FeedMe

A New Password Rant

You know what makes me crazy? Idiotic restrictions and stupid practices for logins and passwords. I ranted about this before. And before that. And this one, too.

Here's a practice I see often. Some vendor sets up access and they choose a user name for you. So, to these folks, I am MRubenzahl428. That is not what my mother meant to name me. Please let users choose their own user name. 

Then they give you a password. Which is 4vu6$tr2. To be fair, they require me to change the password. But the login is forever. You may call me Mr. 428. "I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it, thank you.”

So: Of all the logins I have, guess which ones are on a Post-It on my monitor? Nice security, guys.

Not done yet, one more kvetch. They send an e-mail message:

Welcome to Dolts.com. Here is your Dolts login and password:
Login ID: MRubenzahl428
Password: 4vu6$tr2

What? They sent my login and password in a single e-mail. They even labeled them. Don't they know e-mail is transmitted as unencrypted text?

Who Wants Better Internet?

Who wants better Internet?

I know, everyone. Especially those paying $50 a month for residential Internet connection that's not dependably fast. Want to feel worse? Look at how we fare against other nations. 

But help may be on the way. The FCC will announce a national broadband strategy tomorrow. Google is among the voices who support a nationwide Internet connectivity initiative. They draw an apt comparison to "Power. Clean water. The Interstate highway system."

I am guessing the barrier to this is not technology or even funding; it's the cable and phone companies who won't want to let go of their low-competition regional markets. This is politics, not technology. So sadly, the more apt comparison may be to health care, with entrenched companies in restricted markets use every means to maintain the status quo, even as other countries pass us.

Unless we, the citizens, speak up and demand our interests be out first.

The Queen's Website

 

Queen Elizabeth II has redesigned the British Monarchy's official website, with the assistance of Tim Berners-Lee -- the man who invented the World Wide Web. Really. 

Source: Silicon Valley Webguild

Password Evil

Pet peeve: Idiotic rules placed on passwords. Current example: brightidea.com.

"Password must contain at least one upper case character"

"Password must contain at least one symbol (!#$%&()*+,-/?@{|}~)"

They make it maximally irritating by not telling you these rules until you violate them. So you type a password. Twice, of course.

They balk and you type a new one. Twice.

They balk again. You have typed the damn thing six times now.

Oh, wait, the rules are there. There are five rules!! Gray on gray -- way over to the right, not near where you enter passwords and only when you click on the password box:

And it even contains a typo.

This is not the stupidest. That award goes to the morons in IT at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas for the restriction that no password can contain the first three letters of any month!

IT people everywhere, please: We know you were the smallest one the playground and you never got your way. We know you like being in control. But your customers have hundreds of passwords and why should they need to have a separate Post-It with your site's password just because you think you're wiser than any banking or securities site and you have such smart rules for how to make a "stong" password.

Stop being an idiot.

Google Catches House on Fire

Google's street view caught a house on fire! You can drive around and see angles. Fire trucks, people watching. Google removed one view but the rest remain.

They also caught a car fire.

These are all very un-funny to someone but they illustrate that before long, everyone and everything will be on Candid Camera.

Knol

New from Google is the "Knol." Interesting idea. They've made it extremely easy for anyone to write an article on anything. For instance, I posted an article on how to make lemon sorbet (the same article appears here, in the FeedMe blog).

Google's company mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." They have noted that the entire Internet contains a fraction of a percent of the world's knowledge. The vast majority is in people's heads. (Yahoo has talked about the same idea.) This is a way to soak up some of what's in our brains.

A lot of press on Knol is calling it a Wikipedia competitor but frankly, I think they are missing the point. Unlike Wikipedia, Knol is not collaborative: only the author controls the content. They have very few rules or editorial controls. There are no rules requiring a neutral point of view or restricting conflict of interest. Multiple articles on the same topic can be posted. They are trusting that their search product will properly prioritize all this, along with the rest of the web.

This seems like a significant marketing opportunity. Is there a "first-in" advantage? Should we rush in to write about technical topics that benefit our companies, with links to our company websites?

Not sure, but for now, I am sharing my sorbet recipe.

(You can see all my articles -- just three so far -- by starting at my own knol page.)

(P.S. The knol system is a bit buggy. It sometimes won't load and with Firefox, it is currently not letting me sign in, though it works with Safari. Earlier today, it worked with Firefox. Its search is presently not finding any of my articles, even though they are in the system. I expect it will settle down over the next few days. Google has a motto: "Release early and often." Good think Boeing doesn't follow that philosophy.)

Walk, Drive, Bus...

Google Maps has added walking directions. They already had public transit in some areas. They include a lot of helpful information, in addition to the router.

 For instance, I can drive the 3.5 miles from work to home in 8 minutes. On foot, the route is quite different but the distance is that same. Google thinks it would take 1 hour, 11 minutes (obviously, they don't take into account any ice cream stores en route).

By bus, they tell me it will take 58 minutes — and cost $1.75. They also tell me it would be $2.05 to drive. Again, no ice cream is factored in.

Nicely done. Though it's in beta, the walking route matches what I would choose.

I love the fact that Google keeps improving their systems. By the way, if you didn't know — one of the coolest features of Google maps is that you can click and drag to change a route. If their directions send you up 101 but you prefer to take 280, drag the route line over to 280 and a new route will be drawn, using the points you request.

Firefox 3

I usually let new software soak a while but for some insane reason, I jumped in.

It's awesome. Nice features, much faster. A few of my add-ins are not compatible but the only one that mattered (Google's bookmark sync) has a substitute (Foxmark).

Me like.

Google Health Joins Microsoft HealthVault

With the release of Google Health will come, I expect, another round of privacy paranoia. I wrote about this before, when Microsoft's HealthVault appeared. Both services are voluntary but it doesn't take much insight to recognize that before long, you won't have a choice. Your medical records will be consolidated and networked and if you want health care, you will be in the databases — just as you are if you drive a car, use a credit card, or have a job.

It is perhaps unnerving that the institutions that are rushing forward to fill the need are companies committed to cataloging and sharing information. But I think that's a good thing: These companies have a lot to lose if any of the information escapes.

Regardless of who does it, there is an urgent need. Health care makes poor use of information technology now, way behind other industries. There are great benefits in economy, efficiency, quality of medical service — and privacy. Consolidated records are safer. Most of us now have dozens of records, all different, under poor control, in each doctor's office, hospital, diagnostic lab, or pharmacy. Few of us even know where all our records are. I think this is a boon and it's been a long time coming. 

Stupidest Password Restriction

One of my pet peeves is stupid login or password restrictions. What it means is that for this login only, I have to use a different password. Some require you include numbers, some require numbers be between letters...

The stupidest one ever came up today. Blue Cross / Blue Shield requires:

Your password cannot contain the first three letters of a month (for example: Jan, Feb, Mar). Please try again. Thank you.                             

WHAT?

So if your password is Janet32puppy or imamartian, you're hosed?

Morons.

End rant.

Maker Faire, May 3-4

For those in the Bay Area, I would encourage you to attend Maker Faire. May 3-4 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds -- and not to be missed!

I went last year and vowed next time to go both days. It's huge and full of really, really fascinatng exhibits and brilliant ideas. Lots of free stuff.

What is it? It's the heart and soul of do-it-yourself. Hundreds of people who make stuff and love what they do so much that they stand for 12-hour days waiting for people to come by and gawk at their magic. Organizations and museums that have created hands-on demos you can play with.

If you like metal and fire, gears and gadgets, Legos and things that move, honk, squirt, squeak, spark, and belch, you have to go.

See: http://makerfaire.com/

Comic Compressed

This is very cool. Alt comic artist Meredith Gran posted a timelapse video of the creation of her comic, Octopus Pie. Hypnotic and revealing of the artist's process, this shows four hours of drawing in a few minutes. Way cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeKWsf1UzEg

Electronic Translation

I think we have a ways to go before machines can translate text. We received this at work.

Note the last sentence, in the P.S.

The customer is asking about samples that did not arrive:

The top of the morning to you. Ex rubs weeks not get to my house samples disposal ( 499923; 499390; 498997; 498983; 498218; 497302; 497294; 497285; 497181; 497179) Whether item what yourselves history ex commissioned sample? Warm-heartedly thank you too those whom received. Readies produces panel LED built of disposal your part. Very I am set on it disposal part whose plannings shopping are not to level pcs/ yer. If you please of correspondent on that deal. If you please quote nr touch to can pay in dollar too ordered disposal. Good day.

P.S.Pardon me too my english. Beneficiary ex translating program.

Backup Rules

Is your computer backed up? Are you 100% confident your backups are complete and up to date?

I didn't think so.

Here are rules for a secure backup. Trust me — it's not difficult to do well.

1. Like exercise, the best backup is one you will actually do. Automation is essential, unless you are very disciplined.

2. You need two! You never know a backup is bad (corrupted, missing, has been failing without your knowing it) until you need it.

3. Best is to have two using completely different mechanisms. For instance, one might be a copy that runs via a nightly script and another could be a backup program, and each goes to separate media.

4. One should be a total backup (so you can recover everything on your disks and be up and running quickly); the other can be just essential files. The total backup should be hard-drive based.

5. You should have something offsite. You may neglect this, thinking it's only in case of fire, which is not so likely. But you should also think of theft. If a thief takes your computer, they will probably take your USB drive and may scoop up any CDs or DVDs they see. Imagine the relief of having the key files elsewhere. Or the grief of not having them.

This can be a much smaller set (e.g. your e-mail, docs folders, omitting system files and applications). The easy way is to use an online backup service that stores your key files on their servers. There are many. Some are designed as backup (like mozy.com or crashplan.com); some are automatic file or folder sync tools (like dropbox.com). These programs all work with Macs and Windows. Some are Linux-friendly, too. I haven't tried it yet, but Crashplan looks great and you can use it to manage the whole family's backups. 

If you don't want to fuss, just go to mozy.com and have at it.

6. You can use a USB or FireWire external drive, or a separate drive mounted in another computer on your local network.

Tools

I use EMC Retrospect as my primary. It backs up all the Macs and Windows on my network to multiple sets and supports DVD. I have two DVD sets, one of which is in the office.

My secondary is SuperDuper (for Mac) which mirrors the whole drive to a separate disk (you can use the similar Deja Vu or Carbon Copy Cloner).

If you're observant, you'll note I am violating my own rule 5. One of these days soon....

Apple's Time Machine is another great choice for those with recent Macs.

If you have suggestions for backup programs or services, please add a comment.

Revised March 2010

Health Records Online: A Matter of Trust

A new online service, HealthVault.com, provides a single, web-accessible repository for all your health records. There is much here to like, but — there are a lot of buts.

It has always bothered me that every new doctor or medical service asks the same questions, and each with a separate form. Dentist, specialists, emergency clinics, labs, pharmacies — same questions, again and again. What drugs are you taking? Which of these diseases have you had? Family medical history. It's inconvenient but more important, it compromises one's health care: I'll bet I have answered these 100 times and there are certainly differences, either because things have changed or I don't remember every detail.

This can be important information: A doctor's diagnosis and treatment depend on what the doctor knows about you. And in an urgent situation, or when the patient is not lucid, having accessible medical records can be life and death. I really want better online medical records.

As a technologist, it makes me especially crazy. Everyone else, from the DMV to the grocery store, has an online record system that is better than the medical community's. There are legitimate issues but nothing that can't be solved — and that have already been solved. Every medical office can readily access my credit information already. Clearly we can solve the privacy and networking and access issues.

Some worry about the security issue: Having all your medical data in some centralized database worries people. But do you really think your privacy is more guarded when there are 25 uncontrolled, unencrypted copies of your records, in 25 medical offices all over the county, immediately readable by 100 office staff?

Along comes HealthVault. It's a good start. It keeps all the information for you and your family under what looks like tight security. It holds contact and profile information, medical records, etc. You can upload image files and documents. The sharing facilities seem robust — you can invite someone to view the information and choose what they may see.

Two issues are access and trust. In terms of access, will my doctors accept a HealthVault login as a substitute for their form? Not yet, but they have a few partners who are using the date.

The bigger issue is trust. Note that I did not say "security" — that's a technical issue. It's the human issue of trust that will make or break this, and other, medical automation solutions.

HealthVault is owned by Microsoft. Do you trust Microsoft? I don't share the common distrust of of their corporate intent — I think they mean well and their corporate ethos is that technology is powerful medicine to help people. They also believe that profit and benefit go hand in hand. So I trust their intent.

I am not sure if I trust their technology. They're competent technologists. They certainly are capable of making an accessible, trustworthy, secure system. But will they?

Every Microsoft product is full of defects. Even after years of refinement, glitches remain — sometimes the same issues for year after year.

I worry about bloat. Huge applications mean more opportunity for bugs and functional flaws and Microsoft often seems to not know how to say no to a feature. Worse, they keep adding rather than fixing — a palette, an assistant, a wizard, a "ribbon" — layer upon layer of new things to repair incomprehensible interfaces only a programmer could have designed.

This all affects usability. I am always in awe of what they spend on usability testing and redesign. They seem incapable of simplicity. The continuous repair tells me they know there is a problem but don't know how they are causing it.

Then there are the bugs. I registered and in the process discovered four bugs. Some were cosmetic or minor functional issues, such as a spray of Javascript across the top of one page. There were many user interface oddities. Right now, it logged me out and won't let me log in. Most people at this point would give up. I went in through the top of the application and found a screen that let me sign in.

I tried to edit my contact information. There is no link to let me do that. I think I know why. I haven't confirmed my identity by replying to the e-mail, but guess what: It's not telling me that. There is no Edit link and they give the user no clue. It's programmer-think: If a capability is not available, don't show it. Would Apple or Amazon or Yahoo have done this?

So, will I use this? Even without my doctors' buy-in, there is enough functionality for me to get started. But that's mostly because I am a tech geek. Others would not likely try this, yet.

And then there is the trust issue.

I expect that the underlying security is fine. But it's like the president of United Airlines once said, "If the tray tables are dirty, the customer has to be wondering about the condition of the engines." As much as I may want this service, I am not going to be uploading my data, given how dirty their tray tables are.

Buy Tires Online?

Of all the products one might buy online, tires did not seem likely. They need to be installed. They're big and heavy. I imagine them being shipped to stores by the truckload, not four at a time. People rely on the advice of the seller. Since you're stuck with the results of a tire purchase for a couple of years — and returning them is a problem — can an online retailer provide enough service?

I heard good things about the Tire Rack, the leading online seller of tires and a friend just reported an excellent experience. So I decided to give them a spin, so to speak.

I visited a local tire seller that is very near work. I have used them before. I read Consumer Reports. I checked Costco. I found a message board for Lexus owners and read the numerous threads on tires (including many messages about what tires people like on my exact model of car).

Ultimately, I bought at the Tire Rack. Here's why:

Information: Online wins, hands-down.

The Lexus drivers' bulletin board was an excellent start. It helped me narrow my choices to a few very well-liked models. Consumer Reports was helpful but did not include the Lexus users' preference, the Bridgestone Alenza.  The Tire Rack's site was full of really good information. Their advisor pages let you describe your car, how you drive, your priorities (noise/comfort, performance, mileage). You can select by brand, size, and other characteristics.

Recommendations: Online wins, hands-down.

The Tire Rack's crown jewel is their customer ratings. They have accumulated comments from literally millions of customer miles. Many of their customers write detailed reviews. They detail the choices in comprehensive charts like this one:

(Click image for full size)

This showed me that the Alenza, which the Lexus board owners preferred, was very close to Consumer Reports' top choice, The Goodyear Fortera Triple Tred. I went with the Alenza for $30 less per tire.

The local dealer I talked to was not even close. He recommended a tire that scored fairly poorly elsewhere. Other dealers would probably have done better but how can I assess their advice? In this case, the community's recommendations were reliable and mostly in agreement.

Price: Tire Rack wins, hands-down.

Even Costco could not compete. They were close, for the Michelins they carry, but their selection is very, very limited.

My dealer? Distant loser. Charged me more than the Tire Rack for a lower grade tire. From reading online, dealers vary widely and I could have done better — but shopping for tires is only marginally more interesting to me than being run over by one.

There is no sales tax and with shipping, the Rack wins easily. Installation is $125. The only downside is I will have to pay for tire rotations over the life of the tires. 

Service: Local retailers win, but not by much.

I expected local dealers to win this category since they have the tires in stock and can install them for you. Their advantage was narrower than I thought.

When you buy from the Tire Rack, they identify local shops that will install them. One of them happens to be the auto repair place I always use (Don and John's Automotive in Sunnyvale, CA). I trust them completely, so that was a big plus for the Tire Rack.

The Tire Rack ships the tires directly to the installer.

In one business day.

For $45.

Local dealers, of course, will sell and install the day you buy and generally include free rotation and inspections but add it up and the Rack stills wins, for me.

Bottom Line: The Tire Rack rocks.

Usability Tests: Valuable and Easy!

Usability tests are like cleaning the garage: You know there will be great benefit, but getting started seems so daunting, and once you have done it, you wonder why you didn't do it sooner!

My team at work just did our first ones. They were surprisingly easy and valuable. Then today,  Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing was posted by Christine Perfetti of User Interface Engineering. Numbers 1-3 in her article perfectly capture our experience:

1. Start Testing Right Away

Start testing. Start doing it right away. We've found there isn't any one experience more beneficial to design teams than running a usability test. I'm still amazed by how quickly development team members recognize the benefits of usability testing once they've actually seen it in action. ...

2. Debunk the Myth that Usability Testing Is a Big Production

... Usability testing isn't rocket science. The organizations that do the best job of incorporating usability tests into their existing process understand that testing is not a big deal.

... our recommendation is to start simple: Test on a computer in your office cubicle and start testing with someone, even a co-worker, to begin gathering data. A usability test doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to happen.

3. Start Testing Early in the Process.

...

We will do this often.

A reasonable test is 3-4 test subjects (customers, random customer-like people within the company, etc.) in front of a PC and you, standing behind with a clipboard. Encourage the subject to tell what he is thinking and you have the essence of a usability test!

Hell of a lot easier than cleaning the garage!

For more on usability testing, I strongly recommend User Interface Engineering's website.

Clueless Web Programming

A "clueless company" story.

I was registering a Macy's charge card at their website and it refused to accept the card number. So I sent them an e-mail and they told me:

To add your account number to your profile, you need to add your account number as it appears on your statement minus any spaces or dashes.

Interesting, since the error message scolded, "Enter as it appears on your credit card" -- which is with spaces!! Or, one could try (as I did) to enter it as it appears on my bill -- which is with hyphens!!!!

Of course, it is a simple matter for the web software to match with or without spaces and hyphens, which would eliminate the problem in the first place.

I informed them of the problem. Anyone want to take bets about whether this ever gets fixed?

Update: On Monday, I received a courteous reply that said: "I will pass that information along to my Supervisor and I thank  you for the suggestion." As much as one could expect. It will be interesting to see if it results in a change.   

I often use Macy's as an example when I am talking about bad examples of sales, customer service, and web processes. (In fact I used it as an example yesterday, talking to my staff and letting them know I appreciate their attention to customer service and quality.)

One wonders how companies like this stay in business.

NY Times Links

Links to the New York Times have a problem: They require login and after a while, they require payment. But the Times has a way bloggers can post a link that works without these issues. Feed the link to: 

New York Times Link Generator

Update (March 26, 2007):

I noticed that the Times has a "Permalink" link on at least some of their stories. Click on SAVE and it's one of the options. It delivers a permanent URL:

Sneaky. Opt In? Or Out?

Register at the LA Times. "Membership is FREE and offers a wealth of benefits!"

Yeah, I want a wealth of benefits, you betcha.

It was pretty standard up to this point:

Lessee, from time to time, yadda yadda, e-mail announcements, bla bla, selected advertisers and affiliates! Nuh-uh, I don't want that, so I will surely leave this unchecked.

Woops, keep reading: "Please check this box if you prefer not to be e-mailed"!?

Almost got me, you slime bags.

But really, is this good marketing? If someone does not want advertiser e-mail and you com him into accepting it, you may gain a fatter mail list for a while but will this be a long term gain? And if someone does want the e-mail, you just tricked him into opting out!

If a Blog Falls in the Forset and No One is Listening....

(From one of my favorite strips, Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis.)

Most Programmers Are Smart

Programmers are generally pretty bright, but there are a lot of hacks out there. True story:

A friend has a store that is a franchisee of a larger company. The company's website (which stinks anyway) has a way each store can have a page on the company site. Each store enters their info using an admin interface.

My friend entered his information and reported to corporate that apostrophes were appearing as invalid characters. They put him in touch with the developer who told him that the programming language uses apostrophes to denote strings. Therefore you can't use them in your text. He said that the stores have to write without using apostrophes!!!

My friend asked about using a different delimiter and the programmer told him it was a MySQL limitation -- that it won't store apostrophes! The programmer was not affected by the fact that there are tens of thousands of MySQL sites that somehow manage to allow them. Sheesh.

Do You Think You Know What Google's Business Is?

Phil Bronstein, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, talked about the changing business model for newspapers. He doesn't know where it's going! He admits that! They are seeing more online traffic but they have little idea how to make that work commercially. People love their news on paper but how does one turn that into income?

In 1999, the Internetters were operating on a fantasy: "If you build it, they will come." They thought that attracting "eyeballs" would somehow result in massive revenue. An audience of millions has to be worth something. But an audience of people who are seeking free stuff is notoriously fickle. When the 'net squad and their venture capitalists scrambled to "monetize" their eyeballs, to use the stomach-truning hip-speak of the Internet boom years, it was only a matter of time before it all came crashing apart.

Well, here's the kicker: With Google's AdSense, that Internet fantasy became real.

Today, I can build almost anything, appealing to any splinter, enthusiast audience, and use Google's ad products to create a cash stream. Anyone want to see my left-handed singing chihuahua website? (OK, almost anything.)

Google has four product lines. Five, in a way.

One is the search engine. That's the engine that drives the rest.

Second is AdWords -- the ads that appear on the search engine results page.

Those are the products everyone knows.

The third is AdSense -- ads they syndicate by placing them on content pages anywhere. Google makes the ads match the page where they appear -- targeted ads, the most profitable kind. And generally, placed close to time of purchase. The cherriest cherry in the ad world.

The fourth is Google-built content. That's why they want to digitize libraries, map the planet, fund your e-mail and discussion groups and usenet. All that content is bait for AdSense.

A fifth product is their internal brilliance -- the environment that fuels one of the highest-output creativity machines in the history of the planet. (This is the product line that scares me. I wonder if they can control it. Will they be able to say no to their engineers when they give each of them 20% of the week to develop anything they please?)

Google gets it. A tiny, tiny percentage of the world gets Google.

Finding Recipes Online

A buddy who knows I am a foodie asked me for good online sources of recipes and cooking information. The following appeared in the newspaper the next day. The article tells how to use Google to find recipes and also lists some great recipe sites at the end.

That was handy.

Tips to shortcut your online search

To weed out the more ghastly recipes, Google cooks can employ any number of shortcuts.

• Be specific in your search: ``Pasta and tomatoes,'' for example, will yield hundreds of options.
• Avoid listing every ingredient in your cart: Inputting too many will produce sites with pages of ideas but nary one recipe that includes all of the ingredients.
• Always type in ``recipes,'' and if you have a preference for the way you want the dish to be cooked, throw in cooking terms such as ``grilled.''
• Eliminate foods or cooking styles you want to exclude by using the minus sign: for example, ``celery potatoes -mayonnaise.''
• Try singular and plural forms of words, such as ``chicken mushroom artichoke''/``chicken mushrooms artichokes.''

To further simplify your search, go straight to one of the leading recipe sites whose recipes have been tested. Here are just a few: epicurious.com, allrecipes.com, cookinglight.com, williams-sonoma.com, recipezaar.com, foodtv.com.

-- Washington Post

And don't forget the brilliant food pages at

feedme.typepad.com

I'll add another tip: Sometimes Google does a better job then a site's own search engine. I have found this to be especially true for FoodTV's site. To use Google to search a specific site, add the "site:" parameter to the search. Example:

  artichokes alton site:foodtv.com

will find artichoke recipes from Alton Brown on their site. Searching for recipes from a specific author on FoodTV's own site search does not usually work.

Pandora's Music Box

A friend, Mike Weston, directed me to Pandora (www.pandora.com). He said:

"You give them an artist or even just a single song, and they create a station based on that. As things play you can tell them which ones you you like and which you dislike, and they adjust accordingly. Apparently they have been creating this "music genome" for several years, having trained musicians listen to each song and categorize it with hundreds of attributes."

I was intrigued. Websites that match your tastes to music lists are not new (first one I saw was in 1995). The early ones use "collaborative filtering" which matches your tastes to other peoples' and guesses that you will like what they did. It works pretty well but stumbles, especially when you have varied tastes. This one is a lot more sophisticated and engaging. Way cooler than I expected.

Right off the bat, I tossed it a hard one -- "Beatles." It's hard because it tells them nothing much about my tastes. Early, mid, or late Beatles and which of their many styles? Do I like it because it's pop, because of the instrumentation, or a billion other reasons?

It played "Twist and Shout" and then something I never heard of (Sandy Salisbury, "Here Comes that Feeling") which was recognizably similar in musical structure, but bland and uninteresting to me. I gave it a thumbs-down. Then they tossed me an Elton John cut I had never heard ("Who Wears These Shoes") which I liked.

Then "Ticket to Ride" and Fleetwood Mac's "Monday Morning" and Badfinger's "Baby Blue." I like all of these but my station was locked into a narrow groove . So I added some new artists using the items I have rated most highly in my own iTunes collection. I deliberately chose a range (Al DiMeola, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Sarah McLachlan, U2).

It kept coming up with songs I liked, including many that were new to me. The styles varied.

I threw it some slightly whackier choices like Gorillaz, Zero 7, and Shania Twain.

It continues to play a pleasant mix of known and unknown cuts and artists. What I find impressive is how it combines dissimilar music profiles. And I really like how it has found stuff I'd never heard of.

After that second cut, it never gave me anything I did not like!

You can set up "stations" to accommodate different moods and tastes. I could make myself some narrow programs -- jazz, female vocal, aged hippie dinosaur rock -- in addition to the variety mix my first station embodies. I'll experiment some more and see if it continues to work as a benevolent robo-DJ.

Interesting to click on the song and ask "why did you play this song?" They will tell you the common aspects -- e.g. " Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, extensive vamping, electric rhythm guitars, and a dynamic female vocalist." The text varies with each song, reporting what in this track resembled the overall profile. Another one from my station, for instance, said that the track "features jazz fusion elements, electric bass playing, unusual rhythms..." Isn't it interesting how it recognized two different styles that I like?

The user interface is very nicely engineered. It doesn't demand you register, instead seducing you to by offering something of value. Pandora is free if you are willing to see ads, $3-4 a month for ad-free.

(Speaking as an Internet marketer, I found the idea engaging in other ways. They have the opportunity to do highly targeted advertising. For instance, you can buy music, and they can aim ads at you based on what you like.)

Humans Get New Role as Computer-Helpers

Sometimes we technologists get all caught up in pride over our brilliant technology and I like to remember that the dumbest person we know is smarter than the fastest, coolest computer we have ever seen. All our transistors still can't drive a bicycle over a curb or pick a face from the crowd.

Check out Amazon's fascinating new "Mechanical Turk," a web application that lets developers pass human tasks to humans. People can visit the site and choose tasks, such as picking which photo, taken near Sam's Photo in downtown Portland, is actually a picture of Sam's Photo in downtown Portland. Participants are paid for the tasks they execute.

We're used to having people ask computers to do things (like maybe, "pleeese don't crash"). These are tasks a web application somewhere is asking us to do. By completing these tasks, we are giving the web application the benefit of our human knowledge. Amazon calls it "Artificial Artificial Intelligence."

On the technology side, "developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call - the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work."

It's named for a mechanical chess-playing "robot" which amazed Europeans in 1769 by playing chess. The Mechanical Turk, of course, had a very human chess master concealed inside behind panels full of gears.

More information -- from the developer's view, and for humans who want to serve the noble machines.

command.com

For reasons I can't account, I was trying various domain names and tried command.com. I wonder who posted this and why?

In terms of the HTML, may be one of the smallest pages on the web.

And not very well discovered. Google knows about it but there are only a handful of sites that link to it.

Geek Peek from the Past, continued

I had a few friends who replied regarding this article. Thought I would add their two cents here.

> Linda: This is great...ah, the simpler times. I particularly like the ad just below
> yours: Help to care for Fancy Show Poultry. Must like chickens.
>
> I also love the 3 bedroom ranch house (with paneled walls!!!!) for $125/mo.

I loved the "must like chickens" line. There were a lot of chicken farms in the area -- and my Dad had one of them. My brothers and I got to collect eggs after school each day and tend to other chicken-generated organic products.

By the way, that phrase, "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is true. Not so much running, really, but moving around in all directions -- ok, guess that is more than you city slickers wanted to know.

Two friends asked about the church notices. "I guess all the listings about Temple activities are on another page, huh?" said one. Especially noteworthy since they know I'm Jewish. Well, in Neversink and Grahamsville, there were maybe three Jewish families. No black families and very few of any other non-European ethnicity.

This took one friend by surprise, given that this is the Catskills, which he thought had a zillion Jews. Which is true -- but only in the summer, when a third of the population of New York City came up to either vacation in the Catskills or to work in the resorts. There were regular Jewish residents but most were in the towns -- Liberty, Monticello, Middletown. Towns without sidewalks and street lights were pretty WASPy.

Geek Peek from the Past

This is interesting on several levels. To me, at least.

In 1968, I was almost 16 and already a major nerd.

I think it was my mother's idea that I place a classified ad in the local newspaper. Now, you need to understand what "local" and "newspaper" mean in this case. "Local" was a small, rural community in Sullivan County in upstate New York. We had under 1000 kids in the local school -- and that's K-12. The "newspaper" was weekly, 8 pages, and mimeographed (if you even remember what that was -- it was before photocopiers, let alone inkjet).

The ad asked people to donate their dead electronics (think vacuum tubes, folks) gear (meaning TVs and radios, pretty much).

The interesting thing is that in this tiny farm community, people responded and I soon had 25 or 30 television sets. A couple of them still worked. I got one or two more to work and the rest became parts.

What I find interesting is this. First, the blast from the past and this little glimpse into small town, 1968. Second, the memory of how people responded to an opportunity to help some geeky kid. And third is a sales and marketing lesson, that it works to ask for what you want in an unusual way that captures people's interest. 

The fourth point was how this clipping came to me: The miracle of the Internet. On this, the downside of the Internet "bubble," maybe a lot of us forget that the Internet was and is a transformation in how people reach people. In this case, a guy named Keith Carlsen, a classmate of my baby brother's, began finding and contacting people from the area. He found me via the Internet and has been sending me scanned material from class yearbooks and such. He e-mailed me this clipping.

Sometimes, when we siliconheads get caught up in the technology, it is good to remember that in its shining moments, technology is about people.

This is the full back page of the August 14, 1968 Townsman.