(Sanjay_Parekh) == (Rambling)

Amazon’s New Notification Feature

Sanjay — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:11:20 +0000

Amazon has been slowly and subtly changing the way orders are viewed by users. The new order management page (in beta) gives a lot more information on one page and gives more information on page through AJAX updates. Nice for the user since information can be viewed for multiple orders without the old submit -> load -> back shuffle that happens with non-interactive pages (and admittedly, Amazon’s previous incarnation which is still available).

But today I noticed an addition to the tracking package page. Apparently Amazon has included the ability to get text messages delivered based on the status of a package being delivered (they’re calling it Text Trace).

Text Track allows you to track your Amazon.com packages via text messages (SMS) sent to your mobile phone. When you sign up, important tracking updates for that package (also visible in Your Account) will be sent to your mobile phone.

So as not to annoy users, alerts will apparently be delivered only from 10am until 11pm (mine says Eastern time but I wonder if that adapts to the local time zone of each user).

On looking at this I thought it was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I don’t do text messages (although I suppose I could get them at my GrandCentral/Google Voice number). So I tweeted that it would be nice to get DM’s about package updates. This has been done by other services like Remember The Milk (@rememberthemilk) although given the scale of Amazon, it is definitely a different issue (@rememberthemilk has just over 3,000 followers) and would probably require some coordination with the folks at Twitter (the number of DM’s that Amazon would likely need to put out would probably overwhelm the initial API limits that Twitter has even for whitelisted developers).

The response by some was that SMS is much easier to do than Twitter DMs, which I can definitely see. But if Twitter is becoming a new Internet protocol, then shouldn’t everyone be planning for it and figuring out how to leverage it?

ING Direct To Be Sold

Sanjay — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:49:16 +0000

According to this BusinessWeek article, ING is planning on selling the US branch (ING Direct) by 2013. Bummer.

Raindrop by Mozilla

Sanjay — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:49:17 +0000

Wow, just stumbled upon this Mozilla labs project called Raindrop to unify messaging. I could really use something like this.

Atlanta Botanical Garden Technology Event

Sanjay — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:31:41 +0000

I just got around to posting my slides from the recent invite only technology/startup event at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

Startup Riot 2010 Now Accepting Applications

Sanjay — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:48:04 +0000

I probably should have posted this earlier, but Startup Riot is now accepting applications to both attend and present. The event will be February 17, 2010 somewhere in Atlanta. I’m finalizing the venues for both the event and after party so I’ll talk about those soon. Just know that it’s going to be fabulous in 2010. So what are you waiting for? Go register right away!

Atlanta Entrepeneur Hangouts

Sanjay — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:15:32 +0000

I realized there wasn’t a map of places that entrepreneurs hangout in Atlanta so I made a public map of the ones I know about. If you know of additional ones I should add, send me a message on Twitter.

Social Networks as NGOs

Sanjay — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:55:53 +0000

Bo Peabody had a great article in the Washington Post about social networks and why they may be better off as NGOs. Ethan Zuckerman followed up with his thoughts on the subject.

Data Liberation at Google

Sanjay — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:12:50 +0000

Thanks to my friend Ethan Zuckerman I saw this site from a group of Google engineers that aims to help liberate your data from various Google services. That’s something I can get behind.

The Dead Get No Respect

Sanjay — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:02:45 +0000

Sometimes it would be good to have someone look over your tweets, NPR.

99 companies in, 97 on the way

Sanjay — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:03:33 +0000

Just heard that as of today there are now 99 official ATDC companies with another 97 on the way. Wow!