Over Lawyering on the Web

Is it just me or have lawyers gone too far with all things online such as terms of service, license agreements, and disclaimers in e-mails? Of course, the only people that can answer this question are probably the very lawyers who come up with these requirements.

How important are a website's terms? I don't have to agree to any terms of service when I go to the local mall. But, if I pull out a camera and begin taking photos they can ask me to leave since it's private property (with public access - very similar to a website). Being a guest would seem to be a good analogy. I invite you into my house (or my place of business) and I can ask you to leave at anytime.

The disclaimers at the end of e-mail seem to be a bit over the top. Shouldn't I have to agree to the disclaimer? And, if I don't agree with it should I be bound to delete the e-mail? It simply seems unnecessary. If there is any legal precedence for these e-mail disclaimers, I'd love to know more.

East African Cell Phones

When I was living in Nairobi, Kenya, a few years ago, I was amazed at the state of their mobile phone networks. There I was, in one of the poorest countries in the world, and everyone had a cell phone. Not only that, but cell phone coverage was nearly ubiquitous and the features built into their networks impressed me - even on my bottom-of-the-line Nokia cell phone that I used in Kenya.

Since the Internet isn't very common there, their cell phones were the most sophisticated piece of technology which they used for communications. Texting was widespread.

There are four features that their cell phone networks had, which we still don't have here, in the US.

1. Business Cards

Have you ever needed to give someone a phone number that's in your phone's address book? Ten years ago, I could beam it to another person on my Palm Pilot. Today, I can't even do that with my iPhone - via Bluetooth or otherwise. In Kenya, there was a "B card" option on the phone's menu. Simply choose a person from your address book whose number that you wanted to share and then choose the recipient. Within a minute, the recipient receives a text message asking them to review the contact information and then choose to either accept or reject it.

2. Busy Signal Call Back

When calling a number that was busy I could tell the phone system to keep trying the number, then I'd hang up and wait for the phone to ring back once the number wasn't busy. This reminds me of a circa 1980s technology (Demon Dialer) that would dial a number, automatically, until the line was no longer busy. I'm sure phones have this feature, here in the U.S., but it's neither common nor basic.

3. Missed Calls

I could turn off my phone and when I turned it back on the system would tell me which calls I missed. Can't do that in the U.S. I only get to see missed calls if my phone was on when the call came through or if the caller left a voicemail.

4. Text Message Payments

This feature still blows me away. Kenyans, like most Africans, are unbanked. They live payday to payday (at least they don't have to worry about the sub-prime mess) and, for the most part, they don't use: banks, computers, e-mail, iPods, etc. The two key technologies they use are cell phones and faxes – and they Kenyans were fantastic at filing and retrieving paperwork; never losing a page.

While we rely on computers, printers, and the Internet; they have substituted the cell phone, fax, and the wireless carrier's network. In place of PayPal and charge cards, they simply used their cell phones.

I'll never forget the moment when my driver told me about Safaricom's Sambaza, which launched the month I arrived in Kenya, as a simple way to share cell phone minutes. I was truly amazed, thinking, "Why can they do that here and we can't do it back in the U.S.?"

Unlike cell phone contracts and subscriptions plans we use here in the U.S., the Kenyans primarily use a pre-paid payment plan. In order to add, say $10 worth of minutes (or, more accurately, 10 KSh [Kenyan Shillings]), you'd simply buy a scratch-off card with that face value, scratch off the number, and enter it into your cell phone. This works exactly like pre-paid cell phones in the U.S. No need to worry about subscription fees (but the minutes do expire, just like here, if not used within a certain time.)

The one thing you can't do here that you could do there is transfer your minutes to each other. This became an instant form of electronic currency. For example, people who grew up in a village would move to Nairobi to find a job. They'd take a portion of their paycheck, purchase a pre-paid card, and add minutes to their cell phone. Then, they'd text some of their minutes to their mother living hundreds of miles away, in a rural village - yes, mom has a pre-paid phone with network coverage in the boonies. Mom would go to the local market and text some of her minutes to the grocer at the market to pay for food. Very elegant electronic barter.

Sambaza soon evolved into M-PESA that transferred actual money which, obviously, is a much better feature if you're looking to pull cash out of the system at some point.

The only hitch with Safaricom's system is that the sender and receiver had to use the same wireless carrier (different carriers are incompatible in a way similar to a Visa credit card's incompatibility with American Express). In Kenya, which only has two wireless carriers (Safaricom and Celltel), this wasn't much of a problem. However, there are even better ways to make this system carrier agnostic just like PayPal doesn't care which bank, credit card, or Internet service provider you use. What's the hold up here in the U.S.? Simply put: the Patriot Act.

Electricity in the Early 20th Century

I love this photo - it was probably taken almost 100 years ago.

(click to enlarge)



In this photo, you can see the wiring from the Christmas tree running into the light socket hanging from the ceiling.

In the late 19th century, electricity was used almost exclusively for powering incandescent light bulbs. But that changed around the turn of the 20th century. The problem was that offices and homes were only wired for light bulbs. So the light bulb socket was used like we now use a wall socket.

Back then, electrical appliances didn't have on/off switches - you'd just screw it into the ceiling socket. Appliances like electric fans, beginning in 1890, and open top washing machines of 1908 could be fairly dangerous. You can't turn them off and you can't yank out the cord. There are some unpleasant stories of people getting their hair and clothing caught in washing machines.

Innovation and good engineering takes time, no matter how obvious it seems.

Source: Jeff Bezos at TED

Sensory Deprivation Tank

Today I floated, for the first time, in a sensory deprivation tank. For years I've been wanting to try one and I finally took the plunge.

The tank's about the size of a twin bed and it's filled with eight to ten inches of water heated to 93-94 degrees (skin temperature). About 800 pounds of epsom salt has been dissolved in the water so there's no problem floating.

The facility I went to was definitely up scale. Each person gets a private room with their own shower, a place to change, and, of course, the tank. Since it's private you get to float in your birthday suit (but you can wear ear plugs to keep the water out of them).

After rinsing off in the shower I entered the tank. Most people float with their head on the far end of the tank since it's slightly warmer there. The door to the tank is very light and you can keep it fully opened or close it - whichever makes you most comfortable. Just outside the tank is a spray bottle of fresh water in case you accidently get salt water in your eye.

Very soft music plays for about ten minutes which fades to silence. At this point I was in total, complete, darkness and quiet. Neither a photon of light nor decibel of sound could be seen or heard. I  knew when my time in the tank was up because the music started playing again and, just like the Academy Awards, that's my cue to exit.

So what happened inside the tank? Sorry to say that it wasn't anything like the 1980 movie Altered States; nor did I have visions like Lisa did on the "Make Room For Lisa" episode of The Simpsons (about 14:30 into the full episode).

But it was relaxing - very relaxing. I guess it's the closest you can get to being back in the womb as you float in solitude. There's nothing to distract you so you can focus (or not focus) on what ever you want. I could definitely get used to relaxing in one of these. The cost is similar to a massage ($40-$90 per hour).

I should sleep well tonight.

Lessons in Customer Service

Not So Great Service
Good customer service is a pet peeve of mine. Recently, I wanted to order some pajamas with feet for my wife for Christmas. The company's website was out of stock, in her size, in early December so I wrote to them asking when they'd expect more. Three weeks later (between Christmas and New Year's) they responded and told me to keep checking the website.

Fast forward to February when their inventory levels on their website hadn't changed at all - I'd been checking about every 10 days. I e-mailed their customer service department again asking about their inventory and the response I got was that they were working to increase their inventory levels over the next few weeks.

I replied asking to be put on the back order list and they asked what specific item I wanted and this was their response:
I can actually answer this quite quickly - we don't expect to run another production on the penguin print until late summer to be available for fall.

I think they just lost a customer for life.

Unexpectedly Great Customer Service
Today, I experienced unexpectedly great customer service at a tea shop in San Clemente called the Lavender Lounge Tea Company. The shop is located off the beaten path, above a 31 Flavors. When it opened, about eight years ago, I thought that it would soon go out of business due to its location. I lived on this street from '94-'98 and had seen many businesses come and go.

Today I found out why it's still around.



When my wife and I arrived there were about five patrons that were just leaving so we had the place to ourselves - along with what looked to be about a hundred different kinds of tea. The only employee was a young woman (early 20s) who we asked for some recommendations. She wasn't the owner, but she clearly knew her teas.

I am not a tea person and I'm not a coffee connoisseur either - by the time I've prepped my coffee it has sugar, syrup, and cream. I ended up having the Ruby Cocoa Kiss tea (would a tea aficionado tell me that this wasn't "real" tea?). This tea was good - very good - and I didn't need to add anything to it which is a first. It was so good I bought a tin of Ruby Cocoa Kiss tea as I listen to the employee explain some differences in teas.

As I was being rung up, I saw a coconut meat cubes dessert, from Indonesia, that I had never heard of before called Jubes Nata De Coco. When I asked her about the dessert I was impressed that she knew all about it and how it compared to boba (pearl), but, what impressed me the most was that she told my wife and I that we should visit the Jubes website. She told us how cute the website was because you had to put the cubes into the Jubes mascots' mouth to navigate from webpage to webpage.


Exercise: Ask a Starbucks employee when was the last time they were on the Starbucks' website or visited the website of a third party whose products they stocked. (Of course, I ask this knowing full well that, when I worked at Apple, I was on the apple.com website at least daily.)

No, this wasn't a Starbucks barista who only knew how to make coffee according to an operations manual - she obviously was well trained in most every aspect of the business. It turns out that all of the Lavender Lounge Tea Company's employees are "students of tea".

I'm impressed.

How Good is Your Algebra?

How good is your algebra?
Solve for x:

Great AT&T Experiences

I shouldn't always complain about things - that's just unhealthy; so, here are three things about AT&T that impressed me.

1. Business Class Broadband
I've been using AT&T's (formally SBC) top of the line business class DSL with five static IP address since 2002 and it's been rock solid. Outages have been virtually non-existent. Occasionally, the bandwidth drops which can be fixed simply by power-cycling the router. There's probably a firmware upgrade that might fix this problem, but it happens so infrequently that I don't have the guts to try it out and risk the downtime if there's a problem.

2. iPhone Upgrade to 3G
This experience went very smoothly. I was most impressed with the fact that our family plan's roll over (RO) minutes remained. I really expected to lose those 4000+ of RO minutes.

3. Prepaid Cell Phone (Go Phone)
My mother has the bottom of the line cell phone plan. She hardly uses her cell phone - maybe 15 minutes/month, but it still costs her about $30/month which is more than $360/year with the fees added in. So, last month, we moved her to a pre-paid option. She got $100 of service minutes that will last a year (plus a sign up bonus of $5).
She had a choice of paying 25¢/minute or 10¢/minute with a daily $1 charge on the days she uses it. Which plan to choose? The key is: will you use your cell phone for more than seven minutes on the days that you do use it? If so, then go with the 10¢/minute and the $1 charge; otherwise, go with the flat 25¢/minute. Regardless, text messages cost 15¢ to send or receive unless they're free marketing messages from AT&T which can be stopped simply by replying with the world Stop.

Personal Hero: Wynne M. Trenholme (W2LDK)

This is a personal hero of mine who I visited with earlier this week. Wynne is 94 years old and still lives across the street from where I grew up on Long Island. He's in excellent health with very low cholesterol and blood pressure of 110/70 (the secret to longevity?). He lives alone and he still drives around town.

After my father, Wynne taught me more about electricity and electronics than anyone else. He worked for Grumman for nearly 20 years. In the 1960s he worked on the LEM, training the astronauts on the spacecraft's communications systems. The radio signal to communicate from the moon to earth was about six watts which is the same of an average CB radio, except the LEM signal was highly directional compared with a CB's omnidirectional signal. He gave me a few of the LEM's amazing training manuals.

During WWII Wynne served in the U.S. Merchant Marines (starting in the enlisted ranks and working up to LCDR) so we frequently talk about the ship's steam cycle. But, my knowledge can't compare to his years of experience working in the engine room. He has some great stories including one time when he was in a tsunami out at sea. The ship's captain received warning of the coming wave and simply turned into it as the ship rose and dropped more than a hundred feet. After all, as long as a tsunami is in waters deeper than its wave height it won't "trip" as it does when reaching the shore.

In high school, he taught me about firearms. We used shoot .22s in his basement against a steel bullet trap and we'd usually end a shooting session by firing black powder after casting the musket balls or minie balls ourself with a lead melter. A couple times we went to Maine to shoot his M1911, made in 1917, and his 45-70.

About once a year he sends me books on the Marine Corps or Annapolis with personal inscriptions on the inside cover. This week he gave me The Few and the Proud, Jarhead, and One Bullet Away.

I can only hope to live as long and be in great health as he is at 94.

He-Ne @ 632.8 nm

Click to enlarge

My First Laser & Holography Kit

When I was in 8th grade (1981) I took a trip to Bellmawr, NJ (not far from Edmund Scientifics) to buy my first laser from Metrologic Instruments. Back then, laser diodes didn't put out much power so helium neon was the only practical option I could afford from delivering Pennysavers and newspapers.

The laser in this photo is a modulated laser which means that you could plug in a crystal microphone and talk over the beam of laser light. I purchased this one, and a few months later I purchased polarized laser, to make holograms in my basement.

Originally, I intended to build a sandbox to make the holograms but I found a clearance holography kit at Edmund Scientifics. The kit was basically 2' x 2' piece of black Plexiglass on black foam with some screw holes to hold an optical diffuser (not a lens), front surface mirror, and film holder.

My first hologram was my best because I didn't know that you shouldn't recycle photographic developer chemicals. It was a hologram of Boggle cubes (dies with letters on each side) that misspelled Hologram. (I originally spelled it correctly, but when I moved the holography kit to the darkroom lab I hastily set up the cubes incorrectly.)

I was definitely the only kid in school who owned a laser... actually two lasers.

Amazon's SimpleDB is to a RDBS as...

It took me a little time to wrap my head around Amazon's new web service: SimpleDB. But, I think I've finally fit it into my RDBMS brain.

RDBMS     SimpleDB     OOP

Table  =  Domain    =  Class entity

Row    =  Item      =  Object  

Column =  Attribute =  Attribute

Value  =  Value     =  Value