Great start to the day.  Am hooked up in a cafe at Zurich airport, while wife shops.  The conference attendees have been provided complimentary hotspot access via Swisscom, and courtesy of Whisher.  Feran Moreno personally sent that over, which I thought a nice touch. The Whisher network is powered by users sharing their WiFi. All WiFi networks registered through Whisher are protected and the owners (sharers) have full control on who and when can access them. Whisher is an interesting concept that has been talked about for years, but this is the first big implementation I have seen. Whisher launched … Continue reading Whisher network, via Swisscom

Looking forward to the weather in Geneva if nothing else.  Its horrible in Toronto right now.  It will be a 25 degree increase in temperature for us.  its +12C there today. First thing Wednesday is a workshop on ‘Designing the future’.  Then off to the Peter Mueller Watch factory in the PM for a private visit.  Conference proper begins Thursday, and I am on at 17:00.  There is a no laptop rule, so blogging might be spotty, from BlackBerry, or in the evenings.  But I will take lots of notes.    Technorati tags: LIFT07 Continue reading Off to LIFT 07

 Rather eye opening study here from MIT.  The premise is that site-authentication images increase security because customers will not enter their passwords if they do not see the correct image, said Stuart Schechter, a computer scientist at the M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory.  From the study we learned that the premise is right less than 10 percent of the time. Source: Study Finds Security Flaws on Web Sites of Major Banks – New York Times It will be interesting to see the responses of those Banks’ that use PassMark.  My first question is ‘ who commissioned the study?’.  This may provide some … Continue reading MIT/ Harvard study raises questions about use of pictures to visually validate sites to customers

There is famous scientist from Microsoft, Computer science icon Jim Gray, lost at sea.  I don’t know him, but many do, and look at this effort from Amazon, and others to pull web users everywhere into the search.  Through a major effort by many people we were able to have the Digital Globe satellite make a run over the area on Thursday morning and have the data made available publicly. We have split these images into smaller tiles that can be easily scanned visually and stored into the Amazon S3 storage service. We then created tasks for reviewing these images and … Continue reading All Things Distributed: Help Find Jim Gray

Following up on the Bank of America money management tool post, a BofA customer writes: I’m a BofA customer, and I went online yesterday to see what they were bringing to the table.  Their money management functionality is HORRIBLE.  After 10 minutes of putzing around with it, I could only guess that the only thing it actually does is categorize your spending and investments — but I couldn’t get it to that. And I won’t be trying again. I paraphrase here, but not by much.  Doesn’t sound positive.  It sounds like BofA have plugged in a purchased solution, and dare I … Continue reading BofA money management tool disappoints

RBC have implemented Google Maps for their Branch and ATM locator.  This is (I believe) a first, in Canada, and perhaps anywhere.  Kudos to RBC for that.  RBC Royal Bank Branch and ATM Locator Source: RBC Royal Bank – Branch and ATM Locator Suggestion to RBC …. don’t clear the fields if I missed something – retain what I typed, and let me add the part you needed, rather than make me type it all over again.   Technorati tags: Banks+locator, google+maps Continue reading RBC Royal Bank – Branch and ATM Locator