Posted on February 21, 2012 by Karen Baer

According to Sam Moreau, Director of User Experience for Windows, Windows 8 is “a complete reimagination of the Windows operating system.” So while focusing on and updating modern PC capabilities, it only makes sense (to me), that they leave no rock unturned, that they, as Moreau stated, explore everything and evolve. This includes their logo:

In redesigning the logo, Microsoft had three goals in mind:

1. That it be modern and classic and go with the new Metro style design.
2. That it be “authentically digital”.
3. That it be humble, confident, and personalized.

But is it too far from the multi-colored look of the past? Is it too much like the logo of Windows 1.0? Does it really deviate from the appearance of a flag, or does it scream Finland? What are people saying?

The Good:
“I like it. It’s simple, clean and ties in nicely to the Metro UI.” – Allistair Crossley

“The new Windows 8 logo is pure genius. It has captured attention, it is driving discussion, and it has clearly established itself in just a few days as a unique, distinguished symbol of the future of Windows.” – Tony Bradley, PCWorld

“All the criticism is flat out wrong. The new Windows 8 logo is a winner.” – Clinton Stark, StarkInsider

The Bad:
“Considering how strikingly different Windows 8 is from any Windows OS that’s come before it, this austere and slightly dull design is a bit of a disappointment.” – Lance Ulanoff, Mashable

“It’s hard for me to see how this is a great leap forward in design from the Windows 1.0 logo. I realize that this is all very much a matter of taste, but to me the blue window panel in the original is more eye-catching than the tilted blue panel in the Windows 8 version.” – E.D. Kain, Forbes Magazine

“It’s a simple one-colour logo that emphasises Windows 8’s simple design, but it’s so bland that it doesn’t convey anything important about the new operating system.” – Sean Ludwig, VentureBeat

“The new Windows logo washes away the familiar color scheme and any resemblance to earlier variations. It’s a rectangle cut vertically and horizontally by two lines. The logo lacks dimension, depth or distinction.” – Joe Wilcox, Beta News

The Ugly:
“The Windows 8 logo gives me a window, but I want to jump out of it.” – Larry Dignan, ZDNet

“I think it’s very appropriate to have 4 Blue Screens of Death coming right toward you. Pretty much captures my Windows experience, anyway.” – David Van Brunt

“What the new #Windows8 logo actually is.” (see image below from Twitter)

“Microsoft should have hired me, ‘cause I could have done this in 10 minutes and charged only $100.” – Random dude named Ben

So, what do you think? Good, bad, or just plain ugly?

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Rick Beckley

There are a lot of things you have to keep up with when you’re running a power plant.  Part of it is how you track your vendors and contractors.  Back in 2008, we started working with American Electric Power (AEP) to provide them with software and hardware that would allow management to track Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) issues from their headquarters in Columbus.  To set that up, we traveled to the Kyger Creek plant in Ohio, just outside of Gallipolis.

I was pretty new to Terraine at the time, and I hadn’t done a great deal of on-the-road traveling up to that point.  So I just looked at a Google map and picked the motel that was closest to the plant.  No need to start laughing yet, it gets better.

So my boss Jim and I travel all day and finally get to Gallipolis around 7 or 8.  And the accommodations?  Not exactly what we expected.  Ever watch any 70s or 80s-era cop shows where the bad guys hole up in a cheap motel and wait for the cops to show up?  Well, not that nice.  Or imagine the motel from “My Name is Earl”, but without the charm or cleanliness.  That’s where we stayed (the bad hotel photos on MSNBC’s website offer a glimpse of similar accommodations).

Then, on to dinner.  The dining choices in Gallipolis on a weekday night are pretty limited. We ended up in a bar/restaurant that was probably named “The Bar/Restaurant”.  Jim asked the bartender what kinds of dark beer they had, and the bartender thought about it for a bit and said, “We got Michelob.”  Between the bad beer, the cigarette holes in our crunchy bedspreads, and the on-again, off-again fluorescent sign glaring in our windows, Jim looked at me and declared that I am never allowed to choose the hotel that we stay at — not even the town we stay in —  ever again.

This does have a happy ending, though.  Gallipolis aside, we’ve been working with AEP for several years now, and there’s a great article about what we do for them for QA/QC located here:

http://www.fieldtechnologiesonline.com/download.mvc/Rugged-Handhelds-Automate-Inspection-0001

You’ll need to register, but it’s free and makes me look much better than my skill at picking hotels.

Posted on February 14, 2012 by admin

“Trust Everyone But Brand Your Cattle” are words to live by in the West, even in this age of technological leaps and bounds. However, meshing laws and rules of the Old West hasn’t been as big a challenge as one might think. Cowboys, computers, and the Internet have come to serve the livestock industry in New Mexico well.

A bit of history: our agency was formed in 1887 as the Cattle Sanitary Board, the Sheep Sanitary Board subsequently forming in 1889. The two organizations merged in 1967, becoming the New Mexico Livestock Board, which continues today as a law enforcement and brand registration agency of the State of New Mexico.

Our mission is to protect the integrity of New Mexico’s livestock industry. Our team of about 60 full-time inspectors and another 60 full- and part-time deputies continuously patrol and perform inspections around our state to help keep our livestock free from disease and safe from theft. We are also the office of the State Veterinarian. Dr. Dave Fly and his team of veterinarians collaborate with various government and private sector partners to ensure that our state remains free of diseases.

The operations of this agency were abundant in paper forms; mounds and mounds of reporting were mailed to the main office for proper filing and processing. Time lag from the rural areas where our inspectors worked to our office in Albuquerque carried a negative financial and logistical impact on the benefits and safety we provided for the industry. In the early stages of the agency, inspectors may have had no communication with the office administration for weeks, even months at a time. Hence, the New Mexico Livestock Board moved forward with a grant from the State’s Legislature in 2005 to upgrade our inspection and animal ID tracing system during the outbreak of BSE, more commonly known as “Mad Cow Disease”. This grant gave us the ability to purchase Toughbook laptops for every inspector in our agency and integrate the Adesso client into our main office framework. This allowed for faster communication and more readily available data from the field of inspectors in the rural outreaches of New Mexico.

We have continued to increase the functionality of Adesso into our daily work and have had a successful partnership with the Terraine team in doing so. The digital forms built in the client are being used daily to report livestock movement, brand and ownership information, and animal health inspection requirements. It’s hard to imagine how things were done just 6 short years ago, let alone a century ago. Kudos to Terraine for making our mission and service to the State of New Mexico an easier trail to blaze.

Posted on February 08, 2012 by Karen Baer

Samsung has been bashed by every single social outlet following their Super Bowl commercial that promotes the Galaxy Note.  I’ve read the articles on Mashable Tech and on Information Week Mobility.  I’ve seen tweets like:  “Reversing 7 years of smartphone progress by bringing the stylus back.”  And  “After that very fun, very big, and very expensive Samsung Superbowl ad… People everywhere are thinking, ‘meh, I like my iPhone…’”

But even after reading all of that,  I’ve simply decided that I’m going to cut Samsung a break.  Why?  Because there’s just been too much focus on the “pen”.  I’m sure there are plenty of overgrown boys around the world (or maybe just in Kyrgyzstan) that have never heard of a stylus.  I just refuse to bust on Samsung, because I really think the commercial was actually pretty clever, funny, and memorable (in an I’m-not-a-fan-of-opposable-thumbs sort of way).  I mean, who cares if it brought back memories of searching through foot-tall grass in an I-lost-my-contact-lens kind of desperation trying to find the stylus that came with my 2002 T-Mobile Pocket PC?

What I will say without hesitation is this: The general tone of the Samsung ad is a bit (ok, ridiculously) over the top.  I mean, Mr. Guitar Hero with the circus-like, super tight, hot pink and white striped jumpsuit?  I’m pretty sure that women across the nation threw up a few buffalo wings watching his nearly pubescent hairy chest gyrate all over the place.  And the skateboarder on government property?!   Yikes.  The anarchy!  

Samsung isn’t alone, though.  Another ad that comes to mind is HP’s “I Got a Pair of Brand New Roller Skates” where a baby is flying around in her death-trap walker on a highway with mac trucks and at one point appears to be heading straight for the edge of a cliff (forget stairs being a safety concern). 

At least the baby passed vehicles on the left hand side and wasn’t trampled by a stampede a la Running of the Bulls.  I think HP and Samsung were just trying to be unforgettable.  And in my opinion, they’ve succeeded; I’m going to have nightmares for years.

Rumor has it that the Consumer Preview for Windows 8 will be coming out later this month. Just yesterday, the hearts of techies around the world got all aflutter about a Betta-fish Bing page turned pile o’ rocks today.

There are differing and extremely opinionated viewpoints on Windows 8. Will it be the next big thing, or is it doomed for Vistaland?

I could give you my opinion on it all, but given that Adesso is a Windows-based product, you’d probably take it as a sales pitch for the most amazing offline database platform that the market has to offer. You’d probably say, “She’s just saying this because she wants us to buy licenses for the Lexus of custom software solutions.” So instead, I’ve scoured the Internet for two very differing opinions on Windows 8.

This dude, Steven Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet, has already called Windows 8′s time of death (ouch).  His five main reasons?

1. No one needs it.
2. Metro is ugly and a waste.
3. Little is known about the apps.
4. Given the shear workload, Windows developers won’t just get up on the wrong side of the bed every day, they’ll likely also have gum in their hair and forget to wear pants.  No way will everything get done.
5. Windows 8 is just too late to the party.

Then there’s self described sleep-deprived techie Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo, who believes Windows 8 will redefine the way computers are used.  His 1-minute video has background music that makes me want to run (in slow motion) through a field of poppies.

What does he like?

1. The end of task management.
2. The new gestures such as multi-touch dragging.
3. Context-sensitive sharing options.
4. Fast navigation.
5. Semantic zoom, among others…

What do you think? Does Windows 8 stand a chance of swimming with the other operating system fishes, or will it sink like a rock?

That excitement lasted as long as it took us to get to our job site. Within the day, we were back to using paper. The Pocket PCs collected dust the rest of the year.

Some of you might be asking – what horrible software or hardware did they make you use?

Well, the software was decent, but the Pocket PCs were awful. Slow, difficult to use, no glare-resistant screen…it was a nightmare. Even if the data collection software is smart, if the hardware sucks, then it just doesn’t really matter.

Over the last few years at Terraine, I’ve worked with a variety of handheld devices to collect data using our Adesso software,  including Smartphones such as HTC Android phones, Panasonic Toughbooks, and TDS Recons, but the one I like most is the Trimble Yuma. And I’m not alone. A lot of our Adesso clients use Yumas, not just for environmental data collection, but for various applications like construction quality control, emergency response, and power plant and health inspections.

Above left: The Trimble Yuma.
Above right: Trimble Yuma docking and recharge station, complete with space for recharging two extra batteries.

Trimble Yuma Pros:

• Very bright and glare-resistant screen without that milky surface when viewing it from an angle.
• Integrated GPS with WaaS enhancement plus easy-to-use GPS software.
• Integrated Wi-Fi.
• Extremely rugged. It was tested with the Military Standard Test Series, which involved:
  • Water Test: Water immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter.
  • Sand and Dust Test: Tested for 8 hours with blowing powder from every direction.
  • Vibration Test: General Minimum Integrity and Loose Cargo Test (Method 514.5).
  • Temperature Test: Tested in temperatures from -30°C to 60°C (-22 to 140°F).
  • Temperature Shock Test: Transferred from -35°C to 60°C and back.
  • Humidity Test: Tested for 12 hours in 95% humidity at 0°C and 70°C.
  • Shock/Drop Test: Tested by dropping it 36 times from 4 feet and six drops each from 4 feet at -30°C and 60°C.
  • Low Pressure: Tested at 15,000 feet at 23°C and 40,000 feet at -30°C.
• It is fast and powerful, with a 32 GB Hard Drive and 1 GB of memory.
• Battery life is 10 hours, and changing out the battery is easy (you can pull one battery out at a time and swap with a new battery while the unit is still on!)
• Dual GPS-enabled cameras located in the front and rear (very cool).
• Windows 7.

Trimble Yuma Cons:

• It’s heavy and bulky.
• Price! A Yuma costs between $3,500 and $4,000 (retail).

My opinion: the Yuma will pay for itself over time. If you are sending technicians or inspectors to collect data with subpar hardware, they are likely spending unnecessary time on the job. Upgrading will allow your team to complete the job more quickly, which will save money in the long run. Not to mention you will have happier employees! And happy = productive.

Consider renting or purchasing a Yuma for your next assignment and see how it works for you! If you’d like more information on the Yuma, we have compiled datasheets and a technical review, which you can access via the link below.

The Trimble Yuma is one tough machine! But just how does it measure up in the world of mobile PCs? We can direct you to a detailed review of the Yuma with side-by-side comparisons and tons of helpful images.

You can also download a PDF that includes:

• A detailed specifications sheet for the Trimble Yuma
• Data sheets for both the office and vehicle docking stations
• A list of Yuma accessories with specs
• A Yuma case study

Ready for a heftier dose of Yuma? Fill out the form below!

Although you actually signed up to receive these, it has become truly annoying to open up your inbox and find it full of bacn (on a foodie note, it would be so nice to open my mailbox and find it full of crispy, tasty bacon). Me being the fanatic neat freak that I am, I diligently delete each one of these daily. Which really makes me question why the hell I signed up for these in the first place.

We have gotten so used to hearing about all these deals, like 50% off your entire purchase at Whole Foods, which really means buy $20 and pay $10, which really means buy 2 avocados, 1 mango, fresh-made organic salsa and a foreign cheese, and you are now at $25 but sorta feel like you got a bargain? We feel that if we unsubscribe, we are missing out, so we sign up and are continuously annoyed when we check our inbox because deleting or ignoring the email is so much easier than unsubscribing.

But seriously, in the past year, the bacn has gotten a little out of control. You want to know why? It’s a bargain for marketers, and it pays off. According to unsubscribe.com, the cost of sending an email is $ 0.0001, and the payoff? In 2009, email marketing generated $26 billion for online retailers. In 2010, there were 27,397,274 bacn emails sent per day. That equals 4 emails per day for every person on the planet. Conclusion: some bacn is good, too much will clog your inbox.

Crisis management is for the birds. Literally.
Dallas Lawrence, Chief Global Digital Strategist for Burson-Marstellar, spoke about having a plan for when a crisis occurs, and he suggested that when something happens to suddenly make your product or company look ridiculous, you can often solve the crisis with a few simple tweets. Have a Twitter avatar (no one wants to talk to a logo), start conversations, and know what you’re talking about.

Everything in SEO begins with search, and keywords are the language of search.
According to Ron Jones with Symetri Internet Marketing, the more relevant and specific your keywords and key phrases, the better. No one is going to stay on your website if they searched for “cheap cameras” only to discover that you’re a photographer, not a camera retailer. Create a list of keywords, optimize around them, monitor them, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and then make changes.

Manage your reputation.
An entire session at the Summit was devoted to Reputation Management, and even speakers from other sessions mentioned the power of peer pressure. People want to know that you’re trusted and will often make decisions based on reviews and endorsements. Constantly monitor what is being said about you and your company on social media outlets, find people who have given you negative reviews, address the issues, and learn from your mistakes.

Content is key to success.
No one’s going to follow you on Twitter if your content isn’t fresh and relevant. No one’s going to like you on Facebook if your content doesn’t appeal to them. No one is going to reach your site if you aren’t constantly churning out interesting, relevant content either via your website or a blog.  Michael Marshall, SEO Guru, encouraged us to eliminate spam (Google is watching you); keep content natural and relevant. Once people have decided that you know what you’re talking about, they’ll keep coming back, and it’s the ones who repeatedly return to your website that will eventually become leads.

Get involved!
Overlying all of this is the fact that companies need to start getting more involved in social media. Even we at Terraine have been guilty of ignoring all of the above (Crisis management? What’s that? Oh, who really cares if I stuff a few extra keywords on this page? People are actually writing reviews about us? WHERE?? It must have gotten lost in the last blog article I wrote…six months ago).

If, like us, you’re a small business with big ideas, just remember to always be thinking of how to engage your customers through the various social media outlets available (Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.).   And like the exponentially growing world of technology, the realm of Internet marketing is always changing. Keep current on the latest trends, and if you’re in Raleigh this time next year, consider attending the Internet Summit. The content and people are great (and the food’s not so bad, either).