Letter Never Sent

Solutions to Laptop Theft

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story recently on an increase in laptop theft in San Francisco coffee houses. One victim was stabbed in the chest for his laptop during a recent robbery.

Lynch said people working on the high-priced computers are easy targets. “You walk by any Starbucks and you see people with a laptop, it’s so tempting for the crooks. They walk in, right on top of the person, and the person has all their attention on the laptop. They snatch it right out from underneath their fingertips. ‘

It’s surprising that there aren’t more incidents of laptop theft considering how expensive laptops can be, especially a nice Mac with titanium case and 17″ LCD. There are tons of people out there who walk around with thousands of dollars in their bags: laptops, ipods, digicams, etc. Luckily, there are a couple of options out there to help prevent laptop theft:

Get a laptop cable lock. Lock down your laptop with a cable lock that snaps into a specially designed loop on most laptops. Then loop the cable around something that can’t be moved. Unless thieves threaten you with body violence this is a good solution since it actually prevents theft.
Install Laptop Lojack. There’s a company called Computrace that makes a product by the name of Lojack for Laptops. They even licensed the name and everything. The idea behind it is simple: as soon as your laptop is stolen, you call the police to file a police report then you call Computrace and they set your laptop into “I’ve been stolen” mode. Basically, once the stolen laptop is connected to the Internet it sends notifications back to Computrace that help pinpoint its location by using the IP address, which is tied to your physical address. Computrace then notifies the police with information sufficient to serve as a search warrent. This is a good solution unless the thief wipes the hard drive before he connects to the Internet. Computrace has partnered with Lenovo, the maker of IBM Thinkpads, which now include the Computrace software on the actual BIOS chip. So, even if the hard-drive is wiped the software is still able to run and report back when stolen. Eventually all laptops could include something like this. Computrace claims that 90% of the laptops its customers report lost or stolen are either recovered or the data on them is destroyed using remote commands.
For Mac Users: Orbicule Undercover. Orbicule makes a similar program called Undercover that dials home when the laptop has been stolen. It also features support for iSight if you have a built-in webcam and will take snapshots of the thief. One interesting feature is that it simulates a hardware failure by gradually darkening the screen. The hope is that if the laptop is sent to Apple for repairs and connects to the Internet while at Apple, Undercover will detect the network settings and launch a special screen with instructions on how to return the stolen laptop to its rightful owner. It’s a novel approach, but who knows how well that works.

Business — Comments Off
12
Apr 06

Cheap Human Capital With Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Some time last fall, Amazon launched a service called Mechanical Turk. The name comes from a well-known illusion:

In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelens “Turk” was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinets doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the Mechanical Turk: a human chess master cleverly concealed inside. (From What is Amazon Mechanical Turk?)

The idea behind Mechanical Turk is simple. It’s artificial, artificial intelligence. If you recruit human beings to do tasks that would otherwise require expensive software development it is more efficient and you ensure greater accuracy in the result. Simple tasks like image recognition can be performed easily by human beings and not at all easily by image recognition software. Here’s how it works: on the mturk site there is a listing of available HITs. A HIT is any task that needs to be performed whether it be writing descriptions, adding metadata, or image recognition and matching. Normally, the easier the HIT, the less the reward there will be for completing it. The most common types of HITs involve matching street-level photographs with their corresponding address. These normally have a reward of $.03 for the completion of each HIT. The most likely goal of this type of task is to help improve the accuracy of results for Amazon’s street-level mapping program through A9. Since Amazon has a long way to go to document every street in every city in every country in the world, these types of HIT’s will probably remain the most common. It’s a huge endeavor since the photographic data for these results will also need to be updated as businesses relocate from time to time.

When the mturk service first launched, I clicked through about 2,000 sets of street address images with an accuracy rating of 85% (according to Amazon) in a week’s time. Completing image HIT’s is the kind of thing you can do while on the phone or surfing the internet. Just leave the Window up and chew through 20 or 30 at a time. Since you’re looking at street level photos of cities like Portland and San Francisco it’s almost like taking a weird, boring vacation. Judging from the hundreds of photos I clicked through, Philadelphia looks like an interesting place to visit.

For each successful HIT completion, 85% of that 2,000, I got three pennies deposited in my Amazon account for a total of around $50. Once the HIT’s are completed and passed to your account, you are free to transfer the funds to your bank account. It’s a horribly boring and monotonous way to make money, but it works pretty well. After that first week as mturk became more well-known, the easy HIT’s dried up as human click bots around the world vied for the easy pennies. Now it’s so competitive (three cents is a lot of money to people in the Third World) that there’s no point in even bothering with it. You’re unlikely to get the large pools of easy HIT’s that were once available. It is, however, an amazing experiment in piecing out tasks to the global masses that no employee is going to want to spend their day doing.

Here is the coolest part. Amazon is now making this service available to other companies and individuals through their Requester program. This allows anyone to offer tasks to the mturk masses. Need some cheap market research? Send it to mturk and have your survey completed for $.01 a head. That’s 1,000 survey results for ten bucks. Other companies are paying for podcast transcription services at cut rate prices of $5-$10 per podcast. Transcription is an obvious winner for this type of service, but other services could include translation, editing / proofreading, OCR / handwriting, and content analysis. There are built-in mechanisms to ensure quality results. Before you can volunteer for more advanced jobs like transcription, you are often required to take a qualification test, which is prepared by the Requester. The other mechanism that ensures quality is simple, if the Requester is not satisfied with the result, they do not have to accept and pay for it. Companies like Hit Builder are springing up to build software and services for Requesters to streamline the process of using mturk. This is an idea that could really take off. As the broker between its army of mechanical Turks and companies who need human capital, Amazon could stand to make some serious money, but only if more companies start using it.

General — Comments Off
11
Apr 06

Changes in store

Some separation is in order. Starting today, all new personal blog entries will be written at www.sivori.org. All other content will remain here. The goal is to turn letterneversent.com into more of a topical resource with longer essay style blog entries rather than having a mix of the personal day to day and the topical. The two readerships (or potential readerships, rather) are not likely to overlap. We’ll experiment with it.

General — Comments Off
11
Apr 06

Let’s talk about feet

This weekend I went shoe shopping. I was looking for some slip-on shoes. Something semi-casual and comfortable for the summer I could wear to work, with jeans, and with shorts. Even without socks. We went into Nordstrom’s where they do shoes pretty well except for their lack of sneaker selection. I looked at some top-siders, but those are too 80’s-michael-p-keaton. I checked out a couple things and the salesman measured my feet with that slidey deal (It’s called a Brannock Device). Apparently the staff at Nordstrom’s are certified shoe fitters. That’s what the sign says. Anyway, this guy measured my feet and I learned I’ve been wearing shoes that are too small, and I’ve done this my whole adult life. By length, my feet are longer than I thought anyway, being size 12’s. I guess I haven’t measured in a while. The interesting part is that the toe length is not the important part. You have to measure using the ball of your foot. That’s where the little knob on the Brannock Device comes in handy. Most people have never used that part. Since the ball (where your big toe knuckle sticks out) is the widest part of your foot this is the most important aspect when buying comfortable shoes as shoes tend to narrow at the toe. You want to make sure the widest part of your foot is comfortably situated into the widest part of the shoe. If the ball is forward due to a lack of arch, etc. it will push into the toebox of the shoe where the shoe narrows making your feet feel cramped. Taking the ball into consideration I should have been wearing a size 13 1/2. Anyway, I bought these leather “driving moccasins” that are nice and flat. I’ve been padding around the office all morning.

asides — Comments Off
11
Apr 06

Untitled

Good Cat & Girl comic today. Oh, Evelyn.

Learnding: Expression Engine video tutorials

asides — Comments Off
10
Apr 06

Buy the Crude Oil ETF To Hedge Your Gas Bill (ETF: USO)

Business / Society — Comments Off
07
Apr 06

Hierarchies and networks

How to tap your company’s hidden network: Forget the IT network. It’s a company’s human infrastructure that really determines whether it lives or dies:

Woe to the person who doesn’t understand the trust network in his or her company, she tells the generals, whose attention is now becoming more focused. Ignore this hidden structure and your quality team players will jump ship, mentors will abandon their charges, institutional memory will vanish, and glad-handing schmucks will weasel their way into power. But if you fathom how your company really works, you can identify and reward your most valuable employees and unearth innovative ideas.

Stephenson is a leader in the growing field of social-network business consultants. As happens today with the generals, her ideas usually manage to command attention. Anyone who has worked in any organization knows there’s at least some truth to what she says.

Humans are primates, after all, and we groom each other through sharing information. Organizations are constantly abuzz with thousands of shared confidences, whispered at the water cooler or between buddies in the bowling league. Taken together, those communications make up a kind of dark matter of corporate culture–an unseen force that has significant influence on whether everything holds together or flies apart.

I think many of us can identify with this:

And yet Stephenson, despite her faith in the power of social networks, has a confession to make. “The truth is that with all my talk of networks, I’m really a closet hierarchist,” she says. “I like hierarchies because they’re clear. Nothing is ever totally clear in a social network because they’re always in motion.”

Which might explain why Stephenson so enjoys working alone. “There is no clearer hierarchy than a business of one,” she says. “I’m free, and I can’t tell you how happy I am.”

asides — Comments Off
05
Apr 06

Gene Pitney has died

Gene Pitney found dead in hotel. “Cause the point of a gun was the only law That Liberty understood.
When it came to shootin’ straight and fast, He was mighty good.”

Apple Introduces Boot Camp: Public Beta Software Enables Intel-based Macs to Run Windows XP. AAPL is up 6%.

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Personal — Comments Off
03
Apr 06

Three little goats

Warning: Hearing about someone else’s dreams is notoriously uninteresting…

…but I wanted to jot this one down before I forget it. When I woke up this morning I was in the middle of a dream about this little man who was going hunting, ostensibly for bison or some similar large ungulate. He was wearing animal skins and furs and was riding on a sleigh or cart pulled by three little goats. As they made their way through the shadowed forest, a giant white goat appeared and started fighting with the three little goats, butting them and trying to force them into a nearby pond. The big goat’s name was Boaz or Boez. Once all the goats were in the pond, they continued struggling under water as indicated by the roiling surface of the pond. At this point I quit being a spectator and appeared in the dream. I was about to dive into the water to separate the fighting goats when a woman appeared out of nowhere and told me not to interfere.

General — Comments Off
03
Apr 06

Good birthday weekend

I had a really nice birthday despite the fact that I’m officially 29 years old. I didn’t get up to or into any trouble. It was a sedate and laid back, just right for someone approaching 30. The older I get the more I appreciate the little things like phone calls from family and friends. I got a few gifts from Jody including some nice clothes I am in dire need of. She has learned that dark colors are good for guys with burgeoning pot bellies.

Friday started off with our HR manager (who was born 2 days before me) bringing some cupcakes and a birthday card signed by everyone in the office. That was a nice surprise. I always like seeing what different people say and how they write since you rarely see anyone’s handwriting anymore now that we have email and instant messaging, ad nauseum.

Saturday I didn’t do anything much other than hang out with Jody at the library while she worked the reference desk. I like to go there and read the business periodicals like Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. It keeps me from buying them myself and it always gives me a lot of good ideas about what companies to follow and invest in as well as experience and advice from people who have started successful companies. One day, I would like to start a business and grow it into something nationwide. Freelancing just doesn’t scale very well since I can only take on as much work as I can handle myself. After Jody got off work, we went and saw “V for Vendetta”. I thought it was pretty good, although heavy-handed and cheesy.

Sunday we went over to my Aunt’s house to drop off a birthday card for my cousin who has the same birthday. It also allowed us to visit with my grandparents who were passing through Dallas in their RV on the way back from one of their jobs with the Volunteer Christian Builders. Since they’ve retired they travel around the Texas and surrounding states building churches and living on the road. They really love to do it. We weren’t able to stay very long since we had to meet Jody’s brother and sister-in-law back at the house to go to the Mavericks game. The game was a lot of fun, especially since Dallas won. I haven’t been to a basketball game since I was a kid, so I was comparing the experience with when I used to go to see the San Antonio Spurs with my dad and brother so long ago. As Jody pointed out, everything looks so much smaller in real life than on tv.

Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.