Author: Shaun

Hackoff.com is “An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble” written by Tom Evslin.

So far (I’m fully up to date with the latest episode), this is proving to be an intriguing, entertaining and informative story. In particular I enjoy the in-depth discussion of planning for the IPO and the challenges of stock-market trading that Internet security company Hackoff.com faces.

It reminded me of a Canadian TV show, “Traders” which dealt closely with business wheelings and dealings, takeovers, IPOs and the stock market. I loved that show, but I suspect the show was ahead of its time, and was often buried in jargon – after two seasons it was pulled from our TV sets in South Africa.

It took a short while to get used to the tense which is used in the blook (online book released blog style) – it is written in present tense which is a little weird, but becomes comfortable when the emails that are sent between characters and the interviews take place.

As of recently, the book is now also available in audio format, so you can dump it on your iPod and read it with your ears.

Overall, very intriguing – check it out!

Technorati Tags: traders, ipo, stockmarket, hackoff.com, book, blook, blog

Yes – Rick Segal knows that this is what 2006 is supposed to be like. That is, living with the digital lifestyle – something I alluded to in a previous post.

Marnitz Gray from Orbital VX Corporation has responded to my criticism of the MyOrbital.com service. You can also follow the comment stream on ITWeb.

Some comments on his blog response:
‘…I doubt for one second that Shaun read our privacy policy…’
Doubt longer. I read it twice actually, well before I made any comment.

‘…One with such fierce criticism doesn’t give much advice on what we should’ve done instead…’
So should I just fix the problem or should we develop a whole business plan? Maybe I should market the service for you too? (Already am, it seems – no such thing as bad publicity) If I were going to suggest an alternative solution, I’d rather build it myself. (Hence ‘applauding the innovative idea’)

‘…More people on the internet use Internet Explorer as apposed to Firefox…’
Umm, yah, at the moment anyway. It’s changing. People who do more e-commerce online (techies, power users, etc) are already running Firefox. I’m not going to debate this point though. It’s been done.

‘…need an extension for every site that you visit…’
Not necessarily, you just need one that works with Firefox 1.5. (Now there’s another market gap for MyOrbital.)

‘…We are hard at work on a toolbar…’
Well good luck, it may solve the problem. On the other hand I need to place it under my Google Toolbar, under my Jonga Toolbar, under my Yahoo Toolbar, and my anti-phishing toolbar. Internet Explorer Toolbars may be a little tired…

MyOrbital.com is an “Empowered Global Shopping Experience”. Pah!
More like, a silly proxy tool for snooping into your browsing and changing the currency on your webpage.

While I applaud the innovation I am compelled to criticise the service.

In essence this service is a glorified proxy server, routing all your traffic over the MyOrbital server in the United States – perfect for visiting those “naughty sites” from the office network!! (and providing a certain level of anonymity I suppose) Visit www.privacy.net from within MyOrbital.com and without using MyOrbital.com to see this in action.

The really scary part is that any secure traffic to an online store is decrypted to insert the currency information and then re-encrypted by MyOrbital before it is sent to you, a man-in-the-middle situation if you will. Thus all bank or credit card or login details are visible to MyOrbital.

So how much do you trust MyOrbital with your credit card information, your purchasing habits, your browsing habits etc. etc. ??

Put simply, you’re far better off (and far safer) using a simple Currency Conversion Firefox extension. (Find it at http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/)

The service also kills screen real estate and makes browsing a ‘letterbox’ experience.

I’m sorry, no. This has bad karma spraypainted all over it. The very idea of payment info being accessed by an unknown entity somewhere in transit stinks. Bad bad bad, naughty MyOrbital.com intercept and invade privacy.

Technorati Tags: MyOrbital.com, shopping, online, ssl, secure, website, proxy, service, browsing, privacy, anonymity

Yes, I’m having a bad day. Now piss off and leave me be.

Technorati Tags: SunMicrosystems, Sun, SouthAfrica, anger