Trillian or AIM?

Since we depend on messaging software at B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net, it's important that it be reliable.Recently, I discovered that Trillian version 3.1 is not compatible with Vista operating system! I’ve been running Vista for about a year and accepting the limitations, until this past week when more issues started to arise. The major issue is that the messaging history is not saved. I spent some time this week researching a solution and discovered that 3.1 is not meant to be compatible with Vista, and has this limitation, and it’s recommended that I upgrade to Trillian Astra. I completed the install and so far, I am not thrilled with the new version. It’s very retro-like and I find it difficult to see who is sending me a message and navigate between windows. I am going to spend some adjusting colors and my profile settings, but so far I am not pleased! Should I go back to AIM?

Tracy

Outsourced B2B

I recently watched the movie Outsourced and found it to be a bit enlightening and brought out a few chuckles. Imagine that US company you work for has decided to outsource it’s customer service team to India, and you are sent to train your replacement. Your soon to be “former employer” doesn’t think this request is unusual at all. So, you go off to India to train your replacement and the new support team. At the same time, your replacement sees nothing strange about this either. While in India, you get a sense of Indian culture, work environment, and even fall in love. I have to say I fell asleep before I got to the end, but was worth a few chuckles all the same. Don’t worry, B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net has no plans to do this, right?

Sky 'Gateway' Diving

Yesterday, I watched my 60 year old Dad go sky-diving, something I believe a few B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net employees have also accomplished ( The heights B2BGateway.Net will go to to deliver your EDI document!). He’s always wanted to do it, and apparently turning 60 motivated him to accomplish his goal. My husband and my two boys took a road-trip to Pepperell, MA to support him in his quest. It was exciting watching my Dad come floating down from an airplane on a parachute, and a little unnerving at the same time. It’s unreal to see how high the plane is when the jumpers exit the plane. I asked him what it was like and he said. “It was insane! I’m about to jump, and literally I felt like I was crazy. What am I thinking, it was totally surreal!” My Dad has always been a risk-taker, and unfortunately has had quite a bit of bad luck. A few years ago, he decided to put a new roof on their house, and fell off the roof. Luckily for him, he was pretty bruised, his leg looked pretty mangled on the surface, but he survived. My Dad’s also a big skier, and he was probably one of the first skiers to wear a helmet, which was a smart move on his part, considering the tree bark we often found in his hat. So, you can see why my family thought about having his head examined when he planned the daring expedition. In all seriousness, my Dad is awesome, and I love the risk taker in him, along with his persistence, despite the numerous follies to his name. His Grandkids are his biggest fans, yeah the kids with the full body suits, and helmets, those are my boys!

Tracy

B2BGreenway

“Go Green.” It’s a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot recently. It seems every company in the world is being graded on how environmentally friendly they are. Even a big network like NBC dedicates a week every year to a green peacock logo and making all of their shows touch on the environment in some way.

Being a company that works in Electronic Data, we’ve been a green company since the start. Paper has a safe home here whenever it shows up. Packs of paper like to sit and make a home on our shelves. There aren’t any smoke stacks poking up out of our offices. We are intrinsically one of the most environmentally safe companies that you will come across. Which is good news for that pond across the street. No EDI spills for B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net. Too bad we don’t have a network like NBC to really show it off.

Besides, I have a hard time believing NBC will be able to top having Al Gore appear on 30 Rock rushing off to save a whale. ...I wonder if he does corporate gigs.
Tom

Support Engineer

I’ve been a Support Engineer with B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net for 7 years and feel I have a pretty good idea of what the position entails, but it’s still pretty difficult to explain. The role requires a person who is outgoing, open-minded, creative, technical-minded, motivated and slightly spontaneous. At the same time, being an SE, you have to care about your customers, take the time to get to know them, and understand that they have deadlines to meet and depend on B2BGateway to make their business gel. To be good at any job, you have to take ownership over it and your customers. The reason B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net is such a great company, is because of the people who work for it.

Tracy Sheehan, Support Engineer B2BGateway, MA Office

Special Limited Edition Foil Covered EDI

Collecting comics is a fun hobby for those of us that like to obsess over the little things. Few things make a comic collector more proud than when they can pull out their box of pristine comics and show them off. If I can find a way to sneak in the fact that I have the entire run of the New Avengers, I will. And a lot of collecting means keeping track of what issues you’re missing and how many copies of X-Men #1 you have.

That’s why we understand detail minded people. At B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net, we can help keep our clients in the loop on every document that they trade. Special reports can be setup to accommodate requests for more visibility to make sure each of their documents is in mint condition. Rest assured, all of our clients’ documents will be meticulously organized and filed away for easy access later. They can pull it out and impress their friends any time. Just imagine the “Ooohs” and “Aaaahs” from seeing the kind of EDI that we keep.

And with EDI, you won’t need to worry about having the corners of your favorite 850 being bent.
Tom

B2B Brother

In the summer, I become a fan of the show “Big Brother”. It helps me relax after finishing my work day at B2BGateway. The premise is group of people living in a house together, competing in competitions, forming alliances, with the goal to be the last house guest remaining. Every Thursday night, they hold the live Eviction ceremony. This past Thursday, I was a bit excited when a reference was made to one of B2BGateway’s www.b2bgateway.net customer’s products. Lane, a big guy from Texas was “on the block”, and during his speech to save himself, he made a reference to “Muscle Milk” and how he could really use some instead of the Soy protein powder they have in the house. Lane sends a shout out to Cytopsport!

Tracy

HTC

About 6 months ago, I was having problems with my Samsung Omnia Smartphone, and was in the market for a new Windows compatible model. Kevin Hoyle, the B2BGateway CEO www.b2bgateway.net recommended the HTC Droid Eris. To my surprise, I have been more than pleased with it. I was a little hesitant to go with the HTC, as opposed to the Motorola model due to the touch-screen only keyboard and lack of Navigation, however decided on it due to the price, and the fact that it was smaller in size. A couple months later, the upgrade to Version 2.1 became available which enabled the Navigation feature. I was thrilled to upgrade! The phone is easy to use, navigate, and the applications available are super cool! I have a CopyCat application that my kids love. It’s very simple, it repeats everything you say and has appropriate responses to patting and also beatings. I also love Pandora radio and Fetch it is my favorite. If I misplace my phone and the ringer is off, I can send a text to it from another phone, and it will turn my ringer on! It’s the best!

Label Gateway

Next time you find yourself wandering around your local Best Buy, stop for a moment and think about how all those products got to the store. They had to be packed by a warehouse, loaded into a truck, and driven to their destination. And you know that each one of those boxes have a shiny new UCC-128 Label slapped on there.

And it’s entirely possible, that the label that was on the box that got those products to the store was printed off of our Warehouse Site as part of B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net. We specialize each label to match the specifications required by the Trading Partner so our clients can be sure they have the information necessary go get that product off the loading dock and onto store shelves. Our labels have passed countless tests by the actual Trading Partners as well as third party testing services. Formatted to fit any normal 4”x6” label printer, they’re ready to go at any time off of our easy to use website.

So before you hit the checkout counter with your Die Hard box set or your phone case, take a moment to think about where those items came from before it made it into your hands.

iB2BGateway

You would have to be hiding pretty far under a rock not to have heard about Apple’s newest gadget, the iPhone 4. Apple has become incredibly adept at creating an event around the launch of their products. People lined up overnight just for the chance to spend a whole mess of money on a fancy phone. Apple did their job and got people amped up. What they apparently forgot to do was test the actual phone part of their smart phone.

Almost immediately after the launch, people started complaining about dropped calls and terrible reception. Even worse was when the internet discovered that the reception actually dropped whenever the phone was actually in someone’s hand. That’s kind of a big miss in their QA department. Apple has since tried to make good by giving out free bumpers with the phones to try and mitigate the problems.

That’s an incredibly high profile example of what we try to avoid at B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net. Without proper testing, I’m not sure a single piece of our software would run properly. So we make sure to take that extra time to test properly and eliminate as many future problems as possible. Of course, there’s not enough time in the world to test every possibility, but we take care of the most common problems.

Don’t worry though, unlike Apple with their phone function, we fully test our EDI functions before they’re rolled out to the clients.

Tom

Mt Washington

This past weekend, I actually made it to the summit of Mt Washington! I had previously tried hiking to the top twice when I was younger. The first time, was when I was only about 7 years old and I went with my parents and three sisters. We made it about halfway up before my Mother made us all turn around because she felt it was far too dangerous for children. My second attempt was when I was 11 years old. This time my Father took me and we decided to try a different trail than the first time. The day started off cloudy but as we climbed higher the clouds started to dissipate. While taking a short break about a half mile from the summit, I realized how high up we were. I ended up panicking and making my Dad turn around. 15 years after my last failed attempt, I was determined to make it to the top. Hiking alongside me was my sister, Micaela, her boyfriend, Steve and fellow B2BGateway (www.b2bgateway.net) employee, Justin Hoyle. It was much harder than I had anticipated but just as scary as I had remembered. It took a full 8 hours to hike but I can now say I have conquered my fears AND managed to climb (or more truthfully, crawl, scratch, scramble and claw my way up) the highest peak in the Northeastern United States (6,288 ft or 1,917 meters). That said, I think I might just take the train or drive up the next time!!!!

B2(+5)Gateway

With Windows 7, Microsoft has taken a huge step away from the common view that Windows is always buggy and hard to work with. XP was a good first try, but it had its share of problems (as I’m sure many of you are aware). Vista was a great stepping stone, but it was hindered by launch issues and a stigma that it couldn’t shake. So in steps the most user friendly Windows yet, with the innocuous name of “7.”

We’ve noticed a gradual trend of our client towards the shiny new Windows 7, and why not? It’s one of the better Operating Systems around. And here at B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net
, we have to make sure that we’re on top of new developments in the computer arena. So we have several Windows 7 machines at the ready for testing and debugging. Thankfully, just about everything that worked with XP works with 7. But if there comes a day that something Windows 7 specific is required. We’ll be ready.

Tom

StarCraft2BGateway

If you were on the internet a few weeks ago, you might have noticed a slight slowdown. That was almost certainly caused by the launch of a little game called StarCraft 2. The original StarCraft came out way back in the yesteryear of 1998. Back when apples were pied and baseball was still full of steroids. So it only took 12 years. Hey, at least it came out faster than the sequel to Chinatown (look it up kids).

Anyway, StarCraft is what is referred to as a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game. You are tasked with building a base, creating an economy, and amassing a force that is either bigger, or better managed than your opponents. The game ends when all of one side’s bases are destroyed. But what makes it interesting is the balance that comes with each of the three factions and having to react to the changing landscape around you. If you’re attacked from the North, but have no defenses there, you’ll get plenty hurt. And sure enough, you’ll have defenses there for their second try.

Our people at B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net are juggling many tasks at the same time as well. So no, we don’t need to worry about fortifying our physical position against the alien bugs, but we do need to fortify our systems. We are constantly adapting to the changing landscape around us and making sure we are one step ahead of any kind of problem. Having to adjust strategies on the fly is not something limited just to video games, and we take that philosophy into work everyday.

And our clients will be happy to know that playing StarCraft II during work hours is not encouraged. But I can tell you that I’d have my defenses to the North locked down.

Getting To The Finishing Line!

With summer winding down, and the temperatures starting to drop, it becomes easier to get up in the morning and head out to a race. My specialty is the 5k. Mainly because I don’t want to run any longer than 30 minutes. But even with that short distance, there’s a lot of forward thinking involved. Sure, I could start out sprinting and be in first place. But something tells me that I would fall back to last way before I even got close to the first of the five k's. It’s all about pacing and planning ahead to have the energy to finish the race.

We here at B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net bring that same kind of thinking into the workplace. Sure, we could burn through all of our assignments and get it out the door. But then we would almost assuredly have problems and bugs coming back to hit us. Dropping from first to last right there. Instead, we take our time, plan ahead, and avoid as many of those issue as we can up front. That leads to happier programmers, happier clients, and maybe a free pizza lunch. It behoves us to plan ahead and take our time. If we don’t we sure won’t be finishing first.

Too bad for me though, that free pizza doesn’t do anything to help my race time. But it is delicious.

Tom

Do You Feel Loved?

What makes B2BGateway http://www.b2bgateway.net/ stand out from the competition? How many times have you called a help desk, only to wait on hold, speak to someone who can’t even pronounce your name correctly, asks you to confirm your address, give a secure password just to verify your identity? Does it make you feel loved? What if you needed a new cell phone, and you were able to call your own personal PSE(Phone Support Engineer) who knows your name, where you live, and hell, maybe even what you do for a living. Would you ever leave that cell phone provider? At B2BGateway http://www.b2bgateway.net/, you get just that, your own Support Engineer who knows you by first name, what you sell, and by golly, is happy to hear your voice!

Tracy Sheehan, Support Engineer B2BGateway, MA Office

Was that a Curveball?

To be a successful pitcher in baseball, you need to have a staple of pitches that you can go to and get a batter our. I speak from experience of course. My Playstation pitcher wasn’t doing great until he developed a curveball.

Having multiple options to go to during a crisis is necessary for any business. And we’re no different at B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing one letter in a piece of code. But other times, we are forced to think outside the box and come up with a new kind of solution that we’ve never had to think of before. That’s when we have to reach into our bag of tricks, and find that piece that we haven’t had to use before. And while a pitcher doesn’t always get the batter out, we don’t have that luxury. I have a feeling that our ERA would be record breakingly low.

If only I can get my virtual pitcher out of the Astros. Oswalt got traded, why can’t I?

Tom

Close Encounters of the EDI Kind!

As a setup programmer for B2BGatewaywww.b2bgateway.net , I frequently do work with the same clients. I work almost exclusively behind the scenes. I see the data - product descriptions, UPCs, vendor numbers - but rarely do I learn anything about the client outside of their data. Many of these clients trade with large retail chains which we see everyday such as Best Buy, CVS or Target.

It has become a semi-regular occurance in my life to be walking through a store and come across a product with a hauntingly familiar name. I usually stop and stare for a moment before picking the product up to verify my suspicion. There is a certain sense of accomplishment in recognizing a client product "in the wild". I like to think I had a hand in getting the product to the shelf through the code I spend my days writing. The retailler had to send a purchase order to the client. The client had to send the order to their warehouse for shipping and invoice the retailler. All of these documents process through code I put time and effort into. The more involved or unusual the setup, the more rewarding it is to see the end result on a shelf somewhere.

The clients I work with sell products ranging from food to pharmaceuticals to sporting goods to pet supplies. I can encounter these types of products virtually anywhere. Seeing the result of my work in the real world helps to bring EDI to life.

Jill

Cheng Du!

About a year ago, my favorite Chinese restaurant closed due to a fire. It was one of the worst weeks of my life! There had been two deaths very close to me, and all I wanted was my favorite Chinese food. I went online to check out the menu, only to find out the fine establishment had burned down a few days before. Just my luck! But, as luck would have it, they just opened again! And, this time in a bigger building, with a really nice bar and atmosphere. I went on Sunday night for my anniversary, and to my surprise, it was awesome! Just as I remembered it. Cheng Du is on Washington Street in Stoughton, just a short drive from B2BGateway’s Brockton office www.b2bgateway.net. It’s worth the trip!

Tracy Sheehan, Support Engineer B2BGateway.Net, MA Office

Restoring My Faith In Humanity

B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net connects to Home Depot for a great deal of our clients.
B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net has been connecting to Home Depot since way back in 2000. As I am a very cheap and an impatient person, I spend a great deal of time at Home Depot. Being impatient, I can’t wait for a professional to come and fix something that is broken at my home. Being very cheap, I can’t see paying for that same professional to fix something at my home,… so I do it myself.

At Home Depot, you can walk into the store with no idea how to fix something. If you stand in the right department for long enough someone will help you. Once I stood in the plumbing department staring at a shelf of fittings and another shopper asked me if I needed help. He didn’t help me for any other reason except that I looked like I needed help.

There are not many places left where you can have a perfect stranger walk up to you and ask if you need help. The place that really restores my faith in humanity is the Home Depot parking lot. Without fail, if you are wrestling to get a large sheet of plywood or some other heavy or unwieldy object into your Mini Cooper, someone will offer to help you. I have had people run across the parking lot, (people who would not run if their house was on fire), to offer assistance.

In turn, I have decided to embrace the Home Depot Parking lot code. Now when I load my Mini Cooper up with three 55-Gallon drums of paint, two 4X8 sheets of plywood and a large box of band-aids, I always look around to see if anyone else needs help. Although Home Depot is a “for profit” publically traded company, they have inadvertently created an environment where people treat each other with respect and go out of their way to help each other.

Kevin

Peter 'Gateway' Parker

There’s a very good reason that Spider-Man is one of the most popular comic book characters in existence. He is the everyman. He has issues with his day to day life. Paying rent, keeping a job, keeping a girlfriend. And on the other end, he has to be a superhero saving the day and has to put other people’s needs ahead of his own. He may not be as strong as Superman or as smart as Batman, but we love him all the same.

Now, I don’t want to brag, but B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net fits the same role that Peter Parker is in. We may not be the biggest EDI company in terms of personnel (as you’ll hear from some of our jealous competitors), but we’re the best around in making EDI easy for our clients. We’ll drop everything to help a client in need and put their needs ahead of our own. Sure, that pizza looks delicious, but if these orders need to go out, then that’s what we need to worry about. If only we could get the web slinging down...

B2BCeption

One of the best movies this year was release a few weeks ago in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Nolan is known for having multilayered, and sometimes confusing, plots. Inception doesn’t shy away from that. For those not in the know, Inception deals with a group of people that can enter dreams and gain the information they need from their target. But a bigger problem comes when they need to create information in a target’s head without him knowing it was planted. It can only be accomplished by going into dreams inside of dreams. Layers inside of layers.

In a way, the multiple layers idea is much like what we do at B2BGateway.Net. On the top layer, our sales team talks to prospective clients and explains the world class service we provide. Go one layer deeper, and we have our Support Engineers that help all of our clients through the EDI process and through any speed bumps they may hit. Another layer down we’ve got the Setup team that gets everything rolling. At this point, we’re three dreams deep and things are so far removed from reality, they might not even exist. But let’s continue, another layer and the Maintenance team helps keep everything running smoothly. And go one layer further, and the Development team is in the background making the website and desktop apps for the client.

Much like the dream levels, the further down you go, the more abstract it becomes. If we’re doing our jobs right, the clients are only aware the Setup team exists, and maintenance and development are hardly seen. So, while we’re a lot like the movie Inception, we sadly don’t have Leonardo DiCaprio. But who knows, he might be a level deeper than Development.

Tom Lynch, Infra Programmer, RI Office

Cool Off

Cool off manufactured by Its2Cool Ltd, is an award winning new product. Using all natural herbs, cool off produces a “Quick Chill” when applied to the skin on a hot day. Can’t escape the mid-day sun? Too much heat? Disbeliever? Try it yourself! Purchase Its2Cool at the following stores Amazon, CVS, HEB, Duane Reade, Mclanes, and Vistar. Its2Cool has been an EDI client of www.b2bgateway.net since January 2010.

Ryan Anderson, Support Engineer, B2BGateway.Net, RI Office

How to Explain EDI

Just how do you explain EDI?

When I first came to B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net , people would ask me what I kind of job I have. The first time I would try to explain EDI as a system of electronic interface that sends invoices and purchase orders between companies. These folks would then just look confused, say “Oh. Ok” and walk away knowing that it sounds about as exciting as selling insurance. I know that there is more than that to EDI but I found it tough to explain it in a single sentence.

I then looked at Wikipedia and used how they explain EDI in a single sentence: “Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading partner without human intervention.” With that response I got an even more confused reaction and even a few people had their eyes glazed over like it went way over their head.

When I realized that I didn’t have to explain EDI to explain what B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net does. So I now say to my friends and family: “We help companies do business with other companies electronically.” That sentence is something everyone understands.

It is then I realized that is also what we do here for our clients – we help make it easy for them to do business with other companies and increase their business.

And it only took me 3 years to figure that all out and I still have a lot to learn about EDI.


David Adams, Support Engineer, B2BGateway.Net, MA Office