Summertime, and the highlights are easy

July 2011 has come and gone and I can’t say I enjoyed the 100+ degree F high temperatures in my area.

I did enjoy all the payments news and goings-on, however.  So without further ado, let’s get to some of the highlights.

PayPal published the final two articles in my six part series on Alternative Payment Systems.  Part 5 examined mobile card readers from Square and Intuit GoPayment, while Part 6 summarized the series and cross-compared all of the systems against PayPal and each other.   I discussed key takeways from the series and linked to all six of the articles in a blog post and a related bit.ly bundle (click here for the post, here for the bundle).

I found it very educational to write this series.  I hope you found it equally enlightening to read.  And hopefully you reached the same conclusion I did:  While each of the alternatives has their strong points, none are as broad in their capabilities, and widely useful in their applicability, as the PayPal X Platform and PayPal solutions.

Moving on to other things, here’s a quick recap of my other DevZone writing from last month:

• I encouraged you to vote for your favorite Developer Challenge Android app; note that PayPal has subsequently announced the winners on the X.commerce blog (click here to read the announcement).
• PayPal hosted iOSDevCamp 2011 at their San Jose offices; click here to watch a video highlighting the event and some of the many iOS apps hacked together by attendees.
• eBay acquired Zong, and with it carrier billing capabilities for PayPal; this could open the door to millions of potential new customers for PayPal X based merchants and developers.
• I wrote a high level introduction on how to use PayPal’s new Invoicing APIS to programmatically create and send invoices; watch for updates to these APIs adding additional capabilities later this year.
• PayPal updated their iPhone mobile app to support a transaction history view, among other things.
• I pondered the complaint of abuse of monopoly power brought against Facebook by Consumer Watchdog; whether you believe Facebook’s been illegally playing the system or not, this one may be one to watch vis-à-vis control of the social graph and developer rights.

Other news not to miss from last month:

• Read about how eBay uses Hadoop from the eBay Tech Blog.
• There was a very interesting article on open data, mobile banking, and the app economy in Kenya published on O’Reilly Radar.  Highly recommended if you’re interested in where things are headed with mobile services, and in how open data can foster innovation in Africa and elsewhere.
• Radar was apparently on a roll because they also published some good content on why you might want to use Java (perhaps again) and alternative JVM languages.
• Also on the JVM front, a look at Twitter’s architecture and why they’re shifting more and more code into the JVM (and it isn’t all Java, either).
• DevZone contributor Peter Georgeson wrote a very nice article on “Building a POS System with Android, QR Codes, and PayPal“.
• Excellent resource for developers as well as designers: “Designing for Android“.
• Another designer resource that might prove useful for mobile developers, too:  How to create mobile web apps using HTML/CSS with Sencha Touch.

Click to read the complete post on the PayPal X Developer Network including links to previous month’s highlights.