Sprint supports GPS technology for tracking school buses; Exchange 2007 integration issues arise; Telecommute. Kill a Career?; U.S. cities don’t make the intelligence cut
Moving targets
Regarding “Sprint supports GPS technology for tracking school buses”: This is old hat — obsolete technology. For about $1 per day, USFleetTracking has been providing a tracking service for quite some time to the masses. The system has been deployed in police departments, ambulance services, on school buses and business fleets — even in teenagers’ cars. Even better, the USFleetTracking system is a real-time system. It updates the positions of thousands of vehicles live at five-second intervals. You see only your vehicles, but a business fleet can have hundreds or even thousands of vehicles tracking on the map at once. Move the mouse over the vehicle to see how fast it’s moving. Zoom in to see precisely what lane the vehicle is in. It’s accurate to within about eight inches. Go to www.usfleettracking.com and have a look at the live demo. Those aren’t pre-recorded vehicles moving around — those are actual sheriff’s deputies in Oklahoma City, and it’s live, showing where they are at the time you’re watching. You can even go into hybrid view and see aerial imagery, or zoom all the way down to see the specific house at which a vehicle is parked.
They have thousands upon thousands of vehicles on their system, and from what I understand they’re the biggest system of their kind in the country.
John Hunter
Stilwell, Okla.
Role-playing
Regarding “Exchange 2007 integration issues arise”: During development of the Microsoft Exchange 2007 version of Azaleos’ managed e-mail appliance, our engineering team evaluated virtualizing Exchange roles, as we thought it was a great way to try to reduce some of the cost and complexity of the multiple different ways to deploy roles with Exchange 2007. At our blog site (http://www.azaleos.com/blog), we’ve noted more details on what our engineers found and what led to our scrapping plans to deliver an appliance via a virtualization approach.
Keith McCall
Chief technology officer and founder
Azaleos
Redmond, Wash.
Telecommuting tradeoffs
Regarding “Telecommute. Kill a Career?”: I am a telecommuter and work out of mobile office. I work in three states and handle large enterprise customers. I don’t think telecommuters or mobile office workers will experience career killing. I think mobile workers select their positions because of their skills, talents and love of interfacing with customers. I believe mobile warriors are the wave of the future and these people tend to accept and fill these positions because of their nature.
I have an MBA and BA, and work directly with my distribution channel partners, customers and colleagues. My corporate office does a great job of supporting me. They do an excellent job of providing me online support training and focus on our mission and values in the quest to serve our customers. I accept my role and have no desire to make a career move. I think the current workforce has to be razor sharp in serving their customers and CEOs know that. What is needed are tools to help us measure our performance, manage our workload and organize our days. My thought is there will be an emergence of the mobile warrior call center to support telecommuters like me, and the central office will be depopulated. I think the future managers will need to be familiar and trained on how to interact and trust their mobile workforce.
Felix Lopez
Sunnyvale, Calif.
It’s true that telecommuting may not be great for linear advancement, since office networking is often key to getting ahead or nosing around for new and more exciting projects. But if advancement means a person has to go in to the office more often and hang out in long meetings that often go nowhere, then I’m not sure they are losing out in this arrangement. It’s a tradeoff many would be glad to make. And if and when a person wants to get back into the fray, there is usually a way to make that happen.
Ronnie Ann Himmel
Brooklyn, N.Y.
U.S. not making the cut
Regarding “U.S. cities don’t make the intelligence cut”: It’s a shame the United States isn’t in the top listing. I believe we’re suffering from the leapfrog effect: cities that didn’t have the old phone line infrastructure were able use current technology to leapfrog those that were technologically superior in the past. It’s going to be an interesting 21st century!
Ted Stalets
Owner
Domain Nesteggs
Nashville, Tenn.
