And you thought Paypal was bad...Amazon Payments reaches new low

This is one of those blog posts I've thought long and hard about; on one hand, I want to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt, since their customer service has always been top notch. On the other hand, I wish someone at Amazon would get a clue.

So one of the companies I'm involved with, Braintrust Digital, recently signed up for Amazon Payments using a business account. The system asked for a number of verifications, completely fine, including bank account information. A days after all these verifications were completed, the trouble started.

After receiving a large payment, the company sent one last verification, asking for the last four digits of the SSN (social security number)—an odd request for a business account, since corporations, while recently ruled to be people, still have FEIN (Federal Employee Identification Number). I enter the last four of the EIN, get an automated response thanking me for my entry, and then...Nothing.

A day later, I get an email saying I'd entered it wrong, and that I need to re-enter the information. Ok, fine, so I re-enter the last four digits, again get the automated response thanking me for successfully entering the information, and...

The account is now locked.  No worries, as the small warning at the top of the page tells me there are things that can be done with the account and things that can't be done with the account. Here's the warning:

Click on the "here" link (isn't that sort of 1990s linking, to use "here" for the link—but I digress) and here's what we see we're allowed to do:

So the corporation can't send money or receive money, but it can withdraw it, right? Yes, according to the list, the only thing we CAN do is withdraw the money. So we go through the process of performing a sweep into the corporate bank account, and...

No, it's not telling the truth. At all. The transfer fails, and fails fast.

So we try to launch an inquiry into the failure, using these two links ("Problem with this transaction?" and "click here to inquire about an error" to, well, inquire about the error.

We enter the transaction ID and asking, simply, why it failed. Very simply, as in: "It failed. Why?"

Apparently these are fighting words, because we're told that we're disputing the transaction. Really? Yep, says so here...

Ok, so now what? Can we find a live person to check in with to find out why it failed? Well, only between 7am - 4pm PST (did we mention this was Amazon, based in Seattle, WA, USA?) Says so right here, in a rather snarky way:

No number to call, just a call-back request, either now or five minutes from now, meaning we have to be online to make the call (a call back service, yes, but not so convenient for real business folks, but that's another story all together...)

Tomorrow's blog entry? The incessant requests by Amazon to send Social Security information, date of birth and full legal name by (drumroll, please) EMAIL.

Sony expands Google TV offerings while Google TV universe expands

The Google TV universe is expanding.

The whole universe was in question just a few weeks ago, when Logitech rapped the  Google TV mediaware as "beta" software and jettisoned its Revue set-top box unit as a "mistake" (although not enough of a mistake to cease sales throughout the US Christmas shopping season and in to 2012 as a highly sought after Amazon sale of  refurbished unit at $79.99 with Prime shipping) 

Now, out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas comes news of not just one, or even two, but three new partners that will be launching products. LG, rival Samsung and upstart Vizio all will be launching internet-connected TVs that will contain at least the Android 3.1 (Google TV 2.0) operating system.

In addition, Sony tried to set the record straight about its ongoing decision to continue forward with Google TV based units. Sony announced that the NSZ-GT1 (a Wi-Fi-enabled 1080p Blu-ray disc player featuring Google TV) at almost twice the price of the Logitech Revue, had sold better than expected, and that the Sony Google TV-powered smart TVs (the 40" NSX-40GT1 and 46" NSX-46GT1) are the best selling TVs in Sony's stable of products.

“They’re among the best-selling TVs we have," Brian Siegel, Sony TV vice president told USA Today in a late 2011 interview. "Media has done a real good job of beating [Google TV] up." 

The one major change in all this, including Sony's newer devices (the Blu-Ray player equipped NSZ-GP9, and its Logitech Revue mimicking NSZ-GS7 set-top box may both use an ARM chip from Marvell rather than the Intel Atom chip that Intel offers for the set-top box market but discontinued support for in the internet-connected or Smart TV market.

As reported in a recent StreamingMedia.com article on the Logitech Revue, the Intel Atom CE4100 chipset powers both the Sony NSZ-GT1 Google TV box and the Logitech Revue. Google's reference platform for all Google TV-powered set-top boxes was based on the Atom chipset, so that the original Google TV firmware—and subsequent updates—would run consistently across all consumer devices.

Sony used the CE4100 chipset to its maximum advantage—selling a significant number of NSZ-GT1 set-top boxes and smart TVs in the process—while Logitech opted to hold back on the CE4100's capabilities, as we reported in the Workflowed blog on Logitech's refusal to support the MPEG-2 codec and MPEG-2 transport streams.

The new chipsets provide some interesting opportunities, and we think Google TV-powered products, especially Smart TV products, will gain an advantage using these new ARM processors.

"You're in luck" -- Pinger TextFree and the fatal flaw

Sometimes a company makes a product or service that is *almost* perfect, but has a fatal flaw.

Pinger.com's TextFree is just one such service: its apps for Android and iPhone are fairly decent; even with the buggy interface within the newer TextFree with Voice, the call quality is great and the texting is, well, something to text or tweet about.

Yet the web version lags considerably, especially in one key area: the web service is inaccessible from an iPhone's browser.

Typing in www.pinger.com/textfree yields the typical CSS redirect to http://m.pinger.com/content/tf_web.html with the "You're in luck" tagline displaying the iPhone app.

What if you can't download the app or are in a situation where the app doesn't work, as I found myself in today, where a restricted network only allowed access via http in the browser?

You're out of luck: choosing "full site" yields the full site page in the iPhone Safari browser, as it should, but choosing "login" from the main page's top right corner tosses the user back into the endless loop of http://m.pinger.com/content/tf_web.html

Great idea, poorly executed.

iPhoned

This is Your Father's iPhone

[Editor's note: see additional analysis on the topic at StreamingMedia.com]

After years of desire and months of speculation, today Verizon Wireless announced that the iPhone would be available on their network in February. This is of course really good news for those who either can’t get or don’t want ATT service here in the US. Verizon said that they have been working on supporting the iPhone since 2008, so, they are anticipating a great success for them and their customers with this thoroughbred device in their stables. All current iPhone features will be available in the Verizon iPhone, with two notable exceptions.

First, there is the network technology this device will be using. During the almost constant tea leaf analysis that was occurring over the past several weeks in anticipation of this announcement, there was debate over which network technology would be built into the Verizon-flavored iPhone. That speculation has now been put to rest.

The Verizon iPhone will be CDMA and EVDO only, making this iPhone a device built for Verizon’s legacy 3G network. What this means is that you cannot use data while you are on a voice call, unless, perhaps your iPhone has a WiFi connection. Good for the home or office, but not while you are out and about, which is where most iPhones are used. For those of you keeping score at home, the iPhone on non-CDMA carriers such as ATT’s 3G GSM network in the US can use voice and data at the same time, which, I believe is a large part of the iPhone’s functionality appeal. You don’t have to hang up your voice call to check your email.

When Apple’s Tim Cook was asked why the phone was not taking advantage of nascent Verizon’s 4G network (aka LTE), he basically said that folks really want a Verizon iPhone, and will be willing to make the functionality trade-off. Mr. Cook also stated that incorporating LTE into the current iPhone design would not be possible without design trade offs they were not willing to make. Given the comments that Verizon’s Lowell Macadam made about being the hub of collaboration, there will likely be an LTE version of the iPhone in the future so that it can be a true collaboration hub. Until then, this phone will be a single tasking device, unable to truly multitask.

Second on the feature front, there is one interesting bright spot in today’s announcement. The Verizon iPhone provides WiFi hotspot functionality for up to five devices, which is a feature that is not available on other carriers. This will allow WiFi enabled devices, such as the iPad’s that Verizon has been selling since late 2010, to be able to use the iPhone’s Verizon 3G data connection to get on the Internet. So, expect there to be a much demanding by current non-Verizon iPhone owners to bring this connectivity feature to their phones.

During Q&A, Verizon and Apple indicated that this is a non-exclusive agreement with Verizon, so, one could expect that Sprint could get the phone after some period of time here in the US. And, there are a handful of carriers overseas that don’t use the GSM technology the iPhone has sported to date, so, they will likely get their own iPhone in the not too distant future.

All in all, it is certainly good news that the iPhone has come to Verizon, as many more people can experience the game changing benefits of this device. However, the lack of data connectivity when on a call almost makes the Verizon iPhone feel like “your father’s iPhone,” not “your son or daughter’s iPhone.” After all, what twenty something wants to hang up to tweet? Anyway, ATT should not be sweating the shift in the gravitational pull of the iPhone from another carrier. Yet.

Plantronics shows off personal speakerphone

Renee Niemi, SVP, Communication Solutions with Plantronics presented a few new (or soon-to-be available) products.

To set the stage, she mentioned that there's a disconnect (no pun) between the message, tone of voice and body language between face-to-face meetings and voice-only calls. 

Face-to-Face / Video, she says, breaks down this way: 7% message, 38% tone of voice and 55% body language, while voice-only / phone call communication is 13% message and 87% tone of voice.

Niemi then showed off Calysto 825, a new personal speakerphone that connects the mobile phone and PC phone (Skype) with a unified user interface. 

"Because it works with both the PC phone and your mobile phone, it lets you focus on the conversation, not the tool," said Niemi. "It also has a wireless microphone, which allows you clip the microphone on and still remain part of the conference if you need to step away from the speakerphone."

The latter feature assumes you stay within distance of the speaker, of course, and will hopefully have a mute button for those times you need to stay connected but muted.

Another tool is a software app that Plantronics is launching called Instant Meeting, an Android and Blackberry app that allows one-touch connection to conference calls. 

It searches through the Outlook calendar [and hopefully other CalDav calendars such as Google Calendar or iCal] and then prompts to join the meeting at the appropriate time. 

When confirmed, it will dial the number, enter the passcode and directly put you in to the conference call with a single touch. Diemi didn't really describe what happens in those systems in which you have to say your name and push the # on the keypad before joining the conference, but perhaps there's magic happening there, too, which we'll find out when the app is released.

Finally, she showed off the Voyager Pro UC, a new headset that allows synchronized presence between the PC phone and the mobile phone. In addition, it has sensor capability, or the ability to know whether a headset is being worn or not. 

This sensor capability eliminates the issue of having a phone call go to your Bluetooth connected headset that may have slipped down between the seat or is in your coat pocket. If you find it and then put it on, the call will switch over to the headset. Anot

Has Fujitsu Abandoned the Macintosh Platform? ScanSnap Snow Leopard Issues

Fujitsu had a good thing going, with the ScanSnap for Mac offering one of the best scan-to-PDF options.

But like all good things, this one looks like it's coming to an end, as ScanSnap on the Snow Leopard platform is walking around gingerly on only two paws.

Consider this:

1. The S1500M is the only current Mac-based ScanSnap scanner; all the others (S300M, S500M, S510M) are on Fujitsu's discontinued list.

2. CardIris 3.6, which ships with the S1500M, is not compatible with Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). CardIris 4.0 is compatible, but you don't receive that version when buying an S1500M

3. Adobe Acrobat is now at version 10 with Acrobat X. Which version ships with the S1500M? Acrobat 8. Yes, that's right, the only Fujitsu Mac ScanSnap has a version of Acrobat Pro that's TWO versions old.

When I asked Fujitsu about upgrading to Acrobat 9, six months after it launched, I was told that what you buy is what you get. Meaning that anyone buying an S1500M today will get Acrobat 8.

Fujistu is clearly choosing to abandon the Mac platform, as they've not made a ScanSnap unit that's Mac compatible since 2008.

How's that for progress?

PDF viewing in Apple's Preview looking fuzzy? Welcome to Acrobat X on Snow Leopard

I'm working through a few workflow scenarios for workflowed.com with Acrobat X's scanning and optical character recognition (OCR). Along the way, though, I noticed two quick insights in to Acrobat X.

First, it does a great job of shrinking the file size automatically after the text recognition is run. In many cases, I don't even have to run the "reduce file size" feature to bring multi-page documents to a manageable file size.

Second, the issue that cropped up under Apple's Preview in Acrobat 9, after I'd applied the "reduced file size" to shrink the file size, remains. The image will look blocky and jagged, as if a great bit of information has been abandoned. 

I initially chalked the issue up to an error in the file reduction algorithms, but the advent of Acrobat X—with its better-than-average standard compression—brings the issue back to the forefront. Even without running the "reduce file size" feature in Acrobat X, any file that's been OCRed will appear jagged and blocky within Apple's Preview application.

Researching the topic online didn't turn up any clues, probably because Acrobat X is so new; since I couldn't ignore this issue, as it affects all the scans I was applying OCR to, I turned to my contact at Adobe's PR agency to get insight in to the issue.

It turns out that Adobe X's new rendering engine may steal a few pages from Acrobat 9's file size reduction score. In doing so, this presents a potential rendering issue in Apple's Preview.  According to my contact:

Acrobat X's new scan compression technology divides the image into 3 layers - Background (BG), Foreground (FG) & Mask. BG, FG images are highly down sampled while mask is kept at a higher resolution (to maintain text readability). 

The layering makes sense, as Adobe has always had the ability to choose Image-Text (where the image overlays the underlying OCR text) or Text-Image (where the text attempts to lay out in a patter closely resembling the image, but the text is the top layer). 

I've always opted for Image-Text, as it allows the human looking at the document to read what's actually on the page, should he or she find the OCR text they copied from the PDF a bit, well, lacking.

My contact went on to provide some reasoning behind the miss-match of Preview and Acrobat Reader X, the latter of which seems to display the images in a much higher quality output:

Here is our hypothesis on the reason of low quality rendering by Preview. In order to render a page, it down samples mask to the resolution of FG (or maybe BG), so it loses on text crispness or quality that a high resolution mask provides. Adobe Reader/Acrobat, on the other hand, up samples images to the highest of the resolution of BG, FG and mask to get the rendered bitmap.

Is this the reality? I guess we'll have to see whether Apple issues an update to Preview in the near term. If not, I'm stuck either suggesting that every client upgrade to Acrobat Reader X, or choosing to completely forego the workflow of using QuickLook to view text-heavy OCRed documents.