It's more of a "how are you paying?" than "what are you doing?" kind of business. Square Inc. is a new startup cofounded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Jim McKelvey which will allow businesses and individuals to take credit card payments from customers anywhere. Receipts and confirmations are paperless and get sent to buyers via text message or email. While the media believes it is set to shake up the credit card processing industry, it has also committed to donate a penny on every transaction a merchant takes to a cause of their choice. Square is starting business with $10 million in venture capital funding and is of course tweeting the process; you can see it in action here or try it at Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco.
posted by cgomez on Dec 1, 2009 - 65 comments

A Fresh, Clean Sheet Of Paper: Is anything you can't make love to, eat or sip, more sensual and inviting? In the age of the Internet, fine paper - specially if it's handmade - seems to become ever more precious. Writing or sketching on its slighly grainy texture, sliding ink along its invisible grooves (almost independently of the result...) is an extravagant indulgence; a romantic gesture; an almost guiltless pleasure. And something you can do yourself, satisfying that deep recycling urge, perhaps. A quick tour around some of the outstanding manufacturers and dealers - Fabriano; Canson; Pineider and Twinrocker, for example - will silkily reassure those of us whose pens trembled and blotted with the first mentions of a paperless future. Will it ever come? Unlike so many things in life, the rarer it gets, the better and, paradoxically, the more individual (nice set of paper links here) it becomes. (*imagines a complete multi-handwritten version of MetaFilter on good paper of all sizes and types and instantly snaps out of the daydream, as it reminds him too damn much of his attic*)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 24, 2003 - 28 comments