Damon Cortesi ( @dacort ) over at Untitled Startup recently wrote up a summary of recurring payment services provided for startups. It's a decent analysis of current payment services that offer a hosted recurring billing solution, if you don't have a merchant account or want to handle your own e-commerce. If you're writing a software-as-a-service platform from the ground up, and would like to outsource the payment side of things, these are good options.

George asks, why is everybody talking about Twitter?

Let me be the first to say, I hate reading and hearing about Twitter. The news media is filled with reporters talking about Twitter. Twitter itself has all sorts of "Social Media Gurus" that will tell you how to gain followers and use it to your best advantage.

It's all hogwash, and most of these stories are an utter waste of time.

We get a lot of questions about how to fight spam. For the most part, it's too late when it reaches your email program--but on the mail server, there are several tactics we employ to minimize what reaches your inbox.

Some of these can be applied universally, while others offer very effective protection with some trade-offs:

First, a disclaimer. I use a $20 Samsung as my day-to-day phone. It does text messaging. It has a lame WAP web browser. It makes phone calls. It has a few games. That’s about it. I’m a bit of a Luddite around smart phones, for a variety of reasons.