daynemay

I only recently learned of the existence of the Sony Eye Toy, so I find this sort of thing pretty exciting.

(That’s a link to Wikipedia. I would have linked directly to the EyeToy site, but it’s garish as hell, and doesn’t need to be encouraged.)

Regular readers may enjoy comparing and contrasting the above with my performance.

Twittercal* is a cool idea. I started dicking with it a few days ago, and didn’t have much luck. I flicked the light switch off and on a couple of times. Nothing.

Today I wrote to the support email address. Turnaround time was like lighting. Around half an hour between my first email and complete resolution of the problem, including a couple of test tweets to make sure it worked.

Big ups to Fred Brunel (& Co.?) for putting Twittercal together, for the quick response and for the painless resolution.

* Twittercal = a cool Twitter bot that you can use to enter Google Calendar events, using the Google Calendar Quick Add syntax, i.e. pretty much natural language.

Puttin’ them durn crows to work for a living. Pretty amazing stuff.

I have no words.

The other day, I bought a pizza online from Pizza Hut. I paid with my credit card.

The guy came out to deliver it and muttered something about there being a problem with my credit card, and could I please speak to his manager. I was suspicious but hungry, so I played along. He placed a call on his mobile phone and handed it to me. The phone displayed “Pizza Hut”, and I spoke to his (purported) manager, giving my credit card details.

I took the pizza upstairs. As we ate it, I got thinking about how easily this situation could have been a scam. I called Pizza Hut to ask if that sort of thing was standard operating procedure when there is some kind (?) of screw-up with the card details. “All our operators are busy”. I left a message for them to call me back.

Time passed.

I got antsy – “these dodgy characters could be out there buying plasma TVs in my name as we speak” – and rang the bank to cancel my credit card.

Ten minutes later, Pizza Hut customer service rang me back. Discussion ensued, the upshot of which was that yes, it is standard operating procedure.

So, I’ve cancelled my credit card, which is also my ATM card, which is a mild pain in the arse., but no big deal. And yes, I should probably have suspended it rather than cancel it.

But the main point of this is that the Hut have a process that’s too easy to scam. Simply:

1. Get a job as a Pizza Hut delivery driver.
2. Put a friend’s number into my phone against the name “Pizza Hut”.
3. Get credit-card-paying customers to recite their card details to my friend, “Pizza Hut”, the “manager”.
4. Wait a suitable length of time to let customers forget my smiling face.
5. Buy plasma TVs on any credit cards that haven’t been cancelled.

Or maybe I’ve just been reading too much Schneier.

The portmanteau will be the undoing of society as we know it.

Cam Pegg

I didn’t know about this, but it’s handy (if you use Gmail).

…you can make edits to Gmail contacts directly from the chat list. …

[H]over your mouse over one of your contacts to prompt a pop-up with contact details.

If you just click on the contact name, it will automatically become an editable field. Simply type in the desired name and hit “enter.” Your changes will save the name in your chat list as well as in your contacts.