Category Archives: Technology

15 Days in January – Day 6

19 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Fiction, Government, Science, Space, Technology, US History

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(NOTE: The following is a fictionalized account of the 15 days in January 1986 leading up to the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster. The character’s account is fictional; however, the details of weather and Space Shuttle events are based on known historical facts.)

Titusville, Florida
Sunday, January 19, 1986
High Temp: 73° F Low Temp: 60° F

STS-51L Challenger crew for the next launch

For most Americans Sunday should be a day of rest, but for us on the Launch Pad it is not. It’s hard to describe the workload on the Pad workers right now. This next flight will be our first off Pad 39B, which means we are breaking in a new launch pad at the same time we are trying to get the program back on schedule.

After Challenger launches we will have two launch pads operational and another one that will become operational at Vandenberg AFB in six months. We will need all three launch pads if we are going to be able to meet the needs of the ramped up space program. We are in the process of training a lot of people to staff all three launch pads but after we have a few launches under our belt it will all fall into place.

Challenger in VAB ready to be lifted

Each Orbiter goes through a series of ‘handoffs’ as it moves through the launch preparation phases. The current mission’s Orbiter, Challenger, landed at Edwards AFB on November 6, 1985, which ended its STS-61A mission. It was then prepped for riding on the back of a Boeing 747 back to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) where it arrived on November 11th. Challenger was then put in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) for just over a month where it was prepped for this mission. On December 16th it was moved to the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) where the External Tank (ET) and the two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB’s) were mated to the Orbiter. Six days later (December 22, 1985) STS-51L rolled out to Launch Pad 39B where it is our job to prepare and maintain the ship until it launches next week.

Each ship goes through the same process. To have two launches a month, as is our goal, we will become a factory-like operation that flawlessly performs every duty, every day, 24 hours a day. We will truly be the most unique cargo operation in the world and the most vital for our country. We learn as much science and technology from every launch as the real scientists who fly our ships into space. With every new launch we are revising, updating and perfecting our skills.  Twenty years from now my children will know that their Dad was one of the people who made America the country that has the best, and possibly only, space port in the world! It makes me proud to be a part of history.

New Religion For Business: Believing in the ‘L’ Word

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Business, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Information Technology, Internet, Management Practices, Public Relations, Social Interactive Media (SIM), Social Media Relations, Technology

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Paul Kiser

For a hundred years the Church of the Big Sell has preached to enterprise decision-makers that they will give a voice to their company…for a price. Media chieftains told the world of business that the customer is a commodity that can be manipulated and controlled with the right ad campaign, the right slogan, the right spokesperson, or the right look. Then came Social Media.

Social Media has put a lot of business traditionalists in a tailspin. It turns out that the customer is not a commodity and they hate it when they are treated like one (e.g.; Netflix, United Airlines, Bank of America, etc.) Customers  are people and they have feelings, wants, likes, and dislikes.

Facebook and Twitter gave the people fire and they liked it. Now the customer has a voice and they use it. They talk. They converse. They express. They judge. Not only do they have a voice, they now have the power to turn off advertising…and they do.

The Church of the Big Sell is burning and the voice they were supposed to give to business is wasted on ads in newspapers and magazines that nobody reads, radio and television commercials that nobody listens to or watches, and yellow pages books that go from the front doorstep to the recycling bin…unused. Social Media took away the microphone of enterprise because people are tired of being preached to by the Church of the Big Sell.

Business is realizing that customer interaction has changed. Enterprise in a Social Media world is not about talking, but about listening. Listening is the alpha and omega of the Social Media world. Almost everything a business needs to know is there, if they listen. A new church is being built on the ashes of the old and the religion is based on the ‘L’ word.

Listening is not as easy as it sounds (pun intended.) Social Media is noisy. Too many voices, too many issues. A restaurant owner does not need to know that Emily had a great date last night…unless Emily’s date was at his restaurant. Then he might want to know that Emily’s date was great despite her eating experience, where the food was cold, the parking a pain, and the service rude. The restaurant owner might also want to know that nine of Emily’s friends responded to her Tweet by agreeing that his restaurant sucks and they will never eat there again.

Rob Bailey - Head of US Operations and new CEO of DataSift

Tools of Listening in the New Church of Social Meda
Paring down the noise of Social Media is a major challenge for a business and the new religion has new tools. “The amount of Social Media that people are producing is doubling every year…,” explained Rob Bailey, who is the head of United States Operations for DataSift, a Social Media filtering platform for business that was launched last week. Bailey said that there are three steps in refining raw Social Media into relevant information for any enterprise.

The first step is to refine the data down to what is being posted about an organization, subject, or topic. That refinement may require multiple filters to distill out undesired spam, retweets, and other noise. The second step is to analyze the results based on factors such as age, gender, geographic location, and sentiment. The final step is to have a visual tool that reports the results simply and accurately for interpretation by the decision-maker in the company.

Nick Halstead - Past CEO and now Chief Technology Officer

DataSift had 8,000 users in the alpha test of its Social Media monitoring platform and found that the interest in this technology spanned a wide variety of industries. CEO Nick Halstead said that they had, “… government agencies to pharmaceuticals, a lot in finance, a lot in retail…and quite a few start-ups…” interested in DataSift’s technology to monitor issues of concern to their business and organizational operations. Another industry that wants to be able the monitor the Social Media are News Outlets that are trying to compete with Twitter and Facebook in providing events in real-time. Bailey said, “Twitter is an incredible vehicle…” for finding out what is going on in the world.

Public Relations and Social Media firms are also using tools to filter out the Social Media noise for companies who would rather hire an outside service for their Social Media presence rather than doing it in-house. In addition to listening to the Social Media these agencies help a business identify and correct their public image by handling public image issues and concerns for the organization.

View of data stream screen

The tools of the new platform allow the user to search multiple Social Media formats and have access to the full Twitter worldwide database in real-time. Beyond listening to what is being said about a company’s public image, they can now test market products or services and use Social Media to determine the reaction. The platform also has an interesting application in politics by allowing campaigns to determine sentiments on key issues by geographic region before a candidate campaigns in that area.

Improved customer response is probably the most obvious benefit to listening to Social Media, as a business can now pick up any post written about their company, product, or service and appropriately respond in minutes with a thank you for positive comments and a resolution or apology for negative experiences.

There is no turning back. Social Media demands that enterprise be great listeners and now they have no excuse.

USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype: 775.624.5679]

Wristwatches Tell Age As Well As Time

05 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Aging, Generational, Technology

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USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype: 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend (‘fall back’ at 2:00 AM this Sunday) and the man who reaches for his wristwatch to set it for Standard Time is likely to be over 40…or 50…or 60.

With the invention of the cell phone, the need for the wristwatch has become a piece of a 107 year-old technology that young men often see as unnecessary and outdated. For the cell phone dependent male, time is as close as the phone display and it is always accurate and updates itself when the user changes time zones, or time changes to and from Daylight Saving Time.

A Sign of the "Time"

Mike, who is under 40 and doesn’t own a wristwatch, states:

…only time it’s “cool” is if you are dressing fancy and need to be a little more classy than checking your phone for the time…

James, who is over 40, says:

Most of my life I preferred pocket watches but since I started running/biking I needed a stopwatch function…

A man who wears a watch is noticed by the opposite sex.  Kayla, who is under 40, may have expressed the sentiment of many women when she said:

I like the look of wristwatches on men, but they are becoming a bit outdated….

Kayla goes on to say that she has seen men who are wearing a watch pull out their cell phone to check the time rather than look at their wrist, which supports the theory that wristwatches are more for fashion than function.

In a bar in Golden, Colorado, four young men sitting together were asked if they wore a wristwatch and all said “no.” When asked why, they indicated that their cell phone was their time piece of choice. At the same bar, two men who were over 40 and wearing wristwatches were discussing an expensive Rolex model that one of them hoped to buy. The value of wristwatches seems to clearly be correlated to the age of the man.

Perhaps those who became reliant on wristwatches before there were cellphones continue to be attached to the idea of a wristwatch even though technology has made them obsolete. Whatever the reason, a wristwatch seems to become a generational indicator as well as a time keeper.

This article first published as
Wristwatches Tell Age As Well As Time
on Technorati.com