July 2006

I installed Hamachi (Wikipedia overview) last week, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been so impressed with a piece of software. It’s as close to a zero-config VPN tool as it’s possible to get - just install and forget. No scary networking questions, no fiddling with settings. From a usability point of view it’s obviously been modelled on an instant messaging client, which makes it immediately intuitive to a decent proportion of users.

I’ve been using it to tunnel to the PCs of family members, and it’s flawless; you can quickly throw together ad-hoc networks simply by setting up the software on each machine and logging onto the chosen network.

The only problem I can see is that because it relies on an external server to bootstrap the connection, it will die if the company offering it kill free access to the server. If they do that I’ll go with one of the other solutions, but for now I’m happy.

A friend is currently (probably?) in Syria, after having left Lebanon a few days ago. This spurred me to read some of the blog posts from the region. In amongst all the invective, finger-pointing and (quite legitimate) panic I came across this.

I can’t comment on the accuracy of his opinions, but I thought it was interesting and well-argued enough to link to.

(edit: according to this article, the US will be charging its citizens $300 to get them out of Lebanon. Way to tear down the social contract, guys.)

In the end, sterility was my downfall. I couldn’t sterilise a jar of growth medium sufficently by boiling it, and in the meantime the petri dishes dried out and got infected.

I plan to buy a pressure cooker so I can nail the sterilisation part of the process, then start over in August, in time for the natural mushroom season in September.

Story here (via pretty much everywhere, but especially Scoble and Slashdot)

Pontification below

Google Checkout, at first glance, doesn’t seem like a Paypal killer (the lower fees are attractive but its US-only, requires a credit card and has a scary list of products it won’t touch in the T&Cs - not just porn, but anything that someone, somewhere, might find offensive). Nevertheless, eBay’s response has been to take their ball and go home; the entry of Google into online payments seems to have scared them.

Maybe that’s because their customers have been crying out for an alternative to Paypal for years. It’s universally detested, but universally used, because there’s no better alternative. To be honest, I always felt that the “virtuous circle” aspect of eBay (buyers go there because sellers are there, sellers go there because buyers are there) made them pretty-much unassailable (have you looked at QXL lately?), but now I’m starting to wonder.

An eBay transaction, completed via Paypal, absolutely nickle-and-dimes the seller to death, and I think the majority of eBay users look back with fondness to eBay circa 2001. There may be an opportunity for an eBay replacement with some or all of these features:

1. lower fees
2. open API for mixing up data
3. a ban on large commercial sellers
4. a ban on junk auctions (websites, ebooks, etc)
5. more nuanced user feedback (a decent reputation system)
6. a customer-first ethos
7. improved seller’s tools (eBay’s listing tools are so bad that they’ve spawned an entire industry of add-ons)
8. Improved UI (eBay’s trapped in 1998, has confusing marketing messages everywhere, and is dog slow)

I guess the best approach would be to start out in a niche, and really service that niche, negating eBay’s one-size-fits-all approach. Collectors of small, valuable, not-too-delicate items would be an ideal market. Vinyl records? Jewellery? Lead figures? Clocks and watches? Baseball cards? Comics? Doesn’t really matter which, all are valuable and can be easily shipped to buyers. Once you’ve got that niche sewn up, you can think about expanding into other areas.

Interesting Slashdot post that disagrees with me

Reply from someone who’s actually doing it