Karen Ruby

Check Your Receipts

There's an interesting article on CANOE by David Canton about businesses printing your full credit card or debit card numbers on your purchase receipts.

This is one of the ways that thieves can steal your identity and should be a major concern of everyone. Thieves can go through your garbage and obtain your full credit card or debit card number on discarded receipts. You should always check to ensure that you use a shredder or tear up receipts when they're not longer required. I have been noticing lately that a lot of places are only showing the last four digits of my card when I make a purchase. Most places do this, but not all.

I used my credit card today for two purchases. When I got home I checked the receipts - sure enough, my full credit card number was printed on both of them. One of the receipts was from a salon and the other was from a kitchen gadget store. It doesn't matter what you purchase or how much the purchase is, businesses should be changing their processes so that they protect our privacy and our cards.

According to the article, "Businesses are required to protect personal information under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The act requires all businesses to ensure customer information is secure, accurate, gathered with consent and not used beyond a stated purpose." Although the article states that Visa and MasterCard are in the process of mandating the suppression of all but the last four digits of the card number, I used my Visa today for both purchases. It's really up to the individual businesses, I guess. For now.

What can we do as consumers to further protect ourselves? We can ask businesses to change their policies regarding printing full card number on our receipts, although there is no law (that I know of) that requires businesses to do this. There will be a cost associated, I'm sure, to change the computer programs. We can also pay by cash for our purchases. This would be ideal, but I rely on my credit cards, particularly the few days before my next paycheque. Also, I'm semi-addicted to obtaining the purchase points on my credit card and am saving my points for a nice trip. 

What else can we do?

Quiz on What Canadians Think About Everything

The Globe and Mail has an interesting interactive quiz on :What Canadians Think About Everything.  The quiz is based on the book by "What Canadians Think About Almost Everything" by Darrell Bricker and John Wright.

Do you know the answers to some of these questions?

• Which province is most likely to support the decriminalization of marijuana?

• What do Canadians believe will fix health care?

• Which beverage is the preferred drink for long weekends?

• What aspect of everyday life is the leading cause of stress among Canadians?

• Canadians living in Alberta are most likely to relax by doing what activity?

• Where does Canada rate in the world in terms of internet use?

• Which do Canadians find to be the most aggravating?

• Which province has the highest concentration of people who read the labels on their food?

I scored 11 out of the 20 questions. There were some surprising answers.

You can find some other questions from the book here.

Very interesting perspective on what Canadians think about.

Get Rich Slowly

There's a really interesting post at foldedspace.org: Get Rich Slowly! concerning personal finace. J. D. Roth has read several books on the topic and has discussed the similar themes found in the books.

He summarizes the books into 4 main steps, including;

Step One: Prepare the Foundation
The first step is to lay a foundation upon which the secure home of financial independence can be   built. To prepare to build wealth, one must first eliminate debt, reduce spending, and increase earnings.

Step Two: Build the Framework
The second step toward financial independence is to construct the framework upon which future wealth can be built: establish an emergency fund, maximize your retirement investments, and begin acquiring income-producing assets.

Step Three: Finish Construction
After you've laid the foundation to financial independence, and after you've built the framework, you must then spend years (decades!) finishing construction. All that's required during this time is patience and discipline. Resist temptation. Do not accrue debt. Acquire income-producing assets; avoid non-income producing assets.

Step Four: Move Into the House
Some years later, you will wake to find that your financial house is in order. It's finished. It's ready for you to move in. How do you know when this is the case? Financial independence is achieved when your investment income equals or exceeds your monthly needs.

Well worth a read. There is a lively discussion in the comments, plus plenty of financial advice.

Fast Company For Sale

I'm shocked and saddened that Fast Company is up for sale: For Sale: Fast Company. I love that magazine! Loved it when it first came out and still do. I've been a loyal online reader of the past 7 years, including their recent Fast Company Now blog. They had such fantastic articles, I was constantly sending the links to my friends and we would talk about finding a Fast Company to work for and how our managers could become Fast. We also talked about how important our personal Brands were and how we could develop and further our careers. This is a sad day. I hope whoever buys them appreciates the magazine and doesn't disappoint their loyal readers.

Google Maps vs. Microsoft MSN Virtual Earth

Looks like Microsoft has been watching very closely the buzz surrounding Google Maps and their Keyhole acquisition and will coming out with their own internet mapping service, called MSN Virtual Earth, later this summer. (via All Points Blog "MSN Virtual Earth To Take On Google Earth"). Check out some of the screen captures on the link. This showdown between MS and Google should be very cool and interesting.

MSN Virtural Earth will provide:

Satellite images with 45-degree-angle views of buildings and neighborhoods

Satellite images with street map overlays

Ability to add local data layers, such as showing local businesses or restaurants

Allow users to choose from a number of different data types plus allow people to contribute their own information.

Microsoft already has their TerraServer which allows you to use their satellite imagery as a web service, but it doesn't match Google Maps for ease of use and for the 'coolness factor'. Google has outsmarted Microsoft by bringing mapping, satellite imagery, and local geographic searches to the layperson. All my GIS friends think that Google Maps is pretty fantastic (so do I). Even more so with all the cool web sites people are building to extend Google Maps functionality.

With the world's biggest (or is it second biggest now?) company entering the mapping arena, new technologies and the related functionality that developers will dream up, will just explode. I, for one, can't wait.

My prediction: Google will beat out Microsoft.

Update [05/23/2004]: Apparently, the original article is from The Wall Street Journal by Robert A. Guth. Check out another take on the initiative here. Couldn't find the orignal WSJ article online, but BookofJoe has it here. Hmm, seems to be a discrepancy on the timing of this. They may have been thinking of it back in March and are just announcing it now. Adena Schutzberg from All Points Blog posted that they announced it today.

Space Advertising: No Billboards in Space

Have you seen this yet? - U.S.: No billboards in space. This just boggles the mind. As if we don't have hundreds, if not thousands, of marketing advertisements bombarding us every single day from TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, internet, street signs, delivered to our cellphones, etc, there are people out there who want to have actual objects, billboards if you will, in space. Billboards that you can see, with the naked eye, from Earth.

The FAA doesn't think it's a good idea (no kidding), but "the FAA lacks the authority to enforce the existing law."

The Federal Aviation Administration proposed Thursday to amend its regulations to ensure that it can enforce a law that prohibits "obtrusive" advertising in zero gravity

For instance, outsized billboards deployed by a space company into low Earth orbit could appear as large as the moon and be seen without a telescope, the FAA said. Big and bright advertisements might hinder astronomers.

It's hard to believe that 1. Satellite companies would think of doing this and 2. that there is no enforceable law currently prohibiting companies from doing this.

Can you imagine looking up and seeing "The real thing" lit up in the sky? Or how about, "Always low prices. Always". It boggles the mind where and what advertisers will do. Is nothing sacred, anymore?

Mapping Crimes in Chicago

There is now a site called ChicagoCrime.org that displays the location of crimes reported in Chicago. The site uses Google Map to mark the actual street numbers and locations of various crimes. Such data as the most reported crimes, the beat where the crimes were reported, the beat with the fewest crimes reported, the various types of crimes, the most common crime locations for the city, among other crime-related statistics are provided.

Now, let's think about this for a moment. Say you were thinking of moving to Chicago, wouldn't this be a really good source to check out your prospective house location for reported criminal activity before moving? I'm sure certain undesirable locations in the city will receive a real estate hit. I can see prospective buyers saying, "But it seemed like such a nice neighbourhood to raise the children". Little did they know...until now.

What other impact would knowing where crimes were reported in your city have? What if you were unaware that your street is one of the streets that the most crimes reported in the city? What if you lived on the street that had the lowest reported crime? How would this affect your view of where you live? Wouldn't you feel more safe knowing that you lived on the lowest percentile of streets with reported crimes? What would knowing that there is a certain square block of streets that had the highest incidences of auto thefts occur? How would this affect you if you had to drive through this area? What if you had a business in this area, how would you be affected?

We all are usually aware of the 'bad' areas in our cities and towns, those areas we just don't bother visiting or we ensure we drive around them (with the doors locked). Whether we know that those areas are the 'bad' areas of town or not, if they are perceived to be bad, that affects our reality towards those areas. Now, imagine that you have quantifiable proof that those certain bad areas have X incidences of reported narcotic arrests, X incidences of theft, X incidences of burglary, X incidences of arson, X incidences of homicides, X incidences of sex offences, X incidences of weapon violations, and the list goes on. How would this affect your perception of your city? Your police department? Your neighbours?

What would knowing that your beat had the most violent crimes reported as compared to other beats? Would this affect your perception of your fellow officers? Would you get more money for that beat so you can crack down on the crimes committed? Would some police ask to transfer to the lesser-crime areas?

How would it affect you knowing that 5 other sex offence crimes were reported within 1, 2, 5, or 8 blocks of your house? Would that make you want to move? Would it make you scared to leave your house to go to work? It certainly would affect my ability to enjoy my house and neighbourhood knowing that 3 sex offence crimes were committed within an 8-block radius of where I live. Can you image how seniors would feel? Or single mothers? Or young girls walking to school? Sometimes, a little knowledge empowers you and sometimes it severely affects your life.

It would be interesting to know what the feedback from those living in Chicago feel about the site. Don't get me wrong, I think the site is fantastic and I hope a lot of other cities adopt the hack as a public service to its citizens, but the site poses a lot of questions.

Just something to think about.

Check out the site, it's pretty cool.

Extend your iPod's usefulness

Here's a link to 50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod. (via BoingBoing)

I particularly like:

#23. Read Your Favorite Weblogs:

Keep track of the news and what your friends are up to by putting their RSS feeds on your iPod

#39 Podcast

Using a voice recorder attachment, you can record your thoughts on your iPod, dump it to your computer, publish it to your web site in such a way that people can download your musings to their iTunes Library, sync that with their iPod, and listen to you babble about something on their way to work. It's called podcasting and hopefully it'll get much easier than that.

#44: Look up old friends

Keep track of your contacts on the iPod with built-in software. Supports standard vCard files.

Cool.

More books from Amazon

Another order from Amazon came this morning including: Dan Poynter's "The Self-Publishing Manual" (the 14th edition, recently updated), Robert J. Ray's "The Weekend Novelist" (hot off the press, it's the 2005 updated version. I bought this book because a friend of mine at work swears by it and has been using it to write his own novel), Tim Sanders' "Love is the Killer App", "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell (because I thought Blink was an interesting read, I ordered his earlier book), and the one I can hardly wait to read, Thomas J. Stanley's "Millionaire Women Next Door".

My stack of books to read is growing (all by itself, it seems). I'll soon achieve my Goal of Reading 50 Books in 2005. In fact, I'm thinking of increasing it to 75 books (that is, if my wallet can manage it).

Well, I've got to get back to my reading. But, don't worry, I'll be updating this blog with some new posts. I have a lot of fresh posts to write about. The creative juices are really flowing now, all I have to do is find make the time to write them.

Smart Grocery Carts - They Stole My Idea!

They stole my idea!

Three to four years ago, I had a friend who had just graduated with his MBA and we were talking about what we could do with his newly-minted MBA and my GIS skills. He really wanted to go into business with me, but I wasn't so confident of my GIS and technical skills at the time because I had graduated from university (with Degree in Geography and GIS, plus an after-degree certificate in GIS Applications) a while ago and had gone back to school for computer programming. I was currently working (and still am) in IT, not in the GIS field.

We had long discussions on the possibilities of using GIS to solve everyday problems. He had a lot of business ideas while I was the 'techie'. One of the business ideas that we were thinking about involved the problem of going into one of those 'big box' stores, something like Home Depot, that are so big and have so many aisles of items. Where do you look for the 3/4 inch screw that you need to hang your picture or a hammer or a fluorescent lightbulb? Those big box stores have thousands of items and many, many aisles. Our idea was to have kiosks at the front of the store where you can go to select the item(s) you were intending to buy that day (screws, hammer, lightbulbs, whatever) and a map would print out showing you exactly where in the store the item was.

We were talking about using GPS in the store, but I couldn't figure out it would work because to use GPS you need a sight on three satellites to triangulate your position. We were talking about maybe having each aisle identified somehow and having a database store the aisles' inventory. But, how would we map it? At the time, RFID was not very well-known (at least to us), so there was not a lot of resources we could look to for ideas on how to solve the technical problems. We talked about the problems and the business idea for months and researched it but it never really went anywhere. Then my friend got a job in the States and left Canada and that was that. We abandoned the idea.

So, it was with interest that I read this article, Smart Grocery Carts. They are testing smart grocery carts that have touch-screens on them where you can enter the items you want to buy in the store and a map will display on the screen showing you exactly where the items are located.

People can use a home computer to make their shopping list. Once at the store, they can use their preferred customer card, or a key that fits on a keychain, to log into a system that will organize their trip through the aisles.

If you're looking for toothpicks, you type in the word or pick it from a list, and the screen will display a map showing where you are and where you can find them.

The Concierge and IBM's cart are equipped with the miniature equivalent of GPS, the global positioning satellite system. Sensors can track the devices to see right where your cart is, so that as you turn into an aisle, the screen can show what's there on your list and which items are on sale.

Holy cow! Is that cool or what? No more wandering aisles trying to find the peanut butter or the filters for the coffee or the lemon meringue pie!

I still say they stole our idea . But, it's entirely our fault for not believing in the idea and trying to figure out a way for it to work.

The moral of the story is: when you think you have a good idea, run with it! You just never know....it might be the next big thing.