If PayPal want to hold your money, they can, and they will. A freeze on your account means you absolutely cannot get at your own money, and even if you eventually do, it will only be after a hefty delay and in staggered percentages. Can a bank do this to you? No, they can’t. So why should PayPal?

I dont think anyone willingly likes using Paypal.

The post Paypal Screws More People Over appeared first on The M Blog.

I’m often asked if I’ve lost touch with a lot of friends and family since I’ve left the internet.

“Not really,” I say. I was never much of a “Facebook guy,” I explain, and I talk to my mom on the phone enough to keep up.

But now that I think about it, I wasn’t a “Facebook guy” because I found it artificial, or fake, or lame. I just wasn’t very good at it. I had hundred or so IRL friends on Facebook, but thousands of Twitter followers. I liked my Twitter “alt” better because it had better stats. I’m better at saying something funny on Twitter five times a day than taking the time to wish my sister-in-law happy birthday, as if I care more about a few retweets than bonding with the mother of my adorable niece and nephew. I’m better at retweeting @Horse_ebooks than pressing the Like button on a friend’s blog post because @Horse_ebooks is funnier than my friend’s blog post, and I want people to think I have great taste. Facebook is a grind to me, and “who has the time?” I tweet to my like-minded accomplices.

His “offline” column is one of the best online

The post Paul Miller on the Facebook “Grind” appeared first on The M Blog.

I think the logo is fantastic. It’s clear, representative of the work that they do, products that they make. It has hints of this branding concept, that was created a few months ago, which I think is great news. It shows us as consumers that they are listening. Each colour signals a section of their vompant. Blue for Windows, Red for Office, Green for Xbox, nd presumable Yellow for Mobile

Maybe I’m just impatient though, but I think Microsoft could go a step further, by unifying the logos, like below

The post Microsoft Has a New Logo appeared first on The M Blog.

Back in 2007-08, Twitter wasn’t the only microblogging service around. In fact, the market was diluted with alternatives. You had Pownce, another acquired company founded by Kevin Rose, which just didn’t gain traction as fast as Twitter did. You had Jaiku, the service that nailed threaded conversations, and was developed by Google. You had integrated functionality built into sites like Bebo.

The thing about it is, Twitter was there for the taking in 2008. Their service was intermittent, it wasn’t reaching unanimous popularity yet, and its functionality paled in comparison to some of it’s then-competitors. There were no photo upload features. Functionality was created based on user habits, such as the @reply or the #hashtag. From the outside looking in, Twitter was not organised.

But it’s still here. And its big, with it being the 3rd largest social network in the world. You could say that Twitter’s success was because of the poor competition, but it was still competition, and they still won. They got the celebrities, they got the service running for more than 24 hours at a time, and now it’s one of the first things people check and update when the wake up in the mornings.

So for app.net, they have a huge task ahead of them. They have the tech audience on a fencepost, but these are people who would sign up for anything new, shiny and exclusive given the chance. It will be much more difficult to persuade the non-techy Twitter user to switch allegiances.

Even the name is poor in comparson to Twitter. Twitter is a friendly, approachable brand and even from the name, you kind of guess what the service is for. But app.net? It sounds almost robotic, it says nothing about the service and what it does, and again, it will not appeal to people who aren’t immersed in technology.

Personally, my microblogging history is all on Twitter. I have a set of people that I follow, that follow me, and 27,000 tweets with my signature on them. That 4 years of my tweeting time wasted if I were to move to app.net. I think i’ll just stick to tweeting rather than apping.

The post App.net Problems appeared first on The M Blog.

Our online accounts and presences are holding more pieces of confidental information and it seems that the current mechanisms in place are not sufficient.

Google has a good idea. They’re calling it “Two-Factor Authentication”, and it works by using an ultra-personal device that you have on you, your mobile phone. In addition to logging into Google using your email and password, you are then sent via text or a phone call, a unique 6 character code, which lets you login.  Nearly everyone in the world has a phone with them, with the ability to send receive phone calls and texts (at the very minimum).

It’s a good idea, in theory. From my experience however, things arent so bright. Firstly, Google’s text service didnt send me any code, so I had to use the phone method instead (at least for the time being). Listening to a phonecall for 20 seconds before I’m allowed to login does not align with my idea of a hassle free login.

Secondly, Google have understandable issues with integrating this service with 3rd-party apps. For this, Google allow users to generate a one-time application-specific password for that specific application. For me, who has at least 30+ apps, its not ideal, but hopefully this is just a stop gap.

Hopefully the whole notion of 2-step authentication is just a stop gap. Its a step in the right direction, but with our online presences holding more personal information and our mobile devices getting smarter, this needs to be looked at with more consideration.

The post Authentication Woes appeared first on The M Blog.

So, what will be posted here? It’s the content is what excites me most. It can be about almost anything I want. It can be whatever length I want. It’s a place for me to share things I find interesting, and things I think people who follow me would also find interesting. It could be a link to an article I liked, an opinion on a current event…. or even sports!

It’s a tumblog without the Tumblr. Because I’m strange in that I like to know that when my site is down, it’s more than likely my own fault. I also think the Tumblr’s templating system is underpowered and overcomplicated.

It also gives me a chance to test some new apps. I’m using Typecast for most of the design, and I love it. It allows me to prototype font stacks from different font services like Typekit in realtime and on the web. I would like to see them add a few features such as list styling, but for the most part, it’s perfect for what I needed.

The post A New Home appeared first on The M Blog.

I havent enjoyed opening Photoshop in years, but I’ve been actively trying to avoid it on my machine for the past few days. While I understand that Retina Displays aren’t all that popular (yet!), Adobe and others need to get this ready, because there is no doubt in my mind that these displays are going to be in every device with a display in less that 5 years.

A solution

Step in RetinaMacApps.com, a handy resource for people like me who venture into using the latest technology with a blindfold on. Could Adobe make a few entries on this site soon? I hope so…

The post Site for Retina-ready Mac Apps appeared first on The M Blog.

The biggest threat to Apple’s success is not the company with the most innovative devices and OS (arguably, still Microsoft); it’s the one with the most powerful, successful suite of online services—Google.

In this context, the Mac’s continued independence of character seems even more assured. Apple’s online platform is the unifying force in its product line, not any one OS. Think of Mountain Lion as the best desktop iCloud client Apple knows how to make.

No longer is your computer the central hub of your digital world. Mountain Lion embraces that thought process.

The post John Siracusa on Mountain Lion appeared first on The M Blog.

Not many people that know me online are aware that I have Cerebral Palsy, an impairment which gives me limited ability in my left hand and leg. It’s not totally dibilitating but it does make some thing straining. Walking is fine apart from a limp, and I can type (albeit slowly) with two hands, and I am for the most part, fully independent. Accomplishing some tasks just require an extra bit of creativeness. Up until 4 years ago, what I thought what was going to be most challenging was to find a job.

At the end of 4th Year in secondary school, I had my only meeting with my Guidance Counsellor, and he asked me if I had a career path in mind. I honestly didn’t know what to say. I had to think of something that a) I could do without assistance and b) something I enjoyed doing.

I originally thought about being a photographer – which I now know to be the del facto career path for anyone who literally has no clue (sorry to the professional photographers reading this). I also thought of game progammer/tester and black hat hacker during this brainstorming session with myself and counsellor, but none of those really stood out to me.

I have always been a techie sort of person. I first had access to computer at age 6, a Dell running Windows 3.1 (shudder), which required me to learn command prompt to play the games. Perhaps it was due to the fact I didnt get a steady internet connection until 2006, but I didnt even consider the web before that.  HTML and CSS were these things, which, while cool, were totally above my head. And PHP? Dont even start…

It seemed insumountable at the time that I could become anything more than an admirer of the web and the people who create for it. But I kept at it for the next two years, perhaps to the detriment of my actual schooling and official state-appointed examinations.

By the end of school, I had become relatively proficient in HTML and CSS, but I didn’t know or believe I could still, excuse the term, “make it” as a designer on the web. So I did the next thing that people who aren’t totally sure of what to do : Creative Multimedia.

Perhaps thats harsh, but its what I thought. And I was wrong. My four years in college in LIT Clonmel have been great. I have met some truly great people in different fields, become exposed to different and upcoming areas of multimedia I wouldnt have known or engaged in otherwise. I also became certain that what I was doing on the web was something I could do, and do it well.

That self belief is tied in with helping others. I realy do love helping people. And to help people in this way, assisting people in get their word out – the reason for the entire web in the first place – is genuinely great.

Apart from this post, I don’t disclose my “disability” online to people, mainly because it doesnt affect me. My work speaks for itself. It doesnt change what I do. If anything its helped me improve.

Because of it, when doing normal tasks, it may take up to twice the amount of time to complete a task, mostly due to the thought process behind doing something alternatively from everyone else. But when you keep learning to think about how to do certain things a different way, it becomes habitual.

It this “think-outside-the-box” innovation is what has made me good at what I do, and the reason as to why I make things online.

The post Why I Design appeared first on The M Blog.