Brown Family

When I was in Australia...

...my co-worker interviewed me for his blog.

 

http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=761

 

Michael's a great guy to work with and we had fun.

Vanity search on Cuil

If you are tech person you saw the news. Some ex-Google folks have a new search engine called Cuil (pronounced 'cool'). I decided to run a vanity search on my name "Leon Brown" to see what came up. Here's one bit of it:

Notice that along with a photo I now have a Wikipedia link. :)

The search engine looks nice, and they claim good numbers of pages captured and better, stronger, faster, more relevant searching. I'll play around but it will be hard to move off Live Search or Google.

trueSpace for free: 3D modeling software

[Disclaimer: I work for a tech company, Microsoft...up until now I've had multiple blogs. I plan on merging them in to just one over time. Since most of my readers are my family, sorry this isn't about Kana...she's much cuter. But, I find this stuff interesting. My views, not my companies, my interests, influenced by what I do everyday.]

 

It is fun to be at a big company, Microsoft. One good and bad aspect is that we have a lot of products and it is hard to keep track. That said, this is a fun one. A while ago Microsoft acquired a company called Caligari. They make a product called trueSpace and it has been now released to the public for free (well, I'm sure you'll have to trade some information for it). Why is this fun? Well, you can get a full fledged 3D modeling product for a fun low price. Google did this a bit ago with a product called SketchUp which they now offer for free.

So, why the low price? The idea is that people will model their houses or buildings, and then post their content on the mapping service so that over time a 3D representation of the world is built up. More people go to your maps, more revenue for advertising on-line. We offer uploading to VirtualEarth, our maps on-line. VirtualEarth is quite cool. There is a neat feature that offers you a 3D view so you can actually look at your destination

For example, here's a view of some houses in Gig Harbour, WA:

 

Pretty neat. With 3D software you could add a version of your home, or store, allow people to visit the insides, and more. Realtors and designer like this stuff too.

And, I think its neat.

ReMIX Seoul stage

Quick shot of the stage being set up for the event tomorrow.

StarHub: worst in user experience

A small rant. I hate my cable provider. They have they worst interfaces. Today I am frustrated by their web site. I'd like to search their program guide for 'Tour de France' yet their search function doesn't allow for a generic search across all channels. No, you must choose up to three from the list of channels. Since there are over a hundred I might possibly have to search 30+ times to find the right channel. Very lame.

Part 2. I went to their web form to submit a complaint. This form is on multiple pages. On the first one it requests a full address and valid telephone number (inconvenient) and also give error messages that are not helpful. I entered my phone number as 8 digits and it said I had an invalid phone number. What it wanted was the addition of the country code (65) which is stupid since everyone who lives in Singapore has the same country code. After making it to the second page, you must fill in your Starhub contract number (who knows where that is now), as well as my FIN number (like a drivers license or green card ID number) in order to submit my comment. Lame.

Previously terrible experience was only with their awful interface on their Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Here they have obviously not looked at TiVO as you cannot teach the box what channels you DO NOT receive. So, when you change channels you often hit a large number of "If you'd like to order this channel..." up-sell screens. Very frustrating.

I hate Starhub. As soon as I have another option I will cancel my subscription. They have the worst interfaces I have seen in years. Very customer unfriendly which makes my Starhub unfriendly.

<end rant>

Another layer of annoyance

I do a lot of on-line banking. I do this for my banks, my funds, my stock accounts, my home loans, the works. If I can't get to my accounts on-line, they are not very useful to me these days. I currently bank with DBS in Singapore (well, one of many banks). Today I received a letter stating that they are "Introducing a Second Layer of Security." Yeah. Right. More like a second layer of hassle.

Coming soon to my mail box is a physical device that will most like randomly generate numbers. Whenever I want to log-in on-line I'll need to have this second physical security device in hand (called second factor authentication or two-factor authentication). How's that for a pain in the %$#? What if I need to get access to my account and, well I don't know, happen to have lost my luggage? Or, forgot it at home? What do I do? Get annoyed. I didn't request this device, I don't want this device, I do not need this device. I haven't had anyone grab my ID yet since I typically only do my on-line banking from home.

I recognize this is probably part of a larger problem for the banks themselves. Most likely there is some dollar amount that is lost each year to victims of keystroke capture programs or other means. With a physical device you lower the risk that the bank will take a hit for an illegal transaction. For me it is just a pain. I do not want to carry an additional device and do not appreciate its imposition in my life. Argh.