Towards a transparent wireless carrier customer dashboard

This is the mobile carrier customer dashboard that I want. The annotations tell the story.

I'm hoping that at least one of Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, or AT&T will eventually realize that transparency is a differentiator (if only because they run out of other ways to stand out). Most of these dashboard elements are possible with existing data that carriers already collect, and in some cases already have in this form for internal use.

This shows two variations on the same dashboard landing page. Click for larger versions to read the annotations.

Same wireframes as a Flickr set.

One-click Canon PIXMA MX870 scanning in OS X

RSS readers: ignore this. Just documenting this fix for anyone else who has the same problem.

Problem: Canon PIXMA MX870 says "Set the PC to start scanning" when the "Black" or "Color" scan start buttons are pressed.

How I enabled one-button scanning

1. Install most of the OS X drivers and software from canon.com. I think I installed all of the drivers, or at least ran their downloaded installers. As of this writing, that's ICA Driver, CUPS Driver, Scanner Driver, Mini Master Setup. I also installed MP Navigator and IJ Network Tool from the software downloads. Reboot.

2. After installing the "Canon IJ Network Scanner Selector," a printer/scanner icon should appear in the dock. The installer sets up the app to run at startup, which I left enabled. The dock dropdown "Scan images using the operations panel of the scanner" option is enabled. The scanner MAC address is listed and selected in "Open Settings":

3. Run MP Navigator (3.1) and on the main menu, there's an option in the upper right "One-click." Mouseover it and a different menu will be shown, including a "Start scanning by clicking the button" checkbox. This was not the default. I wish I was making this up.

4. On that MP Navigator One-click screen, click Preferences. Note that you may have 2 entries under "Product Name" ("MX870 Series" and "MX870 Series (Network: <Your MAC>)." I disabled "Compress scanned images when transferring" for both product names. On the Scanner Button Settings screen, I changed the paths under "Save to PC" but didn't make any other changes.

5. After making these changes, I was still seeing "Set the PC to start scanning" when I tried to scan. I shut down MP Navigator and restarted the printer (with the PC on) and it started auto-scanning. I didn't restart the PC except after step 1. I'm not sure whether the problem was a one-time issue because the settings changed or a recurring one with the order that they were originally powered on.

Notes

My scanner LCD options (Document or Photo, DPI) are interpreted correctly. Scanning PDFs from the document feeder and bitmap images from the platen both work. Bitmaps from the ADF are not supported (the scanner says to use the platen). I haven't tried PDFs from the platen.

Tested with: OS X 10.6.8, Canon IJ Network Scanner Selector 4.5.0, MP Navigator EX 3.1.3, MX870 driver 10.51.1.0.

Here's the printer options from System Preferences. I didn't make any changes:

Zipcar Prize proposal: user-sourced car sharing planning algorithm

Zipcar customers must return a car to the same parking spot that it was borrowed from. That means customers must rent (and pay for) one specific car for their entire trip, even when it will be parked in an urban area for many hours during the trip.

In 2009, I emailed Zipcar about cloning The Netflix Prize for a similar purpose: crowd-sourcing (really, expert-sourcing) a set of algorithms, incentives, and restrictions that would let Zipcar offer one-way rentals. Like Netflix, The Zipcar Prize would release an anonymized set of trip data, parking space locations, and an evaluation method (which might emphasize certain aspects, as Netflix did).

This would be a mix of:

incentives: "We'll discount $2 for returning it a mere 5 blocks away from your preferred location"
fees: "Returning to this location will cost $4 more"
enforced policies, like: must reserve 1 day in advance; one-way trip can't leave a lot empty; only offered at certain urban lots (initially)

The email after the jump has lots more details (slightly formatted and edited). As far as I know, no one has tackled this. Zipcar hasn't and I didn't receive a reply.

The first car-sharing service to pull it off will have an amazing competitive advantage: paying for only what you actually need and the ability to get a car to the right place at the right time.

Read the rest of this post »

2 common problems with OAuth client libraries

I posted a long explanation to the fusion-tables-users group about using third-party libraries with Fusion Tables over OAuth. It might also help folks debugging OAuth problems or adding OAuth support to existing libraries. Full text below.

Read the rest of this post »

6 tasty sandwiches in Belltown

Guest posted on BelltownPeople.com: "6 great sandwiches in Belltown" (Seattle neighborhood). Copied below.

Read the rest of this post »

New RSS feed URL

If you're reading this via RSS, please change the feed URL to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/troydavis

I'll make the old URL 301 redirect for a few weeks, but that's not enough for some RSS readers to update their subscriptions (Google Reader, I'm looking at you). Cue manual labor. Paste in http://feeds.feedburner.com/troydavis and you should be good to go.

A bit about preventing toll fraud

Recently posted this reply to the voiceops mailing list. Pasted below or read the original.

Read the rest of this post »

From concept sketches to live Web page

I uploaded a few concept sketches, a final sketch, a final wireframe, and the end result of Cloudvox's home page redesign. They're in this Cloudvox Flickr set with some annotations.

Notes on "What Makes Startups Succeed" discussion

4 VCs, a moderator, and a roomful of people. Here's the gist.

Now that we've publicly launched Cloudvox, and anyone can use it (and buy it!), I finally get to see the outdoors again. I went to this panel on 10/14/2009 and took as many notes as I could. I missed some things, and tried not to take any comments out of context.

Read the rest of this post »

Opinions from Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service (SNS)

I went to a Q&A with Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service (SNS) and took down some direct and near-direct quotes Mark is unique for sharing fairly specific opinions; right or wrong, that's rare. Notes are chronological over 90 minutes. I tried not to take any comments out of context.

Read the rest of this post »