Today I found very interesting Google Doodle – Google Hurdles. It’s pure fun (and productivity killer too!).
After couple attempts, I could reach 11.7 seconds. But it didn’t feel that great.
So I did some “MAGIC” and scored “1.3 seconds”. Yes, you are reading it correct, I haven’t missed any digit there. I have completed google hurdles in just 1.3 seconds.
Still not convenienced? Check the proof images below. And don’t forget to post your best score in comments.
Keep hammering your keyboard!!!
Unfortunately, I have another bad news for India exporters. I was about to go to sleep and I received an email from PayPal regarding upcoming changes to PayPal User Agreement. Below is the main points of that email.
- Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and
- Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.
The second point is the most shocking one. NOW WE CAN’T RECEIVE ANY PAYMENT EXCCEEDING $500. It seems Indian Government (RBI = Reserve Bank of India) is keen on stopping export income.
Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and
Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.
What does that mean to me?
It means, if your business includes receiving payment of more than $500 in a transaction, either STOP EXPORTING and go find your self another business OR ask each and every client to use wire transfer to send you money, which includes visiting bank personally and fill out wire form with all the SWIFT details (in most of the cases). According to me, this will make few clients go away and choose provider from another country.
Indians, it seems Online Export business is in danger now. Better start thinking for alternate business….
Today when I checked my mail inbox in morning, I found a shocking mail – it was from Payoneer. It said Payoneer MasterCard will be blocked in India – immediately for POS transactions (at any shop where you swipe your card) and soon for ATM. Below is the content of that mail.
Dear Valued Customer,
Due to instructions from the Indian local banking authorities, Payoneer Prepaid MasterCard cards will be blocked for local purchases (POS Purchase) made in India within the next few hours, and ATM transactionswill probably be blocked soon afterare also blocked.
Your Payoneer card continues to be functional anywhere other than India (including transactions made online on global websites), and all funds in your account are secure.Payoneer card of Indian users are compeltely blocked now, it won’t work even with international merchants. That’s really bad news!!
Other payment companies have experienced similar restrictions in the past, and most have been temporary and have taken a few weeks to resolve the situation. Payoneer and MasterCard are working with local banking regulators to address the situation. Payoneer is also preparing alternative ways for you to continue to receive payouts, and expects you will be able to continue to receive your payments in the future. We apologize for the inconvenience and will keep you informed.
We have opened a special mailbox for you to communicate with our Customer Support. Please feel free to contact us at IndiaSupport@payoneer.com.
Sincerely,
Payoneer Customer Support
It was certainly bad news for thousands of Indian freelancers. It appears that Indian authority is trying to stop misuse of this service by people trying to hide their income using this service. But a lot of small freelancers would suffer from this. Last year same thing had happened with Paypal and it made a lot of freelancers to switch over Payoneer. Now Payoneer is in the same place.
Q: I have a good balance in my Payoneer card. What should I do?
A: According to Payoneer, ATM withdrawl is not blocked yet. So visit your nearest ATM and withdraw all funds ASAP, though I have not verified whether ATM is still working or not. POS transaction is already blocked, I tried that today but failed.
You also have an option to reverse payment to partner (vWorker,Freelancer, oDesk etc). So you can withdraw the fund using any other method.
Q: Payoneer blocked (atleast for now), What’s your take?
A: It’s an indication that Indian government would not let any freelancer hide their income. So better keep your PAN and IEC (Import Export Code).
Q: What can I use for now?
A: You can use Paypal as an option. I am not aware about any other option. Share it in comments if you know any other.
I hope Indian government can track millions of millions money being scamed by big players soon (some recent are Adarsh society, CWG, 2G spectrum and many other which we are not aware about). That will bring much more tax income and save government’s fund without being an issue for small freelancers who are earning their bread from freelancing and paying their tax loyally.
Some questions has no answer. Following are some of them.
Recently, on twitter, I read someone’s tweet about WePay.com. This name was totally new for me, so I checked their website (wepay.com), their fee structure and it was impressive.
From their FAQ section, it appeared that one need to have US address and US bank account to start using this service. So far, these were their only 2 requirements. Still to be sure, I opened a ticket at WePay’s support portal to confirm this, my question was answered affirmatively, that this service can be used if I have a valid US address and verified bank account, even if I am not US citizen or not living in US at the moment.
Well, that was a good news for me. I am not living in US but I have many friends/relatives there. So I could use this service as I have US address and bank account too.
I signed up at WePay, it was so simple and quick. Then I added and verified my bank account. That was quick process too. Now it was the time to test their service, how it works, how quick it is and all that. So I asked one of my friend to make a small donation just for testing purpose.
Now here comes the twist. According to them, payment made with Credit Card are approved in few hours and payment made with bank account can take upto 1-2 days to clear. My friend had made the test donation using credit card, so I was expecting it to clear in few hours.
Almost after 24 hours, my transaction was still pending. I opened ticket in support system, I received no response regarding this. Then after 36 hours (of payment), I contacted WePay’s live chat support (Yeah, they have live chat support too, which is impressive factor again!!). Live support person had no clue why it was still pending. That person asked me to contact another person from their support team. I contacted him, and I was asked to call him regarding this payment. Later I called this person, he asked me who is the sender of this payment n all that (which I might not be knowing if it was not a test payment, being a donation). I answered his questions and then I was told that I can’t use this service as I am not living in US.
On one side their support staff confirms that I can use their service as far as I have US address and US bank account, I can use this service, even though I am not living in US and other side, after I finish all verification, I am being told that I can’t use this service. This is not professional. All the support person should know all the rules OR they should not answer my question. Any reply from support representative is considered as official, and such huge difference in two support person’s view is not professional.
One more thing I found is, their system/website is not fully tested, specially in terms of cross-browser JS issues. As WePay’s interface depends on Javascript, some of the operations were not working in some browser, which was later fixed when I reported bug.
I have had little email conversation with Bill (co-founder of WePay), turnaround time from this person was quick, must appreciate that.
Things I liked about WePay:
Things I don’t like at all about WePay:
I am using #NewTwitter since a while. Today I noticed something weired in it.
When refering to time of any event or action, have you ever read “It was done at 1:00 am tomorrow”. Well, that would be insult of grammer, but #Twitter is doing this.
Here’s how it happened:
I had granted access to my account to one app and I wanted to remove that. So I went to Settings->Connections.
It lists all the apps which I have allowed to access my account, along with date/time when I approved.
The app which I had just approved was saying something like “approved on 12:59 am tomorrow”. Weired, huh? It is.
First I was thinking what’s wrong. Then I realised that Twitter noted time from my timezone and it’s comparing it with time on their server.
Approval time as per my timezone – 12:59 am 10/19/10
Time on twitter’s server – xx:xx am/pm 10/18/10
So twitter is comparing my timezone’s time with server’s time. So it find it “APPROVED IN FUTURE” 😉
Do you want a proof? Here it is.
This is no photoshop magic, you can try mentioned sequence and you will know it’s real image.
I know this is a very small bug, but after all, BUG IS A BUG!
I just encountered situation where I had to request a page with SSL error.
By default, HttpWebRequest won’t process any request if SSL is invalid but you can override this setting with just one line of code to ignore all SSL error (basically trust all SSL without checking, could be unsafe too).
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = (Function(sender, certificate, chain, sslPolicyErrors) True)
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =((sender, certificate, chain, sslPolicyErrors) => true);
Few days back, I puchased few domains as they were good and just released from “pending delete” period. But I had no time to place a good blog/website on them. So I decided to park those domains or something similar to park, which is better than leaving domains empty.
Who does not know what’s domain parking, here is some information for you. To park your domain, you have to point your domain to domain parking provider’s nameserver and add those domains to your account with them. Once ready, it will display relevant link and some content on it (content is not displayed generally). When user arrives on your domain, parking page is displayed. If links are relevant and if user clicks on any sponsored link on your website, you get share from that click’s revenue (around 60%, rest goes to parking provider) . This is general situation.
I have heard many good and bad things abuot domain parking, which I have mentioned below. Personally I don’t like domain parking typical page design with hardly related link on it. As I didn’t want to left domain empty till I develope something for it, I researched to find alternate to domain parking.
Now, let’s talk about alternates of domain parking. There are other alternates to domain parking like Google Adsense, WhyPark, etc. I’ll also mention pros and cons of these alternates.
So far, I liked WhyPark option the most. Here are the pros and cons of WhyPark.
Honestly, I think WhyPark deserves some share for all their hardwork to make you earn. Give it a try for your domain parking needs.
I am in this Domain-Hosting market for more than 4 years. So far, I have found cPanel as best control panel for Linux server and DotNetPanel for Windows server.
Linux servers are cheap and there are lots of providers. cPanel/WHM has great flexibility and ease of use.
Many of the BIG hosting companies use modified version of cPanel but I like non-modified cPanel the best, specially “x3” skin.
There are tons of linux cPanel hosting provider but one should be careful while choosing hosting provider. Server uptime and your website speed plays very important role on your site’s ranking in google.
You can check your website’s speed performace from Google Webmasters->Labs->Site performance.
So far, I have found Hostgator.com very reliable and supportive. Their servers are really fast with great uptime. They have 24/7 live chat support and whenever I have joined live chat, I have found 25+ support staff online.
Their UNLIMITED plan (disk space, bandwidth and domains – everything unlimited) starts at $ 7.95/month, which is not bad at all for the service which they offer. Additionaly you can save $9.94 using this Hostgator coupon O85NFxbb26.
If your budget is low, you can go with WebHostingPad.com. They also provide unmodified cPanel, with everything ULIMITED package, just like HostGator. And last but not the least, they have live chat support too – all these starting @ just $1.99/month! (Yeah, it’s highly affordable)
I hope this guide will lead you towards selecting a GOOD host for your website.
Here’s the set of instructions to setup SIP/VoIP calls on your Nokia E-series device.
I have used E71 device and Jumblo as SIP provider for my setup but you can use any provider of your choice.
First go to Settings->Connection->SIP Settings and create a new SIP profile from options. (Please follow instructions properly otherwise you may received “Unable to register” error).
Profile Name : Jumblo (user friendly name for your profile – you can choose any)
Service Profile : IETF
Default access point : myhome (Your wifi or 3g access point)
Public user name : myusername@sip.jumblo.com (username which you have created with your SIP provider)
Use compression : No
Registration : When needed
Use security : No
Proxy Server
Proxy server address : sip.jumblo.com
Realm : sip.jumblo.com
User name : myusername (username which you have created with your SIP provider)
Password : yourpassword
Allow loose routing : Yes
Transport type : UDP
Port : 5060
Registrar server
Registrar server address : sip.jumblo.com
Realm : sip.jumblo.com
User name : myusername (username which you have created with your SIP provider)
Password : yourpassword
Allow loose routing : Yes
Transport type : UDP
Port : 5060
If you received “Connection error”, please follow these steps.
Go to Settings->Phone->Call and set “Send my internet call ID” to “Yes”. This should solve connection error issue.
Note : SIP uses port 5060 to make calls, if your ISP has blocked that port (few countries have that port blocked) then you won’t be able to make call even if you have configured it correctly.