’t, there needs to be). Every decision that we make as part of the design process, from the visuals used on the home page to the way that the navigation buttons are named and laid out to the way that the information is formatted and presented, needs to actively work towards forwarding the goals of the Web site and meeting the needs of those using it. Anything that is added to the site that gets in the way of users finding the information they want or anything that makes it confusing as to what your company is offering needs to be looked at with a critical eye, and in most cases, removed from your site. It sounds extreme, and sometimes it is, but it’s also the best way to ensure that your site is as effective as possible for both you and your users.

The approach of making a site easier to use is sometimes looked at with apprehension. The concept and benefits makes sense, but companies often worry that making things ‘simpler’ means making them not look as attractive or ‘not as cool’. That is not the case. Easy-to-use doesn’t have to mean unattractive. A good Web site design will not only meet the needs of your business and your audience, but it will do so in an attractive and engaging way. New York City is no less rich or exciting because it is easy to navigate and the content and user experience at your Web site does not need to suffer simply by making it more user-friendly. In fact, making a site easier to use for your audience will make the design seem that much better! Have you ever visited a site that looked great, but was nearly impossible to use? What did you think of the site? I bet that your first impression of ‘this looks cool’ was quickly replaced by ‘what the hell is going on here?', which was likely followed by you closing the site, never to return. How cool does that design look now?

Look at your current site and ask yourself a few questions:

What is the primary goal of my company’s site?

What are most of my site’s visitors looking for when they visit my site?

What things on my site get in the way of these two critical functions?

Envision Technology Advisors can help you answers these questions and provide ways to ensure your site meets your company’s goals and the needs of your audience more effectively. A better user experience translates into happier visitors (and more of them) which in turn will help you realize the business goals you set out for your site.

Welcome to my Web site…why don’t you stay awhile.

Technorati Profile

Changing the Game in 10 Years

2008-10-24T21:17:00.002-04:00

We recently celebrated Envision’s tenth anniversary! This has prompted a lot of reflection on how much has changed since the inception of one of the best Rhode Island-based technology consulting firms. From living in a post-911 world (not to mention a post-Y2K one), to changes in our location, and even changes in our own personal circumstances, little is as it was ten years ago. Technology, of course, has evolved at an ever increasing pace.

As I reflect about how much technology has changed in the past ten years, I ponder on some of my most favorite innovations. The ones that come most readily to mind are some of the simplest. They include flash drives, terminal services, and LCD monitors.

Flash drives are probably my most favorite. How cool is it that you can have gigabytes upon gigabytes of information on a device that’s so small you can put it on your key chain? (Not that you really should) The ease and portability of having this kind of data capacity at your disposal on a device that auto-detects on the system in which you plug it into its USB port is just fantastic. Remember when we thought writable CDs, and then writable DVDs, were cool? Anyone who remembers installing Microsoft Office 95 from 17 floppy disks will echo this sentiment, I’m sure.

Microsoft Terminal Services, or “Remote Desktop”, was certainly a game changer for everyone too. There was a time not so long ago when every time the phone rang, it meant hopping in the car and driving to the client, all to do things that if only we had easy remote access would only take minutes to do. Our reach has been extended in ways that make this a truly enabling technology, allowing us to work more efficiently, effectively, and in a more geographically unlimited manner. Sure, there were always methods of remote access into networks, and enterprise networks usually had the best ones. But from the perspective of being able to access and support almost any node in a Windows-based environment as easily and cheaply as Remote Desktop allows, you just can’t beat what this has done for us.

And then there are LCD monitors. Flat panels. Space saving, energy saving, back saving. Remembering the days of schlepping hardware to clients for network and PC installs in the back of my car invokes memories of awkwardly finding the most optimal way of cramming as many huge 17” CRT monitor boxes into the back seat of my ’94 Acura as possible. It wasn’t many. But despite the obvious enhancements in portability and energy efficiency that LCD monitors provide, my favorite aspect of LCD technology is the simple fact that I no longer have to spend almost my entire day at my desk with cathode rays beaming through my corneas into to the back of my brain. Yay science!

Despite how cool and far reaching these three small changes in technology are, hands down, my most favorite game-changing technological evolution is easily the technology of Virtualization. Server Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Appliance Virtualization, you name it: you just can’t beat what Virtualization is doing for businesses that run on x86-based computing architectures (that is, almost ALL of them)! From the ease of administration, to the green computing aspects, the consolidating ability, to the flexibility that it brings, virtualizing your corporate computing environment enables capabilities that we would certainly have marveled at ten years ago. Heck, we marvel at it today! As far as game-changers go, the technology of virtualization is the biggest thing to come along in most of our careers to date. The ability to make running server operating systems dynamically portable, while running, and able to be backed up, cloned, cataloged, and deployed as easily as is allowed by products of the likes from VMware, is nothing short of “miraculous”. When you see virtualization work in a well-implemented environment for the first time, you’re tempted to not believe what you are seeing. How can what just happened truly have happened? And the ramifications for the protection of business continuity, uptime, flexibility, and disaster recovery are extreme. Never before in our practice’s history have we been so excited about the emergence of a technology, and its accessibility to all levels of our clients (not just higher-end enterprise environments) as we are today.

To learn more about virtualization and how Envision can help you reap the benefits of virtualizing your corporate computing infrastructure, go to http://www.envisionsuccess.net/networking/virtualization.aspx

Do not panic, blogs are not on the way out, although George W. Bush is

2008-10-20T12:26:00.014-04:00

Recently (Nov. 2008 edition), Wired writer Paul Boutin states in his recent article "Kill Your Blog," the blog is on its way out. He presents 3 valid points:

When blogging was new, in 2004, it was easy to rank high on Google search results for any topic
Professional blogs are squashing the amateur blogger in traffic and on SERPs
Blog comments attract the lowest forms of life: insult commenters

Blogs are no longer the "new thing." That I agree with. However, it's still important to blog for the following reasons:

It keeps content on your site fresh. Our new site now showcases our blog postings on our front page. Google loves constant new content on your site's homepage. This is great for SEO.
It takes the power out of biased American media. Your opinionated blog article is probably more fair and balanced than anything you find on FOX News.
Makes corporate web sites much more personal.
You can get big traffic for blog articles on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Del.icio.us.

Paul then concludes that he prefers to use Facebook and Twitter (a blog-like social networking site that simply asks "What are you doing?" and your short response blasts out to all of your Twitter friends).

While, Twitter and Facebook are the new hype, blogs are here to stay. Blogs are for content, Facebook and Twitter are for keeping in touch. We have consulted with many clients on blogs and Facebook, so ask us if they are right for your company!

Just in the nick....

2008-09-29T11:13:00.006-04:00

I got into technology just in time. When I was first getting interested in technology, the Internet wasn’t anything more than a few bulletin boards that were connected together by modems. IBM had just launched their “Personal Computer” line, the really big hard drives were 10mb (we all thought we would never fill them), and the modem hanging off the back of my Commodore 64 computer was 300 baud (about 50,000x slower than my current connection – literally). In those days, DOS was still king and Microsoft had just launched Windows 2.1.

Since then, the pace of change has been staggering. I remember excitedly telling my parents that I could send an “electronic mail message” from our home in VT to a friend in CA just as fast as the U.S. Post Office could. It took about five days from the time I sent the message for it to get where it was going. Its travel plan involved all of the various computers it touched to dial each other nightly and transmit their batch of messages to their closest neighbor. Eventually, the message would get where it was going.

Today, we don’t measure the delivery time of email in days, hours, minutes, or even seconds; we measure it in milliseconds. In fact, as IT guys, we get irritated if we can’t send data around the entire planet in less than 150ms.

Yeah, I got into it in time to see the technology equivalent of the Renaissance. I have seen dialup give way to ISDN, which lost to DSL, which was later replaced by T1’s, which are now slow compared to Fiber Optic Cable connections. I have seen Palm Pilots lose to tablets which were defeated by Treos which are on their way out in favor of newer Blackberrys and iPhones. Everyone today has email, and most have some sort of personal networking page like Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. We have been through countless iterations of Windows and mountains of software to make our lives “easier”.

It has all happened so fast. The funny thing is that most of us have now become acclimated to the pace of change. We are at a point where the wonder of innovation is lost to the expectation of development. A little more than a year ago, Mercedes unveiled a car that could parallel park itself! It’s a car… that drives itself! As a community we should have been falling out of our chairs at an idea like that. Conversely it was taken in stride as a normal occurrence, just like the first commercial space flight and the ability to get absolutely anything on the planet delivered to our door by Amazon.com.

And why should we get excited? We expect nothing less. For example, many of us receive personalized driving directions from a device the size of a pack of cards that gets information beamed to it from billion dollar satellites in outer space. What do we use this unbelievable power for? Obviously, we use it to find the nearest Starbucks!

I guess my point is that it’s a good idea, now and then, to stop and consider where we are, where we have come from, and where we might be going. I did this a week ago in Las Vegas at a conference about virtualization technology. At the conference I saw some of the most amazing tools for businesses. I spent a couple of days walking the show floor, and every vendor there was sporting some new and unbelievable innovation. After three days it was obvious to me that the Renaissance is nowhere near to being over.

As I sat on the plane on the way home, I watched the people around me type on their laptops, play games on their cell phones, and watch their portable DVD players. I wondered how long it would be before the planes are all Internet ready and we can continue to work or stay connected with loved ones while we travel. I also wondered what the personal electronics will look like just 10 years from now.

In the end, there is an awful lot to keep up with. For business owners, it has become that much more important that we surround ourselves with good advisors. The benefit of a good consultancy is the breadth of experience that they bring to the table, and the exposure that they have to new solutions. A good consultancy can clarify options, simplify deployments, and make it dramatically easier to “leverage the best and avoid the rest”.

How do I love thee?

2008-08-28T16:32:00.002-04:00

At this time tomorrow, I should be underwater in Fort Lauderdale exploring the wreck of the Captain Dan. The "Dan" was a 175' Coast Guard buoy tender that had several owners before it was sunk as part of Florida's artificial reef program. She rests in 110' of water... a significant depth to be sure. Recreational Advanced Open Water certifications prepare divers for maximum depths of 120', however it's rare for most people to venture beyond about 70'.

The "Dan" is the first of about eight dives that we will do in the next two days. For people that don't scuba dive the fears always involve sharks, or running out of air. However, the fact is that the real dangers in diving all revolve around things you can't see until it's too late; nitrogen narcosis, air embolism (the "bends"), and oxygen toxicity are just a few of the dangers you have to be careful to avoid.

The reason that a lot of people don't go beyond 70' is that your body absorbs lots of nitrogen under pressure and the "bends" become a real possibility. So, you have to limit the amount of time that you spend at deeper depths. For lots of people, the risk associated with "going deep" for 3-7 minutes of time to explore doesn't make it worth the trip.

One way to extend your bottom time, and be safer when diving, is to use mixed gasses. Instead of breathing normal compressed air like most divers (which contains 21% oxygen), you can use a higher percentage of oxygen or even a complex gas called tri-mix. This kind of technical diving can extend your range, but it comes with it's own risks.

When we descend on the Dan tomorrow, my wife and I will be breathing a Nitrox mix which contains a higher percentage of oxygen than normal air. It makes us less susceptible to the "bends". The trade off is that if we calculate the mix wrong, fail to properly monitor our dive times, or don't keep track of the volume of mix that we breath, the oxygen in our systems can actually become toxic and kill us (wierd huh?).

Of course there are lots of things that will work to keep us safe. There is the fact that we are both trained in this type of diving, we will also be monitoring each other (as well as ourselves) during the dive, and then there is also our most important tool... our computers.

We have little waterproof computers that we dive with that are attached to our air systems and ourselves. These little guys (when properly programmed) will monitor how many breaths we take, our depth, the pressure in our tanks, and the percent of Nitrox mix we are using. They will track our depth every .5 seconds and will recalculate our oxygen exposure, nitrogen absorption, and other factors, and then they will use that information to keep us safe. They will tell us when and how to surface so that we have appropriate "decompression" times at specific depths that they will calculate on the fly.

Basically, we need these computers to stay alive.

So, how much do I trust my little computer? Not that much!

I carry three of them.

As long as they are all telling me the same thing, I know I am OK. I have been laughed at by other divers on the boat for having more than one with me, but I feel good knowing that I am not betting my life on a single piece of equipment, or a single manufacturer.

The bottom line is that I believe in redundancy, which is a lesson that NASA learned this week when the computers on their space station got a virus.... AGAIN!

NASA announced this week that the computers on the space station had spyware on them that was designed to collect account information and transmit it back to a server on the Internet. They also announced that this was not the first time they have had this problem up there.

Down here on Earth, our engineering team is dealing with the same problem every day at our client's offices by applying what I have learned while diving. We count on several layers of virus protection to keep us safe from the bad things on the Internet. That redundancy helps me and my client's sleep well.

A good virus strategy has at least four layers. Information is scanned at the SPAM filter, on the mail server itself, at the border of the network by the firewall, and finally at the workstations and servers. Like my dive computers, we try and use different manufacturers at each level so that we get the benefit of different "points of view" when scanning for viruses. Again, redundancy saves the day!

To all of you I say that you should take a lesson from my dive computers, or learn from NASA's mistake, so that you don't have to suffer the humiliation of calling your computer guys to come clean a virus out of your network.

Remember, you have been warned! :) Ok... I am off to check over my gear and prepare for tomorrow's festivities!

I might end up hitting this boat....

2008-08-25T23:46:00.001-04:00

My good friend Maggie has a saying, “Every once in a while, you have to chew through the leash.”

What she means is that now and again it’s a good thing to break the ties that bind you in your everyday life. Don’t answer the cell, don’t check your email, and don’t call in for your voicemail. That can be hard for me, and it takes a conscious effort on my part.

It’s almost midnight. I am sitting on the deck of my boat in Newport, RI watching the changing tides and winds push us VERY close to the boat that was previously in front of us. Since I can’t sleep anyway, I have been sitting here thinking about how it is that I got leashed in the first place.

I think it all started with a pager. Early in the life of my business I resisted getting a pager and being “on call”. But the life of a technology consultant isn’t forgiving in that way, so ultimately I relented. I remember thinking that having a pager was like being chained to the office. The only other person employed by my fledgling company shared my concern.

Later on, we had the opportunity to get remote access in the form of a Citrix server. I remember resisting that too, for the same reason. Likewise, I have had concerns with the VPN’s, terminal servers, IP phones, PDA’s and all the other gadgets that have been designed to make my life “easier”. Each one of these little wonders is designed to be more efficient at chaining me to my office.

...Or is it?

That first pager was an eye opener for my partner and me. While we thought it was a leash, it turned out to be a pair of wings. What I mean is that once we had it, we didn’t have to constantly check our voicemails. We didn’t have to be paranoid about being in the office either. If someone had a problem, they would page us!

Oddly enough, many of the other “leashes” were implemented with similar results. Our various remote access solutions allowed us to work from home and avoid having to go to the office to deal with an emergency. Now, instead of missing a meal with family, all we had was a slight interruption. So, as time went on, we became early adopters of each new “time saver” or “life enhancer”.

Pretty soon, we had so many of these “conveniences” that they had become leashes again.

I think this is how most people today live. I know that my Father can’t go 12 hours without checking his email, and my best friend has to have his phone with him at all times so that he can respond to his office messages immediately. It may be true that these technologies free us from having to be “at the office”. But if that is the case, then it is equally true that these technologies grey the line between our business and personal lives.

So, is that a good thing? I don’t know. In the end, I suppose it all comes down to setting boundaries, showing good common sense, and establishing priorities. We have to make time for ourselves.

So Todd’s tech advice for this week (mostly because I am on vacation), is that you draw a line in the sand now and again and press whatever power buttons you can. Shut it all down. Turn it off. Cut the power.

Chew through the leash!

...That being said, please ignore the irony of the fact that while on vacation, and on my boat, I am using a laptop to post to my company’s blog :) I didn’t check my email though!

[looking up from the laptop] - Wow. This boat is getting really close....

A Pear-fect Plan

2008-08-18T09:26:00.009-04:00

In April of this year I moved to a more rural setting. I grew up in Vermont so this was a welcome return to familiar things. However, there are some differences between Vermont and my new surroundings. Most notably, there are a lot of fruit trees on the property.

I am a computer guy.

I have never been a cultivator of food products.

When I moved here I wasn’t really expecting that these fruit trees would produce anything more than nice flowers. However, this is one of my pear trees:

As you can see, it is producing fruit! It’s exciting, but it’s also creating questions and quandaries. When do I pick this fruit? How do I ripen it? Is there anything I need to do for the tree so it doesn’t die? Also, I have noticed something else… look at these two pears:

The two pears came from different trees that are only about 15’ apart. The two trees appear to be about the same age and presumably the two trees get the same amount of sunlight, rain, and nutrients from the ground. So, why are the pears on one of the trees so much larger?

The trees are doing their jobs, so I decided to do mine. I got online and started learning about pears. You know what I found out? The difference between the two trees lies in the way they were cultivated in the early part of their lives.

It turns out that the best way to get bigger fruit from a pear tree is to pluck half the fruit off of the tree when it first starts to produce. Very simply, the tree has limited resources for growing fruit. Fewer pears means that each one gets more of those resources… hence, bigger, better fruit. Each successive season, you leave a few more pears on the tree until you have the tree producing at full capacity.

It all comes down to quality over quantity, and it occurs to me that as business professionals we can all learn from this.

I once had a new customer who came to us because the deployment of their new business management software was a total failure from management’s point of view. It was an expensive product to be sure, and it had every bell and whistle that the business could ever need. To be fair, the software was working… but the business hadn’t really seen any additional productivity or benefit from having it.

In the end, it seemed to me that the deployment flopped because they failed to thin the fruit when they first installed the software. New software almost always means a change to the way that the staff works. Rolling out the new workflow and software with 10,000 features left the employees in a tailspin. Everyone became a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. The company would have been far better off if they had rolled out a few features that provided the most benefit, and turned everything else off.

In my experience, users tend to respond better to this. It is so much easier to master a few new features, and once people see how much easier their job has become, they start to ask management and IT for more. That is how you know when the tree is ready to produce more fruit.

So, the bottom line is this: in business technology as in nature, you need to be a little patient. Trying to do too much too soon only leads to mediocre results.

Now, does anyone have any idea what to do with 150 pears?

The K.I.S.S. of death…

2008-08-04T10:53:00.012-04:00

Computer guys are a funny lot. Where most of the rest of the world places a high value on a
simple and elegant solution, computer people tend to go the other way; they like their world complicated.
Computer “geeks” get off on high-tech, super complicated equipment. They want to see racks full of blinking lights
and interconnected cables. The bigger and more complicated something is, the better they like it.

So, it should be no surprise that most computer consultants and internal technical staff tend to focus their
thoughts on the complicated problems. It’s fun to be a hero and figure out a difficult problem before anyone else does.
Unfortunately, that often leaves the easiest problems unresolved. In fact, it is a rare occasion that an IT person will
sit down and put some serious thought to how to handle something like a virus attack, or a deleted hard drive.
These problems seem run of the mill and hardly worth the time of someone that just de-jiggered the central matrix oscillator
(IT people also like to make things sound complicated).

I guess my point is this, there is a reason that people say, “the devil is in the details”. I have been
spending a fair amount of time recently writing disaster recovery plans. What I have noticed is that everyone wants
to know what the plan is for a fire, terrorist attack, or some other major issue. What I know for an absolute fact is
that 90% of the “emergencies” our clients have had over the last 10 years have been a product of some mundane, every day issue.

Here are some questions to ponder:

If you think you have a virus on your computer, what are the right steps to take to deal with it?

If you accidentally delete important files on your computer, what is the very first thing you should do?

What should you do for your computer network if the power in your building goes out?

Most people think they know the answer to these questions. Unfortunately, unless some thought has been given to educating the users of the network, everyone's answer could be a little different. For example, some people would call their IT guys if they had a virus. Another person might click SHUTDOWN, and still others might try running a virus scan. On the surface, those all seem like decent ideas, but in the end none of those solutions deals with the immediate risk to the company.
In case you were wondering, the number one concern if you have a virus is that it will infect other systems in the network. The priority has to be containment; you don't want the virus to spread past your PC. Trying to shut down, scan the system, or waiting for IT, gives the virus time to execute code that can damage the network. So, if you think you have a virus, the first step is to disconnect your network cable. Once that is done, the virus is contained and your IT guys have the time to decide how best to handle the situation.

So, my advice is simple. If you are a business owner or an IT manager, I suggest that you make a cheat sheet with the 3-5 steps that you want your employees to take for the following:

Suspected virus

Phishing attack

Accidentally deleted data

Power outage

Unexpected error message on the PC

Distribute the list, and answer any questions that the users have. If you are an employee, ask your boss or IT guy how you are supposed to handle stuff like this.

As a business owner, I would also be certain that your IT people or your consultants have some documented procedures for issues like:

Flood

Fire

Server failure

Large scale power outage

Hacking attempt / Network penetration

Data recovery

With just a little planning and education of your users it is possible to prevent small problems from forcing you to break out the disaster recovery plan. Not sure what the right procedure is for some of these? I would suggest that you ask your IT consultants, I am sure they can give you a hand!

Virtually Indispensable

2008-07-30T11:59:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago this October, Envision Technology Advisors was incorporated. Our first client hired us to replace an aging Novell network that was crashing multiple times each day. Their Internet access was a 56k (fast at the time) dialup connection that was shared among the 20 users with a little piece of equipment called a “webramp”. Their “email server” was running on an old laptop and it checked for new email twice a day.

I clearly remember replacing that network and how great it was to add a second dialup to their internet access. Everyone marveled at the speed that two dialups delivered! It was so fast that we changed the mail server to check four times a day and patted ourselves on the back as our new Windows NT 4.0 server ran the network.

Technology has changed a lot since then. Windows NT hasn’t been supported for years now, and I would bet that there are people that will read this who have never used a dialup Internet connection. The one constant though is the aggravation that I feel after I roll out some new technology in one place and then have to work in other networks that don’t have it yet.

The reality is that not everyone can afford to be on the leading edge. However, as a consultant, it sucks to know what the available technologies are capable of and to not have those resources at your disposal. If you can imagine how it would feel to watch a client ride to work on a donkey everyday when lots of your other customers just bought BMW’s then you can start to catch my meaning.

Today the BMW is virtalization and centralized storage, and the donkey is pretty much everything else. With a well designed virtualization and storage platform, a computer network can deliver high availability that was previously reserved for fortune 500 companies.

Just last night, one of our engineers started a vendor mandated upgrade on a database application for a customer that has this technology in-place. The upgrade crashed the server. In a conventional network, we would have had to work all night to put that back together. However, for this client, we clicked the mouse about 5 times and the entire server was recovered to the state it was in moments before we had started the upgrade. It was as if nothing ever happened. There was no downtime, and our engineers were on their way home 15 minutes later.

Aside from the disaster recovery and uptime benefits, virtualization also reduces long-term IT costs. In fact, if the customer from last night didn’t have this technology in-place there would have been a huge bill for the all-nighter we would have had to pull to recover their systems. In that one moment, the storage platform saved that company about $1,500 in operational expenses. It only has to do that a handful of times for it to pay for itself.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, these technologies are a great way to jump on the “Green” bandwagon. The point of this technology is to do more with less. A virtualized environment typically employs significantly fewer servers. This means less waste, less electricity, and less heat generation which means less air conditioning. All the way around, these technologies reduce your carbon footprint and make mother earth smile!

Is it hard to get started with Virtualization? NO! All you need is a desire to save money, have better uptime, and to do the right thing for the planet. That is why Envision is focused on these technologies. It’s a great feeling to sell something that is such an easy win for everyone involved.

So why do some companies try to ride that donkey until it drops dead? The most likely reason is that no-one has ever told them not to. According to VMWare, 96% of small businesses run on conventional computing technology and have not yet switched to virtualization. Their IT people may fear change, or it could be that their IT company isn’t trained in these technologies so they are keeping their clients in the dark.

Whatever the reason, my advice is that you should ask your IT people or your consultants about virtualization. If you don’t know what questions to ask, feel free to email me at Todd@envisionsuccess.net or call at 401-272-6688 and ask for Todd Knapp. Any of our engineers will be happy to spend some time talking to you about how you can leverage these solutions to streamline your business and at the same time give the planet a helping hand.

I guess I should get back to work now. I am very busy watching a server in its fourth hour of a data transfer. This would have taken about 3-5 minutes if the client had centralized storage. [sigh]

He should have carried a pack of Mentos....

2008-07-23T12:29:00.011-04:00

The best thing about Mentos (according to the commercials) is that you can get away with anything you want if you have a pack of them in your pocket. Steal a taxi, run through a stranger’s living room to catch a bus, or use wet paint on a bench to pinstripe your suit after accidentally sitting on it! All you have to do is flash that pack of Mentos, give a toothy grin, and it all seems to work out.

Unfortunately, Larry Mendte didn't know that. He wasn't carrying Mentos this past Monday when he was charged with hacking into Alycia Lane's email accounts 537 times over the last two years.

It seems that Larry, as a product of obsession or just plain avarice, got into the habit of reading, recording, and leaking to the press, the embarrassing details of Alycia's life. He wanted to get ahead, and he wanted her to fall behind. Well, it worked... sort of. She did fall behind. In fact, she was fired from her job at the TV station after Mendte leaked sensitive (embarrassing) information about a pending legal case she had. Unfortunately, it backfired when the police seized his computer in May after discovering that it had been repeatedly used to access her accounts.

Everyone knows that accessing another user’s account is illegal. However, what caught my attention is that the authorities are focusing on the fact that he intercepted communications between Alycia and her lawyer. As a result, they are arguing that he violated privileged communications. The communications are only privileged if Alycia had a reasonable expectation of privacy when she sent her email.

The bottom line is that when it comes to email, privacy is subject to where you live. Some states claim that you have an expectation of privacy, and still others say that you don’t.

There have been plenty of law suits against companies that let people go after monitoring inappropriate email use. Of course, the business owner feels like corporate email accounts belong to them and that if they own the mail server, they own what it contains as well. Most of those business owners lost their case. As it turns out, you have to make it clear to your employees that you reserve the right to monitor them if you want to be able to smack them over the head with their own email.

Regardless of what the law says, if you know anything at all about the technology behind email, then you know there is no expectation of privacy. Here is some food for thought;

Email messages sometimes pass through a half dozen servers before arriving at their destinations. A copy is often left on each server the message touches. That server’s administrator (a complete stranger to you) can read that message any time he/she wants. In that way, sending an email across the internet is a lot like passing a note in class and hoping no one will read it, even though everyone that passes it along will have the opportunity.

Almost all email that is sent today passes through at least one or two spam filters. The filter’s job is to read the email! Then, if the message looks odd it will flag it. Most administrators review the messages that got flagged in the course of tuning their filters.

Most email is not encrypted. They travel across the internet in plain text where anyone and their brother can read them if they like. In Fact, there are “traps” online that collect random samples of email in transit to better update spam filters. Those samples are reviewed by network administrators in the name of creating better spam prevention products.

There are dozens of viruses and spywares that will collect and re-transmit email on any infected computer. Even if the recipient of your email is clean when you send the message, a future infection could easily result in the dissemination of your communication to hundreds, thousands, or millions of users. How do you think all that spam got out there in the first place?

I could go on for days, but I think you get my point. There is a lesson to be learned here. You do have an expectation of privacy when you are standing in a room with your lawyer and the door is closed, the shades are drawn, and you look around and don’t see anyone but your lawyer, his books, and maybe his 13 year old basset hound passed out on the floor.

However regardless of how this case goes, or how the law in your state reads, my feeling is that, when it comes to email, an “expectation” of privacy is a daydream. The fact is that your plain text email IS NOT private. Once you click send, you are leaving copies of it everywhere and setting yourself up to have someone read your message. Most of the time this will be harmless, but you should be prepared for the possibility that it might not be.

If you don’t email information that you wouldn’t want public then you have nothing to fear. For example, I sometimes will email a username to someone… but I never send the password. If I have to send something to my attorney, I encrypt the data BEFORE I attach it to an email. Do I email him the password for the file? NO! I use the phone, give him the password verbally, and take the opportunity to practice the long lost art of interpersonal communication.

Email is a great tool. It has revolutionized our lives. Unfortunately, it is also deceptively easy. If you are an employee, I would advise you to be more careful about how you use your email. Don’t expect that big brother isn’t watching.

If you are big brother, I advise you to inform your employees of that fact! Put it in the employee handbook so that you don’t end up emailing your attorney about being sued because you read an employees’ email……. perhaps you could email the revised email policy to your employees?

Wow. That’s it for me. I have to go now. I just got an email from a foreign finance minister. It seems that he has a large sum of unclaimed money. He needs me to to assist him by allowing him to transfer $30,000,000 to my account for which I can keep 20%.

Is your caps lock on?

2008-07-18T18:58:00.005-04:00

If you've been reading the news over the past few days then you know that network administrators in San Francisco had an interesting experience when they were unable to log onto the city's FiberWAN network which stores about 60% of all of their data. The inaccessible data includes payroll records, emails, law enforcement records, and a variety of other information.

Ultimately, it was discovered that one of their chief IT administrators (Terry Childs) had restricted all access to the network and put in place a password that he has refused to give to the authorities. Additionally, he setup tracking software designed to "spy" on his boss following a bad review. So, at least for the time being, it looks like the city will have to break out the old paper and pencil and find a new way to do business.

As you might imagine, that is easier said than done. All of us have had a computer crash, or have been unable to send an email or access a key piece of software at some time or another. When it happens it can be really hard to be productive, and extended outages or data loss can even threaten the survival of most companies.

There are a wide array of viruses, spywares, and glitchy software patches that our networks have to survive every day. So, with all of that conspiring to keep us from working, why would anyone expose themselves to the damage that a disgruntled employee can do? The answer is that they don't think they have exposed themselves.

The majority of the time, acts of technology vandalism are committed by someone that the company or business owner trusted. In 10 years of consulting, I have heard countless business owners tell me that they don’t need to worry about it. I hear things like, “We are a small company, and everyone here is a good guy” or “I trust everyone here, it’s not a problem”. We would all like to believe that, but I have had first hand experience with businesses who discovered that hell hath no fury like an employee scorned.

So, how can you protect yourself? It’s easier than you think. Take the time to get to know everyone that has administrative access to your network and ensure that you are on that list. Ask your IT administrator to provide you with a list of usernames that have admin access to your system and inform them that every once in a while you are going to log in using those names and you expect them to be working. Then… DO THAT!.

Keep your account list in the network current. By that I mean that you need to ensure that as employees leave, their accounts are disabled and later deleted. The fewer active accounts you have, the less opportunity there is to compromise them.

You should be leary of any IT consulting company or IT manager that doesn’t volunteer password information to you, or that doesn’t extensively log the setup of your network and offer that information to you. A good IT person doesn’t need to ensure job security by keeping you in the dark.

Finally, I suggest an age old tradition… AUDIT AUDIT AUDIT! For reasons passing my understanding, very few companies have a third party audit of their IT department. The accounting deptartment gets audited, but not the department that is responsible for all of the businesses data and operational needs? Yeah… that doesn’t make any sense to me either. A good IT manager or consulting company will have no problem with an audit.

Could San Francisco have prevented their current problem? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that with minimal effort on the part of the non-IT management team, that this could have been avoided. Nothing is 100% effective, but even the smallest effort is more effective than doing nothing. Now it is up to the FBI and anyone else that is willing to help to get the city up and computing again.

More detail on this incident can be found on Information Weeks website. However, unconfirmed reports say that after several days effort, Tony Shaloub was unable to solve the case and reminded reporters that he only plays a detective on TV and that "Monk" is, in fact, a fictional character.