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PayPal said it temporarily suspended certain transactions to India so it could respond to inquiries from the Indian regulators, specifically questions on whether personal payments constitute remittances into India. Over the weekend, PayPal suspended personal payments to and from India as well as transfers to local banks in India. In addition, merchants were unable to withdraw funds in Rupees to local Indian banks.
On Tuesday, the company published a blog post stating it was working with the regulators and PayPal's bank processing partners in India to get the issue resolved as quickly as it could. "We realize that this is causing considerable inconvenience to our customers and I want to reassure you that this is a top priority for the leadership at PayPal."
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Many small businesses that deal with PayPal do so because they don't see any viable alternatives. In some cases, however, I wonder if these companies are really aware of the risks they are taking.
Do a little digging, and you will discover that PayPal's customer service record is nothing short of horrific. The company is notorious for quietly jacking up its transaction fees, and a small army of Web sites are dedicated to publicizing complaints about the service.
PayPal's pat response to such complaints reminds me of Lily Tomlin's spoof of The Phone Company: "We don't care. We don't have to."
For small businesses that rely upon PayPal, however, this is a deadly serious business. Many complaints involve cases where PayPal has frozen seller accounts without warning or explanation. These incidents can take weeks or months to sort out — and if a cash-strapped business doesn't survive the appeals process, well, that's just too bad. -
Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being "mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights" even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems.
Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago.
Torvalds has owned a number of phones before, including Google's G1 device and 'one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones', but it took for Google to add multi-touch capabilities to the Nexus One before he finally broke down and bought one from the company's web store.
And he's loving it:
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The Washington region was paralyzed by a blizzard that dumped more than two feet of heavy snow on the area by late Saturday, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people, toppling trees and reducing many streets to pedestrian pathways.
Almost 218,000 homes and business were without power at the outages’ peak, and many had no heat midday Saturday at the height of the storm. By late last night, about 140,000 were still in the dark. Pepco advised customers to seek other lodging, saying it could take days to restore power to everyone. Some residents abandoned their cold, dark houses and checked into hotels. Others were trapped on side streets as snowplows concentrated on keeping major arteries clear. -
For a company that makes no products, Acacia Research (ACTG) spends a lot of time fighting over patents in court. Acacia has filed at least 337 patent-related lawsuits in its 18 years. To make money—sales are expected to rise to $68.8 million this year, from $34.8 million in 2006—Acacia acquires patents from inventors and then seeks fees from companies that it says infringe on those patents. Because Acacia licenses technologies it doesn’t design or distribute, it is known as a “nonpracticing entity.”
Executives at many tech companies—and their investors—call Acacia and its peers a different name: “patent trolls.”
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The Washington region was paralyzed by a blizzard that dumped more than two feet of heavy snow on the area by late Saturday, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people, toppling trees and reducing many streets to pedestrian pathways.
Almost 218,000 homes and business were without power at the outages’ peak, and many had no heat midday Saturday at the height of the storm. By late last night, about 140,000 were still in the dark. Pepco advised customers to seek other lodging, saying it could take days to restore power to everyone. Some residents abandoned their cold, dark houses and checked into hotels. Others were trapped on side streets as snowplows concentrated on keeping major arteries clear. -
For a company that makes no products, Acacia Research (ACTG) spends a lot of time fighting over patents in court. Acacia has filed at least 337 patent-related lawsuits in its 18 years. To make money—sales are expected to rise to $68.8 million this year, from $34.8 million in 2006—Acacia acquires patents from inventors and then seeks fees from companies that it says infringe on those patents. Because Acacia licenses technologies it doesn’t design or distribute, it is known as a “nonpracticing entity.”
Executives at many tech companies—and their investors—call Acacia and its peers a different name: “patent trolls.”
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We all know Marissa Mayer is a tech nerd turned fashionista, and it looks like her taste for designer clothes is rubbing off on the search giant.
But unlike the media or mobile industries, the fashion industry appears safe from Google. Google is selling “Google-inspired” scarves and other clothing to the public that were designed by emerging designers. Last year, designers who participated in a Vogue and Council of Fashion Designer program were asked to create a one-of-a-kind item inspired by Google in some way that reflected Google’s aura. Google transformed the finalists creations into iGoogle Artists themes but selected three of the designers to produce and sell their Google-inspired couture. -
Google on Thursday began offering administrators of its paid productivity applications the ability to manage iPhones, Nokia E series and Windows Mobile devices remotely, a feature that may appeal both to business users and consumers.
Google charges $50 per year for Google Apps Premier Edition accounts, which are designed for corporate needs. Google Apps Premier includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Video, and Google Groups, and comes with 25GB of e-mail storage per employee. The service is interoperable with BlackBerry and Microsoft Outlook and includes business controls like password strength checks, forced SSL connections, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA.
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Nice timing, Acacia Research Corporation. The mother of all patent trolls patent acquisition, development and licensing company, which was profiled in depth by BusinessWeek just two days ago, this morning announced that it has been awarded a total of $12.4 million in a patent infringement case against Yahoo.
On May 15th, 2009, a federal court jury decided that Yahoo's messenger program with IMVironments ¿ which revolves around interactive backgrounds that users can add to IM conversations ¿ infringes US Patent Number 6,205,432, filed by a trio of inventors and published back in 2001.
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It used to be that Twitter followers were worth something, or at least people thought they were worth something, which is the same thing. It was only about a year ago when Jason Calacanis was offering $250,000 to buy a spot on Twitter’s Suggested User List, which would have guaranteed him perhaps a million followers before Twitter ended up revamping the SUL to be less monolithic. He never got on the list, but if his offer would have come to roughly $0.25 per follower.
Today, you can “buy” followers on eBay for less than a penny each. Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20 (which comes to 0.4 penny/follower), $5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower). You are not actually buying followers outright (Twitter doesn’t allow people to transfer their followers), but rather services which “guarantee” getting your account up to the promised number of followers through “proven and safe methods.” -
Users of Apple Inc.’s popular iPhone may now be able to save money by making Internet-based phone calls over AT&T Inc.’s cellular network.
Apple this week allowed new versions of several Voice over Internet Protocol services to begin working on the iPhone, according to those services. Previously, iPhone users needed a wireless Internet connection to make such calls, but the change will allow calls from anywhere that receives a strong enough 3G cellular signal.
By using VoIP applications to sidestep the phone’s normal calling software, iPhone owners could avoid using up their monthly allocation of minutes from AT&T, potentially allowing them to choose cheaper plans.
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Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.
In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt. -
As an online retailer, Web forms are your bread and butter. There’s no use putting effort into designing great product pages and getting your customers to the checkout with bulging shopping carts only to have them bail out because your checkout process sucks.
All businesses lose a percentage of customers during the checkout process; what percentage you lose depends on how badly your forms perform. Here are several ill-conceived practices that create bad checkout experiences — and how to avoid them.
Who doesn't the love the Muppets? If you are fan (or used to be as a kid), you will want to watch this fun video. It is the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody, and I am sure Freddy Mercury would be proud! Happy Thanksgiving everyone. 🙂
Life, business, politics, competition, family… These things can all be challenging at times. Stress in inevitable. Over the years, I have determined that the most valuable tool you can acquire for managing these challenges is "perspective" or "context".
When you think about the big picture and put your daily stresses into a proper context or perspective, you often realize how minor the bumps are. In the short run, challenges can seem huge and the desire for quick fixes is strong. I like to call this the "chase the shiny object" syndrome. For organizations, "chase the shiny object" syndrome leads to inevitable failure.
In the long run, most challenges are manageable. By staying focused on the big picture and by continuing to put one foot in front of the other, you can make amazing progress that compounds on itself to create success. Intuitively, we all know this, but it is often hard to keep that state of mind when you are in the weeds and when the pressure is on for instant success.
As a leader in your organization, it is always important to keep folks focused on the big picture… to give your team perspective and context on what is going on around them. Create a roadmap or plan. Concentrate on execution. Put one foot in front of the other over and over again. One morning months later, the team will wake up and be pleasantly shocked to see how far they have traveled and how much they have accomplished.
If you want the ultimate perspective, watch this video. It is awe inspiring to me, and it certainly puts our daily, personal challenges into a much bigger picture. 🙂