This morning I participated in a dynamic discussion for the first meeting of likemind.chi. What is likemind you ask? I asked myself the same question when I heard about it, and this video by the founders of likemind explains it well.

And as I am the closest one to the meeting spot at Intelligencia Coffee on Randolph and Wabash, I was there late, however I was one of the last to leave. I met some interesting people and as we sipped our coffee, we exchanged ideas on branding, blogging and swag.

How I heard about this event is almost as interesting. The blog of one of my clients was mentioned on the PSFK blog. After finding this blog interesting, I started reading its feed and heard about Likemind, as it was started by one of the people of PSFK. A sequence of events that had a fantastic result.

And to think that people were meeting today all over the world with the same common goal.

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If you have ordered something online or posted a comment to a blog, you have seen captcha. It was originally developed as a method prevent robots from automatically submitting forms on a Web site by requiring a person to visually view text in an image and enter its value in the form, something a robot should not be able to do.

Where it has a noble purpose to prevent bogus information going to a Web site owner, it is a roadblock to someone who is visually impaired using a form. And as you can see from the example I grabbed from a Chicago-based Web site, it can be hard for those who do not have any visual impediments to decipher.

I made a decision to not use captcha on The Hot Iron or on Dunkirk Systems’ Web site. I do have logic in the forms to try to thwart bogus submissions, but they still get through. Comment moderation is enabled on this blog, requiring me to approve a message. Where this slows down legitimate comments from going live, not to mention more work on my part, it provides a better user experience for you the reader. This I value more than deleting a few offers for pills and watches.

As for the Web site I took this captcha example from... their privacy policy and Web site copy did not make it clear what was to be done with the information submitted using the form, so it was another strike against be using it.

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Last night was TECH cocktail 4, a quarterly networking event in Chicago that has developed a reputation for being a fun and of high quality. I have personally attended three of them, and I believe this was the best so far. The venue was easily accessible near Wrigley Field and public transportation as well as in its vast size to give plenty of room to move, and the diversity of the attendees, from those deeply immersed in technology to those on the periphery.

It was nice to catch up with colleagues that I don’t see often enough, such as Mike Carruth of Digital Bootcamp, Peter Meyers from Tminus2 and debabblog, David Dalka and Tom Sherman of WindyBits. I also had the opportunity to meet two people in person I have up to then only communicated with online – Jason Jacobsohn of Networking Insight and Joe Piekarz of timeXchange.

Not to forget the stack of business cards from people I met for the first time I will be following up with. My only regret from the night was not meeting the founders of the event, Frank Gruber and Eric Olson. Now I have an agenda item for TECH cocktail 5.

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Last week I got an email from Yahoo telling me their points program, Yahoo Points, was being discontinued as of June 30, 2007 and if I do not redeem my points as of that date, I will lose them.

My first reaction to this was, “Yahoo Points?” I had to think back as to when I may have earned or redeemed these points. After logging into the Points site and looking at my points history, it has been 4 years, so no wonder I forgot. This took me back to a time when buying online through Yahoo Shopping was a preferred way for me, as Yahoo’s buyer protection was leading-edge at the time. Today I am buying more through Amazon and eBay and I can’t remember the last time I bought something through Yahoo. Another way to earn points was with your Yahoo credit card.

It looks like Yahoo has already stripped most of the functionality from the site, including some cascading style sheets. I have a couple hundred points in my account, but you need a minimum of 1,000 points to redeem anything – even a charity donation. So they will sit there and wither and die; another victim of the Darwinism of the Internet.

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If you use Vonage for your telephone service or you follow the tech community, you may be aware of the court battle they are having with Verizon. In short, the courts have ruled that Vonage has been using Verizon’s patented technology and not paying for it. The courts have ruled in favor of Verizon and ordered Vonage to pay $58 million. This article from the Chicago Tribune sums up the case so far and a court stay allowing Vonage to remain in business.

As a Vonage customer, I am undecided on what to do next. I am a content customer of the Internet telephony company, as I have never been really pleased with their service. To begin with, it took over 4 months for Vonage to transfer my phone number from SBC, then the name of the local phone provider now called AT&T. There were many outages early on as well, where I would lose phone service for hours or even days. Occasionally, voice mail and three-way calling do not work. However when it does work, I get a clear signal and email notification I received a voice mail message.

Last week the courts wanted Vonage to stop signing up new customers, and as I write this they have a stay of that order. That would choke incoming funds to the company, or as some may say good money after bad. Unclear is what the 2 million plus current customers have for options. Can I easily move my phone number away from Vonage? If so, what other telephony options do I have? Sorry AT&T – there was a reason why I wanted to leave you in the first place, and it’s still there!

Right now I am taking a wait and see approach. I doubt that any court would shut down the service before its customers were able to go elsewhere. Well, I hope that would be the case. Do you have Vonage, and what are you thinking?

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