Too many April showers

We’ve had some pretty serious April showers in my part of the US and they didn’t bring May flowers, but rather flooding.  I myself am high and dry, but many others aren’t so lucky.  I hope this monthly update finds you well wherever you are.

As for PayPal, payments, and developer highlights from last month, I have much to report.

April was a banner month for me on the article front.  I completed my “Selling Digital Goods in Data Markets” series.  Part three showed you how to build an example data market using Python and Google App Engine.  Part four picked up where the previous part left off, examining what you would need to do to implement a RESTful web API for your data market while allowing finer grained, single row or entity level data sales using micropayments.  Click here to access all four articles in the series.

After completing the data markets articles, I began a new series on using PayPal and WordPress.  “Integrating Payments into WordPress, Part 1:  Features and Getting Started” introduced the WordPress system, how to install and begin using it, and where to go to learn more as you do so.  “Integrating Payments into WordPress, Part 2:  PayPal Plugins” introduced WordPress plugins, made some recommendations on popular plugins you might wish to try, and looked at existing PayPal plugin options.  The remaining article in this series will detail how to start building your own WordPress plugins using a PayPal-related example; watch for this to publish soon.

I also wrote the following DevZone blog posts last month:

• “Twitter APIs:  Hacking Tools” finished out my series on Twitter by examining Apigee’s Twitter console, YQL, Infochimps, and GNIP technologies along with a worthwhile O’Reilly book.
• My next post, “LinkedIn APIs:  Professional networks via REST“, kicked off a new series on LinkedIn by first examining their REST web API.  I completed the series with posts on LinkedIn’s embeddable widgets, JavaScript API, and third party libraries to make your programming against LinkedIn APIs much simpler and more fun.
• I asked for your input on payments transactions, use cases, and operations that are difficult for you to learn, understand, and/or do using the PayPal X Platform.  I would still greatly appreciate any feedback you might have on that.  Please click here to read the post and leave your feedback as a comment.
• I also asked readers about their usage of WordPress, and specifically what PayPal functionality the’d like to see implemented in a WordPress plugin in the final installment of my WordPress article series (see above for more on that).
• My final blog post of the month explored the fierce competition between Square and Intuit GoPayment to dominate the mobile credit card reader and processing market.  One to watch on the alternative payments front.

Click to read the complete post on the PayPal X Developer Network including links to other important developer news and information from April.