Handy site for creating secure passwords

I was using a Firefox add-on called "Secure Password Generator" but it doesn't seem to be compatible with Firefox 3.x, so I looked for something else and ran across this. Not quite as convenient as the add-on but just as useful. Password generator to generate good, secure, random and easy to remember passwords.

UPDATE 7/16/2010 -- this site is now apparently a pay service. Here's another one that's decent: Strong Password Generator

Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps

Despite the fact that I wrote my first HTML code around 1993, I am still learning all the time (not so much regular HTML, but DHTML, CSS, etc.). I was having trouble with some CSS positioning this evening and came across this great "10-step" tutorial on CSS position and floating. Definitely worth a read (if you do CSS stuff, that is).

Link: Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps: position static relative absolute float

Twitter and Yammer Test Dot-Com Business Models - NYTimes.com

The 2nd half of this article is another example of the philosophy of getting the product right first, then worrying about revenue. Read my older post where I discussed this.

Key Bank / iPod Nano Marketing Campaign - Was it worth it?

In the Seattle Metro area and perhaps elsewhere as well, Key Bank was running a marketing campaign: Sign up for a checking account, meet a few basic requirements, and get a free iPod Nano.

The campaign was mostly advertised on billboards, or at least that's all I saw of it. I had seen them before but never did anything further to really see what was involved with satisfying the requirements. The billboard ads went away, but soon came back, so I decided to look into it.

The requirements:

1. Open a Key Bank Checking account (their basic was one was sufficient)
2. Fund the account
   
3. Get a debit card (free) and use it at least once in a debit (non-ATM) transaction
4. Make two merchant-initiated* bill payments of $100 or more each
   

These things had to be completed by a certain date as well.

* Merchant-initiated are the kind that you sign up for on the merchant or biller's web site by providing your routing & checking account number so that they can pull the funds out of your account. Doing regular bill-payments from the checking account are different and wouldn't meet the requirements.

So, I funded the account with $300 (or thereabouts), enough to cover the two payments and the debit card transaction, made a purchase, and setup two payments within the time frame required.

I even received a nice and quick call from a local Key Bank branch asking if I had any questions about meeting the promotion requirements.

It took 6-8 weeks (as advertised) to get my iPod, but it just arrived today. The FedEx guy asked what they were all about -- he said he had tons of them to deliver, so apparently Key Bank shipped them all out at once. Anyhow, the iPod was actually the new slender 8gb model (with rotation, shake support, & Genius), not the previous and more-squarish 4gb model they were advertising at the time. Key Bank included a little note to remind me that they had given me the newer version.

So anyhow, the business part of me is wondering what Key Bank is getting out of this -- and for that matter, what Apple is getting out of it. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that Apple put up money for this campaign either through direct funds or by providing the iPods to Key Bank at a very low wholesale cost. Did this promotion help Key Bank or Apple more?

Either way, let's do some quick math:

The average retail price for the new 8gb iPod Nano is $149 at the Apple Store (slightly lower average of about $132 elsewhere online). Let's say Key Bank got a killer deal on them at $40 each. How much money does each recipient of this promotion need to generate Key Bank to make it worthwhile?

They must be hoping that they can make money by leveraging my funds, perhaps sell me a mortgage or other financial product, and/or that I tell my friends how great Key Bank is so they all sign up too.

I don't know -- it just doesn't add up. Anyone with mad banking industry and marketing skills want to provide some insight?

All in all, I'm happy with my FIRST iPod and first-ever purchased Apple product (other Apple products I own: an old Power Mac G3 and a iMac for software testing purposes).

PS -- the packaging and presentation was wonderful as expected, unlike the Microsoft Office 2007 experience in my previous post! Although the casing was not completely obvious, they were smart enough to put clear little stickers and diagrams to show what to do.

Q. How do you open Microsoft Office Packaging?

Interested in how to frustrate your customers with a new product? Make the packaging ridiculously-confusing and unintuitive to open.

DISCLAIMER: I am aware that by writing this post, I risk comments from people thinking I'm an idiot, but I'm going out on a small limb here, betting that there are others out there that have had this same experience. If you haven't tried to open one of these things, I suggest you try it, then come back to my post and comment...

It's Monday evening. I am attempting to install Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 which comes in the type of packaging shown. The package is made of very rigid plastic and looks shiny and sleek -- points to Microsoft for that accomplishment. On the edge of the case just below the curve are two "tabs". After attempting to squeeze them while moving, sliding, and whatever-elseing the case, I couldn't get the damn thing open. By this time, I was already reminiscing about the wonderful experience of opening Apple [iPod|iPhone|etc] packaging and wondering if Microsoft completely designed their packaging in a vacuum.

On the top is a red plastic-film tab that begs to be pulled. I pulled it a little; nothing really happened. I pulled it more; it broke. At this same time, I saw the big sticker that goes across the packaging and was aware that it might be preventing the thing from opening. HOWEVER, the reason I didn't remove it was because there is a barcode sticker with a possible product ID (the thing I thought I might need to activate the product) -- so I hesitated removing that sticker (Why would I? I'm going to need that thing right? Seems like it should stay with the packaging).

So at this point I think to myself, "I bet there are tons of Google results on this exact issue.". Sure enough, there are -- there are even numerous YouTube videos. Here's a hint: If there are Google & YouTube results about how to open your packaging, you're doing something SERIOUSLY wrong.

It turns out that you need to remove the sticker (which in itself is a bit difficult and frustrating), then you pull the red tab (which I already ripped off) and the case hinges out.

To quote Seth & Amy, "REALLY?!?!?"

Here's a YouTube video of a guy having a similar experience and eventually opening it (why he was recording it is uncertain; if he knew it was an issue and wanted to record a video of it, it sure took him a while to do it the 2nd time around):

Airline Reservation Change Fees: Unbelievable

Look, I understand that costs are rising across the board and the airline industry is certainly no exception. What I don't understand is at what point the airlines started giving all of their customers (you know, the ones responsible for their revenue) the middle finger by deciding to charge them for every little thing they can think up.

I recently had to make a change to a US Airways ticket. I knew there would be a change fee -- that's really nothing new, even in recent history. How much was the fee? $25? $50? $100? NO! $150!!!! Are you kidding me? This is totally out of control.

Some other examples of ridiculous fees that put the customer LAST:

• AirTran charges a flat $20 for exit row seats; United charges $14-$109
• Spirit charges passengers for choosing their seats: $15 for a window, $10 for an aisle, and $5 for a middle seat. They're charging for a middle seat???
  
• JetBlue charges $7 for a pillow & blanket!
  

Compare this with Southwest Airlines, who DOES NOT CHARGE for any of the following:

• first checked bag
• second checked bag
• reservation changes
• even more things (see www.southwest.com)
  

By the way, Southwest is also one of the few major carriers that is actually profitable through Q2 2008.

See my post on Virgin America for a brief example of a company that is putting the customer first, where they should be.

Sea Kayaking Class + Day Trip to Deception Pass

I just finished a "Fundamentals of Sea Kayaking" class offered through Northwest Outdoor Center (NWOC). My excellent instructors were John and Eric. John is one of the owners of NWOC (the other owner is his brother). Everyone down there is really nice and chill, so if you have any questions about kayaking, just head down there and ask away! NWOC is on Westlake Avenue in Seattle, next to the China Harbor restaurant.

I bought a kayak (a Perception America 13.5) from Craiglist a few weeks ago and have been enjoying the sport as the summer has been dwindling (my very rainy soccer game yesterday is a sign of what's to come for the Fall & Winter seasons). I decided to sign up for the class at NWOC to get some official instruction and to learn the skills correctly from the start so I could get rid of any bad habits before it was too late.

The course was fantastic! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in kayaking. No experience is required. My class was the last of the season until next April. The class can take up to 12-14 people, but our class was only 4 people. The small group was good because you get a bit more personalized instruction. The course is broken up into four differnet parts. The course was $185. If you needed to rent a kayak, it was $40 more, and if you needed to rent a wet suit or dry suit (with booties), it was $15 more. I had a boat, so I just paid $15 extra for the dry suit rental. I should also mention that even if you do have a boat, they'll let you use demo paddles for free. On the day trip we had a few different paddles. I have the Werner Skagit, which has a carbon shaft but is otherwise pretty basic. It good quality but was affordable and there are better paddles out there. I tried some other ones on the day trip that were all carbon-fiber and were incredibly light!

For parts 1-3 below, we had one instructor but for part 4 (the day trip), two instructors came along. One was always leading and the other was always in the back, just like on a hiking trail when you're in a group.

Here's a brief summary of the class structure and my experiences with each part (see the bottom of this post for a quick map I drew up that shows our route):

Part 1 -- Classroom Instruction (2 hours). This part provided an intro to the sport of sea kayaking and it was held at NWOC on Westlake. We watched a brief video then discussed some basics, then went around the store discussing various gear and the purposes of everything.

Part 2 -- In the Water (2 hours). Normally this is held on the lake at NWOC, but for this last class of the season (and probably for the first few classes of the Spring), they hold it at a swimming pool. The main reason is because the sun sets earlier as the season goes on (or is just starting). In my case, it was at Shoreline Center pool which is right next to where I play soccer quite frequently. This part of the class taught basic paddle strokes, recovery (getting back into your boat when you fall out -- both by yourself and with the help of another kayaker), and other skills such as bracing (using your paddle for control and to prevent tipping).

Part 3 -- In the Water + Classroom Instruction (about 3 hours). The first part was paddling out from NWOC to Lake Union. We basically just applied skills learned the night before in the pool in a more realistic environment. We all wore either wet suits or drysuits. I had a wet suit and gave it a try but planned on wearing one of their rental drysuits for the day trip (Part 4). After being on the lake, we broke briefly for lunch then returned for some classroom instruction on tides and currents. We talked generally about them, then discussed the currents that would be in effect for our day trip the next day to Deception Pass.

Part 4-- Day trip to Deception Pass! We launched the kayaks from Bowman Bay at about 10:30am. Bowman Bay is right before Deception Pass if you are heading to Whidbey Island. At first, we reviewed paddling strokes and bracing techniques before setting out of the bay towards Deception Pass Bridge. The bridge is of course actually two separate bridges that meet in the middle of a small piece of land called Pass Island. The openings on each side of Pass Island are Deception Pass and Canoe Pass. The latter is much smaller which is where we paddled to first from our starting point. When we got there, we observed the currents and discussed how they work and how to work with them and against them to get where you needed to go. We talked about eddys, which are swirling water and reverse currents that form as the main water currents flow over obstacles, such as rocks or points in the walls of the pass. When we got to Canoe Pass, the tide was ebbing -- meaning it was going out of the pass back towards Rosario Strait. It was amazing to see the water literally flowing through the pass like a river! Believe it or not, the water level was even a bit higher when we looked "up stream" (further in the pass). It was very very strange. An eddy line is where the main currents and eddys meet. You can actually use these eddys and their reverse currents to go "up stream" -- in our case, to go through Canoe Pass even though the current was flowing out to Rosario Strait. We practiced paddling across the eddy line from one current to another, then turning around to go with the main current, then turning back to where we started. It was tricky at first but we got better after some practice (by "we", I'm referring to the students; the two instructors have been paddling for 20+ years and were pros). One girl in the class fell out but she was fine and was back in her boat quickly with the help of one of the instructors and her excellent training over hte previous three parts of the course! Since the current was pretty strong, moving at about 4-6 knots, we paddled back a bit and had lunch on a small beach. We ate lunch around 1:00pm and the slack tide (when water is neither ebbing or flowing) was scheduled for 2:30pm. During a slack tide is when the water is very calm because it's no longer moving through the pass. After lunch, we went back to Canoe Pass. The water was still flowing, but much less vigorously. After some more practice with the eddy line, we forged through Canoe Pass!! It was a cool feeling looking up and seeing the bridge. I have always thought that people in small boats in the pass were not the smartest folks but I learned through this class that it's really a matter of being educated on how currents work, having good instruction on techniques and safety procedures, and being properly prepared to be in the water if that were to happen (we all had wet suits or dry suits). After going through Canoe Pass, we proceeded around Pass Island and back through Deception Pass. Next, we paddled straight out to, and around, an island (I believe it's called Goose Island), then back to Bowman Bay. There were literally hundreds of birds on the island -- mostly Sea Gulls, but also some dark blue birds I didn't recognize and even a large blue heron. We saw a Bald Eagle too earlier in the day near the bridge. We got back to Bowman Bay at around 3:00pm or thereabouts and stopped at the Skagit River Brewery in Mount Vernon on the way back.

Route Map (click for the full-size version)


As mentioned above, I would highly recommend this class. It was fun and I learned tons!

Towing my Sailboat

I currently don't have an active need to tow my 14' sailboat, but I've always been wondering if I'd be able to do so with my VW Golf.

This photo pretty much seals the deal. If a Miata can tow it, my Golf can tow it ;) Now all I need is a reason to tow it somewhere and a trailer hitch on my Golf...



UPDATE 7/30/08: As if the photo of the Miata wasn't enough, I found a photo of a Golf towing my boat! Mystery solved.

Have IE6 and IE7 installed simultaneously

This is a very helpful thing if you need to do browser testing on version 6 and 7 of IE from the same computer (and you don't want to have to run a virtual machine/virtual PC instance):

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC

I installed it on Win XP pro and it works perfectly (and IE7 still works too!)

For the record, I only use IE for testing. Firefox 3.0 is my main browser.

Make a good product first, then worry about revenue

First and foremost, focus on making a good product that people like, then worry about how to make money. If something is driven by an innate passion inside of you, then is it really about money? I don't think it should be. If that venture goes belly-up, you may be out investment capital and out of the product you loved, but you should have at least acquired something from the journey and enjoyment of working with that passion along the way.

When I meet people and talk to them about Team Cowboy (my sports team management web site, www.teamcowboy.com), I often get asked the question, "so how do you make money?". I tell them simply that I'm focusing on adding great features and growing the user base. I do have plans to make money -- I have ideas on how to go about it -- but for now, that's not important to me. I'd rather focus on getting the features right, getting more users on the site, and making sure those users are happy (I'm fanatic about customer service; there's simply no excuse to not keep the reason your product exists happy). So far, I think I've succeeded in keeping my customers happy. It's definitely tricky sometimes when you run a free web site. Suppose you were running an e-commerce web site. If customers are unhappy or have a bad experience, you can discount their order, send them coupons, or use other incentives. Anything I give them comes directly out of my pocket (and not just out of my profit margin, as would be the case with an e-commerce site). I get a lot of feedback from my users during the course of customer service emails, and an ecstatic "Thank you!" is probably the most common thing I hear. That keeps me motivated and excited to roll out the great new features (and trust me, there are a lot of them).

I am not oblivious to the fact that as the site grows in popularity, traffic will increase, and that alone will start costing more in bandwidth and other related web hosting costs -- and those are just the hard costs that I MUST face to keep the site showing up when you go to the URL. I will have enough revenue coming in when it's necessary (and even a bit before), but it's not my #1 priority right now.

The article I was reading that made me think of this was about the upcoming release of Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0. At the end, David Ascher, Chief Executive of Mozilla Messaging said:

I'm deferring the revenue model issues for a while. The first priority will be to produce good software. The model used for Firefox was not to generate something that would generate revenue, it was to create the best browser possible. I'm following that recipe again.

Simple words and roughly what I'm going after with Team Cowboy.

Printing with Great prices & Great Quality: Overnightprints.com

I was recently in the need for some business cards for Team Cowboy and decided to give overnightprints.com a try. A year or two ago, I requested a sample kit from Americasprinter.com, and their quality is definitely amazing, and I was waiting for the opportunity to purchase from them (which, by the way, is probably a retailer's dream -- a customer waiting for the "opportunity" to give them business even after a couple of years). Anyhow, I started going through the motions to order with AmericasPrinter.com only to find that they don't even have online ordering! I reluctantly faxed in my order (as they require), and waited for a call back from a sales rep. A couple of hours later someone called me and said a rep would contact me either later that day or the next day. I'm already a bit annoyed at this point since I had to fax the order, and now I have to wait possibly until tomorrow? I decided to go with someone else. Maybe they should consider better customer service and online ordering! By the way, they never did call me but I received an order confirmation email literally about 24 hours after I initially placed the order. I promptly replied and let them know to cancel it and that I had gone with someone else.

That someone else was Overnightprints.com. Their web site was simple, their prices were great, and although I didn't have any samples in hand, I decided to give them a go. They even have an option to do rounded corners on business cards for a small upcharge.

I just got the cards today and they are GREAT. Free UV gloss on both sides (my design is on a white background so fingerprints are not really visible anyhow), and the color is deep & rich without any banding I've seen on some "professional" prints. I got 500 cards for $39.95 plus the rounded corners were $10 more total. I could have got 1000 for $49.95 (+ rounded corners), which is only $10 more, but I figured 500 would last me plenty long. Another cool thing about them is that you can order small runs of business cards -- as few as 100. This is great for small events with unique designs.

Anyhow, check them out, I highly recommend them and will use them again. FYI, they do Postcards, Flyers, Brochures, Letterhead , Greeting Cards & Envelopes as well.

[Update 6/23/07] Just received my sample pack in the mail. As expected, all great stuff. Heavy cardstock, UV glossy options, EXCELLENT full color (even with photos). I highly recommend overnightprints.com!

Virgin America - Airline Travel Reinvented?

I have heard about the airline, Virgin America, but have yet to fly on it. It sounds great. I think they actually "get it" -- that flying can be an enjoyable experience and they CAN differentiate themselves from aging (and extremely unprofitable) competitors.

I went to their Web site today to poke around and saw this thing called Superfly Wednesdays: free drinks, mingling, personal video, chat with other passengers? It's like 1960s air travel all over again except with a bit of technology mixed in. Check it out: Superfly Wednesdays

I've decided that given the option, I will pay a bit extra to fly with Virgin America. I've heard nothing but good things and I think that airlines that think outside of the box should be rewarded with more customers.

PS - While Virgin America is doing their thing, American Airlines recently announced that they will be charging $15 for the FIRST piece of checked luggage now. MSNBC article

How to Turn Junk Mail and Paper into Very Nice Bowls - Instructables - DIY, How To, craft, home

McDonal'ds...

Actual photo of a McDonald's sign in South Seattle... sad, very sad. The other side of the sign (not pictured) is correct (McDonald's)

Printable Paper!

Ya, I know what you're thinking -- "Paper that's printable? What an amazing invention!" Ok, maybe you weren't thinking that but I did.

However, once I went to the Web site I realized that it's pretty handy... for something...I think.

Anyhow, check it out:
http://www.printablepaper.net/

-T

Chumby: Alarm Clock Reinvented

This is friggen cool, and at $180 the price is very right:
http://www.chumby.com/

In addition to being an alarm clock (customizable, wake up to streaming music and much more), this thing connects to the FREE Chumby network over your Wifi internet connection and can utilize hundreds of widgets to show Weather, news, social networking info, and tons more. Very cool.