And yes, Julie Wainwright's piece is indeed phenomenal.

Around that time I got a fortune cookie, that was move advice, that said 'Write your own story. Don't let others write it for you.' which I kept in my wallet for 4 years until I recently taped the pieces together and have pinned next to my desk.

Good stuff, thanks Brad

Delta and others ask those questions as a security measure. It's a common security aphorism that two key elements of a secure transaction are a) something you physically possess (a credit card in this case), and b) something you know. Should someone have misappropriated his credit card, allowing possession of it alone to provide access to the flight would have been a significant security breach.

By the way, when was the last time you funded "good design"? Never, I'm going to guess.

Then I would say that the causes of Ms. Wainwright's difficulties were just in planning and engineering. This does not necessarily mean that she was at 'fault': Sometimes are in a hurry and just tie it together with wire and glue, takeoff, and hope, and that's a large club. Sometimes that works, and that's a smaller club. If wire and glue are what she had in mind, then she should have no struggles with bad feelings and troubling questions. Otherwise, she just needed better planning and/or engineering, may want to do this the next time, and that's a large club.

For more on the analogy, during the flight have good charts, do good navigation, and use instruments, radio, and radar. Before the flight, have alternate destinations, reserve fuel, redundant equipment, life rafts, etc. Aviation learned these lessons the hard way, and they are good lessons.

Generally, if stay anonymous, then the world is not thinking about you, is indifferent to you, is not working against you, and is just often challenging. Make a good attack on the challenges and can expect to win. Otherwise might get lucky and still win.

If fail, then should address indifferent external reality or the possibly non-objective opinions of other people? That is, primarily facing reality or people?

1. The curse of the startup – you duct-tape your app together and by the time you get customer traction it's too involved for most companies to rebuild on the architecture they should have used in the first place. Chalk this up to poor planning or lack of budget to do it right in the first place.

2. Ego. Everyone in software knows of the person who's "way" can't be questioned. Like what was alluded to in Julie's piece, people often get behind that person (it's easier) rather than question them, and often you're company is stuck with his/her version of "great". Oftentimes these people are praised for the elegance of their coding, not the elegance of their results.

Apparently you and your partners have decided that there may be a market for highly-usable software. I hope that you're right. A prior employer believed that "usability doesn't sell sofware." That always irritated me.

4. Haste and impatience. This goes along with number 1, but even in established companies, sometimes the need to meet deadlines or "get this feature in" means that sometimes UI gets put to the back burner in lieu of being able to say it is in there – Apple's fiasco with Exchange in MobleMe seems to be a recent example of this.

Good design is a very important part of what we are looking for in software companies that we fund. Our entire theme around human computer interaction is based on the notion that there is a much better way to interact with computers vs. the way we currently do it – and much of that is a software (and design) problem.

I didn't assert that there is actually any "real security". Rather, I said the kiosks don't provide it. I don't think TSA provides it either – that's the thrust of a lot of the article.

Re: Good design: I think you'll see this as a core of Oblong. It's also a core of Smith & Tinker. I like to think that many of our other investments outside the HCI segment also have great software and UI design.

http://tinyurl.com/6ar69x ("Special Report: Are airline kiosks a security threat?")

As the Secret Service men quoted are trying to convey: convenience is incompatible with security. A related piece appeared in Slate on Oct. 30, 2006.

And what is this "real security" you speak of? There is no such thing. In addition, there is not just one layer of security, but several.

It is very pleasing to hear of your commitment to good design and HCI. Any examples of investments that meet this standard? There are indeed so few.

Have a safe flight.

(By the way, I would have left comments for Pogue, but he doesn't allow that. I suppose he just likes to complain.)