2008 May 13 | billso.com

From the New York Times: Spring announced another quarterly loss today of 18 cents a share or US$505 million. The news is bad, as it looks like the mobile telecom is losing some of its biggest customers:

In the first quarter, the company lost 1.1 million subscribers; the total number dropped to 52.8 million.

Analysts do not seem spooked, although Sprint’s CEO is considering a sale of Nextel. The recently announced Clearwire joint venture may help prospects in the near-term, but not right now.

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Tags: finance, Google, merger, Microsoft, Yahoo

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There are some great hotel deals available if you’re interested in visiting the state of Hawaii this summer. Check this article in Go Visit Hawaii for some details. Airfares are still high, and visitors should avoid the unlicensed condos and apartments that are advertised on the Internet. They don’t pay occupancy taxes, and there’s little recourse if something goes wrong during your stay - or if the county closes down your destination after you paid a deposit. BnBCoalition.com has some excellent information on how to find legal vacation rentals in Hawaii.

Tags: airline, Hawaii, Honolulu, Maui, Oahu, tourism

The mobile phone is an excellent device for two-factor authentication. Most Internet users already have a mobile phone. A user might not notice that they’ve lost a dongle. security token or smartcard. That’s one reason adoption has been difficult for multifactor authentication schemes.

JanRain announced on 9 May 2008 that it is launching a phone-based multifactor authentication service, CallVerifID, that works with its myOpenID service.

The phone verification service lets a user designate a specific phone number that JanRain’s partner, PhoneFactor, will call when their username requires verification. The user can press the pound (#) key on the phone to confirm the login, or use the incoming call to report that their username has been compromised.

Users can designate a mobile or landline number for their verification calls by setting up their myOpenID account preferences with the appropriate number.

The system isn’t perfect. Someone could still learn the users OpenID URL and passphrase, and arrange to intercept the confirmation phone call somehow. This might take a greater level of physical access than stealing a security key or snooping a keyboard. The call verification system could easily be improved by asking the user to enter or speak a second passphrase on the phone.

As Chris Messina pointed out in December 2007, several large Internet content companies have announced that they will support OpenID. Their implementation has been delayed. for several reasons, including branding, although ma.gnolia finally came through in March 2008.

CallVerifID is more evidence that OpenID can become a trusted authentication platform for content and blogging sites, and perhaps for e-commerce sites as well.

See CenterNetworks and Mashable and for more details.

Mobile phone image courtesy of besto-Baker on Flickr, through a Creative Commons license.