The Vidoop Blog

Brand Update

Matt Selbie — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:39:32 +0000

You will have seen in the new web site that the Vidoop brand has got a new look. What has changed is the font style, the dropping of the shield, the incorporation of the infinity symbol within the word, and the separation of our brands into the three business areas we have namely; password management for consumers (myVidoop), multifactor authentication (VidoopSecure) and identity management for businesses (VidoopID).

So what is the rationale? Vidoop is unique in look and name which is a good thing as it means the brand has equity. However like all things we need to review and recalibrate dependent on new findings, always trying to increase equity, and this is what we have been doing. Before we talk about the look lets define “equity”.

So what is ‘brand equity’ ? Like most things there are many definitions but the one I like is that it is the premium a firm can obtain relative to competitors, from selling similar products. It’s a real and realizable value and is a function of:

1) AWARENESS (do customer targets know who you are), and
2) IMAGE (do customer targets know what you stand for), and
3) LOYALTY (do customer targets stay with you).

The new logo is only one element that influences equity. In fact the greatest influence usually comes from how we want to position the brands, or make them stand out relative to competition. We now know a lot more about who are competitors are, and about our target audiences and how we can be distinct and offer real value to them.

So the logo helps define who we are (the ‘image’ element above). In our case it underscores that we are: bold, confident, innovative, simple and straightforward. These qualities ally well with what we see our role in the internet ie. todevelop innovative solutions that make it easier for users and businesses to engage with each other securely on the Internet.

The infinity symbol has many good qualities. It has positive (and tested) equity of its own, reinforces security, identity, user centricity and omnipresence. We shall use it in a variety of new ways, always helping reinforce who we are and so increase that elusive equity, so watch this space, more to come.

Changes at Vidoop

joel.norvell — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:33:16 +0000

Portland’s gracious and enthusiastic welcome to Vidoop has been terrific for all of us at the company. Here less than two months later, the economic reality facing companies everywhere seemed remote, given our momentum and the exciting projects we are working on. But today, we had to face that reality, and tell several members of the Vidoop family goodbye.

We are narrowing our focus to concentrate on those areas of our business that make the most sense in this economy. We are taking these steps for the benefit of our company and our stakeholders, which include all the affected employees. Several of them have been with us from the first day we opened the company in a two-bedroom loft in downtown Tulsa.

The Vidoopsters are like family, and are the best at what they do. When the economy turns around, we hope we can bring our folks back to Old Town. In the meantime, we have made arrangements to help them find other positions.

We honor the contributions of our departing friends, and are committed to fulfilling the vision that each and every one of us has shared for nearly three years.

MyVidoop outage 11/1/2008 11pm PST

Scott Kveton — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:41:40 +0000

We will be taking an extended outage on Saturday 11/1/2008 starting at 11pm PST to upgrade capacity and increase reliability of MyVidoop.com. We are scheduling this outage for 3 hours but hoping to have it completed much sooner than that.

Please let us know if you have any questions/comments/concerns here.

Thank you for using MyVidoop!

Spreading the news at Finovate 2008

Matt Olenski — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:39:17 +0000

Vidoop headed out to the Big Apple last week for Finovate 2008, and after seven minutes of presentation, eleven media interviews, 50+ partner and customer meetings, 12 hours of round-trip flying and 5,000 miles of total travel, Mitch Savage and I are back home in Portland.

Finovate marked the launch of our expanded Vidoop Secure login authentication platform. In addition to the ImageShield, we presented Multi-factor Authentication via phone as a complement to the ImageShield or as a standalone strong authentication solution. It gives financial institutions the option of very simple MFA or a comprehensive solution. Making the phone a token makes a lot of sense; the audience got it.

We’re big fans of the Finovate conference. We presented back in the spring this year so we had a sense of what to expect in NYC. Presenters receive almost instant feedback on their presentations, and we were really pleased with what we heard.

The biggest buzz came when Mitch commented on the idea of presenting sponsored images in the ImageShield. What’s fantastic about the idea is the images don’t look or feel like advertising to the user. However, it’s an innovate, eyeballs-to-brand opportunity for advertisers. Financial institutions that have a medium to large number of logins can generate significant revenue using sponsored images. The idea of turning a cost center into a profit center is an idea everyone can love.

We also received great comments from the press. Banking blog Banktasktic’s two reviewers both gave Vidoop five stars (out of five, of course!) Among the comments were, “Your bank or credit union NEEDS to look into this,” and, “Ready for mobile - the demo was on a iPhone. Looks great even on the phone. I liked the verifying techniques they implemented. Super userful.”

Be sure to catch Mitch’s brief video interview with Banktastik. It includes great info for anyone wanting to know more about how Vidoop is going to help banks, credit unions and other financial institutions be more secure and user-friendly at the same time.

What it’s gonna take for my mom to use OpenID

Luke Sontag — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:48:59 +0000

So there has been a lot of talk lately around OpenID, the user experience, how we make it better, Facebook Connect, Oauth, and the future of Identity on the “social web”. Yahoo and Google both recently released usability data. The results didn’t pull any punches and exposed some serious user experience problems with the way OpenID is implemented today. Current implementations suck! They are much worse than username/password. I have to type in a URL, I get redirected, I get a trust screen, I get to type some squiggly letters. Just let me in dammit! There is ZERO chance my mom will ever use this.

Let’s step out of the weeds for a minute. Everyone is currently trying to solve these problems from the standpoint of every individual site’s different implementation, of which no one seems to agree on a standard. We’ve got buttons, IDselectors, URL as Identifiers, email addresses as Identifiers, Google is proposing to do it one way, Yahoo another, etc… Each with different trade-offs, but the end results are basically the same. Mom doesn’t get it! For everyday users to really understand online Identity, we need to solve the problem from the browser level. We need to let the browser act on behalf of the Identity Providers. One quick advantage is that it only requires a handful of project owners to agree on a standardized user experience, rather than every site on the entire Web. Not only that, but discover-ability and education of OpenID can be standardized in the same handful of places.

The solution is Identity in the Browser (IDIB).

IDIB delivers the 3 main things that must be present for my mom to understand Identity on the Internet.

Standardized experience with your Identity provider
Standardized experience with your Relying party
Standardized discover-ability

This is what it’s gonna take for Identity on the Internet to make sense. Right, mom?

Big Things for Internet Identity Workshop 2008b

Luke Sontag — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:03:54 +0000

Just a reminder, IIW 2008b is coming up fast. Things have been getting really hot in the space lately and a lot of conversations have been happening around usability, identifiers, security, etc… A lot of work has been done and I know quite a few folks are planning on showing up with some serious data, thoughts, and prototypes. Be sure and put it on you calendar. Nov. 10 - 12th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

Intelligent web - protected?

Luke Sontag — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:32:46 +0000

On the official Google blog the other day, two expert googlers talk about the future of the intelligent web. They speculate that the future will be more and more cloud based, with access from all types of devices, served by ever more powerful hardware. I wonder if these experts envision all this new data in the cloud will be as easy to access and steal as it is today. If you look back through Google’s ten years on the internet, all of their services are still protected by a password. I greatly appreciate all that Google has done for us Internet citizens. But I hope, as the scope of their services grow, that the ability to protect all of that data will too. And I sincerely hope other service providers on the web address this lack of access control. The last thing we need are more Palin type incidents.

Watch The Facts - Vidoop bookmarks

magnolia — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:02:32 +0000

Vidoop’s News Clipping Service…

itickr.com » DIDW 2008 Slides

“Here are the slides from our DIDW presentation on ‘Identity enabling Web Services‘.The use cases revolving around browser-SSO are getting a lot more clear and straightforward. And hence the discussions around ‘API/Web Services’ access seems like the next logical step. Enterprises are slowly but steadily moving towards the ‘Service Oriented Architecture’. And more companies are entering the Consumer and/or SaaS space storing user’s data in the cloud; which brings the implicit requirement of enabling access to the data via an API.”

Is Yahoo Planning Its Own Live ID? - ReadWriteWeb

“According to a tip from one of our readers, Yahoo is planning to open up its services even wider and allow users to sign in without having to use a Yahoo ID.”

Not All Opinions Are Equal

“In most forums (and I use the term in the broadest way) an anonymous comment is taken with a weight that is close to zero. That doesn’t mean that it will be ignored, it just means that the requirement for providing supporting evidence or of having a special insight and explaining it is much greater.”

Even Gen X is aTwitter - TIME

“If you haven’t heard of Twitter yet — or, if you’re wondering, “Why would anyone ever want to Twitter?” — you’re probably, well, not young. I received quizzical looks from some friends in my age group when I mentioned it. And, invariably, after explaining what Twitter was and why it was important, I got the same response, “I just don’t get it.” Then I asked several of my new (18-to-24-year-old) Facebook friends why they found Twitter appealing. Their responses ranged from “It’s a great way to broadcast your stream of consciousness” to “It’s a more effective way of communicating with several people at once.” But these answers still beg the original question: why would you ever want to Twitter in the first place?”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Watch The Facts - Vidoop bookmarks

magnolia — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:57:58 +0000

Vidoop’s News Clipping Service…

UK banking giant de-pants irate customer over password

Lloyds TSB is the fifth-largest banking group in the UK, but the bank’s recent actions prove it still cares about the little guy. When it isn’t partnering to sponsor the London Olympics in 2012, or recognizing the contribution of Asians to British society via the Asian Jewel Awards, the banking giant enjoys rooting through customer records and changing passwords it finds offensive, then refusing to change them back.

Vidoop leaving Tulsa

Best Comment Evar: “Ahh, don’t forget Videoop personnel will get that dose of coastal morality (lack thereof), absence of graciousness , and just Nice People … good luck Vidoop. We will welcome you back if you decide to return. Enjoy the hippies.”

ignisvulpis: Google Chrome

Chrome supports the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI), but does not support the embedding of ActiveX controls. Also, Chrome does not have an extension system such as Mozilla-compatible *.xpi cross-platform extension architecture and thus XPI-based extensions such as AdBlock and GreaseMonkey can not be adapted to Chrome.

This means: no easy way to port the openinfocard id selector nor the browser add-on to Google Chrome. Maybe I should take some time to revive my openinfocard plugin subproject… Or I should start to put IDentity In the Browser and change the Chrome source code…?

Are passwords safe?

No…

Bookmarking places and addresses in the real world :: weheartplaces

we?places is for bookmarking and sharing places you’d love to visit. Supports OpenID so you can check it out right now…

Bacon, Spam, Youtube - Kveton’s Inverge Presentation

Three Key Insights from Scott Kveton of Vidoop

1. Bacon is the candy of meats.
2. We can call spammers our enemies.
3. Youtube didn’t exist during the last election.

Vidoopers arrive Sunday - Silicon Forest - The Oregonian - OregonLive.com

Vidoop, a startup recently imported from Oklahoma, arrives in Portland on Sunday evening after roughly 40 employees, family members and friends complete their move, en masse, from Oklahoma City.

They’ve been roughly following the Oregon Trail all week, and will soon set up shop in Old Town.

Welcome to Portland, Vidoop. Time to Party

You’d swear these guys were rockstars with all the attention they’ve been getting for moving their software company from Tulsa to Portland. But, the reality is that it truly is something special with their company, Vidoop, which makes secure password manager software used by banks, financial institutions, and millions of users. The first thing that makes them cool is that they’ve opened up shop in the heart of Portland’s Social Media center in Old Town - the Technology + Arts Building - between Couch St and Davis St on NW 5th Ave (full disclosure: they are right downstairs from us at eROI. The second cool thing about Vidoop is that there are 45 fully geeky geeks who have embraced their inner-geekdom and absolutely love what they do - I’ve only hung out w/ the 6 or 7 Vidoopians who’ve been in the Portland office the past couple months, but Luke, Joel, Scott, Kevin, Mitch, and Matt are pretty sharp and already involved in Portland software scene.

Personal top-level domains try to bridge communication gaps

“The new .mp and .tel top-level domains, intended to serve as vehicle for personal identification, are being premiered this week. Though similar in purpose, the two are very different in function.”

Enable Your Blog or Website as Your OpenID Login

“OpenID is your universal login name which server as single sign on (SSO) to authenticate yourself on other blogs and websites, without ever filling out those registration forms again. It is simply a URL that can be used to sign in to any website that supports OpenID. My openID is TECK.IN, that means I can login with this URL to any sites supporting OpenID.”

OpenID is Hard? So is Changing Your Password Every 3 Months.

“I’ve had the great fortune of working at two consecutive companies that force you to change your password every 3 months. Whenever the rollover date hits, I change EVERY password that I use.”

Good article about how OpenID is not really that hard…

Portland, Ore.-based Company Vidoop Moves Headquarters Along Oregon Trail…Literally

PORTLAND, Ore., BUSINESS WIRE — Vidoop, a provider of identity and authentication solutions to financial institutions and consumers, announced today the company and its employees now call Portland, Ore. home. Vidoop, which was originally founded in Tulsa, Okla., moved 42 people, eight pets, five U-HAUL(R) trucks, four RVs, two trailers, two cars, one camera crew and one blueberry bush to Portland during a five-day road trip ending Sun., Sept. 7.

Carpenter, farmer…or guitar hero? New professions cross the Oregon Trail

Moving yourself and possibly your family is one thing, but moving an entire company and a rock band is an ox of a different color. Vidoop, a software company from Tulsa, OK, arrived in Portland last night with 42 people, 4 RVs and 5 U-Halls after a five-day caravan. Fortunately, they documented the whole thing in text and video on their Oregon Trail blog.

TweetStats :: for vidoop

When does Vidoop talk to Miss. Tweet… err Twitter…

OurPDX shared bookmarks for September 7th | Our PDX Network

“Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve traveled the local PDX web (complete with our comments) for September 7th”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Digital ID World (DIDW) Panel Confirmed

Kevin Fox — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:51:45 +0000

Scott Kveton, Mitchell Savage and others are heading down to LA for Digital ID World 2008.

There will be an awesome panel on Wednesday, September 10th at 3pm about ‘How The Social Web Will Change Enterprise Identity Management.’ This session will be an interactive panel with experts from the emerging field of the Social Web who will answer questions and debate the finer points of this topic. The audience will drive the discussion.

The confirmed panel is:

Larry Halff, Founder, Ma.gnolia.com
Phil Windley, CTO, Kynetx
Tony Haile, Founder, Chi.mp
Nat Sakimura, Senior Researcher, Nomura Research Institute
Scott Kveton, VP Open Platforms, Vidoop

Hope to see you there!