Kudos to PayPal

I've just finished integrating with PayPal. Although one would think it's a given, their developer program is really great. Although I feared from this integration initially (we're talking REAL money here, not some software fluff), their developer program helped me get through it quickly, effectively, and I feel great about it.

Specifically I want to point out their Sandbox program. That's a great tool to demo the whole payment processing without actually spending anyone's money. You can set yourself up as a merchant, setup demo customer accounts (and give them virtual money, yes that past was fun!) etc.

Two topics for improvement, I thought, were:

• Documentation(of course) could be arranged much better with description of the APIs and programs, code samples, perhaps ready-made generated code etc. specifically, there are contradictions in the current documentation.
  
• Arrangement of the Sandbox and developer site: arrange the program and materials for each program, for example, or a step-by-step tutorial wizard that takes you and shows you what you need. For example (just to show how short-attention I am) took me ages to figure out there's that PayPalBase dll that provides the required functionality that you need.

Otherwise, kudos to PayPal, the integration with you was easy and clean.

The Story Behind Sting's Onstage Shave In NYC

Billboard has the story of Sting's shave during concert, and they say it was a product placement for a NY Men's grooming club. They say no money exchanged hands. I could see how the club would be mighty fine with that arrangement, but why on earth would Sting go through this for free? Sorry, the "desperate to look innovative" story doesn't work for me.
If anyone could enlighten me....

(Added:) I usually look for pictures to make my posts just a bit more fun. couldn't find one I liked so went and watched the video. Apologies to Sting's fans, I am one too. But this made me sick. Talk about advertising intrusiveness.