I’m not a gamer myself, but as a parent, I understand the pull of online games and look forward to the day when I don’t have to hand over my credit card for use on some site I barely understand. Some will argue that Kwedit needlessly encourages credit use in the pre-teen set (note 1). But as long as parents stay involved, Kwedit can actually be used to teach kids the importance of paying their bills.

So, if users take this option seriously, by paying down their virtual debt with real money, Kwedit could be huge (in which case, PayPal buys it of course). And it’s relatively low risk for the gaming companies because the virtual goods have a zero marginal cost.

First, the service isn’t focused on adults, but the tween/teen set. This means the cutesy artwork and terminology works. It also means the service hits a spot that is very poorly served today. Second, the goods this service allows said tweens/teens to buy have virtually no marginal cost. Finally, it exposes young people to credit and reputation at a younger age, which will hopefully help them learn some lessons of credit early.

I think the most critical aspect of what could make this a success, and possibly a lesson for all micropayment schemes for digital content. When it comes to paying small amounts for digital content, you don’t need everyone to pay! This is a pretty significant philosophical shift. For an awful long time, we have been very concerned that everyone who says they will pay, will actually pay. And if they don’t, the merchant is out the cost of good that went out the door. For many, many years it has been a must that bad payments get recovered.

With digital content, this has changed. By loosening up on whether the goods are paid for, services like Kwedit can allow merchants to capture a smaller piece of a much, much larger pie. For Kwedit’s merchants, there may be many, many customers willing, but unable to pay for goods. The risk that some of these customers may wind up not paying is far outweighed by the broader reach to those who do wind up paying.

In some respects, this isn’t all that much different from what TipJoy was trying to do, except it provides much more reason to pay, both by making payment the default, and providing consequences for non-payment.

We’ll see how things go, but it seems like a great way for providers of digital content to extend their reach with their target audience.

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 others). So, I’ve been thinking about why it seems that with all the good resources out there, why does PowerPoint continue to be misused and abused so completely?

I don’t think there is one single reason for this abuse, but I’ve come up with a few possibilities:

1. Many people compose in PowerPoint when they know they will need to present in it. This leads to people thinking in a document paradigm, but composing in presentation software. One way to get around this is to outline and compose in Word, then migrate headers to PowerPoint while adding graphics and animations as appropriate.
2. Many people don’t know that PowerPoint has a “Notes” page. This could be because the default view (as far as I can tell) does not make this section visible, thus most people don’t use it. The result is most users will put all the information in the slides
3. There is a perception that anything in PowerPoint is inherently succinct and summarized. Anyone who has reviewed a 90 slide PowerPoint document with a half dozen bullets on each knows this is not true. Since presentations are, well, supposed to be presented, the content on any given slide, and the sum of the presentation should fit in the time allotted to the presentation.
4. PowerPoint has become the “executive choice” for communication. For better or worse, it seems senior management has come to expect PowerPoints rather than documents as the preferred method of communication. This leads people to attempt to cram document type content in to “decks” and often something gets lost along the way.

I promised this would be constructive and not a rant, so I want to provide some examples of really good presentations.

• Netflix culture presentation:
  
  Culture

  View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

  This presentation is great since each slide is simple, to the point, but the presentation stands alone and communicates well even without the presenter.

• Steve Jobs – arguably the best presenter in the corporate world, Jobs provides a great example of the presentation augmenting the speaker rather than the other way around: Business Week “Uncovering Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets”, “How To Present Like Steve Jobs”
• Presentation Zen consistently has great examples and tips on presentations.

Hopefully this isn’t too much of a rant and provides some useful resources.

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 picture quality, even in full screen mode. For me though, I just wasn’t using it much. I tend to watch TV and movies rather passively, for the most part, while catching up on my feeds in Google Reader or skimming FriendFeed, so watching shows on the computer just doesn’t appeal to me. But a week ago, that all changed. A week ago, I got an alpha invite for Boxee. After following instructions linked to from The Unofficial Apple Weblog I had Boxee running on my AppleTV in about 10 minutes. And that’s when everything changed.

First, Boxee is working really well for me – better than an average beta – and the real winner is now I can watch Hulu on my home theatre. This makes Comcast OnDemand look like my modest book collection compared to the San Francisco Public Library. In the last week, the cable box has been on only a few times, for specific shows. On the big screen, the video quality isn’t perfect, but not too shabby at all. BTW, I love my AppleTV, and buy way too much from iTunes Store, where the quality is excellent and there are no commercials (and I can bring things with me on my iPhone), but I still think Hulu + Boxee is pretty cool, and lets me watch things I probably wouldn’t pay for.

So, why do I think Hulu is so great and can be successful? A few key ideas:

• Content is king – Hulu has pretty solid library of content, and it keeps growing. There is also a great variety, so it is not single purpose.
• Fresh content – related, much of the content isn’t very old (a few days or weeks), so it is easy to catch that Daily Show that you missed, or last week’s episode of whatever the kids are watching today.
• Immediacy – damn, it’s fast. Hit play, just a few seconds and the video starts. No waiting for downloads, and I have only experienced a few very short hiccups in playback.
• The advertising doesn’t suck – OK, most everyone sort of hates advertising, but Hulu has scored with their adverts. First, there is a little counter telling you how long till the advert is over – 15 to 30 seconds, so you know how long to wait. Second, the commercials are short, and since you can pause the show, there is no reason to jump up to hit the loo or kitchen during the commercial – greatly increases the chances of actually watching and remembering them.

So, congratulations Hulu, you guys have solved a lot of problems with delivering ‘mainstream’ video content over the internet. With Boxee, it’s the perfect solution for me, and I think just the beginning of delivering more and more video content to the living room TV.

Why Evernote is so valuable to me:

• Ubiquitous Access – providing iPhone, Mac, Windows and Windows Mobile applications, a bookmarklet, FireFox extension, and Outlook add on, in addition to the web application, it is easy to add and access information through Evernote from anywhere.
• Multimedia – many types of information can be stored from links, clips of pages, full web pages, pictures, PDFs, just about any sort of data you might find on the web or your machine, you can pop it in Evernote along with tags and comments, and recently location information for notes posted through the iPhone application.
• Search – of course search is available in many applications, Evernote is pretty great at search, and one of the reasons is the OCR like capability to extract text from photos of things like whiteboards. This really rocks in terms of usability

This all adds up to an application that is so readily available, and easy to put things in to, and so easy to get information out of, its hard not to use it. I’ve been using Evernote to capture a variety of things including web pages and clips of pages for project research (faster and richer than Google Notebook), snapshots of whiteboard sessions, wine labels and tasting notes, key facts from meetings, restaurant notes, and the exact locations of photos for later tagging.

The ubiquity and ease of use drive the overall value. I have yet to find a tool that offers these two attributes in such abundance. It is a great example of the tool working with you rather than against you.

Every tool has a few weaknesses, but I haven’t found many. The version of the current Windows application is a little difficult to navigate between and within notes – especially longer ones such as full web pages, but a little practice and it gets easier. The syncing of iPhone notes doesn’t seem to always go through, occasionally leaving some notes on the iPhone but not yet available elsewhere. This is to be expected since a good connection isn’t always available, and the iPhone doesn’t let the app run in the background for automatic syncing. Launching the Evernote app in the presence of a good signal automatically starts the syncing.

As with many of the newer apps coming out, Evernote operates on a freemium model – the basic free account allows 40MB of uploads per month, with a paid account at $5/month or $45/year allowing 500MB of uploads per month (note these are uploads, not total storage). I’ve found that 40MB has been more than enough for the first few months of use – but as I use it more, I get closer and closer to the limit – and as I do, I become more and more willing/interested in upgrading to the paid account.

And this is the other beauty of Evernote – it works so well it draws you in, and leads you to the paid version naturally, organically, willingly. This is why I think Evernote will be a long term success. Hopefully they will also offer some sort of private or corporate implementation as well – this could be a great thing for many medium and even large businesses to “employee-source” all sorts of knowledge within an organization and/or relevant to an organization quickly and easily.

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 solvent (I assume solvents will take the letters off the keys), and I couldn’t find any rubbing alcohol, but we did have some nice Russian vodka. With a few Q-tips, a shallow dish of vodka and a dry towel, the keyboard was almost like new in 15 minutes of swabbing and wiping. One of the good things about vodka is the purity and high alcohol content – any little over drips evaporate before getting to any circuitry.

I would recommend using only pure vodka – flavored vodkas might smell nice, but I image probably leave a bit of residue. The best part – you can have a shot for yourself

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 snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and used social media to do it. Critically, they did not diminish the validity of the review, in fact they acknowledged the problem and shared the steps to improve it. This is in sharp contrast to a few stories I’ve heard of proprietors bashing a negative reviewer.

So here is the point, the Net isn’t going away, social media isn’t going away, and companies can either participate and win customers over, or chose to ignore it and lose customers due to lack of responsiveness and participation. I upped my review from 2 to 3 stars on Yelp purely for the effort to respond and personal attention that went in to the response (not a canned email). I am also now far more likely to come back, and soon, as the owners have demonstrated they care and are invested in their business, and by extension my experience there. In fact, I’ll make an effort (after my meal) to talk to the proprietor(s) if I can and thank them.

Another great example is Get Satisfaction – I hold no love for Comcast, but they are active on Get Satisfaction and Twitter to resolve customer problems. Companies large and small who embrace and leverage these tools will be much better off. You can bet Gen Y and younger will be expecting it rather than surprised and elated when they do.

“Times they are a-changin’” embrace it an grow, ignore it and wilt. I can say that I will be back to Sally’s in San Francisco sooner than later, will further update my Yelp review, and will certainly tell others the owners give a damn and recommend that others go there on that alone.

This is why I really like this post from Rachel Happe of The Social Organization titled “Executive Blogs Don’t Need to be Difficult.” Talk about a simple way to foster communication from the executive level – just a few sentences based on day to day conversations can do! (I wonder how powerful Twitter could be if it could live behind the firewall in large organizations – I imagine there would be a huge benefit to both executives and mid level employees)

The truth is, there are a lot of kinds of blogs, based on intended (or allowed) audiences – but it is still a format that offers benefits to the publishers and (potential) readers regardless of the context. It is no longer the format or the reach that is important – it is the fact that the tools are so readily available and so easy to use there is no excuse not to blog, at least for specific audience. For executives, there is no reason not to share a few thoughts each day – it can be a release, it can solicit help from unexpected sources, it can tell you who is tuned in and interested, and who is engaged enough to promote.

When it comes down to it, if you are an executive, you should blog (even if only available to an internal audience, though there are benefits to having an external blog too). And as Happe’s article points out, it doesn’t need to be a polished, marketing approved, 6,000 word dissertation – it should be short, real, and ask questions (and of course within the bounds of ethics and SEC regulations) – but it may be surprising the positive reactions and thoughts that come out of the regular posting of what may seem mundane.

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 the ATM card and PIN – you “have” in physical possession the ATM card, and you “know” in your mind the PIN. This is two factors, and you can’t get cash without both. Of course there are white card/skimming schemes of encoding a fake card with legit info, but that doesn’t change the context of multi-factor authentication – there are still have and know components.

As the prevalence of mobile phones has grown over the last decade, it seems nearly everyone has one (or two!), and certainly, nearly everyone prone to using online banking has a mobile phone. So, why hasn’t using the mobile phone become a key part of financial institutions’ approach to implementing FFIEC guidelines on multi-factor authentication?

The most simple answer is that the average online banking transaction (balance inquiry) doesn’t require two factor authentication, and the hit to consumer convenience isn’t worth it. But I’m not satisfied – I’ve yet to see an online banking property that applies vastly different authentication strategies to different sorts of online interactions. I’ll take myself as a use case – I’d be pissed if I needed to respond to a text message every time I logged in to online banking, I’d even be frustrated if I had to do so for every transfer between accounts I own. But, I wouldn’t mind if I had to for transfers to outside accounts. Yet, I haven’t seen or heard about any financial institutions requiring different levels of authentication for different types of transactions. I’m sure someone is and I just haven’t heard about it – let me know in the comments – I can’t have an account with every FI

This all points to aligning security, authentication, and authorization methods to channels/transactions that present the greatest risk to the consumer and the financial institution. A balance inquiry is low risk, a person to person to transfer is high risk. We must authenticate and authorize appropriately for these things. I’d be more than happy to authenticate via SMS or IVR for P2P or P2B transfers via online banking, or for password changes, address changes or any number of infrequent high risk transactions.

The beauty of the multi-layer, multi-factor, multi-context approach is that the convenience need can be met while also meeting the security need. Inconvenience is increased as risk increases, and most consumers will accept this as they know/feel they are being protected.

I think this must be a systems problem in that online banking portals that are in place today just don’t have the flexibility to authenticate/authorize at enough levels to support the granularity required. What do you think?

It takes some effort and purposeful attention to get out of this view. I hate the phrase, but we need to ‘think outside the box’ sometimes. This story about John Kanzius, a business executive and radio technician who comes up with a new potential method of treating cancer is a great example. The story is a bit sensational, but reading past that it is clear Mr. Kanzius took a problem, motivation, and ideas completely outside the accepted or expected and brought a new idea. It might not work, but then again it might.

We should always challenge ourselves to look at our day to day problems from a different angle, and try to apply our knowledge and experience to new problems.