TECH: “CARDSCAN” … a great tool … is acquired by Rubbermaid. What will change?!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Dear F,

Did you ever hear the expression, “The more things change, the more they stay the same?” Well, once again I am delighted to deliver great news about the exciting changes that are happening at CardScan – and to reassure you that CardScan will remain the company you’ve come to know and trust.

CardScan joins DYMO as part of Sanford Brands, the office products division of Newell Rubbermaid.
After 13 years as an independently owned company, CardScan has been acquired by Newell Rubbermaid, a giant in the field of consumer products and owner of some of the best known brands in the world. As the newest member of its Office Products division, Sanford Brands, CardScan becomes a part of DYMO and joins such famous brands as Sharpie, Waterman, Papermate and Expo.

Greater opportunity for us to deliver even greater products and services for you.
While we are proud of what we’ve accomplished as an independent company, we believe that becoming part of Newell Rubbermaid will give us the best of all possible worlds – the continued freedom to develop better products for our customers and the much larger resources to bring those products to market more quickly and support them more thoroughly. As always, innovation will continue to drive us to break new ground in contact management as we continue to provide our usual high standards of technical support and service.

Thank you for your past and continuing support.
I hope you join us in celebrating our exciting news and that you will continue to turn to CardScan for superior contact management products. As a thank you and a welcome to the Sanford Brands family, we invite you to a special offer from DYMO to CardScan customers. And, as always, if you have comments or suggestions about CardScan, feel free to contact me directly at pweyman@cardscan.com.

Sincerely,

Peter Weyman
President
CardScan, Inc.

Please don’t reply to this email. The mailbox is not attended. To reach me, please send an email to pweyman@cardscan.com.

CardScan, Inc. 25 First Street Suite 107 Cambridge, MA 02141

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Changing the model. Change the tech. Change our thinking!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Journalist Dilemma

July 23, 2006
The Journalist Dilemma
***Begin Quote***

I definitely agree with the absurdity of having thousands of journalists all covering one single-dateline story, whether it’s a convention or a Michael Jackson trial. But I wonder, too, how this obsession with new approaches to media — citizen journalism, community interaction, local coverage vs non-local — is going to look a few years down the track. For sure, there’s a lot to be said for breaking down the barriers between newspaper and community between professional and amateur reporter/photographer/editor. But this movement will also have some heavy long term effects that aren’t really discussed in this blogocratic world.

***End Quote***

I find little that is truly “local”. I find a lot of tech that is all over the field. I find little that changes my thinking. That’s the most valuable. In the DIKW scale, I get a ton of D and very little W. But I guess that is to be expected.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Microsoft Outlook has morphed once again into LookOut!

Monday, July 24, 2006

After a recent mandatory Outlook update for “security”, I see two things have happened:

(1) Links are turned off in all email messages. Who agreed to that?

(2) The junk mail filter is capturing good emails. Even people who are in the Address Books. What’s that about?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: ZIGGS is a social networking site that was seeded with all public pages

Saturday, July 22, 2006

http://www.ziggs.com

It’s interesting that the site started by taking every public page that cited people and using that to see its social networking site. Now you can go an put your own page there. Interest for turkeys, seekers, and egotists who can brag about themselves. Not sure what the business model is?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Vampiring a website database

Thursday, July 20, 2006

For many reasons, I often want to vampire an online site. I first tumbled to the concept when a certain online resource that I was using for my alumni research activities went offline for good. I was kicking my self for not having a copy. So I developed the technique of vampiring a website manually in a very organized fashion into a local copy. The problem occurs when you want to stay in sync sort of with it. That is can you come back to it a month later and find the adds and deletes. Changes are a much more complex problem. So here’s how I do it for the XYZZYX website.

(1) I use a spreadsheet to track the “database”. The first column is the web page sequence number and the second column is the entry number on the page. So the Fifth Sequential Page Seventh Item referred to Jones, I would represent it as “5”, “7”, “Jones”, and anything that was important to me.

(2) I’d open the Jones subpage and copy it to a text file (much smaller than HTML) saving it in a directory XYZZYX. If it’s going to be a LARGE number of entries, I may create 26 subdirectories A thru Z.

(3) I’d go thru the website db capturing data. When I revisit the database, since some most are too big to suck out at one sitting, I can then check key pages to see that the last entry on a page still lines up with my sequence number.

(4) If it lines up, I resume where I left off.

(5) If it doesn’t line up, I split the difference and check that page. In a 500 page database, I see I am out of sync when I try to resume at page 450. I’d go check page 275 and see if I was in sync there. When I find the discrepancy, I insert a new line in my spreadsheet for the new data and adjust columns 1 and 2.

Is this ugly, yup. Does it work? Sort of. It is posible to keep tabs on website data bases if you have an organized approach.

When you come back to look at it, you can spot check as above.

It is ESSENTIAL that you have an organized approach. It’s easy to become confused and frustrate yourself.

Questions?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “OUTLOOK” does a lookout again!

Thursday, July 20, 2006

(1) Apparently, LookOut (Microsoft’s Outlook’s evil alter ego) doesn’t honor the don’t send until flags. Argh!

(2) Apparently, Microsoft in its infinite wisdom has decided that now before I can click a link in an email, I have to say ‘mother may”. That’s is it turns off all links and it takes two clicks where one would do! Arghhhhhh!!!!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Understanding the value of RSS as opposed to email.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

http://www.llrx.com/features/rss.htm

The Future of RSS – Is E-Mail Publishing Dead?
RSS-based Information And News Feeds: Pros and Cons For Content Distribution Through RSS
By Robin Good
Published September 29, 2003

Robin Good (Luigi Canali De Rossi) is the Editor of Sharewood Tidings, the alternative and independent news source on the effective use of new media technologies for online communication and learning.  He is the author of several web guides, including Robin Good’s Mini-Guide, Become A NewsG-d.

***Begin Quote***

E-mail is a two-way communication medium while RSS is only a distribution one.

***End Quote***

To that, I would add that IM is email in real time.

This is still an excellent summary of the value of RSS. Or, distribution as opposed to communication.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Determing age for legal purposes to a legal certainty!

Monday, July 17, 2006

http://tinyurl.com/lmup3

Jul 17, 2:10 PM EDT
Online Age Verification May Prove Complex
By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer

***Begin Quote***

NEW YORK (AP) — At MySpace.com and many other popular online hangouts, a 30-something woman can celebrate her Sweet 16 over and over with just a click of the mouse. A 12-year-old can quickly mature to meet the sites’ minimum age requirements, generally 14, while an adult looking to chat with teens can virtually shed several years.
***End Quote***

It would seem that the ISPs know who to bill for the cost of an internet account. That consists of a primary and zero or more secondary ids. It would seem that if there was a secure protocol to establish and transfer that knowledge this could be a solved problem.

Let’s assume for a moment that the unit of identity is the email address. The email address is defined by user name and ISP name separated by an at sign. A web site could inquire of the ISP does this email represent an adult, a teen ager, or a child. The ISP would have to provision the status of the email address by a query to the primary id. Ideally when the primary permits the secondary account it could be characterized at that time. I’d envision: adult, tween (i.e. between 13 and 18), and child (i.e., under 13).

To prevent spammers from using the service, the service could make it a stylized communication. The web site could inquire of its hosting entity. The hosting entity could inquire of its ISP. The ISP could inquire of its peers. It’s not a high volume transaction requiring fast turnaround.

SO a spammer could NOT say verify live email addresses or derive live address by submitting every address in a name space.

I’d also envision some type of micropayment per inquiry. Let’s say the inquiry costs the website a penny for the hosting company, a penny for the first ISP, and a penny for the final ISP. ISPs would surely net. It’d all be electronic so it would just be to ensure fairness.

Then web sites could establish reliably legally the age of a user presenting an email. The ISPs could help protect their Customer’s secondary users.

This represents my opinion and not that of my employer. I don’t design protocols for living; I’m just a philosopher. I’ll defer to the experts for feasibility.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “COMMONGATE” a free social site exposes another users info!

Monday, July 17, 2006

After registering, going to the account page shows you someone else’s info. Doesn’t bother me because I use different stuff at different sites!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “GMAIL” … is unavailable!

Monday, July 17, 2006

On Mondat 2006-07-17 at 0445 edst! I guess Google Gmail has some warts despite what everyone thinks.

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Posted by reinkefj

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