Archive for the ‘could_do_better’ Category
Shortly before digging into the copy of Cognitive Surplus I bought on Google ebooks the other day I read this piece comparing the relative merits of Google, Amazon and Apple’s offerings. One of the areas of the store/reading experience it didn’t touch on was gifting. Since getting my Kindle I don’t really want any more […]
Filed under: could_do_better, technology, wibble | Leave a Comment
Tags: amazon, apple, content, DRM, ebook, geography, gift card, gifting, google, Google checkout, iBook, payments, publishing
Region locks – My 2¢
Since I started using Amazon EC2 as a web proxy I’ve found that I’m exploiting it pretty regularly. Every time that I see one of those ‘you can’t access that content from your country’ type messages I have a choice. I can give up and move on, or I can fork out 2¢ to spin up […]
Filed under: could_do_better, media, technology | 2 Comments
Tags: amazon, aws, ec2, lock, micro payments, micropayments, payments, proxy, region, region lock, SSH, tunnel, video
email like it’s 1995
The old joke There used to be a joke that people who didn’t ‘get it’ would send an email and then call the recipient up to check if it had been received. Now the joke’s on us Now, I am that joke. I think we all are. Email has reached a point where it’s just […]
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble, howto, software | 7 Comments
Tags: bacn, batch, blackberry, business edition, DNS, email, fail, false positive, GABE, GAPE, gapps, google, Google Apps, IP Lock, Postini, premier edition, quarantine, spam, SPF, support
My Kindle died two days ago :( Thankfully Amazon were pretty prompt in dealing with this. I called their Kindle helpline[1], a new one was sent out, and it arrived this morning :) It didn’t take long for me to restore all of my content, and things like bookmarks seem to be intact :) Unfortunately […]
Filed under: could_do_better, did_do_better, grumble, technology | 4 Comments
Tags: amazon, backup, collections, ebook, export, import, kindle, restore
Is zero weight a feature?
As I’ve spent more time with my Kindle I’ve been paying more attention to eBook prices. My conclusion is that zero weight (or perhaps just the novelty of eBooks) is a feature, and one that the supply chain thinks is worth a premium. Pricing Typical pricing for eBooks seems to be the same (or just […]
Filed under: could_do_better, technology | 4 Comments
Tags: amazon, DRM, ebook, grey market, international, kindle, pricing, second hand, used
Identity Providers – the rest
This is my fourth and final post in a series looking at how federated identity has broken into the mainstream (I previously looked at Twitter, Google and Facebook). MyOpenID (JanRain) When I first needed an OpenID identity provider (IDP) this was the service that I was pointed to (thanks @psd). From a security perspective there’s […]
Filed under: blogging, could_do_better, identity | Leave a Comment
Tags: about.me, cardspace, federation, Flickr, google, Gravatar, identity, identity management, idm, information card, JanRain, Live, login, Microsoft, MyOpenID, OpenID, WordPress, WordPress.com, Yahoo!
When I registered thestateofme.com some years back it was for a project to allow synchronisation of RSS aggregator/reader state across a number of systems. I never wrote any code because things got overtaken by events. Firstly I discovered RSS Bandit, which had a mechanism to sync state via a WebDAV server (and a number of […]
Filed under: cloud, could_do_better, media, technology | 7 Comments
Tags: audiobook, bookmark, cloud, ebook, media, player, reader, state, sync, synchronisation, video
3D (in)Secure
It’s not news that the 3D Secure system that gets branded as ‘Verified by Visa’ is a steaming pile of something that should be scraped off shoes rather than presented on screens. Ben Laurie was the first serious voice of dissent (that I noticed), but then along came Ross Anderson and Steven Murdoch to ensure […]
Filed under: could_do_better, security | 2 Comments
Tags: 3D Secure, additional cardholder, cardholder not present, CNP, credit, credit card, joint account, liability, payments, phishing, security, Verified by Visa
SaaS tax trouble
In the last few weeks I’ve had snags with both Skype and Google over billing. I could take this personally – thinking that my bad teclo karma (which must run in the family) is now turning into bad SaaS karma? I suspect though that the problems are much more widespread. Skype I’ve had a Skype […]
Filed under: cloud, could_do_better | Leave a Comment
Tags: billing, cloud, gapps, google, saas, skype, tax, VAT
Broadband Britain – really?
I’ve just spent the last few weeks trying to suck the cloud through a very thin and broken straw – my mistake, trying to use the Internet in the City of London. The proposed telephone tax that came out of the Digital Britain report (and failed to find its way through parliament in the finance […]
Filed under: could_do_better, technology | 2 Comments
Tags: adsl, broadband, efm, fiber, fibre, sdsl, voip, xdsl
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