Here’s how it works: the job seeker is offered a position as a “mystery shopper.” They are told to go to a store, purchase a few small items, and fill out a questionnaire to evaluate their experience with the store staff.

The scammer sends a check in advance for much more than the amount of the purchased items. The shopper is instructed to deposit the check into their account, then deduct the cost of the purchased items and the mystery shopping fee and wire the remainder back to the scammer.

The scammers may even suggest that you wait until the check clears before wiring them the money. Kathy Kristof of CBS MoneyWatch writes:

U.S. banking laws demand that the bank give you access to your funds within 5 days. That gives most consumers the mistaken impression that the check has cleared. It hasn’t. If it’s a forgery, it can take weeks – even months – to determine that it’s a fake.

In the same article Kristof writes:

A recent survey by Consumer Federation of America found that one in every three Americans has been approached by someone peddling a fake check. About 2% of those people bite and end up losing between $3,000 and $4,000 on the con.

The good news for Zenbe users is that most of these scam emails are caught by our spam filters and you probably never see them. But if you get one of these emails it’s helpful to understand how these scams work. Go take the fraud test at fakechecks.org to how susceptible you are.

Also beware of any work-at-home offer that purports to send you a “welcome kit” or solicits an initiation fee, particularly if they ask you to wire the money.

To learn more about email scams in-depth, take a look at the Advance-fee fraud topic on Wikipedia.

Shareflow is based on a simple idea: take a conversation with a specific audience, and treat it like a living, breathing thing.  Conversations are alive.  They are born. They persist. They die. Conversations can be about anything. They happen at different speeds, and they can happen anywhere.

We thought Google Wave had the same idea. Boy, were we wrong.

Google Wave is fun to play with. Its nifty. The protocols are cool. Developers love to play with it. So do I.

Is Google Wave going to help your team work better together? No way!

Do you really want to replay a wave to figure out who said what when?

Should everyone in my conversation be able to edit everything all the time?

There are already numerous public Waves talking about how not to use Wave.

Online messaging, the important parts, are often focused on information creation. This has natural steps or cycles, neither of which is supported  by Wave.

Lets talk about information creation. It’s not important whether its the new artwork for the annual report, the sales forecast, or a new software library.

We start when someone takes a stab at creating a version.  Then its discussed, then one or many take another stab. Repeat as necessary. When the audience agrees no more tries are needed, we are done. Perhaps the information is passed to a different audience, and things start all over again.  There is a shared understanding of what constitutes a “try” or what “done” means.

Google Wave rips apart what a “try” is, or what “done” could mean.  Its refreshing. Its creative. Its just not helpful.

I have worked in meetings where 5 or 20 people try to draft a document together. Its always horrible, and never successful. The coffee runs out. Just as well, its bad coffee. The meetings end with a few people being selected to create the next draft. Lawyers are driven to work this way. Its an ingenious way to increase billable hours.

Wave reminds me of those meetings.  Even worse, Wave treats a conversation like a bunch of people talking at the same time. If you want to understand what was said, you have to listen to the recording. This is not how people want to work together.

People want more structure than that. They need a beginning, the middle part, and sometimes, an end.

I wax poetic.  If you want a more concrete description of why Wave doesn’t add much yet, just read this.

We all agree email is awful.  Google Wave may get there.   Happy Google is innovating on the problem.  They just need to stop being cool for cool’s sake, and think about how the rest of us think.

Why is the API in beta?

• We’re still working on documenting the actual wire protocol for the API.
• We want your feedback on more useful features to add.

Getting started

Head over to Zenbe’s Github page and grab Will’s flareshow library for Ruby or my pyshareflow library for Python. These libraries will allow you to start scripting Shareflow operations like:

• Adding and editing flows and posts
• Uploading files
• Inviting users
• Searching

A few tips

We recommend using the API against a non-critical account before going nuts with it on your critical data. You can always sign up for a free Shareflow account to test with.

If you find an issue with one of the libraries, please use Github’s Issue Tracker (click the ‘Issues’ tab) to report it.

Some Inspiration

Need an example? Check out our script for posting Google Docs to Shareflow.

Let us know how you’re using the API. If you create something cool and useful to the Shareflow community we’ll hook you up with a Shareflow Plus account (a $40/month value) for free!

Shareflow Desktop is a great way to get files from your desktop into Shareflow, where your group can access them easily.  All you have to do is drag the files you want to share into the Shareflow Desktop window, select the flow to upload them to from the drop-down list, and click ‘post’.  It’s that easy to start sharing files on Shareflow.

Shareflow Desktop makes it even easier to keep up with all your important communication on Shareflow by providing ‘always-on’ notifications even when you don’t have your web browser open.  You can use the “recent activity” tab to peruse a listing of the most recent posts comments and files in Shareflow.  Since these updates are downloaded to your computer you can view them even when you don’t have an internet connection.

When another user posts in one of your flows, Shareflow Desktop will alert you to the new post with an orange indicator on the recent activity tab.

You can choose to add additional notifications like playing a sound or animating the Shareflow Desktop icon when updates arrive.  All of this is available in the settings panel.  Just click on the options icon to set your preferred notifications.

Shareflow Desktop collapses down to a small form-factor so you can leave it running and it won’t get in the way of your other applications.  You can still drag in files and view notifications while the application is collapsed.

We built Shareflow Desktop with the cross platform Adobe Air Runtime, which means you can use it on Windows, Mac, or Linux.  A one click installer will guide you through the simple installation process.

Check us out on the Adobe Air Marketplace or the Shareflow Desktop homepage to download your copy today.

Thanks again for using Shareflow and keep the feedback coming.  We’re listening!

The good news is we’re putting the finishing touches on the API. We’ll be posting details on this blog within the next two weeks so watch this space!

We’ve also received a lot of requests for real-time notifications in Shareflow when you’re not logged into the web site. We already provide RSS feeds of your Shareflow activity, but we’re working on three new features to help keep you up-to-date:

1. An unobtrusive desktop application (written in Adobe Air so it will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux) that notifies you whenever there is new activity in flows you are a member of. The desktop app will also allow you to drag-n-drop files from your computer to easily upload to Shareflow.
2. The ability to email a Shareflow post to any member of the flow. Currently all of your teammates can receive a daily digest of Shareflow activity, but sometimes you want to be extra-sure they read one of your posts if they don’t check Shareflow that often.
3. Real-time email notifications: Several people want to receive an email any time anything happens on Shareflow. We’re working on a system to support this.

All of these features are designed to help you and your team get the most out of Shareflow.

In case you missed our previous announcement, check out Shareflow’s new search capabilities.

We want to hear more about what you think of Shareflow.  To give you and your colleagues a little extra incentive, we are having a contest!  Original, huh?

Twitter your thoughts and experiences on Shareflow, we will pick our two favorite tweets, and each winner will receive TWO tickets each  for CRUE FEST 2!!!!!

That’s right! Two creative, thought-provoking Shareflow fans will win  a total of four tickets for the  18 August performance  at PNC Bank Arts Center in NJ.  Read all about this inspiring show at www.cruefest2.com.

Details: Put  the phrase “#getshareflow” in your tweet before 5 pm EDT  next Thursday, 13 August.  We will contact the winners on twitter Thursday night, and overnight the tickets to you.  If you would prefer some awesome Zenbe Fleece pullovers, we can make that happen too!

We look forward to your posts!

At Zenbe, we’ve been using Shareflow internally since February.  Over the past six months we’ve built up a rich database of important conversations, documents and media spanning a wide variety of topics.  Although Shareflow automatically keeps your conversations organized by topic or “flow”, sometimes you want to search through your conversation history for a specific message or group of messages related to a specific topic. Shareflow search makes it easy to find the exact message or file you are looking for regardless of when it was posted or what topic it was posted under.

Search Tips

The next time you login to Shareflow you’ll see the new search box in the top left corner of your screen.

From the search box you can search across all post types or choose a specific post type from the drop down list on the left.  Clicking the “go” button or hitting return will provide you with a list of all posts matching your query in the flow you have selected from the flow list.  If you want to search all of your flows, just be sure to select “All Flows” before running your query.  You’ll be able to search all of the text in any post or comment.  We also index emails, file names, file extensions and meta data about events and maps.  You can even get a list of all posts by a certain user by just searching for their name.

So how can you use this feature to improve your productivity and organization?

Here’s just one example of how we use search at Zenbe.  As we’ve built out Shareflow we’ve generated a lot of documentation about the system. Sometimes I need to refer back to a specific design document or user guide we’ve created as a pdf and stored on Shareflow.  To find these files all I have to do is search in “All Flows” for “pdf shareflow”.  If I know the document I’m looking for is stored in a specific flow, I can drill down to that specific topic by selecting the flow in the left sidebar.

Getting creative

Although Shareflow is great at helping you organize and search the conversations your team is collaborating on, it’s also a flexible tool that can be used in a variety of ways.  I like to use Shareflow as a personal information database for notes to myself, blog posts I want to read later, and files that people send me.  The new search feature makes it possible to mine this personal journal for specific notes or files.  This in conjunction with our mobile application makes Shareflow a great way to keep all your important information at your fingertips.

We’d love to hear your creative ideas on how Shareflow helps you focus on what matters.

We’re working hard to collect all your feedback, open up a dialogue with our passionate users, and deliver the next set of great features in Shareflow.

Shareflow has also gotten some great press lately. Check out some of these articles to read more about Shareflow from an outside perspective and perhaps learn a new use for your team.

Shareflow Emerges as Competition for Google Wave
Chelsi Nakano (cmswire.com)

Shareflow: Online Group Messaging and Collaboration
(makeuseof.com)

Shareflow: Have Conversations Instead of Email Overload
Darrell Etherington (webworkerdaily.com)

Shareflow shows the future of group communication
Matt Marshall (venturebeat.com)

So we’re always excited about the possibilities that arise when new Javascript features become available, and the upcoming implementations of HTML5 promise to bring along a real wealth of new scriptable goodies. Looking to the past, as well as to the future, the HTML5 team has decided to standardize a number of old, browser-specific features — this means that some of the ostensibly new features in HTML5 have already been around for years, and that some are even ready to use right now.

Today, we’re introducing web drag and drop for Shareflow, so that you can quickly and easily share images, text, links, and web clips, just by dragging them into a flow. Say you’re surfing the New York Times, and you see a paragraph from the front page that you’d like to share. Select the paragraph, drag it into Shareflow, and you can share it instantly with the rest of your team. Drag and drop works with word processing applications as well, you can drag in the text of a progress report or business outline. If you have a link to a document or image on the web, dragging the link into Shareflow will upload that document to the Flow, just as if you had used the file uploader to post it directly. Try browsing around your favorite photography website and dropping the pictures right into a flow.

Despite being so new, drag and drop has pretty good browser support. We’ve tested it and confirmed that it works in the following browsers:

• Firefox 3.5
• Safari 4
• Internet Explorer 7
• Google Chrome

The new drag and drop specification is a great step forward, but there are still plenty of differences and quirks lurking among the browsers. To help alleviate the incompatibilities, we’re open-sourcing a little bit of Javascript from our internal framework, a class called the zen.util.DropManager. If you’re a web developer, and you’d like to use HTML5 drag and drop in your projects, give the DropManager a try.

When you attach it to an HTML element, the DropManager takes care of enabling it as a drop target, handling some differences between the types of data that the browsers provide, and giving you back a clean object with the three potential parts you care about: URLs, HTML fragments, and plain text. You can grab the code right here:

http://gist.github.com/153019
(The DropManager depends on the Prototype Javascript framework).

If you find the DropManager useful, please feel free to fork it on GitHub and improve it.

If you want to see it in action, sign up for a free Shareflow account. Cheers!

Well, what do you think?

I think this debate is such a great example of  how people’s brains are wired to make causal assumptions based on  recent history of hearing things.  This is why people think sharks are dangerous to people, and that shark attacks come in waves, based on hearing or reading about shark attacks, when the statistics show that shark attacks are remarkably constant from year to year.  Toasters, donkeys, and coconuts on beaches are all much more likely to kill you than a shark, regardless of what you hear.  I am sure Malcolm Gladwell has a book about this, but one of my favorites is this one, that I picked up at Heathrow one dreary winter day.

Let’s suppose that Zenbe HAD copied Google Wave. That would mean that Zenbe managed to design, build and deploy a real, complete, useable product, along with everything needed to actually support a public service, all in less than a month!  That would be phenomenal!   Miraculous! You should check out Shareflow just to see the magic!

If you search the Internet you will realize that Shareflow must be a separate, independent solution, perhaps to a similiar problem, and has nothing to do with Google Wave.

Shareflow grew out of our own efforts at solving our own communication and collaboration needs.  We wanted a something that would let us ditch IM, email, wikis, and other disconnected tools.  We have been working on Shareflow for more than a year, its been out in public since February 09, in private testing for a few  months before that.

You want proof?  How about  a Youtube video from March, or a  blog post from April?  Or this one.  Or just ask anyone who signed up for our subscription service Zenbe Mail earlier this year.

The history of technology is filled with solutions that are appear to be copies but that actually arise independently. My favorite example is the Soviet Space Shuttle, Buran.  Did you know that the Soviets built and launched a space shuttle in the 1980’s?  It looks like an exact copy of an American one, caused quite a shock, people started looking for spies, but the educated conclusion was that if you need a spaceship that has to land like a plane, carry a few people, and haul payload of a certain size, its going to look pretty much exactly like a space shuttle.

Google, or any large company, can afford big announcements of grand visions.  Google Wave might be a good idea, and it might be a big success.   Wave seems a long way off from being a usable solution for us regular folks.

Shareflow is here to make your life better, and your teams’ life better, right here. right now.   Give it a try.

Reade more about Shareflow here.  Or just signup . its free!