Square is a very cool piece of hardware for the iPhone and other smartphones; when combined with the Square service, you can accept credit card payments right on your iPhone. TechCrunch reports that charity:water used Square at SxSW to collect donations, and other uses are already cropping up; flower carts and political fundraisers, for instance.

If you haven't seen it in action, check out our in-person walkthrough from Macworld Expo, or the official YouTube video demonstration. The demo features Adam Lisagor (creator of Birdhouse for iPhone and part of my favorite podcast You Look Nice Today) and Jason Permenter, who walk through a very simple real-life scenario: what do you do if you want to sell something, like a couch, to someone who wants to pay with a credit card? Square not only makes it possible to do that, but it adds some cool features such as showing a picture of the buyer and seller on the iPhone to verify their identity.

Square was born after Jim McKelvey couldn't sell a piece of art because he couldn't accept a credit card, a process that has traditionally been complicated and expensive. Part of Square's vision has included charitable giving, where a donation of 1¢ is made from every transaction to a cause of your choice.

When I was growing up, using a credit card meant that the clerk had to reach under the counter, pull out a device where you would carefully line up the credit card, then put special receipt paper on it, including two carbon copies (remember carbon paper?), they would push the handle across the device and it would push the numbers on the card into the carbon paper, then they would hand it to you to sign, and then the clerk would take it back, pull out one of the carbon copies, and hand it to you. If you were standing in line behind someone paying with a credit card, you'd react much the same way people do these days if someone pays with a check. Nowadays those PIN-pad credit card readers are in all the major stores and at gas stations. Being able to accept credit cards is almost a necessity in today's world.

Square could give individuals and small businesses the same opportunity, using a device that millions of people are already carrying around in their pockets. Check it out; even if you aren't a seller, you may want to sign up for Square to be registered as a buyer once it's out of private beta.

PCMag.com's recent article The Best Apple Product Alternatives couldn't smell any more like "bait" without being covered in worms.

Hoping to appeal to those who have some innate desire to not buy from Apple due to "a limited budget or an anti-Apple stance," PCMag put together a list of "alternative" products to Apple gear like the iPhone, iPod touch & iPod shuffle. The headline will surely grab attention, but as a friend of mine used to say, "Is there any meat in that sandwich?"

They start out comparing the iPhone 3GS to the Google Nexus One. The Nexus One will save you $20, but even PCMag rates the Nexus One 3.5/5 stars while the iPhone gets 4/5. The Samsung Mythic SGH-a897 will save you $70 and gets 4/5 stars. Only one catch: it's not a smartphone. It has "Web-based widgets" and apparently shows broadcast TV. Oh, and it's on AT&T too, so if you're turning down the iPhone because of the network, this isn't for you. So far this sounds like comparing my car to my bike and telling me the bike is better because it doesn't require gas.

Next is the iPod touch, listed in the category of "Portable Media Players," and here even PCMag can't keep a straight face: "We won't lie: You won't find a PMP that outperforms the iPod touch. Name another player that's basically an iPhone without the phone, and, well...you can't." They give the iPod touch a 5/5 rating. Their "ideal alternative" is the Sony X Series Walkman NWZ-X1051 (who names these things?) which will cost you $299.95. Oh, remember how the "hook" to this story was lower prices? This one is actually more expensive than the iPod touch. PCMag does offer one other suggestion: you could get a Zune.

Sadly, it gets worse. Read on.

[hat tip to Shibani Joshi]

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Is your Drobo up to date? Don't trust Drobo Dashboard for the answer.

Drobo and I have not been getting along this week. I have two Drobo units: a FireWire model and a USB model. I moved them to my office last week, and the USB model started complaining about being low on space. The Drobo Dashboard showed drives in all four bays, and since I hadn't been low on space before, I was confused as to what had happened. About a day later, I checked again (after working hard to delete anything unnecessary) and it showed a missing drive in one of the bays. Not a failed drive, but a missing drive. I shut the Drobo down completely, ejected the drive, and mounted it back on the iMac.

Suddenly I had a lot of free space, but Drobo was acting like I had just put in a new hard drive. It took two days for it to sort itself out.

Everything seemed fine until I was using my iMac a few days later. Suddenly, my iMac said "You have ejected [my FireWire Drobo] without unmounting it." I told it that I had done no such thing, I hadn't ejected anything. I couldn't get the Drobo to remount, even after rebooting. It would work via USB, and it would work via FireWire with my MacBook Pro, but not with the iMac.

I worked with AppleCare to diagnose the problem, and they asked me if my Drobo firmware was up to date. I said it was, and that it was one of the first things I had checked, using the latest version of Drobo Dashboard. My answer was true... except that Drobo Dashboard wasn't telling me about the latest firmware.

I spent all day on Friday talking with AppleCare, running diagnostics, driving back to my house to get my original install CDs, calling AppleCare again, running more tests, and finally having them agree to send a technician out to replace the logic board on my iMac. He arrived this morning (Tuesday) and spent an hour doing the replacement.

About an hour later, the Drobo started acting up again. The install of Snow Leopard was only a week old and I had a completely new logic board, so I was starting to suspect the Drobo. I called Drobo support and their tech asked me if I was running the latest version of the firmware.

"Oh yes," I said with confidence, "I checked in Drobo Dashboard this morning."

"There's a newer version on our website," he replied.

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We've had a few concerned readers contact us, worried that Apple has deleted or otherwise discontinued the "Downloads" section of its Web site.

Fear not, gentle reader, they are still available in the same place as always: http://www.apple.com/downloads/.

What caused the confusion was the redesign of Apple.com that took effect at the end of last week. In order to make room for an iPad tab in the navigation bar at the top of Apple's Web site, something had to go.

Fortunately you can easily locate the downloads section simply by typing the word "downloads" into the search box.

Below the links to Apple products, the iTunes store and the Apple store, the bottom link will bring you to Apple's downloads page, which has a wide variety of applications available, both from Apple and from various third-party developers.

You can also click the Support tab if you're looking for Apple Support Downloads, where you can find downloads for security updates and "point-releases" of software that you might otherwise update via Software Update.

I was surfing on Amazon over the weekend and decided to see what would come up when I searched for "iPad". One of the first results was: TrendyDigital WaterGuard Waterproof Case/Cover for Apple iPad, Blue Border and what caught my attention was that it only had one star. That seemed pretty severe, given that the iPad was only available for pre-order on Friday. How could an accessory already be getting bad reviews?!

The answer? Amazon reviewer ffass from Brooklyn, NY United States gave it a one-star review because "This appears to be a $20 plastic bag. Very trendy, indeed." ffass went on to say: "Wow. 'TrendyDigital' hopes that hyperventilating iPad users will be crazed enough to by [sic] this $20 bag for their spiffy new gadgets. Give me a break."

Sure enough, that's what it looks like, although to be fair it also has a strap to "wear around neck or shoulder." The product description says it is a "Great companion when you use your Ipad [sic] at the beach, near the pool side, in the bathtub or at the kitchen table."

One man's "plastic bag" is another man's "custom-made form fitting transparent case" and these are the distinctions which make marketing the multi-billion dollar industry that it is. I learned from Neven Mrgan than you can, in fact, use an iPhone in a plastic bag (useful for checking recipes on your iPhone while cooking), so it is possible that this "WaterGuard" case would work just fine. What strikes me as odd is that when I went back to look today, the review no longer appears on the product page.

If I go to fass' profile page, the review and rating still appear, but if you click through to the product page it says "No customer reviews yet."

I can't offer any explanation for this, and I wouldn't want to jump right into conspiracy theories when some sort of technical glitch seems much more likely, but I suspect that we will start to see a wide range of random iPad accessories of debatable merit start to show up. Have you spotted any? Let us know in the comments.

You may remember that Verizon started running ads a while ago showing AT&T's anemic 3G coverage map. AT&T responded by saying "Our coverage includes 97% of the country!" In the small print on Verizon's ads they make it clear that AT&T does have coverage outside of 3G. In the small print on AT&T's ads they make it clear 3G isn't available everywhere.

What kind of difference does 3G really make? For American wireless users, the FCC is interested in knowing how fast your mobile broadband really is. The agency has released a free iPhone app, made by Ookla, who also made the free Speedtest.net Speed Test app for iPhone (there is also an Android version).

In case you're concerned about your personal information ending up in the servers of the Feds, note the app disclaimer: "Results may be pooled to analyze the quality and coverage of mobile broadband connections across the United States as part of a larger effort by the FCC to identify areas with insufficient or nonexistent access to broadband." More details can be found on the FCC's page here.

I downloaded the app and ran three sets of tests: on Wi-Fi (connected to DSL), on 3G, and on Edge. I ran each set three time: i.e. 3 times on Wi-Fi, 3 times on 3G, and 3 times on Edge, and then averaged the results to try to offset any temporary network glitches that would throw off the results. I also made sure I was using the same server for each test. (You can either let it select the best server based on your location or choose one manually from a list.)

Read on for the results...

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Many folks were excited when Apple announced Back to My Mac as part of MobileMe. Being able to remotely access your Mac from anywhere sounded like magic. We're used to products from Apple that "just work" but for most people most of the time, Back to My Mac "just doesn't."

To maximize your chances, you're supposed to use a supported router, but even that's no guarantee. At home I have an Airport Extreme Base Station (Wireless-N), and at the office I have an Airport Extreme Dual-Band model. I don't think it's possible to get a "more compliant" setup, yet I still can't get it to work most of the time.

Under the adage "nothing ventured, nothing gained," I took a chance and signed up for a free account with DynDNS. DynDNS gives you a free hostname which will go to your computer even when your IP address changes. There are scads of DynDNS domain names available, but for the purposes of this example, let's assume that your domain name is imac.homeip.net.

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If you have ClickToFlash installed, you may have seen a note telling you that you have an old version of Flash and encouraging you to upgrade.

As you might expect, you don't need to upgrade Flash, but you do need to upgrade ClickToFlash. The current version is ClickToFlash-1.6b7-upload1.zip, but you may have go to the Github page for ClickToFlash to download it.

Jonathan Rentzsch explained that he hasn't been able to update it himself due to illness. However, given that it is open-source, four others (identified as ndfred, Justin, ssp and lapcat) identified the problem and a solution, and Rentzsch merged it back into the main branch of the code.

That's pretty awesome, if you ask me.

So if you've run into this problem at YouTube, take a few minutes, download the new version, quit Safari, and run the installer. Voilà!

TextExpander, one of my very most favorite (yes, I like it that much) utilities has been updated to version 3. This is a major update and renovation of the program, which has changed from a preference pane to an application.

I honestly don't think that I could use a Mac without TextExpander anymore. I have a customized list of "frequently misspelled words" that I have it correct for me, as well as a snippet of text for creating a new shell script, a shortcut to insert the current date or time, HTML markup, and more.

TextExpander has been able to sync via MobileMe for some time, but version 3 also includes the ability to sync via Dropbox. It can also correct "double caps" at the beginning of a sentence which happen when you accidentally hold down the shift key for too long. There is a feature to capitalize new sentences as well, but that feature was a little hit-or-miss for me.

In its new application form, TextExpander has to be running for it to work. That may seem obvious, but since it used to be a preference pane, users may be used to it running "hidden" as a daemon in the background. There is an option to hide the application icon in the dock. If you hide it in the dock, you can still access TextExpander from its icon in the menu bar. They've even included several different styles of icon for the menu bar, which is good news for those of you who believe that menu bar items should only be black and white.

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Every year there is a torrent made to let listeners download most of the music for SXSW. This year's torrent has recently been posted (previous years' are also available at the same site). I don't usually use Bittorent, so I asked around for client suggestions; Transmission seems to be a favorite among several of my TUAW colleagues.

I also remembered a tip from my friend Guillermo Esteves (who did the awesome Star Wars crawl using only HTML and CSS), about using Dropbox to start torrents remotely. Guillermo provides some detailed instructions for Transmission and µTorrent to set them up to "watch" a folder for new .torrent files, with an important caveat to make sure that you don't download the files to your Dropbox.

One additional Transmission tip: be sure that you un-check the box next to "Display 'adding transfer' options window" so that files will automatically be added, and be sure to check the box next to the "Start transfers when added" option. Guillermo shows both of those settings in his screenshots, but it took me a few minutes to figure out that I had them set incorrectly.

Then I asked myself: "How can I be even lazier?" and I remembered Hazel, a program for automatically moving files from one folder to another based on a set of predefined rules. So I added a Hazel rule for ~/Downloads/ which will move any file where "Kind is BitTorrent Document" to my ~/Dropbox/Torrents/ folder. I repeated this on both my iMac and my MacBook Pro. Now I can be on my MacBook Pro and download a torrent file to ~/Downloads/ and have it moved to my Torrents folder, and have the torrent automatically start downloading on my iMac. So when I'm done with my MacBook Pro I can just close it without having to worry about interrupting any of my downloads.

You may have noticed that we're big Dropbox fans around here. We use it for syncing Things or instead of a USB sync cable or keeping our notes with us or sharing screenshots, along with any number of other uses. Do you know of any other unusual uses for Dropbox? Let us know in the comments.

In the meantime, enjoy the free, legal music downloads from SXSW!