Problems with PayPal are very common

Now, I am a loyal person, and even though I signed up for Google Checkout long ago, I have kept using PayPal on my website and for online purchases. But this last string of events, which includes PayPal cutting off my access to my funds without explaining the details about why, then asking me to jump through hoop after hoop for three months, in order to get it back, was enough to get anyone, even a perpetually - sometimes annoyingly - optimistic fellow like me, peeved. (Purportedly, it was due to a “security issue” which they refused to elaborate on despite several requests.)

PayPal Sucks at helping scam victims - no wonder PayPal customers are so often targeted

Then there was the time I got totally shafted by PayPal’s claim filing system… Costing me over $500 and many, many hours of my time… Long story short, after spending hours typing in the details of how I just got scammed, then hitting the “escalate” button, my inbox got INSTANTLY zapped with a notice that PayPal READ MY CLAIM (in 3.2 nanoseconds, wow!) and based on the circumstances, decided to ruled against me! Grrr, that was infuriating. But still, the camel’s back could handle a bit more straw, or so it seemed.

PayPal’s transaction fees are quite simply a ridiculous joke!

Finally, there was my last merchant transaction fee, where I was charged  a whopping - and this is not an exaggeration - 33% to process the payment! 1/3rd of the payment I recieved went into PayPal’s pocket.

Google Checkout to the rescue

Anyways, I am all better, not bitter, now that I have found Google Checkout! What’s more? They offer FREE payment processing to their AdWords clients. Read this (from their website):

Google Checkout is a fast, convenient checkout process that brings you more customers and allows them to buy from you with a single login – and you can process their orders and charge their credit or debit cards for free.

If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you can earn free transaction processing through Google Checkout.

.For every $1 you spend on AdWords each month, you can process $10 in sales the following month through Google Checkout for free. For example, if your AdWords spend in August is $300, you can process up to $3000 in sales for free through Google Checkout in September.

Based on the kind of work I do, the browser is my most useful tool. No other software comes close in terms of hours spent in heavy usage than my trusty web browser. But I also heavily rely on Google Apps, especially Gmail , Google Analytics, Google Calendar, and, well just about all of it. So, I expected that Chrome would be better suited to handle Gmail than Firefox, since both are Google Products. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Forget that fact that there are no handy plugins like BetterGmail2 that I can use with Chrome, let’s just focus on usability: Firefox is more usable, in just about every way. With FF, I can paste pretty much everything into a composed email and it will line up properly. With Chrome, it lacks the intuitive style of FF to know what I want to do… Simple pasting of content copied off the web becomes a chore, rather than a convenience.

Scrolling with my mouse-wheel is another weakness in Chrome, or strength in FF. FF intuitively knows what I want to have happen when I move that thing up and down. With Chrome, I have to add a couple of extra clicks to get the mouse wheel to function the way it should function.

In all fairness, Chrome is in it’ first beta release, and all of these perks have not made it’s way in yet, plausibly, and so I’ll give it another try in version 1.0. For now, thank God for Firefox!

Starting an Online Business in a Down Economy - Entrepreneur.com

As shoppers flock to their computers instead of driving to the mall, entrepreneurs with e-businesses can make a hefty sum

Many people don’t realize that you can actually improve your cerebral fitness. Cognition, concentration, focus, stress reduction and memory improvement are all skills that can be exercised and improved upon, just like swimming or riding a bike.

Without memory your life’s experiences have little value.

Read the Official Google Blog here

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

As a computer guy, I find that I am the first stop for many folks that have a PC infected with Spyware/Malware or viruses from here on out, just referred to as “malware”. Some of these infections are pretty nasty…resulting in a system that boots and runs reasonably well performance-wise, but disables key features of the system so you can’t easily get rid of whatever it was that infected you in the first place.

Read more

While Classic Insulation & Pest Control offers many valuable services, it was difficult to come up with a new identity for the logo that was simple, yet easy to remember and pronounce. “‘Classic Services’ is the name they may mention while answering the phones, but it does not say really anything about what they do,” Solla said, “Plus, the domain name was already taken!”

After conducting an analysis of the industry and target market, the domain name “classicinsulation.com” was selected. “Eventually, other domain names, like ‘classicpestcontrol.com’ and ‘classicservices.com’ will become available,” predicted Solla, “and we can help them acquire those domains to further their brand strategy.”

For now, check out the new website: Classic Insulation & Pest Control

“This is a historic resolution,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of Icann’s board. “It’s going to make a big difference to how the Internet looks and works.”

ICANN officials said some technical issues for the new system must still be worked out, but it could be reviewing the first applications for new TLDs as early as next spring. The application fee is expected to cost more than $100,000.

Under the new system, individuals, companies or groups could apply to have any string of letters established as a domain name. It could be a vanity name, for example — .smith — or a category name like .sports or .perfume. A company could also change its domain to reflect its brand, so Apple.com could become Apple.mac, for instance.

(source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2635186520080626)

I’ll be the first to admit, (or rather, the 409,718th to admit) that the RC1 and RC2 “pre-release” versions of the Firefox 3 browser were in fact much faster, much more memory efficient, and, in general, offered a more enjoyable browsing experience than their predecessors.

However, today Mozilla launched the “Official” release of the Firefox 3 browser, which I downloaded and installed about 2 hours ago.  And, as you may have guessed, the browser is once again up to it’s old shenanigans! So, slow, so, so slow. So much RAM being wasted! (On what?)

In sales, they call this “bait and switch”. They “bait” you with one product whilst boasting it’s extravagant features, then, once you’re hooked, they “switch” it with an inferior product. In most countries, the practice is completely ILLEGAL! Companies found guilty would have to pay back the consumers. However, we did not have to purchase this browser, it was free. But that doesn’t mean it comes with out a hefty price: Your Time (and your electricity to push your now severely overworked CPU).

There are also quite a few bugs that I’ve noticed. Such as, when trying to add a bookmark by dragging the favicon into the bookmark bar’s folder, there are some sub menu tiers that cannot be accessed.  And pressing Control-D to bookmark doesn’t remember the last folder you added a bookmark to (unless you added it in one certain way, via the CTRL-D dialogue box).  I even emailed these bugs to Mozilla, but they released the new version without fixing them for some reason.

So, to me, the new version is worthless. The result: I will be re-installing FF2 as soon as I get the chance.

If you haven’t done so yet, please do not bother upgrading to the new browser.