Pay "So Chumpy You Can Carve It" Pal

And in my dream,

Jonathan “Hank Azaria” Kelly (I’ve got a middle name quotes thing going at the moment) walked over and gave me a big handshake and a hearty greeting, saying that he loved my previous blog post and thought that PayPal could definitely support my burgeoning story-telling career by forking out a few hundred thousand as a gift to me so that ..

Ahem.

This week, on Monday 20th July 2009, the Sydney PayPal Developer Day was held.

Scott has done an excellent writeup over on his blog, so for actual pertinent information, you should leave my blog right away and head over to his.

I went along to the Developer Day for a number of reasons. In fact, I created new reasons while I was there.

1. PayPal approached me (I mono-toned about this earlier)

2. It’s the first time they’ve done something like this in Australia

3. I don’t get to go to many external events (although this is changing)

4. Free stuff (become a PayPal Certified Developer)

5. Technical interest, due to having projects that will need Payment functionality

The last one was what spurred my actual brain, and the questions asked.

Really, it all boiled down to two things for me:

a) Could I stick PayPal in a Desktop system?

Answer:

No, not in a classical sense. You have to open a browser, else the mystical Elves of Style and Branding will smite thee with powerful forces of smiting.

b) What is PayPal’s own wisdom on implementing it’s functionality in web systems?

Answer:

This was answered very well throughout the talks. There are three methods, although for small to medium developers, really only one (I’ll give you a hint, it was the second one). Oh wait, you don’t know what I’m talking about?

There were three main options talked about for implementing PayPal.

Website Payments Standard (simple html buttons like “Buy Now”)

Express Checkout (cart system)

And Payment Gateways, in two flavours, Payflow Link and Payflow Pro.

The general wisdom seemed to be that for most small-medium business solutions, go with Express Checkout.

Thoughts

I think the PayPal team would have learnt a bit (maybe that’s presumptuous?) from the day. I guess it depends on the audience, but it took a while for the questions to actually start, for the creative juices to kick into gear.

One thing that might have helped is having (I understand there were legal reasons why not) the slides printed for everyone, so that questions could be written down on the pertinent slide, helping with context.

But that said, pens and pads were provided, and I still wrote my questions down, even though I kind of got lost :) Specially once I got onto the wireless and started tweeting a bit. Twitter. Diet Coke of time-management wastage. WoW being the Coke.

PayPal should be commended for taking this initiative in the Australian Developer community.

A hearty KUDOS to you!

Late To The i-Party

It’s as big a leap in technology as I’ve experienced.

Perhaps I’m a little late to the party, but as of a few days ago my tech world has been forever changed.

What is this that you speak of? I hear you think across the interwebs.

iPhone.

It’ll change things. And if it doesn’t, then that’s sad.

The ability to do many tasks remotely. Apps that because of the smallness, the restrictions, the perceptions, actually work better on an iPhone than my pc.

Examples?

I’ve used Facebook more in the last couple of days than ever before. And that’s a big deal. I don’t like Facebook. But the iPhone has caused a deep shift within my patterns of tech discipline.

I discovered a time keeping app which is perfect for my contract work. It keeps tracks of my hours while I work on my laptop.

Even the seamless compact methods of Google use (Email, Reader,Talk) is fast growing on me.

I leave you with some of the photos my 5 year old took this afternoon. Oh, and this post was sent from my little tool of awesomeness (iPhone).

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