“Write once, run everywhere”

I just wrote Adobe Flash is full of surprises about a week ago and today I came across OpenLaszlo. It’s a platform that’s supposed to enable “write once, run everywhere” applications. From what I understand after reading their website, OpenLaszlo is a programming environment or an SDK for writing applications. The code eventually gets compiled into Flash code so that it can run in Flash or Java. My guess is that the main target platform is Flash since Flash is ubiquitous and that OpenLaszlo seems to be targeting the desktop(ok, Java runs on the desktop too but seriously, it’s not desirable to run a Java application on the desktop when there are choices)

Paypal vs Google Checkout online payment systems

Update: see my post Paypal vs Google Checkout online payment systems – Part II

As I mentioned on my About page, I’m in the process of starting a website(more on the nature of the website later). One of the things I need to do is to set up online payment for my customers. I considered handling credit card transactions myself but that simply has too many security implications. Instead, I’m looking into PayPal and Google Checkout. It’s best to leave online payment processing to the specialists.

One thing that would be really nice for my website to have is some kind of shopping cart/checkout feature which would allow me to streamline the payment process nicely. However, Google Checkout requires you to work with a 3rd party e-commerce partner to enable the checkout feature.