False Positives

During the last week rumors of Google developing an online-payment system (Google Wallet) to rival PayPal surfaced (First on Wall Street Journal then everywhere like:SlashDot, SearchBlog, and The Unofficial Google Weblog) and then had a offical confirmation, by Google CEO Eric Schmidt which was interesting for want wasn’t said:

“We do not intend to offer a person-to-person stored-value payments system.”
…
“The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google’s existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers.”
…
“We are building products in the area to solve new problems in ecommerce.”

Lots of wiggle room there.

Not be a P2P (person to person) PayPal system, but that still leaves B2B (Business to Business ) and C2B (Consumer to Business). Remember that Google runs a Advertising Solutions Business (AdWords and AdSense) and a shopping search tool Froogle.

So how about allowing consumers to to make on line purchases for its ~200,000 Froogle merchants? Currently Froogle’s revenue is from advertising on it’s site.

How about enabling AdWords advertisers to AdSense web publishers transactions (B2B)?

How about enabling consumers to buy from those AdWords advertisers? Advertising without allow them to buy (or do something) seems silly.

How about addressing the risks perceived by consumers in giving out credit card numbers to a company you have never heard of (in a place you have never heard of). Would you be more willing to buy on line if you had a Internet based debit card system (transfer a fix amount of value from your bank or credit card) from a trusted name (Google)? Would you be more likely to buy from unknown merchants (without giving your credit card number to) that have also been vetted by a trusted name (Google)? (with money held in escrow until received?). PayPal is to weird and small for many non ebay consumers or non ebay merchants. The banks and credit card companies have been doing a awful job of improving the risk perceptions of the public.

How about avoiding the “stored-value payments system” part and enable disposable credit card numbers (sometimes called “One-time use”) that back end to your choice of any credit cards/banks/other with Google providing google id verification to the Business, and the Google Wallet protocol universal button to consumers? (Maybe something like Jon Udell’s Password generator or the GreaseMonkey version I use)

How about doing interbank-based Interac Email Money Transfers (as done by CertaPay in Canada) which would lower the barrier of entry for consumers in a Internet debit scheme?

Could Google be thinking about the holy grail of ecommerce? : a Micro Content payment system, if the transaction costs are sub penny and the volume huge, becomes possible.

Another open question is: what will be the role of AJAX ( Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in this since Google is the most famous practitioner of all things AJAX?

I came across Payment News in the course of researching this.

Also it’s worth re-reading How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web for a big picture look.

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Via The Guardian, Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction…She likes us she really likes us….see why this is a big deal Margaret Atwood Vs SF.

I’m too chicken to face the “Wrath of Atwood”, and ask the “question”. Perhaps I’ll just quietly move “Handmaids Tale” and “Oryx and Crake” to the the SciFI section of our local library branch? (Ms. Atwood lives in the Annex neighbor of Toronto)

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Via Boing Boing, we have a combining of US census and Google Maps to make GCensus.com (the latest in a long line of G names), by Jimmy Palmer of DrmBlog.com and DrmBlog.org fame (“devoted to the discussion of Digital Rights Management (DRM)”), down to the level of Census Blocks extracted from 10 gigs of data from the 2000 United States Census.

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and Surprising Expiration Dates:

# Tuna, canned

Unopened: 1 year from purchase date
Opened: 3 to 4 days, not stored in can

# Brown sugar

Indefinite shelf life, stored in a moistureproof container in a cool, dry place.

# Batteries, alkaline

7 years

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Pulp Fiction… in 30 seconds with Bunnies by Angry Alien

More Bunnines : It’s a Wonderful Life …in 30 seconds with bunnies, Jaws and The Shining or The Exorcist and there is allways The Titanic or Alien. All 30 Seconds, all Bunnies. Boy those Bunnies get around!

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Long awaited, Charlie Stross’s Accelerando! is available for downloading (and mindloading) under a Creative Commons license, in various formats (use Bit Torrent to save his bandwidth). Then on July 1st buy the book and support a hard working and nice guy.

I’m currently - slowly - reading it, and doing a mental diff with the original short story “Lobsters” ,published in Asimovs in 2001. Noticed a couple updates.

I’ve previously related mentioned related stories in Jan ‘05 (and Cory’s book is also out very soon), Aug ‘04. Cory say’s Charlie writes like love-child of Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson and Hunter S Thompson. That’s a good thing!?

What is Accelerando! ? It’s the story of several generation of the Macx clan (and their cat) surfing the edge of the Singularity . think: Over-clocked, ADD’ed, slashdoted and future shocked.

Update:I’ve started reading it on my Palm Zire (71) using Plucker (an offline Web and e-book viewer for PalmOS? suggested by Charlie ) and I like it! (the story and the reading) Much better ( and easier on the eyes ) than doing so on my much older Palm II - which is the last time I tried it. and Plucker works like a charm too! After this I’m going to find some more (non-drm) reading.

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The Importance of RSS, and what Google might do next, and who will Google buy next?

Technorati, and del.icio.us would make sense, as value add aplha geek search engines, and then they need a web based rss news reader.

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Via Space.com, and following up Getting Space Exploration Right reveals a little more real information on Russian’s successor to the Soyuz, called Kliper (or sometimes “Clipper”?), which is way ahead of NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), with a full scale mockup.

European Space Agency (ESA) is on board to ensure it is adapted for launches from the European space port in Kourou, French Guiana, and are considering further funding the Kliper spacecraft during its meeting in December of 2005. Japan has also expressed interest in joining in on Kliper development.

Space.com has 2 photo’s of the Kliper from the Paris Air Show, but if you what last more here’s a gallery of over 100 images from March 16th 2005 on a Russian Language space new web site (any russian speakers who can tell translate some of this, or at least tell me when and where this happen?), and the Russian Space web site has a great wealth of details on the Kliper.

Question: Doesn’t that last row of seats seem completely upside down for launch? Do the seats orient differently for launch, and then swivel to this position for re-entry? Just asking. (that’s the parachute section above their heads).

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In the Sunday NYT’s Magazine there was a piece about A Neater Way to Make a Paintball Mess and the new Spyder Electra ACS paintball gun.

(image via NYT)

The craftsmanship behind the paintball gun was starling stunning. I also began to reflected on the Bruce Mau’s Massive Change show that recently finished at Toronto’s AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) and the section on military spin off’s and spin on’s (spin on’s are civilian use adapted for military use).

Which lend too two wonder if paintball weapons have non-lethal military or para-military applications like crowd control (they sting!) or to delivering skin contact drugs (they sting and make you drowsy or throw up) - no to mention they made me think of the guns in Logan’s Run.

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Via Tech Dirt : there’s new effort by the magazine industry in Europe to do a cueCat like system. Keywords sent with SMS (huge in Europe & Asian with teens and young adults ) get you a email with a url link to a special on line “animated” version of a magazine.

At least they are not spending a zillion dollars on OCR scanners, since most phone allow SMS already.

TechDirt links to a piece in TheFeature which highlights the big problem :

If you’re going to get people to respond to some sort of keyword on a billboard or in an advertisement, there needs to be either some sort of immediate gratification or a real, clearly stated value to the user in doing so. It needs to provide some sort of reward. Sending them a link to a free magazine hardly seems like a reward.

and concludes :

Connecting the analog and the digital world is a huge opportunity, but that doesn’t mean just any connection makes sense. The connections have to help the mobile user do something useful. This is a solution that is only designed to help the magazine industry. Of course, it won’t help anyone if no one uses it.

More details in Yahoo News about cueLess Norwegian publisher Fast Forward Media Group and Belgian technology company Allisblue.

Update : Two million CueCats at $0.30/each, and CueCats vs. Common Sense Marketing

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