Roll & Rock:

iPhone Business: Dongle Love

You knew this was coming...

There are lots of cool emerging point-of-purchase payment systems for the iPhone...but this is my favorite!

It will soon be fashionable to boast about having a small dongle.

TypeHi.com: Strangers In The Night

“Strangers in the night exchanging glances

Wondering in the night what were the chances

We'd be sharing love before the night was through”

A friend turned me on to a new Internet sensation called TypeHi.com

Essentially, it lets you chat anonymously with strangers worldwide.

This is either super-brilliant or super-creepy.

I haven’t decided which yet.

This is really not a new concept.

In the pioneer days of the ‘Net, you could visit anonymous chat rooms on AOL.

That was never my thing…because it quickly dawned on me back then that I had no idea who was really who. The person claiming to be a 24-year old female could indeed be a creepy old guy sitting in front of his computer in his dingy whites.

Sorry for that visual…but you get my drift!

Blocking out that mental picture, I decided to give TypeHi a shot.

The interface was clean and self-explanatory.

I then quickly received a prompt that I was being connected with another user.

So far…so good.

My first conversation was relatively pleasant. The other party acknowledged that they too were checking out the site for the first time.

I told this person that I was curious about seeing if any data was filtered.

They agreed to help me test, so we sent a few mock phone numbers back and forth.

They got through just fine.

I run a kid’s website…so this made my toes curl a bit.

Allowing the anonymous disclosure of personal information is a Bozo No-No when you are dealing with kids.

Granted, TypeHi makes no claims to be for kids…but you know it’s gonna happen.

My second conversation was considerably weirder.

The other party opened by asking if I was interested in viewing his supposedly oversized appendage.

I explained that I was a male and that I was not interested.

I did ask how he intended to do that, as TypeHi does not allow for file attachments.

He replied, “Wait, I show you.”

One cool attribute of TypeHi is that it does language translation on the fly—which allows you converse with others whose native tongue is not Anglais.

TypeHi must be using the Google Translate API—which is good, though far from perfect.

I could tell…because he then asked me if I was “horny girl with address MSN?”

When I reiterated that I was a male, he again asked in much cruder vernacular if he could expose himself to me.

I advised this gentleman not to attempt inserting any appendages into his CD Drive.

There was a moment of silence.

But then, my lights flickered and he suddenly disconnected.

Oh well, once bitten…twice shy!

I suppose it’s a bit like fishing in public waterways.

If you drop your pole in the Hudson River…you never know what you might catch.

I’d be curious to hear any opinions about TypeHi or other similar sites.

Bowels of Leadership: The Movement

This is brilliant. I'll let the music do the talking...

 

Yo Ho Music: A Pirate's Life For Me!

 I try to avoid public sparring...AKA "pissing contests".

But today, there was a dialog on a Linked-In group that I could not ignore.

Content creators everywhere are up in arms about copyright piracy.

As they should be. I am a content creator too...and like to get paid for my work.

I am sure the guy that I was "sparring' with is a nice guy in person, but his viewpoint typifies the attitude of many on the creative side: Complaining Without Solutions!

Think you have some good ideas on how to get people to pay for content rather than steal it?

Bring it on!

Don't just sit there and complain.