Programmers Ain't Chefs

I recently ran across a peer-to-peer selling network called Vendly, which (to make a rhyme) ain't too friendly! It thinks the opposite, saying that unlike eBay, which it complains is "complicated," you just post a picture of stuff you want to sell (no need for those pesky details), and let your "friends" contact you to complete the purchase. Put another way, it has no method of payment embedded in the platform.

Of course, with PayPal, completing the transaction is not that difficult, but it is a completely separate step, after you have secured other details from the seller outside of Vendly.

Vendly does say it has plans to include a payment platform, but when is anybody's guess.

AlphaBeta Soup
Which reminds me of how a lot of phone apps work, all boiling down to the simple fact that developers for the last few years seem to think it is normal and SOP to put things out there for the public to use as alpha or beta testers.

I, for one, resent this. I understand that everyone is rushing to be first to market with something new, build a large base of early adopters, and try to get more funding and ward off competition before breakfast, i.e., before a better solution can be built and marketed.

Not Like Chefs
Speaking of breakfast, imagine if chefs did this. There would be no printed printed menus, and the chef would prepare something as quickly as possible, without all the seasonings or ingredients, and without waiting for it to fully cook. Throw a few sprigs of parsley onto the plate along with this mess, and hope for the best!

Bleh!

Since the stakes (steaks?!) are so high, I'm not sure there's a defendable alternative. But I'm sure I can't be the only one to be irked by this. Let me hear what you have to say: please comment!

App Privacy

Dr. Dobb's Journal has a very good summary of mobile app privacy issues, covering U.S. Representative Hank Johnson (of Georgia), who has drafted a bill aimed at trying to give users more control over their application data: The Application Privacy, Protection, and Security Act. There is also a link to a study on the subject questioning over 1,000 users by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.