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I briefly used a PayPal security key, but it was a frustrating experience, simply because I kept leaving the key at home. PayPal’s integration with eBay is not good, which is surprising as eBay owns PayPal.

When I decided to stop using the key, I was able to cancel the PayPal key online in a matter of minutes. It took a 15 minute live chat with an eBay rep to remove the PayPal security key from my eBay account. Perhaps that was a security step by eBay. However the frontline system for canceling the key on eBay’s site did not work properly.

The worst part of the PayPal key: I had to pay US$5 to get one in the first place. If PayPal really wanted business users to have multifactor keys, the first key would be free of charge.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• OpenID
• 11 May 2008: JanRain launches CallVerifID multifactor phone service for OpenID
• 10 May 2008: Why use OpenID?
• 30 April 2008: Updating WP-OpenID to support ID Selector
• 21 March 2007: About ecommerce part 3: The broadband connection
• 15 March 2007: About ecommerce part 1: Maximizing ROI

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.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• OpenID
• 10 May 2008: Why use OpenID?
• 30 April 2008: Updating WP-OpenID to support ID Selector

There are plenty of great free software applications and services available on the Web.

In some cases, payment removes advertising and enables more features. Some require a subscription or a one-time payment.Sometimes the payment is merely a donation to a one-man operation that wrote the code.

Here’s a few quick lists of what I’m using, inspired by this discussion on Weblog Tools Collection:

Keep in mind that my recommendations are for the consumer or individual versions of each service. Some products are available in corporate or enterprise versions for a fee.

Free software and services that I would pay for, along with links to each service’s “about” or home page:

• Craigslist, if only to get the spam and junk postings off the classified portion of the service.
• del.icio.us, my second favorite social bookmarking service. I’m waiting to see what happens to Yahoo, the company that owns del.icio.us and also owns my next choice..
• Flickr, for the Pro account features.
• Google Earth, to get enhanced features on the Mac application.
• MacUpdate, for enhanced features on this Mac software update service.
• PayPal, so I could have a business account.
• Skype, for unlimited calling.
• StumbleUpon, my favorite social bookmarking service, to get some extra features as a sponsor.
• TextEdit, my favorite text editor for Windows.

Here’s a list of free software and services that I wouldn’t pay to use, because the ROI just isn’t that great:

• avast, my favorite virus scanner for Windows and Mac.
• Firefox, the best web browser for the Mac and Windows.
• Gmail, because the keep adding more storage space to my free accounts anyway.
• Twitter, a microblogging service that supports SMS and a variety of web and software clients
• Twitterific, a Mac twitter client. I can live with the occasional ad.
• WinZip and other file compression programs.
• WordPress, the software I use to run the billso.com web site. It’s fabulous, free, and there’s no real reason to pay for it. Many WordPress developers earn consulting income from clients who need

In this post on his blog, Kevin Kelly discusses how the Internet is a massive copying machine. This is a major reason that digital rights management (DRM) does not protect business models very well.

The music and movie industries have focused on protecting content and managing copying, instead of building and offering value that is difficult or hard to copy. U2’s manager recently attacked ISPs, search engines and other companies for aiding and abetting music and video file sharing on the Internet. (CBC).

Kelly, on the other hand, proposes a network economy where sharing and abundance are key success factors that every content publisher must satisfy. He also identifies 8 key success factors that spur customers to buy instead of copy.

It’s difficult to copy reputation and trust, but it’s rather easy to offer or measure these attributes. Just look at eBay.

Reputation and trust are relevant in education. Jason Schultz published links to several YouTube videos of students demonstrating how to cheat in school. BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow discussed his own experiences with cheating when he linked to Schultz’s post.

Schools offer interpretation, which is another form of value that is difficult to copy. Grading, evaluation, advising are good examples of content that is very difficult to copy. These also have elements of personalization, which help increase their value.

Patronage is another factor. Some users want to pay for content, even if it can be downloaded free of charge.  Physical forms that cannot be downloaded through the Internet can also make content more valuable – cover art and booklets are examples in the music industry.

Convenience is also an important value generator. Immediate access to content may be more important to some users than eventually finding free access through peer-to-peer networks or file sharing. Metadata, XML and web services are some of the tools that small and independent publishers use to sell their content.

Blogs are also part of the value system that is created as multiple value chains link together from end to end. BoingBoing is a good example – that blog has several editors who promote their solo media projects through the web site. I discovered Kelly’s article on a BoingBoing post, as a matter of fact.

Here’s an interesting article about an academic study that affirms a popular belief – that eBay is a good place to find bargains. According to this summary on ZDnet, eBay shoppers saved an estimated US$8 billion dollars in 2004. The study by Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli will be published in a future issue of the Journal of Information Systems Research.

Graduate students should make a habit of reading at least one peer-reviewed article a week, especially if their degree program requires a thesis or professional paper.

eBay’s next CEO, John Donahoe, hopes to bring sellers and buyers back to the service by offering better search options and a more secure marketplace, as I discussed on 23 January 2008.

As The Register points out, eBay’s lower listing fees are balanced by a hike in the final sales fees. While it will cost sellers list to relist an item, sellers will pay eBay more money if and when that item sells.