I Want My Airline Seat!

We live in the era of instant gratification. We have instant messaging, instant soup and coffee, instant relationships and even instant lottery winners. And, of course, there’s no place better to get instant gratification than when you buy something online, and can get it NOW.

But what I like even better than the instant rush about online purchasing is the ability to see my choices from inventory in real-time, or as close to real-time as possible.

Get more information about choosing your own airline seat in my column here.

What happens when you forget your site password

Website passwords are becoming more of a problem, as more of us use a wider number of sites to conduct our daily business transactions. The issue is that the security filters to recover lost passwords are seriously broken, and are biased towards people that frequently return to sites. But think about it. The more often you visit a site, the more likely you are using (hence remembering) the password. The very users that password recovery systems are supposed to help are left in the cold. People’s electronic lives aren’t static, and the password recovery programs can’t keep up as we move about the physical world, change e-mail addresses, and forget which piece of critical data will be used to authenticate our electronic personas.

Consider this situation from one of my correspondents, an experienced computer scientist. She was recently asked to login with her username and password and couldn’t remember either when she went to buy something at eBay.

Find out more here