China Struggles To Nail Down Virtual Cash

Last August, I expressed some doubt that QQ coins represented the future of money for various reasons. Now Finextra reports that on Saturday the Chinese government banned the use of virtual currency, including the dominant QQ coins, to purchase real world goods and services, as well as the use of virtual money for gambling. Its use is now restricted to buying goods and services supplied by the issuer. It seems to be the second ban in this vein, according to Digital Money Forum, the previous one relating to the purchase of real world property and virtual currency trading. Whether this second attempt will rein in the misuse of Chinese virtual cash remains to be seen.

At least the Chinese government has not banned the use of stored value products altogether. Given China's authoritarian stance in some areas, that should be a good sign for the future of e-money.

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Unmasking Passwords May Boost Conversion

Interesting report in El Reg on why "It's time to show most passwords in clear text as users type them," according to "Usability expert Jakob Nielsen and security expert Bruce Schneier."

Apparently masking the password as the user types (e.g. with blobs or asterisks) adversely affects usability and security. Users have a tendency to choose simple passwords, or cut and paste, to ensure they get them right. And frustration with errors may mean users don't bother to enter the site at all.

I wonder to what extent users might now expect to see password masking, and whether they might judge a site which doesn't use it as somehow less secure. To this point, the commentators suggest allowing users to enable password masking by ticking a box, especially where "shoulder-surfing" may be a risk (e.g. Internet cafés or open plan offices).

This would seem worth trialling at the very least.

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"Green Shoots" Shot

It will come as no surprise at all to anyone that the UK is still crunched. Yet the economic headlines in our miserable newspapers have been flip-flopping around like so many dying fish, claiming green shoots and "milder" forecasts one week, and doom the next. TV and radio reports are no better.

Readers of Flat Earth News won't be surprised by this either. The traditional media have been reduced to merely summarising speeches and economic reports without having the time or resources to check the facts, to put the "news" into any perspective, or to thoroughly state the context or bias for each report they're citing.

So it's about time the newspaper publishers really save some money, by cutting out the middlemen and delivering directly from the paper manufacturers to the fish'n'chip shops. That way they won't need to print a thing.

And if we simply ignore TV and radio news, it too will go away.

Web Filters To Block All Australian Content

The United Nations Safe Internet Committee (UNSIC) announced on Thursday that its web filters would no longer accept any Australian content. A spokesman explained: "The Australian government warned us that it has lost control of Internet content, and we should not accept any further Internet content from its servers until the problem is resolved."

When asked for the Australian government's response to those who believed in an open, neutral Internet, the UNSIC spokesman added, "Talk to the hand".

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Fat Cat, Long Tail, Trial and Error

I'm struggling slightly with John Kay's latest article "Counting errors: from the fat cats to long tails."

I understand the point about power laws, and to be careful making assumptions that one is dealing with "normal" data in any given scenario. But a problem I have with this article is John's claim that the long tail of book sales, is "truncated" because books that would only sell 1,000 copies don't get published.

"If book sales are governed by a power law, then if 10 American books sell 1m copies in a year, and 400 sell more than 100,000, then about 16,000 titles will sell more than 10,000 copies.... The rule would predict there would be 640,000 books selling more than 1,000 copies. There are not, and for an obvious reason. Most titles that might sell 100,000 books get published but most titles that would only sell 1,000 do not."

But surely lots of books get published that don't (initially) sell 1,000 copies, because publishers don't accurately predict sales. And surely that's the real point here: only 10 books might sell more than 1m copies a year, but you don't know ahead of time which 10 books. So it's still worthwhile listing on digital platforms titles that initially sell very poorly, because they might yet resonate with enough people who share the same taste and 'work their way up the tail'.

Similarly, John claims that:

"Companies that would have only a few thousand pounds of sales do not continue to exist: people who would have incomes below a certain level are supported by social benefits. To choose appropriate models you need to understand both the maths and the business environment. Media industries and financial institutions have both been unsuccessful in marrying these two skills."

This may be true, but the challenge of non-normal data is that you can't accurately predict which company will not continue to exist, or which people who are on low incomes today might strike it rich tomorrow, like J K Rowling (or they could be wealthy benefits cheats). You can't write off anything or anyone until it or they have actually failed.

On this basis, the conclusion ought to be that participants in the media and financial industries should be prepared to experiment - and fail - a lot before reaching any conclusion about what will necessarily be successful. That was one of my takeaways from The Black Swan.

Or am I missing something?