UPDATE: I am out of gift cards for now. Will be getting some $75 credits soon, so check back. Please note that I need your mailing address, not your email address. Businesses in the U.S. get priority. Sorry – SEO and Web design companies are not eligible.

As a Google Engage partner, Google gives me $100 Google Adwords Gift cards to hand out to my clients. I have a limited number of left. To get yours:

1. Go to http://www.tpdesigns.net
2. Click on the “Contact” link at the top of the page
3. Fill in your contact information – put your mailing address in the “Message” field,

That’s it! I’ll mail you the gift card. Supplies are limited, so do it now. The $100 is only valid until January 31.

A common problem I’ve noticed with phpLD (php link directory) installations is Captcha not working properly. On these sites you will be able to complete all of the link information, but when verifying that you are human using Captcha, you can only enter a portion of the Captcha code that you are given. You are therefore unable to submit the link, because you will always receive a Captcha error. Often the Captcha code contains six (6) characters, but the Captcha field only allows you to input five (5) characters maximum. You would think that these Webmasters would notice the lack of link submissions.

The problem is due to the use of a third party template that has the maximum characters for the Captcha input field set too low. To resolve the problem, simply open templates/submit.tpl and find the code for the Captcha field. It will be something like: input type=”text” name=”CAPTCHA” value=”" size=”10″ maxlength=”5″ class=”input.” Just change the maxlength to as many characters as you need to hold the Captcha numbers that are being generated.

Paypal offers developers an environment called the “sandbox” to test out their applications. “Sandbox”is a generic term for “test environment.” I last used Paypal Sandbox a year or more ago in testing a Paypal integration with Oscommerce, and didn’t notice anything unusual.

Today, however, just now, when throwing a quick test together to detail out a quote, I was unable to use the environment. Page loading is over 10 minutes and counting. To check whether or not it was just me, or just a momentary problem, I did a search and found quite a lot of angry complaints. The complaints spanned a year’s time and seemed mixed at first. The last complaint, just a couple of weeks ago was just resigned. He would not be using paypal in his applications again.

A major theme of the complaints was that Paypal wasn’t interested in improving the situation. They didn’t really care. That was something I had heard before, not from the developer community, but from eBay sellers. They complained of problems, which Paypal customer service was very uninterested in resolving.

If Paypal were just another online store it would be one thing. The problem is that Paypal is basically a bank that has a LOT of peoples financial information online. Are they competent? Do they just not care about the little guy? It seems to me that Paypal should be all about the little guy, because I don’t see many Paypal buttons on Fortune 500 websites.

The bottom line is, if a developer can’t use Paypal’s Sandbox, why not try Google Checkout?