billso.com

After breaking away from Amazon back in 2006, Borders has finally unveiled its new e-commerce web site. This may be a last-ditch effort for Borders, whose revenues are insufficient to service the company’s mounting debt, as I noted in this billso.com article of 28 March 2008.

Borders will try to reestablish its web presence after 7 years of outsourcing by offering free shipping on orders of $25 or more, just like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Borders will also offer free shipping to its stores, where customers can pick up their books. Border’s in-store kiosks will be connected to the new site, so customers can access their wish lists.

See these articles from the Associated Press and the New York Times for more details.

I recently implemented OpenID on billso.com. OpenID is a single sign-on (SSO) system that lets web users log on to multiple sites with the same username and password. SSO support is becoming a key success factor for social networking and social media web sites, as new users struggle to manage a growing number of passwords.

With OpenID, no one needs to apply for a user account on billso.com. They can use their username and credentials from another site to join billso.com, or to post a comment on a billso.com article.

Kyle Neath posted a long rant about OpenID yesterday. He won’t be implementing OpenID on his site because he thinks the system too confusing for users. I don’t think OpenID is that difficult to understand - here are two brief explanations from OpenID.net and Wikipedia.

Phishing phears

Kyle’s concerned that phishers might target OpenID users, and he uses PayPal as an example. That site has become a primary target for phishing attacks.

OpenID does have an identity system that lets an authorized user revoke their OpenID as a last resort. Anyone who uses an OpenID should select a strong passphrase, as I described in this billso.com article from 24 Aprill 2008. OpenID can also add multifactor authentication to their service. Checking a user’s location, or asking for a token or passphrase that only the user should have, in addition to the regular passphrase, would provide a strong defense against phishers. Virtual keyboards and other systems could also be used, as I described in this billso.com article from 17 April 2008.

The provider’s burden

I understand some of Kyle’s points. Any web site that implements OpenID for SSO could also become a provider of OpenIDs. I decided not to do this right from the start. I don’t want to provide perpetual support users who request a billso.com OpenID username. There is a system that lets departing OpenID providers delegate their users to another provider.

On 30 April 2008, I posted some programming code that lets a popular WordPress OpenID plugin use JanRain’s ID Selector tool. There are several providers of OpenIDs that can carry the long-term burden of maintaining these accounts, including VeriSign, AOL, Google, Flickr, and WordPress.com.

Universities could become OpenID providers. It makes sense to give students and employees access to a global SSO system, as long as schools are willing to provide stable, permanent usernames for their stakeholders.

Users can also purchase a personal identity domain for around US$10 a year and get a personalized OpenID URL.

Related posts and pages from billso.com

• OpenID
• 30 April 2008: Updating WP-OpenID to support ID Selector
• 24 April 2008: Change that password into a passphrase
• 17 April 2008: Virtual keyboards and monitoring software foil keystroke loggers
• 12 April 2008: Finding business contacts and passwords on the Internet
• 14 March 2008: Social media in action
• 2 July 2007: CXOs face malware email attacks
• 11 January 2007: How to create a secure password

The Microsoft-Yahoo takeover battle may be resolved soon, according to Wired:

One of the better insights came from Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney, who handicapped the outcomes of the Microsoft-Yahoo war. Mahaney reckons there’s a 45 percent chance Yahoo sells out at a higher offer; a 40 percent chance Microsoft goes hostile; a 10 percent chance Microsoft walks away; and a 5 percent chance they both agree to the current price.

Yesterday’s New York Times had additional details. Saturday, 26 April 2008, was the deadline that Microsoft had set for Yahoo’s response to its recent purchase offer. According to this New York Times analysis, it seems unlikely that Microsoft CEO will abandon the company’s pursuit of Yahoo, because failure might send the wrong signals to the market.

Microsoft’s CFO, Chris Liddell, has led the company to spend more on acquisitions, and take on debt for the first time in the company’s 33-year history. He was profiled in Reuters article, which also discusses his management style.

To merge or not to merge

Microsoft doesn’t really need Yahoo, according to a recent research report. Michael Cusumano suggested in this New York Times article by Randall Stross that Yahoo is a poor fit with Microsoft’s enterprise software ambitions. SAP would be a better choice for Microsoft, especially after Oracle’s acquisition of BEA.

Another ZDnet report and this Wired article indicate that Yahoo has increased its severance packages for employees.

On 25 February 2008, Yahoo CEO asked his number two, Sue Decker, to join him on-stage at an important presentation, according to the New York Times. Decker has excellent ties with the advertising industry, and she was the real architect of Yahoo’s advertising business strategy.

Yang needs all the help he can get when facing nervous customers. At the event, Yang called Microsoft’s bid a “galvanizing event” for Yahoo managers, employees and board members. That’s some deep thinking… deep like a puddle. Threats of acquisition and unemployment can really command attention. The company’s plan to recapture its former dominance as an Internet portal is about seven years too late.

Photos courtesy of Carsten Knoch (top) and code_martial (bottom) through a Creative Commons license.

Related posts on billso.com

• 18 April 2008: Antitrust regulators would fight a Yahoo-Google combination
• 5 April 2008: Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo may disappear
• 17 February 2008: Shareholders may bring Microsoft and Yahoo together
• 4 February 2008: Microsoft acquistion of Yahoo faces roadblocks
• 1 February 2008: Microsoft makes offer for Yahoo
• 25 January 2008: Oracle, BEA and middleware

As business blogging becomes a key success factor in some industries, business bloggers sometimes face pressure to produce excellent metrics right from the start. Their managers sometimes try shortcuts to success, only to find that the online community can see through these tricks.

SEO 2.0 has posted an excellent list of 10 things a business blog should not do. These include:

Number 1) Writing under an assumed name. I use an old email address (billso) for my domain name (billso.com). My real name is listed on my about page.

Number 9) Requiring employees to read, rank and promote the blog. I do not require my employees or students to comment or rank my blog articles. I do assign blog articles for my students to read with their assignments. My blog articles provide up-to-date examples that my course textbooks cannot provide.

Building reputation and authority

SEO is an acronym that means search engine optimization. There are thousands of blogs and online businesses that offer advice on getting more advertising revenue, more readers and a higher Google rank.

Many bloggers get caught up in revenue generation, as I mentioned in my billso.com article of 27 March 2008. It’s much more difficult to build a blog’s reputation and authority. These attributes can be measured by counting the number and kinds of inbound links to a blog, a blog’s search engine ranking, and quotes in the mainstream media.

For readers, reputation and authority are difficult concepts. It takes little effort to lose these attributes. SEO Chicks has some more good examples of what not to do with a business blog. It’s a bad idea to set up a flog, especially in the United Kingdom:

A ‘flog’ is a fake blog usually created by a PR or online marketing firm for the purpose of falsely representing themselves as a consumer, usually for the purposes of creating a buzz around a specific product or brand. Sometimes this is done as a brand or online reputation management activity.

There’s usually hell to pay when the mainstream media or the blogosphere discovers a flog or a fake.

Related posts on billso.com

• 8 April 2008: Blogging and teaching
• 5 April 2008: Blogging can kill you
• 27 March 2008: Blogging as a business model
• 14 March 2008: Social media in action
• 25 February 2008: Social Media 101
• 11 June 2007: Blogging for a living

As bad as the Aloha Airlines passenger jet shutdown has been in Hawaii - see yesterday’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin for some details -  British Airways is facing a much larger problem with its new Terminal 5 in London’s Heathrow Airport. How bad is it?

The British Airways web site has a graphic on almost every page that says “We’re sorry”, and BA CEO Willie Walsh may be out of a job soon. Maybe BA executives shouldn’t have thrown that opening day party, as Jeff Nolan discussed here.

BA has called in FedEx to help deal with an estimated 28,000 bags because the entire bag handling system failed. Bags that were headed the the European continent have been diverted to Milan for sorting, according to this BBC article. See the BBC, Wired, Business Week and Bloomberg for more details.

Reliability is a key success factor

Air travelers want to get their baggage at their destination. BA has had baggage handling problems for years, according to an 21 August 2007 Wall Street Journal article.

This BBC article reveals that baggage handling personnel could not find parking spaces and were standing in line waiting for assignments as the bags started piling up. Workers struggled to use a scheduling system that should have assigned them to specific areas of the massive terminal, based upon flight activity and traffic patterns. A system that should have handled 12,000 bags per hour failed on its first morning because the staff didn’t know where to go in their new workplace.

The new £4.3 billion terminal, which was dedicated earlier this month and built specifically for BA, was supposed to help matters. Now thousands of travelers are marooned in Heathrow and neighboring hotels because the airline has canceled flights for the fifth consecutive day, according to another Bloomberg article. The BBC article said that 250 flights were canceled in the first 4 days alone.

Quite a shock

For those stranded in the new terminal, it’s a bit boring. BA does offer free WiFi in its Terminal 5 lounges, according to Jaunted. BoingBoing noted on 19 January 2008 that electrical outlets are hard to find in the new terminal. All in all, it’s worse than being fumigated in your seat.