Alec Saunders SquawkBox

For the last few days I've been playing with Scanr on the N95. I first wrote about Scanr in October of 2006, but with the low quality camera on my BlackBerry Pearl, and the Rogers high seas pirate pricing on data, it wasn't an option.  With the new 1G data plan from Rogers, and the N95's 5 megapixel camera, it seemed like a good time to try it again.

What Scanr does is very simple.  It uses the camera on your phone to capture an image, which it then sends to a web site scanning service.  Depending on the type of content, it does different things.  Business cards it will run through an OCR, and return you a vCard of the content, which you can then insert into your address book.  Whiteboards are returned to you as PDF files.  And documents can be faxed, OCR'd or PDF'd.   A good idea, with lots of promise!

And it works amazingly well in practice.  For example, I was introduced to Veronika Litinski of MarsDD in Toronto last week briefly while eating lunch in their food court.  Her card scanned beautifully.  The image above is the scan of her card taken by the N95, and below that is Scanr's interpretation. 

Tips to get the best results from Scanr for business cards:

1. Use a phone with a 5 megapixel camera.  Although Scanr claims it will work with a lower pixel count, my previous experiences were not very impressive.
2. Set the camera on macro to allow it to focus close up and reduce the strength of the flash.
3. Focus as close as possible to the card, but do not cut any part of the card out.  The software gets confused if it can't see the whole card.
4. Don't waste time on cards that heavy color components.  It doesn't work well there.
5. Cards with a glossy finish also don't scan well, as the flash tends to obscure portions of the card.

Scanr also works well for whiteboard images.  Snap a photograph, send it to Scanr and what you get back is a highly compressed image optimized for readability with the knowledge that it was created using markers and whiteboard or paper.  It's a much better solution than today's expedient of snapping and mailing JPEG files.

I like it a lot.  The $2.99 / month price to allow you to upload unlimited scans is a steal too.

From here it looks as if the FCC is in favour of Net Neutrality.  At hearings held yesterday at the Harvard Law School, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had pointed questions for the cable industry, and opined that any traffic shaping based on content must be "conducted in an open and transparent way".  Commissioner Michael J. Copps noted that cable policies had been decided "in a black box that the American public could not peak into".

This must make execs at BitTorrent, and Vuze hopeful.

In a classic phishing scheme, criminals try to dupe consumers into revealing personal information about themselves using fraudulent emails. Victims receive email purporting to be sent by a financial institution, or a prominent business (eBay is a frequent target, for example). Within the email are links to various websites, including valid links to the financial institutions web site, and links to the fraud artist’s web site, which is designed to be identical to the users financial institutions site. When users “log in” to the false website, their login credentials are captured and can then be used by the criminals.

An emerging variation on the phishing attack is voice phishing — the use of a voice response system instead of a web site to dupe the unsuspecting consumer. Typically the crooks make a series of calls to the institution (such as a bank) that they’re pretending to be, and record all of the prompts that the bank uses. They then construct an identical voice response system using a cheap telecom platform like the Open Source Asterisk platform.

Victims are sent either an email asking them to call an 800 number, or they receive a recorded message from the business that they patronize asking them to call an 800 number. The reason given is usually “to discuss your account”, or some such. Then when the call is made, the victim may be instructed to enter credit card information into the telephone in order to “update your account”. Very sophisticated criminals may answer the phone and ask the usual questions – name, address, date of birth, social security number – to confirm identity, and then ask for the credit card number. In either case, unsuspecting consumers expose themselves to identity theft.

The FBI has noted that criminal use of phone systems, and in particular phishing attacks, is on the rise. January 17th, 2008 they took the step of issuing a consumer warning about these kinds of attacks, instructing consumers about how to protect themselves.

Despite this,  major American corporations such as AT&T and American Express are beginning to adopt the same technologies as a means to contain costs. AT&T, for example, often uses an autodialer to call customers, and instructs them to call an 800 number to speak with a representative “about an important issue concerning your account”. The tactics that these corporations employ are identical to those that criminals employee. Whether through negligence, or simply a misunderstanding of the issue, corporate America is conditioning their customers to become victims of these scams.

This morning's call was to discuss this issue.  On the recording you can hear representatives from BT, the VoIP Security Alliance, and the usual group of opinionated commentators.  Notably missing was AT&T who declined to attend, as they didn't feel it was an issue they were facing. 

In addition to the recording, I've also assembled some other resources that you may find useful.

• A short printable document that describes voice phishing schemes, and how to protect yourself from them.  Feel free to forward this to friends and family.
• For US residents, if you would like to know the latest FBI recommendations, please visit www.ic3.gov.  In Canada, visit www.phonebusters.com.
• US Consumer Fraud statistics, as collected by the FTC.  Canadian statistics, as collected by PhoneBusters.

 

 Squawk Box Feb 25 [39:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hey - LinkedIn has a mobile version available at http://m.linkedin.com. Cool!  I'll definitely make use of this.

I like the guys at LinkedIn a lot.  But I'm scratching my head over part of this announcement: a mobile version of LinkedIn… optimized for iPhone users.  Perhaps I'm missing something, but I would have thought that a business networking tool would go mobile first on a business phone.  Or perhaps the iPhone is the business phone of Silicon Valley.

Let me know when you've got something for my BlackBerry, guys.  

“Our biggest competitor was that consumers seem to be satisfied” with DVDs, said Toshiba America's Jodi Sally.  Thus, Toshiba's decision to can the HD DVD project.   

Toshiba's decision is a great illustration of the 10x rule.  To shift a market, the product being offered needs to be 10x better than what was available previously.  Sure, it's tough to come up with a measurable 10x, but let's face it… good marketers know when they've got a revolutionary product on their hands.  And if you do have that revolutionary product, even then you may have to have the patience to wait out consumers.  It takes a long time to move a market, especially if you have to move an entire value chain at the same time.  

Take, for example, USB.  Does anyone remember the old serial cable that USB replaced?  USB as a technology was hundreds of times faster, could be easily chained together so that multiple ports could be on a computer, had it's own power, and was easier for the consumer to use.  With those kinds of benefits, it would seem as if USB devices should have just flown off the shelves at its introduction.  In fact, USB wasn't ubiquitous in the industry until nearly a decade after its introduction.

USB needed an entire value chain to move.  It needed the makers of operating systems, computers, and devices to agree and move in concert.  It needed retail to become educated, stock and display the devices.  And it needed consumers to demand them.  It wasn't going to happen overnight. We don't all live in Silicon Valley and shop at Fry's.    Consumers don't rush out and buy every shiny new toy like the uber-geeks do. 

You would think that the consumer electronics industry understands this by now.  After all, HD-TV was introduced in 1998.  Here we are in 2008, and it's just starting to achieve mass popularity.  Why?  The industry needed to move a value chain to HD — content creators, studios, and networks, plus retail.  And consumers didn't see a need to buy HDTV's until the content was there.  I've owned one since 2001, and it's only been in the last two years that a significant amount of HD content is available.  

So, was HD-DVD a 10x improvement? For those with HDTV, absolutely.  But nobody gave it a chance. Toshiba introduced HD-DVD in 2006, and canned it two years later in 2008.  Toshiba might have given up too soon. Or, as some have argued, uniting behind a single standard might allow the value chain for high definition video to move more quickly.  Either way, nobody had the patience to wait for the market.

It's way too early to make a statement like "consumers seem to be satisfied" with DVD.