false precision

Hmm, Clear data story not so Clear

2009-06-26T14:31:30-06:00

I was a happy Clear customer up until the service went away, quickly earlier this week.

I'm not a super paranoid personal data protector but I have been interested in how Clear, or rather Verified Identity Pass, was intending to handle the personal data they kept on Clear travelers. Today I got an email that covered several questions including the "What about the personal data" question.

Will personally identifiable information be sold?

The personally identifiable information that customers provided to Clear may not be used for any purpose other than a Registered Traveler program operated by a Transportation Security Administration authorized service provider. Any new service provider would need to maintain personally identifiable information in accordance with the Transportation Security Administration's privacy and security requirements for Registered Traveler programs. If the information is not used for a Registered Traveler program, it will be deleted.

I think they just said "Yes". Not sure I like the look of that. What exactly is the definition of a "Registered Traveler Program?". Seems like a fairly broad statement that can include uses that I am not in favor of. This does not make me feel better.

How is Clear securing any information at the airports?

Each hard disk at the airport, including the enrollment and verification kiosks, has now been wiped clean of all data and software. The triple wipe process we used automatically and completely overwrites the contents of the entire disk, including the operating system, the data and the file structure. This process also prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

When I read this question I thought to myself, "This shouldn't be a big deal". The reason I thought that is in today's connected world it would seem to me that they would not keep personal information on Kiosks. After all they are a security based value proposition. If one of their members was on a no-fly-list wasn't it their value proposition that they would stop that? I would think they would need constant communication with "something" to keep that from happening. Why would they need anything stored on the kiosk hard disk that is personally identifiable? This again, does not make me feel better.

Who is monitoring this process?

Clear is communicating with TSA, airport and airline sponsors, and subcontractors, to ensure that the security of the information and systems is maintained throughout the closure process. Clear thanks these partners for their continuing cooperation and diligence.

Ok, so Clear is "communicating" with them. What does that mean. This does not seem to be a "monitoring process" so much as a reporting process to people who have little control over the issue at hand. This does not make me feel better.

How can I contact Clear?

Please visit our website, www.flyclear.com, for the latest updates. Clear's call center and customer support email service are no longer available.

I think that means you can't. Again, probably nothing comes of any of this and everyone's data is protected. I think this is an interesting case for working with startups that maintain a high degree of personal data. If not handled right Clear could become a text example of how not to do this kind of thing.

Help me login

2009-06-16T17:24:31-06:00

This may already exist, and if it does someone tell me.

I have been traveling a lot lately and I connect to a lot of different WiFi hotspots via http authentication. It's a pain because a lot of times they are same hotspots. Often, TMobile but a variety of others as well, some free, some not.

Why do I have to do the login stuff every time? Does anyone make a .NET app or browser plug-in that just sits there and notices that I attached to a known hotspot and then just registers the credential via a http POST behind the scenes for me?

I noticed what a pain this is when I started using my Verizon MiFi adaptor which of course "just connects". It seems small and simple but it would be really helpful.

Filtrbox delivers real-time alerts

2009-05-28T14:40:07-06:00

I got an email from Ari this morning that Filtrbox added real-time alerting to their service. I dogged them a while back because I thought it was the killer feature they were missing.

I turned it on a little while ago and so far it seems to right on top of things! (3 emails so far with about 15 Lijit Alerts) I'm looking forward to trying it out as Google Alerts have become pretty annoying and not much use to me. I'll report more later but wanted to give them a shout out for getting this going and listening to their users!

Jonathan Schwartz has lost his fucking mind

2009-05-20T23:16:33-06:00

Wow.. A couple weeks ago I wrote about the toolbar distribution deal where the Java update jacks toolbar's into people browsers, BY DEFAULT essentially acting as a virus on your windows desktop.

Frankly, if I were Sun I would find the entire thing embarrassing. In that post I grapple with the entire notion that it can't be that profitable compared with other Sun business units. Why would Sun associate themselves with this kind of nefarious behavior? Come on now, it is totally deceiving.

Well, I was wrong. Really wrong. Apparently it's so profitable, that it's becoming a new product to be announced at JavaOne. It's the JavaStore (most likely), and Jonathan describes it in his podcast today. As a friend of mine used to say, you know it's true because you just can't make that that shit up.

So, it's come down to this. The huge value unlocked by millions of hours of software development, blood sweat and tears and the greatest intellectual software minds is…

A Trojan horse. Sun, you nailed it. I can't believe I'm saying this, Oracle – stop the madness. WTF.

I just don’t always care

2009-05-12T21:39:19-06:00

Years ago as the CTO of Raindance, I reluctantly, along with the rest of the management team underwent assessments by an industrial psychologist. This is not uncommon among larger companies and one of our major investors was all about it to determine how compatible the management team was with each other. Special note: if you're doing one of these, you probably aren't compatible as a management team J

The result of that assessment was a report that each executive was given. It's about 20 pages of stuff about your psyche. I tested mine by giving it to Lura to read. She, laughed and said, "Yeah, that's dead on". While I take exception with parts of it, I too believe it's a fair assessment of my likely behavior and motivations - at least in a business scenario. My take away is a sentence in the report that both makes me laugh and bums me out. "Todd has a unique ability to understand everyone's position around the table, he just doesn't always care". I guess I translate this to the ability to empathize just not always sympathize.

I got news this week about a friend that I have known for a long time and some career changes ahead for him. Strangely (for me) it really rocked me. Not because of the change, these changes happen all the time, but rather the way it kept entering my mind. I have a weird corner of my psyche that I don't think the assessment found. I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to people with an enduring work ethic. I have a fundamental belief that if you work hard, good things will happen. Of course, it's hard to boil things down to that, we all know someone who puts in the hours but for one reason or another, the magic just isn't there. I can't and don't have the perspective to make an assessment of circumstances, but I do know that person has always been a huge supporter to me and a great resource.

At the end of the day, Stuff happens to Good people. Something else I have picked up in my life, every time I thought I was faced with a setback – I was way better off 3 years later. I have a feeling this is one of those situations for my friend.

What happens at Driving Schools?

2009-05-08T19:34:15-06:00

A couple weeks ago I went to the Lotus Stage II driving school in Pahrump Nevada at the Spring Mountain Raceway. This school built upon the first Lotus school I did a year earlier. As I look back on both, I have to say they are excellent and I highly recommend them to anyone that wants to learn the hidden dynamics of how cars perform at high speed and how to harness that behavior like a racecar driver would.

This lotus school dealt with learning how to effectively use brake enduced over steer to rotate the car faster in turns without bleeding off too much speed.

Huh? What does all that mean?

If you learned to drive a car like everyone else, you learned how to "drive" the car, but you didn't learn the dynamics of the car. If you have been driving for while you have experienced the dynamics of the car – probably at inopportune times, probably when you did something wrong or the weather was bad.

Two important dynamics of car behavior are over steer and under steer.

If you have ever driven a rear wheel car in the snow and hit the gas kicking the rear end out, that's over steer. Over steer also happens at high speed in a corner when you suddenly lift off the gas pedal shifting weight from the rear drive wheels to the front wheels. Lift on the gas after going into a corner too fast and you'll get a 360 degree view of the racetrack! Brake hard after entering a corner fast, spin out even faster.

The other common dynamic you have likely experienced is under steer. Basically all street cars are built with a bias to under steer. This is because peoples nature reaction to under steer is to slow down which corrects the problem. Car manufactures want your brain to save you. You may have experienced under steer in your every day driving when you were messing around and tried to take a corner faster than you should of. You come into the corner fast and turn the wheel but the car kind of plows the front wheel forward even though you have them turned (like when you're on snow). This happens because you are on the gas and have most of the vehicle weight over the rear wheels making the front wheels light reducing friction and pushing the front end out.

While these examples of vehicle dynamics that can get you in trouble, some of these dynamics you can use to your advantage. I don't mean the awesome power slides you see on TopGear but rather the more subtle, but equally amazing way you can coerce the car into invisibly rotating in a high speed corner to carry amazing speed, through the corner. You can feel it when you're in the car, but you can't see it outside the car.

This brings me to the punch line. A lot people I talk to say they would be interested in attending a driving school but the just don't have a proper car for it. The fact is, you can bring any car (probably not a Van) to the BMW driving school twice a year in Pueblo and have a total blast and learn a lot. It's all about going fast, but not about racing. The fact is the less tuned the car is the more you can feel the dynamics and the more you learn.

I strongly encourage anyone who hasn't taken part in driving schools to try it. I plan to bring both my daughters at the appropriate time to learn how their cars behave when they find themselves out of the vanilla pudding envelope of everyday driving, be it because they intended to or not.

For fun, here is a video of a lap at Spring Mountain during the Stage II School. I took the video on my blackberry during an instructor lap!

Come to Puttin on the Leash 2009

2009-04-17T09:09:15-06:00

Saturday, April 25^th at 6pm is the 2009 - Puttin On The Leash Event to benefit the Humane Society of Boulder Valley. The event is located at the Coors Event Center on the CU Boulder Campus. Our goal for the event is to raise $300K for the programs and services that are provided straight back into the Boulder County Communities.

As some of you know I joined the board of the Humane Society of Boulder Valley a little over a year ago and have been lucky to see firsthand all the good work this group does year in and year out.

In 1904 the Humane Society of Boulder Valley was founded to protect those who did not have a voice to protect themselves. Each year this mission is supported as they counter animal neglect and cruelty and literally save the lives of thousands of animals.

The Humane Society of Boulder Valley is a private, nonprofit organization that relies on donations from generous supporters. The HSBV is not operated or funded by any national humane groups or governmental agencies and must rely on contributions to bring its services to Boulder and surrounding communities.

Here are some interesting Fun Facts about the HSBV.

The HSBV serves 8,000 animals annually.
The HSBV facilitates 5,300 adoptions annually.
40% of the animals who come through the front doors of the HSBV need some type of medical attention through the shelter medicine program.
150 Dogs received behavioral modification training last year, from food guarding to separation anxiety.
Average length of stay for dogs is 4 days, for cats 10, these are outstanding statistics!
Some of the services the HSBV provides include, Adoptions, lost and found, Veterinary Clinic, Behavior and Training Center, Humane Education, Pet Retail Supplies...
The HSBV Live Release Rate, representing the percentage of animals who come through the door and are reunited with their guardians or placed with a new family is 89% - this is among the highest in the nation.

If you have never been to this event before, it's a really fun way to spend an evening in Boulder. Its basically a huge cocktail party with foods from 20 different restaurants in Boulder and over 600 silent auction items made up of goods and services all donated from local businesses and individuals. As you walk around the party, there are tons of Adoption Center dogs cruising the event (all of which ending up with multiple new families offers before the end of the evening).

At the end of the evening there is a live auction with an amazing list of stuff this year.

Dress is casual, although there will be people in Tuxes and others in space suits, its Boulder – it's all GOOD!

As you can tell I am very passionate about this cause, and generally speaking this is the Vernon families' major charity effort each year! My personal feeling is that this is a critical fundraising year because of the economy. If you have never been to this event and would like to go, shoot me an email – or tweet me @toddvernon and I will hook you up with a homeboy deal virtually guaranteeing you have a blast, and have enough money in your pocket to bid on some of the great silent auction items.

If you can't make it to the event this year, let me know and I would be ecstatic to pass along any donation that you could make!

Hope to see you there!

Jihad against toolbar, enablers

2009-04-15T13:07:47-06:00

Anyone who has ever had to help their parents with their computers knows that their parents' web browsers have about 20 toolbars installed. All turned on, and none of them ever requested. These get installed when companies engage in poor judgment and install unrequested software into the browser of unknowing people when their unrelated product is installed on the computer.

In the example below, each subsequent installation of the Java Virtual Machine installs the Yahoo Toolbar by default. My parents don't know what the Yahoo toolbar is. They don't want the Yahoo Toolbar but they do trust Sun Microsystems.

When someone like Sun does this deal do they think about it this way? Or do they think about it in terms of $.01 an install?

I actually don't blame Yahoo at all for this. I will say they quite possibly have the most active business development guy on the planet however putting these deals together.

I do blame Sun however. Why would they ever do this deal? Why would they piss off their customers with this? Why would they do this for a revenue stream that surely cannot amount to anything significant for them?

This behavior really makes me mad, and tarnishes Sun Microsystems brand in my eyes. Not because of the Yahoo offer, but because by default it takes advantage of peoples ignorance of what is happening.

Java on the desktop – Accept, Decline or Irrelevant?

2009-04-15T11:18:08-06:00

todd vernon

Brad Feld - Entrepreneurial Lifetime Achievement Award

2009-04-15T11:03:44-06:00

Last night I was lucky enough to introducing Brad Feld at the Silicon Flatirons Mashup Event. Brad was being honored with an Entrepreneurial Lifetime Achievement Award. It was a lot of fun to go to the event and the video that Jason his partner put together was awesome.

Brad Feld - Lifetime Entreprenurial Achievement award video from Kendall Media Group on Vimeo.

At first I thought the concept of giving Brad a Lifetime Achievement Award was a little weird, for a couple reasons.

First, Brad is in his 40's and I no longer consider that old J Second, Entrepreneurial Lifetime Achievement doesn't really fit Brad in my mind. My experience is that entrepreneurs tend to be exceedingly good at making themselves successful but that doesn't always translate to those around them. Undeniably, Brad is by all measures a very successful Entrepreneur, but more importantly he is an amazing catalyst in the community helping make others successful. I think that will ultimately be the Brad Feld legacy (many years from now when he's old).

I think he should have been awarded the Entrepreneurial Lifetime Achievement Catalyst Award.

In my experience, regardless if Brad has a direct investment in your company, he will engage and help in any way he can. If what you do doesn't "fit" what he knows, he will tell you – but if he does have experience with regard to your situation, getting his perspective is always useful.

Congratulations Brad!