Then I went to get an purchase an app. Suddenly I was unable to purchase any apps. The error message indicated I couldn’t purchase any apps in the my region. My region? What does that mean? I was in Florida, are apps illegal in Florida? After searching for and finding the Amazon customer service contact I sent off an email asking what was going on. Amazon responded that I was unable to purchase apps with a credit card from a Canadian bank and billing address. Basically because I was a Canadian in the US I couldn’t purchase applications for the Kindle Fire. The Kindle was returned the next day.

Apple and iTunes have done something similar for years where you can’t purchase from the US iTunes without a US billing address. The easy solution to this problem is to use the iTunes gift cards exclusively with a fake address ( preferably in a state with no sales tax ). With the launch of iCloud and iTunes Music Match though the company has changed its policy to require a US credit card and matching US billing address to be added to the account.

Donations

Wikileaks recently had problems collecting donations via credit card and Paypal froze its funds, limiting it’s ability to fundraise online. The ban has been so sever the only option to donate is the BitCoins system or to purchase virtual goods.  The BitCoin system has limited support and but may offer the best alternative to avoid the Paywall.

Regretsy has recently encountered problems with Paypal and their donation support. The company seems to allow you to use and collect donations but then freezes the funds. The confusion with the Paypal donation process is outlined in great detail by The Green Geeks.

The Paywall is effectively controlling donations and deciding who can fundraise online.   I’m sure this policy is need for some legitimate cases to prevent terrorist funding etc… but these are US companies that enforcing these policies largely without government direction or oversite.

Like the Great Chinese Firewall, the Paywall is proving to be a fairly effective means to control online purchases. Its surprisingly difficult to make purchases that do not involve your bank, credit card or Paypal.  The best system to get around the Paywall seems to be BitCoin.  The BitCoin system uses encrypted coins can only one person can ‘own’ through cryptology.  BitCoin includes an exchange and a defined Coin generation process.  This process means that once you own a BitCoin it can be transfered or exchange to anyone.  Eventually BitCoin’s must be converted by to real currency, this is where the Paywall may still be effective and few conversion points exist today.

The goal behind these Paywalls seems to be to create online economies of different scales.  For example an iPhone Application that sells for $0.99 in the US might sell for $1.19 in Australia or $1.49 in Europe.  This allows Apple and the application vendors to receive significantly more revenue for the same content from international customer.   The DVD system attempted the same with the DVD region codes a few years ago  but the system was quickly cracked and different pricing regions were never fully exploited.  The digital stores have so far been fairly effective at enforcing these restrictions, largely because they can heavily control the follow of money.

While physically in the US I can purchase just about anything at US retailers using my Canadian credit card and billing address.  As soon as the transaction goes online the Paywall comes into effect and my purchases can be restricted.  A very interesting development given the state of the US economy and the need to consumer spending…

Purolator

Purolator doesn’t leave a door hanger or and indicator that they’ve visited. Even if there is money owing or its the final shipment. Apparently this is a security feature to prevent someone from paying the duty/handling charges and stealing my shipment. They will attempt to call you if they have a phone number ( often they don’t ) or you have to use your mystic skills and call them when you think your package is due. The only pickup depot for Toronto is actually in Etobicoke. Once your pay any duty or COD charges the package is sent the next day. By far the worst experience…

DHL

DHL has decided to partner with Loomis in Canada for local delivery. The DHL number 1-800 number brilliantly says to call Loomis in Canada and then hangs up. Calling Loomis you are immediately told that DHL handles shipment from international destinations and you need to call them. If you’re lucky you can convince the Loomis rep to transfer you to the DHL otherwise its best to call the DHL US number via Skype and get transfered to DHL Canada. Once you pay the Duty or COD charges the DHL can contact the driver wirelessly and tell them to just drop off the package. This often doesn’t work though and the package will not be delivered until the next day. I wasn’t able to figure if my package would be a Loomis or DHL depot in Toronto, probably not aware near downtown.

UPS

UPS borrows from DHL with a single 1-800 that works in Canada and US but seems to transfer you to the US when the Canadian reps are busy. The US reps seem unaware/able to handle US packages. This means you have to keep dialling and hoping that a Canadian rep answers. The single UPS pickup depot is located up by York University, easily an hour trip on Transit or Car to get my package. And again once you pay the Duty/COD charges UPS can notify the drive but the connection process doesn’t seem very reliable and most of the time the package will be delivered the next day.

USPS/Canada Post

By far the best experience so far. If there is no duty due the package is dropped off without issue. If there is duty due then its a short walk to the Post Office, where I can pay the fees and walk home with my package. Canada Post has offices throughout Toronto and by far the easiest solution to deal with. If I were Canada Post I would make a stronger emphasis of their shipping benefits.

So I will be using USPS or Canada Post where ever possible. Its not an option with most online stores though and I would image that cost and easy of shipment these choices.

In my ideal world I’d love to be able to receive email notifications on shipments and pay duty/cod charges online. I’m really surprise that none of these services offer this yet…

When Ascentum, my employer decide to use Dropbox too initially it was all good and we just shared files between users. Eventually we started running out of space with different users who only had the free account or small paid accounts. I also noticed that my work files were taking up space in my 100GB personal account quota. So we decide to subscribe to Dropbox Teams, which gives us more storage across all users. The system is priced at $750/year for the first 5 users and $125/year for each user after that and includes 1000GB and 200GB per additional user.

There are few problems with Dropbox team though. First many of our employees had Dropbox accounts, often with their personal email address and now we were inviting them to Dropbox team with their business email. The Dropbox app doesn’t provide the ability to switch accounts easily or allow personal and team logins. So we had to either add users with their personal email addresses or un-authenticate their computers and setup dropbox again with their new account. This also means re-inviting the new user to all the shared folders the old user used. And the employee would almost completely loose access to their personal dropbox account.

For employees with paid Dropbox accounts the process was even more difficult. If we added them using their personal account Dropbox would close their personal account and refund their balance to Ascentum. Yes, Ascentum, their employer and not the individual who paid for the account. This means that Ascentum would need to figure out how to re-emburse employees for their Dropbox balance. No email or billing detailing this transfer could be found, making the reconciliation very challenging.

After a few months of using the service a team member left the company and we need to figure out how to transfer the files they share. If they are not the “Owner” of the share folder its fairly trivial to remove the user with no impact. If they are the owner of the share folder it becomes very complicated because they may have shared folders with any of the other employees. There is no universal view of shared folders across the team. And Dropbox provides no ability to transfer shared folder ownership between users. Instead we need to open a support ticket for each folder we discovered and wanted transfer. It appears that removing the user complete will erase shared folders they own.

We’ve also had some weird folder sync issues between users where we can’t seem to give users shared permission. The only solution seems to be to create a new folder and copy the old content into that folder.

And lastly the Dropbox client features an option to sync over the LAN. This feature seems to enable on Wifi too and without bandwidth limitations can quickly consume most of the WiFi bandwidth. We found this feature to be particularly problematic with employees that recently return to the office and receive a bunch of Dropbox updates immediately from the other LAN clients.

Photo via David Crow

Last night was Democamp 28 at Ryerson University.  It was my first time attending a Democamp there and the venue was a theater format with the crowd very separate from the presenter.  This is great for viewing the presentation but it made for a less interactive Democamp.  As a result there was very little heckling or crowd interaction…

The evening opened with a presentation by Mark Ruddock, which seemed to be a bit of a rehash of his StartupWeekend presentation last year.  You can get the idea here if you do a search/replace of “VC” with “Startup” from his presentation here.  The most insightful content was during the QA afterward, that’s really where you got the impression that Mark has a lot of experience developing startups.   I particularly liked hearing how he grew Viigo using co-branded partnerships.

After a short pause the first demo was Kipu, which I think I first saw about a year ago.  Kipu provides the ability to track time in an interface very similar to Google Calendar.   Activities are very well tracked and totaled with nice colour codes.  I couldn’t help feel that this product should really be a feature of a product like Freshbooks.  Freshbooks already has a basic time tracking capability which can be directly connected with invoicing.

Rocketr was the next demo which provides the ability to aggregate short notes together among group members.   It felt a lot like Google Wave with a much simpler interface and Twitter integration.  The iPhone app looked interesting but I couldn’t see a firm advantage over just using Twitter with hash tags.

Attachments.me provides the ability to organize all your email attachments and as a long time Gmail user I think it addresses a definite need.  I’m often searching through my Gmail looking for a particular file attachment and I think email has been the default archive for many users ( YPG and its 150MB mailbox limit aside ).  I do think they will have serious scalability issues and ultimately this product should really be a feature of your mail client.  Gmail or even Outlook would be well served by providing a better attachment view.

Green Owl Mobile seems to provide mobile traffic reporting but the demo was a little disjointed.  I couldn’t see a definite advantage over Google Maps with the Traffic analysis feature.  When asked the only answer offered was that the Green Owl Mobile provides the ability for users to call-in traffic conditions via voicemail.  This seems largely irrelevant with aggregated traffic information coming from the speed of people traveling with cellular phones.

Trendspottr provides the ability to search and detect trends across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.  This seemed to be an expanded version of the Twitter “Now Trending” functionality across multiple services.   Seems like an interesting idea and by aggregating content from multiple sites they should be in a good position to catch trends quickly.

TubeMote was the last demo and maybe the most confusing.  From what I understood it provides the ability to view synchronized videos from Youtube across multiple sources.  You can control what is played and hence the “remote” aspect of the product.  Videos can then be embedded inside websites,or viewed on mobile devices and kept in sync while multiple people watch.  I’m not certain the utility of this as I think the advantage of digital media for most users is the ability to watch on demand on your own time.

Overall a pretty good line-up of demos and apparently there were 22 applicants to demo this time.  Its awesome to see so much activity in the start up scene.  David Crow has issued the challenge for the next Democamp to feature all female presenters/founders.   The other common theme was that most companies are hiring and very few developers are looking for work.  If your thinking about learning to code it seems like a great time…

“The fault lies not in our ties, but in our selves. In my opinion, RIM’s real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it’ll drift into in a situation where it can’t afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It’s very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it.”

Anyone interested in Product Management should read the whole article here.

I thought the most interesting aspect of the article was the focus on the Product Management as the solution.  Specific Mike’s 2 recommendations:

“To keep a platform viable, you need to focus on two tasks: Keep the customer base loyal, and add adjacent product categories.”

Very simple advice and focus that many Product Managers forget and Mike follows it up with more strategies for each.

Overall one of the best articles I’ve seen on RIM and excellent reminder of the importance of Product Management.

Hello Colin,

Thank you for your reply.

We understand your concern regarding your Skype account. We know the importance of getting this resolved the soonest time possible and we are more than willing to help you.

Upon checking our records, your account has been flagged for verification. Please be reminded that we do this verification process to maintain online security for all our customers and protect everyone from fraud which also indicated that you had carried out actions which are not allowed under Skype’s Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately we are unable to explain the specific reason for restricting your account.

However, we have now lifted the restriction, so you should be able to sign in again. Please note that if our systems detect further problems with your account then you will be unable to use your account again.

We hope this has clarified your issue. Should you need any further assistance or have additional questions please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Best regards,

Jolly
Skype Customer Service

I’m not really sure what triggered this request for verification or if did actually verify successfully. Suddenly after 3 days of suspension my account is now active again.

I use Skype alot for business and now as my 2nd phone line at home. I even pay a Skype subscription with unlimited calling in Canada & the US. With Bell or Rogers in Canada there are terms of service guarantees but its very clear that when using Skype your really are mercy…

The changes are mostly minor with Facbeook but the most note-able visual change being the replacement of Facebook Tabs with a small menu on the Left Nav.  The menu includes all the pre-defined Facebook components including Wall, Info, Photos, Notes and Posts.  There is no option to add other menu items or areas.

A “jumble” of personal information is now included at the top of the below the user name, its not overly well formatted and the order seems to be clear.   The jumble seems to default to current job & employer, most recent education, current location, relationship status and partner,  home down, birthday.  I’ve also seen the Jumble show language(s) spoken so it might be related to the most recent changes to your profile.

The top of the profile now includes a 5 photo banner with your most recent tagged photos.  Photos can easily be removed/hidden from this banner section.

The Facebook profile data has also been updated to allow users to interests and activities from pre-defined Facebook Pages.  For example selecting “Rowing” or “Swimming” defaults to Facebook Page for these activities.  One small change is that you can select “with who” for many sports and activities.  This adds a nice social component to these pages but its not clear how to user these community pages effectively.

The other major change is the addition of spoken language to your Facebook profile.  As someone who speaks a little French and even less Japanese it fun to enable these as languages and notice how my Facebook advertising experience changed almost immediately.  You can even see a “Japanese ad” on my profile snap shot.

The new profile clearly has some interesting new features but its also very focused on getting users to self-select their own interests with the hope that this will provide better advertising targeting.  These advertising units are controlled exclusively by Facebook.  There is NO ability for third-party Facebook applications or Facebook Pages to create with a user’s profile pages.  Gone are Profile Boxes, Boxes Tab and Application Tabs.

The main focus of the guideline seems to be around focusing promotional activities on Facebook Applications and not core Facebook functionality.   In order to enter or qualify for a Facebook Promotion an application should be used either on the Canvas Page or a Facebook Page tab.   It’s prohibited for Facebook Promotions to use status updates, commenting on a wall or photo uploads as a method for entering the promotion.  This is very similar to the Facebook Policy against incentivized action for Facebook Applications.  The goal of both theses policies is to prevent companies from encouraging users to spam their friends.

Under the new rules promotions that involve photos will need to handle photo upload and management in a Facebook Application.  In most cases this is how most promotions handled photos anyways.  For example the Pepsi WorldCup Application “Paint Your Facebook”, copied your Facebook picture into a external application and applied your team colours.  The photo was then available for the user to download and manually upload a new Facebook picture.

The other major impact of the new rules are Quiz type contests where a Facebook Page will pose a Quiz Question on their wall and get user’s to response with the correct answer in the comments.  Under the new rules users should be directed with a link to a Facebook Application where they can respond.

While the new rules are disruptive, Facebook Promotions are still a great way to develop a long term engagement with users. After a user “Likes” a Facebook Page it allows the Page owner to maintain a relationship with that user. Posts and photos can appear in the user’s newsfeed and the Page can issue updates to the user. Facebook Promotions are still a key component to a Facebook Marketing campaign.

In the past most Facebook Applications involved considerable development. That’s no longer the case with several premade applications being offered, especially for Facebook Promotions. I’ll be providing a review of pre-built Facebook Promotion applications shortly.   Please send me any feedback you have on contest/promotion applications you’ve used.