I have taken similar pictures of the Boston skyline from Cambridge but particularly like this one because of the star-burst lights along the Longfellow bridge. These are construction lights along the bridge because the Longfellow is going through a major renovation. The project was scheduled to be completed in 2016 and cost around $300,000 million, but has hit numerous delays and is now set for completion towards the end of 2018. The reconstruction of the salt and pepper towers was completed this past month. Please see my online store. The store allows you to have my photographs custom printed and framed. Friend me on Facebook, look at my blogs, or look me up on Flickr. Store is now open. Check out my profile on ImageBrief! Click to Shop.
In This Issue
ReCaptcha Project
Feeling Special
Welcome to News from trif.com! First time readers, I am glad you're here! Returning readers, welcome back!
I love to share the many photos I have taken of places, people and things throughout the country and beyond. Each month our headline photo will be something new and different. We hope you enjoy. Keep in mind, we don't want to waste your time. Articles will contain generally less than 250 words. Please have a look and give us your feedback. By all means, forward to a friend using the link at the bottom of the Newsletter. Thanks. Questions? Send me an email!
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Is Twitter for You?
It is Twitter's tenth anniversary. It is hard for most of us to understand why more than 300 million users are actively 
tweeting every month. Some is reality based, some vanity, some political and some social.
It isn’t hard to understand why the growth of Twitter year over year is declining. Twitter lost 2 million users in the 4th quarter of 2015. That is a first quarter loss. That said, the revenue jumped 48% to $710 million. The stock price has almost inversely matched tweeting users. With a high of $69 in 2014, it has sunk to around $17. The current retained earnings hovers near 2 billion dollars. That is a lot of ground to make up especially when the company is still losing $500 million a year.
What is becoming interesting is Twitter in business. In the end, Twitter is great for those building a social media following. Here are some reasons to use Twitter:
- If your customers are already using Twitter, then it makes sense for you to use Twitter.
- A great way to provide real-time customer feedback
- You can research your prospects
- One more way to broadcast news
- An avenue to provide real-time discounts or coupons
- Might be a good way to view competitor
- Helps define your brand
Here are some cautions:
- Follow before engaging
- Take conversations off-line
- Don’t tweet unless you plan on tweeting again, and again, and again
TRIF.COM
Technology Resources
Technology solutions are a part of doing business just like sales and marketing, It is an important component in servicing customers, managing costs and controlling operations.
Our capabilities bridge database design and development, Internet services, network and computer sales and support, document imaging, bar code scanning, corporate communications, fax and email programs, mobile applications, cloud computing and help desk services. Interested in taking a step forward with technology? Looking to take advantage of the latest advances? Or just want to take advantage of your new computer?
Email me at rmj@trif.com The first consultation is always without charge.
Feeling Special
Those of you who know me know that my wife and I (and the whole family) are BIG fans of Disney. We love the quaintness of Main Street USA, the incredible ambiance of Wilderness Lodge and Mickey Mouse is a hero of mine as is Walt Disney. Disney Vacation Club is their point-system time-share offering and we became members back in 2001 with our home resort the Villas at Wilderness Lodge. This year, there are lots of improvements being made to that resort, so we made other plans.
We booked ourselves into Disney’s Vero Beach resort in October using their on-line reservation system. We have never been there, but have heard good things about it and the vacation points are quite a bit less than those required to stay at Wilderness Lodge. So a few minutes after I booked the reservation, I received an email from Disney Vacation Club:
“Welcome home Robert Jones! October is our favorite month at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort because you’re coming home!”. Well, I just thought that was a great opening sentence. Sure, I know the same email goes out to every single guest. I know I am a sap. But that doesn’t make the sentiment seem any less sincere. Disney has a way of making you feel special and isn’t that what we all want from time-to-time?
So how is this newsworthy? I think it is one of the things that sets Disney apart from other major corporations like Citi, Bank of America, Comcast, Walmart, Pfizer or ExxonMobil. It makes me think, what have we done to make our customers feel special? It’s something we all need to work on.
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The ReCaptcha Project
Security on the Internet is often confirmed through the use of a captcha or reCaptcha, a graphic word or phrase that 
needs to be solved by the user before proceeding. The captcha has always been annoying, difficult to read let alone interpret, but this has changed.
The reCaptcha project uses graphic words excerpted from scanned books or photographs of street signs as the Captcha source image. Then it has multiple users translate the graphic word or sign into text characters and the results are saved. One word at a time is verified by many people to digitize entire volumes more accurately than any computer. This builds a library of digitized books published before the digital age and makes maps more usable and readable.
In essence, the reCaptcha project harnesses a global human effort to flawlessly perform optical character recognition to digitize the world around us. For more information on how this works, see this Ted Talk.
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Nuts and Bolts
Microsoft, like all major software houses shoves "enhancements" down the throats of its users. The new feature in Microsoft Outlook which created the Clutter folder is one of those ill-thought-out features. The problem is that it creates an extra step for us users and yet another email folder for us to manage. We have the ability to create Outlook Email Rules for any inbound email, so why do we need Microsoft deciding into which folder an email should be routed? I remain clueless. So to turn off the Clutter feature in Office 2013, you need to sign onto the Outlook Web App. (File - Account Settings - Access this account on the Web). Click the settings gear top-right, select Options, Go to the Mail options on the left side and select Clutter. Uncheck Separate items identified as clutter. There is a video describing this here. If you need help, please let us know.
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