Debate Around Password Security Overlooks Universal Logins
ReadWriteWeb   

Must include at least one number. Must be longer than six characters. Cannot have more than four sequential characters from your previous seven passwords. The rules for password creation vary wildly from site to site, an effort to protect users from those who would hack their identities.

These protective measures don't go very far, rding to the New York Times, because hackers can get ahold of passwords with software that remotely tracks keystrokes, or by tricking users into typing them in. The story touches on a range of issues around the problem, but neglects to mention the obvious: the march toward a centralized login for multiple sites.

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A universal login could solve a lot of the issues around password security, from keylogging to the problem of users having their passwords discovered after writing them down.

It would also solve the problem of password-overload. Managing logins for all the Web sites that require registration is a pain, and any frequent Web user who says differently is either lying or has a photographic memory. Browsers have taken some of the pain away by remembering passwords for us, but clear your browser's history and suddenly you have to answer secret questions and email your username to yourself for umpteen different sites.

A handy chart to help you create secure passwords, Microsoft.

One or more options for a universal login is inevitable and progress is well underway. More and more sites are supporting the easy-to-use book Connect, which lets users register for a site with their Facebook profile instead of creating a site-specific username and password. As of last year, there were than nine million websites using ID, the openly-developed standard that users can use to log in across multiple sites.

Standards like OpenID carry their own security problems (and other problems - see Troubles With OpenID 2.0), the obvious being that a successful hacker can gain access to all the sites and services you use at once. But the convenience of a universal login is irresistible, especially for the myriad sites where there's no danger if your password is hacked, such as news sites. Users who try it won't want to go back - which is why it's important to talk about the security issues around these new protocols for users and the sites that implement them.

How do you manage your logins?

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Guest Post: Could Tiny Somaliland Become the First Cashless Society?
TechCrunch   

Bob Dylan once said that 'money doesn't talk, it swears', but in Hargeisa the capital of Africa's Somaliland it stinks. It literally stinks, reeking of rotten paper, like a leaky library in a monsoon.

That's because there's so much of it. For every dollar there are almost 17,000 Somaliland Shillings and the highest-denomination note is 500 Shillings, which is by no means the most common note in circulation. Money-changers sit within self-built stacks of money (picture left, video below) and children take wheelbarrows of it from one place to another, reminiscent of 1930s Weimar Germany when the Deutsch Mark became worthless.

By all criteria, cash doesn't work here. Could tiny, unknown Somaliland become the first nation to become a cashless society? It is not only possible, it is almost certain. There is already a surprisingly strong base for this to happen. Thanks to a cobbled together-by-necessity system of money-transfer posts from Somaliland's diaspora and a surging mobile banking industry, the country has to do away with cash. But first some background...

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Using a Virtual Personal Assistant for Your Startup
ReadWriteWeb   

ReadWriteWeb Co-Editor Marshall Kirkpatrick recently extolled the virtues of on's Mechanical Turk for "ing conference blogging." He's not the only person who's seeing some real benefits from outsourcing small tasks to the service, as I've noticed a number of people talk about the ways in which they use - or could envision using - Mechanical Turk to help them. McIntosh, for example, wonders if teachers could utilize the service to outsource some of the "larger scale time suckers" in education -- entering attendance records, generating letters to parents, and so on.

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Lindsey Harper recently wrote about her experiences using anical Turk to validate her startup idea. Noting that friends and family are unlikely to be objective when assessing whether or not your idea is viable, she spent $28 on the Amazon service in order to poll 200 people on her concept. Her survey asked whether or not they'd use the service, example of how they might use it. In addition to asking for general feedback on the idea, she also captured gender and age demographics, so she could have a better idea of who her market might be.

"The information I got back for my $27.50 was INVALUABLE," she writes. "I found from that 1 survey, how to basically build my product for launch. What features I had to have based on how users would use the service. I also realized I could basically cut my current feature set in 1/2 because what I thought people would want, wasn't even mentioned."

Rob Walling had a guest post on Jason Cohen's blog last week that goes into more details about some of the other ways startups can use Mechanical Turk and other virtual personal assistants. post is an excerpt from Walling's new book t Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup.

As Walling notes, "The value proposition of a VA deals with how you monetize your time. If you monetize it at $50/hour and you can pay a VA $6/hour to handle administrative tasks, this frees up time for you to create real value in your business by developing new features or expanding marketing efforts. Performing tasks you could pay someone else $6 to accomplish is a foolish use of an entrepreneur's time."

Echoing Harper's use of Mechanical Turk, Walling argues that virtual assistants can be useful for startups to develop proof of concept. But they can also be utilized following launch to handle small administrative tasks.

Walling offers a lot of great tips on how to find and evaluate virtual assistants, noting that "My first piece of advice is to avoid spending too much time worrying about screening your VA before you hire them. In the end, how well they work out depends entirely on how well they accomplish their tasks." Hiring someone will help you judge their efficiency and reliability, and Walling suggests these steps for the first task you assign:

Back everything upProvide detailed instructions. Even better, provide screenshots. Timebox your requests, but assume that the virtual assistant will not be as fast as you are.Be clear with the timeline you establish for the work.

If the first virtual assistant you hire doesn't work out, find another one. But don't give up on the whole process after one go, says Walling, as it takes time as an entrepreneur to find how to best utilize this sort of service.

Have you utilized a virtual personal assistant for your startup? How so? And what have your experiences been?

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Former HP CEO Mark Hurd heading to Oracle?
CNET   

Hurd and Oracle are in negotiations to have the former HP chief join Oracle as a senior executive, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

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6 SaaS Metrics You Should Track
ReadWriteWeb   

As you work to develop your product - before and after launch, it's important that you use more than just "gut feelings" to ascertain what's working and what's not. Along those lines, last week, Ryan Carson, co-founder of onified offered a list of key metrics for your web app and how to track them.

It's a great list - with definitions, calculation methods, examples, and even a link to a Google spreadsheet (see below for link) that you can use to input your own data.

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1. Churn

Definition: Churn is the % of customers that cancel each month.

Calculation: number_cancellations_this_month / total_number_paying_customers

As Carson notes, churn will vary depending on the kind of app you offer. If your app is something that's crucial to others' businesses, such as an invoicing app, then your churn will likely be lower than an entertainment app, something that may be the first to be canceled when budgets are tight.

Using Churn, you can calculate the Average Customer Lifetime - the average number of months that a customer stays with you before canceling. The calcuation is 100 / churn_percentage.

2. CMRR

Definition: CMRR is "Contracted Monthly Recurring Revenue."

Calculation: (total_number_paying_accounts - number_cancelled_paying_accounts_this_month) * monthly_price

Carson suggests you aim for a monthly growth of around 5% ater Churn in your CMRR. You need to be sure your CMRR keeps pace with your Churn, otherwise you will start losing money.

3. Cash

Definition: Money in the bank.

Calculation: cash_at_end_of_last_month + (CMRR - total_monthly_costs)

Likely negative for the first several months as you work towards profitability, Carson says that at 's aiming to be cashflow positive on a monthly basis after six months.

4. LPC

Definition: LPC is "Lifetime Profit per Customer."

Calculation: See Google Spreadsheet

Carson admits this is a "pretty tricky number to compute," adding that "essentially this helps you understand how much profit each customer brings you, after all your costs." The figure takes into account things like Churn and Average Customer Lifetime.

Carson argues that, while this number should grow, if it's too high then it may be an indication you're not investing enough back into the product. He says that typical numbers for SaaS apps range from 50-70% net profit.

5. CACR

Definition: CACR is "Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio."

Calculation : See Google Spreadsheet

This is a ratio that will tell you how long it will take for you to recover your customer acquisition costs. According to Carson, this is a useful number to gauge how much your are re-investing back into the product in order to grow the customer base (and by extension, revenue). "If it's too low, then you're not making enough profit. Too high, then you're not spending enough on marketing."

6. CPA

Definition: CPA is "Cost per Acquisition."

Calculation: marketing_costs_this_month / number_new_paying_users_this_month

Carson contends that companies are often told to spend more on customer acquisition than they need to, and he says that he's aiming for around 1-2 months of customer revenue to acquire a new customer.

Carson offers a gle spreadsheet for anyone to use and asks for feedback and opinions. Are there any additional metrics you think SaaS companies should track?

Photo credit: Flickr user a Varlan

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Aboard an Alcatel-Lucent undersea cable ship (photos)
CNET   

The telecommunications infrastructure company gives ZDNet UK a tour of its cable gear factory and the ship Ile de Batz, offering a look at a vital part of the global Internet that's normally hidden by miles of water.

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Blogging And Mass Psychomanipulation
TechCrunch   

If I ever write another book it will probably be about one of three topics. The first is the truth about how the press and journalism really works - the sausage making - to show just how much of a beautiful, subjective and chaotic mess it all is. The second idea is to talk about how perfect blogging is, with its constant feedback loop, as a training ground for mass psychology and manipulation. The third idea I'm keeping to myself for now, but it's more startup focused.

It's the second one that's been on my mind lately. Mostly because it's become pretty clear to me that any blogger worth her salt could start, say, an extremely successful militant religious cult.

Any blogger will tell you how frustrating the early days are. Getting someone, anyone, to link to you. Your first comment! etc. And as your audience grows you are introduced to the first rule of anonymous human behavior - it's dark and brutal, and reminds me how thin the veil of civilized behavior really is. If there is something nasty that can be said, someone will say it. Over and over.

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The Real Social Network: Your Mobile Contacts
TechCrunch   

The term "social network" is of course synonymous with online networks like Facebook. But think about what you're actual social life is like for a second. Are you really closest to the people whose items you "like" the most on Facebook? What about the people you @reply or retweet on Twitter? The people you reblog the most on Tumblr? If you're anything like me, probably not. Instead, the best indicator of who I actually interact with socially the most in real life are the calls I make and the texts I send -- it's all mobile interaction.

I've written before that I think tion is the bridge between social networks and actual social life. But why do we even need that bridge? Why are so many startups content to build on top of the Facebook or Twitter social graph, when a lot of them can access your actual social graph in your mobile contact book? We're seeing more and more apps go "le first, web second" these days, and that's likely to increase going forward. This means that they start as services on mobile devices. So again I ask, why not just get to your actual social graph through your contacts there?

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StarCraft For Startups
ReadWriteWeb   

I recently had an urge to pick up an MMORPG again, but after checking on the profile for my favorite Everquest 2 character - clocking in at over 138 days played - it's probably best I not devote myself to the life of hardcore raiding at particular juncture. That being said, as a self-described gamer, I'm pretty sympathetic to any argument made that playing MMOs makes you a better person.

And perhaps Koichi feels the same way, making the strong case on his blog that "tups Should Only Hire Good StarCraft Players."

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His (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) list includes:

Good StarCraft Players Are Obsessed with ImprovingGood StarCraft Players Can Wear a Lot of HatsGood StarCraft Players Know How To Micro (Use Resources Efficiently)Good StarCraft Players Make Quick, Good DecisionsGood StarCraft Players Don't Forget To Scout (And Don't Obsess Over Scouting)Good StarCraft Players Know When To Say GG ("Good Game") and QuitGood StarCraft Players Have A High APM (Actions Per Minute)Good StarCraft Players Do Something Besides Work

The argument that you can hone a variety of skills via MMOs isn't new (See the d CIO for a long list that guild leadership teaches, including conflict resolution, talent recruitment and retention, and strategic planning and vision.) And I'm not sure StarCraft holds a monopoly on startup skill-building. (I'd love to write a comparison between StarCraft and Angry Birds for entrepreneurs, but I can imagine the outraged Letters to the Editor in response.)

Koichi's post was inspired in part by an announcement for tupCraft, a StarCraft II Tournament for tech startups to be held October 2 in San Francisco. There'll be 2v2 and 4v4 brackets. A $50 donation is recommended per team, 100% of which will be donated to d's Play. The tournament will be broadcast live via in.tv, who is hosting the tournament in its San Francisco office. 14 companies have already registered their teams.

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The ad that uses YouTube brilliantly
CNET   

A Liquid Paper-like product's ad, created specifically to run on YouTube, shows the possibility of creating something remarkable on a site for which display advertising is becoming a key profit-making component.

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