Technology

There is new gadget that can accept credit card payment just using a mobile phone particularly an iphone. According to some report it can also be used on a laptop. It is a kind of dongle that you can plug on an iphone audio jack, a tiny square shaped plastic that can read credit card info and can transact just like a credit card terminal. The biggest advantage of this kind of technology is almost every one who has an iphone can avail of this new technology  (not exactly every iphone user because as of this moment it is only available in the U.S.). To accept a payment by credit card, all you have to do is to swipe it in the square dongle and the information will be transfered to the iphone. Then in real time you can charge the card and presto you have the payment, possibly in your bank account. The square plastic device works simple unlike the traditional credit card terminal where a merchant needs to have a merchant account, monthly fee and transaction fee whereas the square is free. Before I forget to mention, this device was a brain child of Jack Dorsey, the founder of twitter. Maybe my post will look redundant for introducing Jack Dorsey over and over again because most of the articles I’ve read always starts with his name.

Anyway I thought this was the first kind of mobile payment system ever invented but there is a predecessor which has been around in the past and still active today. It’s the Iswipe mobile payment system by appninjas.com. The only difference is that iswipe has a monthly fee and transaction fee. So how about you? what do you think? was Square the best mobile payment system?

I accidentally discovered the misspelled keyword “Facaebook” when I was typing the word “Facebook” on Google search. Many bogus sites appeared on the search list but little that I know that this keyword was also being used by other people according to Google Insights for Search as you can see below, and the geographical location were Turkey, Colombia, Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France and United States.

Just staring at my keyboard, I ask myself how in the world will I have a misspelling like that? the letter “A” was far from the letter “E” if I will consider it as a typo. I just assume that it might be just a flicker of my fingers.

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I wish I bought Smart Bro prepaid last month (for emergency purposes) since Smart Philippines lowered the price to Php 995 . When Typhoon Ondoy hit our country my PLDT landline lost it’s dial tone but only lasted 2 days so I never bothered buying Smart Bro. But just last month when Tyhoon Santi hit Luzon, I wasn’t lucky enough because up to now our phone line is still not working. So having a back-up broadband connection is essential. Now the question is why choose Smart Bro and not Globe Tattoo or Sun Cellular?  I was hesitant at first if I will choose other brand of prepaid wireless broadband. Since I already tried Smart Bro prepaid from a friend when I fixed their computer and was very satisfied with the speed (and they live near our residence. If they live on other place, I will not be sure if there is a 3G signal in our area), I was decided to buy it.

I also checked the speed of Smart Bro on speedtest.net and below is the result:

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Technology will be with us until the end of this world and no one can deny it’s existance even if you live under a rock for decades. Since the arrival of the internet age, I guess technology is now fast paced unlike before when it still doesn’t exist. Maybe this is what the bible says about “People will go here and there to increase knowledge”. Yes the medium of transportation helped a lot on the exchange of information (e.g. jet planes and bullet trains) that allow people to travel on distant places in a short period of time. But compared with the internet, the collaboration between people on all parts of the globe makes it possible to do things not possible without this technology. The realtime lightning speed of the internet with the latest hightech software makes those things possible.

Another effect of this technology is the changes in distribution of wealth. I guess everyone knows about the term middle class, the rich and the poor that makes up a society with regards to wealth. The rich class are those billionaires and millionares, most of them employers and owners of corporations. The other one is the poor class and those are the ordinary workers, the jobless, low earning self-employed individuals and even the ordinary staff of a company that don’t belong to the management. And the middle-class are those that earns above the poor class and below the rich class. They are the supervisors and managers of  a company and possibly self-employed or small business owners that earns above the poor class. One of the effects is that technology and the web can create billionaires in a short period of time regardsless of age like the founder of facebook and Google.

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Since I got this laptop I’ve been making changes to the system and installing stuffs I need for my work. But from time to time I’m experiencing some system halt maybe because of those changes. When I browse about those problems in the internet I learned that Windows Vista have lots of complaint and seems buggy. One remedy that seems to work every time was reinstalling the system drivers and software, like for example the when I experienced the loss of audio on my laptop. But one incident happened to me when I lost the battery meter icon on the system tray. I’ve search some forums and blogs discussing their problems how to solve this thing but they all seem not to work successfully. I even read a tip on how to solve it by tweaking the registry and deleting some stuffs in there.

I don’t want to take that risk so as much as possible I refrain from doing it. Not unless I enjoyed seeing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) every time I use my computer. Another computer troubleshooting tip I read is by enabling the system icon on the Notification Area by pointing your mouse on the system tray (The system tray is located in the Windows Taskbar, usually at the bottom right corner next to the clock) and right clicking it. Then clicking the properties menu bar and going to the Notification Area then tick the check box of the “power” (see Figure 1 below). [click to continue...]

When you talk about search engine, nowadays it’s “Google”. Like this: “Search Engine = Google” it’s like they are the same thing. It’s similar to gadgets and appliances we are very familiar with. When you say refrigerator, we Filipinos call it “Frigidaire”. Or if we want to photocopy something, most of the time we call it “Xerox”.  So when it comes to people searching the internet, I heard and read people saying “Google it”. And the statistics don’t lie, the search engine market share of Google is dominating which overpowered Yahoo! that sometime ago was called “The Mother of All Search Engine”.

Aside from that, there are also some observation on what kind of people uses that search engine. I once read a post on Yugatech blog that says users of Google are more financially able than those who use Yahoo! So we can assume now that the money is in Google. The more traffic that comes from that search engine, the more potential buyers your site will have. More potential buyers means good conversion rate for any website that have advertising on it. This is the reason why many webmasters and internet marketers do their best to get as much Google traffic in their blogs or websites. If you happen to have lots of visitors from Google, then you are one of the luckiest guys and gals on this planet. But what if someday you see your traffic coming from Google slowly diminishing? That is a very big problem. I read many webmasters in Webmasters World Forum who are complaining about the sudden loss of their traffic blaming the Google update. It’s easier to blame others than yourself. Why not check first on your blog or website?

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