jdavid.net Social Software Hacker, Designer, Consultant living in SF.

New Babelfin logo and Site design coming.

Babelfin Logo - Icon

In the near future I hope to push out a version of Babelfin that will work in Japanese. Soon after I will release one in French. As part of that release I thought I would iterate a bit on the logo and the site layout. The previous logo was a one color logo with grey text ( which in print is two colors anyways ), this one is a two color log and is high contrast. I think the new logo is readable and distinct. I also hope that the subtle abstract nature of a fish bone is present.

I found inspiration for this logo via the hit show Mad Men and my recent visit to the Picasso exhibit.

Let me know if you like the logo, or if you are feeling bold, I would love to see what you come up with. Take this as inspiration.

As for the site at large, I really just need to add a call to action to collect email addresses and to send people a link to the plugin/ chrome extension. I felt like an email list is the best option until I can afford to dedicate some time to really write some copy. At some point I expect to add at least two more pages, one for each language. Over time I will start to add the other typical pages like About, etc... But for now I only need a landing page.

What are your thoughts?

Getting VerifyStatus API working in Sandbox

There are a few caviots to getting the API working.
I hope this saves someone a few hours/ days.

• CallerServices.php has a small bug
• Only Sandbox email accounts work in the sandbox. Thanks for confiming @ppalavilli
• ALL Sandbox accounts have the First Name: Test Thanks @ppalavilli
• ALL Sandbox accounts have the Last Name: User Thanks @ppalavilli

If you get a

PHP Warning: Missing argument 3 for CallerServices::callWebService()

On line 101 of CallerServices.php you have:

function callWebService($request,$serviceName,$simpleXML)

It should read: //(most of the calls that use callWebService are parent::callWebService( $request,$serviceName ) anyways.

function callWebService($request,$serviceName,$simpleXML=NULL)
{
$response = null;
try {
$endpoint=API_BASE_ENDPOINT.$serviceName;
$response = call($request, $endpoint, $this->sandBoxEmailAddress,$simpleXML);
}
catch(Exception $ex) {
throw new FatalException('Error occurred in call method');
}
return $response;
}

Here is the code I used. Replace {email} with one of your sandbox email addresses.

public function verify_email($params){
$VstatusRequest = new GetVerifiedStatusRequest();

$VstatusRequest->emailAddress = '{email}';
$VstatusRequest->matchCriteria = 'NAME';
$VstatusRequest->firstName = 'Test';
$VstatusRequest->lastName = 'User';

$rEnvelope = new RequestEnvelope();
$rEnvelope->errorLanguage = "en_US";
$VstatusRequest->requestEnvelope = $rEnvelope ;

$aa = new AdaptiveAccounts();
$response = $aa->GetVerifiedStatus($VstatusRequest);

echo json_encode($response);
}

The JSON encoded object looks like such:

{"responseEnvelope":{"timestamp":"2011-03-25T15:37:32.443-07:00","ack":"Success","correlationId":"42bce847aebc9","build":"1772158"},"accountStatus":"VERIFIED"}

@jdavid

Japan: Pay it Forward

I just sent this message to a friend in Japan. My hope is that others will do the same.

I was inspired by a few articles I had read about in the past about pastors giving money to the congregations members to do good in a community. I don't know how my friend Jon will make use of the money but I trust he will slightly know better than I how to use it.

I figure that this $100 will work in different ways than the other money that I have sent to the relief effort via the Red Cross.

If I get a note back of how the money was used, I will update this post. Please let me know if you choose to do the same. #japan #payitforward

Jon, I am sending $100.00 to you in Japan, if you need the cash please use it. If you know of a way to leverage the money please do that. If you think someone else could make better use, pay it forward. Write back to tell me how you use it.

Cheers,
Justin

Facebook as a Bank?

http://michaeldeshazer.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/the-yuri-milner-connect-how-facebook-will-become-a-bank/

This is a little bit of a leading argument but it seems to sum up external arguments.

I still have yet to rediscover where I saw that Facebook was filing to be a bank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

$2billion in cash can lend out $18billion in value.
@ 5% interest that's $900 million a year in profit.
@ 10% that's $1.8billion a year.
& that's just on interest.

Facebook makes transactional profits too, so on $18billion in credits, I bet you could see $100 billion in transactions if they one day allowed peer to peer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax

Visa has about $2-3billion a quarter in revenue via their transaction fees.

#TSA2.0 imagine you are an Evil Web Genius ( ninja, rockstar ) hacker!

If you were some evil web genius hacker type ( otherwise known as a ninja or rockstar ) how could you mashup TSA's new scanner's to your favorite webapis?

If you have not heard, TSA is at it again. It's almost like they took a look at the past 20-50 years of sci-fi and said, "what don't people want us to do?" "Oh, let's do that." So, they just decided to do it, even though fiction paints a bleak image of it. These days they are doing full body scans, and not the type you might see in Total Recall, where you see someones bones and maybe a weapon or two, but this time TSA seems to have contracted out to a company that seems to have their inner 12 year old boy on overdrive; and as a result TSA's new scanners don't just find weapons, no they snap photos of your naked body for the world to document. The technology uses a form of x-ray vision, no joke. Which has raised concerns for cancer patients and others whom care about their health.

So the question is what will TSA come up with next?

How good, bad can it get?

Maybe it's time to have a little fun of it to raise awareness. Maybe we should create a few mashups in jest of the new procedures.

So, If you were some evil web genius hacker type ( otherwise known as a ninja or rockstar ) how could you mashup TSA's new scanner's to your favorite webapis? Would you cache a copy of the photo for yourself? Would you share it on Path with your 50 closest friends? ( MySpace, Facebook, Twitter? ) Would you tie it into your Gowalla or Foursquare checkins? Maybe you could use it as part of a google interview question, " How can you determine someones BMI or weight from a 'Naked Body Scan?"

Maybe you could track how much people eat/ gain between the holidays if you compare their departure and return flight images?

If you combine that with the data from http://face.com you could even merge the data from an anonymous photo, and tag that with an ID, and then later use rapleaf to look up that user's web history before they board a plane.

So if you were one of those web ninja's what mashup would you build?

Data is a paradise?