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

FTP Client, SharePoint Client or Multi-Protocol Network Redirector

Technology marketing is hard. On the one hand, you want to position your product or service in clear simple terms that most people can understand. But at the same time, you don’t want to dumb it down so much that you insult the intelligence of the tech savvy buyer. Non-techies want to hear about how your product or service will benefit them, while techies may have a long checklist of acronyms and geek-speak that needs to be addressed before they can move forward.

Our WebDrive product is a perfect example of the challenges technology marketers face.  In simple terms, WebDrive maps a drive letter to web servers that run supported internet protocols. Because it extends the functionality of the Windows operating system, it’s not really a client application, technically it’s a network redirector. And because it supports many protocols, it’s not really an FTP client in the pure sense of the word.  What further complicates the issue is that some users may not know what protocol they are running – they just want to connect to their MyDocsOnline account or their corporate SharePoint server.  Both of these run WebDAV protocol, but if you don’t know that, you won’t search for “WebDAV Client”.

So in a world that loves to categorize everything, how do you categorize WebDrive for marketing purposes?  As it turns out, no one in history has ever googled the words “multi-protocol network redirector.”  Well, except for maybe me.  So you have to market WebDrive for each of the individual purposes it can serve:  both SharePoint Client and WebDAV client.  You specify the protocols for the techies amoung us and the applications for the less techie folks.  And then you rely on your excellent technical writing staff to guide the SharePoint Client users through configuring a WebDAV Client that happens to talk to a SharePoint Server. 

Maybe in my next career, I’ll market toothpaste. 🙂

 

 

Welcome

Hello and welcome!
Originally founded in 1996, South River Technologies (SRT) is a Maryland based, privately held company, that pioneered and paved the way for document collaboration, secure file access, and managed file transfer. In 2004, SRT received the Baltimore SmartCEO Future 50 award, which recognizes the top 50 fastest growing small businesses in Maryland.  To date, over 65,000 customers have adopted our simple, powerful approach to file management, and we proudly share that our enterprise customers include more than 70 universities across the country.

Our home office is in Annapolis, Maryland, 2 miles from the beautiful South River and about 5 miles from the Chesapeake Bay. We are also conveniently located just 2,461 miles from the heart of Silicon Valley!

It is our pleasure to be able to offer this medium to interact with our customers, answer questions, and provide up to date informtion on our products. This is a conversation  medium, and not a support desk option. For technical support please visit our online help desk at http://www.srthelpdesk.com/, this is a free support option for all.
SRT will be represented weekly by our technical, sales and administrative staff to ensure that you find something new and valuable on a regular basis. You will find information on all of our products: WebDrive, Titan FTP Server, and the DMZedge Server.
We welcome your presence here and hope you will visit us often. My name is Shaunna, and I will be activly monitoring activities here. Your appropriate, relative, and thoughtful posts will make this blog a smashing success!