Earlier this week, we caught a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about UPS’s plan to test and deploy the next generation handheld device that their drivers use to manage the flow of packages in pickup and delivery operations.  According to this story, this will make the 5th generation of their “DIAD” (Delivery Information Acquisition Device) handheld terminal — this one apparently from Honeywell (the conglomerate which acquired HandHeld Products aka HHP), though previous versions have been built by Motorola and Symbol Technologies (Symbol was subsequently swallowed by Moto in another acquisition).

The DIAD V will feature video capability which could provide some additional utility in the capture of the condition of damaged packages (if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth even more!) and will be even smaller weighing in at 1.3 pounds.

To us, this announcement from UPS and Honeywell underscores the power and value delivered by enterprise mobility applications.  Delivering significant information resource to workers at the point of service permits enhanced productivity, reduces overall costs and improves customer experience every time.   That’s why you see organizations like UPS, famous for their ability to analyze and improve business processes, continue to invest in leading edge enterprise mobility technology.

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eNom (the large domain name registrar) posted a few Twitter messages this afternoon that addressed the failure of their domain name server (DNS) system earlier today (and which apparently resulted in many web users being unable to access the millions of eNom-registered domain names).  You can read their twitter tweets here.   They indicate that they problem resulted from a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. 

Unfortunately, we got caught up in the problem as well, and RepairEngine(r) was down for about 90 minutes.   Lexicon’s tech team has since added a couple of layers of DNS redundancy to prevent a reoccurrence of this problem.  Thanks to our users for your patience this morning.

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1:01 PM EST — Looks like our tech team has RepairEngine(r) accessible once again. Don’t have all the details yet, but I’m told that we’ve added redundant DNS capability that should prevent a repeat of this morning’s problems.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused. The good news is that our development/tech teams have taken the opportunity to build more durability and robustness into the web “infrastructure” that supports RepairEngine(r).

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12:40PM EST — Unfortunately, we’ve gotten word in the last ninety minutes or so that access to RepairEngine(r) has been blocked as a result of problems being experienced by the large domain name registrar eNom. We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing our customers and expect and hope that the problems will be corrected soon.

In the meantime, please feel free to contact Lexicon by phone at 800.678.1744 for any information or immediate assistance that you may need.

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Some of Lexicon’s customers have been asking us HOW RepairEngine® seems to know so much, and so quickly about all of the activities and transactions related to the repair and maintenance of their Symbol Motorola MC9060s or Intermec CK terminals, or any of the hundreds of other enterprise mobility devices and scanners and barcode printers we service.   From repair history to warranty status, from repair process status to shipment tracking, and from invoices to payments received — RepairEngine® always seems to have information that is “up to the minute”.  Can that be?

Well the answer for the last couple of months has been “yes” — we went live with a robust and powerful new data exchanger system (we’re going to call it ‘LiveData’ Exchanger when we issue the press release) which our team developed for RepairEngine® and rolled into production in September.  ‘LiveData’ replaced our “old reliable” data comm technology which utilized multiple updates occurring at regular intervals throughout the day.  Our “systems of record” — service center management and accounting, for example, would sync with RepairEngine® throughout the day to get relevant information onto the web, and available for Lexicon clients. 

Not anymore.  Now RepairEngine®’s ‘LiveData’ Exchanger uses its State Manager to detect any change that occurs in our web database or in one of our host systems instantly.  We use a Connection Manager to keep a connection between the systems always open (and recover it when necessary), and a Data Translation Rules manager to “tell” ‘LiveData’ what to do with a given transaction (for example, ‘LiveData’ Exchanger knows that a bit of data is a repair status update or a new routing rule for shipment processing or a payment — and sends it along, accordingly), all essentially in real-time.  XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used to help standardize the communications that take place between our systems or between RepairEngine® and the incident management systems employed by Enterprise-level customers, for example.

It’s leading edge stuff, we think and we’re proud of it.  ‘LiveData’ will open up important  integration opportunities for RepairEngine® and other useful repair management systems — to benefit Enterprise Mobility customers in ways that haven’t been possible before – and we believe that costs can be taken out of existing processes for our customers, as a result.  And that will make it a winner.

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Fifty-seven years ago, on October 7, 1952, the US Patent Office issued a patent to two American inventors (Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver) for a bulls-eye shaped barcode (yes, even though their symbol was “round” – we now refer to it as the first “bar” code) and a scanning apparatus designed to interpret the bulls-eye pattern. Silver and Woodland started as grad students at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University), to work on a problem that was brought to them by a local Philadelphia grocer who wanted a system that would “read” product information during checkout. Barcode eventually started to take off in the 70’s with the adoption of the Universal Product Code standard by the grocery industry, and as we all know, the rest is history. Thus was born an extremely successful technology — one that has found its way into applications far beyond grocery and that were not imaginable 50 or even 25 years ago.  For this paragraph, I borrowed heavily from a nice, concise arcticle by Mary Bellis on the history of barcode at about.com.

Today is good time to reflect on the genius borne of the Woodward and Silver collaboration: described in their patent applications as “article classification . . . through the medium of identifying patterns“.  These young guys invented, envisioned and paved the way for easily produced (usually simply printed) patterns (that is, barcode symbols), which could be readily affixed to  just about any object that someone might want to keep track of.  They knew it would be relatively simple to read (and interpret) the barcode patterns with light emitted from a “scanner”, which was reflected off the barcode pattern. Their vision has led directly to the creation of incalculable economic and societal benefits over the last 35 or 40 years.

Finally, it’s been popular to speculate for the last few years about the imminent demise of the lowly and now familiar, “simple” barcode — choose your new candidate for replacement champion from this incomplete list: two dimensional symbologies, smart cards, memory buttons, and the latest, and certainly the contest entrant which has breached the conscience of the consumer, Radio Frequency Identification or RFID.  However — my advice is to expect the old garden variety barcode to be with us for a long time to come (and since I’m part way out on the limb, I’ll just go ahead and say “for decades”).  Why?  The answer is cost advantage — barcode “marking” (that’s industry jargon for the act of printing or affixing a barcode to a product or object) is cheap. For products which are packaged and sold at retail, adding a barcode is essentially “free” — and “free” is a tough price for any competing technology to beat.  Innovations in enterprise mobile computers, (like Motorola/Symbol, Intermec, HHP) scanners, and printing technologies (Zebra, O’Neil, Datamax) continue to enhance the application opportunities for the good old barcode, and will for many years to come.

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We saw an interesting Channelweb article yesterday focused on the growing adoption by mid-size companies of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to meet certain specific business needs and reduce their software licensing costs.  Applications like email, CRM, business intelligence, patch management, anti-virus, and spyware may readily lend themselves to the cloud computing environment because of their non-core nature and the necessity that these apps typically have to connect beyond the corporate IT environment anyway.  Our RepairEngine® app for Enterprise Mobility Equipment Repair Management is classic SaaS in several ways:  R.E.® connects mobile device/barcode (Symbol/Motorola, Intermec, Zebra, Datalogic, HHP, etc.) user orgs to outside service/support providers, is a key support app, but non-core to most user corporations, and is low cost (FREE!) compared to in-house-hosted options that come with license fees.

You can read the article here and learn more about RepairEngine® here or give us a call or an email at info@lexicontech.com.

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Can't Wait Till Toe Meets Leather

All right — the last day of August.  Everyone knows what that means  -  just a few more days until:  “Toe Meets Leather!” (credit to the late, great Al Ciraldo).  Yeah — bring it on!  Spirits are soaring, the juices are starting to surge and of course, everybody is still undefeated so all things are possible, especially in the minds of younger fans.  We’ve got them of all ages at Lexicon and like most places our loyalties (as represented by Lexicon team members) are spread far and wide.  We’ve got allegiances here (this an incomplete list) that include:  Alabama, NC State, Virginia Tech, UVA, Clemson, University of South Carolina, Wake Forest, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Miami, Troy State, Ohio State, and Valdosta State.

What’s that got to do with our repair and maintenance business for Symbol/Motorola or Intermec scanners and  portable terminals or Zebra printers?  Hmm.  Well, I did get my parking pass the other day and it’s got a barcode on it  — so how about enterprise mobile devices to manage access and control of game day parking?

That’s OK.   I should say stay tuned to this space for some exciting news coming soon on RepairEngine®.  The design and development team has been focusing all summer (not day dreaming about kick-off) and plans to release more good stuff in the early fall around payment options, repair routing to support all your repair vendors, and more reporting power and options, and also Real Time updates to make managing repair and controlling your enterprise mobility assets easier and better.   Of course the price is right for enterprise mobility equipment users — FREE!  If you haven’t tried RepairEngine® yet — make your life better and signup here.

And good luck to your favorite team this fall

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RepairEngine's® Birthday Cake

RepairEngine®, the revolutionary Repair Management System that delivers a “better repair experience” for barcode and enterprise mobility equipment users, is celebrating its 6th birthday this July. RepairEngine’s® development team has been working to continuously enhance the system over the years by incorporating innovative features such as Dashboard and the “Grid” System seamlessly into RepairEngine®. We want to make RepairEngine® THE tool to use when managing the repair or maintenance of any Symbol, Intermec, Zebra, or any other kind of barcode and enterprise mobility equipment.

Its not every day that we celebrate a birthday at Lexicon Technologies, so we decided, “Whats a birthday without a cake?” This was icing on the cake last Thursday, pardon the pun, as we already had a three day weekend coming up for the 4th of July!

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Luis - one of our Work-Study stars

For the past several years, Lexicon has been working with the Rockdale County Public School System in the Student Apprenticeship Program based in the Rockdale Career Academy. Basically, we’ve hired students from the local high schools to work at Lexicon and learn the basics of electronics repair, as well as what it is like to be an actual employee at a real company. It’s been kind of cool to have a few younger employees! At one point we even had a good chunk of the Rockdale County High School Wrestling Team working either on the repair floor or on the loading dock!

The program has worked great, giving the kids an important job to do after school, not to mention a paycheck, and has helped familiarize them with the business world. Now, when Lexicon work study employees go to the grocery store, a concert, or Blockbuster, they spot any number of scanners or enterprise mobility devices that they have worked on. Some examples include the Symbol SPT 1800’s, MC 9060’s, or even Metrologic MS7120’s, which some of our student-employees spotted at LA Fitness last week. Their experience at Lexicon has helped make them aware of how technology is employed all around us in our daily lives.

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