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Would really appreciate it, if you guys could vote for the panel I have suggested to the South By Southwest (www.sxsw.com) community.  There is a good chance with many of your new votes, that I could finally get to present there.  It is something I have wanted to do for a few years, but never found the proper subject to discuss.

So if you could please vote for my panel at this link http://pie.im/sxsw for  SXSW 2010.  THANKS!!  You might have to sign up, but it takes a second and is free!

If you cannot find me, please search Craig Agranoff

I truly appreciate your support!

USAA Bank has teamed with Apple to offer an app that allows you to take a photo of your check with your iPhone and send it for automatic deposit.

USAA Bank has seven million customers and isn’t the largest or most well-known bank in the country, but now they’re surely poised to be the most innovative. The idea seems pretty simple when you think about it, but going from the back-end, the security requirements must be horrendous.

The application appeared (rather quietly) in May and it goes live this week, rolling out across the country over the week.

It works pretty simply: the customer takes a photo of the check (front and back) and then sends it to the USAA deposit address via any cellular connection the iPhone is capable of using. The bank will receive it, process it, and send an acknowledgment and you can then just shred the original paper check and be done.

USAA has been working on this as part of their overall mobile strategy for quite a while and has been especially focused on simplifying check deposits. The bank doesn’t have a lot of live branches, so being a leader in Web technology has been key for them. They were the first to introduce check scanning for deposit three years ago, in which customers scanned checks on any platform scanner and sent it in electronically for deposit.

For those of you who don’t have an iPhone, don’t worry. USAA is working on apps for other smart phone platforms to be released through the rest of the year.

The bank hasn’t released any numbers on their usages, but one of the bigger banks, Bank of America, has said that they estimate that at least 40% or more of their mobile customers are using an Apple product like the iPhone or iPod Touch.

This kind of new tech from USAA is the kind of thing that propels mobile banking and our more convenient, faster mobile lifestyles forward. In fact, it smacks of the kind of thing that will be considered commonplace in a few years. Just as mobile banking is considered common today.

Awesome. Watch this video demo to see how it works:

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If you’re looking for a script to power your website, whether it’s to offer a new service or to put together a site to flip (resell), you might be interested in what’s available at BuyThatScript.com.

BuyThatScript offers six commonly-requested, turn-key scripts for building quick, popular websites. They can be used to build a stand-alone site based on the script or a section of an existing site to augment traffic.

These scripts are reasonably priced and you can request a quote for a custom-made script if you don’t see what you’d like. Given the prices listed for the scripts on the site, I’d guess that the developer’s fees are very reasonable.

The script list includes:
A URL shortener (think bit.ly or pie.im) you can install onto a domain and create your own URL shortening service.

A jobs script for creating a job posting site where users can post or review jobs and subscribe to the RSS for the site to get updates as they happen. It has several other functions too, making it more robust than a merely glorified classified ads script—which many lame job posting sites basically are.

A wallpaper trading site on which users can post wallpapers for download and find others they’re interested in. The admin panel on this one has lots of functionality.

Have you tried the new Aardvark or similar ask-it websites? Well, why not make your own? There’s a script for that too.

Two smaller scripts for integrating YouTube’s API into your site to fetch videos (based on searches, page-set criteria, etc.) and a Twitter search script so you can use the Twitter API to pull the latest tweets based on keyword searches (like hash tags or terms).

You can preview and demo any script on the site right from the screen and query the coder with any questions you have about the script, such as installation issues and so forth. Purchases are through PayPal by either direct PayPal transaction or credit card.

Buy That Script appears to be an extension of JungleScripts.com, another of the same developer’s websites.

For the site flipper who likes to quickly build a site from the ground up or take an existing domain with potential and turn it into something better, it’s definitely worth looking at Buy That Script. I’m sure there are plenty of flippers out there who enjoy the virtual turn-key that can be had here. Much easier than paying big bucks through a freelance service and hope what you end up with is what you wanted.

You won’t find scripts this good on the usual outlets of cookie-cutter script and website plug-ins sites either.

Although Nambu, the parent company of the popular used URL shortener Tr.im says their recent announcement about closing down the site was not a public-relations stunt, one must wonder if this was the case.

Less then a week ago, Nambu said it was shutting Tr.im down due to the overhead of running the site.  They further cited Twitters preference of Bit.ly as another cause for the shut down.  Now out of the blue, after getting numerous suitors to buy them, and threatening to remove all links by December, the company puts out information stating that they have decided to keep tr.im alive.

Nambu states they “restored tr.im, and re-opened its website. We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the popular response, and the countless public and private appeals I have received to keep tr.im alive.”

Many users have already switched to competing URL shortener services already.  I have seen an dramatic spike in users using my own http://pie.im. More likely then not, Tr.im will remain the underdog in the URL shortening arena, unless it manages to make a deal with one of the bigger Twitter clients, like Tweetie, or Tweetdeck.

Here is more of what the company has said on their blog:

We stand by everything that we have written on this blog and communicated to the many people that have reached out to us:

1. Twitter has stacked the URL shortening business opportunity overwhelmingly in bit.ly’s favour, as twitter.com currently operates. This is not whining, as some have suggested, but a simple reality. If we post a link to this blog article by its title Twitter switches our tr.im URL to a bit.ly URL. bit.ly has a monopoly position that cannot be challenged with reasonable investment or innovation unless Twitter offers choice. This is a basic reality of challenging monopolies. bit.ly has deep personal connections and agreements with Twitter that we simply cannot compete with. And it is our humble opinion that this type of favoritism will become an issue for all Twitter developers.

2. We too want to see tr.im live on, but feel we can only transition it to another party committed to ensuring the links are not highjacked in any way. A contract for sale to an unknown group or individual simply cannot guarantee that.

3. We have no interest in framing tr.im URLs, or adding interstitial advertising to redirects, and some have suggested we do, or others would do with tr.im should they acquire it. We will simply never do that out of respect for the fact that users created tr.im URLs based on this commitment. We do not see that as a viable revenue model as well, as it is not expected or welcomed by the individual visiting a shortened link.

4. This was not a public-relations stunt. At all.

Amanda Bonnen didn’t mean to tweet her way to anything. In fact, she wasn’t even really a Twitter user, compared to many of us who tweet daily and RT hourly. When she sent the tweet that landed her in a cesspool of litigation, in fact, she had only 20 followers, was following 29 herself, and barely tweeted even once a day.

That didn’t matter to Horizon Realty, however. When Bonnen sent her ill-fated ill-fated tweet to her 20 followers on May 12th, she had no idea that each of those people was worth $2,500 in damages to Horizon. Not long after she’d sent that tweet, she was hit with a $50,000 lawsuit for it.

Given those numbers, I’m potentially worth millions…

Amanda’s tweet in question?

To a friend: “You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

According to the news item in the Chicago Sun-Times, the realty company filed the $50,000 lawsuit for libel and damages at the Cook County Circuit Court. The now-defunct @abonnen user name was listed as an “alias” for Amanda Bonnen in the suit.

The apartment in question, in case you want to avoid it, is in Chicago. I suspect that by now, it’s the focus of a shrine to Bonnen’s potential losses.  Perhaps it should also be a shrine to the new loss of freedom on Twitter that this could mean. Personally if I didn’t want people to know about the alleged issues in the apartment, I would have avoided a public lawsuit that disclosed the exact location of the apartment in question.  All they did is enable millions around the world to become aware of issues with their properties instead of the few people this tenant told.  They should sue themselves for the billions it probably relates to, in regards to the amount of eyes that have now come to see the address.  Sometimes I wonder if people think things through.  Not only will people avoid the building now, but they will avoid this real estate company, based upon their reactions.

Think about that.  If this company wins the lawsuit, how will that affect how you or I tweet?  Will we be as likely to say things openly?  Could this destroy Twitter as we know it?  Something to think about, anyway.

The whole thing  is summed up in Mr. Michael’s sentiment to the Sun-Times:

“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.”

Indeed.