I can’t seem to go to a meeting these days without the topic of Twitter coming up. Twitter is one of the pioneers of micro-blogging – sending curt (140 character) posts with the goal of answering the question “What are you doing now?”

I’ve been using Twitter myself for over a year as an off-shoot from my Mind of Men podcast. My twitter ID is currently @mindofmen. And I’ve been very successful at using it to stay in touch with friends, follow interesting items, and meet new people along the way. And as a social tool it is really great. However most of the conversations I’ve had about it during business meetings center around trying to understand what the potential value is to using Twitter as a part of their online marketing efforts.

My normal response is simple. People are using Twitter (and other social media outlets like YouTube or Facebook) to converse – to share their opinions. And somewhere, somebody is probably tweeting (posting an update to Twitter) about your company. Could have been that they were on the way to your bank branch, had a great experience ordering online from you, or even perhaps that they weren’t too happy with an experience with your company. Either way there is a conversation going on out there, and by your company joining in you can change the monologue into a dialog.

Just tonight, I received a tweet from Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief for PC Magazine (I’m a follower of his Twitter account @LanceUlanoff) linking to an online article that talks about some big-name companies that are using Twitter in some pretty effective and exciting ways. So if you are interested in exploring a bit check out 10 Corporate Accounts Worth Following on Twitter.

And if you’d like leave a comment here, or send me a tweet, I’d love to have a dialog with you too!

-- Mike

CyberStore 1.7.288 was released today. This release includes:

• Enhanced the Sales Order Review to allow the visitor to search by either their "Customer PO" or the SYSPRO Sales Order Number.
• Fixed an error that happened when doing an "Exact" search on the dealer search page.
• A new control template that can be used to send an email from user input via a form on a customized ecommerce page.
• Enhance the Dealer Search to show the SYSPRO description (CyberStore Name) and SYSPRO long description (CyberStore LongDescription2) instead of the CyberStore Short Description.
• Add a new variable [customerpo] for use in the email body on order confirmation/receipt.
• Enhanced the Dealer Search results for readability move the dealer information into a separate column from the preferred dealer graphic to allow each to be left aligned separately.
• Enhancement to Distributor Search results to allow an administrator to set the maximum number of miles from the visitors starting zip code to show results for.
• Added access to edit the EnableCustomerIDFill web.config variable via the Console > Setup > Catalog Configuration > Auto Fill Leading Zeros on Customer Number.
• Corrected the display of the State field when you select a different address from the On File Address drop down during Account Registration or Checkout. This only effected B2B On File customers who had multiple ship addresses with different states.
• Enhanced session management to avoid the error message "A problem has occured with your session. Please reauthenticate to continue shopping."
• Added a configuration variable to set the taxable status of Miscellaneous charges. This allows CyberStore web promotions to not be taxed as they are added to the SYSPRO sales order as miscellaneous charges.
• Optimized the Common Util Update Item Description function.

What you need to do
To perform the update you will need to download all build versions greater than your installed version, and apply them in order. Update instructions can be found at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_UPGRADE_PROCEDURE. If you do not already have an account for the CyberStore Center, please create one when asked to login.

How to download CyberStore Builds
To obtain the correct builds, confirm your installed version and download all builds numbered greater than your version, and then install them in order. Build files can be downloaded at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_BUILDS.

For details about this release cycle, please check the online release notes at CyberStore Release Notes.

• 02/04/2009 08:30pm - Full service was restored to 100% capacity after Dovetail's ISP completed repairs on the broken fiber line. Subscribers to Dovetail's AVOID Emergency Page Service have switched sites to a normal state.
• 02/04/2009 05:00pm - Dovetail's ISP has located the issue with the fiber optic cable - a kink due to a downed limb from last night's snowstorm. Current estimates puts the repair at 2 hours or 6+ based on the severity of the kink. ISP has promised to update Dovetail within the hour with more solid estimates.
• 02/04/2009 03:24pm - ISP still attempting to successfully splice Dovetail's fiber optic cable. In an attempt to help stabalize web hosting service and provide more pertinant information, Dovetail has forced A.V.O.I.D. to display the maintenance page for all subscribers.
• 02/04/2009 11:45am - ISP attempting to migrate us to a spare pair of fiber optic cables. ISP discovered a break in their fiber splice. If the migration to the spare pair does not work, it should only be a few hours to resplice the broken fiber cable.
• 02/04/2009 9:45am - Spoke with upstream ISP again. Issue appears to be in the fiber optic cable between their facility in downtown Shrewsbury and our hosting facility.
• 02/04/2009 9:00am - Technician determined issue is not ISP equipment in our hosting facility.
• 02/04/2009 8:00am - Spoke with upstream ISP. Technician has been dispatched.
• 02/04/2009 6:00am - Discovered that primary Internet line is down. Logged call with ISP. Discovered that Dovetail VoIP telephone service also affected

Dovetail's hosting services were seemlessly shifted to use our other Internet lines when the issue was detected.  As such, websites may appear to load slower due to increased traffic.

This outage is also impacting Dovetail's Voice over IP (VoIP) office telephones as well.  Though voice mail is still being delivered and responded to via email.

Our engineers are working feverishly to help resolve the issue, for which information will be posted on the network status page at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=NETWORK_STATUS as it is made available.

Thanks for your patience, and we do apologize for this and any inconvenience you or your users may encounter.