Kirby WIN Hint and Question

FYI - If you are having trouble logging into www.kirbywins.com, please note that the username is case sensitive. This means you must capitalize the first letter of your first and last name in your email address. This is good practice for email too. Email is not case-sensitive so you can log in by capitalizing the first letter of your names!

Thank you to everyone who has participated in the program so far. I welcome any feed back you may have. Please leave your questions here and I’ll respond!

Thanks!

Logging In Question

I am continually asked: ”Can we have the same log in for everything? There are too many passwords!” The real answer is no, we can’t set up your all your accounts to have the same log in. However, there are ways we can condense log in information to where you only have 3 logins.

The websites www.kirbycrew.com, www.kirbycorptraining, and www.extranet.kirbycorp.com have set logins that can not be changed. These logins should have been sent to you or your boat should have received an internet matrix that shows the formulas of how to login.

The Kirby WIN program was designed for the username to be the same as your www.kirbycrew.com. The websites are not tied together, so you’ll have to log in on both, but the information is exact same. Kirby WIN IS case sensitive, though, so just practice always capitalizing the first letter of your first and last name whenever you log in.

Your login for www.kirbycorpjobs.com has been set up diffently, but this one can be changed. To do this, please see a post I made with detailed instructions. It’s easy to do, and by doing so, you can reduce your login counts by one because you can set it to be the same as your email login information. Like Kirby WIN, it’s not tied together, but at least it’s the same information to remember.

By doing this, you have a different login for the extranet and www.kirbycorptraining.com, but the rest of your logins will be the same. That’s three different sets of information to remember - much less than 5 or 6! At the most, you may have 4 or more depending on if you choose to set up accounts on the safety and tech blogs.

Resetting Username and Password on kirbycorpjobs.com

You have been assigned a username and password for the website www.kirbycorpjobs.com and should have received this information in you www.kirbycrew.com email address. For the most part, your user name is the first initial of your first name and your last name (example: John Doe’s username would be JDoe). If you have not received this information, please call 713-435-1642.

You can change this to be like your other username and passwords by following this step-by-step instruction.

1. Direct your web browser to www.kirbycorpjobs.com and log in. Check your email for your log in information.
2. Once logged in, you will see something called the ‘Tendenci Console’. The Tendenci Console is a home page where you can edit your profile and use the site like a social networking site.  On this page, you will see five tabs and underneath the tabs, a sentence saying ‘Your profile was last updated on ___. Please take a moment to update your profile now’. Click the link, ‘Update Your Profile Now’. The other way to access your profile is to click on your Username found underneath the tab.
3. Your profile will open up. To change your username, scroll down to Section G.  In Section G, change your username and password and press ‘Submit Changes’. You may fill out any other information you want.
4. From this point on, your username will be whatever you told it to be. One suggestion is to change your username to your email address because both the www.kirbycrew.com and www.kirbywins.com username is your email.

You can NOT change your username for www.kirbycrew.com or www.kirbywins.com. You may change your passwords for these sites but the username must remain your email address.

Computer terminology pt. 1

Not familiar with computers? Have no idea what a URL is? Get lost when we talk?

No problem! Here’s a few words that you may want to keep near a computer for reference if you ever call me and have no idea what I’m talking about.

Internet Explorer: It’s an internet browser that hosts the world wide web. To access it, click the blue ‘E’ that’s either on your desktop or your Start Tool Bar.

Web Browser: The application that allows users to interact with the text, pictures, and content on the web page.

URL field/box: A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a protocol for specifying addresses on the Internet (www.dictionary.com, www.techterms.com). Simply put, it’s a web address. Every website, which is a group of webpages, has an unique web address or URL. To go to the page, you must either type it in the URL field box at the top of the web browser or click on a link.

Tool bar:A tool bar is a set of icons or buttons that are part of a software program’s interface or an open window. There are different tool bars on the internet window. The first is the URL field/box/toolbar. The second is Menu Bar which has ‘File’ ‘Edit’ etc. The most important of these is the ‘Internet Options’ menu because you can delete cookies and temporary files from this location.

Temporary Internet Files: Temporary Internet Files are downloaded information from web sites you visit.

Cookies: Cookies are data sent to your computer by a Web server that records your actions on a certain web site. This includes information about passwords. Sometimes these are kept in the memory and will automatically recall them. To clear this, you must go to the Internet Options. Select the ‘Tools’ menu on the toolbar. Click Internet Options. You will see ‘Delete Temporary Files’ and ‘Delete Cookies’. Click either of these buttons to delete the stored data.

Link: A hyperlink or link is the physical address that is in text that you are reading that you can click to access the website. From techterms.com, a link is When you are browsing the Web and you see a highlighted and underlined word or phrase on a page, there is a good chance you are looking at a link. By clicking on a link, you can “jump” to a new Web page or a completely different Web site. While text links are typically blue and underlined, they can be any color and don’t have to be underlined. Images can also serve as links to other Web pages. When you move the cursor over a link in a Web page, the arrow will turn into a little hand, letting you know that it is a link. The term “hypertext” comes from the way links can quickly send you to another Web destination.

Desktop: The desktop is the screen that’s on the monitor when no window is open. It is like a physical desktop; it can hold items that you need to access quickly such as commonly used files or shortcuts to webpages you frequent.

Window: A window is an area on the screen that displays information for a specific program (techterms.com). Anything you open opens up in a window. It usually has toolbars and icons that are uneditable but the middle of the window houses the content you are wanting to interact with, be it reading or sending email or awarding points.

These are just a few of the words that I may use when discussing the computer/internet.

Question: Are there any other words that you don’t know what they mean? Let me know! Leave a comment!

Kirby Sites

Please add one more site to your favorites. If you need to know the other 4, click here.

www.kirbywins.com is the recognition site for our deck crews. More information about Kirby WIN program can be found on our employee site.

Kirby WIN Program

I’m proud to announce that emails have successfully gone out regarding the Kirby WIN Program. It’s great to see people using it and I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback. Thanks! You should have received log on instructions in your email on Monday. If you did not, please call me.

Here’s a quick run through the Awards Catalog Site (www.kirbywins.com). 

This is a picture of the navigation bar on the site.

Product Catalog - Redeem Points - You can view the items in the Catalog that you can purchase with your points.

Search Catalog by Points Range - Find what you can currently afford.

Your Account / Points History - You can view the history of your points. It’s like a checking account - you will see credits and debits of points.

Edit Your Password/Profile - You can change your password here. Please do so. Remember, these points are money. If you do not change your password, people can log onto your account and use the points and there is no way to recover them.

Make a Product Suggestion - Want something that isn’t in the catalog? Suggest it here!

Account Questions - Have a problem with your account? Ask a customer service rep here.

Submit Safety Tip/Suggestion - These will be used for various publications both online and off.

This is just a rundown of what’s all on the site. Remember, items can be added to the catalog so you will be able to get what you want (and when you want if you let me know now!).

Have a great day, and be safe out there. Be mindful of the job and you may just receive points!

- Lisa

Kirby WIN program update

It’s been a long time since I wrote here, but it’s because we have been very busy working on the Kirby WIN recognition program. You will be receiving an email notification in the very near future, but I am having some problems with doing a mass-merge email, so please be patient with me!

Until you receive this information, please ask your captain about the program. Hopefully, you will have login information on Monday morning!

Have a great weekend and be safe! Drink lots of water!

Safety Blog

If you haven’t already, check out Dave Riches’ safety blog. It’s got some good information in it!

By the way, don’t drink energy drinks. They are not good for you!

Time Saver - RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Here’s an idea to save some time! Do you want to read the latest updates to the website or to my blog without actually going to the site? There is a way to do it! And it’s pretty easy. You use an RSS feed.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it was created in order to syndicate websites. The practicality of this is web users like you and me are able to ’subscribe’ to their various favorite sites in order to keep up with updates with relative ease. It’s different from ‘Favorites’ because you still have to visit the sites when you save them to Favorites. Instead, RSS feeds pull either a summary or the entire article from all of your subscriptions to one page. You can then choose if you want to continue reading them or not by clicking links that lead directly to the website. Thus you read one site instead of 10 and you don’t even have to remember URLs once you’re subscribed!

There are two ways to subscribe: 1.) By clicking an icon on your IE toolbar or 2.) Logging on to a syndication site such as Bloglines. The easiest way is by clicking the IE toolbar.

From the Toolbar:

1. To determine if you are on a site that supports RSS feeds (this blog does!), look at the upper-right hand corner of your Internet browser. You should see the RSS icon orange. If the site does not support RSS, it will be gray.

2. To subscribe to the feed, click the RSS Feed Icon. You will see a confirmation page:

3. Click on ‘Subscribe to this feed’ in order to subscribe to the feed.

4. You will get a pop-up confirming your subscription. At this point, you may click ‘OK’ or you can organize your feeds. On the boats, you may want to have folders for every crew member. To create a new folder, click ‘New Folder’ before proceeding. When you are finished, click ‘OK’ and you will see a screen that looks very familiar to the confirmation page. Click ‘View my Feeds’.

5. To view your feeds, you click the ‘Star’ icon on the top left corner of the internet browser. Once you do that,a submenu should pop out. Click the RSS Feeds Icon which is next to the Favorites Icon.

Most blogs and news sites have RSS feeds. Our website has RSS feed capabilities. If you want to get the latest updates of pictures being added or latest news articles, subscribe to the RSS feed.

This is only a suggestion, but it may help. I spend a lot of time online so it’s nice to have those feeds available so I can determine if I really want to read something before I do. It saves some time!

- Lisa

Typing Help Sites

Typing is a learned skill which everyone can do if they practice enough. When I was younger, my mother would want me to practice writing and typing and I hated it. But today, I have great penmenship and type over 80 wpm (words per minute) so I guess I should thank her for that. The one thing that made ‘typing practice’ bearable is the fact that I played a game that made typing seem fun. When I’d type, I’d shoot at space invaders or something. I can’t find that game at all now, BUT with the help of Phyllis, there are a few sites that you can learn to type by playing games. I encourage you all to practice every now and then, when you’re at home or have down time on the boat. After all, practice makes perfect!

The sites are:

http://www.powertyping.com/

http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=typershark (This one isn’t available on the boats due to content blockers, but it’s really fun to play so play it at home!)

Happy typing!

- Lisa