Be sure to visit my new site today and bookmark it.

http://www.vincentcollins.com

I’ll be keeping this old blog up and running as an archive but all new posts will be here.

Boy, it’s been a long time since I’ve had something worth saying eh?  ha ha

Sadly, I’m unable to install it on my laptop.  The install freezes while asking me what language I want to use.  I’m assuming this is due to some keyboard driver issue.  I then downloaded and attempted to install the ReactOS LIVE CD but it has stalled on the “installing devices….” screen.  My laptop is an HP Pavillion AMD Turion 64 with the ATI Radeon Express 200M graphics card.

Has anyone had luck installing the ReactOS 0.3.10 or any other release and if so, what are you thoughts?  I realize this is all considered alpha as the website suggests, just curious how the experience is.

http://www.reactos.org

To better qualify what superior customer service is, let’s look at an offline store experience.  In this ever-changing world of impersonal online transactions, in this world of big box stores where you potentially never interact with a person with a name badge because you are forced to use self-checkout, who stands out as a leader in personal customer service in a physical store?

Best Buy

In short order, Best Buy kicked Circuit City out of the big box electronic store market.  Why?  Customer Service.  At least in my local Best Buy, you are almost guaranteed to talk to 4 different employees while in the building.

• The greeter – Some say having this person is silly.  While they actually have two roles, a greater and a security monitor, I think they are equally important.  You walk in and someone looks you in the eye and says “good morning”.  You know right away that you can ask them for customer service.  You are guaranteed to have someone you can find and ask a question of.
• The people in the isle – So you decide to buy a new harddrive.  Chances are that either on the way to that isle or once you are in the isle, an employee is going to ask you “can I help you?”  if you engage, they assure you at some point that they do not collect commission and that they are there to help you.  Their sole purpose is customer service.  Of course most every shopper while in a store is going to do a bit of wandering around and you are going to most likely talk to a third person asking if you need any help.
• The checkout – At least in my Best Buy, there aren’t any self-checkout registers and I hope it stays that way.  Once again, the cashier is friendly and asks if you were able to find everything you were looking for.  Once again, you have the opportunity to speak to someone that can assist you with customer service.

I’m convinced that Best Buy beat Circuit City by this simple principle alone.  Not on price, not on selection but strictly on customer service.

Ok, enough you say, I get it.  This isn’t rocket science.  This isn’t new news.  Yes, I would agree with all of that.  However, the real challenge to online businesses and especially online-only businesses is how do you do this on your website?  How do you somehow break through the barrier of firewalls and websites and overcome the fact that you will never see your customer face to face?  This is the biggest challenge online merchants face today.

There are large sums of money spent on data mining.  Today online businesses know more personal information about their clients than offline businesses who’s customers mostly pay cash.  This is certainly important for target marketing and other reasons.  However, offline businesses are beginning to overcome that by offering rewards programs and the like to help level the playing field of information.  But what are online businesses doing to personalize transactions?

Live Chat programs such as Live Person, ActivaLive, InstantService, SightMax, Live2Support are just a few services you could integrate into your online businesses which allows your customers to quickly ask a question of a live person within your business.  What a great opportunity to proactively tell your customer we are here and ready to serve you.

Make your site social – Add the ability for your customers to talk to each other by adding features such as ratings, forums and tags that allow them to twitter or post something in facebook about your site or your product(s) with one click.

There are many buz words being thrown around like social sites and the like but what does it all mean and how do you package your site with these offerings in a way that makes sense?  There are many ways to make your online business more valuable than offline storefront businesses but the key question is how?

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

What online store(s) differentiates themselves in their market space by providing superior customer service and why?

I’ve known this rule from the very beginning and how it will affect your bottom line directly.  However, time and time again, I find myself sacrificing this for other, more immediate things.  Things that I feel are either more interesting or more pressing to concentrate on:

• Fix that patch
• Monitor ad campaigns
• Order that software update
• Code that new functionality
• Dabble in new, exciting programming techniques
• Grab that cup of coffee
• Check and recheck your email
• Blog about something (oops, doing that now)
• Jump on facebook for “a few minutes”
• Tweet your latest musings

The list is endless really, but when I stop to think about it, what would have happened had I called up a customer directly and asked how their online experience was?  What could have been gained by this simple act?

I did that today.  I called one of my good, regular customers.  I introduced myself for the first time.  They have always done business via the web and so to them, our entire business front is our website.

I can’t tell you how shocked they were to hear from me.  “Who is this?”, “Why are you calling?”  At first they felt this was a sales call.  I assured them that I’m not selling them anything.  I explained that I wanted a couple minutes of their time to ask them what they thought of our company.

What happened next was incredible.  They were willing to share with me the good, the bad and even provided specific user experiences that caused them routine problems.  By the time our “two minute” turned 30 minute conversation ended I had two pages of notes scratched down on my yellow pad.  I thanked them for their time and promised that I would incorporate some of these issues into our next release.

They were genuinely appreciative of the personal phone call may have won them to our side for the long term.  The question is, if I hadn’t called them, would they have chosen our competitor down the road?  While I can’t answer this question definitively, I can say that the benefits of this simple 30 minute phone call certainly outweighs the time I could have spent checking my email…

This is one of a series of IRCE-related postings.  You can read more here:

I Attended This Years Internet Retailer Conference Exhibition in Boston, MA

My first time attending the IRCE - No regrets

It was my first time attending the annual Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition or IRCE and I’m not dissappointed.

In forums like the IRCE I’ve come to realize that many of the speakers are really smart, successful people who just want to share.  Even though there are direct competitors in the room, CEO’s and the like are up there talking about the wins and their mistakes and how they plan to fix them.  Incredible.  I came in with only one goal:  Learn as much as I can from smarter people

I own eCoast Jobs LLC and also run a New Hampshire focused job board ( NHJobs.com ) which isn’t necessarily a “Retail” organization but to me online retail stores are trying to achieve the same goals as I am as a web application developer.

• Build Customer Loyalty through great customer service
• Provide a unique online service and experience
• Help your customers find what that want fast
• Remove barriers to buy
• Grow Market Share
• Build your brand around your services
• Once they are at your site, don’t mess it up!

I could build a much larger list of important rules or goals when building an online business of any sort, but to me, these stand out above all.

In the coming weeks, I’m planning on talking about these points in more detail.  I’m also going to be addressing the overall retail trends I saw while attending this show as well as what some of the industry leaders and innovators were saying at this conference.

Hope you consider joining me on this soon to come series of postings.

ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES:

• Building Customer Loyalty Through Great Customer Service (added June 18th, 2009)
• Bringing Old World Customer Service into Today’s Trend of Electronic Transactions (added June 19th, 2009)

More articles in this series to come…

Joseph W. Collins - Author of Atari Color Graphics

This afternoon I came across the photo to my right.  It’s of my Dad (Joe Collins) holding his newly published book, “Atari Color Graphics”.  This photo was taken in 1984.  The book was published September 1984.  I was 15 at the time.

I remember when the box arrived with several copies of the book.  It was a big deal at our house.  My dad had been writing pretty much all his life.  When he set out to learn how to write BASIC and more importantly the use of Atari’s color graphics, he was frustrated that there weren’t any books geared to the very beginners.  He spent long hours putting together this 203 page book.  To see it all come together, I was really happy for him.  I’m still very proud of his achievement and of course have my signed copy on my shelf.

His achievement really showed me at an early age that if you set your mind to it, you can do anything.  I did some googling and although it’s of course out of print, I came across some cool little tidbits.

Antic Bookshelf had a nice little article that I’ll republish here in the event the page goes away sometime in the future:

Atari Color Graphics - authored by Joseph W. Collins

Atari Color Graphics: A Beginner’s Workbook is a useful introduction to 14 Atari BASIC graphics modes. These include the three GTIA modes and two modes (Graphics 14 and Graphics 15) unique to XL computers.
If you’re a beginning programmer, you’ll want to keep your BASIC reference manual close at hand, since the workbook only describes BASIC graphics commands.
Each workbook chapter introduces a different style of computer graphics, including high, low and medium resolution modes; single and multicolor modes; the GTIA modes and three text modes.
The book contains many illustrations and dozens of short type-in programs that demonstrate key points in each chapter. New BASIC programmers ready to add interesting graphics routines to their programs should start with this book.
(This book is available by mail from the Antic Catalog bound into this issue of the magazine.)
…Published by Arrays, Inc./The Book Division, 11223 South Hindry Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

Amazon had the published information but alas, no photo

Having a Dad with such a drive and interest towards knowledge and computers no doubt affected me.  Amazingly enough, I didn’t pick the path of programming until much later in my life but I’m enjoying it immensely now.

My Dad Rocks!

Using ColdFusion, I was able to to do something like the following:

<cfif Trim(selUsername) neq "" and Trim(selPassword) neq "">
<cfset SearchFilter="sAMAccountName=#selUsername#">
<cfset viewfieldlistLookup = "sAMAccountName,distinguishedName,cn,memberOf">
    <cftry>
      <cfldap action="QUERY"
		      name="qry_authenticate_user"
		      attributes="#viewfieldlistLookup#"
		      filter="#SearchFilter#"
		      sort="sn"
		      start="#LDAPBase#"
		      server="#LDAPServer#"
		      username="#selUsername#"
		      password="#selPassword#">
      <cfcatch type = "Any">
        <cfset err = "#err#
	<li>Unable to find that username and password.</li>
">
      </cfcatch>
    </cftry>
<cfelse>
  <cfset err = "#err#
	<li>Username and Password are required fields</li>
">
</cfif><strong>
</strong>
<cfif err eq "" and IsDefined( "qry_authenticate_user.recordcount" ) and qry_authenticate_user.recordcount gt 0>
  <cfset variables.IsValid = 1>
<cfelse>
  <cfset variables.IsValid = 0>
</cfif>
...

The above works because all users of this organization has read only and search access for ADAM.

Now here is the interesting thing. For a different client, they don’t have an implementation of MS’ ADAM directory so I’m tasked with authenticating directly with their Active Directory. This company does not give the user read only or search capability of their Active Directory. So, I ended up having to rewrite it a bit by doing the following:

<cfset variables.IsValid = 0>
<cfset err = "">

<cfif Trim(selUsername) neq "" and Trim(selPassword) neq "">
    <cfset SearchFilter="sAMAccountName=#selUsername#">
    <cfset viewfieldlistLookup =
"cn,displayName,distinguishedName,givenName,homeDirectory,name,objectClass,sAMAccountName,sn,mail">
    <cftry>
        <cfldap action="QUERY"
                name="qryCheckUser"
                attributes="#viewfieldlistLookup#"
                start="#LDAPBase#"
                server="#LDAPServer#"
                username="#LDAPUsername#"
                password="#LDAPPassword#"
                filter="#SearchFilter#">
                <cfif qryCheckUser.RecordCount gt 0>
                    <cfset curDisplayName = "#qryCheckUser.displayName#">
                    <cfldap action="QUERY"
                            name="qryAuthenticateUser"
                            attributes="#viewfieldlistLookup#"
                            start="#LDAPBase#"
                            server="#LDAPServer#"
                            username="#curDisplayName#"
                                password="#selPassword#">
                    <cfif qryAuthenticateUser.RecordCount gt 0>
                        <cfset variables.IsValid = 1>
                    <cfelse>
                        <cfset err = "#err#
	<li>Username and/or Password Failed</li>
">
                        <cfset variables.IsValid = 0>
                    </cfif>
                <cfelse>
                    <cfset err = "#err#
	<li>Username and/or Password Failed</li>
">
                    <cfset variables.IsValid = 0>
                </cfif>
        <cfcatch type = "Any">
            <cfset err = "#err#
	<li>Technical Error Connecting to LDAP Server.  Please notify IT.</li>
">
            <cfset variables.IsValid = 0>
        </cfcatch>
    </cftry>
<!---
    Here is a list of Active Directory errors you could optionally test for:
    525 - user not found
    52e - invalid credentials
    530 - not permitted to logon at this time
    532 - password expired
    533 - account disabled
    701 - account expired
    773 - user must reset password
--->
<cfelse>
    <cfset err = "#err#
	<li>Username and Password are required fields</li>
">
</cfif>

Because the user doesn’t have permission to query AD via LDAP, I must use a system account to look up that person to find out if they exist first. There is an interesting twist in this second example. After a long time searching, I gave up on trying to find out why I couldn’t pass their NT username (sAMAccountName) and their password like I did in the first example with ADAM. After much trial and error, the only way I figured out how to do it is by looking up their DisplayName and passing that along with their supplied password instead. I think looking up their Distinguished Name (DN) works as well.

I’m assuming that AD blocks the passing of their NT Username for some obscure reason or more likely I have made a mistake. I’ll look to others reading this post for any insight. The current code works but I’m not 100% sure it’s the best solution.

I suppose another option is to set NT Authentication as a requirement for the directory within IIS and handle it that way. A colleague showed me a quick example which seemed like a pretty graceful way to handle things. I just am unclear on the compatibility of this option with other browsers, Servers like Apache, as well as possible problems from remote connections via VPN.

So, there you go, a couple of examples of how I have used ColdFusion to connect to two different LDAP compliant directories.

I’m looking for suggestions to make this better as well as any feedback you might have regarding the use of NT Authentication at the Web server level instead.

Yes, I’m officially 40 years old today.  I’m not nearly as sad about it as one might think.

I’m healthy and happy…What more can I ask for?

I have posted in the past about CMS options. There are many choices but but the choices narrow once you introduce CF as a requirement. I have decided to give FarCry 5.0 a shot. The last time I installed FarCry was probably 2003 so I’m willing to give it a fair shake once more.

So far, I’m impressed overall. For one thing, the 5.0 installer just works and simplifies the whole process. So many CF programs (including many of mine) require editing of text files and placing of scripts manually but FarCry seems more mature and is evidenced by the installer. I’m very impressed with this.

The look and feel of the administration back end or web top as FarCry refers to it is really nice. There was a bit of a learning curve for me at least regarding how to actually use the tool to build the structure of a website and I will go into that in a later post. That said, I was up and running pretty quickly once I got it.

The documentation seems a bit fragmented on the deamon site. I know there is a wiki for each version but it’s incomplete. I spent hours looking for answers to my questions in the form of documentation. In the end, I did happen to come across their 125 page training guide for version 4.0 which was a help. There are also eSeminars posted on deamon’s blog such as this one for version 5.0.

5.0 is still in beta, however I hit the ground running with it before I knew this since the 5.0 version is placed prominently on deamon’s home page without the warning that it is beta. Well, at least as recently as today This means that things such as site-wide search and other components aren’t working yet as I came to find out while I was developing a mockup for a client. I’ve decided to take a small risk and continue to use the 5.0 version because I’d hate to go backwards and Geoff Bowers’ recent posting eluded to the fact that this feature would be implemented in the coming weeks.

Once the software was installed, and once I had a handle on how to create top-level links with related pages with them, I was able to quickly create all the core Intranet pages in the hierarchy needed within a couple of hours. I’m now working on creating users with permissions to edit only certain sections such as Department heads editing their own departments and not others’. From what I understand, this is straight forward to do.

The challenges ahead are many such as how to embed custom CF pages and how to use the built-in functions such as RSS feeds, News, FAQs, Events and how to embed built in features like these into a FarCry page. I’m hoping it’s covered in the 4.0 manual because as I have said, the wiki is incomplete or if it is not, it seems at least hard for me to navigate. I’m also going to have to figure out how to modify the look and feel and find out how navigation works once you get 4 levels deep. Also, how the ‘create link’ function works in the webtop.

FarCry seems deep and can feel a bit daunting at times for me when I just can’t figure out how to do something I want. However, my gut here is that Deamon really has a winner on their hands and if I can figure out how to master it, I may become a bit of an evangelist for the tool because there just isn’t another software package out there written in CF that is open source and does what this one does. Well, that last statement is based on my knowledge. If you know of something else, please let me know.

Also, I would really like to hear from some of you with first-hand experience/knowledge of FarCry. It would be nice to know how others are using it and how successful you have been handing over the day to day management of a site to end users with no programming knowledge. Have you come across a tutorial you can hand end users with simple instructions on day to day maintenance, adding a page, approving a page, adding users, etc. Did you have to create something yourselves?

I’m really looking forward to hearing your comments!

I’m disappointed when I come across developers laughing and making fun of a code block or website design they happen to come across. I see this sort of mentality time and time again. I suppose it is easy to forget about the long path we all had to take to get to where we are. Forget about all the mistakes we made along the way and will continue to make in the future.

This is the equivalent of a bully making fun of a geek in third grade. The only difference is that in this case, the geek is the bully and should be a bit more educated and mature by now.

I know that no one’s perfect. I’m sure not. However, the next time you come across work you deem is terrible or laughable, consider the possibility that the person you are laughing about may be newer to the whole wide world of design or programming than you. They might be younger than you and just getting started. They might not have had the opportunity to go to college like you but they still want to do whatever it is they are doing. Consider the possibility that someone might be trying to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps with limited knowledge and resources.

If you still feel like laughing, keep it to yourself and go to a comedy show.