Technocom Blog

UGuardU Website getting better all the time.

We have been working on the website to make it an even better place for you to get information.  Check out the live views of the car dealership in Newberg, Or. or the view of “Portland’s living room”.  We are really excited about it.

If you want to get the UGuardU system in your hands right away go to Amazon and type in “UGuardU”.  Do your shopping and have it delivered directly to you.  No fuss!  We are always here to answer your questions if you have them, even if you do shop at Amazon.

Imagine all the ways you can use the UGuardU solution.  It is a great way to keep an eye on places you just can’t be at all the time.  Your kids are ready to go back to school and who are they bringing home with them when you are at work? Nursery’s in our area are having stock stolen, I saw on the news that cow’s are being stolen and sold at auction.  Just set up a camera and you can log into your browser to see the images.  What have you got to loose?
See. Protect.

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“Troubleshooting Detective” - Phone System or Carrier?

Hello again fellow detectives!  I have a short training for you today.  We get many calls with issues that can be confusing as to who is the culprit, the phone system or their carrier provider. 
Before you go hating on your phone like this girl.
There is something to keep in mind when the problem arises.  If you make a phone call or someone calls into your business and you hear a message.  The magic word there is “hear”, something like “the number you dialed is not is service” for example or click on the link and you can actually hear what one would sound like (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl6j67zJP9w).  Anytime you hear a message, typically this is going to be a carrier issue.  Why? Because the phone system does not have the ability to give out audio messages but the carrier, can only send audio messages.
When making a call, you see a message on your phone display or it just hangs up on you or you hear sounds, which could be your phone system.  I  say “could be” because of course to all these rules there are exceptions being that we are dealing with electrical systems that sometimes seem to have a mind of their own. 
 

Even though these clues will help you determine what is causing the problem sometimes it’s even hard for us to figure out which of the two is the culprit so when in doubt call your carrier.  They can typically look at your account and see if there are any errors or they can also tell you if they are having difficulties in your area and they will not charge you for checking (it can save you a service charge from us if we go out there and it ends up the problem was the carrier).  If after talking to them they say that they see everything good on their side, next step would be to give us a call with as many details about what you heard or happened as possible.  Remember!   Think like the phone, be the phone!  Ask, ask, ask as many questions as possible.
 

“when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” – Sherlock Holmes

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Why recycle?

I recently attended a tour at Glacier Recycling in Auburn through ABC Associated Builders and Contractors, Green Council.  I have to say even though this event sounded like it was going to be boring, it was actually interesting so I decided to write a little something about recycling.

Let’s start with, what is recycling?  Recycling is the process of making or manufacturing new products from a product that has originally served its purpose. If these used products are disposed of in an appropriate, environmentally friendly way, that my friend is what you call recycling.

A large amount of people are starting to realize how important recycling is, however, there are many that remain unaware or simply think it is too much of a bother to take the time.   They believe the trend is growing, however and that proactive individuals and alternative energy companies are starting to step up in a big way.  Here are some eye opening facts.

Recycling Statistics in the US

*  82 million tons of materials are recycled in the United States. 

*  53.4 % of all paper products are being recycled.  Technocom only uses recycled paper!

*  There is about 100% increase in the total recycling in the United States during the past decade.

*  Each person produces 4.6 lbs. of trash per day in the United States.

*  United States recycles about 32% of its waste today.  Come on people, I know we can do better than this. 

Interesting metal recycling facts

*  Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74 percent of the energy used to make them.

*  Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

*  Americans throw out enough iron and steel to continuously supply all the auto makers in the entire  nation.   Interesting….do I really need to say what everyone is thinking??

*  A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces water pollution, air pollution, and mining waste by about 70 percent.

*  When you throw away an aluminum can you waste as much energy as if you’d filled the can half full of gasoline and poured it into the ground.

*  Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans each day.

*  Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 100 watt light bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, and a TV for 2 hours.

I know most of this information is about general recycling.  I also wanted to focus some attention to copper recycling because well, that is one of the materials Technocom is responsible for recycling when we do a demo of cable.  Did you know that scrap consumption over the past 20 years has provided between 44 and 54.7% of the total copper consumed in the U.S.  To learn more about copper, copper recycling and all other copper facts check out www.copper.org. 
Some other interesting websites on recycling:
http://www.binfordmetals.com/contact.html
http://www.glacierrecycle.com/welcome.html 

Visit out Facebook Page to see all of the pictures I took during our Glacier Recycle tour.  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wilsonville-OR/Technocom-Inc/57090862390?ref=ts

Remember…..…reduce, reuse and RECYCLE!
 

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Matt~Technical Analyst-Wireless Provider-Beaverton

I want to give a HUGE thanks to your Tech for doing fantastic work on the switch cabling-our telco room finally looks correct, and the cabling is perfect!

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Excitement around UGuardU

Friday, June 12, 2009, we were very pleased to see that the Portland Business Journal recognized that Technocom has come up with a great product that can help businesses and individuals alike.  Front page of the Journal, no less!!  If you haven’t checked out UGuardU yet, go to our website and see for yourself what all the buzz is about.  You can also see the article at www.portland.bizjournals.com.

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UGuardU today

There’s more exciting news for UGuardU.  I was in the office the other day and saw the newest camera available for UGuardU.  It is a very small camera with an amazingly good picture.  The price is incredible.  It is only $199!

What came to my mind first was that it was the price of a fairly good cell phone and the monthly rate is far less at as low as $10 a month.  What this meant to me was that it is affordable to almost anyone.

Where else can you spend $10 a month and literally see a return on your investment?

Check out our website www.UGuardU.com and get your imagination working.  How can this be applied to your life?  Do you want to keep an eye on your business, your dog, your vacation home?  Wouldn’t it be cool to be the first of your friends to have this new technology?  Go ahead, show off a little!

Being two places at once is not the future……..it’s now!!!

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Technocom Branded Music-on-Hold Update

Ever been put on hold with no music playing? Did you wonder if you were cut off? Pretty frustrating, eh? Don’t do the same thing to YOUR customers. Chances are, they’ll just hang up…

Here’s the solution;
Technocom has a brand new product that we are offering. It is an affordable Music-on-Hold Player that uses a USB memory stick or an internal memory chip. The first version (MB2000) is wall mountable and comes with a 1Gb USB memory stick. The other version (MB4000) can be wall or rack mounted, and has a built-in NIC so you can put it on your network to update the music file(s) remotely over the LAN or WAN. These players are our first Technocom branded products. We have been selling these same units for years under their original brand name, but we were able to get a substantial discount by branding them under Technocom.

Cool Things:
Automatically restarts after a power outage.
No need to change CDs.
No moving parts to break down.
Ability to hold over 1,000 songs.
Can be used for in-store or overhead music.
Non-proprietary software for loading USB drive (drag and drop).
MP3 and USB technologies are PC and MAC compatible.
“Play All” and “Shuffle” modes.
Access to the MB4000 on the LAN is through a standard web browser.
Comes with a 3 year warranty!

Another new offering is our Music-on-Hold Custom MP3s and CDs. These are custom made productions with licensed music and professional voice talent. The customer can write up to six custom messages, pick up to two different voice talents, as well as the type of music, and we will do the rest. We’ll even provide sample scripts that they can edit. It all can be done easily on-line at http://www.gotechnocom.com/COMMERCIAL/musiconhold.php . Visit this site to listen to samples of the voice talents and music types.

Download the brochure here http://www.gotechnocom.com/Misc%20PDFs/Technocom%20South%20MoH%205-8-09.pdf .
 

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Money Saving Technology Tips

I found this article and thought it had some good tips so here I am sharing them with you!  : )

http://www.dceb.ie/news/moneysaving-technology-tips- 

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UGuardU Latest & Greatest

Well, we did it.  We’re up and running!  UGuardU is official with purchases on order and technological upgrades pouring in.  With this being a brand new service for TECHNOCOM, we are still uncovering exciting features for UGuardU.  Our latest feature is SMS Text Message, where the server can send a text to the account owner when the camera detects a certain level of motion.  Pretty fancy, huh?

Our customers are supplying lots of ideas for applications for this service.  We have one customer interested in watching his vacation home in Sisters and another wanting to keep an eye on his wine storage.  Isn’t that a great idea?  We also have a condo in The Pearl wanting the latest technology to provide an eye on their property.  We can even set it up so the tenants can go into their HOA website and view the cameras set up on the property.  The possibilities are endless.

Let your mind wander and find out how UGuardU can help your life or business!!

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“Troubleshooting Detective “ – My phone doesn’t work!

I have a new case we need to solve!  So what do you do when someone says, “my phone doesn’t work”.  Well first off that is a very broad sentence.  There are many different functions of a phone that could go wrong.  Now you’re thinking how will I be able to determine that?  The first thing you want to always try no matter what the issue is resetting the phone.  Unplug it for a few seconds then plug it back in.  Sometimes that will fix a glitch which can happen periodically. 
Resetting it didn’t work?  Next we interrogate the person to try to pin point the problem and the questions are as follows:
What part of the phone isn’t working? (handset, speaker, display, buttons)
If the problem is related to sound like  they can’t hear me or I can’t hear them first make sure this didn’t just happen on one call because it could be related to the caller.  If they say it’s happening on every call make sure the handset connections are all pushed in all the way.  If that still doesn’t work then have them try plugging in a handset that you know is working.  They’re still having the problem? With some phone systems you can swap out the phone with one you know is working, it just has to be the same type of phone.  If you’re not sure you can call our Service Department and someone should be able to tell you.  If you’re troubleshooting didn’t work then give us a call.
If the issue is with their speaker, buttons or the display and resetting the phone didn’t work, just try swapping out the phone with a similar one like we talked about earlier with the sound issue.  If that doesn’t work, call us.
When I try to make a call I get dead air!  For this issue refer to my first blog on troubleshooting dropped calls.  It’s not the exact same issue but the questions you ask are very similar. 
The fact of the matter is that when someone says “my phone doesn’t work”, it could be an infinite list of problem that if I tried to address them all this blog would be too long and you probably wouldn’t stick around to read all of it and quite frankly I would tire from all the typing : )
With these solutions you have a basic understanding of how the troubleshooting process starts and that will ultimately help you think more like a phone, which will help you with any issue you encounter.  Think like a phone?!  Yes, when troubleshooting try to put yourself in the telephones shoes.  Try to think about how it works, where it gets the info from, how it gives you the information it needs.  Be the telephone!
If you ever have any doubts or questions you can always call us!  We are always ready to help : )
“You know my methods.  Apply them” – Sherlock Holmes

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