adamyntium

Category: tips

  • The RIGHT way to AUTHOR privacy policies

    You’d think that companies would “get it” by now. Most don’t.

    Privacy policies aren’t rocket-science, but they’re absolutely critical to the long-term success of a company. Without earned trust and strong communications, firms have little hope of surviving, and thank goodness!

    So without further ado, here is my free advice to companies wanting to create or update a privacy policy:

    A privacy policy must do all of the following:
    – INFORM: Let visitors know, in accessible language, how the site collects and manages data acquired
    – REASSURE: Offer confident and truthful promises about the safeguarding and respect of this data
    – PERSUADE: Successfully invite visitors to fully utilize the site’s functions, and to provide honest data and feedback without fear
    – PROTECT: Guard the company itself against basic legal or public relations challenges that may arise from improper or incomplete disclosures

    Ideally, every company should offer both a comprehensive privacy policy (though preferably not in ‘legalese’ — whip those lawyers into speaking English, please) and also a concise one paragraph summary of what they will and won’t do with their customers’ data.

    And then — though I shouldn’t have to say this — they need stick by their promises… and they’ll then be rewarded with greater loyalty and fewer lawsuits 🙂

  • Got a Gmail account? Here are a few interesting tricks ‘n’ tidbits

    [In case you didn’t already notice, I wrote a pretty detailed review of Gmail earlier, in which I also noted that I’m unfortunately unable to procure accounts for folks. Sorry! For those who already have accounts, I hope the tips below are useful and/or fun 🙂 – Adam]

    So, you’re one of the Gmail testers and you want more bang for the buck, eh? Try these tips on for size:

    SENDING & SHORTCUTS
    – Send mail to fellow Gmail’er by just entering their username in the TO, CC, or BCC spot. No need to include @gmail.com 🙂

    – Did you reserve .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and now wish you had left out the darn period? It’s not too late! For whatever reason, Gmail treats that e-mail address the same as one without a period (and visa versa), so .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) works just as well as .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). As you may have guessed, Gmail is flexible with regards to capitalizations, too!

    – Using the handy-dandy spell-checker and want to quickly Resume Checking without using the mouse? Just hit ‘R’, an undocumented shortcut key in this context.

    SEARCHING
    – “or” is not the same as “OR.” Only the capitalized version (sans quotes, by the way) will work with searches. So if you want to find mail from your friend Jen, you can use this in search: FROM: (jen OR jenny OR jennifer). Note, by the way, that the actual search terms are not case-sensitive. “jen” works just as good as “Jen.”

    – But, using the same Jen example, it’s important to realize that the search engine of Gmail (and Google, for the most part) does not search partial words. So “jen” will not find “Jennifer.”

    PERFORMING ACTIONS ON A GROUP OF E-MAILS
    – Let’s say you have 150 e-mails, listed over two pages (100 max per page), and you want to archive all of them. I initially made the mistake of clicking ALL, then hitting ARCHIVE and thinking that this would do the trick. Nope. Commands — whether TRASH or ARCHIVE or LABEL — only affect those items that are both selected and on the page you’re currently viewing.

    – And speaking of groupings… don’t forget that when you archive or label e-mail, you’re affecting the entire Conversation of e-mails by default. If you want to trash just one of the e-mails in a Conversation, you can do this by expanding that particular e-mail, clicking on MORE OPTIONS, and then clicking on TRASH THIS MESSAGE.

    ALL THIS *PLUS* A LITTLE BIT MORE
    Gmail supports “plus” addressing, which means that if your address is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), you can receive e-mail at maryhadda+littlelamb@gmail.com or maryhadda+longaddress@gmail.com, etc. Why is this useful? Well, Mary (or you!) could use one, er, I’ll call it a “plussing,” for mailing lists (“maryhadda+lists”), and another for shopping online (“maryhadda+shopping”) and so on, and then create filters to put useful labels on the different types of mail.

    Some have suggested that this could also be a useful spam deterrent (e.g., using maryhadda+2004q2 and then discarding e-mail sent to this address the following quarter), but I think this suffers from two key flaws:
    1) Spammers are probably smart enough to start stripping off the plussing :(.
    2) After a while, you’d have to create a LOT of filters, and — at least for the moment — we only get an allotment of 20 filters total. It’d be a shame to use those all up in a (likely futile) attempt to thwart spamjerks.

    *** Edited 4/30/04:
    Some folks had expressed concern that plussing was seemingly not working for them. However, I’ve worked with them to track down the cause: Due to the way Gmail handles discussion list mails — not showing one’s own contributions in the Inbox to avoid duplicate views — people who were testing the plussing feature by mailing themselves via Gmail wrongly assumed the mail was ‘lost’. As it turns out, the mail was indeed received, but — since it appeared to be part of a ‘discussion list’ — was not shown in the Inbox, which is what caused the confusion.

    THE BOTTOM LINE: Plussing works; just don’t try sending tests to yourself FROM your Gmail account TO your same Gmail account :D.

    * * *

    Well, that’s pretty much everything off the top of my head for now! How about you? Got some cool Gmail tips or tricks? Speak up below, or feel free to contact me 🙂

    * * *

    *** Added 4/21/04
    Uh oh! I have competition! 😀 It’s been pointed out to me that there’s already a blog dedicated to Gmail tips and tricks, called Gmail Gems. Definitely worth checking out.

    *** Added 10/11/05
    Want to read more stuff about Gmail and Google? Check out the BLADAM Google category! and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog! (see the options in the top menu!)

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  • Privacy, paranoia, and Plaxo

    For those of you reading my blogs and primarily interested in the TIPS category, I’ll get the useful / utilitarian part of this post out of the way first:

    The Plaxo service is pretty darn cool. Despite some annoying quirks, it’s useful, it’s fun, and it’s free. I definitely recommend giving Plaxo a try.

    What is it? Well, in a nutshell, Plaxo is a service (with optional software) that allows you to:
    – Keep your addressbook up-to-date pretty effortlessly.
    – Send out contact-info changes to your friends easily.
    – Access your entire addressbook securely on the Web from anywhere.

    Read on for my detailed thoughts about Plaxo.

    The Plaxo Controversy

    First, the boring ‘legalese’:

    DISCLAIMER:
    I’m not affiliated with Plaxo in any way except as a generally happy user of the service and software.

    Okay, now with that out of the way… 😀

    Since Plaxo’s inception, there’s been a bit of a firestorm on the Internet about privacy, trust, and the evils the service could and might do with your personal info.

    After all, they have your e-mail address, full name, and possibly company name, job title, phone numbers, and more. What a treasure trove for telemarketers and other sleazoids, right?

    Well, sort of. Plaxo vehemently insists, via their privacy policy, that they’re not going to do any of that nasty stuff with your info. And you know what? I believe them. I also like and respect how they prominently feature both a plain English summary of their privacy policy and also a longer, more detailed version for those interested.

    Personally, I think lots of people on the Web are far too paranoid for their own good. Of course, everyone is and should be free to make their own judgement calls about what services and people they trust, but what bothers me is the foaming-at-the-mouth invective and often outright nastiness that’s been flung at Plaxo and other companies like it. “They could sell all our data!” some scream, and “If they get bought out, they’ll betray us!” Many of these people have loudly lumped Plaxo into the category of spammers and virus-makers and worse… IMHO unfairly tarnishing Plaxo’s reputation and unfortunately dissuading many from making an informed opinion about the service.

    Do those folks who are angrily ranting about the ‘threats’ of Plaxo realize what data is ALREADY widely (and sometimes freely or cheaply) available about them via their banks, their health insurance company, the department of motor vehicles, the Direct Marketing Association databases, and so on (all of whom are, without a doubt, FAR more palpably evil than companies like Plaxo)? And unlike Plaxo, most of these companies have actively resisted disclosing, much less openly inviting people to check out their privacy policies.

    Plus other online entities already have demonstrated the concept of trust. Amazon.com not only has my personal contact info, they also have several of my credit card numbers and my purchase history. What if Amazon.com got bought out, huh, bub? ;-). Strangely, I don’t see too many people flinging epithets at Amazon in their blog entries, speculating about how all their data’ll be sold to the highest bidder if Amazon gets bought out.

    * * *

    Personally, I’m much more worried about my credit card companies’ policies (especially since they STILL persist on trying to sell me crap over the phone!) than I am about Plaxo. For that matter, I also think there’s a zillion-times greater chance of my personal data being stolen and sold by a waiter who has my credit card number in a back room for a few minutes.

    Comparative risks, people. Intelligent weighing of risks and benefits. Plaxo offers what I think most would agree is a useful and interesting service. The tradeoff, in my mind, is a no-brainer. Or, in a more direct / less-eloquent way of putting it: get a grip.

    * * *

    LEGITIMATE PROBLEMS WITH PLAXO

    Despite my defense above, I should, in fairness, point out that there are quite a few problems and annoyances with Plaxo.

    1) Privacy issues
    There actually is one argument I’ve read from privacy advocates that I can respect. Unlike with services such as Amazon.com, for instance, where each person has the choice of whether or not to submit his or her personal data, with Plaxo, it’s not really up to each individual. In other words, because I have Jim Smith in my addressbook and I send a query to him via Plaxo’s servers (AND I store his data on Plaxo’s site so I can access my addressbook on the Web), Jim has effectively had his data shared without his consent… and possibly even without his knowledge. Of greater concern, if Jim is particularly concerned about Plaxo ‘n’ Privacy, he really has no recourse for getting his name OFF of Plaxo’s servers, short of demanding all of his friends to remove him from their personal addressbooks.

    2) UI issues
    Plaxo is pretty darn user-friendly, but there are quite a few UI niceties that its engineers have overlooked, and cumulatively, these issues are rather frustrating. For instance, when I’m looking through any large Plaxo list of my contacts, I can’t simply jump to a name by hitting the first few letters. I have to first sort, then scroll. With 600 names in my addressbook, that’s damn annoying, especially if I want to select more than a couple names.

    3) Not very customizable
    While I can change and add to some of the language in the “please update your contact queries that get sent to friends, far too much of it is fixed — and overly formal. The cringe-worthy closing is “Thanks, Adam Lasnik.” What friend signs off with a closing like that?! And while one can save the (partially) customized mails sent out for future use, they’re neither named nor editable nor deletable. It’s issues like this that suggest that Plaxo has been “dumbed down” er, simplified at the expense of customizability, and frankly, I don’t believe that having a highly customizable (power-user) and user-friendly UI should be mutually exclusive.

    * * *

    Okay, with all that out of the way, let me explain why I think Plaxo kicks ass and why I’m pretty excited about it.

    WHY PLAXO ROCKS

    1) One-button sync with secure Web version of my addressbook
    This option, included as part of the free service, is wonderfully handy! Had I been using Plaxo when my Palm Pilot was stolen during a trip throughout Europe a while back, I would have had a much easier time (pop into an Internet cafe, log into Plaxo, access the handy PRINT version of my contact list, print it… voila!). Plus, it’s impressive and useful how the Web version offers nearly the identical (and in some cases, actually superior) functionality to the desktop/Outlook/Outlook Express front-end.

    2) Support for FoaF (Friend of a Friend) standard
    Granted, I’ll admit that I don’t quite yet grasp how this works, nor know if it will end up being widely adopted over time. But the fact that Plaxo has listened to and worked with pioneers in this realm suggests to me that the Plaxo folks are committed to a reasonable amount of interoperability and openness.

    3) Good documentation, admirable interactions with customers
    Though in the past Plaxo has been criticized for some slowness with customer service responses, I’ve actually been pleased with my experience so far, and also impressed that Plaxo representatives have intelligently and actively participated in multiple forums and even posted on blogs. Plus the Plaxo Web site is pretty informative, with a searchable knowledgebase and multiple ways to contact customer service (even an “emergency” form).

    4) Plain English promises and reassurances
    As mentioned earlier, Plaxo has admirably taken steps to be a responsible and ethical player in the Internet contact-sync space, and has also clearly articulated their stances and promises on their site.

    5) Robust feature set and ease of use.
    While Plaxo occupies a pretty busy space (with, among others, GoodContacts and AddresSender), it seems to have the edge in features and makes them nicely accessible via a number of different ways — both via client software and the Web.

    and most importantly…
    6) Strong usefulness!
    When you start having many hundreds of contacts like I do from all over the world, something like Plaxo is a Godsend! I haven’t yet used it to do a full scan, but when I used the similar GoodContacts software a couple of years ago, I found myself instantly provided with literally dozens of critical contact info updates from friends, and also some friendly catch-up notes from people who hadn’t written me for a long time. I also got quite a few bounces, which saved me from writing long letters to people whose contact info was long since out of date.

    * * *

    THE RESULTS SO FAR IN MY TESTING…
    I have tested out Plaxo on a handful of friends and personal test accounts so far, and the responses and results have been generally positive.
    – All said the process of responding was straightforward and easy.
    – In every case, the info they input was added flawlessly to my Outlook addressbook.
    – In my own tests, Plaxo requests weren’t viewed as spam either on my Yahoo or Hotmail accounts. Unfortunately, one friend at Cornell found my Plaxo request in his spam folder. 🙁
    – One friend was reluctant to supply his address, due to privacy concerns; he sent that to me separately via my Web forum, whereupon I mercilessly teased him about being a hypocrite :D.
    – And one other friend was angry that I had disclosed his “personal” e-mail address to a third party, but that doesn’t say anything about Plaxo in particular.
    – I’ve noticed a couple of minor bugs, such as an improper date stamp in one area of my Plaxo reports, but the engineer I corresponded with has noted that this should be fixed promptly.

    After I square away a few things, I plan on doing a much larger test with Plaxo (over several hundred contacts), and — if there’s interest — I’ll report my findings back here in my blog.

    In the meantime, I encourage you to post your Plaxo concerns, kudos, and questions below if you’d like, and I’ll do my best to address what I can and – within reason — test specific stuff out for you. Of course, if you’re as geeky and curious as I am, you’ll want to download and play with Plaxo yourself :-). I say go for it!

  • Fabulous garlic fries

    Tonight I had a hankering for garlic fries.
    Unfortunately, I wasn’t near a ballpark, and I had wisely NOT stocked up on the horrible hydrogenated fat artery-clogging excuse for garlic fries sold at the local supermarket.

    Instead, I decided to make my own… and man, did they turn out great! Read on for my (formerly) super-secret AdamRecipe! 🙂

    I’m not even going to bother with measurements. Just put as much as you like, to taste, depending on hungry you are.

    INGREDIENTS:
    – Potato cut into wedges (frozen or fresh)
    – Cajun spice OR cajun spice substitute (paprika, red pepper, salt, etc. — be creative :D)
    – Garlic (ideally fresh, or worst, garlic powder)
    – Healthy oil (olive or canola)
    – Healthy margarine (canola or ‘smart’ type), or substitute extra oil above

    1) Prepare potato. If they’re frozen and/or otherwise pre-cooked wedges, you’re all set. Otherwise, cut potato into wedges, then cook in microwave for 2 minutes.

    2) Place wedges in a sealable plastic container. Lightly coat or mist wedges with oil, then add some cajun spice, and shake well.

    3) Put wedges on an oven-safe tray and don’t have them touch each other. Heat for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

    4) Just before the wedges are finished cooking, make a special ‘coating’ by heating a margarine, additional cajun spice, garlic and additional oil (in the same tupperware bowl used earlier) for 20 seconds or until butter has melted. It’s important that you don’t overdo the ingredients in this step; a little goes a long way!

    5) Take wedges out of oven, plop into bowl, cover, shake well to fully coat wedges, let cool a little bit, then eat!

    If you want even more potent garlic-y fries, do not add garlic to the microwaved coating mixture, since this moderates the garlic potency. Instead, add garlic to the bowl after the mixture is microwaved and after wedges are added (but obviously before shaking).

    * * *

    Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did! Let me know how it works out if you try it! 🙂

  • Find a cool Web site? Just Furl it!

    I recently discovered the coolest site and service.

    It’s called Furl (http://www.furl.net), which stands for File URL. In a nutshell, it is an excellent free resource that will help you save and full-text-find any Web page on the Net.

    Basically, you painlessly install a little bookmarklet thingy (icon) on your browser and when you go to a site you want to save, you click on it. Furl then does three things:
    – Shares it with others in your group, or with the public (depending on what you set — you can keep your entry private if you want!)
    – Tags it with the category you chose and any comments you add.
    – Stores it in your own personal archive (accessible from any browser after you log in).

    But here’s the kicker: it saves the FULL TEXT of the page, and lets you search your personal archive, sort of like your own personal Google!

    This is very cool for research or for play. Save articles, save joke pages, save pretty much anything you want, and Furl will remember it and find it for you as long as you can enter in at least a couple of words from the page.

    Amazingly, Furl is free, and if the site ever does come to an end, you can export all your links before it goes dark.

    Oh, and the guy who runs it is pretty cool; after I wrote him with some suggestions, my mail didn’t just go into a black hole like such feedback mails sadly often do. Instead, I quickly got a friendly note back, thanking me for my input, and asking for clarification on a couple of my requests.

    But I’ve blathered on long enough. Go Furl! (and don’t forget to Furl this blog, darnit :D)

  • Digital camera advice

    I’m no stranger to digital cameras… having bought and used one for myself around 3 years ago, and also shopped for friends and family. I’m also shopping for a new one myself this week, since I’m tired of not having a camera after having my Olympus 3030z stolen in Estonia last summer 😐

    Since I’m in a digicam-shopping mood, I figured I’d share some advice. Feel free to chime in with additional tips via comments!

    1) Know what kind of photographer you are.
    – Are you the sort that loves snapping impromptu people pics but doesn’t want to fuss with settings? Get a great point-and-shoot, and don’t pay extra for manual setting flexibility.
    – Do you like composing “art” shots, taking your time to make stuff “just so”? Make sure your camera allows for tinkering!

    2) Prioritize what’s important to you.
    – Size/weight (ultra-compact? average? chunky SLR-style?).
    – Type of shots (low light? action shots? mostly people shots (need good red-eye prevention), panorama?…)

    3) Take *ALL* costs into consideration!
    You most likely *WILL* have to buy at least $100 in accessories if you want to make good use of your camera.
    – You WILL need more memory. Note that different types of memory cards (compact flash, SD, xD, etc.) cost significantly different amounts.
    – It’s imperative that you have a set of HIGH QUALITY spare batteries and a reliable, high quality battery charger.
    – Get a case or two… one for light duty, the other for more rough-and-tumble trips.
    – A tripod is an absolute must for low-light non-flash shots.
    – A card reader is pretty cheap ($20-$30) and very handy.
    – A paid-for extended warranty is almost certainly a waste of your money, statistically speaking. Instead, put the purchase on a gold or platinum card, then call your card provider to register for a FREE doubled warranty and other protections!

    4) Check out reputable and fascinating photo sites on the Web.
    – http://www.dpreview.com (info, reviews)
    – http://www.dcresource.com (info, reviews)
    – http://www.photo.net (info, galleries)
    – http://www.fotki.com ($30 a year for unlimited storage, no ads!)
    – http://www.dcviews.com (digicam portal… very useful!)

  • Amazon.com’s got… food?!

    Just when you thought Amazon.com couldn’t branch out any further… now they’re featuring Restaurant Menus for Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

    Nothing technically brilliant here… just relatively clean scans of the restaurants’ menus. Also, the search for restaurants in/near an area code feature doesn’t seem to be working.

    But still, the offering is pretty fun and helpful! 🙂 I can now either throw away those old menus clogging up my desk space… or I can go the other direction and print out updated ones via Amazon.com. Bon appetit!

    UPDATE January 8, 2006
    It seems that Amazon.com has discontinued this service. Bummer.

  • MusicBrainz: Intelligent music tagging and much more

    Many folks are used to being able to insert their CDs into their computers and have the disc and tracks recognized via one of the online databases, such as GraceNote or CDDB. That’s decidedly cool and useful.

    But MusicBrainz, a new open source service, takes music tagging to a new level.

    MusicBrainz actually analyzes the sound content of individual music files, like MP3s, and compares this against its user-contributed database of songs.

    In contrast, the old CD-based services won’t work at all with your MP3s, and they even choke when your localized (e.g., UK) version of a CD differs from the previously entered U.S. version by one track or even one second of music.

    The MusicBrainz software is free and deliciously easy to use for tagging your music files. However, I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg here. Imagine using this technology to identify songs played on the radio… to compare subtleties in different song versions or performances… and to recommend artists with a similar sound or feel. Definitely some amazing possibilities!

  • I hate spam

    More than 200 spams are sent to me DAILY. Yes, I’m not exaggerating.
    Luckily, a bunch of ’em are stopped before they hit my inbox due to Brightmail filtering offered by my ISP (Earthlink) for free.

    But that still leaves tons of spam hitting my inbox.

    I was using a program called POPfile, which had an admirable 97-98% effectiveness with sorting my e-mail. Unfortunately, some of that 2-3% was painful, since I couldn’t ‘whitelist’ e-mail from my friends. In other words, there was no way to tell the software to automatically accept (and not mark as spam) e-mail from people in my Outlook addressbook.

    So I ditched POPfile and I’ve been trying the embarrassingly aol’ishly named “ihatespam” program.

    It’s $20, though free after rebate with amazon.com when you buy any version of Turbotax.

    Here’s my take on the software so far:

    POSITIVES:
    – Easy install
    – Is free after rebate when you buy it with any TurboTax product from Amazon.com (kindly do so via http://amazon.smilezone.com — thanks!)
    – Integrates tightly with Outlook… no need to reconfigure POP stuff with proxy servers, etc.
    – Offers “bounce” feature, whereby you can send a fake but convincing ‘bounce’ mail from your domain’s Postmaster, hopefully fooling some spammers into thinking your e-mail address is no longer valid.
    – Can whitelist addresses from contact folders and e-mail folders.
    – Strong support (I got a response just a couple of hours after e-mailing them).
    – Decently configurable
    – Free 30-day trial
    – Can easily create own rules using functionality much more powerful than Outlook’s native rules wizard

    NEGATIVES:
    – Only works with Outlook and Outlook Express (and not even so well on the latter, apparently)
    – Costs money ($20) if you don’t get it with TurboTax
    – Some usability issues (too many clicks required for some tasks)
    – Occasionally removed focus from e-mails I’m typing when it is handling incoming mails.
    – Can’t see hard-coded rules ‘under the hood’
    – Yearly ‘rules’ updates cost $15

    The program has incorrectly flagged some of my e-mail newsletters, but — given the whitelist functionality — has not and apparently will not ever mark mail from my friends as spam, and that’s very important to me.

    Hope this is helpful to those of you who are also deluged by spam.

  • Down on your lock? Put on a happy face!

    If you go to a MegaGym like I do with Megasized Locker rooms and you’ve ever been MegaFrustrated trying to find which locker you put your stuff in… here’s an idea for you.

    Take some red or brightly-colored nail polish, and paint a happy face on your lock. Two eyes on top (duh!) and a smile on the bottom.

    I honestly have NO idea what originally possessed me to try this, but let me just say, it’s turned out to be wonderfully helpful. Plus, even after all these months, I still smile whenever I pull my lock out of my gym bag 🙂