Google Play now accepts PayPal payments for digital goods

In a surprising move yesterday, Google added PayPal, a competitor to the company's Wallet service, as a payment option in its Play Store. This means that Android users will now be able to purchase digital goods like apps, books, songs, TV shows, movies, and more with their PayPal account.

The option will initially be available in 12 countries including United States, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom.To add it as a payment option, touch the drop down arrow from the purchase popup of an item and then click “Add PayPal”, after which you will be asked for login credentials.

The move not only highlights the popularity of PayPal, but can also be seen as an admission by the search giant that users are not comfortable using its own checkout service, probably because they don’t want to give the company even more personal information.PayPal integration will help Google increase its revenue as nearly two-thirds of the company’s Play Store sales happen outside the US.

As of now, PayPal can be used to buy apps and other digital content only. You can't use it to purchase devices or accessories on Google Play or for other purchases that use Google Wallet outside of the Play Store. Additionally, Google has also expanded its support for carrier billing, a service that lets you charge purchases directly to your phone bill and Google Play gift cards to 24 and 13 countries, respectively. Developers based in 13 new countries can now sell apps on Google Play, bringing the total to 45 countries. The company has also increased buyer currency support to 28 new countries.

Android Apps On Windows Phone: Good Or Bad?

The curious case of Windows Phone continues to pique the interest of tech enthusiasts. Rumors have it that Microsoft has plans of offering the Android apps on the Windows Phone devices. The big question is, is this good or bad?

What Windows Phone lacks?

There is no denying that one of the largest drawbacks of the Windows Phone platform is that it doesn’t have nearly as many apps as Android or iOS does. While most of the important apps are there on the Windows Phone store, there are many that are exclusively available only on Android and iOS.

So, if Microsoft is concerned about the collection of apps on the WP store, that’s a very valid concern. But the question is, how exactly should the company try to resolve this problem? Is making Android apps available on the Windows Phone device a good enough solution? Let’s see.

The Good:

Naturally, the best thing about making Android apps available on Windows Phone devices will be that WP users will instantly have millions of more apps available on their handsets. They will be able to get apps directly from the Windows Phone store as well as from Google Play store. In fact, with Nokia rumored to launch an Android handset of its own soon, the company can become a bridging entity between Android and Windows Phone.

The Bad:

The very first thing such a decision would do is convey a message to the world that Windows Phone platform is not good enough, which is why Android apps are being made available to Windows Phone users. This will instantly disillusion WP users. Microsoft should know that when people buy a Windows Phone handset, it’s not just because of Nokia’s hardware but also because of the interface and looks of the Windows Phone OS.

Compromise the integrity of Windows Phone OS and the WP market will diminish within days. And making Android apps available on Windows Phone devices is a sure-shot way of doing exactly that. After all, if Microsoft starts hedging on the availability of Android apps to sell Windows Phone devices, why shouldn’t a user simply go out and buy a more affordable, unlocked Android handset directly?

The Problems:

And even if Microsoft decides to go ahead with the decision, this will pose a huge list of additional problems for the company. First, bringing Android apps to an all new platform, with whatever ways, will tar the user experience. Apps tend to go awry and buggy when transported from one platform to another without appropriate adjustments. Since the rumors say that the entire Google Play store will be made available on Windows Phone devices, there’s no way that all of its apps will run smoothly on WP devices.

Not only that, this move will significantly reduce the developers’ interest in native Windows Phone app development. These developers will simply create Android apps, since these would then be available to WP users too. In simpler words, the native developer community for Windows Phone will disintegrate.

A possible solution:

Microsoft has many options and far more issues at hand right now. The company is struggling with the Windows Phone platform and its competitors are rapidly expanding. The one thing that Microsoft must ensure right now is to differentiate its platform and its products in the mobile market.

Nokia has been the key Windows Phone manufacturer so far. And while the company has dished out some brilliant hardware, it is focusing on the wrong parts. Nokia ought to stop pushing out ultra-high-pixel cameras in smartphones. That essentially caters to a very small audience. The company needs to find a way of creating top-end smartphones which are competitive against the likes of iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4, and at the same time offer them at prices which are not too steep comparatively.

At the same time, Microsoft must ensure that all the top free and paid apps are made available on Windows Phone store at the earliest date. If the company needs to expend some of its huge pile of cash in ensuring this, that’s not a bad bargain. At the end of the day, the key to success in the mobile market is to create an entire ecosystem which contains a full range of devices from top-end to budget handsets, and a list of services and apps that is unending.

Can You remember being a baby? Researchers find new brain cell growth erases our earliest memories

As we become older, the growth of new brain cells effectively overwrites existing ones.

Most don’t remember what happened when they were only 2 or 3 years-old.

The creation of memories and the way they change in a person over time has been a key focus of many recent studies. In one such study, researchers have demonstrated why we lose all recollection of our early childhood years.

We start making memories from the get-go. However, if you try to recollect what your memories are of being 2 or 3 years old, you will come up with nothing. Researchers have finally attempted to explain this phenomenon in a new study. According to the study, we forget our early years because as we outgrow them, our brain cells rewrite the neural paths which comprise of memories.

This results in overwriting the existing memories at that time. Like a hard disk, the brain writes new memories over our early memories, so that they are effectively erased. Explaining the phenomenon, the lead author of the study Katherine Akers said, “Infantile amnesia refers the absence of memories for events that occurred in our earliest years—most people typically don’t remember much of what happened when they were only 2 or 3 years-old.”

She further explained, “But this doesn’t seem to be because children at this stage can’t make memories—when our daughter, for instance, was 3 years old she would enthusiastically recount in details trips to the zoo to see grandparents and so on. But she is now 5 and has no recollection of these events – these memories are rapidly forgotten.”

Our memories are usually stored in the hippocampal circuits in our brains. With aging, new neurons alter these circuits so that the older ones are written over or degrade over time. The researchers demonstrated this by elevating the levels of neurogenesis in adult mice. Neurogenesis impairs the formation of new memories, and in the case of mice the researchers observed that this happened because of an overwriting of the memories.