ScottyLabs

Domain registrar spam – chinadns-tic.org.cn

tomschlenkhoff — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:16:09 +0000

Seems like a new wave of domain-extortion spam is arriving at european shores. Usually this is weeded out, but somehow these seem to get through. The scheme seems to rely on

Confirming the email address once you reply to one of the mails
Selling domain grabbing ‘insurance’ so this ‘won’t happen again in the future’

This is another good reminder not to have you email client to download content automatically. The mail contains hidden flash-content that will be downloaded if you allow your email-client to do so. This is noticed back in China and will lead to being more valuable as a spam address – resulting in more spam!

This is what we got from “David.huang” <David.huang@chinadns-tic.org.cn>:

(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward to the right person/ department, as this is urgent, thank you.)

Dear CEO,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in China,we have something need to confirm with you.we formally received an application on February 24, one company which called “Fines Investments Group” are applying to register ” telfish” as Brand name and following Domains:

telfish.asia
telfish.com.hk
telfish.com.tw
telfish.hk
telfish.in
telfish.net.cn
telfish.org.cn
telfish.tw

After our initial examination,we found that the Brand name applied for registration are as same as your company using name and Brand name.These days we are dealing with it,hope to get the affirmation from your company.if your company did not authorize the aforesaid company to register these,please contact us as soon as possible.If your company and this”Fines Investments Group”as the same company,there is no need reply to us,We will accept their application and will register those for them immediately.
In addition,we hereby affirm that our time limit is 7 workdays. if your company files no reply within the time limit,we will approve the application submitted by “Fines Investments Group” unconditionally.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Best Regards,

David

————————————————————————————————–

David Huang(Mr)
Auditing commissioner
Tel: +0086-556-5186637
Fax: +0086-556-5337837

Website: http://www.chinadns-tic.org.cn

London cabbies fighting for survival?

tomschlenkhoff — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:10:07 +0000

Just read the latest Dial-a-cab ‘Call Sign‘ by their Editor Alan Fisher and found the reason why a few London cabbies I met recently were so worried about private hire. By now I understood quite well that there are plenty of little quarrels going on between these two trades. But this fact – sheer numbers – really makes the point:

Number of licensed black cabs versus private hire vehicles

Sure enough, taxicabs look like a small minority now, not even counting all the other contenders like rickshaws and illegal touts. What can the TfL do to make black cabs become relevant again? What can the trade do? Is it enough to go the extra mile? Should the TfL do away with the black cabs and lower the barrier of entry into the mobility market, and thereby lower the price of on-demand mobility?

CRM Odyssey – Salesforce, BatchBook, Highrise and finally – Solve360

tomschlenkhoff — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:55:08 +0000

Finding my ‘CRM’ was something like an odyssey. After a few exchanges in a few forums and with Norada support it dawned on me, that is rather the rule than the exception.

This is my short story of how this came about. May there be interesting tidbits for others facing comparable problems.

It all started off with CabChap developing faster than anticipated. telfish being an B2B business, didn’t generate many leads, we were able to handle them with the standard Mac address book.
CabChap on the other hand, is pure B2C play. And as leads, partner requests, customers, bugs and that stuff started rolling in, I needed a more capable solution.

Everybody knows 37signals and salesforce, so these were the obvious places to start. I tried Highrise first, being an avid user of Ruby on Rails I deemed it fair for them to get the first shot. But I somehow didn’t get the hang of it, found it was lacking to much in terms of integration with my contact and mail database.

On to salesforce: Everybody knows them, seemed to me, it’s the gold standard of CRM on the web. Wrong! It feels reasonable fast, but it looks, feels and IS way over-engineered. It probably has all the (little) features I wanted but 1.) at a price in terms of money, and 2.) in terms of a steep learning curve.

Features I required:

Integration with my contact database on MobileMe (or Google for that matter) – I am a heavy iPhone user
iPhone app or at least iPhone-enabled access
Integration with my mails (MobileMe or Google as well – I ended up switching contacts and mail to Google because they are interfaced the most to other solutions)
Have the ability to put notes and tags to contacts easily
Be affordable
‘Handle Projects’ is an optional plus that Solve360 delivers, it wasn’t on my list at first

After 37signals and salesforce I turned to small solutions for SMBs like BatchBook and TactileCRM. I like them way more, but they both felt clunky to use, like Web 1.0 – plenty of page reloads and SLOOOOW, at least from Europe. Maybe that is different from the US/CA. Actually I preferred BatchBook over TactileCRM, the latter producing a few significant display-problems in my beloved Safari browser.

On to a short stint with Gist. Gist.com is something like a external information aggregator for your address book, feeds, blogs and Gmail. It pulls together all this information and helps you stay informed about what is going on with you important accounts. It bills itself ’social CRM’ but its less CRM and more social. I am still playing with it, but more to find out if I may have other uses for it. Check it out, it’s worth a trial.

So, a few days and a few address book rebuilds later, I found a hint on the CRM solution Solve360 from Norada. At first its an awkward mixture of CRM and project management. But the UI looked so good and it felt like it was engineered with passion (something I am very susceptible to as an avid Apple user). So after a few hours of importing my stuff and reading through the CRM forums I almost felt relieve, this could be it – at least for me.

So next morning I took the plunge and started to migrate all my stuff to Solve. Then I couldn’t help it, I had to push my luck. I activated two very cool beta features that Solve is about to deliver: Google Contact Synchronization and Google Mail Integration. This sounds to good to be true, none out there, delivers a tight live integration of the most important poor-man’s tools. But as I said, I hit a few problems here. At first the sync wouldn’t work, this was resolved within hours by helpful Norada support staff.
But once the integration worked I got all my contacts (1000+) into Solve and this was not what I wanted. But again, very helpful staff sorted out (my) mess in a few hours and I am good to go again. What really shocked me was, how understanding and empathetic support was (thanks Mike!). Live email integration worked somehow nicely, but then again I have a complicated setup with different SMTP-servers for the different projects, and compared to the fantastic Gmail Client it has to lack big time. Remember, these both promising features are beta, so things will improve further and I will probably try them again one day.

So, my setup looks like this now: I keep my contacts in Mac and iPhone address book, my emails in Apple mail and Gmail and all neatly synced with Google Sync. This works like a charm, is fast as hell and push-y (and free, but thats not so important for me). I keep Solve separated, but mails for my projects are automatically forwarded to Solve via Gmail filters to my Solve360 dropbox. Sending mail is triggered via the Solve web app and then automatically sent to the dropbox as well (via bcc). Looks and works good so far.

If you have any questions or tips, don’t hesitate to leave me a note below.

Bonus tip: Back up your contacts in different formats (VCard and CSV preferred). You’ll need these files for import into your chosen system anyway – and I messed up my contacts db in the process a few times.

Vivisecting Apples iPhone App Review Process – Insights from Inside

tomschlenkhoff — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:56:41 +0000

09-12-18 Update: Many people pointed out, that there is a remote chance that the coords really show the tester’s home location. To protect her/him I have jittered the address / the location slightly.

Our first iPhone App ‘CabChap’ for the global taxi dispatch cabchap.com has been released today to the Apple app store. The app makes it possible to find nearby cab drivers with a single click. It differs from other offers out there by contacting the drivers directly (in the near term), instead on having an intermediary – aka dispatch – in between.

Facts (all times UTC):

It took exactly seven days to get the app in the store, after I finally released it for review. I uploaded the binary on 09/12/10 approx 3pm and got the mail stating ‘Your application is Ready for Sale’ on 09/12/17 approx. 11pm.

Being a server based app, it is possible to learn when and where tested the app has been tested with what devices. Below you will find the complete log file for your own conclusions. Here are my derived findings from the logs:

Testing commenced 2009-12-11 23:06:47 from a real device at this place: Lowell Dr, Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA with this reverse address: 166-205-135-185.mobile.mymmode.com which in turn stands for a cingular ip.

That means the preliminary testing starts quite early, after 1,5 days the first reviewer checked the basic app functionality on a real device. If you take a look around this address it seems like Apple outsourced the testing to people working from home! WTF? It may be, that the location data is fake, but then again there is characteristic jitter around this location, it seems real to me!

In the next two minutes the app ran on two different devices. Manual location entry was tested as well from an IP which is assigned to Apple (at least according this whois: http://whois.domaintools.com/17.227.47.226). Maybe a VPN to Apple HQ at Infinite Loop? Or the location data is fake…

(Glad everything seemed to work so far).

Testing for today ended 2009-12-11 23:08:48. A real short stint!

Two days, nothing happened, then on 2009-12-14 23:55:27 testing commenced from Tantau Ave, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA, which at least approximately resembles Apple new campus. Testing goes strong for approx 90 secs with yet another real device, then stops. Apple Apple IPs, so I guess this is corporate WLAN.

Finally, last testing on 2009-12-17 21:18:31 from Junipero Serra Fwy, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA, either fake or somebody driving to HQ? That’s it, at 23:14 I received my stamp of approval.

You can download the app for free here: iTunes App Store.

After ten requests and approx 10 minutes of total testing the app went live. For sure, the CabChap app is quite simple, so for heavy hitters the testing profile will definitively look differently.

Here is the detailed log:

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 166.205.135.185 at 2009-12-11 23:06:47) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.32″, “uuid”=>”2456e145d730a092141d18c8c5ebc5f4b20ede53″, “longitude”=>”-122.00″}

Completed in 1664ms (View: 220, DB: 48) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=2456e145d730a092141d18c8c5ebc5f4b20ede53&latitude=37.32&longitude=-122.00]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 166.205.135.185 at 2009-12-11 23:07:44) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.32″, “uuid”=>”2456e145d730a092141d18c8c5ebc5f4b20ede53″, “longitude”=>”-122.01″}

Completed in 1704ms (View: 16, DB: 48) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=2456e145d730a092141d18c8c5ebc5f4b20ede53&latitude=37.32&longitude=-122.01]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 166.205.135.185 at 2009-12-11 23:08:16) [GET]

Parameters: {“commit”=>”Find Cabs”, “query_address”=>”J unipero Serra Fwy, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA”}

Completed in 552ms (View: 12, DB: 48) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?query_address=J+unipero+Serra+Fwy%2C+Cupertino%2C+CA+95014%2C+USA&commit=Find+Cabs]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 17.227.47.226 at 2009-12-11 23:08:24) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.33″, “uuid”=>”8e793876dd64fc4221f82a500e628f7d73630674″, “longitude”=>”-122.00″}

Completed in 1724ms (View: 16, DB: 44) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=8e793876dd64fc4221f82a500e628f7d73630674&latitude=37.33&longitude=-122.00]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 17.227.47.226 at 2009-12-11 23:08:43) [GET]

Parameters: {“commit”=>”Find Cabs”, “query_address”=>”Tantau Ave, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA”}

Completed in 764ms (View: 16, DB: 48) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?query_address=Tantau+Ave%2C+Cupertino%2C+CA+95014%2C+USA&commit=Find+Cabs]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 166.205.135.185 at 2009-12-11 23:08:48) [GET]

Parameters: {“commit”=>”Find Cabs”, “query_address”=>”Junipero Serra Fwy, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA”}

Completed in 636ms (View: 16, DB: 48) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?query_address=Junipero+Serra+Fwy%2C+Cupertino%2C+CA+95014%2C+USA&commit=Find+Cabs]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 17.227.47.62 at 2009-12-14 23:55:27) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”0.000000″, “uuid”=>”cd1a92ab73ab6068933d828724c7f4ae476af72e”, “longitude”=>”0.000000″}

Completed in 580ms (View: 56, DB: 40) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=cd1a92ab73ab6068933d828724c7f4ae476af72e&latitude=0.000000&longitude=0.000000]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 17.227.47.62 at 2009-12-14 23:55:53) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.32″, “uuid”=>”cd1a92ab73ab6068933d828724c7f4ae476af72e”, “longitude”=>”-122.00″}

Completed in 1404ms (View: 16, DB: 52) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=cd1a92ab73ab6068933d828724c7f4ae476af72e&latitude=37.32&longitude=-122.00]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 17.227.47.62 at 2009-12-14 23:56:54) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.33″, “uuid”=>”b7c61e39f88eb71cd35ca454b656a2756fa827a4″, “longitude”=>”-122.00″}

Completed in 1652ms (View: 152, DB: 44) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=b7c61e39f88eb71cd35ca454b656a2756fa827a4&latitude=37.33&longitude=-122.00]

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 166.205.131.29 at 2009-12-17 21:18:31) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.32″, “uuid”=>”9e801bd2d76bc30e9e2670991c0074b70594a428″, “longitude”=>”-122.01″}

Completed in 1724ms (View: 60, DB: 48) | 200 OK [http://www.cabchap.com?uuid=9e801bd2d76bc30e9e2670991c0074b70594a428&latitude=37.32&longitude=-122.01]

#First test block from them:

Processing IphoneController#passenger (for 166.205.135.185 at 2009-12-11 23:06:47) [GET]

Parameters: {“latitude”=>”37.329012″, “uuid”=>”2456e145d730a092141d18c8c5ebc5f4b20ede53″, “longitude”=>”-122.001169″}