A Different Recession in Alabama

In 2007 there were eight Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Alabama. Today there is only one. Texas whose economy is rebounding at a faster rate than any other state has fifty one Fortune 500 companies that make their home there.

What happened to Alabama ? Other states that have seen an exodus of large corporations include Michigan and Maryland.  Michigan’s reason is pretty obvious but what about Maryland? By all accounts Maryland’s problem is the recent rise in tax rates. Big companies are sensitive to a lot of factors but  operating costs are high on the list. So did Maryland kill the “goose that laid the golden egg”? It certainly looks like it.

It doesn’t take an economics degree to realize the prosperity fallout associated with having a “500”  company headquartered in your state. Big companies tend to buy the things they need locally and large companies need lots of stuff. Remember this conversation , “Why is ABC Company buying so many widgets?” answer, “Oh they supply X to (insert name of Fortune 500 company here).”

So what’s the fix for Alabama’s “Fortune” deficit? I certainly don’t have that answer but I do know that if we don’t do some thing, Alabama’s comeback trail will be hard , long and treacherous.

Don’t clean the toilet with your toothbrush.

I talked with a client the other day who was considering moving his business completely to cell phone. “ I think we can do everything on our cell phones.” he stated.

 

I tried to explain to him why that wasn’t a real good idea. I failed miserably. Now do I think he will eventually see the problem with this and change his mind? Yes I do but I wish I could have explained it a little better and saved him AND HIS EMPLOYEES some anguish. Maybe if I write about it here I can do a better job of explaining this.

Cell phones are one of those technologies that have become indispensible  very very quickly. Think about how long you have felt like you couldn’t get through the day without yours…it probably hasn’t been very long. For me it has only been in the last decade that I have become permanently attached to mine. Now granted “the last decade” is a pretty long time but it pales in comparison to my forty year relationship with the automobile .

Like the automobile , our cell phones are a very personal piece of technology. Mine has MY email and MY contacts it also has MY pictures. MY customers , close contacts and friends call ME on MY phone. “ I have his cell phone.” is a phrase we use to express our close relationship to that person.  I don’t have that kind of relationship with the phone on my desk. It’s a business tool like my calculator (yes I still have one) or stapler. My Dad always used to say that the key to doing a good job was having the correct tool for that job. To use an analogy that Dad used….” You CAN clean the toilet with your tooth brush , but you aren’t going to be very pleased with the results .”

The major problem with cell phones is their lack of ability to transfer a call. Have you ever called someone about a business matter on their cell phone and found that to accomplish your task you really needed to talk to someone else at that that business.  Then what do you do? Hang up and call that person? Cell phones are designed to communicate with a specific person directly not a group of people. They aren’t a collaborative tool. We all learned in Business 101 , that businesses grow by becoming a group endeavor and incorporating the talents and efforts of many people. Entrepreneurs expand their businesses by delegating tasks and “cloning” themselves. The ones who don’t do this well FAIL.

The good news is that modern phones systems are able to incorporate cell phones into the mix and enhance their collaborative power . For example , yesterday someone called my direct number at the office. I didn’t happen to be at my desk so I answered it on my cell phone which rings along with my desk phone. I needed something at my desk to answer the question so I sent the call back to my desk phone. I looked up the information I needed and answered that question. We then found that to complete the task , he needed to talk to another person in my office. I transferred him to that persons phone and we were able to take care of that customer and let him get back to doing what he does. Without our phone system , satisfying that customer’s needs would have been a lot harder and probably more irritating for him.

OK Hackers and Scammers…I Give Up!

I recently posted about my annoying Twitter hack. It was just that…annoying….but no real damage done. Now I have experienced a whole new level of irritation…with E Bay.

I have been buying and selling on E Bay for years. I have not only bought and sold the requisite tech stuff but I have even bought and sold cars and boats.

I bought my 23 foot Regal cruiser on E Bay five years ago from a dealer in Coral Gables, Florida. My family and friends have had many great outings and lots of fun on her. Eventually , the second happiest day in a boat owners life comes…the day you sell it! I pulled her out of the slip on Smith Lake more than a year ago thinking I might move the boat to Guntersville or maybe even back to Florida. Time and circumstance have conspired to cause it to sit right here and eventually I decided to sell it.  Since I bought it on E Bay , it made sense to sell her that way…right?

The first auction went to a guy in Tennessee who had to back out. OK…….stuff happens. The next go-round didn’t get the price I wanted…OK. On my third attempt I made the acquaintance of a lovely  gentleman who claimed to be working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. All I had to do , according to the fake email from PayPal that I got, to get the money that HAD NOT been deposited in my account was to send $1500 via Western Union to some bogus shipping company in Kuala Lampur and they would release the funds that weren’t actually in my account. I went through all the necessary fraud reporting procedures with E Bay and Pay Pal and relisted. Things were going well and the boat sold for what I wanted.

The buyer appeared to be a guy from a small town in Georgia near a couple of lakes…made sense. My first communication with my new buyer yielded a surly response demanding things that I was unable and not obligated to do like “test drives” and forgoing the deposit.

My business like response about terms and such stuff netted this reply-

“Sir,
Tnis is not the end of this situation. Crooks like u need to be brought to justice. I'm a police cnief and nave contacted the proper ajthorities.”

Obviously this is the work of a nine year old or another semi-literate hacker in some third world country working off a cell phone. I’m guessing the nine year old.

The net result is I have wasted two weeks, been irritated beyond belief and I have not sold the boat. Am I mad at E Bay? Maybe they could do more to keep out the scammers like my faux cruise ship guy…I don’t know what that would be. Maybe they could do more to keep nine year olds off??? Once again I am not sure how you filter out a determined internet savvy pre-teen with a smart phone.

Some people are hesitant to buy from E Bay because they are afraid of being taken advantage of. I personally have had thousands of transactions over the years and I honestly don’t remember having a bad experience as a buyer or as a seller….till now! I guess the old caveat “Let the buyer beware” gets reversed on E Bay…..”Let the SELLER beware!”

Cutting The Chord

It’s been about a year since we “fired” Dish Network at my house. We only have TV that comes from broadcast sources and the internet. Our spend went from about $130 a month to about $26 (Netflix and Hulu). We managed to make it through the summer with no ill effects. Encouraged by this success , I am considering another bold move……firing (or reducing) AT&T. I am writing this post using an air card connection from Sprint that I have been using exclusively at home for about a week and it seems to be working pretty well. Cell phone signal at my home has been pretty dicey but seems to provide enough bandwidth to do the basic things like web and email. Just like the TV project , I plan to apply some technology to enhance the experience. My next step will be to see if a signal booster with an external antenna will increase the bandwidth and telephone to a level that will support things like voice and streaming. My friend who works at Sprint says 4G will be here “any day now”.

My Personal Hacking Experience

Although having your social media account hacked (happened to be Twitter for me) is not as devastating as  having your bank account compromised, it teaches a lesson that we should all heed.

When I originally set up my personal Twitter account in 2007, I was “trying it out” and really didn’t take it too seriously. That was the year that Twitter hit a million users. Since then , Twitter has exploded to 500 million users.

I set up my Twitter account with an easy password that I could remember. Five years later, that password has been compromised. I don’t use it much anymore and never used it on anything that I was really concerned about. Since I link a lot of social media together , the “nice” person from Brazil who hacked me also tried to get into my Facebook and some other stuff. I had changed those passwords to stronger ones mostly (I am ashamed to say) at the request of the services themselves. I hadn’t gotten around to Twitter yet (or rather they hadn't gotten around to me yet)

So far the damage has been minimal.Up until yesterday, I had the pleasure of following 2000+ random people from Brazil (Sao Paulo to be precise) who mostly Tweet in Spanish and Portuguese about rap music. Being the big fan of rap music that I am and being so fluent in Portuguese……I  set out to unfollow these folks. Easier said than done but I managed to find something called Manage Flitter http://manageflitter.com that allows you to mass unfollow people. Great stuff! The Twitter shores are once again safe…..and Brazilian free. Manage Flitter has several built in filters that you can use, one is the “People Who Tweet in A Different Language” filter. Kind of makes me think that this has happened to someone else????

As annoying as this was, no real damage was done. Even if this person had done what I have heard has been done to others, and discussed my “well known” crack addiction or my sexual preferences (or lack of) publicly as me…(every one who “really” knows me is well aware of both those items)…it would still just be annoying. Going through the list of my “new best friends” was sort of entertaining. Along with the rappers and party people were several transsexuals and one real interesting account which is a resource for doctors who need information on the latest techniques for transgender surgery. I am still trying to decide if this was something designed to make me look bad or simply a reflection of my hackers personal tastes.

Who is to blame for my hacking experience? ME! I am a technology and social media consultant..I do this stuff for a living and I am supposed to know better. I screwed up…..Twitter isn’t to blame. Now my Brazilian hacker has some culpability obviously (God love him) but the responsibility for securing my accounts rests squarely on my pointy head. ARE YOU SECURE???? Unless you want to acquire a few thousand “new best friends” or are shopping for some transgender surgery…you had better take a hard look at the passwords and security settings of all your web based accounts. NOW!!

The Power Of Buzz

Buzz Words Can Be A Powerful Tool…..

But Apply With Caution!

Having spent most of my life in industries loaded with buzz words and acronyms (PRI, ISDN , VOIP , Cloud , SEO) I am still amazed at the power that these “buzzy” concepts can assert. I recently had that waking nightmare experience that we all dread. I walked into a breakfast meeting and was told , “You are giving the presentation today.” Its like the dream where you go to school and suddenly realize you are naked! Anybody who knows me would be surprised that the idea of speaking extemporaneously for ten minutes on ANYTHING would give me pause but it did…..a little.

Since I have recently been involved in some social media projects, I decided to go with that. Now sometimes when I start off talking about technology stuff, I notice that my audience will often get that eyes glazed , little drop of drool at the corner of the mouth look. NOT THIS TIME! Everybody was paying attention and at the end when it was time for questions the Q&A was longer than my allotted speaking time.

Afterward , I was asked to meet with someone at their office to talk about about how I could help them with a social media campaign…WOW!

The moral here is…..technology is all about driving the growth of business with better and innovative methods that deliver REAL returns. Often you can use “buzz words” to gain interest and engage your clients. Remember to be careful…set the proper expectations and ALWAYS deliver the goods.

Six Common Telecom BOOBOOS

In thirty plus years, I have seen lots of things when it comes to how telecom services get handled. These are the six things that seem to be repeated over and over on thousands of  plans.

1. Buying the inside wiring coverage
The inside wiring plan sounds like something that should be very beneficial to the consumer. IT's NOT! If you read the fine print there are additional charges that will  be incurred for just about everything they might do INSIDE. Basically you are paying for nothing.This is true for telcos and cable companies.

2. Unlimited Long Distance
If you use 1000 plus minutes of long distance every month, this is a fairly good deal. Let's face it, most folks don't use that much. I recently told a client, "you  paid thirty five cents per minute for your long distance last month." The client replied . "No we have UNLIMITED long distance!" "Right", I said, "which costs ten ninety five a month and you used 31 minutes last month." I have also seen people put unlimited long distance on all lines, also not good.

3. Buying domains , email and web hosting from your service provider                                                                                       If you were never ever, ever going to change providers this would be ok, but the reality of today's environment says that at some point you will want to change. Moving these services away from your provider is painful and time consuming. It's designed to be that way. How can I say that? For example,AT&T uses a domain registrar in Melbourne Australia called Melbourne IT. The only way to communicate with Melbourne IT is via FAX to their local number in Australia. Could they make it any more difficult? Coming soon...... AT&T's new domain registrar, LUNAR IT!!!

4. Having more than six analog lines.
This is another one of those basic math story problems from grade school. Six  business lines cost $50 each or $300 per month. The average T-1 now costs about $300 per month and can handle up to 23 voice channels. How many lines past six does it take to make a T-1 the better deal? This will be on the test later....:)

5. Packaging feature deals on all your lines.                    Packaging features is a great idea for businesses with one  or two lines and regular phones. It's a terrible idea for anyone with a phone system and three or more lines. I have seen bills with six line plans that have features on all six lines. Do you really want three way calling and voice mail on your third rollover line?

6. Assuming that “customer service”doesn’t mean SALES.
Customer service calls are answered in the sales department. I am not saying that the people you talk to aren't nice people or that they are out to get you.They are sales people with quotas to make , families to feed and products to push. Never forget that. What is good for them may not always be what you need.