This is pretty damn cool!
RjDj
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Author Archives: ayn
best desk by far – iDesk
Web virtual keyboards suck
I recently opened up a new brokerage account at TradeKing, I haven’t really used it yet as I am still in the process of clearing my initial ACH transfer, but one major annoyance is the virtual keyboard they use in their login system. This is pretty commonly used in financial websites, it usually works like this: first you have to type in your username or customer ID, there is only one field to submit, and then if you type in a username/id that matches one of their records, it redirects to a different page to prompt you for passwords/security keys/PINs/etc. Sometimes it doesn’t even tell you if the first input is correct, which is the right thing to do. In the second screen you are presented with a virtual keyboard or keypad, where you are forced to click the virtual keyboard instead of typing in the password, I think some of them even remap the clicks into different keys. This might seem like a good idea as it makes it slightly harder for people to guess the passwords, but in reality it doesn’t work because:
- it encourages users to have much shorter and easier to type passwords or PINs, instead of using 1Password‘s password generator to generate strong random passwords with the maximum allowed length, I am inclined to use something easy to type, without symbols or mixed cases
- with a little bit of scripting and the right tools, you can emulate mouse clicks in browsers, people do this in web UI testing all the time, so it really doesn’t prevent anyone from trying to guess passwords, and due to point #1 the passwords are usually easier to guess with such system
This just becomes a HUGE annoyance to your customers when they try to access their accounts. TD Ameritrade or E*TRADE don’t do this, and 1Password can log me into those sites with just one keyboard shortcut (?-\), so I am way more likely to trade at my TD Ameritrade account vs at TradeKing.
This is a screenshot of how it looks like at TradeKing:
ING Orange also has something similar:
and HSBC also implemented a virtual keyboard, though, in this case, 1Password was able to autofill and submit the form:
BTW, if you have a Mac and an iPhone, I highly recommend getting 1Password, especially if you use multiple browsers like I do (FF, Fluid, and Safari). It is GOLD!
Lensbaby “Composer”
Lensbaby just refreshed their entire line of selective focus lens. I’ve wanted a Lensbaby for quite some time but never actually bought one, all my lenses are large so I kindda want a ultra lightweight and small walkaround lens. While the 50/1.4 or even 1.8 might fit the physical criteria, I am hooked with L-shaped bokeh and just cannot deal with the unpleasant blur from those lens. Check out this video of the new Lensbaby Composer, seems easy to use while I still get decent control of focus. Kindda pricey at $270, and I would want to get the wide angle attachment at $90, or maybe I won’t need it with full frame (later).
The Composer is a breeze to use. Simply bend the lens to move the Sweet Spot and focus with the Composer’s unique barrel focus mechanism, which automatically dampens the focus action as you approach infinity.
The Composer stays in its bent position without needing to be locked. If you want to ensure the Composer will not move during an extended shooting session, you can lock the lens’s position by rotating the locking ring. This locking feature makes the Composer the ideal Lensbaby lens for studio photography or for any situation where you want longer or repeated exposures.
[From Lensbaby – Composer]
poor doggie
From Shanghaiist…
A dog in Changsha, Hunan province, stays by the dead carcass of his good friend, which has just been knocked down by a car. As if unwilling to believe that his companion had died, he tries to wake her up with his paws, and when he realises that he is unable to awake her, he sits quietly by her side, unfazed by all the passing traffic.
NYT Econ Journalist David Cay Johnston: It Doesn’t Add Up
From Open Left.
NYT Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill, has written a letter to fellow journalists that deserves wide attention, urging a fundamentally skeptical approach to reporting on this purported crisis, warning against repeating the mistakes of the recent past, reporting on other Bush Administration panics…
…
Here are some question to ask:
Do we need a bailout of American and foreign banks? Show us in detail the reasons for this, and the numbers: make the case.
Is there a market solution to this? If so, why impose a government solution? If not what does that tell us about our entire economic theory?
Is there a less expensive solution?
How do we know this will not just be a downpayment on a much bigger
bailout?Is there a solution that provides direct help to those who took out these loans, rather than those who sold them?
If AIG and others are too big to fail, what does that tell us about government anti-trust policy and regulatory policy and inaction?
Why have both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley made clear that they want IN on this deal? Get skeptical and ask the basic questions — who benefits, how much and what makes this plan so attractive that Goldman and MS want to participate? Ditto for GE. That they are others want to be included should prompt a great deal of skeptical questioning.
How does banning short selling of the stocks of 900 companies help the markets? (The markets are heavily biased toward the sell side, so why constrain the shorts, who often turn out to be right about stocks whose share prices has been artificially inflated.)
How is banning short selling of this growing list of companies show a commitment to “free markets,” a stated goal of this and a long lost of previous administrations?
During this short selling ban, why are there no parallel controls on insiders getting out of their positions?
Reporters, hit the streets and telephones to ask business owners if their credit lines have been frozen. Look at swings in the stock market and put the recent swings in perspective.
Look on the Internet and see all of the ads for the very toxic mortgages that are supposedly at the core of this mess. Ask why are 1.9% loans (in which you pay that in cash and the rest of the interest is added to your mortgage balance) still being sold? Find out who continues to buy these loans.
[From Poynter Online – Forums and Open Left]
Startonomics
I’m going to this, should be interesting:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II Hands-on Preview at dpreview
5DM2 is finally here, the price is right, it’s not perfect but it’s close. I think I’m gonna get one.
- 21 megapixel CMOS sensor (very similar to the sensor in the EOS-1Ds Mark III)
- Sensor dust reduction by vibration of filter
- ISO 100 – 6400 calibrated range, ISO 50 – 25600 expansion (1Ds Mark III & 5D max ISO 3200)
- Auto ISO (100 – 3200) in all modes except manual
- 3.9 frames per second continuous shooting
- DIGIC 4 processor, new menus / interface as per the EOS 50D
- Image processing features:
- Highlight tone priority
- Auto lighting optimizer (4 levels)
- High ISO noise reduction (4 levels)
- Lens peripheral illumination correction (vignetting correction)
- RAW and SRAW1 (10 MP) / SRAW2 (5 MP)
- RAW / JPEG selection made separately
- Permanent display of ISO on both top plate and viewfinder displays
- AF microadjustment (up to 20 lenses individually)
- Three custom modes on command dial, Creative Auto mode
- Image copyright metadata support
- 98% coverage viewfinder (0.71x magnification)
- 3.0" 920,000 dot LCD monitor with ‘Clear View’ cover / coatings, 170° viewing angle
- Automatic LCD brightness adjustment (ambient light sensor)
- Live view with three mode auto-focus (including face detection)
- No mirror-flip for exposures in Live View if contrast detect AF selected
- Movie recording in live view (1080p H.264 up to 12 minutes, VGA H.264 up to 24 mins per clip)
- Two mode silent shooting (in live view)
- New jump options in play mode
- HDMI and standard composite (AV) video out
- Full audio support: built-in mic and speaker, mic-in socket, audio-out over AV (although not HDMI)
- IrPort (supports IR remote shutter release using optional RC1 / RC5 controllers)
- UDMA CompactFlash support
- New 1800 mAh battery with improved battery information / logging
- New optional WFT-E4 WiFi / LAN / USB vertical grip
- Water resistance: 10 mm rain in 3 minutes
[From Canon EOS 5D Mark II Hands-on Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review]
Using Phusion Passenger in Facebook apps development
Ray pointed me to a RailsCast on how to use Passenger for local development, it literally took me 2 minutes to setup. If you work on multiple Ruby on Rails applications, you should definitely do it.
There is however one problem on this approach, since the default passenger.pref config relies on virtual host, you can’t really setup SSH port forward to forward something to one of the virtual hosts, and this is important as this is how most of us develop Facebook applications locally. To get Passenger and Rails Facebook apps to work, you have to:
- open up httpd.conf ask Apache to listen to another port:
Listen 81
- add another named virtual host, here I’m adding port *.81:
<IfModule passenger_module> NameVirtualHost *:80 NameVirtualHost *:81 Include /private/etc/apache2/passenger_pane_vhosts/*.conf </IfModule>
- In the configuration for that Facebook app, change it to respond to all traffic on the new port (81 in this case):
<VirtualHost *:81>
ServerName app_name.local
DocumentRoot "/Users/ayn/work/app_name/public"
RailsEnv development
RailsAllowModRewrite off
<directory "/Users/ayn/work/app_name/public">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</directory>
</VirtualHost>
Now you can setup your tunnel to forward to localhost (or 127.0.0.1 if you use SSHKeychain) port 81 and it should work. Add more ports if you work on multiple Facebook apps at the same time.
Just turned off daily tweets digest
I feel like the tweets digest are taking over the blog as I don’t blog enough. Also people can see my tweets by following me on Twitter or going to my Twitter page so having them here just added noise. So I have turned off daily tweets digest just now.
Btw it is a pain to add links in this WordPress iPhone app!