Cell Phone Etiquette

When I was a kid growing up in the sixties, we had a solitary pink rotary dial phone on the middle floor of our three story house. Whenever the phone rang, all activity in our household immediately ceased and everybody made a mad gallop to answer that ridiculous telephone. If it rang while we were all still in bed, everybody threw aside the bed covers and dashed for the stairs, with whacky bed hair and crazed, hollowed eyes. But that phone never went unanswered, unless there was nobody home to hear it ring.

In the early eighties, somebody had the good sense to invent the answering machine. This was the relatively peaceful period of phone evolution, now we could let a machine do the answering. We didn’t yet carry personal phones around with us, so if we were away from our houses (and therefore our phones) it didn’t matter. A simple machine handled the call for us.

Then a few years later we got cell phones. At first, only well-paid executives had them, and they could be seen walking around trendy restaurants with a brick phone glued to their ear. I regarded them with some disdain; I thought they were just show-offs, trying to look important.

Fast forward a few years, and now everybody seems to have a personal phone; they are compact, they often have integrated cameras, the phones are cheap or sometimes free, the plans are affordable, the coverage extends to even tiny little northern towns, the batteries last forever between charges, so why wouldn’t we all have one?

Apparently we all do, and many of us have forgotten our manners while under its spell. There is something terribly compelling about a ringing phone. What really gets me is that we have now regressed back to the sixties again – if the phone rings, no matter what else is happening, it must get answered. A few years ago, a friend and I went for lunch at Citta’s. While waiting for our server, my cell phone rang and I answered it. My friend looked at me with shock and horror at what she perceived to be very tacky behavior – to answer a phone while at a restaurant. She was right of course – it is tacky behavior. Since acquiring a cell phone of her own however, I have observed on a couple of occasions that she violates her own rule. After all, the subconscious message says, this call is for ME!

Because I find it so irritating and rude that someone will answer their phone while talking to me, I have decided upon a rule of etiquette for myself. The rule goes like this: if I am involved in any kind of social interaction with a real, live human being, then that is the first priority. If the cell phone rings, press the silence button, and let it go to VOICEMAIL! Since adopting this rule I have noticed my stress level has gone down when my phone rings. I no longer have to decide whether or not to answer my phone. My rule has taken care of that decision. Now I can wait until I have a quiet moment, when I am not having a conversation or driving my car, I can sit down, listen to my voicemail messages, write down what needs to be written down, and call the important ones back. The non-urgent ones can either be deleted and ignored or perhaps just pushed back a bit. The urgency is gone, the stress is gone, and I know that I am doing my part to practice good cell phone etiquette.

Web Analytics

It seems that everybody has a website these days. It has become an accepted practice to set up a website if one runs any type of business. But for businesses, it’s not just enough to have a website. Most businesses need their website to get some specific results… to sell directly online, generate leads, or save money by providing customer service online. So how does one go about it? Good question.

The practice of website optimization is increasingly becoming a science. Increasing amounts of resources are being spent these days on website analytics and marketing. Setting up a basic site is getting easier to do; there are many affordable software tools available to us these days, if we choose to set up our own site. There are also many website design companies around. Many rely on flash and dazzle to produce nice-looking sites, but not all of them know how to build websites that build business or save money. That’s where Web analytics comes into play.

The Web Analytics Association defines Web Analytics this way: “Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage. Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding & optimizing Web usage.”

Roy McClean, owner of Whistler-based Custom Fit Communications is a member of the Web Analytics Association and is enrolled in UBC’s new Web Analytics program. He notes “Web Analytics is the practice of studying website visitor behaviour and optimizing website accordingly based upon this analysis. We first benchmark your visitors’ behavior when using your website. For example, how do visitors find your site? Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves? What words did they search with? Do visitors come to your site from a referred site? How long so they stay? What you measure - you treasure! Knowing how your website works makes it possible to develop or adjust the layout, content and programming to produce better results. We are finding that we can often increase a website’s effectiveness by well over 100 percent by applying web analytics and development best practices.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the lament, “I have a beautiful website, and I paid a lot of money for it, but nobody visits it!” It is no longer good enough just to have a pretty site; you want as many visitors as possible, and more importantly, a healthy ratio of those visitors should convert into buyers. You should be getting a good return on your website investment - otherwise, what’s the point?

If you would like to learn more about Web analytics, I recommend visiting Custom Fit Communications’ Website at www.customfitonline.com. Roy McClean is leading a course in Web Analytics and Search Engine Marketing in conjunction with the Whistler Chamber of Commerce on Jan 16, 18 and 20, 2006 from 3 to 5 p.m. You can register at www.whistlerchamber.com in the Learning Opportunities section.

Threatwall Internet Security Appliances

The internet is an amazing technology; I believe it is one of the most important inventions of the century. Here we have an incredible research tool whereby we can look practically anything up, we can communicate with anybody in any country in the world in a microsecond, and there seems to be an endless variety of other things we can do on the ever-growing internet infrastructure.

As with any widespread adoption of a technology, there are those who abuse it. Those of us who use the internet on a daily basis know that there are dangers lurking, and precautions we must take. The most prominent problems are viruses, spyware, phishing scams, and spam. It is now estimated that 80 percent of all email traffic is spam. As a computer consultant, I can attest that probably the same percentage of PC repairs involve removing viruses or spyware.

I recently attended the Xchange Canada tradeshow at the Whistler Fairmont. Many of the exhibitors there were showcasing devices and strategies for battling the internet demons mentioned above. One that caught my attention was a device called ThreatWall. This is a gateway device (meaning that it sits between your office network and the internet, like a firewall), and its job is to defend against viruses, spam and spyware. It is also a content filtering device, which means that it can be programmed to disallow access to specific websites and types of websites that are considered hazardous. An example of a hazardous type of site would be “warez” or “cracks” sites. These are sites that promote software piracy and publish “crack” codes allowing software pirates to install illegal copies of software. Anyone foolish enough to visit such a site is asking for trouble – these sites are LOADED with viruses and Trojans and god knows what else.

The ThreatWall content filter can ban visits to such sites, thereby reducing the danger of virus and spyware attack, but that’s not all a content filter can do. Any business that provides internet access to their employees will know that there is a very real temptation for employees to waste time surfing the net, composing personal emails, downloading games, or chatting with messenger programs. As a former employer myself, giving my staff unrestricted accesss to the internet, I know that this was a problem. According to a Web survey conducted by America Online and Salary.com, the average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per day surfing the net, not counting lunch. Over the course of a year (and even after accounting for time employers expect to be wasted), that adds up to $759 billion spent on salaries for which companies receive no apparent benefit. The ThreatWall device, with some programming by your network administrator, defends against all internet activity that is not business-relevant. It can even be programmed to unlock access to sites or messenger programs during lunch hour, and then relock the restrictions during work hours.

As for the Threatwall’s ability to defend against viruses and so forth, the device defends on two levels. The Threatwall hardware device itself blocks threats, but it also installs client software to each of the workstations on its network. Once installed, updates are “pushed” to each workstation as they become available. The ThreatWall device itself is automatically updated as often as every 5 minutes. Used in conjunction with a firewall, which you likely already have, your network should be virtually impervious to those myriad internet pests.

The ThreatWall product so impressed me that I became a dealer. If you wish to learn more or would like a demo unit added to your network for a free evaluation, please contact me.

ImmersiVision

Now that our newly elected local politicians have promised to restore our economy, let’s hope Mayor Melamed will unite the new council and start making progress; however the people who are just as likely to kickstart the economy are unknown to us (unknown right now, but perhaps not for very much longer); they are the entrepreneurs toiling away in tiny little hidden offices, with no lawn signs or shop signs, or any other evidence of their existence. .

Rob Eberhard, a Whistler businessman and president of ImmersiVision, is one of these creative individuals. Rob has masterminded a product that will astonish anybody who hasn’t seen it; we could be talking about the next killer application, or killer app. To understand what a killer app is, think back to the early 80’s when we saw the first killer app, the word processor; the next was the spreadsheet. In the mid 90’s we witnessed what could probably be considered the ultimate killer app – The internet.

To understand the ImmersiVision killer app, imagine a Swedish citizen planning a ski vacation in North America. She jumps on her computer and browses all the websites of all the big resorts. They all have very detailed websites; the information is all there, but once our Swedish citizen arrives at her carefully researched destination, she may find that the resort was not as she’d envisioned it.

ImmersiVision hopes to change all that. At first glance our Swedish citizen thinks she has found just another website. The start page shows a photograph of the village. Nothing new here, but our Swede moves her mouse and discovers that she can swing the view around and see a 360 degree panoramic view from her vantage point. Another click of her mouse and she begins to actually move through the village, in any direction she wants. This is interesting, she thinks, and now she has completely forgotten about the other sites she was researching. As she progresses through the village, she discovers that she can actually enter some of the buildings and look inside. All the scenes are real photographs, no artistic renderings. She is also impressed that she can choose her own language for her virtual tour.

There’s a nice hotel, she thinks, and she clicks her way into the lobby. Again, she can stop and swing the perspective around 360 degrees. She finds that she can actually go into the rooms and take a look at the amenities, all the while swinging her view from side to side, even look at the ceiling if she wants to. Great! This one has a ceiling fan! (Swedes love their ceiling fans). She notices that to the right of the photo is a menu, and she is offered the chance to book this room, right now. The booking is made, she is sent an email to confirm.

You can certainly see the possibilities. Rob’s vision is much bigger than I have space to describe in this column, but the ability to virtual shop in the retail stores is certainly part of Rob’s plans. This is not a pie in the sky application – it exists today. At present a downloadable player is required for the Virtual Tour, but the web version (which will run in Quicktime within your browser) will be released in the next month. Rob showed me a demo of this software, and I believe this product has the potential to get our visitor numbers back to where they should be. Anyone who finds this site in his search for a resort holiday will look no further.

A number of hotels and retail locations in Whistler are fully on board with Rob’s vision, and both Whistler/Blackcomb and Tourism Whistler are just two of the many supporting parties sharing in the development of Whistler Content for the Immersive player. Rob is preparing to release Version 1 of Immersivion in the next few months. For more information and a demo CD, contact Rob at ImmersiVision Interactive Technologies Inc. 604-938-1477

Computers Have Come A Log Way

In this age of rising gas prices and inflation, it is easy to get bitter about the cost of living. But when it comes to technology and computers, everything is getting better, faster and cheaper. Allow me to illustrate…

When I was a young technician working for Epson Canada in 1988, my father decided to trade in his Underwood typerwriter for a computer. As a writer, he had heard about the benefits of a word processor, and decided that he was ready. He was the first in our family to own a computer.

As a staffer for Epson, I was able to get a staff discount for him. The PC I delivered to him had the following specs: 8Mhz processor, 64k of RAM, 10 Mbyte Hard-disk, 14” amber monochrome monitor, and an Epson dot matrix printer. The operating system was DOS 3.3; things like soundcards, USB ports, built-in LAN ports, even mice hadn’t been conceived of yet. Color printers cost thousands, and so did Laser printers. Color monitors were only for the rich. Nobody had even heard of the Internet.

The total cost, with discount, was around $2800. I should mention that we decided to copy the software, because we couldn’t afford it. With WordPerfect 5.1 it would have cost an additional $300, but I was able to pirate a copy of MultiMate for him, and that got him off to a nice start. After a few weeks, my mother got interested in Multimate’s database function, and was soon using it to print mailing labels for members of their local Power Squadron chapter. She got so hooked my Dad couldn’t get near his computer, so Mum had to go and buy her own. But I digress…

It is worth mentioning here that the average cereal-box electronic toy has more power than did my father’s first computer. Today, you can buy a bottom-of-the-barrel computer that has a processor 300 times faster, has 400 times more RAM, and has a hard-disk 8000 (eight thousand) times larger, bundled with a big crisp color monitor, all kinds of software and a free color printer, all for about $500. For $800 you can buy a well-equipped wireless enabled laptop weighing 5 pounds. If you were to spend today what my father spent in 1988, you’d have the very best.

Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted that the speed and power of the CPU would double every 2 years, and this came to be known as Moore’s Law. He probably could not have known that the prices would fall in direct proportion. This phenomenal pricing is probably thanks to Bill Gates’ vision of having a computer in every home by the end of the 1900’s; by now must of us have 2 or 3, and have thrown away at least another 2 or 3 as the older ones became obsolete. And with the new capabilities of modern operating systems, a system that is 5 years old is worthless because it doesn’t have the power to run the new OS’s.

My Dad’s first computer is (unfortunately) probably deep in a landfill somewhere by now, and I believe he is on his fourth computer. He is definitely ready for an upgrade, as he is now a blog author, and he needs his ‘net. I think my mother is on her sixth computer now. High speed internet? You must be joking, they’ve had that for 5 years. Dad’s in his 80’s now and Mum’s closing the gap.

Next week we’ll talk about the astonishing proliferation of free software that is available from the internet, so stay tuned.