Technology
PayPal Should Go Undercover
PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).
Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.
But I’ve got a different request altogether.
I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.
In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.
Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.
Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”
I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.
What do you think?
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Written by:John Quarto-vonTivadar
Amazon’s Patented Lousy Service
Techdirt reports that Amazon has been awarded a patent for Generating Current Order Fulfillment Plans Based on Expected Future Orders. Essentially, if Amazon deems that you won’t be a long-time customer or ordering again soon, your order will take longer to be expedited.”
This comes after Amazon snuck One-Click past the patent system by changing the word “a” to “the,” and adding the phrase “purchasable through a shopping cart model.” According to Slashdot, lawyers for Amazon “apparently managed to reinstate two of CEO Jeff Bezos’ 1-Click Patent claims that were rejected a month earlier.”
Once again, Jeff Bezos is making his mark on commerce.
Amazonian Customer Disservice
If you don’t get your order on time, just chalk it up to Amazon thinking you aren’t worth it as a customer. Do you think they’re doing this to prevent other companies from providing lousy service?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Can You Hear Me Now? NO!? Gooood…
Google will make cellphones even cooler. Yay! Yippee, social media!!!(?)
I already have a leash, model number BlackBerry 8700g. I enjoy guilty introverted fantasies of a device that will allow me to provide a mild-yet-meaningful electric shock to everybody who calls me; not to torture them, but to have them reconsider whether or not it requires a conversation.
With a voice that no librarian could love, I’m certain that I’ve been that cretin who won’t shut up more often than I’m comfortable admitting. Not wanting to be rude, I’ll apologize if I’ve disturbed you. But my liberty should end at the boundaries of your liberty, otherwise just call it license and add it to those “rights” so bellicosely defended by libertines garbed in libertarian costumes.
My friend recently purchased a cell phone jammer. I don’t know if he ever used it but we laughed deviously at its delicious potential during show and tell. Can you imagine?
Cellphones have changed our lives forever. Remember the Seinfeld episode in the Chinese restaurant where they couldn’t reach each other? That episode is about 15 years old and it feels as fresh as the leftovers in the Honeymooners’ icebox.
We love our cellphones and, as they evolve, we can’t imagine life without them. We hate our cellphones as they become more intrusive in our lives and the lives of others.
Do you ever turn off your cell phone? Do you ever ask other people to? What are/should be/might be the rules?
TheNew York Times also got me thinking about this in an article called “Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally“:
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.
“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.
Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.
“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”
As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.
The technology is not new… [Read the full article - registration required]
What are the implications of the new Google mobile platform?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
The YouTube Effect: Copyright Law Will Eat Itself
Jeff Atwood’s “YouTube: The Big Copyright Lie” may be the most telling — and concise — article ever written about today’s online copyright law fiasco. According to Atwood, the company’s whole existence teeters a fundamental lie: that so-called “fair use” is in the eye of the beholder, and the only beholders who matter are the copyright’s owner and their attorneys (read: copyrighted material is kept live on YouTube indefinitely until either the copyright holder or their lawyers complain).
Atwood shows that YouTube’s copyright tips page, although refreshingly plain-spoken, is a bit self-righteous, considering that, as he puts it, 90% of the content on YouTube is ripped-off copyrighted material…
It’s completely glossed over on the YouTube copyright page in favor of 100% original content, but the loophole in copyright is fair use. Under the banner of fair use, you could legally upload a video without the copyright holder’s permission. Anyone who contributes anything to the web should have the four factors of fair use commited [sic] to memory by now:
- the purpose of the use
- the nature of the copyrighted work
- the relative amount of the portion used
- the market effect of the use on the copyrighted work
Atwood goes on to explain why “The typical YouTube clip does well on the last two factors of the fair use test, but utterly fails the first two.” It’s an eye-opener for anyone who creates original content.
Meanwhile, our attitudes toward the media landscape continues to shift according to generational fault lines. In AdvertisingAge, Mike Vorhaus shares some telling figures:
Americans also believe their use of online video has cannibalized TV. Overall, more than 15% of respondents say they watch TV less as a result of watching online videos. And 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that online video is cannibalizing their TV viewing. In comparison, fewer than 11% of 45- to 54-year-olds report such cannibalization.
Hmm… Does it count as watching TV if you’re watching TV on YouTube?
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Michael Dell’s Lousy Investment Advice
“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
Michael Dell said that about Apple 10 years ago.
Pretty, pretty…bad advice!
Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports:
Apple’s (AAPL) market capitalization today is more than double that of Dell (DELL):
Apple: $140.4 billion
Dell: $62.27 billion
But don’t shed a tear for Micheal Dell. According to a list of the 400 wealthiest Americans published last month, his net worth is more than triple Steve Jobs’.
Michael Dell: $15.5 billion
Steve Jobs: $4.9 billion
I’m not crying for either one but I just finished syncing my iPod with my MacBookPro. Apple marketing is brilliant but the company is very far from perfect. Apple’s brand is eroding and it missed a huge opportunity to make more headway into the business market because it insists on pursuing a broken distribution model.
Are you a better fortune teller than Michael Dell? Please let us know where you think Apple and Dell will be in 2017.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
EBay Lowers Reserve on Skype
Let’s say you need to unload a promising-yet-way-overestimated tech company you bought for $2.6 billion in 2005 dollars. Where do you turn — eBay? What if listing a “Buy it Now” price isn’t an option? What if you are eBay?
The New York Times has some bubble-bursting hindsight on the broader effect of eBay’s soured Skype acquisition.
Skype earned $90 million during the second quarter of 2007, far below eBay’s projections. EBay said in a regulatory filing that the charge was “the result of the updated long-term financial outlook for Skype.”
The Skype deal helped to initiate a renewed acquisition frenzy in the online world, and a return to what some call a bubble mentality. After the spectacular dot-com flameout seven years ago, Internet executives pledged to begin judging technology companies by revenue rather than by something as ephemeral as “eyeballs,” or traffic on a Web site.
But somewhere along the line, the high-tech industry reverted to its old form.
“We are almost going back to year 2000 types of errors,” said Aaron Kessler, a senior Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray. Internet companies “are buying users instead of revenue and profitability. That’s what eBay did for Skype. They saw a great asset with tons of users but no clear monetization path.”
How bad’s the bleeding? Ebay says it’s $1 billion-bad. Silicon Ally Insider’s Henry Blodget says it’s probably $1.4 billion-bad. And, on The Next Big Thing blog, Don Dodge even adds Skype to his list of “Worst Billion Dollar Acquisitions of All Time”. Says Dodge:
I wrote a post “The 10 Worst Billion Dollar Internet Acquisitions of All Time” Skype didn’t make the list at the time because it was too early to tell. Not anymore. It takes a spot very high up on the list. AOL, Lycos, and Excite are still the clear leaders in this dubious category.
If you’re reading this, eBay, we may not be able to provide much comfort — but here are some tips for selling “it” on eBay.*
[*Please Note: The term “it” may not apply to “IT”.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Are Record Labels Being Shortsighted?
Internet radio broadcasters have lost an important copyright battle in court that will make streaming music much more expensive and that could force them out of business. The record labels see Internet radio as a threat. They think that radio encourages record sales but that streaming music does not. The record labels haven’t been so smart in the past. Are they being shortsighted now?
If the subject interests you, then also check out SaveNetRadio.org
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Tell the Truth: Have You Ever Read Email in Traffic?
There was a good article in Sunday’s New York Times by Steve Lohr, called “Slow Down, Multitaskers, and Don’t Read in Traffic”
“Confident multitaskers of the world, could I have your attention?
Think you can juggle phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work to get more done in a time-starved world? Read on, preferably shutting out the cacophony of digital devices for a while.
Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.” read the article (registration required)
Attention fellow “CrackBerry” addicts: The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. 
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Written by:Mike Drew
Technology and the 2008 Presidential Campaign
John Edwards twitters me nearly every day.
It’s not quite as provocative as it sounds. The John Edwards campaign is working hard to connect and start discussions with people through technology. Whoever is in charge of the Edwards online presidential campaign has a firm grip on the effect of social media and is workin’ it hard.
Visit Edwards’ website and prepare to be amazed. On the home page, there’s a large section titled, “Connect With the Campaign,” which gives visitors a choice of plugging in via MySpace, Gather, Flickr, eAssembly, and more. The site’s blog doesn’t just report campaign news; it’s an interactive tool where anyone can write and post.
Then there’s Twitter, the latest social media platform that’s taken the Internet by storm. Allowing for only 140 characters per post, it’s a cool combination of mini-blog and IM. Almost every day, I receive a text message directly from Edwards:
3/8/07: Interviews, airplanes, and just arrived in Houston.
3/9/07: Left Houston this morning. Holding a community meeting on healthcare in Council Bluffs, Iowa today. Des Moines tonight.
3/10/07: Community meeting on healthcare in Newton, IA. Then 1 hr 1/2 drive to Burlington for a similar meeting. Later tonight, back in NC.
Suddenly, watching Edwards on the evening news, I can connect with where he is and what he’s doing. I am in-the-know. When I joined Twitter last week, I became Friend #256 on the John Edwards Twitter list. As I write this less than a week later, the number of friends has reached 738.
How cool would it be if John Edwards promised to keep Twittering if he were elected? Can you imagine how hooked into the White House we’d feel if we got a daily Twitter from the President?
2/1/09: Lunch today with Kim Jong Il. He wants to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” afterward. Hope there’s popcorn.
4/12/09: Calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this afternoon. We’ll talk uranium, religion and peace.
10/23/09: Today is the vote on universal healthcare. Have you called your congressman to register your vote?
I don’t even know if John Edwards is my personal choice for president, but already I feel I know him better than any of the other candidates. His Second Life headquarters may have been trashed by insurgents, but his real life on the campaign and his attempts to reach out via social media are fascinating.
Could this be the election that hinges on connection… and winning… through technology?
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Written by:Michele Miller
Have Lots of Domains You Monitor?
A convenient service courtesy of XBlog: Domain Log Book is a place for you to track all of your domains. All you do is add them to your log book and it shows you their Google page rank and Alexa traffic rank all on one page, as well as a link to WhoIs information. Supposedly there are more stats coming in the next few weeks.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
