Watch PayPal’s Platform Preview

PayPal has just released the video of the platform preview that occurred at the PayPal head office in San Jose 23 July 2009. This announcement makes them the first global payment system to open to developers and the public beta will kick off simultaneously with their first conference, Innovate 2009, 3-4 November, 2009 in San Jose.

The hour long announcement included a brief introduction to how the payments system can be developed as well as introductions to a couple of developers who have been working with adaptive payments including:

• Twitpay: This can be used with Twitter as a reminder of what you owe someone and goes one step further as you can actually pay them back off Twitpay using PayPal.


• LiveOps: This helps companies push out work to communities of virtual workers. Companies don’t have to worry about compliance and security and multi-split payments can be made instantly.


• Windows Azure: Launching at the end of 2009, this cloud computing will allow users to pay for access not ownership, share computing power, go online quickly, only pay for what they need, and instantly scale-up and scale-down even on an hourly basis.This is really good for developers as there are a number of templates, programming tools and snippets of code that can be used to develop new applications. They can deploy it to test (locally or remotely) and then run it live in the cloud. They can then sell the application using PayPal as well as integrate it into the applications as a global payment solution.

I think the video is a great run down of the information and what developers and users have to look forward to when you actually get to that part of the video. I’m confused on why they took the first 6 minutes of it to show a global map of what I believe is an indication of traffic and location of those watching the live feed as the conference happened.

With no explanation of what it was, I almost clicked away and would have missed a very informative and interesting talk. You can watch the video here and you really should. If you aren’t excited by pretty pictures and ambient music that goes on for a bit, six minutes is enough time to make some tea and toast before the juicy stuff starts.

New video created to excite developers about PayPal

So I’m assuming this official PayPal video is meant to excite developers about the future of PayPal after PayPal announced that it’s opening its platform to third party developers. Despite it feeling like the spoof Veridian ads off the television series Better Off Ted (I hope that’s what they were going for but I’m not 100% sure), I like the idea behind it.

The thought that PayPal are interested in using feedback from developers and users reminds of Dell’s IdeaStorm, a site where you can post and vote on ideas to improve Dell products and services. Last I heard over 800 ideas have been implemented.

It will be interesting to see how PayPal uses input from developers to develop PayPal to work in new ways. Who will decide on which ideas are the best and how many of them will be implimented?  We’ll have to wait and see, especially as it doesn’t officially open up to developers until 3 November, 2009.  In the meantime, if you have an idea you can submit it via Twitter with the hashtag #changehowwepay and view responses at www.changehowwepay.com.

Upcoming events and fun things

::POETRY::

John Hegley’s Elevenses
Saturday, 25 July, 2009 : 11 am
Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London
£6/£5
Nearest Tube: Covent Garden

Saturday morning is the new friday night with John Hegley and guests. £6/5. Starts 11am. Bar open for breakfast.


::THEATRE::
A Shropshire Lad (as part of Grimeborn 2009)
Wednesday, 2 September, 2009 : 8 pm
Studio 1, Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola Street
£10
Nearest Station: Dalston Kingsland

I’ll be performing with Peter Shipman in this gentle and loving presentation that combines English art songs with love and war poetry to follow a country lad from his days of wooing in the village and at the fair, to an untimely death far from home and from those he loves. He is an allegory of the tragic and unprecedented loss of life, love and dreams in the Great War.


::IN OTHER NEWS::

SOCIAL NETWORKS PLUS
Myspace: I’ve set up a myspace page with a few clips of my poems and a podcast of my prose poetry sequence “Howdoes it feel to be loved?”Click here to have a listen and add me as your friend to keep up-to-date with my upcoming shows& events.

Twitter: Follow me on twitter on @heatherataylor.

YouTube: New videos up of me performing on the SouthBank and at BCB in Soho. Click here to see more.


::RECOMMENDATIONS::

CANUXPLOITATION

CANADIAN CONTENT is Vancouver Canada’s premier sketch and Improv comedy group. Winners of the Canadian Comedy Award “Best SketchGroup”, and featuring the top of Canada’s improv community including Canadian Comedy Award winner of “Best Male Improviser.”
Canuxploitation is a partially scripted, partially improvised comedy extravaganza from Canada, God’s America.

NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS & THE UPTIGHT. MATURE LANGUAGE AND SUBJECT MATTER, but funny.

See them at the Leicester Square Theatre from 4 August - 30 August. Click here to find out more


MY PLACE OR YOURS
Apples and Snakes have a really cool virtual writers’ residency called My Place or Yours – www.myplaceoryours.org. Check it out and leave your comments online!

Let’s Talk PayPal goes live!

For the past 2 months I’ve been preparing for the launch of a new blog for PayPal called Let’s Talk. It’s a website dedicated to help UK online shoppers get to know PayPal and eCommerce better and I’ll be running the site, blogging and answering questions about PayPal and related topics.

With access to the office and the people behind PayPal, I can help you get the right answers to your questions. So ask away! In addition to PayPal related topics, I’ll regularly produce video interviews and podcasts with experts in finance, social media and web development, to help people use PayPal and the internet better. You’ll find me in some of the videos so watch out for me popping up every now and then!

If there’s anything you’d like to see or have an expert you think I should interview, let me know. It’s great to get outside feedback for folks like you as I want to make this site an interesting and informative portal that people want to come back to again and again. So come visit me online on Let’s Talk - https://www.paypal-talk.co.uk

Wild West Dream goes out to festivals

I’ve just completed my first short documentary with Michelle Tsen and Natalie Kardum through Red on Black Productions. Wild West Dream follows the only active UK rough stock competitor on the European Rodeo circuit, Cambridge firefighter Gareth Boyd. It’s the story of a man following his cowboy dreams as he tries to balance his life in the UK with competing in Rodeos in France and Germany on his own steam and with his own buck.

Wild West Dream is currently in consideration for a few festivals but in the meantime, find out more at www.wildwestdream.com. We’re looking at expanding it into an hour long television documentary so if you’re interested in getting more details, contact Red on Black Productions.

Online shopping: How to stay safe

According to the Office of Fair Trading, one in three internet users feel it’s unsafe to hand over credit card details for online shopping. Fears over personal security and a general mistrust of companies who provide online shopping are the main reasons for their insecurity. And, although there has been a 45% increase in internet spending since 2006, 72 per cent of e-shoppers still say they have concerns. So how do you make sure your details remain secure when online shopping?

First of all, only buy from sites that follow Distance Selling Regulations (pdf). Make sure you check that the information on the website is clear and includes details on:

• the address and contact details of the business
• the goods or services being sold through online shopping
• payment arrangements
• delivery arrangements
• cancellation rights

If you can’t find this information online, or the company won’t provide it, you should purchase from them with caution. Though Distance Selling Regulations do not apply to sites like eBay where online shopping is done through an auction, eBay do have their own protection procedures in place so you can still feel safe while online shopping.

Another way to make sure your personal details are protected is to check that the site you’re buying from is secured by an SSL certificate. This means your personal, bank and credit card details are encrypted during online transactions.

As long as you keep these tips in mind while online shopping, you should feel more confident about the security of your purchases. Happy shopping!

How I ended up on a Small Island – 5 podcasts now out!

This series highlights the strange andsometimes unexpectedexperiences of Heather Taylor’s new home of England while interactingwith the localinhabitants; their strange customs and exoticarchitecture make Heather feel that she has stepped into adifferentworld. She gives us, the listener an insight into her thoughts fromthe New World to her experiencesof living in the old world ofShakespeare surrounded by millions of people.

Find out how she gothere and why she decided to stay…

Click here to listen to episode 1 (http://peopletalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=40437 )
Click here to listen to episode 2 (http://peopletalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=430487 )
Click here to listen to episode 3 (http://peopletalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=446841 )
Click here to listen to episode 4 (http://peopletalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=450855 )
Click here to listen to episode 5 (http://peopletalk.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=503681 )

The LAST EPISODE will be out over the next couple weeks or so so staytuned!

Session three with Bernardine

My third session with Bernardine was the first session we looked at actual poems. My first task was to write poems as one of my characters and I chose to follow John’s story. At first I only knew that I would write about the dates he went on but then it became more so I have him ones about him at work, dates, and meeting my main character Kathy.

The feedback was good - they needed work as first drafts usually to need to have. The one thing I could do was write more description which I realized I cut back on because I was trying to write in a more condensed way. Of course description can live in one sentence and be specific so I need to go through the poems and put more in.

Bernardine suggested that I add more to his character and the desciption of the world around him (through his eyes) by watching the type of men I thought would most resemble him. I think I can be up to that task ;) I am also going into Selfridge’s to find his cologne - what does it smell like, why did he pick it, etc. and also to go through the suit section - feel the make, the cut, how did his suit, clothes, bag, shoes, hair cut, style show more about him. I never thought of actually feeling/ experience those parts of a character.

SO this weekend it’s a trip to the shop and some coffee drinking/ people watching. Well cute boy watching actually. Hee hee.

Keeping your details safe with encryption

As part of ensuring your payments and details are kept secure, websites use encryption. But what is encryption and how does it work?

When you enter your details on an unsecure site without encryption, it’s as if you are sending a letter in a transparent envelope. Anyone accessing it can see inside and use your details as they wish. So, to make sure your personal information doesn’t become available to one and all, it is encrypted. That means it is written in a special code and only the person receiving the information is given the cipher to decode it. It’s the way secret messages have been sent through the centuries but now encryption is all done electronically within seconds.

There are different levels of encryption, but the most secure sites have 128-bit encryption – the highest commercially available. At the current speeds computers work at, it would take a hacker a trillion years to break into a session encrypted in this way. And that’s only if they have the time and the tools to do so!

Not only is the information encrypted but it’s also sent through a private and secure channel, making it even harder to access. All of this is indicated by a SSL Certificate, which comes up as a green bar or a padlock in your browser bar. Look out for it next time and you’ll know your online purchases and details are safe.