Paypal-certIt looks like the folks at Paypal forgot to pay Verisign to their SSL certificate. I don’t have the faintest clue what this means in terms of real transaction security – probably nothing. It is reassuring to know that even the big boys let things slip once in a while.

I was at Paypal because I needed to buy a license for the very cool “BananAlbum” skin. I’ve become very disenchanted with my photoblog software lately – mainly because of the amount of comment spam it was inviting. And also because it wasn’t really the style of presentation that I was looking for.

A quick search led me to the very nifty JAlbum – I hadn’t really considered using desktop software to manage an online album – I’ve become so accustomed to the server-side experience offered by Blogware, Bubbleshare, and so on that I’d become blind to the notion that I could do the heavy lifting from my desktop. JAlbum is a very spiffy, simple and cross-platform app that builds photoalbums from your photocollection. Its definitely more complicated than Flickr et al, but no where near as complicated as running your own server software (and much cheaper than having some Flash Jockey build a custom album for you). Coupled with a slightly customized BananAlbum skin really took care of all my needs – no more spam, much cooler layout and a skin developer that’s now $20 richer.

Using JAlbum I had the Old Opticandy torn down, and the new one erected in all of about five minutes. Kind of sparse for now, but I’ll get around to personalize it a bit more as I get the time.