Being Green at the Office

Protecting the environment has always been a personal passion of mine. I was recycling 15 years before “curbside pickup” was available. I’ve always driven fuel-efficient cars (well, except for the “beater” that I had in college!). And even as a young girl, I begged my mom to switch to a detergent that was phosphate-free. Thankfully now they are all phosphate free.

But there is one place where it’s been relatively easy for many of us to forget our well-intentioned ways: at the office. It’s possible, however, that this may be just the place where we can have the most impact. The key to accomplishing this is more related to changing the way we think, rather than putting forth a lot more effort. Here are a few simple ideas:

Turn off the screensaver. Australian company Telstra has removed 36,000 screensavers, which they claim will cut 646 tons of CO2 – the equivalent of removing 140 cars from Australian roads for one full year.

Turn off your office lights. Hopefully you turn off the lights when you leave for the day, but did you consider turning off the lights when you go to lunch or head to a long meeting?

The office kitchen is also a place where you can save a lot of energy. According to the National Trust of the UK, the digital clock on a microwave will use more energy in one year than typical cooking usage. The SRT kitchen has a microwave and two coffee pots that have digital clocks. I try to remember to turn them off on Friday afternoon. What would be even better is to turn them off every night.

Saving Paper.

When I started my career, I worked for one of the first digital imaging companies. At that time there was a lot of hype about the future “Paperless Office”. Just a quick look around should tell you that this prediction has never come to be. Granted, we don’t print and distribute memos anymore, but there is still a lot of wasted paper. Here are a few things to think about:

Don’t print emails. Create a nice filing system on your PC, and then back it up to your file server or corporate FTP server. If you have a good filing system and if you use a desktop search tool such as Google Desktop Search or Microsoft Windows Desktop Search, you should always be able to get your hands on what you need. If you use WebDrive to map a drive letter to your remote server, you can configure you desktop search tool to search your local drive and your WebDrive drives, and get a list of files from all storage locations.

Use the back of printed pages that you don’t need any more as scrap paper. Often when I am on the telephone, I take notes about what the caller is saying. Typically these don’t need to be retained, so re-using paper before I recycle it can save a lot of paper.

Needless to say, (I hope!) you should recycle paper and cardboard. If your office doesn’t have recycling services, get a group of interested employees to volunteer to periodically make a recycling run to the local recycling center. Sometimes, I just take a bag or box home to add to my residential recycling.

So contrary to popular belief, it *IS* easy being green – even at the office!

Help! Where is my Product License Key?

Everywhere you go, there is a need for some kind of code, and if you do not have the correct one, your access is restricted.  From the ATM to Twitter, it seems we need a code to do everything now. At South River Technologies, we are no different. There are support ticket IDs, customer information IDs, trial codes, tracking codes, and license codes.  Occasionally our returning customers find themselves in a sea of codes and business comes to a screeching halt for a few minutes.   Your lifeline is a good record of what you are working with, and the proper steps to finding your registration code within the product itself.  Here are some things to keep in mind:

When you update your product, make sure you are using the correct registration code. Your trial code will not work on the full product version, and your old registration key will not work on the new license or upgrade.  Server codes work ONLY on the server product you purchased, and WebDrive client codes work ONLY on the WebDrive product you purchased.

To locate your registration code(s) within the product, do this:

For Titan FTP Server

Launch the FTP Server Administrator and click Titan Domains, on the “Welcome” tab you will see your registration code.

For WebDrive

Launch WebDrive and click HELP then License; click on Registration & License Information. You will have to deactivate then reactivate your license to see your registration code.

OR

Launch WebDrive, click HELP and select License – Check for Program Updates. Highlight the WebDrive license installed. Click MORE INFO to see your registration code and other product information.

 For GroupDrive

Launch the GroupDrive Server Administrator and click GroupDrive Domains. On the “Welcome” tab, you will see your registration code.

For more specific technical support issues, please review our Knowledge Base Articles or submit a help ticket through our online HELP DESK.

Southrivertechnologies.com

Shh, I have a secret… or is that SSH, I have a secret?

That’s something my 3 and 5 year olds say. “Daddy, shh, I have a secret”. They would then promptly tell me their secret, usually either tattling on each other or someone else or telling me they love me. While that sort of non-secrecy is great for children, it is not acceptable in secure communications.

A very long battle has been going on for literally thousands of years between those with information they want to keep secret and those who want to know those secrets. Some early methods included taking a rod or staff of fixed width and wrapping a strip of paper around it, writing your message on the strip and unwinding it, this would leave the letters of your message scrambled until you placed it on another rod of the same width. Like this:

Substitution ciphers go back at least to the 1400s and involve changing one letter for another based on some rules. A famous version recently was Enigma used by the Germans in WWII. Substitution ciphers are still used in DES and AES though they are much stronger encryption algorithms than earlier ciphers. DES is one of the algorithms selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). Today Triple DES, or DES applied three times, is viewed as secure.

FIPS compliance is an important part of writing any secure Managed File Transfer server like Titan MFT by South River Technologies. As one of the engineers working on Titan, it is my responsibility to keep current on cryptographic standards and incorporate those standards to secure data transmission for our customers. Titan MFT enables secure communications over SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol using the secure shell or SSH), FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS), and HTTPS.

Secure communication is essential in today’s environment, and as hackers and spies become more sophisticated in their attempts to break into secure data, new ways to secure that data will be developed, and software engineers like me will bring those new protocols to customers. Rest assured that you can indeed have a secret and keep it secret.

Just Tryin’ to Help

I’ve been in sales for over 15 years, which has provided me the opportunity to talk to people with different backgrounds, cultures, and personalities.  Over the years I’ve been praised, yelled at, cussed at, and hung up on.  Early in my career I had a difficult time not taking it personally.  One thing that I’ve noticed during this time is for the most part people are just trying to get through the day, and most importantly, keeping their bosses happy.  With the ever-increasing pressures, deadlines, stresses, and playing multiple roles within our day to day jobs in this electronic world, I think people sometimes forget  the human element and importance of interpersonal interactions.

 I’ve noticed that many people, when contacting any organization, assume that the first person they speak with will be able to answer all of their questions and solve their problems.  Without even an introduction, they start throwing information at me.  They are often not pleasant or professional if they don’t receive the answers they are looking for or the answers they expect.  It doesn’t take much to set people off into a tantrum.  I’ve been in several situations where I’ve been on the receiving end of that anger just by saying “Hello, how can I help you?”   I’ve learned that it’s best to sit and listen and allow them to express their dissatisfaction, anger and frustration before uttering a word. 

People just want to know they are being heard and feel they have your full attention.  Even if I am not the right person for them to talk to, can’t answer their questions or assist them with their problem, I’ve listened.  It’s important to talk with respect, be honest and provide alternatives on how they can obtain the information they are searching with a smile.  Yes, even on over a phone line it is possible to hear when someone is smiling.  In the end, the person on the other end of the line will end the call with a “thank you, I appreciate your help.”

 After all, we are all just trying to make a living and survive another day and as a sales person I’m  just tryin’ to help.

 

South River Technologies

Mind your P’s & Q’s & ACLs

When I was young, my mother always used to say, “Mind your P’s & Q’s.”  While I knew what she meant (i.e., “behave yourself!”), I did not know the literal translation. Because language is alive and evolves over time, today we are left with only theories about the original meaning and origin of “Mind your P’s and Q’s.”  Did it originate from 17^th century bartenders minding their pints and quarts? Or, perhaps, from typesetters minding the placement of letters on printing presses? Today, no one really knows. But, while we do not remember the original meaning, we generally do understand the current meaning as it has evolved over time or, if not, we can look it up.

 

Thankfully, somewhere along the line, someone decided that there must be rules for meaning, punctuation, and grammar, even though these rules change and evolve as various uses become popular and generally accepted. And, while language is alive, it is also like a virus and, in fact, grammar conventions and colloquialisms spread like viruses amongst groups of people. We can consult, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), but sometimes a new general consensus forces style manuals to adapt and change. Even so, technical writers, such as myself, must rely upon style manuals for clarity and consistency. So, although I can spot a trend and realize that in the future a rule may be changed because general consensus, understanding, and general use has evolved, until my style authorities have spoken, certain popular punctuation or grammar conventions will remain incorrect.

 

This brings me to technical acronyms and initializations and the plural forms thereof. We, here at SRT, recently released version 9 of WebDrive, which includes enhanced support for Amazon S3 ACLs (Access Control Lists). During my research, I noticed that a very large number of websites referred to ACLs (plural) as ACL’s (possessive). I know this is wrong, technically, because CMOS tells me so! But it makes me wonder, with so many people adding “’s” to denote the plural form of acronyms or initialisms, how long will it stay wrong? Now, I am not the grammar police…oh wait. Yes, I am. So, while I realize that apostrophe rules can be a sticky wicket, for now, remember: If you have more than one, and you’re not denoting ownership or some possessive relationship, just add a lowercase “s” to your acronym or initialism (for example, DVDs, IDs, ACLs).

 

Of course, English being what it is (i.e., a language where flammable means the same as inflammable), you can expect a few exceptions to this rule.

 

The exceptions are:

• if the initialism or acronym contains periods (for example, “Ph.D.’s”)
• if the initialism or acronym ends in “s” (for example, “SOS’s”)
• If the initialism or acronym contains only one letter (for example, P’s & Q’s)

Next time, more on “The Viral Nature of Language,” or “No, lemmings don’t actually commit mass suicide.”

Expanding Our International Presence

 

“We want you to develop and manage our reseller channel, concentrating on expanding our international presence”, said my future boss. Now that sounded like a very challenging new opportunity some half dozen or more years ago. Learning new skills, traveling the world, meeting people of different backgrounds and cultures, and all the while promoting the benefits of SRT’s suite of file management and collaboration applications, could it get any better?

 I did not stop to think about how the most basic of all business challenges would be handled – communication. It hit me right away after receiving the first email from an interested software reseller located in Germany, written entirely in German, of course. That was soon followed with my introduction to a Japanese integrator very interested in marketing our catalogue of software to his local customer base. Written in a mix of, what I now know as Kanji, and English, it was a challenge to understand. I’ve become very adept at using Yahoo’s Babel Fish site (http://babelfish.yahoo.com/) and Google’s “Translate Text” http://translate.google.com/ page to get the intent of the message.

 I’ve learned to install additional language packs on Win XP so that I can correctly represent the extended character sets found in the communications with my German, French and Spanish partners. The Cyrillic alphabet still escapes me, but thankfully, our partners in Russia offer literal translations in all their emails and purchase orders.

 

I’ve tried to resurrect 5 years of high school/college French language classes. While I did very well in school way back when, the years and lack of practice have not been a friend to me and I must resort to copy and paste to Bable Fish to properly understand purchase orders coming from our French speaking resellers.

 

With more resellers in Germany than in any other country (other than the US) I decided it was time to expand my international language repertoire and take a continuing ed class in conversational German.  I was quick to realize that ‘Guten Tag’ and ‘Mit freundlichen Grüßen’ was about the most I could reasonably remember and that the remainder of this intriguing language was a little more than my AARP-qualified mind could grasp. I did learn to look for emails and faxes with “Bestellung” in the subject, now knowing that another order had arrived.

 

I have recruited my high school son for assistance. With two years of Japanese language classes under his belt, he has proved to be a very worthwhile resource for written communications with customers throughout Japan.

 

The challenges continue as we move into new markets with new international partners. I still haven’t traveled anywhere, other than the corporate headquarters in downtown Annapolis, Maryland, USA – a mere 125 miles from my remote office outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am working with more and more partners to translate our product materials into their native language, but unfortunately, I still can’t proof the web pages myself. Thankfully, 3rd party businesses abound who can help with this; but there’s an element of trust when you have to turn your marketing pitch to an outside firm so that it can be translated into a language you don’t understand. 

 

I’m a little sad to say that I’ve succumbed to the US-centric view of the business world, expecting all my customers to be able to communicate in English. Telephone conversations to international partners almost always begin in the same format.  “Hallo”, “Hello”, “One moment please”, “Hello, this is Sue, how may I help you?”

 

Some day I’ll be able to drag up that entire French dialog exercise from my high school days and say something intelligent on the phone like “Bonjour. Je m’appelle Matt de South River Technologies. Est-ce que je peux parler avec Michael?”

 

…but until then, I’ll need to resort to the “Hello” and then wait for the English speaking receptionist to pick up the phone. Thank goodness for auto-translate in email 😉

 

Congratulations Mr. President!

Do You Know Michael Ryan?

 

Michael Ryan, CEO of

South River Technologies,

was recognized today for being 1 of 25 CEOs you need to know!

(Read about it)

 

Congratulations on your achievements Michael!

 (Have a Diet Dew on the house!)

Eating the Corporate Candy

M&M’s are the official corporate candy of South River Technologies. There is an SRT logoed jar sitting at the front desk that remains perpetually full of M&M’s.

The jar greets the employees each day, it welcomes visitors, and if someone brings their child to work “mommy/daddy, can I have some?” is usually the first thing out of a young visitor’s mouth. Children can hone in on the M&M jar with laser-like precision.

The jar reveals something of a personality profile for each of us. There’s the person who, like clockwork, hits the jar at 4pm for that late afternoon boost – someone who tends to burn the candle at both ends. There are those who take a few M&M’s several times a day – usually people who tend to be more social. Some people just make one large withdrawal – usually people who focus on efficiency. Or there’s the quirky person who just picks out a few blue ones. That would be me.

The M&M stash is also something of an emotional barometer for all of us. When we celebrate a big sale, a resolved support issue, or a new product release, enjoying some M&M’s is typically part of the celebration. You can also tell if someone is having a rough day because you’ll usually hear someone else say, “Hittin’ it kind of early today?” Or you’ll just hear a sigh, followed by “I need some M&M’s!”

We are big snackers at SRT, and there is always a large basket in the kitchen that is filled with a variety of snacks. The varieties tend to vary weekly and monthly. But M&M’s have consistently been the official corporate candy, even though the jar is often flanked by other jars – candy corn at Halloween, jelly beans at Easter. It’s not only the one treat we can all agree on, but it kind of brings us together. A lot of great information, encouragement and support is shared around the M&M jar.

There’s a lot to be said for eating the corporate candy.

FTP and Taxes

As April 15th approaches, everyone scrambles to get those taxes in the mail. Wait, the mail, forget about it, whose mailing tax returns? Well, maybe Grandma Betty still takes her pre-printed IRS envelope to her local Post Office, but the rest of us, we’re transmitting those Tax Returns into cyberspace and hopefully getting a refund.

In August 2007, the IRS produced Publication 1346, a 400 page document that discussed in great detail the Electronic Return File Specification for Individual Tax Returns –it’s a definite page turner (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1346.pdf). In a nutshell, protocol of choice for the IRS is FTP with SSL 3.0/TLS 1.0. Zmodem was second, a file transfer protocol discovered by Chuck Forsberg in 1986. Its claim to fame was that it improved transfers on the X.25 network and it offered the ability to restart transfers. As you can see, the IRS has always been on the cutting edge when it comes to collecting the government’s money.

Here are a few statistics for you to ponder:

• Electronic Tax Filing began in 1986, with the transmission of 25,000 refund-only individual income tax returns from five transmitters in three locations, Cincinnati, Raleigh-Durham and Phoenix
• In 1992, filing from home began with the 1040 TeleFile research test which processed 125,983 TeleFile returns from the state of Ohio
• Last year, the IRS received 136.9 million total individual returns
• There are over 1700 forms available for download from the IRS FTP site

In closing, there is another protocol that you never want used by the IRS. It’s also called FTP. Here’s their definition: “Congress established the FTP (Failure to Pay) tax penalty to encourage taxpayers to pay their Federal income taxes on time and authorized the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to charge this penalty on tax accounts when taxes are not paid when due.” So the moral of the story, keep e-filing but pay your taxes!

Standards: Who needs them?

In my many years of development work, I’ve had the opportunity to work at several companies as well as freelance work, so far always developing retail software (in contrast to in-house software). Programming came naturally to me from as young as ten years old. One thing I’ve always encountered is the problem of standards.

Structure in programming isn’t just a matter of the language itself, though languages have matured to become more structured over the last 3 decades since I began the adventure of programming. When I started programming in BASIC in the 1980s there were very few standards one could use to structure a program. Now standards are everywhere and in every language. But standards are also very important in every aspect of computing.

As I moved to more advanced and mature languages and began to work with more programmers, I experienced the problem of differing standards. Naming conventions are a small annoyance to overcome; data differences can be huge obstacles. Recently the issue of standards in SFTP data transfer reared its ugly head again as a new version of a client program, whose programmers seem to relish the idea of ignoring standards, stopped working against our Titan Server product line.

Standards aren’t just developed because a bunch of people have nothing better to do when they get together at a convention in Las Vegas. Standards are the very core of what allows for our modern communication systems to continue functioning.

So the answer to Standards: Who needs them? We All Do.