PayPal: Not For Sellers

To be clear this will be a rant, factual but never the less a rant. I went to investigate what was taking so long for my direct deposit from PayPal. I discovered that Paypal has set my account to "limited" status.

What does that mean?
*You can not receive payments
*You can not send or request money
*You can not close your account

So even though I am a Verified PayPal user. PayPal says on the site that "In addition to increased security, buyers and sellers value your Verified status because it indicates you have passed PayPal security checks."






What does it take to get out of Limited limbo?
You have to fax or email the following information into a PayPal. A company that is not a bank or financial institution. That is not FDIC insured.


• Confirm your bank account (Your full routing and account number)
• Confirm your credit card (Your card number and the 3 number code)
• Photo ID (Government issued only)
• Proof of Address (Utility bill)
• Supplier Contact Info (Where you brought your product)
• Provide Proof Of SSN (That's right a copy of your Social Security card)
• Confirm Location (They call your phone, why not use the Photo ID?)
• Provide proof of delivery (Easy enough)



As you can see the request is very long and very sensitive. I did it all but I refused to send in, email or fax my social security information. The line had to be drawn somewhere. What did PayPal say? "We have to keep you account on Limited Status indefinitely." So my account that is full of money from eBay sales will remain there for 180 days. For Half a year PayPal will be collecting interest from my money because I do not wish to give them my personal information. I will from now on only be using Amazon which is direct to the point and safe. Some good reads more about the real PayPal are http://www.paypalsucks.com/ and http://www.screw-paypal.com/

Who won E3

What does it mean to win E3, well aside from a lot buzz in the media and Fanboys chatting away on the Internet? It means that people will more likely want to know more about the products coming out for that company. This year Microsoft won the event hands down for the 3rd year in a row.

Last year Microsoft just gave us a tease of Project Natal but this year we get a new name, games and date but no price. This is not won the show for them because on it's surface the games were very Wii'ish. I know that is not a word but that is what they looked like. What made the Kinect a must have was it's seamless integration into the Xbox Dashboad. To be able to have a system recognize your voice and face is incredible. I see this feature getting integrated into 3rd party televisions.

What really won the E3 event was the Xbox 360 Slim also known as the New Xbox 360. The system came out of the blue. No one expected to see it. The new system has everything the Xbox fanboys wanted and Sony fanboys used as ammo in the fight. The new system has internal wifi, removable hard drive and is much smaller. The only thing the system is missing and most likely will never get is Blu Ray. Microsoft would not want to pay Sony for every system they sale.

The games and demos were relative. This year was about hardware. Sony's Move is just a Wii mote. Sorry Sony but I'm going to skip that. Nintendo's 3DS was at best cool. But in a world of iDevices it's going to take more to impress us in the mobile world. In future E3's it would be nice to see Apple up there talking about it's mew system or platform. The iDevices have become a force to be reckoned with in the gaming world. If not addressed by the big 3 of gaming. Never mind there is no big 3. Nindendo is the only one that needs to be concerned for now since Microsoft has no portable system and the Sony's PSP is well...you dead.

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OnLive now on iPad

I wrote an article for AppAdvice.com but got it published at iCauseFX.com instead a few weeks ago about the possibility that OnLive could run on iPad. Since the service is all in the cloud all you would need is a good connection. Seems that I was right. They have released a video that is said to be strictly designed for demonstration purposes to prove that this idea is possible on a fully mobile device.

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Drake: Don't Thank Him Yet

This CD has been anticipated for almost a year now. I've had a promo copy for about a month but held off on a review hoping new tracks would get added. Or production would change. Or something. I was wrong. They were the same tracks, same flow, same singing. Don't get me wrong this is not a bad album. It's just not what you would expect from a highly anticipated album and not in a good way. Not like Lauryn hill when she came out with an R&B album instead of a rap album. That was a great surprise. This not so much.

There are some sure fire hits:
Fireworks w. Alicia Keys
Show me a good time
Up all night w. Niki Minaj
Fancy w. Swizz Beats & TI
Light Up ft. Jay-Z

The Album has three parts:

Slow Singing: Example
Most of the songs where Drake sings sound forced with the exception on Shut it down ft. The-Dream. But I think that is due to the great production and the talent that is The Dream. Drake has great flow so this 808& Heartbreak singing needs to stop.

Singing mixed with nice flow: Example
Unforgettable ft. Young Jeezy opens with a sample of Aliyah's Let me know. Sounded so surreal. I expected some deep flows but alas it was not meant to be. The sample was only used for the intro and the flows are to be expected by Jeezy. The beat was suspect. Such a waste of a sample. The producer of this song needs to go apologize to Aliyah's Estate.

Pure Fire (wish it was the whole CD was like this): Example
Light Up ft. Jay-Z felt like a passing of the torch. Jay gave Drake some advice about the industry. This track is pure fire from start to end.

I am not a hater. I use to watch Degrassi back in the day and heard his old mix tapes when he use to rap super fast and off beat. Drake has grown up and plans to take the industry with him. But I don't think the industry is ready to go there just yet. So thanks but no thanks Drake.



Review in one sentence:
Good album but not great.

Buy or Download:
Neither, get the singles off iTunes

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3D photo frame without glasses

The display above is a 3D LCD auto-stereoscopic. What that means is you don't need any glasses. If that is not enough to make it worth your hard earned cash. The makers this display take it a step further by supporting motion parallax which means you can see around an image.

Newsight's image processing software can take any 3D or 2D image and create five separate images out of it that let you see the same image from different angles. This technology for right now can only be processed on a PC with the current model. Newsight promises that future models will have built-in processing.

Could this be the same or similar technology that Nintendo plans to use on their upcoming 3D system? Let's take it to something else. What if theaters or TV manufactures adapt this technology as a industry standard? If it takes off how long before it makes it's way to iPhones, iPads and other smartphones. No glasses ever again.

[Via: Information Display SID 2010]

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Facetime over 3G

iChat is on the iPhone 4. You may of missed it. iChat was hiding behind it's alter ego Facetime. Apple was smart to make Facetime open standard because it opens up possibilities. The user base will go up with iPhone 4 sales. I say a few million on within a month or two will jump on Facetime. iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 does limit the user base but other companies will have no choice but adapt it. This deals a death blow to companies like Skype and Fring unless they use the standard.

Calls are only on Wi-Fi until A: The AT&T network gets better or B: iPhone moves to a network. Neither of these are going to happen anytime soon. That does not however have to limit using Facetime only on Wi-Fi. MuscleNerd of iPhone Dev Team has already jailbroken iOS 4 using a tool called Redsn0w. Which means you can add Cydia apps. One app in particular would allow you to use Facetime over 3G.

The app is called 3G Unrestrictor will trick your applications into believing they are on wi-fi. Now this is just a proof of concept until it can be tried out on a live iPhone 4.

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Iphone 4: invisibleShield

The iPhone 4 is not out yet. You can't even pre-order it yet if you wanted to. That has not stopped Zagg from letting you buy their incredibly effective screen protector. The invisibleSHIELD is like wrapping your iDivice in a Teflon coating. I use invisibleSHIELD on my I pad and can say one has a very secure feeling knowing you have it on.

The invisibleSHIELD has a rubber-like texture which adds a little bit of resistance when you move your finger across the touchscreen. The difference is negligible and does not deter you from the experience of an iDevice.

I recommend you order yours now so when your iPhone 4 comes your protected. iPhone’s display should be pretty scratch-resistant on its own due to the new glass being used but safety is better than sorry.

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The Pulse RSS Booted From The App Store

Pulse got great reviews and considered by many as the best RSS News reader for the iPad. It lets you add 20 news sources and creates a visual mosaic out of them. Well yesterday the Pulse RSS reader was booted from the App Store after the New York Times claimed violation of its terms of service. Funny that happens after the Pulse reader was featured in the WWDC keynote.

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Facetime

What was expected and what happened at WWDC were two different things. Lets get the what didn't happen out of the way first. Apple TV and iTunes Live were not at WWDC. Verizon is not getting iPhone.

What did happen was what was expected. Most of the features were already leaked or talked about by Apple it's self. One of the best one's is Facetime.

Facetime
Video chat is Wi-Fi only (Although if iPhone is jailbroken can make it run on 3G). At first video calls will only be on the iPhone 4. Apple said that Facetime is an open standard. What that means is that anyone can use the standard for their product if they want to. I think like all things Apple this is going to take off like fireworks. This is going to be real competition for Qik and the upcoming Skype video.

17Mbps Download Speed?

So while writing stories and researching information. My computer started moving really slow. I thought it could not be my computer since it's maxed out. I'm using a Lenovo Y510 running Windows 7 Ultimate. It features an Intel dual core T5750, 128GB SSD hard drive and 4GB of ram. Non Internet programs worked fine. I checked for virus and had none. The culprit was my internet it's self due to all the network use. I have the basic Comcast plan that states Upload Speeds up to 3Mbps & Download speeds up to 15Mbps. But no one really gets the advertised speeds, until now.



I decided to add another USB network card that I had from the days of non built in wi-fi. I ran a test with Pandora, chrome, Firefox and IE 8 (64bit), utorrent (only used for good), Ameritrade Streamer and WarHammer Online downloading. My download speed went from 9.31Mbps to 11.21Mbps.

Not that big of a jump so I thought why not add another adapter. The jump was impressive to say the least. I now get download speeds of 17.59Mbps and upload speeds of 4.14Mbps consistently. Those are just the adapters I had lying around the house. This should work with any USB adapters as long as you have them all connected to the same network.

Products being used: Belkin wireless G USB adapter (f5d7050v4010), Netgear Rangemax Dual Band Wireless N USB adapter (wnda3100) and the built in Intel 4965AG Wireless G adapter.

WWDC: Rumors vs. Facts

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference rumor mill's in full force since it is just days away. What is fact and what is fiction? Here is the run down.

Apple's next iPhone will be introduced, officially, June 7th to the world.
Based on the front-facing camera and iPhone 4 OS's code it will have video chat. The same iPhone OS 4 Beta 2 SDK shows chat will most likely be Wi-Fi only.

Apple TV is going to get a upgraded with A4 processor, iPhoneOS 4.0, 1080p streaming, 16GB flash storage all for $100. But Steve Jobs just said at D8 that he has no idea what they are going to do with it so it will not be at the WWDC.

Verizon is not getting iPhone. My sources that work for Verizon confirm that they are not getting it this year. Also on June 2nd Verizon's John Johnson insisted that his company wasn't planning on supporting Apple devices in the near future. Sorry people.

Apple wants iTunes to be a streaming music service. That was the whole point of buying Lala last December. Apple shutdown Lala then registered the iTunes Live trademark. But record label negotiations have not worked out thus far so this is not going to happen at WWDC.

Safari will finally get extensions but in Apple fashion be called something else.
John Gruber's track record of predicting new Apple products is close to Nostradamus like. He said it is likely that this will happen. The gap with Chrome and Firefox is something Apple will take on sooner than later. After all they saw what happened to Microsoft in the smartphone race.

[pic credit: turbora]

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HP Says No Palm WebOS Phone?

At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas the Palm Pre with it's WebOS was all the rage. I remember because I there. Everyone called it the 'iPhone killer'. At the time it might have been a real competitor but Palm took too long to bring it's innovative operation system to market.

By the time Palm brought out the phone, Apple had already incorporated most of the features that made the Palm WebOS stand apart into the iPhone via updates. HTC also helped displace the demand for Palm with it's Sense UI and great Android designed phones.

Palm has really gone down hill since then. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has since paid $1.2 billion for the company. That amount may sound like a lot but it is pocket change for a company as big as HP. To add insult to injury HP CEO Mark Hurd has gone on record saying HP is not going to use the WebOS to enter the very lucrative smartphone market. That is very surprising since that is what everyone, myself included thought was going to happen. What was once a great phone and platform will be reduced to at best a tablet and at worst web-connected printers.

With the death of Palm Apple iPhone remains alone as king of the hill in the smartphone world. Blackberry in the words of Avatar 'I see you' but until you take the non business users into mind with a more innovative & user friendly OS, you're on time out. Only Android poses a real challenge. It has great phones although it still has a long way to go due to the amount of apps in it's Market not it's technology. Note to Microsoft: Palm failed for many reasons but all can agree it's lack of apps was a main one.

Jetblue + Gate Guru App =Free Flights

JetBlue is teaming up with the free app GateGuru. Almost every company is trying to cash in on the location based service trend. Whether McDonald's teaming up with the yet to be annouced Facebook location based service or Starbucks with FourSquare. Well, GateGuru is like FourSquare but for Airports. It has the expected information such as departure times to maps of where the gate you need is located. What sets GateGuru apart is it also has user generated information in the same light as FourSquare's 'Tips' section. An example is how well the Wi-Fi works. (That is important, trust me)

GateGuru is a great service with a lot of users. Users stuck in an airport have to spend money at the airport. This is a no brainer for companies and it is only a matter of time before more sign on with GateGuru. JetBlue is the first one to jump on board since GateGuru updated its app to connects advertisers and marketers with frequent travelers.

JetBlue is hoping to intice more customers by offering 1 round trip pass for the most frequent GateGuru user each month. Second place gets $100 gift certificate. This only for five JetBlue markets (the New York metro area, Chicago, Florida, Boston, and California) although I was able to get to the add after picking BWI (Baltimore) as an airport.

Facebook Questions: Killer app or ....

Facebook says hello to user-based, question-and-answer services. This space already has well-established players such as Yahoo Answers and Aardvark (which I love), which has been a Google company since February. Facebook has over 450 million users. That is going to be an issue for its competitors. I just started using the beta so I can not give you a full review just yet. That will be for a later post.

Facebook is no longer just happy to be a social mecca. It is going after anything to help make a profit. Next up after Answers is Location Based services. That's right Four Square, Facebook is a coming. McDonald’s is expected to be involved in the roll out in the next few weeks.

If you want to sign up just click the link
http://www.facebook.com/product_application/