My Universal User Name

Over a decade ago I opened my bank account with a local bank. Once they went online, I was using my social security number and ATM PIN as user name and password, respectively. The idea of using SS# as user ID may seem scary now, but back them, everyone used SS# for everything. Health card number, employee number, Student ID and so on.
Over time, my local bank got sold, merged re-sold many times, and now it is part of a huge national bank. During these years, their URL changed, but I managed to keep my SS# and ATM PIN as login credentials -- until this last round. This time, I was forced to select a new user name -- something I liked.

What I did not like is this bank has a rule on how someone's user ID should look like. It has to have both upper-case and lower-case AND numbers. Now over countless websites where I have account, I always use a specific series of choices of username, and none of them have numbers in them. So the bank forced me to invent a new ID, which I knew I am going to forget -- and I did.

So what could be universal user ID ?

Email is a good choice -- everyone has one, it is unique, already personalized and come with a way of reaching the guy. LinkedIn, FaceBook etc all uses email as their ID.

A phone number could be one as well. In fact over years, mobile operators talked about owning the identity of their subscribers. Identity management is a complicated concept and I am not sure if mobile operators will get in to this. Read this article on GigaOm on good discussion on using phone number as identity.

Here is a funny advertisement on using mobile number as identity.

Anyway, going back to original topic, so what is the right universal user name ? Ideally it should be something biometric, along with a scheme to protect it from misuse. If my user name gets stolen, I can use another one, but if my fingerprint gets stolen, tricky situation. Something like a one way hash function that will generate a **new** finger print will be required. Companies like VeriSign will be needed to set up identity management service and readers will have to be ubiquitous.

Movie Ratings

On October of 2006 popular online movie rental service NetFlix launched an ongoing competition to improve its movie recommendation algorithm. Obviously the key input to any such technique will be the past movie ratings by the subscriber - something they may or may not do meticulously. I for one, use Netflix service but rarely remember to go back and rate a movie I watched. I spend my time on Netflix portal searching for new movies.

So I was thinking about that can be an effective method of getting user's movie ratings. The method that surely will work for people like me is if there is a way I can do it right at the time I am watching the movie or immediately afterwards. Even beter if I could do it using my TV remote. My DVD player already knows what movie I am watching and when it ends. So right during the end credit, if it prompts me to rate the movie I will do it using my remote (which by now should already be in my hand). Then all it takes for my DVD player to upload the rating to Netflix using my home network (such DVD player does not exist today of course, hence the post). So a bluetooth or WiFi enabled DVD player and some special software will do the trick.

Then of course there are other possibilities. My DVD player knows a lot more than just this. It knows what time I watched the movie, and how many times within a given time frame. How many times I paused during the movie and for how long (i.e. if I paused the movie during bio-break, a sign that will indicate I liked the movie and did not want to miss a scene). How many times I watched a particular scene and if I watched the extra sections of the DVD. All these data can be used to derive some degree of rating information without even asking me. Mix that in with data on what my friends like (from social networking) and you may have a killer recommendation engine for me.

Now, obviously the fun should not stop there. If I am really in to it, the DVD player will allow me to virtually "clap" when I really like a scene by pressing a key on the remote. This 'clap' data can then be used to further fine tune the movie recommendation similar to the Music Genome project (but for movies).

Once I have this connected DVD player, it should also show me the recommended movies right there and allow me to add those to my queue.

So is there a case for Netflix or BlockBuster Online to take an OEM DVD player and put all these features and sell them at a subsidized price to its subscribers ?

I certainly think so.

Call Forwarding

Recently I tried out two telecommunication services, both utilizing call forwarding in a smart way. The first one is Grand Central from Google. The second one is YouMail. Let me begin by saying that while I liked many aspects of both the services I ended up not using either of them, for two very different reasons.

The two most popular telecommunication applications from the IN (intelligent network) world are call waiting and caller Id. The common theme had always been, subscribers love it when an application brings more control to them. But the trick is to bring that control in a very simple and intuitive way, a task that is easier said than done. Both GC and YouMail does this successfully.

The Grand Central allows user to create a single 'virtual' phone number and 'map' that to multiple real phone numbers. In addition, you will get ring back tones, personalized voice mail depending on who is calling, ability to switch phone in the middle of a call and a varity of fun features. Since you have a new number seperate from your actual phone number, if you switch your real phone number, you do not have to let everyone know -- just point the GC number to your new phone number. Better yet, you can have multiple GC numbers each pointing to your same phone and use these numbers for different groups of people. Also to be noted that GC works only for inbound calls, i.e. there is no way currently to configure such that when I call my friend I can use my GC number to appear on his caller ID. This is technically possible but Google will have to integrate with network operators.

YouMail on the other hand is kind of reverse of GC. First of all YouMail is just a voicemail service that allows smart features like personalized greetings for each member on your address book or ability to check your voicemail from Web. So unlike GC, you do not get a new phone number but instead of using boring vanila voicemail box provided by your carrier, you use YouMail. This is done by configuring call forwarding so that after a certain number of rings, the call gets forwarded to YouMail. Most mobile operators will allow you to do this by pressing a certain combination of keys so that their switch will add the forwarding rules. If not, almost all of them will let you call their customer tech support line to do this.

Both GC and YouMail are free to end user. Which obvoiusly begs the question of user privacy and how and when someone will make money by giving this away.

Now as I mentioned earlier, I do not use either service any more. The reason I stopped using GC is because I started getting telemarketing calls on the GC number ! I know for sure, because when ever some one calls my GC number, both my mobile and home phone was configured to ring simulataneously. When ever that happens, I am almost certain that some one is calling my GC number. After getting several of these 'spam' calls, I dropped off my numbers from GC. Even after that, every one in a while I get telemarketers call my cell phone, something that never happened in past 10 years.

On the YouMail, I encountered a technical issue. The service was working fine, until I traveled to India on business. My GSM phone was roaming to a local network, and the forwarding rule of YouMail stopped working because of (I think) the international call forwarding failed. If some one called me, they heard "The call is being forwarded to an unrecognized number" error message. Which means they could not reach either me or my voice mail. When I found out about it, I paniced. Because I was still roaming, I could not use the key combination to 're-program' the forwarding rule. I ended up making an expensive call to T-Mobile tech support so that they can take the call forwarding rule out of their switch. After this experience, I did not put back the YouMail service. I suppose one can experiment using 011 or +1 type of forwarding rule to see if this works outside of the US -- I did not play with it any more.

Digital Art Collection

I sometimes wonder if there will ever be a market for digital arts. I am not talking about cool PhotoShop images, but real serious digital art that real art collectors will pay top dollars.

Let me confess - I do not collect paintings, sculptures or any other type of arts. But I know few people who does -- and what they tell me, it can be one of the most lucrative form of investment (albeit a lot risker than an index fund) and while you are waiting for your collection to grow in its value, it will look nice on that drawing room wall.

When I think about it, the value of art in ones mind (besides obvious intrinsic value of the human creativity and skills) can be a combination of -- (a) its commercial value, more if the artist is well known and the art is an original work with some significance. (b) Its aesthetic value, more so for private collectors and (c) bragging rights of owning something that is unique. The uniqueness of art will also directly impact its commercial value.

In digital art, i.e. computer generated art, where a real artist creates some type of art, be it a picture or a 360 degree virtual sculpture in Flash or even a complete virtual reality scene, can clearly have great deal of aesthetic value. After all, that comes more from artist's creativity, not from the medium of expression. But digital artifacts can be copied any number of times, taking away the uniqueness aspect -- thereby making the value to a minimal very quickly.

But what if we can solve that problem ? No, I am not taking about DRM or copy protection -- we all know that usually does not work. But what if, the location itself of the art in the cyberspace is certified, making that art only available to one owner. Then, conceivably the demand and supply rule will bring the price. The idea I am talking about it, collector's virtual homes -- which could be FaceBook or similar social networking sites, will pull in the digital art securely from the artist's certified published art gallery and display it on the collector's profile.

Think about it. Virtual walls of my virtual home[page] will be decorated by the digital painting from that budding new artist from Canada. Even if some one copies the image and puts it on their home page, everyone knows that is a copy, because mine is coming from the certified location. Better yet, all my friends are right there to see it !

A very early form of this type of digital art market is already evolving. Today several FaceBook applications allow you to purchase limited number of 'gifts' (which are small icons or pictures) for a friend -- which then will then be shown on your friends profile. But these are by no means 'collectibles' yet. For one, these are mostly simple images or photos. But once the marketplace is defined, young artist will surely pick up the new media of generating fascinating creativity that exists on canvas and oil.

How to read your email

Everyone knows that Google's GMail service offers one of the best web emails funded by context based advertisement. Which means, when you read your mail, Google reads it too, and put banner ads to the side that might be of interest to you.

Now, like everyone else, I used to pay little or no attention until one day something interesting happens.

Usually, the banner shows advertisements that you will expect - like, cheap tickets to Delhi when the email mentions India or job postings when you are reading the mail from a head hunter. But, this time, I was reading a mail from my friend, who wrote the mail in Bengali language (a language spoken in Bangadesh and some parts of eastern India) using english transliteration. The advertisements were about cheap tickets to Dhaka, Bangadesh and Bengali DVDs !

Wow ! It seems Google has a database of texts from various transliteration words (note that the way you spell these words are not standard) and they can identify the language from it. So I decided to some some quick experiments to try to figure out what else they can do. Following are some interesting observations.

They mix in adverts on past searches with mails that do not generate much other ads. Like I searched on Disney Resorts few days back, and when I am reading a auto-generated mail from by bank, Disney deals show up. A mail that mentioned pot-luck generated recipe links. Mails from my friends in India always generate cheap call to India ads. A mail that some one mentioned he is up until 2 AM generated mattress ads !

Of course there are examples where Google was not too relevant. But in most cases, they do a great job.