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I’ve been annoyed at Starbucks for awhile - it’s the CD racks, countertop displays and spinners that clutter their stores.

The Starbucks on the mauka side of Bishop and King Streets is a prime example of how this retail initiative is a nuisance to customers. That store is small - I’ve seen closets that are bigger. The CD displays make it much harder to stand in line when there’s more than 3 people waiting for a barista. I’m surprised there aren’t ADA lawsuits pending.

CDs and coffee don’t mix

I can’t imagine that the employees like dealing with these racks, either. What happens when a customer knocks over some CDs or spills a drink on merchandise? How do stores control shoplifting and shrinkage? What about teenagers and young children who decide to “play” with the packages?

Starbucks is phasing out its music CD retail business, according to an AlleyInsider.com article called Starbucks (BUX) Dumping CDs. Starbucks stores will have 4 CD slots per store.

I expect that Starbucks stores will still sell iTunes gift cards, as part of the WiFi promotional campaign for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In addition, Starbucks has handed over the day-to-day management of its Hear music label to Concord Music Group.

Related articles and pages on billso.com

• Digital music
• iPhone
• 27 February 2008: Starbucks, coffee and music
• 26 February 2008: iTunes is number two
• 11 February 2008: Starbucks signs with AT&T
• 7 July 2004: Downloading music at the coffee bar

Several blind people live near our home, and sometimes they cross in front of our driveway. I’m always patient, as it’s obvious to me that they are listening for engine noise.

Before I saw this article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, I hadn’t realized that blind people cannot hear gasoline-electric hybrid cars at crosswalks. I’m ashamed to say I had never thought of it, even though I owned a Honda Insight for two years.

Most hybrid automobiles shut down their gasoline engine at a full stop, and some models, like the Toyota Prius, can use their silent electric engine at low speeds. There’s no gas engine noise to warn blind pedestrians of an approaching vehicle.

The American Council of the Blind has proposed a research study, to be conducted by the US Department of Transportation. The research would determine if an indicator noise could be added to hybrid cars to help the blind hear the vehicle. Crosswalk signals now include an audible signal, to help local governments comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A Federal solution is vastly preferable to local and state regulation. In the past, the Federal government has mandated other safety features for automobiles, including air bags, brake lights and seat belts. Audible signals for the blind could be combined with for backover avoidance technology that is designed to warn drivers of children and objects behind their reversing vehicle.

Perhaps Neil Young can write the warning song, and test it on his electric 1959 Lincoln Continental convertible.

Image courtesy of Aaron Gustafson through a Creative Commons license.

Updated 6 June 2008, 10:26 HST: New Scientist posted an article about this issue yesterday, along with this YouTube video.

From Lifehacker comes a link to a free virtual keyboard called Neo’s SafeKeys. The keyboard is displayed on the computer screen, and lets a Windows user type their password without accessing the computer’s keyboard.

It’s trivial to monitor keystrokes through software and hardware called keystroke loggers or keyloggers. This New York Times describes a new phishing attack against executives, involving an email with a link to a fake subpoena. Click the link and a Windows keystroke logger gets installed.

Executives are excellent targets for such attacks. CXOs often want to bypass corporate security systems for the sake of personal convenience. When executives insist on carrying confidential or valuable corporate data on their laptop’s hard drive, they may as well paint a target on their foreheads.

CXOs might also disable virus scanners and security software to make the computers run faster. This only makes their personal computers much more vulnerable. When executives are reluctant to admit their mistakes or ask for help, the damage is already done.

I’ve seen virtual keyboard systems deployed on banking web sites, so that users can use a mouse to enter their passphrase. Of course, this can be very tedious if the user has a long passphrase. These virtual keyboard systems may become more common as banks implement multifactor authentication schemes that address consumer, regulator and compliance issues.

Keyboards and keystrokes

It’s still possible to use a keyboard for multifactor authentication, however. This article from Windows in Financial Systems describes a system from BioPassword that requires the user to enter their password ten times in a single enrollment session. Software determines the rhythm of their keystrokes, and stores that data along with the user’s account on a Microsoft Active Directory server. Anyone who tries to access the account will have to simulate that user’s typing behavior for that specific password.

In this 15 May 2007 article, ha.ckers.org pointed out some potential problems with BitPassword’s system. The timing needs to be loose enough to accommodate different keyboard styles. A laptop computer’s keyboard often is laid out differently from a standard desktop keyboard. otherwise, the timing checker might flag users who include numerics, international characters (such as € £ ß Ω) and typographical symbols (like % @ © ^#~) in their passphrase.

Dots and dashes

The concept dates back to the 19th century. Experienced telegraph operators could identify each other by through their fist, or their distinctive patterns of keying Morse code. The same concept was also used during both World Wars to match radio operators with their message content.

Some banks might have each user to enroll several different passphrases, as many banks now require for their web-based customer portals.

BioPassword’s software is designed for business and enterprise users. PC Magazine has an excellent review here, and the London Times and Baseline have good recent articles. This Wired article from 2000 describes how the system was used by a Canadian company, Musicrypt.com, as part of a user management service for music web sites.

Related posts on billso.com

• 12 April 2008: Finding business contacts and passwords on the Internet
• 4 April 2008: Get LinkedIn with [billso.com]
• 14 March 2008: Social media in action
• 3 January 2008: Impression management and Facebook
• 10 August 2007: Forty-somethings flock to Facebook
• 2 July 2007: CXOs face malware email attacks
• 20 June 2007: Facebook vs MySpace
• 11 January 2007: How to create a secure password

The New York Times ran an article today about adaptive aids for the baby boomers. Because I was born before 1964, technically I am a boomer, even though I don’t feel like one.

The Lucida font is one example cited by Times journalist Katie Hafner. The font was co-designed for Apple by Charles Bigelow to provide a highly readable font for low resolution printers and monitors. Lucida is the default menu font for Mac OS X and the Safari web browser, and has been included in Microsoft Windows since 1995. Wikipedia has a page full of examples.

Tiny fonts in web browsers? There’s hope.

Hafner mentions that Internet Explorer and the Mac have features to enlarge fonts on the screen. These are handy, especially when using a laptop computer. I’ve noticed that Internet Explorer sometimes compresses or mangles the page layout when displaying enlarged or zoomed fonts. In my favorite web browser, Firefox, fonts can be enlarged with the Ctrl+ keystroke on a Windows computer, or Command+ on a Mac. this method doesn’t always work, especially on sites that use Flash.

There are a few screen magnifying utilities for Windows users. I’ve used Magnifixer, a freeware product that is easy to install. Windows also has its own accessibility utilities, available in the Start, Accessories folder.

Mac users can find a Zoom feature in the Universal Access preferences panel. There is a built-in feature to enlarge the mouse cursor, but the results look awful. I use Pinpoint, a US$10 app, to display a very large mouse cursor on my MacBook Pro.

It’s much harder to enlarge the fonts on a mobile phone or PDA. A few models provide adaptive features, but most don’t. The Sidekick 3 provides no way to enlarge a font on the screen, and that’s been a sore point for a few of my colleagues. Larger screens can help, like the display of an iPhone. But a larger screen almost always increases the device’s size and reduces battery life.

Oticon’s Delta hearing aid was profiled in the New York Times on September 24. This model looks more like a fashion accessory, and is marketed towards users in the 40-60 age group.

Hearing aids that look like Bluetooth headsets

A blog that covers technology for older users, 50+Digital, posted an article last week about the Audeo. This hearing aid is marketed as a “personal communications assistant”. It looks like a large Bluetooth headset, but it is similar in many ways to the Delta.

Devices like the Audeo and Delta will become more popular, according to Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe, as boomers hunt for fashionable alternatives to traditional hearing aids and reading glasses.

I expect more younger users to adopt hearing aids, partly because they’ve blown out their hearing with their iPods. I’m always careful to keep my iPod’s volume at a level that will let me hear traffic noise.

USA: The New York Times has proposed abolishing the Electoral College. In the Electoral College, every vote is not equal. Small states like it that way, so I doubt that small state legislatures will vote for the consitutional amendment required to make this change. Presidential candidates would pay more attention to the needs of the larger states like New York and California, at the expense of smaller states like Hawaii and Nevada. Swing states would be a thing of the past. As the Times points out, Yucca Flats is getting more attention than NYC security in this campaign.

Abolishing the Electoral College could encourage more voters to participate in presidential elections, if voters know that their vote directly counts towards the total results, and that votes will be accurately tabulated. I lived in Texas in 2000, so my vote against W was for naught.