Rafe's Blog

Be careful what you ask for

The keyboard I want is real. Almost. United Keys is taking pre-orders on a keyboard with programmable displays on the function keys. Not color, and not the whole keyboard. But how far behind can that be?

Schwab update

A very poorly worded email from Schwab -- and a tech support rep without a good grasp of Quicken's own security -- led me to believe that Schwab now required that my Quicken datafile password was the same as my Schwab account access password. This appears not to be the case. Which is good. See the comment thread on the original item.

The future of media in 25 words or less

I moderated a panel today at an event put on by Walden Ventures. The topic: What is the future of digital media? Big question! But I had a great panel: Alex Blum, VP of the Audience Business for AOL; Toby Coppel, SVP of Corporate Development for Yahoo; Larry Kramer, Founder of CBS MarketWatch & President of CBS Digital Media; and Shawn Fanning, founder of SnoCap (and formerly Napster).

The most gratifying thing I heard was when I asked the panel how they value digital media companies when they are considering acquisitions. Expecting to hear an argument about eyeballs vs. revenues, instead the focus was on taking risks with companies that have potential for viral audience growth. And that's not a metric, that's a gut feel. I'm glad to see these guys evaluating companies this way -- it makes things interesting.

Also at this event, several digital media startups pitched to the audience of VCs. I'll probably write soon about SnoCap (aka Shawn Fanning's repentance), and maybe one other after that.

Dear Schwab: Keep your hands off my PC

I just got a notice from Schwab. They want me to change my overall Quicken software password to match the account password that's on their servers, or my capability to download data from Schwab into Quicken will stop working.

This is terrible. First of all, I use Quicken to access more than one Schwab account, and they have different passwords. I don't want them to be the same. Secondly, I don't want Schwab to have my Quicken password. If, by some strange event, they get my Quicken data file, they would have access to it. Furthermore, if some other bank also wants me to synchronize my passwords, and they have different password rules, it is possible that I wouldn't be able to access both. Or if I could, I'd then have the same password across Schwab, another bank, and my Qucken file. This would make my data less secure.

There's a reason I have a different password on my two Schwab accounts, and there's also a reason my Quicken password is different from those. I'm fine with financial institutions that set their own password rules. But it's not their purview to set the rules on my personal software.

I talked to Schwab tech support, and they say they are doing this for "convenience." Personally, I am more than willing to deal with a little inconvenience to maintain the security of my personal finances and of active trading accounts. I'm stunned that Schwab doesn't get this.

Quoted on Skype/eBay

A few months ago I did an interview with NBC News (KNTV) on VOIP. Yesterday a clip from that interview surfaced again, on their Skype/eBay story. Weird to see oneself taken, while not out of context, out of time.

Peerflix for books

If you like the peer-to-peer DVD trading system that Peerflix has set up (which I covered in a column, Building the Cashless Economy), and want to see if the model can apply to other types of goods, check out Bookins, the P2P exchange system for books. Just like Peerflix, Bookins lets consumer extract value from goods that are no longer wanted.

Personally, I think trading DVDs is a better bet: DVDs are much cheaper and faster to ship; there is a smaller universe of titles; and, as my wife says, handling somebody’s used DVD isn’t as "icky" as a used book can be.  Plus, Bookins charges $3.99 per trade, vs. Peerflix’s $0.99.

On the plus side, Bookins’ $3.99 charge does include postage, which prints on the shipping label (cool). And since this bar-coded postage is tracked by the Postal Service, users don’t have to tell the system when they mail a book; as soon as it hits the post office, Bookins knows.

So now we have Peerflix, a DVD-to-DVD trading system, and Bookins, a book-to-book trading system. It begs the question: Why can’t we exchange DVDs for books? Or books for PlayStation games? Or games for pots and pans? And how far can trading systems go before they have to adopt some universally-accepted medium for value exchange? Oh, wait, we already have that. It’s called money.

Quoted

I was interviewed for a story in the New Jersey Star-Ledger ledger about technologies for the small business: Back in the Swing: The latest tools of the trade. I got in one tip (use your digital camera to record whiteboards, instead of trying to scribble everything down) and one cute quote that I've been using in speeches (see the last paragraph).