PTP Blog

the latest version of Skype includes an option Firefox extension that automatically transforms phone numbers in webpage into buttons that you can click to initiate a Skype call.

Here’s an example of what it looks like in action:
(Click for a larger image)

This example is taken from PTP’s database - Salesforce - but would work the same with any other online database out there.

As you can see, the possibilities are pretty intriguing - imagine setting up a phone list with entry fields - a caller could sit at a computer, clicking and calling their way down the list, entering in response directly on the page and therefore directly into the database. This could be pretty darn cool.

Thanks to Jan Adams for the picture.

We wrapped up the first session of our in-progress COaTI on Saturday, and though the curriculum still isn’t where I want it to be, we’re steadily getting better.

One challenge that’s been on my mind a lot over the last few days is that we try to create a certain culture at COaTI - largely through a series of warm-up sessions that are designed to help foster a sense of safety, a sense of not being alone with technology challenges, and an understanding that peer knowledge is at least as valuable, if not more valuable than what the techies know. This presents a challenge because it takes time, and I think gets frustrating for some folks participating.

Right now, I’m not sure if and how to change that - shorten the “warm-up” maybe, or be more clear up front about the flow of all the sessions so that we’re clear about what we’re doing and why we’re doing.

We do try to do that at the beginning of every session, but I’m thinking that if we can really tighten up how to introduce the whole program at the beginning, things will make more sense to folks who are participating.

We all know that spam’s a problem. But a recent post on gigaom.com had a stat that caught my eye: quoting a NY times article that said spam “accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages.”

I knew that it was bad, but since we’ve set up with Mailfoundry, the number of spam messages that actually make it to my inbox have dropped to fewer than 10 a week - yes, a week.

I’m not suggesting that Mailfoundry is the answer to spam filtering - running mail through Gmail, using SpamAssassin, and any of the many other tools out there are probably equally good.

What I do think is that as the number of spam increase relative to actual mail, we’re going to see three things happen:

1. spam filtering that happens away from your inbox is going to increase in popularity due to its greater efficiency for the end user (you).
2. spam filtering that aggregates the spam reporting of its userbase is going to become ever more effective - think about something like Gmail or Mailfoundry, where many users are marking messages as spam thereby training the filters for everyone. It just makes sense that this sort of approach is going to always be more effective than what you or I can do invididually by training our own anti-spam system.
3. some form of verified sender and “pay to send” email is going to arise out of the competing proposals. Making spam unprofitable is the only realistic way I can see to shift this trend. The concept has problems, but spammers are spamming to make money. A serious reduction in the profits would go a long way towards reducing the allure of spamming.

The trick is going to be coming up with a solution that retains the utility of email while signifcantly reducing the spam problem in a manner that doesn’t restrict control of who can send email.

I read about OpenDNS a few weeks back and decided to give it a try.

OpenDNS is a company that provides free DNS lookup service for your computer. Since you all have DNS service already - you get it when you buy an internet connection, you might wonder why you’d want to look at OpenDNS.

I wondered the same thing, but after reviewing what they offer, and actually using it, I think they’ve got two really great features that make them worth a look.

The first, and probably most useful is their spelling correction - have you ever typed in a URL incorrectly? www.progressivetech.og for example? OpenDNS will correct that to www.progressivetech.org for you - super useful since we all sometimes forget that we’re not perfect typists, but also nice because at least on small laptop screens, the address bar in my browser isn’t always quite as clear as it could be (I probably do need to get another eye exam too, but that’s besides the point). I haven’t used the service for all that long, so I don’t know how extensively the spell correcting works - for example, typing www.progresivetech.org doesn’t trigger auto-correction, but instead takes you a google-esq search page. Still, most of the URL mistakes I make are in the extension - .co or .cm instead of .com.

The second feature that makes OpenDNS interesting is their anti-phishing protection. From what I can tell, they maintain a database of phishing sites, and block your computer for reaching those sites. If you try to access a site in their anti-phishing database, you get a page that tells you that the site was blocked because of phishing, and gives you the option of submitting a form to contest the phishing block. Again, I don’t know how extensive their database is, partially because I haven’t used the service that long, but also because I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of accidentally hitting a phishing site. Still, even a little protection from phishing is nice.

If you’ve ever thought about finding a different set of DNS servers, I think OpenDNS is worth a look.