Sep 21

The people search engine

By Stefano Buliani General Babbling, Technology, Thoughts, WWW No Comments »

Spock - The people search engineA while ago I stumbled upon an article on TechCrunch about Spock, the people search engine.

I was very interested in the idea and went to sign up on the site straight away. There I discovered that they had already imported my profile scrapping Linkedin and Facebook. Great software? Really bad for privacy? I’ll leave that up to you, the only thing I know is that at the moment I was pleasantly surprised to be already part of their people index.

After that brief fling-at I decided not to write about it. That was until yesterday, when I received an email from Spock informing me, as a member, that somebody had searched for my name.

Yesterday night I went back to the site, logged in, and was brought to my profile page. The look and feel is still slick and clean, Spock has definitely improved since the last time I logged in, more tools to complete and customize you profile.

I particularly liked the connection/relationship tool – A really spiffy form which lets you select a person from their database and specify how you are related to that person. That’s how you gain “spock-points”, as I understand, works pretty much like Google, the more people you’re “linked” to and the more “important” those people are the more points you gain.

The other tools available to the user to complete their profile include photo uploading, websites (including RSS feed, which is great) and tags.

The site is really well designed and I’m certainly going to use it next time we’ll be looking for programmers in our area.

The only other thing I’d like to see on Spock is some sort of human-readable URLs for you profile to link around, at the moment my profile is accessible here http://www.spock.com/user142936472k210751ss4k168348594k4c1159527, not exactly easy to remember. Give me something like http://www.spock.com/stefanobuliani. Furthermore to put my spock profile link here I had to copy it from the URL bar in my browser.
How about an embed button YouTube style, or a sort of widget?

And now I’m off to Italy for a long overdue week of holiday! I’ll try to take as many photos as possible and publish them here but I can’t promise anything.

Take it easy,

Stefano

Sep 12

Identity verification for Ebay!

By Stefano Buliani General Babbling, My Works, Technology, Thoughts, WWW No Comments »

EbayIf you’re lucky enough to look under 21 we may have to ask for proof of your age.

That’s how stores like Sainsbury and Tesco tell their shoppers that if they’re trying to buy alcohol and look under 21 the cashier will ask them for a valid document as proof of their age.

Last year I decided to sell my PSP on Ebay! I paid the fee and put up the auction. Long story short I was almost scammed into selling my PSP to a Nigerian who commandeered an American account and sent me some brilliantly realized fake PayPal payment emails.

Luckily the real account owner noticed and alerted me on time otherwise it was goodbye PSP and money. Yes, I know, I’ve been stupid and didn’t check the payment emails properly, but it was a very well reputed account (on Ebay!) and I trusted it implicitly.

So here’s what I’d like to have and couldn’t find anywhere on the net. A very simple and small website providing an identity verification service for Ebay! users. Could be based on GPG and would ideally work this way:

  1. When a user signs up on the service a GPG key pair is created for him and the date of the creation is recorded
  2. The private GPG key is sent armored to the user email address.
  3. The user will also be given some HTML code to generate widgets in their Ebay! auction pages which will display a simple “Verify” button and the date the user signed up on the service

Now whenever I’m interested in an item I can verify the identity of the seller in the following way:

  1. Click on the “Verify” link on the widget
  2. The system will send a message (random number or something) encrypted with that user’s GPG public key to their email address
  3. The user will have to decrypt (maybe with a small really simple application) the message and enter the code provided in the email on a page in the system.
  4. The seller will also be asked whether he wants to verify the buyer identity or not
  5. The system will send an email to the buyer confirming the seller’s identity (or not) and eventually asking the buyer to verify their identity

The date the account was created in the verification system is very important at this stage because you may not want to trust completely a key created the very same day of the auction.

I know the idea is a bit blurry and definitely has some loopholes, but I’m confident that they can all be closed and security risks minimized.

Do you know of any system like this on the net? If not please create it! I love Ebay! but I’m tired of having to spend days in a state of total distress and anxiety every time I sell or buy something!

Sep 07

China has to go green

By Stefano Buliani Covestor, General Babbling, Thoughts, Trading No Comments »

From my rationale on Covestor:

After the incredible tumble CSUN took at the end of August amidst the defection of some of the high ranking management (CFO), and the investigation opened by the The Law Offices of Eric J. O’Bell, L.L.C.to determine whether the company had violated federal securities laws in connection with its May 2007 public stock offering I felt, oddly enough, that it was a great time to start building my position in this stock.

Not only the entire world is going nuts over green energy but China in particular has to do something about its increasing pollution levels in anticipation of the Olympic Games it will host in Beijing (2008).
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hJdSYDAgzpPRQI75g9xugIbuJAOQ

So far so good…

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