Mobile

When I travel out of the country, I usually test out new VoIP services both for calling back to the states and receiving calls while I am traveling. I consistently find that while the rates for VoIP services are very attractive, the user experience and flexibility is often lacking when I traveling, particularly with limited network connectivity. Depending on the length of my stay, I purchase a prepaid SIM to use in a spare unlocked mobile phone so that I can make and receive local calls at local rates. Since most countries outside of the US offer free inbound calls, having a local SIM is even more attractive, although navigating voicemail prompts in another language can be challenging. I often use one of the VoIP services to forward a my United States phone number to my international cell phone number so that I can let friends and family reach me without incurring international charges on their part. Rates for calling international mobile phones range from $0.15 to $0.30 a minute, so be careful who you give your forwarded number to if you try this method. ...

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball pointed me to Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox column Stop Password Masking, which resulted in a thoughtful and interesting thread of conversations and a few experimental solutions. Password masking refers to the practice of displaying an alternate character, usually a star or a bullet in place of the actual characters typed into a password field. The idea is that this prevents another party from viewing the password while it is entered. Nielsen argues that in most cases masked passwords are not needed since should surfing is not a major issue and that this is even less of an issue on mobile devices. He says masked passed passwords often reduce usability by increasing the number of errors since users cannot see what they are typing. This problem is further compounded on mobile devices where typing is more difficult and slower. Since users are less certain about what they are typing, they are much more likely to choose passwords that are simplistic or copy and paste the passwords from less secure locations. Nielsen says that high value password forms should offer an optional checkbox for masking passwords so that they can be used on an as needed basis. ...

TripIt is a free service that simplifies organizing travel plans. The service has done an excellent job of making it painless to aggregate the collection of email receipts that you receive from airlines, hotels, car rental companies and travel agencies into one master itinerary. In order to use TripIt, you simply forward any email receipts to plans@tripit.com. The service extracts the reservation information from the message and assembles an attractive and very functional master itinerary from all the disparate documents. TripIt supplements the existing information with seating charts, information about local weather and events. Tripit supports a large number of travel-related vendors and regularly adds new ones based on demand. ...