Taking credit card payments via the Internet

It all started when one of my clients wanted to pay me with a credit card. It is odd that I have been in business for 18 years and this is the first time that I have been paid in this way. It is doubly ironic in that I used to teach classes on eCommerce back in the early days of the Web and hadn't ever gotten around to getting a merchant account, which is what you need to take credit card payments.

If you want to accept credit cards, you enter a brave new world where there is an entire collection of jargon to use your secret decoder ring. For example, "discount rate" is the fee that the card issuer (like American Express or Visa) charges you per transaction. Typically these are anywhere from one to four percent, depending on a series of circumstances. Then there is the "virtual terminal" which is a series of Web-based services that allow you to enter the credit card number in your browser and have the transaction completed online. These replace the typical credit card swipe machines that you see in every retail shop.

Since my client wanted to use their American Express card, my first stop was to try my business bank, Bank of America, and see what they could offer me. Online had limited information but I tried the 800 number and got nowhere fast. They suggested that I talk to Amex and see what they could do for me. Within about 30 minutes I was setup with an Amex merchant ID and could start accepting their card via a telephone response number. The issue was that the transactions would take some time to clear and actually end up in my bank. They could also sell me their virtual terminal software, called Payment Express, which would be an extra charge of $20 a month. Amex has many different options that can easily get confusing – my recommendation is if you want to go this way, first sign up online to access your account and then read the various screens that describe Payflow, Payment Express and their physical card payment terminals.

In the interests of research, I pressed on to see what else is available.

Paypal was my next stop. While you can process some credit card payments, once you get beyond a few hundred dollars you need to have a Paypal business account. This means $30 a month, plus transaction fees of 2.4 to 3.1% to use their virtual terminal software. Here is a description of that process:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_vt_hub-inside

Intuit was next. Their merchant services are $13 a month, and it took about a day to set me up. They also have their own virtual terminal software and their home page takes something to get used to. They also charge less per transaction, with fees ranging from 1.9 to 2.9%. They have a great series of online demos here on their Web site:
http://payments.intuit.com/products/quickbooks-payment-solutions/online-credit-card-processing.jsp

So which do I recommend? If I had to start over knowing what I know now, I would go first to Inuit. They are geared towards their online product, they have a simple sign up process, and if you already use Quickbooks they can integrate with that too if you end up with lots of transactions. (I have been a happy Quickbooks user for nearly two decades, starting with the DOS version, can you believe it?) I would steer clear of Paypal, I just think they charge too much for too little.

There are dozens of other payment processors online, and this isn't meant to be a comprehensive review. And feel free to share your own experiences on my blog or via Twitter.

Outbound content compliance using Global Velocity

Looking to do a better job monitoring all of your network's applications portfolio? The GV-2010 is a unit designed to give you very granular control over how your end users use particular applications, and inspect all of your content leaving your network.

We tested the appliance on a small network in February 2010.

Global Velocity GV-2010
Globalvelocity.com
St. Louis MO
314 880 2900

Kace Kbox: Best Way to Massively Migrate Windows XP Desktops to Windows 7

Kbox (which recently was acquired by Dell) is used to manage and control desktop system images that contain user files and applications and — with its Systems Management Appliance, sold separately — to do PC inventory and audits. It also works with both virtual and physical machines too. Unlike the PC Mover and Zinstall approaches, they are designed for large-scale deployments of hundreds or more PCs.

You can watch my screencast review here at ITExpertVoice.com:
http://itexpertvoice.com/home/kace-kbox-best-way-to-massively-migrate-windows-xp-desktops-to-windows-7/

Codeless Ajax Development with Alpha Five

Alpha Five is a powerful database and Web applications server and development environment that has been around for many years and continues to get more powerful but not at the expense of ease of use. There are numerous tutorials

You can watch my screencast video here: http://webinformant.tv/alpha5.html

We tested Alpha 5 v10 on a Windows XP running SP2 in February 2010.

Documentation, copious code examples and videos:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=d52ghw8_92f9r2m4dx
http://www.ajaxvideotutorials.com/videos/help/01intro/
http://65.75.250.238/webApplicationDemoV10/default/index.a5w

Alpha Five v10
http://alphasoftware.com/products/v10/
70 Blanchard Road,
Burlington, MA 01803
781.229.4500

Prices: Developer $349
Application Server $599, both for $799
Unlimited Runtime licenses $599
Windows XP or later required with at least IE v7 or Firefox 3.0

Searching for softphones

Remember when your office phone was a solidly built multi-line key system with push buttons for the different extensions? And you had a secretary who would answer all of your calls? It seems so quaint now, like something out of a Tracy/Hepburn movie like the "Desk Set." (Which for those of you that haven't seen it, features a plot about a room-sized computer that replaces human workers at the TV station. Amazingly, 50 years ago too.)

The biggest change for office telephony these days is the separating of incoming and outgoing calling plans and how we will use computers instead of an actual phone instrument. Maybe, if we all can get our softphones to work properly.

I am not talking about some Claes Oldenburg sculpture, but the software running on your PC that enables you to make and receive calls. Softphones aren't new – I recall writing about them in the early 1990s. Sadly, the quality of software development is still akin more to this era than the modern day.

Voice over IP has made calling almost too cheap to meter, to recall a phrase from the 1950s (then it was about nuclear power, and we know what happened to that). That's why many vendors currently offer unlimited monthly calling plans for their VOIP Service – Vonage ($25), Skype ($3), Google Voice (Free!). What is important to note is that these are all outgoing calling plans. Anyone can call you without any plan, you just need a phone number. Here is where things get tricky.

I have been a happy customer of Vonage since around 2002 or so, using their phone service in three different states and for both home and work. The best part about using Vonage (or any other VOIP phone with a reasonable feature set) is that I can set up what happens when someone calls my number. Right now I have it ring both office and cell numbers simultaneously. This way I just have to give you one number to call me, and I can change cell numbers, or add a new location if I am working someplace for an extended period of time. The next best part about Vonage is that I can do all of this with just a couple of mouse clicks, without having to wait on hold for a Bell business office service rep to try to upsell me with services that I don't want.

But I don't really get that many calls anymore, not that I am complaining. Most of the time when I am on the phone it is to interview someone for an article I am writing or to listen to a conference call briefing. Those are calls that I initiate and I don't really need a physical phone anyway – I much prefer to use a headset connected to my computer, to free my shoulder so I can type in my notes. (Yes, I could use a Bluetooth headset for my phone, too.)

I started thinking that perhaps I could eliminate my office phone line, and swap it for a Vonage softphone, and perhaps save some money in the process. That led me to searching for a softphone that will run on my Mac, connect to my Vonage account, and be reliable. Getting all three criteria has turned into A Project over the past week.

The softphone costs $10 a month. A call to Vonage customer support set up things, and moved my office number over to the softphone account. I thought I was doing well.

Alas, it wasn't so easy. First of all, while Vonage has its softphone app on both Windows and Mac, the Mac version is a poor cousin and I couldn't get it to work properly. After spending some time with Vonage tech support, I found out that there are "issues" with it running on Intel-based Macs (which are all recent Macs for the past several years).

Vonage does have a softphone for the iPhone (and Blackberry too), but you need to set up another $25 a month subscription plan. It really is designed to call internationally from your phone and save you on these charges. So it really isn't the softphone that I am looking for.

There are numerous softphone VOIP software companies, and some even have Mac clients. I have tried a few, and tried to get them configured for my Vonage account, but with no success. There is a lot of poor quality information online, and many of these are smaller companies with no tech support.

What about Skype? Yes, Skype can be considered a softphone (and more, since it does video calls too). The monthly unlimited calling plan is $3, but you also need to purchase an online number for another $3 a month if you want people to call you. All of a sudden, my expected savings are evaporating. I like Skype and have used it for years, mostly for the IM features, and the voice quality is terrific.

How about MagicJack? This is a pretty cool USB device that you can connect to both Macs and Windows PCs, and it will set up a softphone (or you can use a regular phone and wire it to the USB device directly). All for $40 for the first year, and $20 a year thereafter. My one problem with the Jack is that I keep getting people calling me who are calling wrong numbers. Not sure what that is all about. I do get the occasional Skype from someone I don't recognize but not as often.

And then there are Google Voice and eVoice, a new service from J2 Communications, the people that are behind eFax and jFax. These aren't quite softphones, but do offer some interesting communications features to manage your telephony, and if I didn't keep my Vonage number I would probably be more interested in them. Google has also purchased Gizmo Project, which had a really nice softphone that came with a built-in voice recorder, so who knows what will happen to that.

Not having a traditional land-line phone can be an issue, I will admit. But it isn't usually a problem. So as I transition to a phone-free desk, I think back to the days when I had one of the old Western Electric phones. Maybe I should buy one and just keep it on my desk for old time's sake while I keep fooling around with my softphones and headsets. If you are interested, check out this site which has all sorts of great info on the golden era when people had to rent, not own their phones, and they still had dials instead of buttons.
http://www.frillfreephones.com/

The new browser wars: Flash vs. Swipe

Pardon me for adding yet another iPad analysis (certainly, when a computer product launch makes it into Doonesbury, we have crossed a new threshold of hype), but one thing actually missing from the copious words and videos on yesterday's event at Moscone was the simple fact that we have a new browser war on our hands, and it isn't a pretty sight.

The browser wars of yesteryear between Microsoft and Netscape seem so quaint. (And look what happened to Netsacpe, too.) Today it is all about Adobe Flash versus the multi-touch swipe technology that is part of Apple's product lines.

Why is this a war? Apple's iPod, iTouch, and now iPad all share a lack of support for Adobe's Flash technology, the animation glue that binds Web pages to in-line video playback. When you bring up your Safari browser in these devices, you see a big blank nothing on the pages that have Flash content to play. And what that means to me is that Apple has made it clear: rewrite your sites to support our own technologies (including new apps that are certain to populate the iTunes Store soon), or be forever absent from this brave new world of cool devices that Steve is creating.

I come to the support of Flash most reluctantly, mind you. Flash is a necessarily evil, and for the most part we just don't even think of it when we merrily surf around the Internet, finding new video content to amuse and inform us. (Unless our plug-ins are outdated or messed up, that is.)

Flash will bring about the Internet TV revolution a lot sooner than the misinformed mainstream TV executives will like to admit, too: the more video that gets encoded in Flash, the fewer hours that 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings will spend in front of their living room TVs, if they even have living room TVs anymore. See what has happened to Leno et al. Their best bits are immediately uploaded to YouTube and watched the next morning. That is the power of Flash.

But Apple has its own idea about how to watch video, and it has nothing to do with standards that anyone else creates. It is about making Web content creators develop new iTunes Apps that can deliver their content customized for their devices. Anyone using an ordinary Web browser can be ignored. Granted, they have sold a lot of iPhones, so it isn't a market that has been marginalized like their share of the PC market – but still. Why do so many Web site owners want this? Because of the latest Steve reality distortion field. See the comment about Doonesbury above.

It is ironic, because in the early days, Apple was a big boost to Adobe's Postscript technology, the glue that made printing pretty pages from your PCs possible. But let's not rest on these accidents of history.

Is a multi-touch swipe worth starting a new war? Maybe. Swiping the glass for controlling the display is very intuitive. It is a wonder that more tablet PCs haven't incorporated it yet. In the mean time, we all will be watching and see how this shakes out, but (I can't believe I am saying this) my bet is on Flash.

It's all about the jobs

Even Conan can't keep his job, although I am sure many of us would welcome a multi-million dollar payout as he got last week. But as our economy tries to re-start itself, I have seen first-hand how hard it is for people to get new jobs. Over the past seven months, I have been working with our local Regional Chamber and Growth Association in an effort called the St. Louis Job Angels, to help get information about new jobs quickly disseminated to the right people, and also provide self-help and peer networking to job seekers.

The effort was started nationally by consultant Mark Stelzner and has since become very successful here in St. Louis. We have more than 600 people on our LinkedIn group and a new job is posted almost daily. We also send out the postings via Twitter too, although trying to fit an entire job description into 100 or so characters is a challenge. Based on these efforts, I have some advice for employers and job seekers that I want to share.

First off, if you are going to post your opening online, make sure your Web jobs board is both search and Twitter-friendly. Try to have unique and simple URLs that people can email and Tweet to bring job seekers directly to the position at hand. Put all the information about the job on one page, including salary range, prerequisites, and reasonable experiences and skills required. Include a job number or some other identifying string that job applicants can use and reTweet so that others can quickly find the opening. And be specific about how to be contacted and with what information.

You would be surprised (well, maybe not) how many job openings I look at that don't have this basic information. This isn't rocket science (and we do have a few openings here in St. Louis for rocket scientists, believe me) and you would think that Al Gore still hasn't gotten around to inventing the Internet, what with some of the postings that I see.

Some online job boards that are part of individual companies are behind registration walls, so you have to provide all sorts of information about yourself before you can get to see the actual jobs themselves. Bad idea! You want people to browse your board, because they might see something else that they are more qualified or more interested in.

There is a reason not to skimp on descriptions. The more information you can provide the job seeker, the better and more of a match your applicants will be when it comes time to apply.

The unique URL per job makes it easier to reTweet the openings: you use a URL shortening service such as Bit.ly and you can send out the job post quickly without having to worry that Twitter will mangle the URL or that users won't be able to find it on the Internet someplace.

Some recruiters are told not to divulge the company name for fear that the company will be buried in resumes. Fair enough. But then provide more detail about the job so that applicants can understand what they are getting themselves into.

Also, be fair about telecommuting options. It is time to realize that many of us want to stay put for various reasons. If your management can deal with finding the best candidate in another city, then support this practice. I mean, we are in 2010, people!

Second, spend some time on LinkedIn. Yes, there are still plenty of places where you can post job openings, including Monster, Craigslist, and hundreds of other more specialized sites. And yes, employers should be promiscuous and post openings widely too. But the right use of LinkedIn by both employers and job seekers can be useful.

I keep adjusting my online LinkedIn profile all the time, even though I have had it for many years. I keep forgetting to add particular experiences, or to ask for references from previous bosses. So don't try to create your entire profile in one sitting, but come back to it frequently. I have some more tips on how to improve your LinkedIn presence here if you want to view my slides:
http://slideshare.net/davidstrom

Most of the people I know are still new at using this service, and some are unaware about the more advanced features such as Groups and Answers that can help augment your job searching and make the service more valuable too. Answers can help build your expertise and demonstrate your knowledge of a topic or niche. Groups can be used, as we do for St. Louis Job Angels group, how to find others who share similar traits and can be quickly scanned for updated information.

LinkedIn can be both a blessing and a curse. Getting groups setup is a slow process, and you have to follow an arcane series of rules if you want to play in their sandbox: for example, as group Admin, I can send out exactly no more than one weekly email to the group. I try not to bury people in emails, but still, sometimes you want to get the word out if we have had a lot of postings or some with very short response times.

Third, become better at marketing yourself. One of my colleagues here and the supervisor of the MissouriCareerSource local office, Frank Alaniz, talks about how to develop a resume that will present your qualifications in a way that a job interviewer or HR screener can quickly see you online. Most employers spend less than three minutes reviewing resumes, which means you have to grab them at hello:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=d6kgf4r_20gr2v5xg8

Good luck with your own job search, and maybe you too can host a late-night show in the near future.