socmoth

There are two good reasons Square doesn't do this that I can think of off the top of my head.

First, CNP vs CP card processing rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction

Every credit card has the CC number encoded in to the back of the card, but in addition to that, it has a couple bytes of extra information. That extra information qualifies the merchant for a lower processing rate if they SWIPE the card. That means, when you take a picture, you are paying closer to 3.5% instead of 2.75% for every transaction. (rates quoted are square's cp vs cnp rates)

Some merchants are extremely sensitive to this, other aren't. The larger a merchant is, the more likely they are going to care. On the other hand, no merchant wants to lose a sale, 3.5% of a sale is still better than 100% of a lost sale.

The other reason is based on UX. It feels really weird to have someone take a picture of your credit card using their cell phone. The apps that use this technology might be doing anything with that image.

Otoh, more people should take credit cards!

(edit: Sidenote, Square considered doing this before the swiper was invented, during the very first month or so. Doesn't mean it is a bad idea, just that Square moved away from it in favor of a swiper.)

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257

and that was after launch. pre-launch speculation about how it isn't worth buying because of some hypothesized reason are mostly for fun!

basically, he gets things done and makes money, even though he is using old tech. he isn't buzz worthly, but he is successful in his own way.

for what it is worth, i really like working with people with this attitude. (except the next step is often looking for bigger markets)

Otherwise, looks nice.

is the translation off or is this really what they said?

http://www.chahal.com/

isdeluxe is very tumblr-esque project of mine.

so yes, i made both and isdeluxe is 'simple' blogging. but it is unlikely that socialmoth.com will always point to isdeluxe

yes and no :)

flickr was not the first sharing photos website by far. youtube wasn't the first video online. and your example, yahoo and google. yahoo was an online list of interesting webpages, hand edited. google was another search engine.

yes yahoo grew up to be a portal, and google showed us search means great ads. but they hardly did it in three months.

[edit]

oh yeah, and yahoo is burning out. and google is still only making money in one way (ok plus search appliance last i heard).

i also found dwdiff, which you may like because it is very similar and very unixy http://www.linux.com/feature/114176

i don't think you can do it any longer, but there are still plenty of posts on the internet where people talk about it.

vs movable type

ada, for me, was like a teacher who taught the entire class at the speed of the slowest student. it tries to prevent you from doing anything marginally likely to cause a bug, at the expense of speed or creativity. it assumes the worst in a programmer. good programmers are forced to program simply so that future generations of bad programmers can read their code.

(i'm very glad to never touch it again)

http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/introd...

edit: 7pts * 889M shares, what is a man worth?

i'd link you, but i'm lazy

Of course, when i started working at home again, they were still asking me "how's your office doing?" As if, that is where I kept all my work, in folders, at an office, with desks.

Of course you could just say, we just opened an office downtown, and people will get excited for you.

There was a country resort down the street which I used to bike to and go swimming in their gigantic swimming pool. I was allowed to bike everywhere in the city by myself.

The food was insanely fresh having been killed and cooked hours before you ate it.

We always had water, and called home long distance pretty regularly. When my brother broke his arm, he had a local doctor in the hospital put a cast on it, and then saw it off.

I may have been too small to experience the corruption first hand, but everything seemed fine to me.