Thursday, March 9, 2000

Heard about something interesting this morning: PayPal, a system which serves as a proxy for money, with this twist: you can send and receive money in many forms, and the other side is notified via e-mail. You sign up for a PayPal account, then you can use a credit card to “send” an amount to anybody; if they’re not on PayPal, they get a temporary account. They are then notified by e-mail, at which point they can log in (creating a permanent account), and they can withdraw the money via direct deposit to a bank account, a physical personal check, or a credit to a credit card. This is extremely useful for eBay-style transactions.

What else exciting has happened lately? Well, I watched Cartoon Network‘s Campaign 2000 last night, in which a number of cartoon characters are campaigning for the presidency. They’re running faux news bulletins and election commentary, all of which is terrific fun. They’ve got some great campaign slogans, too (“Yosemite Sam: Yer Darn Tootin'”, “Scooby-Doo: Your Candidate is Over Here”, and “Elmer Fudd: A Man with a Pwan”).

Also, check out this excellent article about open-source, and how it’s not financially viable (at least, not in practice, yet).

I’ve also uploaded my first cartoon. Yes, it sort of sucks, but I have to start somewhere (it’s also scanned from cheap paper, so it’s a tad grubby). In particular, I need to work on my lettering, I see. :-/