As a developer and entrepreneur I have extensive experience with the Paypal API and I couldn't agree more with the words of Michael Arrington in his post about the closure of Edgeio and the future of the TC Job board.

However I can go much further, not only is their API total crap but their support is the worst support I have ever come across in the tech sector.

To give you an example, I have a small problem with the language a user is presented with when he arrives at Paypal after clicking on a buy now, on Safari the user gets Paypal French, on Firefox is presented in English.

Obviously something is a miss so I contact their support on 2007-10-13 asking for an explication, no less than one month passes and on 2007-11-16 I receive this nonsense reply:

"Thank you for contacting PayPal by email. We apologise for the delay in responding to you.

We value your business and we want to address all your questions in a timely fashion. If you still have a matter outstanding, please either re-send your email or, if you would prefer to speak with a PayPal representative, contact us at 0870 730 1895".

"No Shit" that was it no help. So immediately I wrote again explaining the problem yet again, then 3 weeks pass and on the 2007-12-03 I receive the following reply:

"Upon reviewing your account, I can confirm that if you have any difficulty
in integrating PayPal on your website, open a Merchant Technical Support
ticket following the steps below:

Click on the following link: https://www.paypal.fr/st
Click on the 'Poser une question' tab.
Fill in the form and all the required fields.

Please let me know if you need further assistance."

What a lot of nonsense. I would have expected that a competent company that looks after our money, could have (at least) simply forwarded the question to a real tech support person who was in the 'right' department. Alas instead they like to wait a month then 'apologise' for their inconvenience yet again. This is total bullshit. If you display total incompetence with regards support, god only knows how in hell we can trust them to look after our money?

There are many issues with the Paypal API, I don't want to list them all here as embarrassing as they are, for fear of boring the hell out my readers, however, having a language selection option on the landing pages would probably be a good idea Tech support guys!

Edit: after popular demand I will elaborate on the other little issues that wind me up with the Paypal API.

OK,

1) First thing is their sandbox, where you can test their api (before you go live), you are forced to open an account with an email address like you are a paypal customer, with a unique password. It stores the passes, and will not allow already registered paypal accounts/emails, so you have to have a few real emails to get going, not to mention waste 20 minutes setting up the account. God forbid you ever forget the user and pass as you will find yourself at it all again with yet another email account. Advice REMOVE THAT.

2) In the sand box you get like 100 pound to spend before you have to recharge the credit card? WTF, this process does not work (for me), hence you end up either setting up another account or fathing about yet further to figure it out. Advice REMOVE THAT.

3) In the sand box you cannot check the AUTO RETURN to merchant function, this is when your shopper has paid for their goods you want them auto returned back to the shop to update the db with their sale details. If it's virtual goods they need it now, not when you get back online. So how do you test it really? This is further aggravated by the fact that the real API does not let you dynamically set up a return path (URL) when in the AUTO RETURN to merchant mode. Further the problem with the AUTO RETURN function is that you can only set one URL, (ideally I would like to set this return path dynamically like you can when not using the AUTO RETURN function. Still further aggravated is that the IPN data is not sent in the same format on AUTO RETURN, so you have to set up yet more complicated systems to get the same data.

4) Don't even bother trying to work out their IPN system it's a complete and utter mess. There is a free 'third party' PHP class called Paypal.class that actually makes the whole process workable. You don't need spend 2 days working out how to configure their variables as this class sets it all up and in a n hour you can be in business. ADVICE, link to that PHP class from Paypal!

5) They claim that you can select the language you want the customer presented with, (this don't work) in the preferences, however, I have a property related site, aimed at France and English speaking, if you present it in any one language kiss goodbye to others. STRONG ADVICE, put a language selector on the merchant landing pages (like you do on the homepage).

Thats it for now, but as you can see they are not small issues, and really are basic to the success of any business incorporating and servicing their clients.

Both of these models have falling out of favor with God. God has accused everyone involved with paid links of intentionally influencing 'their' SERPs and being Blackhats. Thus all participating sites have seen massive PR attacks, many sites loosing all of their PR (albeit not their traffic which was not the point in the first place). However, with no PR left to trade, paid link revenue no longer makes sense and evidently many sellers are looking elsewhere to make revenue while persistent link buyers are moving onto pastures new. So where does this ultimately leave TLA and PPP?

TLA have now changed their system to make it harder for God to see in their system who is selling links, however this is not fail-safe and most of the time, with a bit of common sense one can normally work out the url of the site (from the site descriptions). Maybe more interestingly the TLA format allows 2 types of links, site-wide links (which can certainly trigger flags) and homepage links. This is their standard offer and maybe their biggest weakness.

Homepage links offer the buyers the biggest bank for their buck but are also the easiest for algorithms to spot as paid links. Come on, who in the real world puts outbound links on the homepage of their commercial enterprises? These links while being the most valuable are also the easiest for robots to flag as suspected paid links, and as such scream unnatural link.

PPP on the other hand has done a lot more dancing recently, not only relaunching under a new trade-mark, with a complicated set of new offerings but have also developed their own new ranking system (which really couldn't have come at a better time) that they must have had in development for months prior to Gods wobble (displaying a certain degree of foresight).

PPP links are naturally placed within articles, leaving the only way for robots to detect them via giveaways such as the 'sponsored post' tag (which PPP were bullied into incorporating by the rest of the blogsphere). If they (PPP) relaxed the telltale giveaways their bloggers would undoubtedly be undetectable! Leaving the only question being 'who would they rather please, their advertisers and bloggers', or the blogsphere that has wished them Hell long ago and even made mock up PPP dolls that they stick pins into during their nightly ritual worship....

Given the rate at which PPP must be burning through their 3 million in VC cash, and I suspect they are still a long way from making it into the black, they will have to pull out of the magic hat some rather special tricks if they are to make it to a point where they can tread water on their own. But For some strange reason I wouldn't give up on them yet. Ted is a marketeer and I suspect there are many more tricks he will try and pull off before his day comes.

Given that the TLA model is blatantly used to manipulate the SERPs, and the power of God will not be questioned my gut feeling is that TLA will be the first to meet the wrath of God, and God only knows what thereafter... But the really interesting question is - what will fill the place of these 2 'blackhats' if they do wither? You can mark my words, there are many watching closely looking to pick up where they might leave off.

"Robert X. Cringely" whoever he is, has been promising the second season of NerdTV for nearly 2 years now. Yet he still claims it's coming soon... WTF. He has mentioned technological difficulties as reasons (which don't stack up) bandwidth limitations, codecs etc. (ever heard of Google Video and Flash?) though none of these reasons are serious.

The real cause is that the producers of NerdTV haven't yet found a way to capitalize on it (though there is a DVD on sale of season one) --- anyone know any big blogs out there in the tech sector, who are turning away ad revenue yet who are in desperate need of good content?. Yet money aside, somethings should be done just for the hell of it, and this is one of those things.

The first season of NerdTV was full of geeks who had classic stories to tell, these were not your average startup sales pitches which you will often see on the likes of Robert Scoble's 'show' but rather icons of the industry that you had most likely never heard off, but who made silly little widgets like the mouse for example.

These were great shows, entertaining (in a really nerdy way) and with content that had traction (i.e. not 2 second dribble that we are mostly bombarded with). It was really a tough choice to pick one of the shows to embed here for you to get a taste, but the whole list can be found Here.

This example is for all the mac lovers out there and will hold special appeal. Though there really is something for every nerd!

The second season 'SuperNerds' claims to be interviewing some of the industries top players, Jobs, Gates, et al. So where the heck is it? Someone who has cash and an active audience in the tech sector (I won't mention TC again, I really don't care anymore) should put some of their advertising bucks back into the industry and sponsor the season 2. Blimey if I was flush and had the audience I'd throw cash at it for the geek kudos alone.

Anyone who want's to see the second series should make their voice heard.!

conmment here

Where the heck is NerdTV season 2?:

Do you want season 2 now and free with sponsors? (like TC cough*cough)

Would you pay to watch season 2?

This is an open letter to Techcrunch in a last-ditch attempt to bring some sanity back to the main blog in the startup sector!  

Duncan you wanted great new startups to write about, but I find your filtration process a little screwed up. TC writers are much more likely to feature a company that's been funded (albeit) with no real chance of getting into the black, than a little application that (maybe also) has no way of making money itself, the only difference is the former has funding and the latter has evidently more creativity and worked allot harder to get a final product (challenged by having hardly any resources). Either that or you cover clones, and tittle-tattle around the likes of FaceBook et al.

Many of your readers are all little guys (mostly I presume also developing startups) that admire you and desperately need some recognition for their own efforts, even if they don't get rich - that someone like TC comes along and says good effort guys, that's probably enough to keep them in beer and good spirits for another year.

'Baby It is it's cold out there', there are millions of wannabe startups (99% of which will get little if any rewards for their efforts). Most of whom plod on with a shoe string budget and hope that they will make the grade or at least get some kudos for their efforts which is sometimes worth more to them than money (maybe I'm talking about myself here?).

However, I see an increasing number of negative comments about the quality of the editorial coverage on TC and given the increasing number of readers you have, your feedback figures (I.e. comments per post) are dwindling just as you readership figures are doubling... Odd that!

I understand you're probably sick to death of the general public by now (I would be) for all their constant attacks. Alas for all the flack you take I cannot help thinking you would do better if you all came back down to the lower (innovative) levels and expanded the TC format and terrain with new sections and features to cover the ground floors.

My advice to Techcrunch is as follows.

Solution No.1 Best new startup application... A new section with daily submissions (where your devotees would submit their little startups / applications) these (after review) would all be published, allowing a small description (150 words say), a link (no-follow), and a picture. Then the readers (who are bothered) vote them up or down. The top 1-2-3 (whatever) would be featured the next day by a staff writer on the TC main-stage. The object would not be to find the next big money maker, but rather an exercise to spread some encouragement back into the many many players who add so much innovation and receive so little in return.

Solution No.2 Best news story of the day from a guest writer... Allow guest writers more often, (many of your readers would like to publish stories occasionally). Have a similar section to above where guest writers could submit articles for inclusion and after review you could publish them allowing your readers to vote them up or down, the top 1-2-3 (whatever) would be featured the next day on the TC main-stage. To illustrate the power of this, we only need look back to the 'how to go viral post from a guest writer' and the followup, the huge response both articles received in the comments and ensuing debate it started, the likely increase in traffic that article alone brought in for your sponsors, all undoubtedly added value to TC and the community as a whole.

Solution No.3 Allow ratings on every article... Add a rate this story box on every article published and let the readers vote / filter out bad writers, you will be able to aggregate the data and extrapolate the bad writers and stories more clearly. Publishing the aggregated data live would also put the pressure on and make the game more interesting. Opening up new positions when necessary and holding your contributors to account for the quality of their articles.

I think these ideas would bring to Techcrunch much needed new content and give your loyal readers hope and enthusiasm to continue to partake. Thus allowing Techcrunch to develop into a real WEB2.0 company and help avoid the many pitfalls WEB1.0 has already succombed too.

Comment on this story here

There is a backlash circulating against all the spammy new FB applications that are being released. There are over 200 groups (I stopped counting after that) specifically dedicated to campaigning that FB somehow limit the number of spammy requests people receive from these so-called ‘applications’.

Do a search ‘when its working’ for ‘applications’ in groups and take a look at the groups that come up, the first 200 results are large groups against FB apps.

It's VERY clear that there is a LARGE group of FB users who are sick to death with the apps themselves and their spammy requests.

Considering applications are the new Viagra for the internet and Open Social is all the rave, it might just turn out that it’s not that ’social’ after all to have the whole world making apps…

Some are estimating that there is a large percentage of people turning away from FB, as they also did from Myspace as they transformed into Myspam.

What does this mean for Open Social and FB? Well Google are in a win win situation, as it if works they win and if it fails they loose nothing, but the same is not so true for FB. They could quickly degrade into the latest Myspam and in doing so will open the door for the next social 'dating' network!

So far I have only seen a few apps that are worth adding, the cities I've been one and the sexy-girls one. Other than that I think most are tripe. Don't get me wrong, there is a market to be had here, but better filtering is in order to protect users against some of these join this app request. Many apps are building unique invite all your friends widgets that don't allow you to opt them out. This alone should be banned.

There are two other aspects that need addressing. Many apps require you to join them before you get a glance as to what they do or are about, it should be made mandatory that people can see what an app does before being forced to join (this only requires the removal of 2 lines of code).

Also many apps once you join, they stuff their shit into your profile pages, this should require a separate request option that has to be accepted before they spam your profile. However, there is currently an oversight in the FB API for if you want to offer a member the option of placing the app into their profile, there is no way in the core code that you can check if it has been added, thus apps have no way of knowing if you can remove that option from their sight. Small points but all these factors would make the terrain less spammy and increase loyalty to the whole.

comment here

Using video podcasts to sell real estate has just got interesting.

According to the NY Times particuliers (private sellers) using video podcasts

is becoming all the rage in Europe, to sell real estate.

Online companies such as particulier a particulier A Place in The Sun are offering private sellers their online facility to produce high quality videos of their properties then feature them to a global audience.

The technology is as you'd expect state of the art and they say over 100k GBP has been invested so far in the back end technology.

Here is a sample of one of the real estate videos: