National Bankruptcy Day

December 21, 2008 at 9:03 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Note: While not about technology, this post is relevant to startups. 

H.R. 4040, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was signed into law late 2008.  The intention is to protect children by outlawing the sale of children’s products containing lead and other harmful substances. 

Sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, the law is going to force a lot of small companies selling safe products to shutter on or before February 10th.  Welcome to National Bankruptcy Day.  From the site:

February 10, 2009 untold numbers of children’s products manufacturers and retailers will be closing their doors.

The problem is that the law was put together very hastily and has a completely infeasible implementation timeframe.  Oh yeah, and requires unreasonable testing to boot:

Not enough time:  The law was signed in August and goes into effect on February 10th.  So every kids product sold in the US has to be tested in the next 52 days?  That is impossible.

Unreasonable requirements:  Every component of every SKU has to be tested separately even if that component is used in multiple products.  For example, imagine a tag or button that is shared across ten SKUs.  That same button has to be tested ten times. 

Unreasonable cost:  Each test is expensive.  For example, one company has quoted each test at $500.  Continuing with the above example, imagine your ten SKUs with the buttons have 4 other components.  You would have to pay 10 x 5 x 500 = $25,000 to a testing company.

No allowance for existing tests:  Some companies have already had their products tested for harmful substances (e.g., kukunest is Oko-Tex certified).  That should count.

I am all for safe products and accountability, but this is really a draconian measure.  It will punish companies and people with an unreasonable set of rules and penalties. 

If this doesn’t get fixed soon, companies will go out of business, founders and innovators will lose their dreams.  Innovation in children’s products will be all but dead here in the United States.

It will happen unless the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and the US legislature do something to stop it. 

Call to action

Sign this petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/economicimpactsofCPSIA/index.html

Contact your Congressperson and ask them to fix H.R.4040 now, before more damage is one.

Disclaimer:  Do I have a vested interest in this issue?  Definitely.  My wife is the co-founder of kukunest, a company that designs and sells children’s bedding and other products.  I’m a parent and don’t want to see our schools unable to get the products they need because the suppliers dry up.  And I’m an entrepreneur believing that reasonable laws can protect people and protect innovation and business interests.

Tags: CPSIA, CSPC, Government, HR4040, kukunest, Startup

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Voting for the OpenID Board

December 16, 2008 at 8:36 pm · Filed under Web 2.0

With voting closing on Christmas Eve, there is just over a week left to vote for the OpenID board.  Personally, I have been meaning to join the OpenID foundation for some time.  Having the opportunity to vote for the incoming board pushed me to finally do it.

Although I really like OpenID, I am critical of it.  Why?  Because trust is not baked-in. 

This makes it hard for a Relying Party (RP) to determine if an OpenID comes from a trustworthy Identity Provider (IP).  I believe this is the fundamental roadblock to the big services becoming RPs.  My eyes roll to the back of my head whenever I hear users criticize services for not accepting arbitrary OpenIDs. (More here: OpenID and the Relying Party Patchwork).

This roadblock is a problem for the OpenID technologists to solve. 

The confused users is another problem altogether.  While I am a bit skeptical of the motives behind demanding OpenID adoption without solving this trust problem first, OpenID does have a real problem with an inaccurate market perception. 

So, I decided to vote.  There are 17 nominees and each member gets 7 votes.  I have not decided who I will vote for, but my votes will go to those who see these as top priorities of the foundation.  I am mainly basing my votes on the candidate statements (https://openid.net/foundation/members/elections/1 for members).  If you aren’t a member, you can see the complete list of nominees at ReadWriteWeb. 

Tentatively, here are my yes votes . . .

• Nat Sakimura:  He lists Trust relationship and reputation as barriers to adoption.
• David Recordon:  Unfortunately, aside from his obvious credentials he doesn’t say what he thinks are important for the foundation.  He has probably written this elsewhere — I’ll have move past his statement.
• Same for Joseph Smarr and Scott Kveton
• Johannes Ernst: He talks about “mainstream sites” and relying parties, not just users.
• Chris Messina:  I respect his work and certainly like what he says about usability — he doesn’t mention relying parties though.

What am I missing (besides a 7th vote)?  Am I wrong about the priorities?  Should my votes go elsewhere? 

Tags: OpenID, Web2.0

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Upgrade to WordPress 2.7

December 13, 2008 at 11:35 am · Filed under Web 2.0

Love the new administrative interface.  Much cleaner and more configurable.

And I’m happy to say that the OpenID plugin finally works for me.  I don’t know why it started working, but I’m not complaining.

Tags: 2.7, blog, OpenID, Wordpress

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Google, what is a beta?

December 11, 2008 at 8:48 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Now Chrome is out of beta.  Cool.

Question: what on earth are Google’s standards for the word beta anyway?

Possible answers:

1. Non-existent
2. Non-existent with a dash of whimsy
3. Variable based on $$$$$
4. (Fairly) fixed based on the users requirement to understand relative product completeness / bugginess

Before Chrome left beta I would have said #1 or #2.

Now it seems that Google can’t get Chrome adoption from OEMs while it is a beta.  Shazam, we’re out of beta.  So I guess its #3.

I sure wish it were #4.  The term beta is actually pretty useful. Google has never taken it seriously, and this is just further evidence.

I’m generally a fan of the Google products and I use many of them, but Google, can you grow up a little here?  Show some respect for the term beta — you’ll be respecting your users too.

Tags: beta, Chrome, Google, sdlc

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