Outside Look

Is Kwedit For Real?

I was following the commentary about Kwedit Thursday, like I think a lot of payments professionals, my initial reaction was something between 'how cute' and 'seems a little crazy.' Glenbrook and Finextra didn't have a lot of commentary, but TechCrunch was certainly optimistic. Over the course of the day as I thought about it more, it became more clear that Kwedit could really take off. I was pleased to open my Google Reader this morning and find that NetBanker had hit on a few of the key reasons...

Power-Plunk

I try not to use this space to rant, so this is a little rant, and mostly constructive (I hope). At the same time, it just seems that most people think PowerPoint is Word with a landscape layout. The other day I posted this tweet while on a corporate training web session. The experience reminded of scourge PowerPoint has become in corporate America. I am not, by any stretch, the first to discuss this misuse of PowerPoint (here is a great little video on the topic, and here are dozens of other...

What I Do

I've been meaning to post this since the first week of January, but I've been traveling too much. Here is a map of my domestic travel in 2008. 2009 is shaping up to be similar. Including the international travel, 2008 came out with over 170,000 flight miles, which is about 70% of the way to the moon, and over 2 weeks in the air. While it is tough to be away from home, it is great to see so many places and people. I wish this image, which is from Flight Memory, where I keep track of my flights, h...

I Have Seen the Future of Television

And it is not on cable, or satellite, or broadcast. It is on the net. In honor of Hulu's first birthday, I wanted to share the very positive experience I've had over the last week, and why I think Hulu has some real potential. It was just a few weeks ago that I finally started using Hulu, and instantly I liked the interface, video quality, and selection. Finding new shows is always fun, and catching up on missed episodes of favorites is always nice. On my MacBook Pro, I'm quite happy with the...

Cleaning Grimy MacBook Pro or G4

I've been preparing my old PowerBook G4 to give to my in-laws since I have a MacBook Pro and bought the wife a new MacBook. One of the things that happens with a lot of use of the aluminum keyboards is a build up of grime and oils. There is a lot of information out there about what to do with liquid spills, but not a lot about basic cleaning. Apple does not recommend using any solvents, and I found a lightly damp towel wasn't doing the trick. Nail polish remover was out, too strong of a solve...

A Social Media Win

I recently had breakfast at Sally's restaurant in San Francisco, and was not impressed. My meal was sub-par, so like any young (ish) geeky net type guy, I put it on Yelp. I was going against the stream - most of the reviews were great, and I did assume I had a one off, lousy experience, or my expectations were too high. But then, something amazing happened. The owners sent me messages on Yelp, and they were entirely apologetic, ready to make things right - they won a repeat customer. They sna...

Why Is Blogging Hard?

It doesn't take more than a quick look at this blog's archive to see that bogging can seem to be hard. I don't publish as regularly as I would like, ideas go unwritten daily - and I am not the busiest person around. Sure, I work 16 hours some days, and 12 others, and some Saturdays I hardly work at all. Yet I still don't manage to get most of my daily ideas in to the blog. And even worse, I still don't get many of my specifically project related ideas out to my reports. Sure, there are some shor...

Online Multi-Factor Authentication

I was just reading this article on myOpenID CallVerifiD regarding using phone authentication for online log ins. This made me wonder why the mobile has not become a more common authentication factor. I've talked to too many people who have said that online banking has two factor authentication because you "have" the user name, and "know" the password. This is complete bunk. You "know" both of them, which leaves most online banking logins as single factor, multi-layer solutions. Compare to th...

The Curse of Knowledge

I really enjoy stories about people who bring a completely outside perspective to what appears to be an intractable problem (and thus the name of the blog and consulting service). One of the things that I notice time and again, even in myself, is the 'curse of knowledge' - the tendency to lock in to a myopic view of a problem or industry, and stop looking for solutions outside the traditional box. It takes some effort and purposeful attention to get out of this view. I hate the phrase, but we...

Use Case for Decoupled Debit Cards

There has been a fair bit of buzz around decoupled debit products (here is a good write up with many good links from Digital Money Forum). I just haven't been able to figure out why people would take the time to get one. The points are a nice idea, but most people get those with a credit card, and more banks are beginning to offer points and rewards with their check cards. The user experience doesn't seem any different (I don't have one yet), it is a point of sale card that you use like any othe...