I sent a payment to my coder only 2 hours ago through Paypal and everything looked normal.  I haven’t seen Paypal change much in terms of design and usability in quite some time.  So, I get back to the office after running a quick errand, and realize I need to send a couple of payments to some service providers since it is the first of the month.  I log back in to Paypal, click on “send money’, and see something totally different than the normal screen I have grown accustomed to over the past few years.

Here is what I saw when I logged in to the system to send money at 2:00pm CST:

That looks normal, right?

Well, about 2 hours later when I came back to the office, I see something different here:

And the following screen is displayed when you click continue:

So, I think this stuff is pretty interesting.  When I saw the change I had a friend of mine log in to his account (the one that provided our first screen shot above) and he saw the same old design.  It appears Paypal is in the process of testing out new design possibilities.  Anyone else seeing this in their Paypal account?

Only our second conference and so much excitement, so much going on. Jeremy and I discussed the details yesterday, confirming everything with Guy Kawasaki and today have decided to release this great news. Guy will be sharing from his experiences with our small group of 30 attendees the afternoon of Day 1 (March 19th). I can’t really explain how exciting this is for us all, both the leaders and the attendees. Guy usually speaks to thousands, not 30, so this is proving to be an EXTREMELY unique event for those looking to succeed in the online business world. As you have likely heard, this is picking up steam in the blogosphere fast:

Shoemoney Announcement

Problogger Announcement

Gray Wolf Announcement

SE Rountable Announcement

Seats are selling out quickly, so don’t delay much longer and grab your spot in the Elite Retreat right away!

After reading through the recent news announced Friday, I am really disturbed by what is coming of the News Corp and Google partnership. Michael Grey points out that it is already costing him $2 - $3 a day from clicks on his name that are immediately leaving his site. Not sure what this will mean for the ultra amazing Google quality scores (NOT!) or if advertisers not wanting to pull out of the search network will end up making negative adjustments for the terms getting large amounts of junk traffic. I can see Google will need to address this problem sooner rather than later as not to upset its many advertisers spending $xx,xxx to $xxx,xxx monthly through the Adwords network.

Another fun twist to the Google PPC saga and it will certainly be interesting to see where it all ends up. I will keep you posted on any major news that surfaces on this front.

Transcript exerpt:

S. O’BRIEN: Well, it may not be the happiest place on earth, but it is pretty darn close. Google top’s “Fortune” magazine’s list of the best places to work. And we sent AMERICAN MORNING’s Alina Cho to the company’s California headquarters to find out exactly why. Alina’s back to fill us in.

Good morning.

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Another good assignment.

S. O’BRIEN: Is that good (INAUDIBLE).

CHO: It certainly is, Soledad.

You know, you may be waking up right now dreading the fact that you have to go to work. But people at Google, well they are almost giddy about their jobs. Some of them barely leave the office. And why would they? They have every perk right at their fingertips and all of it is free.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHO, (voice over): Ever wonder what’s behind this home page? It’s the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. The people who work here are called Googlers. Or if you’re new, you’re a Noogler and Google’s hiring 100 a week.

THOMAS AREND, GOOGLER: You never need to go home because you can almost sleep here. You can do your laundry here. You can eat around the clock.

CHO: And all of it is free. Googlers and Nooglers can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here at any of the company’s 11 gourmet restaurants. If you gain what’s called the Google 15, hit the gym. Training is free. So are the massages. There’s volleyball, swimming, rock climbing, game rooms and scooters. And how’s this for a perk? Google will kick in $5,000 for the purchase of a hybrid car. All this and every day is take your dog to work day.

LASZLOW BOCK, VP, GOOGLE: For us it’s less an expense item and more of an investment because we truly believe that it generates value for us in the business.

CHO: By value, Google means productivity. The ubiquitous Internet search engine is not just Google anymore. There’s Froogle, Google Earth, Blogger and G-mail. And Google is available in 110 languages. Many of the ideas are hatched, not in the cubicles, but in the lunchroom or over coffee.

Twenty-seven-year-old engineer Miniane Wang is a quintessential Googler. She graduated from college at 18, was lured to Google from Microsoft, and loves her job so much she immediately rejects all other offers.

MINIANE WANG, GOOGLER: What inspires them is not the ability to cash out and then relax and sail down the Nile. What inspires them is the ability to change the world.

CHO: Google gets 1 million applications a year, one every 25 seconds, and this year hired just 5,000.

In 2006 they hired approximately 5,000 new employees, a small percentage out of a total 1,000,000 applicants according to a recent CNN Business Report (check out the video there). Another interesting tidbit was that veteran Google employees are called Googlers, while new hires are called Nooglers.

The report was a fun look at why Google is able to hire the very best as they continue to grow. Imagine being able to eat, work out, hang out, play, and get free massages all at the same location! Also imagine how cool it would be to run a company that gets 1,000,000 applicants a year. That is a valuable database of folks looking for work that MUST be valuable to somebody…