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.