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PayPal Here

David Marcus, Vice President of Mobile, PayPal

I’m excited to unveil PayPal Here, a new payments solution that will help small businesses get paid – whether they do business online, offline or on mobile.

They can accept payments by swiping cards with a fully encrypted thumb-sized card reader, or use a phone camera to scan and process cards and checks. It also allows them to invoice directly from the mobile app and, of course, accept PayPal in a brand new way.

PayPal decided to release a competitor to Square. They even copied the clever 3.5mm audio jack card reader. Competition is good, as long as the competitors are working towards bettering the overall experience for their customers or end users. So what makes PayPal Here different?
So, you’re asking, how is this different from other small business mobile payment solutions? The key differentiator is that it comes from PayPal, a trusted brand in the online payments industry with more than 100 million customers around the globe and years of proven payment innovation, driving growth for millions of businesses globally.
(Emphasis mine) Lovely. You haven’t improved anything. You just entered the market and because you’re PayPal, people are suppose to use your product. It’s not better, we’re just PayPal, use us!
Good luck with that.

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Categories: Random.

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By Von Landfried
— March 15, 2012 at 5:04 pm

Weather and Stocks apps use iCloud storage

Apparently the Weather and Stocks apps for iOS store their data in iCloud. I was messing around with iCloud this weekend and signed out of my account on my iPhone. I noticed that all my saved Weather locations and Stock symbols were gone. I thought I ran into a bug, so I rebooted the phone and tried a few Google searches to no avail. Once I logged back into my iCloud account, all my symbols and locations reappeared.

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Hope this helps someone.

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Categories: Apple.

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By Von Landfried
— February 24, 2012 at 1:44 pm

Create Encrypted PDF Files from the Print Dialog in OS X

Mac OS X includes a great feature in any print dialog that allows you to print to PDF. This post will expand on this functionality to have the PDF automatically get encrypted when doing a print to PDF. Open Automator (located in /Applications) and select the “Print Plugin” template from the template chooser that appears. This will allow us to tie directly into Mac OS X’s print dialog. Next, drag and drop the following actions into the workflow (in the order they appear):
  • Encrypt PDF Documents
  • Move Finder Items
Now, let’s configure these actions. For the “Encrypt PDF Documents” action, click the Options button at the bottom of the action in the workflow and check the option for “Show this action when the workflow runs.” This will allow you to specify a new PDF password each time the action is run.After you have configured this new workflow, click File > Save and specify a name for the new print plugin. The save name is what will show up in the Mac OS X print dialog. I suggest using “Encrypt PDF” as the saved name. Automator will do the rest and place the plugin in the appropriate location for it to run on your Mac.To run the workflow, open a print dialog in any application. Click on the PDF button in the lower, left-hand corner of the dialog and select the name of the workflow that you just saved. Type in a password, then type it again for a confirmation. After clicking Continue, a new encrypted PDF will appear on your Desktop.via Cory Bohon at MacLife

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Categories: Apple.

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By Von Landfried
— January 24, 2012 at 11:32 am

Setup Mirrored Folders in VMware Fusion

Mirrored folders work in a similar way to shared folders. Mirrored folders allow you to select an entire folder such as Documents or Downloads and VMware Fusion will automatically mirror the entire folder between your Mac and your Windows VM. Again, because these files are stored on the Mac, this makes it easy for you to always have a backup of your commonly used files as Time Machine will backup your Documents and Downloads folders automatically. This is great because it simplifies the opening of files while already inside your Windows VM. Its important to note that VMware Fusion does not create duplicates of the files in the mirroring process, but simply creates one folder that’s accessible from Mac OS X and your Virtual Machine.

To configure a mirrored folder in a virtual machine:

WARNING: Any data currently occupying a folder in the virtual machine prior to mirroring becomes unavailable after following these steps. Be sure to move this data to another location in the virtual machine or to the Mac before proceeding.

  1. Launch VMware Fusion and run the desired VM
  2. From Fusion’s menu bar, click Virtual Machine > Settings.
  3. Click Sharing.
  4. Enable each folder you would like to mirror (Desktop, Documents, and Downloads)
  5. Close the Settings window.
  6. Restart your virtual machine for these changes to take effect.

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Categories: Tips and Tricks.

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By Von Landfried
— December 29, 2011 at 9:38 am

Is this the future of Twitter?

Marco Arment: (regarding the new updated Twitter 4.0 iOS app piece by John Gruber)

I’d wager that all third-party clients will be forced to display the trends and ads within a year, and what we know as Twitter today — or at least what we knew until yesterday morning — will be a distant, quaint memory: Remember when it was just people you followed?

I really hope this doesn’t happen. I use and value Twitter way more than Facebook, the other social audience platform I currently use. I understand the need to monetize Twitter, but there has got to be a better way than forcing users to see tweets or threads for things they have no interest in. Thankfully, right now in the present, I can use Tweetbot and avoid all this nonsense.

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Categories: Random.

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By Von Landfried
— December 9, 2011 at 11:20 am