Category: /etc/

Everything Else

Why Don't Startups Get Their Users To Invest In Them?

So, Yahoo! is to buy tumblr for $1.1 BEEEEEELLION.

I don't understand money. Well, specifically, I don't understand how companies are funded, classify shares, or any of that finance stuff. But, there's something which has been bothering me about the recent sale of some social media properties.

According to some estimates, tumblr has 170 million users.

$1.1 billion / 170 million users is.... double checks workings $6.47 per user.

Err... what? Even if those number are off by 50% - Yahoo have paid the equivalent of just $13 per user.

Now, I realise that $6 - $13 is a lot for some people, especially young people and those without disposable income. But it's not exactly an extravagant amount, is it? If a social network's worth is in selling advertising to users - you would expect said users to have enough income to be worthwhile advertising to.

Take, for example, Facebook. When they sold their shares they raised something like $16 billion and had roughly 901 million users.

Does sums. That's about $18 per user.

These are not huge sums for an individual.

The thing is, it's pretty hard for an ordinary person to buy a share of a company. You usually need to be able to buy a large quantity of shares, pay for a trading account, try not to get ripped off with various fees, and deal with taxes.

The Internet is making this slightly better - but market trading for small people still needs a hell of a lot of disruption. At the moment, I can't simply hand over the $26 I made in babysitting money and own a single share of Facebook.

I appreciate that selling your company isn't just about the money... but it seems that if you do want to raise cash, getting your users to invest may not be the worst idea in the world.

Sure, the transition from "user" to "part owner" may be uncomfortable - but it's not impossible. Look how Co-ops, Building Societies, and other partnerships manage it. Invested users could vote on major decisions, and feel a sense of pride and community in what they were achieving - not to mention the potential for receiving dividends or other forms or returns on their investment.

Take, for example, App.net. Users pay for their accounts on the microblogging service - developers like me pay slightly more. But we're still just sharecroppers tending someone else's plantation. This isn't a criticism of Dalton Caldwell and his team - but just being a customer isn't enough to convince me that the service won't suddenly shut down or follow some dark path.

I want to be an investor - a very small one - in the services I use. I don't want my attention to be sold to the highest bidder on the stock market.

Like I say, I don't really understand how corporate financing works. I'm sure there are lots of problems with my idea. Not least that Goldman Sachs wouldn't make quite as much money.

I sincerely think that Internet-scale companies should look to those with the most emotional investment to provide them with financial investment. Or they will end up selling not just their customers' eyeballs - but also their trust, loyalty, and love.

Guide to Using the Nook STR / Glow Without a B&N Account (Pictures!)

I recently picked up a new Nook. Their manufacturer is dumping stock and the prices are ridiculously cheap for an eInk touchscreen running Android.

One thing that annoys me about the Nook is the fact that you have to register for a Barnes & Nobel account before you can use it. I dislike their geo-restrictive terms and conditions, and the fact that they place advertising on my home screen. I also don't particularly want my reading habits fed back to anyone. No one needs to know that I like reading Star Trek slash fiction, and that I've read chapter 5 of "Spock ♥ Tribbles" seventeen times.

So, here's the quick illustrated guide to running your nook without a bn.com account. There's no scary hacking, formatting of SD cards, or fiddling with computers. This is a ten second hack which just involves tapping a few buttons on your Nook. This works with the original Nook Simple Touch Reader and the new one with GlowLight.

Step 1

Charge your Nook fully. Switch it on using the button on the back.
Do not begin the setup process.

Step 2

Hold down the top right page turn button.
While holding down the button, swipe the top of the screen from left to right.
Nook Button Press
Release the top right button.

Step 3

A "Factory" button will appear on screen. Press it and you'll be taken to this "Factory" screen.

Nook Factory Screen View

Step 4

Again, hold down the top right button.
While doing so, tap the bottom right corner.
A "Skip Oobe" button will appear.
Nook skip Oobe
Oobe - stands for "Out of box experience".

Step 5

Press the button! Go on, you know you want to :-)
You will be instantly rewarded with a homescreen with no adverts and no requirement to sign up for a bn.com account.

Nook no account

Step 6

Enjoy!

Carve Your Brand Into Stone

Wandering down my suburban street this morning, I noticed a manhole cover, with the initials G.P.O. carved into it.
GPO

The General Post Office was the UK communications monopoly. Created by King Charles I in 1660, it remained a fixture of British life until it was abolished a mere 309 years later.

The GPO ceased to exist in 1969. And yet, 44 years later, its brand remains seared on the flesh of the streets.

Most of the GPO manhole covers have survived for over half a century - although many are in severe need of repair. It got me thinking about the permanence of brands.

With all the pivoting, merging, de-merging, logo refreshing, updating of style guides, it's hard to imagine any modern day brands being brave enough to risk etching their logo into anything more permanent than a laptop sticker.

coke_pepsi_chart_revisedThere are very few companies who have been in existence for over a century - and even fewer which still have the same name. Titans of our industry, such as IBM, have gone through countless name and logo changes.

There's a very real cost involved with changing a company's brand - aside from the outrageous fees from "creative consultants" there's the cost of reprinting stationery, refitting buildings, sewing new uniforms for employees, and retooling production facilities.

For digital brands, there's still a non-trivial cost associated with replacing logos on websites, updating apps, and the like.

In both cases, you need to re-educate your workforce and customers.

GPO_logoIt's true that the GPO didn't carve their entire logo into the manhole cover. Whether that is due to technological limitations, or otherwise, I cannot say. But their identity is firmly embossed on the fabric of the streets.

Old logos persist. Old brands stick around in people's memories long after their corporate owners have discarded them.

It has been over 20 years since the Snickers bar was introduced to the UK, and many people still refer to the chocolate bar by its old name of Marathon.

There's an awful lot of nonsense talked about branding. The data continually show that older brands dominate charts which measure which brands customers trust.

We live in a world which professes to favour the new, the innovative, the reinvented - yet our actions indicate that we prefer established brands which can draw on a long history of consistency.

There's a certain arrogance about having your name hewn into the living rock. A belief that you - or your brand - is a permanent, unchanging feature of the world. Next time you're thinking about changing your logo, or remodelling your brand, imagine how much more powerful it will be to have the same designs and the same brand name reaching out through history.

Caution Needed When Using CloudFlare and Better WP Security

There's a nasty WordPress hack doing the rounds at the moment. Essentially, it looks for WordPress blogs and then tries to log in to them using common username / password combinations. If you're still using "admin" and "secret" - now is the time to change them!

I've started using Better WP Security on my blogs. It automatically takes care of securing WordPress against the most common forms of attack. One thing it does particularly well is lock out people who repeatedly try an incorrect password to log in.

Additionally, I've also added CloudFlare to my sites. CloudFlare acts as a CDN - when people visit my site, they're actually hitting the CloudFlare service - CloudFlare caches my content, saving me bandwidth.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

CloudFlare Blocked By Better WP Security

That the IP address of CloudFlare! Due to my inability to perform homographic disambiguation I had repeatedly tried to enter the wrong login details in my management app (i.e. I thought the password had a capital I in it rather than a lower-case l).

All of a sudden, CloudFlaretly was locked out. No worries, I thought, I'll just go in to the database and remove the block.

Only, of course, I couldn't. My entire site was behind CloudFlare. CloudFlare couldn't access my site. Therefore, I couldn't access my site!

So, how to get out of this conundrum?

I could have changed the DNS records of my site to point back to my host - rather than CloudFlare - but that would have taken several minutes to propagate.
Luckily, my delightful web provider VidaHost has a Cpanel console which isn't behind my domain names.
From there, I was able to go into phpMyAdmin and access the Better WP Security lockout database - called "wp_bwps_lockouts". I found the offending IP address and removed it from the block.

That restored access, but how could I prevent it happening again?

CloudFlare offers Page Rules which allow you to disable CloudFlare for a partclar page, or set of pages.

Setting an exclude rule for 

http://example.com/wp-admin

will stop CloudFlare from proxying and cacheing requests to your WordPress admin panel.

It's also possible to "pause" CloudFlare temporarily but that would have lead to a rather large load on my website.

Conclusion

What have we learned today?

  • The unexpected interplay of two independent products can have an "interesting" effect on your service.
  • Always have a backup plan for accessing your server.
  • If someone is using a tool to automatically blacklist IP addresses, it's possible to provoke a Denial of Service attack by proxying requests through a critical piece of their infrastructure.
  • Avoid ambiguous characters in passwords - or at least ensure you use a font which clearly shows the difference between Il1, O0, 5S, etc.
  • Don't panic!

Brightening Up The Office - TARDIS Lanyards

The only jewellery it seems acceptable for a modern man to wear is a discreet wedding ring, and a corporate necklace.

I've long since given up wearing a tie - why trust a man who voluntarily wraps a noose around his neck? - but as a sop to modern work-wear I have a security badge dangling from a lanyard.

The lanyards that work hands out are unspeakably corporate - and the ones I've picket up at conferences are strewn with logos of companies who couldn't pay me to advertise them. I need something... special.

Luckily, my friend and neighbour runs Jenny Wren Creates. She specialises in making bespoke, geeky, and reasonably priced thingamijigs.

Tardis Lanyard

Beautiful! (The lanyard, not me!)
Terence Wearing Tardis Lanyard

Jenny is selling the lanyards for £7 + P&P.

She also has a Police Box with a darker pattern:
Dark Tardis Lanyard

And space invader wallets:

Space Invader Wallet

Snap 'em up quick!