I was very pleased to see Google’s announcement yesterday about Email authentication using DKIM now available to all Google Apps domains[1,2]. DKIM is an important weapon in the war on spam, and may well be crucial to stopping email from slipping into irrelevance. Of course this may just make the spammers go after our Google Apps credentials, but we have two factor authentication (at least for GAPE/GABE) as a means to fight back.
Sadly there’s a fly in the ointment, and once again it’s with Postini:
At this point I’m pretty much ready to give up on Postini. It’s anti spam features don’t seem to me to be that much better than native Gmail/GApps. It’s confusing for my users to get a daily quarantine message from Postini and stuff in their spam folders on GApps (usually it’s bacn in both – I see very little real spam in either). The only thing that we use it for that adds any value is adding a compliance footer, but now that stops us from having DKIM.
Of course one might expect a high end product like Postini to have DKIM support in its own right. Sadly this is where Postini is too ‘enterprisey'[3].
So… compliance footers with a link to some legal boilerplate that nobody bothers to read[4], or DKIM so that our email stands a better chance of actually reaching its intended recipient? Not such a hard choice really – seems like I have some GApps domain admin work to do.
PS Google – it would be great if you could make the labs feature ‘Authentication icon for verified senders’ work for all DKIM authenticated email and not just PayPal and eBay.
[1] DKIM has been available in regular Gmail for some time.
[2] Though I’m disappointed to see that it’s not yet available for thestateofme.com (whilst I have been able to set it up for some other domains where I use Google Apps).
update 8 Jan – it turned out that I needed to turn on ‘Next Generation’ for the Control Panel in Domain Settings – General for the DKIM options to show up.
[3] Don Box – So Long, 2006 ‘The blogosphere embraced the term “enterprisey” to describe the lack of quality that previously had no name’.
[4] I know from the web logs.
Filed under: could_do_better, technology | 5 Comments
Tags: DKIM, GABE, GAPE, gapps, google, Google Apps, Postini, spam
Bubble 2.0
I had the misfortune of missing most of the first Internet bubble. Although I’d got into the Internet before there was a World Wide Web I’d signed my life away to the Royal Navy (in exchange for a great education and generous financial package). Thus I got to spend the two years it took between resigning from the Navy and escaping to the outside watching everybody else do lots of cool things (and in some cases getting rich whilst doing those cool things).
I caught the tail end of the whole thing by joining a .com consultancy firm in early 2000. I remember now clearly the moment that I realised that the Internet had become an investment bubble rather than an economic miracle. It was in the wake of the AOL Time Warner merger, and I was in the pub next door to the office discussing with my colleagues the merits of ‘clicks and mortar’ versus ‘bricks and mortar’. I’d known the web since its birth, and none of this made any sense to me.
I had a similar epiphany the other day when it was reported that Goldman Sachs is investing $450m at a $50Bn valuation. Madness.
Dion Hinchcliffe sums things up perfectly:
There are clearly two things wrong with this picture:
- User based valuations are relics of the web1.0 bubble, and were contrived for situations when companies weren’t actually making any money by any normal measures[1].
- How can the average Facebook user possibly have a net present value of $100 to the company?
To be fair it wasn’t really an epiphany. I’ve been short on Facebook and its ecosystem (particularly Zynga[2]) for some time now.
To be fair on Goldman Sachs I don’t think they’re idiots – far from it – though I do think it’s likely that they’ll flip their investment (sooner, whilst the company is still private, or later, after the long awaited IPO[3]).
The main point here is that I use these services. I know people who use these services. I even spend money on these services – just not enough to get into the same order of magnitude as $100.
The other key thing is that I like Facebook less now than I did before. For a while it felt like the school playground – a few rough edges, but fun. Now it feels like a shopping mall – all shiny, superficial and nothing that really captures my interest. Of course my friends are still there, and I can chat to them, but we could do that on Twitter or Gmail or Skype.
‘But what about advertising?’ I hear you cry. Facebook makes its money from advertising just like Google. Google is an (almost) $200Bn company, with revenues of around $28Bn. Facebook has even surpassed Google for page impressions, which is where we find the heart of the problem – Facebook is working a lot harder than Google to make a lot less money. That doesn’t make it worthless, just worth less – somewhere around $14Bn if we think Google is a reliable comparison.
The other thing to worry about is growth. Google is going through that painful transition from being a growth company to a cash cow. From a corporate structure perspective I think life will be easier at Facebook, but for the balance sheet things are less rosy. When you already have most of the world population that could use your service already using your service then that’s not a growth story. Of course the internet will continue to expand its reach, but those new users will be $1 users not $100 users.
So when will the bubble burst? I’d give it 2-3 years if the company stays private, less if an IPO happens in the next year – there’s nothing like having Wall St analysts picking over something to bring on a sudden dose of reality. Do I think an IPO would be a disaster – only for those buying the shares.
[1] Facebook is making real money- revenue of approximately $2 billion, with roughly $400 million in profit. That means it has real value. The problem is simply a disconnect between present cash flows and views on future cash flows.
[2] Who haven’t had a hit since Farmville, and where the miracle of ‘social gaming’ seems to have turned to an advertising symbiosis (deadly embrace?).
[3] One way that many of Facebook’s users could be worth substantially more than $100 each is if they can be persuaded to buy stock ;-)
Filed under: technology, wibble | 14 Comments
Tags: bubble, Facebook, google, investment, IPO, social networking, valuation, Zynga
Salt – I want my DVD player back
Seems like Sony are at it again with crazy DRM ruining their customer experience.
Here’s what happens when I put Salt into my Kiss DP-600 DVD player:
Disc spins up
Starts to play
Player crashes and switches off
When I switch the player back on:
Disc spins up
Starts to play
Player crashes and switches off
Rinse and repeat.
It took me about 15m to get the player to eject the disc by having perfect timing on pressing the eject button. During that time I did wonder if it would be easier to take it apart and physically remove the disc that way.
Luckily I have another DVD player that doesn’t switch itself off when trying to play this disc.
Filed under: grumble | 8 Comments
Tags: crash, DRM, DVD, fail, player, Salt, Sony
A week ago I ordered a Push N Go Thomas for my nephew from T J Hughes (Amazon only had the Percy version).
The site showed that they had it in stock (unlike some of the other sellers that I’d found on Google Shopping), and I was even willing to bear the somewhat steep P&P to get it in time for Christmas.
I went through the usual check out process, and received an email with an order number. Had I been more paying attention then this might have bothered me:
What happens next?
The details of your order will now be processed and a further email confirming acceptance of your order will be sent to you, usually within 3 working days.
Yesterday – 6 days after placing that order I get another email:
We regret to inform you that we are temporarily out of stock of your requested item
As we are currently unable to confirm when we are likely to receive a further replenishment of this item(s), we are therefore sadly unable to accept your order at this time.
How can it possibly take an entire working week to figure out that you don’t have something?
If T J Hughes had a functioning stock control system and web site then I’d have never bothered.
Thanks for nothing guys – a total waste of time.
I’m also not impressed with Google here. They’re showing 4 stars based on 44 seller ratings. I took the trouble to put all of the ratings into a spreadsheet and work out my own average, which turned out to be exactly 3. So what’s juicing the ranking up to 4?
Update 22 Dec – I just had a call from the customer services manager at TJ Hughes. He told me that they have managed to find a Push N Go Thomas, and that he’s getting it sent out to me. Given the state of the postal system after all the snow we’ve had neither of us expects delivery before Christmas, but still it’s a nice gesture.
Update 17 Jan – the Push N Go Thomas that was supposed to be sent to me before Christmas never arrived. After waiting for the mail to return to normal following Christmas and all the snow it became clear that there was a problem, so I contacted TJ Hughes again. Another package was sent out last week, and it was just delivered. Since I was never after a freebie I’ve donated £18.50 to Help for Heroes (which when tax is taken into account is roughly what I was expecting to pay for the toy when I ordered it).
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble | 1 Comment
Tags: cancelled, customer service, Froogle, google, online, order, product search, ranking, shopping, T J Hughes
I moved into my house over 8 years ago. The day after that move I bought a Brabantia kitchen bin – a nice big shiny stainless steel one. As I got to know more of the neighbours it soon became something of a running joke that everybody had bought the same bin.
Some years later the hinge on the lid broke. I called up customer services and they sent me a new one (of an obviously better design).
Over time that lid also broke. The catch wouldn’t work reliably, and the plastic by where it fits around the handles got cracked (by people not putting the lid back properly). Eventually I could tolerate it no more, and I looked into getting a new lid (or maybe even an entire new bin).
As luck would have it Brabantia sell their products with a 10 year guarantee. I ordered a new lid online.
Somewhat annoyingly I received an email the next day asking me to send the old lid back, but it came with detailed packing and (free)post instructions – so no major drama. I went about fashioning a temporary lid out of some cardboard that was otherwise on its way to recycling.
A little over a week later I got another email saying that the new lid was on the way. It took some extra days to arrive because of heavy snow, but my bin now looks good as new (and the lid works better than ever).
Brabantia’s product may not be the cheapest, but their stuff is well made, and when that’s backed up by a great guarantee it makes for a happy customer.
Filed under: did_do_better | 1 Comment
Tags: Brabantia, customer service, guarantee, Touch bin
I live in the UK, and I feel like I’ve been waiting for Google Voice for way too long. I also travel frequently to the US, so I could get some use out of the service as it stands and it’s been frustrating that I couldn’t sign up.
Disclaimers
Google only offers it’s Voice service within the US, and using it elsewhere probably constitutes a violation of their terms of service.[1]
When Google does get around to launching services outside of the US it’s likely that you won’t be able to use them (with a given account) if you’re already using a US number.
Signing up
You will need:
- A proxy in the US
- A US telephone number that you’re able to answer
Like so many geographically limited services Google Voice uses IP geolocation to determine whether you’re allowed to play or not. When I browsed to voice.google.com from the UK I’d see the message shown above. Using EC2 as a proxy to give me a US IP got around that problem, and I was able to start the sign up process.
To complete the sign up you need to register at least one US phone number, and verify it by entering a code. To get a (free) US number I used IPkall. Luckily I already had a VOIP/SIP service that I could point IPkall at. Initially I had some trouble – the number IPkall gave me had already been used by multiple Google Voice subscribers, but after cancelling that number I got another that did work.
There are probably other ways to do this now. Skype has just refined their SkypeToGo service so that it can connect directly to a remote extension via the Skype network (rather than using an IVR menu as before), which means it’s possible to avoid SIP and VOIP entirely and just virtually wire up existing telephones [2].
Refinements
Once I had the basic service working I spent some time integrating Google Voice with my SIP Sorcery account. There’s a great guide for this. Along the way I also got myself a SIPgate number in the US. This involved some more proxy based hoop jumping (and a friend with a US mobile), but gives me confidence that I have a backup to IPkall if it becomes flaky.
I also configured SIP Sorcery so that incoming calls from Google Voice would be routed to my mobile and desk phones (by making use of Ribbit).
Next steps
I still need to get my US mobile registered, and since my PAYG T-Mobile doesn’t offer international roaming I’m going to have to wait until my next trip to get that sorted.
Numbers
After going through this process I now have a ridiculous quantity of telephone numbers – 11 in total. The good news is that I only need to give two out to people that want to contact me – my UK number (which is attached to Skype, and normally forwards into my Ribbit UK service) and my Google Voice US number (which through SIP Sorcery meshes into my existing handsets, desk phones and services).
Conclusion
Whilst I hope that Google Voice will soon launch in the UK and other countries there’s definitely some use that can be had out of it now for people that do business in the US and/or travel there frequently. It would be brilliant if Google Voice could replace the rats nest of Skype, SIP sorcery, IPkall, SIPgate and Ribbit that I’m presently using and let me have the entry points (numbers) that I need flexibly routed to the end points (handsets) that I have, but I won’t hold my breath on that – especially where multiple countries and billing/regulatory structures are involved.
Notes
[1] Though I should point out here that people who sign up for the service in the US aren’t prevented from using it when they travel, so to that extent the service is as global as the Internet it runs on.
[2] To use this method you just need to enter your Google Voice number as a registered phone. It’s also necessary to set Caller ID (incoming) to ‘Display my Google Voice number’ otherwise Skype won’t be able to authenticate the call origin.
Filed under: howto, technology | 1 Comment
Tags: google, google voice, IPkall, sip, SIP sorcery, SIPgate, skype, SkypeIn, SkypeToGo, UK, US, Voice, voip
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 dead tree books, so I converted all of my Amazon wish list items over to Kindle format where available (as there wasn’t any proper DRM free option). Sadly gifting isn’t yet available on Amazon.co.uk, so I see this:
Notice how the ‘why not’ explanation doesn’t really provide any further information?
I’m hopeful that it will be fixed soon (though looks like not in time for Christmas), as gifting is now available in the US:
Whilst I would expect that Google will quickly catch up with this, I have my doubts. It seems that publishers are still trying to maintain a geographic sales model that doesn’t shape up well on a global internet[1]. One of the hurdles being put in the way of buyers is the need to pay from the same geography as the sale. That hurdle works fine when somebody is buying for themselves, but gets smashed when you allow people to buy stuff for each other (even indirectly through gift cards or similar).
Google has been very slow in this area. Google Voice is still stuck in the US, a situation that’s sure to be in part due to tax and payments issues. There’s also no gift card mechanism for Google Checkout (besides the fact that they accept gift cards from the payments card companies). Perhaps until now the gift of Google wasn’t that alluring – who would want a Google Apps subscription for their birthday? The Android marketplace, Chrome marketplace and Google Books surely change that though. The trouble for Google will be how do they keep upstream relationships with the ‘content’ industry in good shape whilst providing what customers want?
[1] Charles Stross has already done an excellent job of explaining Territories, Translations, and Foreign Rights in his Common Misconceptions About Publishing series, so I don’t have to.
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
One of the big tech news items today is the launch of the much anticipated Google eBooks. Sadly the service is only available in the US at the moment, so I thought I’d have a poke around and see what the hurdles were.
US Browsing
Browsing from my regular connection at home I could only see the free (out of copyright in the US) books that have been available for some time, along with a message that ‘The latest Google eBooks are not available for sale in your location, yet…Google is working with publishers around the world to let you buy the latest ebooks from top authors. In the meantime, you can still browse millions of free and public domain Google eBooks and read them effortlessly across your devices‘. Of course I’ve heard this song before (or one much like it) with Amazon. After firing up a US based proxy I was able to browse the new store. I put a copy of Clay Shirky’s ‘Cognitive Surplus’ into my basket (after reading JP’s review of it the other day, and being disappointed that I couldn’t get it as an ebook[1]).
Payments
The next hurdle was paying. I got a message that the seller (in this case Penguin) didn’t accept cards from my country. I briefly checked out various virtual credit card and prepay card options, but nothing seemed easy or attractive. The workaround I came up with was using an additional card that’s already on my Amex account, along with a US address (Google Checkout already had the details for my main Amex – and that was the card that it wouldn’t accept). I suspect that this may not work for Visa or Mastercard as they issue additional cards with the same number.
Downloading
I could now read my book online (even using a browser with no proxy), but I wanted it on my Kindle. The first step was to download the book. It seems that Google are using Adobe’s DRM (and supported device ecosystem), so I needed to follow the instructions for those devices[2]. After a few hiccups (which I initially thought were down to having my laptop ‘authorized’ to my work email address, but that no look as if they were just flaky DRM server issues) I had a DRMed ePub file in ‘My Documents\My Digital Editions’.
Removing DRM
I used the Python scripts from this guide to strip the DRM off my ePub file – a pretty painless process.
Converting ePub to mobi
The final step was to convert my ePub file to mobi format so that my Kindle could read it. For this I used Calibre, which looks like an excellent tool with lots of features I’ve not had the time to explore yet.
That’s it :)
I now have my $12.99 copy of ‘Cognitive Surplus’ on my Kindle despite Amazon, Google and Penguin trying to stop me (though Google and Penguin got my money this time, and Amazon only got 2¢).
Notes
[1] Update 8 Dec – It seems that in the last few days a UK Kindle Edition has become available. We can now look at the price arbitrage of £12.99 versus $12.99 (£8.54 [or £10.03 if VAT had been added]).
[2] I had to install Adobe Digital Editions for this part. I already had it on my laptop, but that initially refused to do the right thing with the .acsm file. Installing on my desktop failed in both Chrome (with Flash enabled) and Firefox (where I don’t run a Flash blocker). Thankfully Adobe do have a regular download link.
Filed under: howto, technology | 4 Comments
Tags: Adobe, amazon, Amex, Calibre, convert, Digital Editions, DRM, ebook, epub, google, Google books, kindle, mobi, payments, proxy, UK, US
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 a machine, and get access. 2¢ isn’t a lot of money, so more often than not I pay.
Video
I pay to see video content. Of course my 2¢ goes to Amazon, and not the people who made the video (and don’t want me to watch it outside the US).
File lockers
I pay to get stuff from file lockers (when I’ve already exceeded my quota from my home IP). Of course my 2¢ goes to Amazon, and not the people running the file locker (and is a whole lot less than one of their subscription plans). Oddly it seems that downloading from some of the services is faster down an SSH tunnel from Amazon in the US than it is over my regular broadband connection (WTF?).
Amazon 2 : Other services 0
So – living proof that micro-payments work for stuff on the web. What a shame that the payments are going to the wrong place. If only those other service providers had a smart new business model like Amazon’s maybe they’d get my 2¢.
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
A tale of two clouds
Over the past few weeks I’ve been kicking the tyres on two new(ish) entrants to the IaaS space. Both services are still in beta.
Savvis Virtual Private Datacenter
I first came across this back in June at the Cloud Computing World Forum, and I signed up straight away for a trial. Sadly there was some kind of issue with the first token that they sent out, and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that this got fixed.
To be fair to Savvis it’s worth pointing out that VPDC isn’t meant to compete head on with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) etc. It’s clearly a bridge product between dedicated hosting and public cloud for those who still have concerns around security and privacy. From a contractual and delivery perspective this makes the whole thing less ‘on demand’ than I’ve become accustomed to.
The main point of contact for the user of VPDC is a Flash application that’s used to design and deploy hardware architectures. I’m a Flash hater, so this was a bad start for me, but as Flash apps go it wasn’t too grim. The experience was somewhat reminiscent of early Sun N1 demos – drag and drop machines, click to configure, wire them together.
There are a few things regarding the firewall config that I could whine about, but at least it has one.
It was when I first hit the deploy button that disappointment really set in. AWS has made me expect (near) instant gratification, and VPDC doesn’t do that. I didn’t time the first deployment (of a single machine ‘essential’ configuration), but I had plenty of time to get on with other things. I did time the second deployment (of a three tier, three machine ‘balanced’ config) and it took over an hour. I guess an hour shouldn’t matter so much when you’re buying by the month, but it just felt wrong.
The next disappointment was the sign in process. Something else that AWS has spoiled me with is key based SSH that just works. VPDC is a bit old school, and emails out machine/usernames and passwords. Quite annoyingly it doesn’t bother to put the FQDN or IP into those emails, so you have to go back to the Flash app to figure those out from machine properties. The emails also say that a password change will be forced, but that isn’t the case.
Once I got this far I had a bare machine running Linux (Windows is also on offer). There isn’t (yet) some menu of middleware and persistence tiers that you can browse. Once again I suppose that the build of such machines from scratch might be a small issue if you’re keeping them for a long time, but Savvis desperately need to offer some choices and automation in this area (and something like CohesiveFT’s ElasticServer would be a great place to start).
Overall the trial served it purpose of illustrating to me the capabilities (and limitations) of the platform. I don’t think I’ll be rushing back with my company chequebook in hand, but I think I get what’s going on here.
Brightbox
I saw some cynical reactions on Twitter when Brightbox first announced their cloud platform as being a UK first (along with some mistaken impressions that AWS had UK based services), but I was intrigued, and signed up for the beta.
Brightbox have not taken the path of least resistance, and just thrown up something based on Eucalyptus (and the AWS APIs). This could be a problem in the long term as APIs settle down into standards, but in the short term it’s quite exciting to be able to try something new.
Brightbox’s background seems to be firmly rooted in the world of Ruby hosting, so it should be no surprise that their command line tools to access their API come as Ruby Gems. I ran into some trouble trying to get things going on my old Ubuntu 9.04 test VM, so I eventually caved and brought up a new 10.10 machine on which the CLI tools installation went without a hitch.
With the CLI in hand the getting started guide had me up and running in no time. It could be just a subjective opinion, but my sense is that the Ruby CLI runs faster than the Java based EC2 equivalents – it probably comes down to the startup times of the various language interpreters. The machine that I got felt much like an EBS backed small instance on EC2, though the storage usage pattern is quite different (no S3 here). I liked the snapshot facilities a lot (though it’s not a feature I’ve played with on AWS, so I can’t compare), though I did hit some trouble when I tried to use a snapshot that wasn’t completed. The exciting news on this front is that Hybrid Logic will be putting their beta within the Brightbox beta, offering fine grained snapshots to provide fault tollerance and scalability (check out the webcast demos to see how cool this is).
My one gripe about Brightbox at this stage is the lack of a firewall (besides IPtables on a machine). I feel like things are just a little too vulnerable if left out there on the Internet without something to filter out the lumps – it’s all too easy to configure extra services on a machine that increase the (unintended) vulnerability surface area. On the plus side they use public key authentication for SSH into machines.
Overall I must say that I liked my (so far) brief experience of Brightbox, and I look forward to seeing what pricing looks like and how the service develops.
Filed under: cloud | 1 Comment
Tags: API, aws, Brightbox, cloud, Hybrid Cluster, Hybrid Logic, iaas, Ruby, Savvis, snapshot, VPDC
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