{"id":2687,"date":"2016-04-15T02:22:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T17:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2016-04-15\/2687"},"modified":"2016-04-15T02:22:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T17:22:24","slug":"yahoo-requires-a-dancing-pony-to-open-a-new-account-but-i-dont-have-a-dancing-pony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2016-04-15\/2687","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo! Requires a Dancing Pony to Open a New Account, but I Don’t Have a Dancing Pony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f\/2.8 at an effective 51mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>1600 sec, f<\/span>\/4.5, ISO 320 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nIsolated and Doomed<\/span>\nthis famous tree was cut down<\/a> in February\n(I photographed<\/span> it in 2007 from the public road)<\/span>\nFrom the same outing that produced “<\/span>More Biei Countryside<\/a>”<\/span> among others.<\/small>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

I've so many things that I want to write about lately, but just no time as I help<\/span> my mom recover from a stroke.<\/span> But I ran<\/span> into\nsomething so frustrating that I just<\/span> have to rant a bit.<\/span>...<\/p>\n\n

I worked for Yahoo! from 1997 to 2004, and as such it has a special<\/span> place in my heart despite how it's deteriorated over the\nyears. Knowing how it's deteriorated, though, didn't prepare me for what I ran<\/span> into recently when trying to create\na Yahoo!<\/span> account for my mom.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>6400 sec, f<\/span>\/3.2, ISO 200 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nEntrance This Way<\/span>\nwhere is everybody?\n(from “<\/span>Not a Petroleum<\/span> Refinery, Silly, it\u2019s an Aquarium<\/a>”<\/span> in 2011)<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

I recently set my folks up with a new<\/span> TV,\na TCL smart TV<\/a> with Roku streaming service<\/a>. The latter<\/span> allows you to install apps on the TV, including ones that allow you to access photo-sharing sites like Yahoo's Flikr. I thought<\/span> I'd set it up so that their kids (me and my siblings) can add photos of their grandkids to the Flickr account,\nand my folks would then automatically see them when they put the TV into “<\/span>Flickr Slideshow”<\/span> mode.<\/p>\n\n

So, I went to create a Yahoo! account for my mom to use as the Flickr repository for these photos, but I couldn't.<\/span>\nYahoo! requires<\/i> a mobile<\/span> phone to create an account. If you don<\/span>'t have a phone<\/span> that can receive a\ntext<\/span> message, you can't create an account. It's apparently<\/span> been this way for some time.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f\/2.8 @ 32mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>200 sec, f<\/span>\/5, ISO 6400 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nWelcome (NOT!)<\/span>\n(from “<\/span>Kyoto\u2019s Haunted Hua Huan Museum<\/a>”<\/span> in 2008)<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

Now, before you say “<\/span>that's absolutely asinine!<\/i>”<\/span>, let me make a few<\/span> observations. One is that<\/span> it's a free<\/i> service; beggars can't be choosers. Another is that though\nwe can only speculate on the reason, they must certainly have a specific<\/span> reason for having\nimplemented such a draconian<\/span> hurdle to participation.<\/p>\n\n

What could the reason be? Well, it could be a way<\/span> to choose their demographic. Maybe they simply don't want users like my mom;\nmaybe they're looking to skew their audience to the young and technologically hip, or to exclude folks\nto don't have the discretionary income to afford a mobile<\/span> phone (because inability to afford it is the only possible\nreason one wouldn't have a mobile<\/span> phone, you know).<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 70mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>500 sec, f<\/span>\/7.1, ISO 4500 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nLots of Storage<\/span>\nthat apparently people like my mom can't have\n(from “<\/span>Kyoto\u2019s Haunted Hua Huan Museum<\/a>”<\/span> in 2008)<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

It could also be a way to avoid account-creation abuse; if you want to create multiple accounts,\nyou need multiple phones, and that's a hurdle<\/span> that spam-bots, for example, can't easily overcome. If you don<\/span>'t have specific experience in the industry, you simply can not imagine the depths that\nsome people go through to abuse online systems. Really, you're simply not evil enough to even imagine it. So take my<\/span> word that abuse curtailment is a very<\/span> big deal.<\/p>\n\n

Or it could be something else. Who knows? Someone at Yahoo!, probably, but not me.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f\/2.8 at an effective 51mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>160 sec, f<\/span>\/8, ISO 100 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nNobody's Home<\/span>\n(from “<\/span>Furano in Hokkaido, Japan<\/a>”<\/span> in 2007)<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

So, given all that it's not reasonable to complain, but as a former<\/span> Yahoo! I'm compelled<\/span> to\nexclaim:<\/p>\n

This is<\/i> absolutely asinine!<\/b><\/p>\n\n

Many folks with mobile phones have no problem with this, obviously, as Yahoo! (at the moment) still seems to exist. But a lot<\/span> of\nfolks don't have mobile phones, and a lot<\/span> of folks who do don't want to reveal that private information to big\ncorporations like Yahoo!. Yahoo! is proactively excluding these folks, which is perhaps their exact intent,\nbut I don't<\/span> see how this can bode well in the long term.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\n302HW @ 3mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>180 sec, f<\/span>\/2, ISO 50 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nIt's All Downhill From Here<\/span>\n(from “<\/span>Kyoto\u2019s Nasty 21<\/span>% City-Bike Hill Climb<\/a>”<\/span> in 2015)<\/span>\nphoto by Gorm Kipperberg<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

I spent considerable time trying to find a way<\/span> around it, not initially believing that Yahoo! could be so stupid. I eventually<\/span> abandoned the idea.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f\/2.8 at an effective 82mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>320 sec, f<\/span>\/2.8, ISO 250 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nAbandoned<\/span>\n(from “<\/span>Snowy Round Trip to the Heian Shrine<\/a>”<\/span> in 2008)<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n

I moved on to try my idea with SmugMug<\/a>, a non<\/span>-free photo-sharing site that I've worked with\nfor many years because I made<\/span> a plugin<\/span> for Adobe Lightroom for it<\/a>.\nSmugMug has always kindly provided me with a free<\/span> account for plugin development, so I used<\/span> that to test with. Normal users would\nhave to pay a nominal<\/span> fee each year, but at least they don't require something that may well not exist.<\/p>\n\n

In Lightroom, I created a Publish Service using my plugin to upload photos to a SmugMug<\/span> gallery, adding to the pipeline my Crop for iPad<\/a> plugin to crop photos on the fly to best fit the\n1,920×1,080-pixel screen of the TV. (I should<\/span> probably rename the plugin to remove “<\/span>iPad”<\/span> from the title,\nsince there's nothing iPad specific about it and I actually<\/span> use it for more other devices than iPads.)<\/p>\n\n

I then installed the SmugMug Roku app<\/a> onto the TV,\nand soon had a gorgeous<\/span> slideshow of my test photos. It was wonderful<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n

As wonderful as it was, the free SmugMug Roku app didn't work quite the way I wanted.<\/span>.. my folks would have to drill down\na few<\/span> menu items each time they wanted to see a slideshow,<\/span> and I wanted<\/span> an even easier solution, so I bit<\/span> the bullet and\nreturned to try Yahoo! again. I had two<\/span> US phone numbers available on my own cell phone via\nmy attempts to get a reasonable<\/span> American number for my Japanese cell phone<\/a>,\nso I thought<\/span> to use one of them to create my mom's Yahoo! account.<\/p>\n\n

No go: it simply wouldn't accept them, telling me “<\/span>that's not a valid<\/span> phone number<\/i>”<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n

So I give up on trying to create a Yahoo!<\/span> account for my mom, and on Yahoo! in general. I divested<\/span> myself of what little YHOO\nstock I still<\/span> had. It's been a<\/span> long, slow decline into mediocrity and irrelevance, Yahoo!, but I've been with you every step\nof the way, but from now you'll have to continue down to the end without me. Bye.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 120mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>500 sec, f<\/span>\/6.3, ISO 5000 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nAlways Stay Connected<\/span>\n(from “<\/span>Kyoto\u2019s Haunted Hua Huan Museum<\/a>”<\/span> in 2008)<\/span>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I've so many things that I want to write about lately, but just no time as I help my mom recover from a stroke. But I ran into something so frustrating that I just have to rant a bit....<\/p>

I worked for Yahoo! from 1997 to 2004, and as such it has a special place in my heart despite how it's deteriorated over the years. Knowing how it's deteriorated, though, didn't prepare me for what I ran into recently when trying to create a Yahoo! account for my mom.<\/p>

I recently set my folks up with a new TV, a [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}