Boris Dinkevich

Better than Gmail

There is one worrying thing about spam-filters:
“The things that we miss by mistake.”

They say Gmail got the best spam-filter.

But ours is much better, can handle a wider range of data (audio, video, etc) and, do it all, in real time !

Think back

Have you ever walked down the street, only to figure out that you have no idea what you have passed by ?
What shops there were, who were the people or almost anything about the recent minute or so ?

Now consider, just our optical nerves receive an enormous amount of data.
Add to that the processing our brain does
-> thats red
-> thats a square
-> thats a store
-> thats a shoe store
-> thats a shoe store like the one I bought stuff in 5 years ago in a different town
Hard to image now much data we get every single instant.

Its all around us, every moment, but most of it gets filtered out.

Sure, some bits get stashed away to be recalled by a rigrous head scratching process.
But most of it is lost.

Is it all spam ?

They say that in the days back when we were hunters, our brains were conditioned to filter in another way.
Constant danger of enemies and seeking of pray, made us more aware of the basics. Colors, movement.. hunches.

Is there a way to re-train ? Change some settings on our filter ?

Its just that I am worried.
Worried that I am missing too much.

My NexusOne broke down.

All it took is a fall from about one foot, to render it useless. Reminds me my old Nokia phone. You could hammer nails with it, hell you could hammer hammers with it !

So I called up my cell provider, Orange.

Me: Hello

Orange: Hello Sir, how may I help you ?

Hello, I would like to cancel my wireless internet.

You can’t

I .. what ?

Can’t.

But.. why ?

I press a button and it said “You can’t”

A button ?

Yes.

Which button ?

The cancel Internet one. Said “Can’t”

… did it maybe say why ?

Yes, you have a 3G phone so you are committed to the wireless internet.

What ? But its my phone. I bought it 2 months ago

But the one you had before also had 3G. So you are comitted.

Wait.. wait.. but I didn’t have internet before I called you two months ago.

That was a mistake.

OK, so how do we fix this ?

Fix it ? If I fix it, you will need to pay one year back.

Wtf ? Why ?

All 3G customers are committed to a 3 year plan and must pay. You didn’t pay because there was some glitch.

Yes, but I also didn’t get the service

*blinks*

So why would I pay for a year when I didn’t get service

Because you are committed.

Can’t you just cancel the internet I have now ?

No, when I press cancel a box pups-up saying I can’t

So who can I talk to, to solve the problem

Me

OK, So what can we do ?

You can go on paying quietly or I can fix the problem and you will go on paying quietly AND pay a year of fees.

.

.

.

Orange: Is there anything else I can do for you ?

Me: …aa….

Orange: Have a great day

Me: Yes.. thank you.. I..

If instead of trying to sell me your product, you are trying to sell me “selling your product”: its a pyramid.

Its sad when the product itself comes second, or third, or.. never at all.

So to the nice woman who approached me at the Greek un-conference. Next time explain what the heck is it your product does, before even starting to talk about an “exciting new job opportunity” (or better yet, don’t come).

The What

There is a small cute neighborhood in the middle of Tel-Aviv. As I was walking there a few nights back a strange though struck me. I was on a long alley, with every other building having either a small coffee-shop, a bar or a restaurant. And surprisingly, they were all packed full.

And that reminded me of another place, very similar but with a very important difference: “The internet”

The Internet is not unlike a huge mall. It is packed full of tiny niche stores (startups) trying to make it big (or small).  And as any self-respecting small business, they will all burn a bunch of capital (usually time in this case) and close down if enough customers don’t show up. But unlike that little alley, most of them are almost empty now. Hardly a customer in sight. There are simply too many businesses and too few clients here. Too many niche coffee shops  and tiny “vintage water bottle” businesses.  In the restaurant business, people would tell you it is insane to open another tiny “mom’s breads” place. But the young entrepreneurs keep on coming, with the bright light of belief in their eyes.

At first I was sad, so many talented developers, investing so much of their time and effort. And all fighting for the same small crowd. Instead of working for hire and making huge salaries, they invest that time into projects that, for the vast majority, will not cover the investment. Thousands of programmer hours being thrown in vain..

But then the opportunistic entrepreneur in me woke up and slapped me hard, square on the face. Those millions of dollars in engineering fees are not really disappearing. They are actively being consumed by people like.. me. I am the direct benifactor, the one who keeps getting top quality work for virtually free.

The How

I already have about 5 different companies that I pay 10-20$ a month, for different services that would of taken me months to implement.

And the amazing bit ? They are working so hard to get customers and improve their product. That if something is missing from their offering, a quick email, and a few weeks later I have the features I want. For FREE!

Just imagine going to the local restaurant, paying 10% of the bill and getting the cook to add that custom vanilla and pepperoni sandwich that you love so much. Sounds crazy ? Well not in the current Internet world.

Sure it might look like a win-win situation. I get a product I need for ultra-low cost. They get a paying customer and improve their offering. But I still feel a little bad. Because I know that most of them will never makeup for the time and heart they invested.

But for now I got teams of brilliant people working for me, and that, at only ~2,000$ / year.

Now that’s a GOOD deal.

First, a story

Back when I was 16, it was considered very cool to get a tatoo. Some of my friends actually got the nerve (to disobey their parents) and went to get tiny bits of color embedded (mostly un)skillfully into their skin.

Now I personally considered it to be what we like to call “a bad move”. Its not that they are bad in principle. Its just that they will have an affect on your life. And be it good or bad, you will never be able to remove it.

So I never went to get one. No tattoo for me…

* Skip forward 13 years *

The people I meet now

Let me tell you a secret. If you ever emailed me, called me or were even causally mentioned to me. I investigated you. (Yes you)

But its not as creepy as it might sound. Before any interaction with a new person, I tend to spend a few minutes looking them up in LinkedIn (Who they are professionally), Facebook (The human side) and Google (everything else). This usually sets the tone of the future engagement and gives me a “virtual first impression”.

A bit of free time

Thats what I had, so I decided it might be wise to do the same on myself. Basically a mirror experiment, to see how I appear to others with similar approach.

LinkedIn

- A fully professional overview that I try to keep updated.  [10/10 points]

Facebook

- Luckily I control (+/-) my Facebook account. Its 99% private and only displays a not-so-flattering photo.   [9/10 points]

Google

-  …. OH MY GOD !

Remember the time when I was 18 and a friend wanted to show me what RDND is all about ? And we signed up on some lame site with our REAL names ? Well I don’t. But guess who does ? GOOGLE.

Remember the time when I was giving “expert” advise on some programming forums ? Not really. But you know who remembers ? GOOGLE.

Remember the 1000 stupid things I emailed on some obscure long forgotten mailing list ? No ? Don’t I ? Yea, you figured out where this is going.

The bad news

Between old email addresses, forgotten passwords, mirroring and caching. It is simply impossible to delete these traces of stupidity.

Sure we can argue that most are not harmful. But they do create an image of you, the  ”First Virtual Impression” you leave on other people.

Just like a tattoo, not bad per-say, but with implications on your life.  Be it bad or good. Its not going away, it is there. FOREVER

Help!

Is there a doctor who can help me remove my Digital Tattoos ?

Thats it, I can’t read the news anymore.  Its not because its not interesting, not because I don’t want to be updated. Its because of one reason:
The endless and shamless attempts by professional journalists to dictate to us what to think.
And sadly, they are succeeding.

If you look around, you will find that most of the people you see have very strong opinions on a variety of subject. Sadly, 99% of that was force fed to them by the news media they prefer. They are unable to really debate the issues (no understanding and lack of knowlege) but still are very vehement about their view. How is this possible ? Well, the Sophists can tell you.

Here are two different stories presented in two different views. The facts are exactly the same, the results.. you be the judge:

Politics #1:
In yet another unprovoced attack, a team of Israeli soldiers penetrated the border of its neighbour.
Ruthlessly executing one of its leaders. As usual, the reckless action cost Palistinians yet another life as bystanders was targeted by the Israeli bullets.
[Read more..]

Politics #2:
Israel finds itself in despair yet again. The latest of the unprovoked attacks from the Hamas, was a series of rockets targeted at the center of the nearby heavily populated city. Tonight, another attempt was done to capture one of the men directly responsible. A team of Israeli soldiers managed to penetrate into Gaza and kill the Hamas's number three in-command, the man in charge of the attacks. An unfortunate accident caused the target's driver to be injured in the shooting that followed. While being moved to a nearby Israeli hospital, the driver died of his wounds. [Read more..]

Finance #1:
Bonus time ! After being bailed for billions of taxs payer dollars only the year before, the new CEO of a national bank is to get a staggering 10M dollar bonus. Only a year at the failing company and the old lessons all seem to be forgotten. [Read more..]

Finance #2:
Following the brillian recovery of the national bank. With revenue soaring to 12Billion and the success at returning billions of dollars of bail money back to the state. The stocks of the bank have climbed back a whooping 75% from their low just a year ago. In an unprecedented move the banks board has decided to awar the new CEO a 5M dollar bonus. [Read more..]

Initially it seemed that the solution might come from the Blogosphere. Where a myriad of independent writers produced an endless stream of opinions, forcing us to consider, research and think before coming to a conclusion. Sadly, this area is undergoing a heavy movement of consolidation. As the bigger blogs get bigger and the smaller becoming nothing than a nice read for friends.

Will someone ever be able to create an opinion-less stream of information ?

Yesterday while pondering just that, I spoke with a friend and we decided to pull some data and make some graphs.

First order of business was to get a DB of posts, and it seemed like crawling was the only option.

But then luck strikes, and someone posts 6 months of HN data* !

Since what really interests me is the amount of traffic a post generates. I decided to get the average rating. With the assumption being:

• People read -> People vote -> High rank

I have ignored the relative placement on the main page, since a high placement during low-hours does not drive higher traffic, making the placement a poor indicator.

So, a bit of python and here it is:

The average Points and Comments for each post, based on its submission time (UTC).

The average Points and Comments for each post, based on its submission day-of-the-week.

With timing you can get your post almost 50% more.

These charts show the relative percentage of submission of front page articles based on time of submission (Hour(UTC) and Day-of-week):

* Please note that the DB used, only provides information on posts that made it to the main page. “Failed” submissions are not counted and might affect the results.

[Keep me posted]

Foreward

A few months ago I tried to estimate the worth of my Facebook account. The idea was, to see how much money will I need to be offered to delete my Facebook profile and create a new one.

• I will have to reconnect with friends (An hour of work – 30$)
• Lose my status updates and comments (not really important – 10$)
• Retag all my photos taken by other people (big problem – 100$)
• Lose my standings in various games (don’t really care – 0$)

Not that much, ~140$ – The price of many software packages. That is all that would take for me to create a new facebook user or get the (presumably) same functionality somewhere else.

So if you are Facebook, and you plan to become THE social identity for ever and ever (and one day finally roll out a full P2P payment system,  put PayPal out of its misery, allow real micro-payments, p2p loans, slowly become the defacto bank for all our online transactions and finally get a revenue model that will jump you from a 10B$ to a 300B$ company). What would you do ?

The logical thing, you increase the 140$ to 1,400$.

So you introduce.. *drum roll*.. Facebook Connect !

A nifty, useful and harmless (?) feature. No more signup forms, no more poor conversion. An answer to both users and webmasters alike. I have been clicking away at the little blue button non stop, happily waving my password managers goodbye.

So wait.. about the leg

You know how you go out drinking all night and wake up the next morning feeling violated and with your leg hand-cuffed to the radiator ?

[..long story censored..]

I decided to re-evaluate my “cost to leave Facebook” price. And a new item poped up on the list:

• Cost of losing all the information I have added on sites where I have nothing but Facebook connect – 500$ and rising rapidly.

On many sites, once you register with facebook connect, there is no way back. (Poor design? Yes! Lazy? Yes! Fact of life ? Yes!).

With every day that passes, my ties to Facebook rise across multiple sites in parallel. But with the UX failures of OpenID and no real alternative in sight.. I am doomed.

Granted it is not dire yet, not yet a time for leg chewing.. but a good time to ask, “Does anyone have the key ?”.. The radiator is getting hotter…

קופונים במבצע קבוצתי

Whats the most common advise on writing blogs ?

“Be yourself”

Write what interests you, not others.

Write about your passions.

Write in your own style.

Write and they will come.

Just do your thing

And then they run and put Google Analytics, to see how well they are doing at “being themselves” and what they can do to improve in their “themselvesness” to get more people to read their blogs.