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MoBank. This U.K.-based company acts as a gatekeeper for your financial information for use on mobile commerce sites. You give it all your credentials in return for a way to use a single, secure log-in across multiple vendors. It forgoes the usual password system in place of a financial PIN that you enter at the time of the transaction. It’s also smart enough to jumble up the way the PIN pad looks between transactions so malicious third-party tools can’t grab your information with repeated viewings.

Acculynk PIN is an additional layer of security applied to online purchases. If you’re using a debit card it checks to see if it can be verified by PIN. Instead of entering the security code to confirm (which is on the physical card), you need to enter a PIN. It uses the same PIN code that’s on your card and lets you enter it with a number pad that changes between presses for security’s sake. In a way it’s part PIN, part captcha.

(Credit:
HomeATM.net)

The HomeATM plugs into your USB port and lets you make purchases and transfer money instantly–and securely.

The payoff is that, unlike money-transfer systems that go off the credit and check system (which can take up to three days to clear), the money gets transferred immediately. All the while your data isn’t compromised by things like keyloggers or screen-grabbing tools. The only downside is that you and the person you’re sending the money to need to have the hardware.

Aradiom’s SolidPass system combines a PIN and a mobile token system, where you’ve provisioned your phone as yet another way to secure your identity. You can enter your PIN as usual, but you need to have the mobile application running to verify that you’re making a purchase. When the system verifies you through the PIN and the software app, it lets you in. This system also works on sites, so if you have something securely locked down by password, you can also require that users validate their credentials on their handsets as well.

What’s something we often use for security in the real world but not online? PIN codes. We use them at stores, banks, and ATMs, so why not use them online? For one, a QWERTY keyboard lets you create a much stronger, and often easier-to-remember password than you could with numerical digits. But PINs are still a password and can be just as good with the right precautions.

Some companies are using PIN codes to add an extra layer of security on top of what sites already offers. Here are four companies at the FinovateStartup conference doing just that.

Online sellers can add the system to their sites, and in return the company has an app that put all those shops in one place, letting users search and purchase items they want to buy. It’s only available in the U.K. for now, but co-founder and CEO Dominic Keen says it’s coming to the U.S. in a few months.

HomeATM.net is ATM hardware for the Web. It’s a physical piece of hardware you have to lug around with you. You securely enter your PIN or swipe your debit card to use for P2P money exchanges and purchases on commerce sites.

Shareholders should be able in 2010 to start telling Apple’s board for the record what they think of executive compensation policies. “Apple is committed to implementing an advisory Say on Pay vote next year,” the company said.

The company informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that a filing last week “incorrectly reported the voting percentages for shareholder-submitted proposals because abstentions were counted as ‘No’ votes.” At Apple’s February 25 shareholders meeting, shareholders had seemingly rejected a “say on pay” resolution that would have let them weigh in on policies regarding executive pay and compensation.

Apple said Monday that its shareholders have approved a so-called “say on pay” proposal, contrary to the results it had reported earlier.

After a recount, Apple told the SEC on Monday, it turned out that a majority of votes had been cast in favor of the resolution, officially known as Shareholder Proposal No. 5 Regarding Advisory Vote on Compensation. The mistake in the earlier count was the result of human error, according to the company.

Today, Toshiba announced a 1.8-inch hard drive that combines high capacity with high performance. The drive (model MK617GSG) gives you 160GB of storage spinning at 5400rpm. Other 160GB 1.8-inch drives have been chugging along at 4200rpm, until now. Expect to see this drive–and the single platter 80GB version of it–in mininotebooks in August. No details yet on how much of a discount these drives will offer over similarly sized solid-state drives.

(Credit:
Toshiba)

JBoss was growing in excess of 100%/year. MySQL wasn’t far off from 100% growth. As for the crazy multiple on XenSource, the bankers clearly used a forward-looking multiple, not the understated trailing revenue. Citrix must have had a lot of faith in those forward numbers, but had they not, why buy XenSource? Using forward-looking multiples, suddenly XenSource’s valuation may not be quite as crazy.

He’s absolutely right. Part of the reason that MySQL got such a great valuation is that it has significantly improved its growth in the past year. Much of this came from productizing its services (i.e., the distinction between MySQL Enterprise and Community), such that it had a compelling value proposition beyond vanilla support. Savio would be proud.

I heard from a few people about my post on the relative valuations of MySQL, JBoss, Zimbra, and XenSource. Because of a lack of data on growth trajectories, I didn’t factor those into my light analysis, but anyone buying a company would seriously factor this in. In fact, as one person commented, “multiples are a factor of growth by definition of discounted cash flow based valuations.”

At this point, most open-source companies need to be thinking about growth. There’s a huge land grab going on. She who can grow bookings fastest, while managing expenses so that profitability is not a distant dot-com bubblesque dream, will win, either as IPO or as a hefty acquisition.

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In real estate, the three most important things are location, location and location. In computers, they are backup, backup and backup. Any techie that blows off the question about backup, is a normal person in techie clothing.

Where do I fit in? See for yourself: The Best File Backup Scheme

The techie will brag about what a great system they devised or inherited.
The techie will gripe about how management has held them back from implementing a much better system than the one currently employed. They may go on and one about the flaws in the way things are done.
The techie will blow off the question, as if it wasn’t important.

It takes one to know one. So, how can non-techies form an opinion on the abilities of a computer nerd? There is a language gap, a knowledge gap and, likely, a personality gap to overcome. Here’s a tip.

I see three possible answers.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

Ask the techie about the system (meaning hardware, software and manual procedures) used to backup the computers they are responsible for.

This is interesting because there’s been considerable interest lately in whether Internet shows can replace or at least emerge alongside traditional television series. The interest was particularly intense during the Hollywood writer’s strike because studios were desperate for original programming created outside the auspices of the Writer’s Guild.

At an event it called Digital Showcase, held Thursday in New York, the software giant told a group of ad execs that it is getting into the business of producing original Web shows for its wide range of Web platforms.

The shows are slated to run on portals like MSN,
Xbox Live, and MSNBC.com. Among the initial series are: 50 Greatest, which MediaWeek said is “a spoof of the multiple pop culture list shows common to VH1 and other cable networks”; and In Need of Repair, “a male-aimed home improvement series featuring a pair of sophomoric, mostly inept hosts.”

On the other hand, since one of the portals in question is Xbox Live and one of the shows is called In Need of Repair, I can see a few people thinking that the show might be about the well-publicized quality control problems of Microsoft’s Xbox video game consoles.

Watch out, Hollywood. Here comes Microsoft.

And, I must say, I’m not too optimistic at the prospect of watching inept, sophomoric guys trying to fix things. Then again, King of the Hill has been a huge hit for Fox. So you never know. If the writing’s good, anything is possible.

The bigger question may be whether they choose good scripts. As we all know, the only way to succeed with any kind of story telling is to tell good stories.

According to MediaWeek, Microsoft told the ad execs that the shows it is funding will be naturals for supporting online advertising.

Whether a company like Microsoft can be among the first to succeed with Web-only series is a question that I’m sure a lot of people would like to know the answer to. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them, since they can throw a lot of resources at the problem.

(Credit:
CBS Interactive)

The other major improvement, which is more business-centric is the option to selectively e-mail meeting attendees. Like Outlook you can now get a separate list of people who have replied yes, no, or maybe and e-mail specific groups without perturbing the others. In both the business and social world, this is a great way to send notices and reminders without spamming the in-boxes of people who have already responded.

One of the new improvements, flexible reminders, seems like the most minor–but it’s not. Setting up reminders in the previous system had presets on when you’d be able to get the message. The new system is far more customizable and lets you drop in whatever time you want, complete with an option for days, which means you could set a reminder years in advance. You can still set whether you want it as a pop-up, e-mail or SMS message, the last of which I find to be the most useful if your mobile phone doesn’t sync up with Google Calendar.

One of the updated features is the option to create new draggable calendar events over other ones. Previously you'd have to create it elsewhere then drag it over–making it a two-step process.

If you’ve been on the fence about ditching Outlook for Google Apps you might want to give Google’s efforts another look. In a blog post this morning the company outlined some of the ways Google Calendar has improved over the past month with a handful of small, but important features. Many of them are aimed squarely at business users.

Alongside these two features is a slight upgrade to the event creation tool which now allows for overlapping events, as well as a new two-click calendar subscription shortcut that lets you subscribe to someone else’s calendar without having to deal with special invites or permissions.

Some links for your enjoyment:

I caught a touch of food poisoning yesterday and I’m not still not totally right. While generally not a great experience, something about pulling over in the Tenderloin to hurl felt all too comfortable.

10 Reasons Enterprises Aren’t Ready to Trust the Cloud Gnip: Grand Central Station for the Social Web GPLv3 One Year Anniversary Edition 06/29/08 9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless

In this week’s episode, Don chats with CNET’s Tom Merritt about why Apple and Google will be hated one day and whether or not the XM-Sirius merger should happen. After that, Don sits down with Microsoft’s marketing manager to discuss Office 2008 for
Mac and in his solo rant segment, Don tells you why he’s fed up with anti-piracy types. Listen now:

Download today’s podcast
EPISODE 8

TODAY’S LINKS: Check out Tom on Buzz Out Loud Click here for all the stories Don and Tom talked about this about Thanks to Microsoft!

Webware reader Amy wrote in to let us know one of her favorite
Firefox plug-ins shortText just got updated with a handy new feature. It will now automatically go through any page you’re on and seek out any TinyURLs, converting them to the actual URL so you can see where the page links to.

If you want to accomplish a similar feat, there’s also a bookmarklet called Embiggen, which will do the same thing without you having to install anything. The key difference between the two is that shortText packs in a bundle of other features like letting you write Twitter tweets that are well over the 140 character limit and link all your posts up to a centralized page where you can keep track of replies more easily than on Twitter.

Any TinyURLs on a Twitter post or elsewhere on the Web will automatically be converted with shortText.

(Credit:
Shorttext.com)