According to this tech article I saw in theage.com.au, PayPal has unveiled Mobile Checkout — allowing users with a PayPal account to purchase goods on the fly.

Unfortunately I can’t find info yet on PayPal’s website.

PayPal is reported to have already signed up several partners including Hoyts, Warner Music, Deals Direct, Ready Flowers and Mobile Wine Club… some of which will start offering payments via mobiles today. And within a few months, the service is set to expand to include user-to-user PayPal transfers and payments and donations via SMS.

As the article also reports, combining eBay bidding and buying with mobile checkout means a user could be sitting in their local pub and fully complete an online purchase, without the need for a computer… that’s a great range of additions to online buying options and helps to even further expand the reach of media like eBay and websites for online commerce.

Having just driven around Noosa in Queensland late yesterday afternoon, admiring the beautiful Pacific ocean panoramas, our overnight flight to Perth has landed us just minutes from the Indian ocean (and some rather warm Spring weather!).

We forget sometimes the technology that allows us to spend just 4.5 hours traversing an entire continent, for less than $400 per seat, something of an impossibility (at any cost, let alone at a price affordable for just about everyone) even just 100 years ago.

I still wonder in another 100 years what experiences might be like that are just as “impossible” for us today!

Wired News has reported in recent days of the development of low-cost, low-power computer memory that could make a terabyte capacity thumb drive a reality.

Thanks to a new technique for manipulating charged copper particles at the molecular scale, researchers at Arizona State University say their memory is, bit-for-bit, one-tenth the cost of — and 1,000 times as energy-efficient as — flash memory, the predominant memory technology in iPhones and other mobile devices.

How different that would be — having basically 1,024 gigabytes, or a whopping 1,048,576 megabytes, in a tiny keyring size memory device — compared to say the entire memory of my first computer back in 1989, which came with a (then) “hefty” 20 megabytes of storage capacity (plus two floppy drives).

That’d mean my little usb key drive would be more than 52,400 times bigger than the hard disk on my first computer!

Michael Kozicki, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Applied Nanoionics, says:

the technology can be built from materials commonly used in the memory industry, which should help keep manufacturing costs down.

ASU predict the first product containing the memory, a simple chip, will be out in 18 months. I hope the product matches the “one-tenth” cost claim, along with being 1,000 times as energy efficient!

If you’re a dial-up user looking at the low-cost broadband plans, be very sure to read the fine print on additional costs and download limits.

Here’s the perfect reason why: I am currently upgrading a piece of software I use, via download from the USA. It’s Ulead’s Movie Factory 6 Plus software — used to create home DVDs etc.

Downloading online makes more sense to me than waiting a few weeks for a physical shipment to arrive (along with the extra shipping costs). Within an hour, on 1.5Mb/sec broadband, I’ll have the files.

There are two files I’m downloading, of pretty large size:

• Main file is 537Mb
• “Bonus” content file is 352Mb

That’s a total of 889Mb!

That’s fine by me — I’ve got 60Gb (60,000Mb) per month of data allowance.

However, some of the entry level broadband plans available only have a paltry 200Mb of data allowance before you pay EXTRA money for your downloads.

So, this SINGLE file on a SINGLE day of the month would exceed the whole month’s data limit by 689Mb. Let alone all the other activity I do in the month (or even today).

Some low-level plans make you pay $0.15 per Mb over your limit. Makes it sound pretty small, eh?

However, $0.15 x 689 = $103.35!

That’s more than DOUBLE the cost of this piece of software — just to download it! And it’s more than three times the $30 or so you pay for such a plan.

Whilst it’s not a very usual purchase, and is more than I normally download, a low-level plan would either burn a hole in my wallet or mean I can’t take advantage of a convenience such as an online download of a purchased product.

Buyer beware! Before you chose an inexpensive sounding broadband plan, read the fine print, and talk to your friends and family first about “real life” internet usage.