ATCP, LLC

A colleague turned me on to an article here that talks about 5 stunningly awful mistakes for demos. I don’t think these are all that bad, and certainly not stunning, but I’ll include the 5 here, as we have a few more practical ones to add after:

1. Misunderstand the customer’s needs: “Harbor Cruise.” Don’t make a demo in the hope that your customer will eventually see something of interest. Inexperienced salespeople often inflict these demos on their customers as a replacement for doing their homework. Jaded sales engineers offer these demos when they receive little or no pre-demo information from their sales colleagues. Do the research to figure out what your customers need in advance. More »

A Sales Engineer is always on the road, and always has her/his laptop. We often need to make calls that aren’t company calls that we don;t want showing up on the company’s bill. We also find ourselves needing to call work discretely in areas where there is Internet (client site) but no cell phone coverage.

And what about those of us that receive calls from all kinds of people throughout the peak hours of our cell carrier, yet don’t want those minutes taken off our allowance?

What is an enterprising Sales Engineer to do?

I was always frustrated at how Skype was too bulky (kills your battery), and was open to government inspection of content. I don’t use it. Like Gizmo, they get paid for “Skype Out” at a hefty fee. There had to be a better way. Other services I have, like GTalk, don’t even allow for calling land lines. Well, there is a way. More »

If you wanted folder functionality in your web based client, you were usually out of luck with Gmail. In fact, here they say so:

Folders

Actually, Gmail doesn’t use folders. To help you organize your mail more effectively, Gmail uses labels instead.

Here’s why we think labels are better than folders:

Labels	Folders
A conversation can have more than one label	You can only put a message in one folder
A conversation can be in several locations (Inbox, All Mail, Sent Mail, etc.) at once, making it easier to find later	You have to remember where you filed a message to retrieve it
You can search conversations by label	You can’t always do folder-specific searches

But this isn’t actually true-on either account.

You can actually have both folders and labels in Gmail-effectively having cake and eating it, too. All you need to do is install GTDInbox for Gmail so that your browser version of Gmail will act more like the IMAP service it actually is-showing you folders and such like it does in Thunderbird. This does not change anything about Gmail-instead it makes the Gmail interface look the way the actual Gmail servers see the email you have there. This step is also reversible, so any time you want to go back, just uninstall/disable the add-on. Simple.

So lets make a folder in Gmail called TEST:

More »

I recently replied to a post on Google’s Gmail Help forums regarding phishing, and it touched on an issue I’ve been confused about for years:

[...]

This is the result of a common translator (Google’s , Babelfish, etc.) being used on perfect grammar-from
another country.

Now for years the question has remained as to why an Asian, or other, company wouldn’t just spend a few quick dollars and have their text proof read? I’m not talking (necessarily) about the phishing expeditions, but in all matters foreign where they know an English audience will be reading their material? I’ve been to Asia, and it is crazy how proud they are of their own country and culture. They would rather spend their energy and time making a knock-off of [insert virtually any product type here] than to use that ingenuity to make
their own brand, and establish their countries as those known for making good _original_ goods, instead of really good knock-offs.

Trust me on this, as I have purchased a LOT of Asian knock-offs, and they are a terrific value-as long as you realize what they actually are.

There is no translator that converts perfect to perfect… but this next one is probably even better than the first.

The top part of the sign is in English, but when they emailed someone to translate that English into Welsh, the response actually said “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” That’s right, it’s an out of office message, which subsequently made it onto the road sign undetected. We hope those residents are getting used to Welsh truck drivers carrying heavy goods. from here.

Translation, although it would cost just a few dollars, is something I believe is outside their comfort zone with regard to national (cultural) pride.

So. Attention all Asian, Welsh and other companies wanting to get into the US markets by translating your manuals, instructions, and yes-even banners-into English: Send me your broken English and I will make it perfect. I will charge only $5 USD per document, up to 500 characters. How can you miss with that? Email me for my PayPal account!

So who is sitting in front, again?

Yes, they do!

I don't see it! Do you?

Lord knows, I've tried!

Need some spare change when abroad?

Just like at the casino!

Nobody dries crack lik ethe Asians!

I'm calling No.8, just in case!

Nobody would be dumb enough to put something in STONE without checking with me first, would they?

You want creative? You got it!

Would this work over here?

You might as well take one more step!

Lets see if I can help clean up the masses of virtually unintelligible translations out there! :)

I’ve written so many emails about this that I think I should put the info down in a blog article and simply refer models to it! The following is first person:

Clothing
I will tell you not to plan on anything ‘busy’ to wear. You need solids, and preferably nothing the same color as any desired background. Black and white are winners, as is a variety of jewelry. This holds true for both kinds of shoots.
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