Category Archives: Digital Identity Management

Still Skypeless …

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Amazing … I have been sending support requests every single
day.  And I get no response, except for the occasional reply to
some of the messages saying “We normally will respond within 72
hours.”  Uh guys … if you are hearing this … it’s now been
almost two weeks!  Uh … they still have my $10.00 …

I wrote them the following message:

Please … oh Skype gods …
let my account go! Please unblock me …

My prayer to the Skype gods … please have mercy on my account … PLEASE
unblock my account. Why haste thou forsaken me????

Our Skype who art in
Luxemburg,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy phone call come, thy will be done,
on
the Internet as it is on POTS lines.
Give us this day our daily
SkypeOut,
and forgive us our use of mobiles,
as we forgive our non-Skype
friends.
And deliver us from expensive calls,
for thine is the
$.02/minute, the p2p calling,
and the VoIP solution
forever.
SkypeMe.

Oh please Skype gods … please unblock my account
…

Will it work?  Hmmmm … we’ll see …

Skype … where the whole world CAN NOT talk for free. Not even for PAY!

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Ok … I had to take a moment to vent about Skype.  What a great
product … what lousy execution.  Their support?  It sucks
beyond almost any vendor I have ever dealt with.

On my recent Philippines trip, I started to use SkypeOut … or tried
to.  First, I was unable to get them to accept any of my credit
cards … business or personal.  Now these are the same credit
cards that I use for all other on-line purchases … but not with
Skype.  Nope.  They wouldn’t take them.  So no SkypeOut
credit.

Well, then I noticed that they accept PayPal … hmmm … wonder if
that will work.  Yeah!  It worked!  A week ago I was
able to pay Skype $10 for SkypeOut credit.  They even gave me an
extra $1.60 of credit for paying!  I called lots of people … for
one day.  Then … back to ground zero.

Six days ago … the morning after my success paying via PayPal … and
after using Skype to make calls for over an hour … I wen to dail a
number only to see a red bar appear that said:

Skype Account Blocked – Your Skype account has been blocked!  Click here for details

Yeah … right.  Try clicking … it takes you to their home
page.  Uh guys … how about if I log into my account?  I
simply get another message:

You are currently restricted from purchasing services or redeeming vouchers.
Please contact
Customer Support to review your account status.

Ok … great.  No details … I click the link … get taken to a
crappy tech support form.  Fine … I filled it in, posted it, and
was sent to a page with a bunch of unrelated “knowledgebase” articles
… with another button to *really* post my support request.

So six days ago … I sent my support request.  And I have done so
for each and every day since.  No response.  Oh … well this
monring I finally got back a message saying that they have received my
first support request … sent seven days ago!

So Skype has my money … and has blocked my account.  As for the
“free in the US” they claim to be offering?  I can’t call those
numbers either now … my account is blocked.  I can call PC to PC
… I think … but no SkypeOut at all … nada.

So they lie … the whole world CAN NOT talk for free.  And in my
case, I have even paid my $10 and I can not talk … at least not via
Skype.  What a bummer … some people are screwing up a perfectly
good idea.

The Trip to Baguio

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After spending one day and night in Manila, we headed up to Baguio City
… north of Manila in the Mountains.  We left early and flew
Asian Spirit … in a YS-11
… an old turboprop airliner.  After taking off, we quickly
climbed to ~10,000 feet.  The grey color of Manila slowly began to
be sprinkled with green, and the quantity of green again continued to
grow as we flew north away from Metro manila.

As we continued our flight, the spots of green continued to grow until
we were over a large flat valley with some large winding rivers. 
Various roads – paved and otherwise – cut convoluted paths between
farms, towns, and open ground.  All of these roads seemed to wind
in strange directions with no rhyme or reason.  Below, one large
river wound below us, leaving groups of buildings, and maybe whole
towns, stranded on empty oxbows.  And then the foothills appeared.

It was impressive to see the mountains rise from the valley as a series
of large sharp ridges.  The river winding below us came from a
valley in between some of these ridges, and a large reservior with a
dam had been built to hold back its waters.  The mountains
continued to rise.  And rise!  All of the sudden the
stewardess announced that we were approaching Baguio … and the
mountains continued to climb up towards our altitude.  Below us
there were now a few roads winding up the jagged mountain sides … all
looking like dirt roads.  And then the first towns appeared up in
the mountains.  As we passed over one of the larger ones … now
looking only a few thousand feet below us … I caught site of a runway
cut into the mountains … one end spilling out over a shear mountain
face.  Baguio Airport?

As we now passed that runway the plane began to turn … yep … that’s
Baguio!  I actually shot some pretty good footage of the landing
… amazing mountain with a mix of small homes and big mansions. 
The vacation homes of the upper-class, mixed with the homes of the
average people.  We continued to bank hard left … circling
around to the other end of the runway that I saw … to land in the
direction of the shear mountain face.  As we got lower and lower
there were all sorts of streams and rivers flowing down the mountain,
with waterfalls all over the place.  We continued to decend, and
finally touched down.  We’re in Baguio!

As we exited the aircraft, it was immediately cooler than Manila … by
far!  Nice.  We wandered the parking lot … found a cab …
and headed to Session Road … one of the main roads in Baguio. 
I’ll write more later.

Arriving in Manila

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We flew to Manila, from Los Angeles, on Sunday the 21st.  One of
the first things that was nice was the free wireless Internet provided
by the Asian carriers in the LA terminal.  Getting there early we
were able to get our seats (nice big aisle exit-rows!) and then hang
out and get work done.

The Philippines Airlines flight over left at ~10:00pm, so we flew into
the darkness, being chased by the sun.  The flight actually landed
at ~4:00am in Guam for refueling, and then continued its way to
Manila.  We approached the Philippines at daybreak, just before
sunrise.  As we crossed over the first edges of the Philippines,
it was a combination of islands and then the mountains of Luzon. 
The mountains turned into a large flat valley, and then the density of
grey structures began to grow.  Slowly, the grey started to
overwhelm the green and we had started to cross over the outer edges of
Manila.  As we continued to descend, the grey color took over …
it was impressive to see the sprawl of Manila below us.

We landed and got off of the plane, walked into the terminal and passed
through immigration … very uneventful.  We had both packed in
only carry-on, so we had no luggage to claim … instead we headed
right out into the hot and humid air to look for our car.

The first thing that hit me as the humidity wrapped all around me was
the smell of smoke.  Everywhere.  Like a fireplace nearby
kicking out the smoke of burning wood.  I had been told about this
… it was the smell of forests being burned in Indonesia.  Some
of my contacts here indicated that a month ago it was a constant haze
that was almost unbearable.  Even today in Iloilo I am greeted
each morning to the same smell as I leave my hotel room.

I’ll write more later … have to catch the high speed boat to Bacolod!

Blogging from Iloilo, Philippines

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I’ve been telling myself each day this week that I was going to post
… and I’m only getting to it right now. I’m sitting in the
Amigo Terrace Hotel in Iloilo, Philippines … and after completing a
whole ton of work, I’m now ready to post. I’m in the lobby
restaurant … on wireless.

I’ll probably break this into a whole set of posts … there is too
much to write about. It’s been a very cool trip so far, and a lot
has changed since the last time I travelled in this region. I’ve
never been to the Philippines before, but when I was with Novell I
visited a number of Asian countries … Singapore, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
India, Nepal, Thailand … all amazing places. But these trips
were in the early 1990’s and predated the penetration of the
Internet. What a huge difference. I’m floored. The
Internet is everywhere.

So where exactly am I right now? I’m at the hotel here in Iloilo. I’ve been here a few days after visiting Manila … we stayed in Makati … then visited Baguio City. Tomorrow we’ll be heading over to Bacolod for the day … then another day back here in Iloilo, before heading back to Manila and home.

I’ll write more … it’s been eye opening. An amazing trip.

May CTO Breakfast

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It is time for another Phil Windley
CTO Breakfast. It was a smaller
group, but some good conversations – both technical and
philosophical. Some good talk about business and team management.

I walked in and there was a conversation about “in the net” storage. Bruce Fryer from DiGiSENSE brought up JungleDisk
… which looks very cool! This solves one of the things that I have
wanted for a while now. I’ve been backing up my various laptops
and home computers to a server at my house. On Windows I’m using
a very cool tool called Second Copy
that I found years back. Second Copy provides very customizable
copying profiles to mirror date from my hard disk to almost
anywhere. So each night when I go to bed I ensure that I set up a
Samba share to my Linux server in the basement. Second Copy kicks
off after 2:00am and replicates several designated subdirectories from
my machine to the server. It also will create “archive” copies of
any changed files … keeping the last {x} copies of changed
files. The one hole in my model is that I don’t currently have
“off-site” backup. With JungleDisk it appears that I can now
consider automating the replication of my server storage to Amazons S3
storage in the net!

I really didn’t take too many notes today … the conversations were
too fun! I started to fall quite behind in my typing. We talked
about Identity, and that VeriSign has added an OpenID service. This is a good thing as it is showing the growing momentum in Internet Identity.

The web site World Mapper
was brought up. This is a very cool site that shifts the sizes of the
various countries based on a number of criteria. I really like
maps and checking out the statistics of the world … this site has
great information.

Someone brought up the “the Lost experience”
… which is a very interesting way that the TV show Lost is now
attracting people to the commercials by embedding puzzles into these
commercials. Hollywood and the Networks are now starting to
learn how to leverage the net … finally.

Too many other conversations … I just wasn’t committted to blogging
it all today. It was fun to be with the group, and I look forward
to next month!

WuFoo … nice AJAX

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I’m sitting here playing with WuFoo … what a nice AJAX tool.  I was reading this great article on AJAX Prototyping,
and it linked to WuFoo.  It’s a pretty amazing example of where
applications within the browser are going.  What I started to
think of – and maybe they are already doing this – is how I can
download the final form that I create and host it on my own server?

Croquet SDK Beta v1.0 Released!

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Wow … I have been too heads down on projects lately … I missed the
release of the new Croquet SDK Beta!  I’m downloading it as I
write this … and will begin to write more about what I find.

For those who are not familiar with Croquet, it is a full blown 3d
virtual world platform being developed by an amazing team.  It is
cross-platform for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms and is able to be
networked for multiple users to interact.  If you go to the web
site, check out the FAQ, and the Screenshots … they are really worth
seeing so that you can get an idea of what is possible.

What I am currently most interested in is the state of the networking
components.  These were rough when I played with Croquet last, but
to me hold the real network effect value of the platform.  This is
where I am able to “hyperlink” between spaces, and into other
spaces.  Consider that this is the equivilent of hyperlinking
between web pages in the Web … but that I am moving from space to
space in a 3d universe where much of that universe does not exist
initially on my machine.  Oh yeah … it’s all Open Source!

I’ll blog more about my experiences … I’m also starting to learn more
about Second Life and will be comparing and contrasting my experiences.

[04/18/06]
Croquet SDK 1.0 Beta released!

The Croquet Software Developers’ Kit 1.0 Beta has been released. This
represents the first complete public release of the core Croquet technology.
Croquet is a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative
multi-user online applications. It features a network architecture that supports
communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation
among multiple users. Using Croquet, software developers can create powerful and
highly collaborative multi-user 2D and 3D applications and simulations.

Delayed Deposition

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I have had some people asking about my deposition for the SCO vs. IBM
lawsuit. Well … it was delayed. I was supposed to be
deposed in Salt Lake City on the 16th of this month, however it turned
out that SCO didn’t have enough lawyers to cover all of the depositions
going on. So I was asked to alter the date … which was fine
with me.

So my new date is this Friday … the 31st. I’ll head into Salt
Lake City first thing in the morning, and the deposition will begin at
9:00am. I had to ask some questions to learn more about this
since I have not been subpoenaed for a deposition before … by the US
Federal Courts no less.

  • Do I get paid or reimbursed for my time?
    • Nope. Nada.
  • Well … how much time to I have to provide?
    • IBM is allowed up to 7 hours of “tape time”. Crap! That’s all day!
  • Can I blog about the experience?
    • Yeah … but not about the content. Period. The judge said so.
  • Can I plead the Fifth?
    • I didn’t really ask this … but it sounded kinda cool.
  • Do I get to eat lunch?
    • Yeah … there’s a lunch break, but it’s not counted in the 7 hours above.
  • Who pays for lunch?
    • I didn’t ask, but I’m going to guess that they can’t buy me lunch either!
    • (As a side note, I think that IBM and SCO ought to fairly split the cost of my lunch so that I would be equally biased.)

Hmmm … I ownder what to wear? 🙂

Well … I’ll blog about the experience. It’s going to be interesting.

Bloggaps

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Wow … time flies. I know that I have to alter my blog writing
behavior. It seems that when I start to get busy with things. I
stop blogging until I have the time to “post it correctly.” I
want to make sure that I write it well. I really want to give
this up and just blog.

Today I started to think that I want to stop creating Blogaps, or
Bloggaps … large gaps of time between my blog posts. Ok …
time for a new word:

bloggap (blggp)

n.

  1. An interruption of continuity in blog posts: a two week bloggap left his readers in a quandry; real bloggers don’t have a bloggap of more than 12 hours.

What I realize in all of this is to just BLOG. Post it! Don’t worry if it’s good enough!