Bnpositives Blog

Blog

By

When Websites Force You to Login to Interact

My personal belief is that one of the best things about the whole social media and web 2.0 world of things is the interaction. It’s about connecting with people and interacting. It’s about sharing your thoughts without being forced to share anything else.

Bug-Me-Not-uncovered-website

I was visiting a website today and wanted to leave a comment. The problem was I couldn’t leave a comment without creating an account and registering as a user for the website. I may never visit this site ever again in my life, why should I have to register and create an account just to leave a comment?!

Now, with the BugMeNot website, you don’t have to create your own account, you can just borrow the credentials for someone else that’s already registered a dummy account with the site.

My question is, don’t you lose your own identity if you register with someone else’s login? That kind of defeats the purpose of leaving a comment as well. I looked around at the FAQ’s for the site to see if they answered my question. Nothing that I found.

I also wondered if BugMeNot would have a login for the site I needed. They have over 300,000 sites, but you can’t really search through their database to find out.

So, the next time you want to leave a comment or interact with a site and don’t want to uncover your own personal information, visit the BugMeNot website. They may have just what you’re looking for to get in there.

Oh, and if you were wondering, I didn’t leave a comment and usually don’t on any site that requires me to register first.

By

Free Facebook Email Account

If I were Mark Zuckerberg, the first thing I’d do is spend some money and buy a bunch of cool stuff. Next, I’d start offering free Facebook email accounts to users. How interested would you be in a Facebook email address?

facebook-email

Facebook continues to go strong. Everyone is getting used to and familiar with the interface changes for the most part and things seem to be settling down. There’s part of me though that still thinks Facebook is at risk of losing their totally cool status and being replaced by something else.

I think if Facebook offered email addresses to users it would absolutely lock Facebook in as an ongoing provider and Internet hub for millions of users every day. Not that they’re having a problem keeping users right now, I just think it would be another great way to entwine themselves with their users even further.

If you had an email address like jasonlbean@facebook.com that would allow you to both send and receive email outside of the closed walls of Facebook, wouldn’t you jump at the chance? Would it replace your @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, or maybe even your @gmail.com account?

By

Magellan GPS Installation Procedure Very Risky

My dad gave me a call tonight needing some help with his computer. That’s not such a new concept, but what he needed help with was new. He purchased a new Magellan GPS device and needed help getting the software installed on his computer.

 Magellan-GPS-installation

He’s familiar with installing software on his machine, trust me, I regularly have to delete stuff that he’s installed for no reason. But tonight he was worried because of the convoluted install instructions and warnings he was being told.

Basically, here were the steps that specifically stated:

  • Turn-off all firewalls and anti-virus
  • Turn-off all power saving features
  • Make sure running on power and not battery
  • Disable anything that could interrupt install
  • Make sure GPS device is fully powered

Generally I wouldn’t think too much of those steps, but turning off the anti-virus and firewall I didn’t really like. Luckily the install process didn’t require an Internet connection for updates. Everything needed was available on the installation DVD.

What concerned my dad, and why he was asking for my help was that the instruction clearly warned that if anything interrupted the install process the entire installation would be corrupted. The instructions suggested that the install would take up to 2.5 hours. If errors did occur in the installation process, he would need to ship the entire device back to Magellan for them to fix and repair and then send it back. Sounds like if it failed during install it would completely "brick" the device.

All of this would be at his expense if it happened during his installation update.

That just seems very harsh to me. Has anyone else experienced this type of risky install errors where you would have to resend the entire device back to the manufacturer?

Image: Magellan Product website