He who wears glasses will replace them sooner

It started innocently enough (maybe): the car manufacturers created headlight lenses made out of plastic instead of the clearer and more expensive glass. If you have an older car you would know by now that plastic headlights become clouded and need replacing or resurfacing (which usually leads to replacing anyway as you melt through the flimsy plastic as you try to clean it). What a pain. I am surprised that in the land of lawsuits nobody has brought suit to the dangers of plastic headlights in order to get the car manufacturers to use the more clear and longer lasting glass headlight lenses. You see, apparently, the ability to see at night diminishes with how old the headlight lenses are, as opposed to how older you get. I could have saved a trip to the eye doctor if I knew. Maybe the car manufacturer can comp me the eye doctor exam.
But here comes the kicker: eye-wear lenses are also made out of plastic -- the eye places are considering stopping glass lenses altogether. I still have glasses from 30 years ago, that I can see through, amde out of crystal. But the glasses I bought 4 years ago, made in the USA- not France, from lenscrafters (the name does not imply that they are craftsmen -- they could not get the lens centers to line up with my eyes) are heading to the garbage. I went to lenscrafters and this was the exchange:

• Me: Something's wrong with my glasses. All of a sudden I cannot clean them.
• her: They are scratched.
• Me: How can they be scratched? I did not scratch them. I clean them every day the same way. Wait a second, these are plastic, aren't they? Does it matter how old they are?
• her: Yes, these are very old. We do not even sell (picture vile dripping from the voice and an implied "stupid-old") Nike frames anymore.
• Me: Old? I did not think they are old. Can you tell how old they are? (I gave her my info - she looked it up).
• her: They are 4 years old.
• Me: So? That's old?
• her: That's old.
• Me: Can you fix them?
• her: No. Lenses must be replaced.

I left because they do not take my insurance any more. 

But I was thinking: When did it become that glasses (which cost more than what the blue book value of my car was) are a disposable product -- when your script remains the same and the frame is sturdy enough? It's not like they are clothes and you wore the out. I can see that the auto industry is trying to lower their costs by selling us disposable cars, but my eye glasses are now a disposable product? Where did the quality engineering go? The way of homo erectus and homo habilis, I guess - it just vanished. Where is the business fellow that first suggested that eye glasses should become disposable. The irony of this is that Lions will lose a charity... We cannot give our plastic pitted cloudy scratched glasses to poor people any more - that would be cruel. The glasses belong in a landfill.

As a side: my car is a Chevy -- runs great, but is falling apart piece by piece: seat belt plastic crumbling exposing sharp metal components ($100 per seat-belt to replace - thank God for duct tape), headlight lens cloudy ($200 to replace - found them cheap on autoparts website for the other car) forcing me to question my night vision (I only night drive when there is a full moon), weather stripping crumbling so that I cannot take the car to a car wash unless it is a hot summer day, the blade that keeps the window from touching the door also crumbling - no more hand on the window when I drive since it turns bloody, the paint is peeling off exposing a lovely grey and rust color, lost the overdrive a few years ago but it drives great and it is a very stable car to drive with lots of power to haul and go up hills. People say to me "why don't you get a new one?" and I say: I hope some Chevy guys come across this car, you know, their final product, and maybe, just maybe, they get embarrassed enough with their product that they start making it well again.

FACEBOOK updates - get rid of games, music, and the like - How-To

I got a request today to "privately" connect with a friend on Facebook, someone that has a privacy issue regarding "like-ing" and "comment-ing" on things and having other people know what he likes or comments about. One advice I have is that he should leave Facebook, because he is delusional if he thinks that anything on the web can stay private -- ever seen that wayback machine? So, don't say/post anything that may come back to bite you in the rear. Think of posts like tattoos. Easy to get, a b*tch to remove.

But his post suggested that there are some steps I can take to reduce the automatic nonsense updates I receive from some of my friends without their knowledge, that seem to bog-down my news feed. You see, if you do the following steps (until FB changes direction again), you may reduce the updates to things that matter to you.

Place your mouse over someone's name, but do not click. A window will appear. Now move the mouse on “FRIENDS" but do not click. Move your mouse down to "Settings" and click. A magical list will appear. Here you may remove checkmarks from things you do not care about, like games, or music, or video updates.

Neat.

Global tech support since the late 1980's

My friend Phoebus had his hotmail account hacked a month ago. A wealth of email addresses and saved emails and pictures have been inaccessible to him. Plus I was getting spammed from his account. Using technology for selling snake oil is not something I approve of.

So, I connected with him on Skype and we chatted, he was in England a few days ago and in some Caribbean Island today when we chatted again. I offered to help him clear his account. I am sure he will be buying me a Guinness when we meet in the UK one day. I was able to reset his password and his security questions by prodding his memory and my archive email folders for details about his account, such as email names, titles, content, etc. as well as other email accounts he has. About an hour later, mission accomplished, he was in his email again! Another satisfied customer. The global reach and ability to tech-assist is fantastic.

My aunt the other day was in an Arabian country and was having Skype problems. She called me for help and was able to help her. I connected with the regular land line and realized that she misplaced her Skype login credentials. So I was able to connect remotely to her computer in Cyprus, spend a few hours, and track her other Skype accounts -- she had 4 other accounts. We picked one and we restored that account going through the profile settings and restoring her connection to her global family! Another happy customer!
BTW, my account was hacked by computers that appeared to reside in southeast Asia about a month ago. It was not a big deal to me to go in and create stronger passwords and new security questions -- tip: my questions and answers do not match, for example, if the question is favorite color, my answer could be "pastichio". It seems that the hackers were able to mimic the sign-in credentials for email sending and address lookup, but not really get into the emails and cause serious privacy damage. Whatever the vulnerability with Hotmail was, I am sure the Hotmail people fixed it already.

Reliable Hard Drives a thing of the past?

I am on the market for a new external hard drive. The Western Digital 500G one I have had a 2 year warranty and lasted 4 years before it just would not connect any more. The 5 year warranty one lasted 7 years, so I am happy about that.

Typically I have been buying 5 and 10 year warranty hard drives but they seem to not be available any more. My first one was a Seagate 40 Meg. Still runs, BTW.

According to a recent article here, two big-time manufacturers slashed the warranties on hard drives. The manufacturers give some bogus-to-me reasons about why they did it, but the bottom line is as follows -- in my opinion: They cannot be sure of the quality of the products they manufacture any more. Yippee for the global-supply-disjointed-chain!

So, let us all put our faith in these disposable external hard drives with 30-day, 90-day, or even [gulp] 1-year and [double-gulp] 2-year warranties. Let us backup our cherished phone and video memories on metallic storage devices that the manufacturers themselves do not think can last for more than a year, or two. Could they be thinking that nobody will notice that hard drive warranties are reduced?

But wait, the manufacturers "may" charge us for "extended" warranties. I can see why they "may". I wonder how they can charge for extended warranties when they slap 1-year warranties on products they do not think will last more than 1 year.

Quality manufacturing seems to be dead, anywhere I look around me. Is it for the sake profits versus customer satisfaction? [Ah, the people will buy anything you drop the price on - so said a Marshals' employee the other day when I asked "how long does merchandise last on the shelves?"]. Even Nokia is going cheapo -- the 7 key on my E1 phone just fell off -- it must have hit the warranty-period-end mark.

Anyway, long live recycled disposable paper plates, since that is where we seem to be right now in manufacturing quality products.

PS. What drive will I buy? Probably a LACIE since they offer 3 year warranties. Bye-bye Seagate and WD. See you when you start making quality products that you can stand behind.

Troubleshooting diner's laptop keyboard

I checked on my friend Nick today, at Alexandra's Bistro (f.k.a. Blue Anchor Restaurant) for a delicious lunch special. While we talked it came up that the letter "r" on his laptop keyboard does not work. I told him I'd have a look at it after the fresh black coffee I was consuming on the private veranda (read: blacktop parking lot). Patrons started arriving and we went inside, he on the grill, I on the laptop. A quick button pressing to test all the keys, revealed that 3 keys where actually not working, a sign to me that the Toshiba laptop keyboard has a bad connection and probably needs replacing. The keys where "~" "r" and "[left-alt]". Since most of the places he visits on the internet are .gr domains, the Hellenic/Greek domains, I wrote on a piece of paper the ASCII code for the letter "r" for him, namely "[right-alt]114" and taped it on his laptop. So, by him pressing the right-

ALT key, and while the key is pressed use the keypad to enter 114 and then release ALT, the lower case "r" appears. Problem solved! Additionally, a new laptop keyboard would cost him $100+shipping. So I proposed a $10 USB keyboard from Staples or Office Max, and a piece of Luan wood platform to cover the defective keyboard but not the touch-pad.

thunderbird 13.0.1 new mail alert: disable it

I receive several hundred email messages every single day, less on the weekends, about 10% work-related, the rest not. I use Thunderbird to check my email. Every now and then, a sliding pop up creeps into the lower part of my screen, alerting me about email messages that I have already seen, dealt with, and probably deleted. I do not like that pop up, it does not help me be more productive.

So, I use the Thunderbird options to disable it. I go to the menu called TOOLS in Thunderbird, then I choose OPTIONS, then the tab GENERAL, and I check off the two options for alerts, SHOW AN ALERT, and PLAY A SOUND. And I press OK.

The next step would be to find out how to disable the popups for when there is an error with the email read/write/create.

How many websites since 2003

I took a refresher job search course with Lehigh University the past few weeks. It was awesome, and it made me think about accomplishments versus titles and responsibilities.

It is a very easy trap to fall into when you just "do" instead of "doing and recording". It was a trap I fell in early in my graduate work and quickly dug myself out when I was asked to explain my results. The same applies when you look and bid for projects, get them, complete them, and then move on to the next cycle. One day comes when you need to recall the work and the projects, and you draw a blank. You know you worked your ass off to get here, but then you cannot recall on the spot your accomplishments.

I feel that blogging and twitter might be the answer to my recall issue. I will try to record the accomplishments, like the fact that the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church Facebook and website went from a few dozen views per week to a high 300 unique for the first and 1500 unique visits for the second, after I took over both sites, within a few months. I have done this for other sites too, but the analytics in Google and Facebook are making it easy for me to quantify the results now, not so in the past.

So how many websites have I worked on by designing them, building them, debugging them, promoting them, maintaining them, redesigning them, since Jen and I founded Zephyros Inc. in 2003? 76. How many email campaigns have we built and delivered and analyzed and maintained since then? 150+. How many emails did we sent out for clients? 9,000,000+.

The next step for me is to write about the manufacturing and service industry projects. Many of them are from our collaboration with the Enterprise Systems Center.

Charalambos Marangos is cited in the International Journal of Production Economics

Charalambos Marangos is cited in the International Journal of Production Economics Yeah! Our article: Agile supply chain transformation matrix: An integrated tool for creating an agile enterprise by Baramichai, M., Zimmers Jr., E.W., Marangos, C.A. in Supply Chain Management v12, no5, 2007, pp. 334 - 348 has been cited in: A review of applications of Analytic Hierarchy Process in operations management by Subramanian, N., Ramanathan, R. in the International Journal of Production Economics v138, issue 2, 2012, pp. 215-241. Thank you!

New email name is not seen in email campaign

In a recent email campaign we changed the FROM address descriptor from Joe to Helen . When my client received the newsletter, he complained that the descriptor was still Joe, instead of Helen. He proceeded to FWD me the newsletter. The FWD newsletter included Helen as the FROM, not Joe. That was the clue I needed to help the client out. You see, the client was using Thunderbird to read emails. In the past, the client replied to the newsletter and the Joe descriptor was saved in the collected address book. A search for the email address in all the address books in TB revealed that to be the case. We deleted the Joe email addresses and instantly the FROM became Helen in the inbox view. Pretty Neat!

A cure for blogger's block

While my last post about Twitter and my mixed feelings about what constitutes an appropriate Tweet did generate several positive comments from readers in my off-line world, it didn't do a whole lot to help me to figure out what I should be digitally dissecting on Twitter, here, or elsewhere.

As I tend to do when I am stumped by such things, I asked my pal Google for help.

Inspiration came from an article titled “100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start 2010” and in particular item number 10 under the section called “About Your Business.”

The suggestion: Blog about how you are using Facebook.

Although our Facebook use with respect to our corporate identity as Zephyros Inc. has been minimal so far, the Zephyros team has leveraged the power of Facebook quite well in the area of community service. Specifically, we have used Facebook to promote a local blood drive sponsored by the MOMS Club of LME.

This year’s blood drive, our third annual, will happen on Thursday, October 28, from noon through 7 p.m. at the Emmaus Public Library. As in past years, we are working with Miller-Keystone Blood Center, the only supplier of blood in the Greater Lehigh Valley. As you can well imagine, Miller-Keystone handles quite a few blood drives each year, and we are proud to say that they have termed our community blood drive among the most successful they have ever seen.

To ensure that that success continues, as in past years, we will be booking donation appointments prior to October 28. And, as in past years, we will be creating a Facebook event page to promote this event and secure donors. In the meantime, please email me at jmmarangos@zephyrosinc.com for more information about the blood drive or to set up an appointment to donate.

Of course any members of the business community who would like to help promote the blood drive within their organizations, provide incentives for donors, or come out and share a pint or two on October 28, are encouraged to get in touch as well.

Oh my, I just got the chills. I think I just felt the true power of social media marketing…

If you don't have anything nice to tweet...

True confession time: I am having a real problem with my new, self-assigned role as social media guru at Zephyros Inc. and I don't know what to do about it.

I have done a lot of research on the topics of blogging, tweeting, and the like.

I have spoken to many people who employ the packaged popular social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook to their business advantage, as well as the looser forms of electronic communication like Twitter.

I have advised people in my professional and personal lives on how to use these tools to their advantage -- and quite successfully, I might add.

But, I find myself at a loss in terms of how best to leverage these things to our company's advantage.

I know that a silent blog is a dead blog.

I know that studies are showing that the vast majority of users with Twitter accounts are silent, with 80 percent of accountholders, like me, having a lifetime tweet total of less than 10.

But I also know that the hit rate on our fledgling company Web site has gone up considerably since I started on this journey, albeit a meandering one, a few weeks ago.

I sent out a tweet earlier today. Actually, I re-tweeted an article about the 18 things a business could tweet about.

I didn’t tweet because I wanted to, but because I felt like I was “supposed” to. As a communicator, I am not sure I feel good about that. In many ways, I just added more noise to what I view to be a pretty deafening landscape.

I would welcome any thoughts on this topic. Is there value to tweeting? Is there business value in tweeting? How about blogging? Can a small business owner use a blog to some sort of business advantage?

Or if you don’t have anything nice to tweet about, would it be better not to tweet at all…

What's in a name?

It's been a week or so since the Zephyros team has focused its energies on this long overdue push into self-promotion, but it doesn't mean we haven't been thinking about it!

As pretty much every small business owner knows, internal marketing projects get "backburnered" when a client needs something, right?

But, we're happy to report that we do have a couple of new Web pages on the Zephyros site -- a revised services page that's visually improved from where it was earlier this month, and a newly developed FAQ page, which answers, among other things, how Zephyros, Inc. got its name.

We hope you enjoy our story and we'd love to hear the story behind your company name.

Giving credit where credit is due?

One of the items on the Zephyros Inc. to-do list as we work to enhance our virtually non-existant online presence is the construction of a more robust company Web site. We took the first tiny step down that path last week, uploading a new "home" page for our site, http://www.zephyrosinc.com/.

While we have designed and maintained Web sites for a variety of entities in the Lehigh Valley and beyond over the last decade, we have always been tripped up by the best design for the Zephyros Web site and how to most appropriately represent ourselves on the Internet. Fearing to take a mistep in this area, for a long time we haven't moved.

That changed last week, but I would be lying if I said giving birth to that single page was easy. Still hung up on the design-side of things, we began our construction efforts with a Web template we found through http://opensourcetemplates.org/. The template we selected was created by http://Studio7designs.com/. We changed the code and the graphics, we took care of browser incompatibilities, and fixed code bugs to make the template fit our creative vision.We provided a credit line to both organizations in the footer of our new page.

In sharing free Web templates, OpenSource invokes the Creative Commons Public License (CCPL) as a means of protecting its work. Our reading of the CCPL is that "you can use our stuff and change it as much as you like, but you still have to give us credit." So, that's what we did.

On some levels we "get" it, and on some levels, quite honestly, we're not sure. If an author writes a story about a shark, is he obligated to give credit to Jaws creator, the late Peter Benchley?

We would welcome any thoughts on this subject...

Blogging, the next...version

So, Zephyros Inc. officially took it's first, and long overdue, step into the world of self-promotion yesterday. In particular, we are focusing on marketing in the electronic world for obvious reasons.

Our journey began yesterday with the posting of a single, simple Web page in our Web space: www.zephyrosinc.com. The new home page now sits above the rather crudely designed services page that has served as our company placeholder page for far longer than we would ever care to admit. The text on that page gives you a bit more information on our self-imposed mission.

Today's task was to start a blog. Something that pretty much everyone has been doing for a long, long time. And, because blogging is nothing new, we figured that we would be able to cross this important and seemingly simple task off of our list before pouring our second cup of coffee.

Boy were we wrong. More on that to come.

For now, we remain committed to the challenge we've given ourselves. And pledge to our clients that from this point on we will only be using the phrase "do as I say and not as I do" with children.