macdavid pro

Kevin Rose gave a review of an awesome piece of technology by Square that allows credit & debit card swipe payments. Both the average person and businesses can take advantage of this technology. Below are some really interesting screenshots and a list of features, followed by Kevin Rose’s video on the product.

Follow Kevin and Square on Twitter.

Swipe

Photo verification

The buyer can sign his or her name with one finger. I imagine that would seem a little awkward at first. I do think a stylus does work on an iPhone.

Get a digital receipt via email. But if by chance you don’t receive it you can retrieve it on squareup.com.

In general this is really neat!

Related Links
PaulStamatiou.com on Blippy (“What are you friends buying?”)

I’m currently in a mad rush to finish reading an advance copy of a book due out in November 2009 by Darren Barefoot Julie Szabo. This book is a phenomenal read and is titled “Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”. Before I go on, I just want to put it out there that I was thrown by the title at first. In other words, I was confused about the authors meaning until I continued reading the rest of the title, “A Social Media Marketing Handbook” after which I grabbed my gut and had a big chuckle to myself as continued reading the press release. Just thought I’d share that little anecdote.

Without doing a direct quote from the book, there is a part that addresses honesty and authenticity on the internet through social media, be it via a blog, YouTube, Twitter, etc. The example used in the book was the lonelygirl15 marketing scheme that was, to my recollection, both lauded and looked down upon (Read this and this as examples). On the one hand it was incredibly cool that this so-called video blogger named “Bree” (16 years old) also known as lonelygirl15 on YouTube, was actually a 19-year old actress–which was astoundingly clever. But on the other hand, this reveal was bittersweet in that it immediately alienated the fans and betrayed the cool-factor of how transparent Bree was and the authenticity of what she talked about in her videos.

The good part of that “experiment” is that it served as a litmus test if you will, for just how people want use the internet and the immensely strong resolve for how people want to connect with others online. The closeness of getting to learn about a person who seemed to have no reason to lie about what she shared was betrayed. Fans were inadvertently made the butt of what effectively came across as a viral marketing trick. The feeling of connectedness with Bree and her honesty was amazing and it made you feel like you (the viewer and fan) were friends with a real person. While the medium (the internet) is virtual the desire to connect with real people real, and the eventual relationships that people do build via the many tools on the internet, (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Viddler, Blogger, etc) are also real–NEVER forget this! (As an aside, other iterations of this marketing scheme were used, but in a way that wasn’t alienating by virtue of the kind of content that was being marketed–in this case a film along the lines of the shaky Blair Witch camera film style. For example, the video clips that were posted to the internet and passed off as if they were real to market the film “Cloverfield”, by my standards, was a sheer genius means of getting the film known and built a strong following before it’s release. Learn more… with J.J.’s Viral ‘Clovefield’ Diary)

A real, genuine, and positive testament to what kind of community could have continued around lonelygirl15 before news broke of it’s falsehood, were she blond, 25 and an even more active video blogger, is the very real, Justine Ezarik of ijustine.com. She has a huge following–primarily young females–and most of what she does is in real time, in that she shoots a lot of video and posts it to the web relatively close to the time she shot it. She essentially streams a portion of her life on the internet, interacts with her fans, or friends as she puts it, via different social networking sites, and even features them in her own mini web show, “Ask iJ“. The majority of the tools that she uses are free social networks that she uses to share and connect. More importantly, I haven confirmed whether she did this on purpose or it just happened this way, but all the internet tools that she uses and what she does with them now serve as her calling card or business card as far as her personal Brand “iJustine” is concerned. Finally, all of this is done in a positive way that is honest, authentic and non-alienating to her fans and business partners, while never compromising her own privacy and safety.

Authenticity goes a long, long way and that is what continues to amaze me so much about this present phase in our age of the internet.

In closing, I’ll give a more thorough review once I’ve gotten through this book.

‘Til then, stay synced!

I received a copy of Wallace Wang’s new book “My New Mac: Snow Leopard Edition”. I’ve gone through this book and it is clearly geared towards new Mac users and switchers. It allows one to scan a detailed list of helpful topics for a quick-fire means to finding answers for your needs, fast.

Additionally, it’s extremely thorough and easy to follow in terms of content format and layout of topics.

There are 5 parts to the book as a whole:

• Part 1: Basic Training
• Part 2: Making Life Easier with Shortcuts
• Part 3: Putting Your Macintosh to Work
• Part 4: Touching the World Through the Internet
• Part 5: Mainting Your Macintosh

Then underneath each part are a number of easy step-by-step projects for a total of 52 projects (see below).

Basic Table of Contents (excerpt)

Introduction

PART I: Basic Training
1. Turning Your Macintosh On and Off Manually or Automatically
2. Learning to Use the Mouse
3. Choosing Commands on the Menu Bar
4. Loading Programs and Files from the Dock
5. Customizing the Dock
6. Manipulating Windows
7. Navigating Through Folders with the Finder
8. Managing and Viewing Your Files and Folder
9. Conserving Energy While Using Your Macintosh

PART II: Making Life Easier with Shortcuts
10. Working Faster with Shortcut Commands
11. Learning to Drag and Drop
12. Controlling Your Macintosh with Hot Corners
13. Finding Files Fast
14. Organizing Files and Folders by Color and Weird Words
15. Putting Information at your Fingertips with Dashboard
16. Giving a Macintosh Multiple Personalities with User Accounts
17. Slapping Parental Controls on your Kids
18. Making Your Mac Easier to See, Hear, and Control

Believe it or not the author admittedly states that this book does not cover the gamut of topics for learning about your Mac--and it shouldn't. But believe me when I say that there is more than enough help provided in this book to cover the basics.

Two more things I want to mention are the "Additional Ideas for... *topic goes here*" section. Under this section within each chapter it provides additional fix options, web links, and suggested reads. Secondly, if you look carefully at the image of the front cover (above), you might be able to notice that the smiling Mac is made of paper. In other words, at the back of the book it shows you how to make a paper Mac. I highly recommend this book!

I give it 5 out of 5 M’s! lol
(M stands for “MacDavid”)

Stay synced!

Publication Info:
My New Mac Snow Leopard Edition
$29.95 USD
ISBN: 978-1-59327-209-8
Publisher: No Starch Press – www.nostarch.com

Update: Yesterday, I apparently really upset a die hard techhead that obviously is a big fan of the Palm Pre. I apparently angered him with my remark that the Palm Pre is an iClone. So I revised this post, not because he got angry, but to clarify and stand by my personal opinion, based on what I want out of a touchscreen, smartphone. I still think it’s the very best iClone, that’s close to standing on equal footing with the iPhone. It’s in the #2 spot in my book. I imagine I can’t just say this without stating my reasons so..

Detailed reasons why I would stick with my iPhone (not that I wouldn’t):

• Palm Pre is with Sprint. I don’t want Sprint.
• The tactile keyboard is awesome, but too small and it hurts my fingernails.
• The screen is too small.
• I formerly and doubly didn’t like the fact that it didn’t sync with a Mac, but this has recently changed due to markspace.com’s program Missing Sync. (Read the post above this one.)
• I’m just happy with what I’ve got. Why buy something you don’t need. And on that note…
• It does a lot of what the iPhone already does for me very well.

On that last bullet point:
(That’s not to say that it doesn’t do some things better than an iPhone. For one it’s mucho, mucho better at multitasking than an iPhone by leaps and bounds in my honest opinion, and it’s cloud computing abilities (like what Mobile Me does for you Contact and Calendaring) allows you to sync with your already existing web services like Google contacts and calender, Facebook and what not. Read more about this at popsci.com and here. Form your own opinion.)

But in general, I’ve never seen someone get so passionately upset about tech. I thought talking about this stuff was supposed to be fun. Just sayin’.

And scene. lol

Revised Post

I very briefly spoke with Ramsey Mohsen on Facebook, asking for his opinion on the Palm Pre after he visited his local Sprint.

I have been watching, listening and waiting to see what some of the results would be after the Palm Pre launched. So, as a die hard Apple iPhone user (not really), I am giving my personal opinion at long last. In all honesty, I am kind of disappointed with the Palm Pre because I thought it was actually going to bring some ground-breaking feature(s) that would have it stand as a competitor that exceeds the iPhone. Instead, it’s just the very best iClone out there–just giving credit where credit is due. Don’t get me wrong, it does have one particular feature that comes to my mind right now, that I wish the iPhone could do. It allows multiple apps to run in the background. However, with the push notification added in the 3.0 software update, I’m happy with my iPhone.

The Palm Pre is an iClone and yet veeeeery different in it’s own right. But for now I think that was implied in Apple’s first iPhone 3G ad back in 2008–the one device that’s better than an iPhone, is a better iPhone–is true. …so far. The Palm Pre may eventually come out one top. And when and if it does, it’ll be a cool thing to have happened.