Memoirs of a Roadie

Lost Horizon

Posted on 8th April 2008

For the past few months I've been playing Lost Cities on a site called YourTurnMyTurn. I've got into it so much I'm considering upgrading to a VIP account so I can play even more. I've tried some of the other games on there, but none have kept my interest as much as Lost Cities.

I'm hoping that they introduce a few more two player games based on German style board games, as they've certainly scored a hit with me for this. Kahuna and Pick And Pack aren't bad, but for me personally I got a bit bored too quickly. If I was playing them with someone in person, then it would probably have been alright, but playing remote lost the momentum for me.

I managed to get to the Quarter Final in my latest torunament, but unfortunately was up against a good player who managed to just pip me in the points. I'm playing in another 3 and soon to start another, so fingers crossed I can get further in them.

I've been playing it so much I haven't been playing Xplorers (aka Settlers of Catan) on AsoBrain for a while. Might even start entering some tournaments in that too at some point .. if I ever get the time!

Let Me In

Posted on 3rd April 2008

The problem with those that get high and mighty about username/password site logins, is that they often use examples where you really do want some degree of protection, not from yourself, but from others. Of the 16 Account Design Mistakes listed in Part 1 and Part 2 by Jared M. Spool, most include good ideas for developers, however, some use examples where the sites are quite right to be obscure.

Take #13 "Not Explaining If It's The Username or Password They Got Wrong", then proceeding to hold up Staples and American Express as the worst offenders. I'm sorry but if I have accounts with companies like that, then there is no way on earth I want them giving hints to crackers whether they got my username or password wrong. Those kinds of sites contain VERY sensitive personal information, not least of which is your credit card information. If Jared is that eager to share his financial information, I'm now wondering if he publishes it on his personal website. Could it be that perhaps the very security he ridicules actually protects him from identity theft?

Another is #16 "Requiring More Than One Element When Recovering Password", where a company requires some form of additional account information other than just your email address. Again this is a company that holds your credit information and by the sound of it some very personal information (such as my phone number). Does Jared post his personal phone number on his website? I doubt it as I assume he doesn't want all and sundry knowing it, thus exposing him to more identity theft.

Don't get me wrong, Jared does list some good thoughts about username/password site logins, but the context in which he uses to ridicule some sites and companies is grossly misplaced. The problem is that the author often thinks only in terms of making life easier for themselves, forgetting that you can also make it easy for those of a more malicious nature too. In all, or possibly nearly all, sites that I have a login for, the login is there to protect my account on the site from abuse. I know there are sites out there that only provide customisations with your login, but I don't use them. Even those that don't contain personal information, I would not want anyone to hack in to. If you're happy to make it easy for some one to login to your blog account and post spam, abusive or malicious content, then fine, make it easy. For the rest of us, we'd rather have some form of protection on the account that makes it a little harder for others to get through.

Dancing with the Moonlit Knight

Posted on 21st February 2008

This week it seems eBay are changing their policies to a number of things, one of them being Feedback. My mother told me she had read about it in the paper, but seeing as I hadn't noticed anything in my inbox from them, and it wasn't obvious from any of the general announcements, I assumed that either the paper had put the wrong spin on it to generate "news" (typical of the paper in question), or my mother had misunderstood the actual news article. I suspected the paper to be at fault. However, after a quick search I found this blog post, which picked up on the feedback issue, and after a bit of digging through all the recent announcements, I finally found the announcement specific to feedback. Why they had to hide it away I don't know. With such a big change I would have expected to see this in a "news" or "update" box on the front page.

Anyway, the point of the feedback changes seems to be to protect buyers from poor sellers. They believe that "buyers will be more honest when they leave Feedback since they will not fear retaliatory negative Feedback." Sorry but I don't buy that. I've had several buyers who have failed to follow through and left me with a bill for the final value fees (FVFs) from eBay. eBay DO NOT make it easy to get those fees back. Thankfully, I've not been given bad feedback. I have also been caught out by bad sellers trying to sell conterfeit products, but having contacted both sellers in my case I was able to get a refund. Now admittedly not everyone may be as successful, and could quite easily be ripped by quite a considerable amount, but I do believe the negative feedback does have it's place. If there is ever any issue with retaliatory negative feedback, then there should be a mechanism where either party can alert eBay to the situation and for it to be handled more appropriately. From my experience eBay make it very difficult to contact them, and when you do try and contact them it falls on deaf ears.

eBay also state "When buyers receive negative Feedback, they reduce their activity in the marketplace, which, in turn, harms all sellers". Ever thought that sometimes there are buyers for whom that is a good thing? At the moment a seller has a difficult time to do anything about a bad buyer, and in some cases the only way to alert other sellers is by leaving reasonable negative feedback. How are eBay going to better protect the seller from continually bad buyers? Some sellers refuse to deal with anyone who has less than 100 points, and I can see that getting worse, as having to pay eBay what amounts to a fine for being an honest seller, is not good enough. And please don't tell me about their Unpaid Item system, as I was told my window of opportunity had passed (or words to that effect), after I had waited a couple of weeks, sending private emails and mails via eBay itself, after the end of the auction. Any experience of trying to deal with eBay themselves, for me personally, has never been a good experience. I always end up feeling that they are only interested in taking my money, never willing to sort things out when things go wrong.

Thankfully my actual auction experience with eBay has been good, and I've been very happy with both buyers and sellers in nearly all my transactions. I wouldn't stop using eBay because of these changes, but it will make me more wary of the feedback mechanism, both as a seller and a buyer, as I'm not sure the changes are favourable to anyone. Except maybe eBay themselves as it will mean less data storage.

I'm not convinced by some of the changes they propose, although some do have merit, but I shall wait and see what the outcome is for me. I may not sell high volumes, but if I find myself getting messed around because I'm not able to spot bad buyers, then I may find alternative places to sell my CDs and music memorabillia. If others follow suit then buyers have less choice and prices get higher, thus eBay wins more from FVFs. I think I see the pattern here. Or maybe I'm just cynical ;)

Fixing A Hole

Posted on 5th February 2008

I recently made some minor alterations to the site, most you shouldn't notice, and some that are part of the admin screens. However, one noticeable part that I've removed is the Digg links. I can't really say why I added them in the first place, apart from the fact it seemed like a good idea at the time and several other sites have them too. My site doesn't really get the high end traffic that other more prolific and structured writers get, so it seemed a bit daft keeping them there when no-one was ever likely to use them. I know a few read my thoughts via their favourite RSS feeds, so obviously that has been worthwhile adding to the site, but Digg, well at least I know how it works if I'm ever asked to add to another site ;)

Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol)

Posted on 16th January 2008

Continuing the motoring theme, I recently discovered a newish site, PetrolPrices.com. It follows the comparison site idea, but for petrol (and other fuel types) at petrol stations and supermarkets, etc. across the UK. Although it hasn't been going for long, it does seem to have gained quite a bit of interest and is a worthy addition to your bookmarks.

The only annoying thing (for me persosnally) is that I had the idea to do this (as I'm sure several other did) several years ago when I first started developing websites :) However, I am surprised that no-one has developed this kind of site before, as it is a resource that has been wanted for a very long time. In my case I didn't develop my idea further, as I didn't know of a reliable way of getting at realtime data. Originally I was going to allow users to enter prices from their local filling station, but this is open to abuse, and considering that I wouldn't be able to verify the prices, would likely have been very unreliable. PetrolPrices.com have overcome this hurdle, thanks to Catalist. Although they existed back in 1998, my research never revealed them and I'm sure others had the same problem. With data for over 10,000 stations up and down the country they certainly have that data market sewn up.

I shall be using PetrolPrices.com from now on, but from initial searches it would seem that the price I'm paying currently is quite low. Although there are petrol stations that charge a lower price, the effort getting to/from them would probably negate a lot of the benefits of filling up at stations that are actually on my route to/from work. However, I see it being very useful when driving long distances, particularly when on holiday to find the cheapest and closest filling station.