money

There is a United States federal agency that specializes in collecting and cataloguing scientific research papers of all kinds. The NTIS — National Technical Information Service — will serve up files or paper copies of these records for $25 or $73, respectively. The issue, as pointed out by NPR, is that most of these records are available for free elsewhere, and are easier to find with Google than with the NTIS’ outdated website. And so, ever the enemy of a wasteful budget, Tom Coburn has introduced the Let Me Google That For You Act of 2014 to abolish the NTIS.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Square has just launched a new service called Square Cash, which allows quick money transfers between any two parties using through an email. Contrary to what you might be expecting, you don’t need to sign up or get all of your friends onto Square Cash to share funds. Instead, you just need to link a debit card to your account.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Following its I/O keynote address today, Google just announced on its commerce blog that it will soon be integrating Google Wallet features into Gmail to allow users to send and receive money. The feature will be available to those with a Google Wallet account and will initially be available to users 18 and older in the US:

Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and family directly within Gmail — even if they don’t have a Gmail address. It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card.

Google will be adding a new $ icon next to the paperclip icon for attachements that will allow users to “attach money” to messages in Gmail by simply entering the amount and clicking send.

Google noted that the feature will first only be available on the desktop, but that users can also send money through wallet.google.com on mobile devices.

Look for the feature to start rolling out in the coming weeks but earlier access will be granted to those that receive money from others using the feature. You can learn more about sending money with Gmail here.

Some Android app developers aren’t receiving the earnings they’ve generated through web-based Market sales, according to a report from The Register.

Google’s Android Market support forums are full of devs claiming discrepancies with the orders being charged and the payout they’ve received each month. One forum poster comments “It could be that some of your orders aren’t charged until a day or so later and will therefore creep into a different payout day”. However, others note the issue goes beyond the normal lag and have missed  up to “100 orders a day at least for the last two days”.

Its also been reported that a large number of developers have failed to notice the inconsistencies, so you might want to take a closer look at your statements to make sure everything is accounted for. The Register notes rumblings of a “Developers’ Union” and there is even a petition going to renegotiate sales tax, initiate a removal appeal process, and more.

Google employee HeidiLC posted this response on behalf of the company:

Expand
Expanding
Close