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Short Line Data Systems Inc. ROCS Update – October 2004
Website: www.sdsrocs.com
Greetings (or after the last trip, Howdy) –
Well, I have just returned from Texas, from a dual purpose trip: installing ROCS at the Texas Central Business Lines, and the ASLRRA Central/Pacific regional meeting. The Central/Pacific meeting closed out the three regional meetings, and we had the pleasure of being an Event Sponsor at all of the meetings, and getting to speak to a number of people about the ROCS family of event reporting products. The staff of the ASLRRA and the Regional Vice Presidents did an exemplary job of organizing the meetings and setting the programs for the attendees.
The install at the TCB went quite smoothly, and we have to thank the people at Railinc, BNSF, and UP for that. They are the first outside user of Version 9, and the new version is working with no major issues.
We are continuing our deployment plan for Version 9. We are currently preparing the HRRC’s copy for conversion, as well as preparing the TCRY’s copy for installation at the end of the month. We will move ahead with upgrading the rest of the customers as time and schedule allows.
New Customer
We are pleased to announce the addition of the East Erie Commercial Railroad to the SDS family. Located at the GE Locomotive plant in Erie, PA, the EEC interchanges with both NS and CSXT. We currently plan to install the system at the EEC in early November.
New Developments
With the release of Version 9, we have started working on some new “toys” to add to the system. We are working on a couple of new switch billing reports for one of our customers, which should help an unusual billing situation that is occurring. As a reminder, any new reports a customer might request are included in the monthly maintenance charge. The only exception to this is a report that would require major modification to the system in a way that would only benefit that user. For this we will charge a “nuisance” charge.
We are also starting to work on a new customer report system. The current goal is to have a system that will fax or email a report automatically at a specified time each day. This new report will also have a revised format that should be easy to read as an email.
ROCSMobile
Development and testing is continuing on ROCSMobile. Many of you got to see the TabletPC we are using to demonstrate the system, and the feedback on ROCSMobile was greatly appreciated. One of the things we are looking at right now is possibly reducing the display size to accommodate an 800X600 display, which will allow the system to run on any of the tablets available on the market today. A big concern that we have is that if we make the screen size smaller, it will also mean that we might have to take some of the information off the screen, or make the type smaller. The dots that make up the display are somewhat larger, so the display will be easier to read, even with smaller type. We will be making the decision soon, and it is possible that we might decide to use two different versions to accommodate different hardware. The bottom line is that we don’t want hardware to be an impediment to implementing what we think will be a useful tool to many railroads.
Well, that is just about all for now. Sorry for the delay in getting the update out, and we will have a full update in a couple of weeks at the beginning of November.
Take care,
Steven Friedland President
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