There have been issues with funds set up to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, issues reported regarding payments for Events which have been withheld and now the latest in over-zealous policies, the Regretsy case.  If you’ve not heard about these I’d suggest doing some Googling and have a quick read, especially the recent case regarding Regretsy.

Now I understand Paypal need to be cautious when dealing with other people’s money but in many cases they are freezing accounts and holding onto money that does not belong to them, while also taking a nice cut off the top for every and all transactions made through these accounts.  This is just my personal view, but I find this just a little wrong.  I concede they need to take dealings with money seriously, and their infra-structure seems to cope with any fraudulent attempts so I congratulate them for that, it just seems that in more and more cases there is a tendency to bend their own User Agreements and policies to suit.

Happily for the Regretsy team, their issues seem to have been resolved, in part helped by the social media storm that followed yesterday.  I’m not sure PayPal had ever seen so many comments posted on their Facebook wall, unfortunately they were not all positive!  So congratulations to PayPal for bowing to public opinion and doing something right.  Would the outcome have been the same if there wasn’t so much social media pressure?

Personally, I’ve also had issues with PayPal and am still trying to solve one particular issue which currently sees my PayPal account over £4,000 in the red.  A bit of background:

Recently I’ve had problems with a non-paying client who agreed to a web project, paid a deposit and a number of ‘sign off’ payments as the project progressed.  With about a week’s worth of work left on the site, the client then decided he didn’t want the site anymore and demanded all payments be returned along with the logo design, web design and coding work that had been completed.  Obviously, I declined this kind offer and am currently taking the client through the small claims court to recover the money he still owes.

However, during the course of this action, the client decided to report me to PayPal and said he had not received the item he had made one of the deposit payments for.  Unknown to me PayPal allowed him to make a request for reversal of the payment and his credit card company took the money back.  My account has now been moved to the Collections team at PayPal and will soon be handed over to a Debt Collection Agency.  Funny thing is, the client has been supplied the work I have completed so far and is, in fact, using the logo designed for him on both his Twitter account and on a holding page for his site.  He’s also trademarked the logo and associated it with his company.

I’ve been in contact with PayPal regarding this and it seems their only contact during this process was to send two emails to me informing me of this process.  Needless to say, I wasn’t aware of these emails so I went off searching for them.  Deep in the depths of my ‘Junk’ folder in Hotmail I finally managed to find an email marked as ‘suspicious’ and from an ‘Unknown’ email address, it had automatically been flagged and deleted.  An extract from this email follows:

We carefully reviewed the information you sent to us and determined that we
won’t be able to dispute the reversed payment successfully.

The credit card company charged a settlement fee, and as a result, we
debited your PayPal account to cover this fee. This is in accordance with
the terms of the PayPal User Agreement.

I’m not sure what ‘information’ they are referring to here as I’ve not received anything before this email or sent them any information, and this one was flagged as Junk as it didn’t have a ‘from’ address.  Needless to say I now have my own feelings towards how PayPal act on their own policies and their methods of contact when an issue like this arises.

Is a couple of emails from an ‘Unknown’ address really sufficient when you are talking figures of this amount, especially when the claim of ‘item not received’ is unfounded and possibly fraudulent?  I have screenshots of the logo design in use by the client, how can he then claim he’s not received the item paid for?

I’ve supplied PayPal with these screenshots and explained that the client actually still owes me for the work completed and a small claims case in in progress.  However, due to the actions by the client I am now looking at over £8,000 owed to me for work which has been completed, signed off and handed over to the client.  I have requested that PayPal contact the client’s credit card company and reverse the reversal, due to a non-substantial claim by the client that was not communicated to me clearly or directly.  Had it have been I could have supplied proof that the client has received the item and the reversal could have been blocked.

Now I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon here but my issues seem to be just another case in a long line of mishandled cases and confusing and unclear User Agreements that PayPal seem to be able to pick and choose from.  Not only that but their infra-structure needs some serious overhaul if the only notice they need to give when taking over £4,000 out of an account is a ‘suspicious’ email sent from an ‘unknown’ account.  Surely they are able to communicate more clearly with their users in this day and age?  Reliance on email only when dealing with this kind of issue is not really acceptable to me.  Remember those large objects that sit on your desks, PayPal, the ones with numbers on the front…perhaps picking up the phone before you take £4,000 would be beneficial?

Now, perhaps, they have no other option in this case, I understand they need to protect buyers as well as sellers and the client’s credit card company are only acting on communications from him, I understand that.  However, there needs to be a process that allows proof to be supplied to substantiate the claim and allow the defending party to dis-prove that, which I could easily have done, had the ‘Unknown’ email actually reached it’s intended recipient?

I’m not sure what the outcome of this issue will be,  I’m awaiting contact from PayPal themselves regarding the proof I have supplied.  It seems it may be  along wait.

In the meantime, are there really any other viable solutions to PayPal on the market at present?  I’d seriously be interested if there were!

UPDATE – Fri 9 Dec 2011

So, PayPal contacted me this morning to say that due to the item I supplied being a non-tangible product I am not covered under their User Agreement and am now liable for the £4,300 or so that is owed!  Interesting to hear PayPal.  I have an idea to help combat this issue so I’ll be posting about that soon.  In the meantime, let me know if you’ve experienced anything similar.

UPDATE – Mon 23 Jan 2012

My PayPal account has now been passed to a debt collection agency who are now trying to collect ‘my’ debt from me directly.  As such I’ve not made contact with them but will need to do so in the next 24 hours to come to some sort of arrangement to pay off what I now apparently owe.  In the meantime, I’ve set up a new site to ask for the web’s help in paying off this debt.  Check out www.payoffpaypal.co.uk!

My main issue with PayPal’s stance is that they say I am not covered by there User Agreement as the items paid for were not ‘tangible’.  My question is that if I was not covered, how was my client?  He’s managed to pull back a payment for something he was not covered for?  I’d welcome any comments from PayPal on this, please do get in touch if you’re reading PayPal!

A collaboration between myself and a good friend of mine, Sloopz is our first mobile release together and hopefully the first of many.  Now all we need is for some lovely people to buy it and let us know what they think.  So if you have 59p spare, head over to the App Store and give it a try!

Some info about the game:

Sloopz is a fun, addictive puzzle game which uses the touch screen to collect items.

Make your way through 39 levels if you can! Collect biscuits, ants, vans, microchips and more over 4 colourful worlds. Play in either Adventure or Endless mode then submit your best scores to Game Center Leaderboards. Prove yourself superior to your friends by gaining Achievements along the way!

Where else can you have this much fun for the price of a can of fizzy pop?

We’ve also got a simple site up and running which we’ll add more to very soon!  You can even see a quick promo video we made before buying the game.

Hope that anyone that buys it, likes it.  And if not, let us know why!

Introduction

Working from home Sarah found that her experience of using iPhone apps was insular, with no commute to and from an office, her view on the available apps was quite small.  Without being on the go her usage of apps while out and about was limited, until her honeymoon in 2010.  While travelling her iPhone became a useful tool that many of the commuting workforce use every day.  A number of app downloads later Sarah finally saw the key to developing a mobile app, and her view on building a successful app became:

The most successful apps fulfill basic needs.

Your 3 Choices

There are 3 main options to build an app, all with differing costs and benefits.

Apple SDK

The Apple SDK is the first and obvious choice for building an app.  However, the SDK has a very steep learning curve.  As a designer the Cocoa and Objective C object orientated structure is confusing and hard to grasp.  The SDL also costs $99 to use so instantly places a barrier to those wishing to learn without perhaps making a profit from their output.

For a useful resource for designers on the SDK, check out ‘The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook‘.

Web only app

The second option for producing an iPhone app is a web only app.  This is based on standard HTML and CSS but does not generate revenue from the App Store.  It also requires a user to bookmark the site and is not available as a full downloadable app.  The aim here is to try to create a HTML based site that is as native looking as possible for ease of use and familiarity.  It is easy, however, to see that a web app is not always as polished as a native app.

Some apps simply can only be done as full Apple SDK native iPhone apps.

Hybrid app

These are apps that are based on templated HTML pages that are then bolstered by native iPhone app transitions and functionality to an extent.  There are a number of bridging methods to use in order to do this, such as Mobile Roadie.  Again, this can cause issues with usability if the user is expecting a native app and functionality which are not supported by the bridging gaps.  Hybrid apps can be released as native apps on the App Store however, Apple can be a little strict on apps which use a bridging method.

ADS

ADS stands for ‘Application Definition Statement’.  An application definition statement is a concise, concrete declaration of an app’s main purpose.  Many people produce a large document for the ADS but this should purely be a couple of line statement outlining what the app will do.  The ADS will form the basis of what the app is and should try to include:

• What you will feel like using the app
• What the application will do – every single usage
• Who the intended audience is – really targeted

The initial brainstorming will produce a large amount of text or content and this needs to be filtered and reduced to produce the ADS.  A perfect ADS for an app that allows a user to check train times should be something like:

“At a glance train arrival and departure times for commuters”

An ADS should be fact based and not full of marketing spiel!

Design Preperation

When designing for an iDevice the screen resolution differs per device.  For iPhones, the resolutions are:

320 x 480 for standard iPhone

640 x 960 for iPhone 4

For iPad, we currently do not have retina displays but this may change in the next year:

768 x 1024 but could be 1536 x 2048 when the retina display is introduced for the iPad.

Categories

All apps sit under one of 5 app categories and when designing you should decide which category your app sits within before any design work is started:

Serious Tool

• Limited colour palette
• Focused on data
• Limit on imagery
• Standard navigation
• Clear divisions and blocks

Examples of serious tools include the Mail app, Instapaper and Dropbox.

Fun Tool

• Moderate use of colour and graphics
• Simple hierarchy of information

Examples of fun tools include Ocado, Bills and Whereto.

Fun Entertainment

• Extremely graphic heavy
• Fun use of sound
• Simple hierarchy of information
• In your face visual feedback

Good examples here include Flight Control and Angry Birds

Serious Entertainment

• Moderate use of graphics
• Content heavy
• Standard navigation elements
• Usage of tabbed data

Examples here include the Sky app and movie and film apps.

Utility Tool

• Graphically rich
• Normally only a single screen
• Try not to have a hierarchy
• Known as the ‘Fast Food’ apps
• Clear, concise and about the user

Examples here are the Weather app and EgoApp.

Wireframing

Wireframes should only be for the designer and internal teams but should never be skipped.  They are an important step in the process and should simply be rough sketches.  Moving from wireframes into prototypes and simple semi-design files, these should be annotated with notes and process explanations to the client.  This stops numerous email or phone calls to explain your process and also acts as a good part of a developer’s package for future use.

Gestures & Transitions

It’s important to realise what gestures and transitions will be needed within your app.  Gestures can be programmed into an app and don’t necessarily need to be in-built.  However, putting the emphasis on the user to learn a new gesture can be dangerous.  The user will, however, use pre-defined behaviour so utilise these when thinking about gestures.  Transitions are also fairly standard, zoom in and out, slide left and right, slide up and down, fade in and out and spin around are some in-built transitions.

Practical use

Following on from this morning, we are now looking into designing a simple iPhone app.  Within a team of three we have been working on the main app screen for an app that allows users to get real time updates on train time departures and arrivals.  Using this morning’s info and Sarah’s help, we are now working on the design.  As a work in progress, please see below:

That’s all folks!

I’ll follow this post up with some more info from FOWD tomorrow!

Project Fizz is a new take on providing both Freelancers and Employers a way to connect and discuss projects and jobs in the web  indstry and takes all sectors into consideration.  So if you are a designer, developer or even a content provider, Project Fizz would be a good place to start!

From Tim Cox at Project Fizz:

There are many freelancer sites out there all offering the same thing, a one place stop to find freelancers or projects. But at Project Fizz we’ve done our research and found that many employers and freelancers were expecting more, as they rightly should.

We’ve found that many freelancers often feel under-valued and un-motivated when everything has an emphasis on price with many freelancers local to employers who offer the same services often find that work is outsourced to other countries to get ‘cheaper quotes’. There will often be an emphasis on price in an ever changing environment but that’s not always the case; employers are also after a high quality standard of work which is not always the case when outsourcing work for a variety of reasons.

Project Fizz doesn’t emphasis price for a project, an employer can only specify a budget range and all freelancer bids are hidden from one another to ensure that an accurate and concise bid is received on every project, not one that was placed to under-cut another freelancer. We believe that our unique selling point will ensure happy parties from both sides. Freelancers submit a cost that they are realistically happy to do the work for and employers will generally receive a higher level of work as a result due to the fact that no cost cutting is tried by freelancers to just finish the work.

We use a unique way in which freelancers make bids on Project Fizz. When signing up to the website, freelancers receive free bids in order to test the success of the website without risk. When a proposal is placed on a project regardless of being awarded or rejected one (1) bid is used for a standard proposal and two (2) for a premium proposal, this will also ensure that the freelancer uses their bids wisely and will generally result in a more complete and professional proposal to tempt the employer to accept their proposal. This will eliminate poor and unworthy proposals being submitted to employers.

It’s a completely free service for employers to post projects, no percentage of the overall project value is taken and we don’t charge a flat rate per listing as per other job portals. Instead, freelancers simply purchase bid packs as and when needed to continue bidding on projects, we have a wide range of bid packs on offer which are easy to purchase through PayPal.

When it comes to paying the freelancer the final sum of the project we offer the tools for freelancers to stipulate their payment terms and preferred method of payment. Project Fizz don’t hold funds in any sort of account; freelancers and employers have been and will always be able to communicate with one another without the need for 3rd party intervention. Project Fizz also offers automatic invoicing as downloadable PDF which can be downloaded by both parties which saves time on accounting.

If you’re an employer looking to post a new project or a freelancer looking for additional work then try out Project Fizz, we’re sure you’ll be happy with our services!

Visit Project Fizz and find projects now!