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Paypal Electronic Withdrawals in India Resumes

Abhinav Kaiser — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:07:18 +0000

It almost seems like a psychological game that is being conducted by Paypal on India users. A couple of days back, they sent out an email communication stating that all electronic bank transfers to India will stop starting from August. And today, it’s a different ball game. A new communication states that the electronic transfers would continue and hence, no disruption.

Importantly, the days of panic for Indian freelancers has ended. I hope the change if for a longer term rather than having to review every couple of months. Remember, in May, Paypal had shut out payments to India as the Indian regulatory bodies had raised serious concerns!

Mail from Paypal below:

Dear XXXXXXXX,

We’ve received good news. You can continue to enjoy electronic withdrawals just as you did before.

While we have received your appreciation for the advanced notice and the refund of the cheque processing fee, we also have heard loud and clear that you highly value the ease-of-use of our electronic withdrawal service. Our customers are our number one priority and we are working tirelessly to improve our service.

Thank you for your patience and in appreciation for your continued support, we will still provide the $5 USD processing fee refund for any cheque withdrawals made from July 29, 2010 until further notice.

For any enquiries, please contact PayPal customer support by logging into your PayPal account and clicking on ‘contact us’ at the bottom of the page.

Thank you,

The PayPal Asia Team

For the past couple of days, I have been musing over switching to Moneybookers, but it looks like I will be forced to wait for a while to make the change. Paypal is easy to operate and reliable. But, their transaction charges are on the expensive side, and they do a good job of hiding it from you. I am not really sure how reliable others are.

Thuat Nguyen is a Fraud Apple App Developer

Abhinav Kaiser — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:09:03 +0000

If you frequent Apple’s app store, you are bound to have seen the name Thuat Nguyen. Beware, he is a fraud and he steals confidential information and rips you to the bones.

80% of the apps in the Apple app store are developed this Nguyen who hails from Vietnam. Itunes accounts were hacked and purchases were made without the rightful owners’ knowledge. The suspicions of foul play were confirmed by Apple today.

Apple stated in a statement – “Thuat Nguyen and his apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns.”

“Developers do not receive any iTunes confidential customer data when an app is downloaded.”

“If your credit card or iTunes password is stolen and used on Itunes we recommend that you contact your financial institution and inquire about cancelling the card and issuing a chargeback for any unauthorized transactions,” Apple advised.

Apple is merely advising iTunes users to change passwords and get rid of their credit cards registered with Apple. They don’t seem to be taking any legal action against the Vietnamese sucker.

YouTube Hacked, Target Justin Bieber

Abhinav Kaiser — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:22:34 +0000

Video sharing website YouTube has been hacked yet again, but, this time around the website was not the target, young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber instead.

Bieber’s music videos were the target. Comments, abusive in nature were posted on the video clips and some comments even claimed that the singer was dead. Yikes!

The site was down for two hours on Sunday before the parent company (Google) took notice of the situation. A flaw in the website allowed hackers to redirect YouTube users to adult websites and also launch pop-ups.

A Google spokesman said of the YouTube hack: “We took swift action to fix a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability [which allows hackers to place code into a site] on youtube.com that was discovered several hours ago. Comments were temporarily hidden by default within an hour, and we released a complete fix for the issue in about two hours. We’re continuing to study the vulnerability to help prevent similar issues in the future.”

Graham Cluley from the security firm Sophos, told BBC News: “The thing with a cross-site scripting attack is that it will appear that it is a message being posted by that website, which gives it a certain legitimacy.

“It could be used to show a message that tells you to update your password; it could link to a malicious website; or it could attempt to phish you.”

For some strange reason, Justin Bieber has been on the receiving end for sometime now. His website which featured ‘My World Tour’ section was hacked. Voting was called for asking where Bieber should tour next – with no restrictions on location.

Most people voted for North Korea, followed by Israel, with just over half a million votes having been cast, after bulletin board, 4Chan, nominated the despotic state. This is the second joke in two months that 4Chan has played on Bieber, after getting its readers to search for the phrase ‘Justin Bieber Syphilis’ last month – making it number one in Google Trend’s ‘Hot Searches’ list.

Oh! By the way, Justin in alive, he tweeted it himself.

Flash 10.1 for Mobile: The Long Wait Continues

Anuroop Kaiser — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:43:49 +0000

Adobe announced Tuesday it released Adobe Flash 10.1 to its mobile platform partners, with support coming to Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Phones, Symbian, MeeGo and LiMo. What does that mean for you? Nothing, unless you have a Nexus One with Android 2.2 (serendipitously received over the air or installed manually).

Some day, Flash 10.1 will be available on all kinds mobile devices, but you may want to grab a Snickers, because it’s not happening for a while. Everyone else will have to wait.

Android phone owners, who need Android 2.2 to run Flash 10.1, can check out this upgrade guide; the gist is that Motorola’s Droid will be next in line — date unspecified – and several other Android 2.1 phones will go Froyo within the next six months, or by year-end. It was once reported that Flash 10.1 would work on Android versions 2.1 and higher, but Adobe’s announcement only mentions Android 2.2.

As for those other mobile platforms, think late 2010, early 2011. “We may not see a huge number of these devices available on Tuesday, but the pipeline for Christmas, CES, Mobile World Congress next year is really exciting,” Anup Muraka, Adobe’s director of technology strategy, told IDG News Service.

Folks eagerly waiting to play Farmville on their phones or watch video from the many content providers who use Flash should be used to the long wait. We started hearing some chatter about Flash 10 for mobile phones in 2008, with Adobe aiming for a late 2009 release. The idea was to have a beta out to developers by October of last year. The beta release window slipped to late 2009 for some devices and early 2010 for others. Reviewers finally got to try Flash 10.1 on the Nexus One last month.

With Flash 10.1 still months away for all but the Nexus One and possibly the Motorola Droid, today’s news of a release to partners is worth noting, but not worth getting excited about as a consumer. Proving Steve Jobs wrong will require a bit more patience.

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MS Office 2010 Hits the Stores

Abhinav Kaiser — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:17:29 +0000

Microsoft has officially launched its latest offering, the Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010. Over 35,000 stores across the globe have put Microsoft’s new products on the shelf today. This is a record of sorts for the software major. Some of the stores to carry this product in the US are Best Buy, Fnac, Harvey Norman and PC World, and online retailers such as amazon.com are also promoting it.

The new Office 2010 does not come in standalone version alone, it can purchased pre-installed on PCs, some brands that carry it include Acer Inc., Asus, Dell Inc., HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony Corp. It is estimated that in the coming year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded.

“Working with major retail partners and PC makers, we’ve made dramatic changes in the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs,” said Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division. “For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs. For those who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes.”

“Recent comScore Tech Metrix™ data confirms that more than 1 billion PCs worldwide have Office software installed, making it the most widely used productivity suite in the world,” said Mike Hurt, senior vice president of comScore. “This milestone helps illustrate the importance that software products like Microsoft Office have played in shaping the digital world to date.”

Office 2010 in its present format is supported in ten different languages but is expected to expand over 90 languages in the coming year. The product can already be deemed popular as the beta downloads exceeded 9 million, which is a big boost to a product which has always traditionally done well.

“Following the great response to the Office 2010 beta and the success of Windows 7, we predict this will be the biggest consumer release of Office, ever,” Elop said.

Pacman Celebrates 30 Years, Happy Birthday Pacman!

Abhinav Kaiser — Sat, 22 May 2010 02:59:52 +0000

One of the most popular games of my generation, Pacman, has indeed made the cut above everything else that came after it. Today is the day when the game Pacman celebrates its 30th birthday, and this is perhaps the only game that has survived all odds.

Google commemorated this event in history by replacing their logo with a flash based Pacman game. The game worked as fine as it would with the real arcade game. I scored a decent 26k.

It all started on 22nd of May 1980, one month after I was born, in a game studio owned by Bandai Namco Games in Japan. It was called as Puck Man then, and this simple game addicted several children and adults alike. It came to the Western nations in October of the same year and sold over 100,000 units the same year.

To build on the success, in the US markets, variants of Pacman like the Ms.Pac-Man (female version), Super Pacman, Pac and Pal amongst several others were launched and some raked up larger revenues than the original one.

The game is still alive, although mostly as a free arcade which you can download off the internet. Or, play directly on the web like the way I did on Google homepage.

via Abhinav PMP

HP drops Windows 7 from ‘Slate’ tablet, will use WebOS variant

Anuroop Kaiser — Mon, 03 May 2010 06:29:36 +0000

Less than a week after computer maker HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm $1.2 billion in cash, sources are noting that it will be removing Windows 7 from the Slate tablet, instead choosing to use a WebOS variant, arguably the best smartphone operating system available.

Sources say HP was not happy with the overall performance of Windows 7 on their unreleased tablet, saying the OS was too power-hungry. Additionally, a Windows 7 license will bring up the price of any final Slate product, and now that HP owns WebOS, the move makes sense.

TechCrunch says also that HP is set to drop the Intel processor used in the tablet, which would completely kill off any chance of Windows 7 being used.

The Slate, in its original state, would have run on Windows 7, would have been $549 at its cheapest, and had an 8.9-inch 1024×600 multi-touch screen. Additionally, the tablet had a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor, 1GB RAM, SDHC slot (with support up to 128GB), two cameras, a USB port, a SIM card slot, and five-hour battery life.

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Google acquires 3D desktop BumpTop

Anuroop Kaiser — Mon, 03 May 2010 06:26:43 +0000

Google has acquired Bump Technologies, the maker of a 3D desktop called BumpTop, Bump announced Sunday.

“Today, we have a big announcement to make: we’re excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Google!,” a note posted to the company’s Web site said. “This means that BumpTop (for both Windows and Mac) will no longer be available for sale. Additionally, no updates to the products are planned.”

Financial details were not disclosed, but the company said it would keep its software available for download for one week. A Google representative confirmed the acquisition but declined to discuss specifics of the deal.

BumpTop debuted in April 2009, three years after a video demo of the freeware replacement desktop captivated YouTube viewers. The software, which runs on top of Windows and Mac OS X, allows files to be thrown into loose piles, tidied into neat stacks, or fanned out like a deck of cards.

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Apple’s iPad 3G model gets off to a good start

Anuroop Kaiser — Mon, 03 May 2010 06:24:33 +0000

Opening weekend sales of Apple’s 3G version of the iPad were good, according to published reports.

The company began selling the iPad 3G in the U.S. late Friday afternoon. The starting prices for the 3G mode were $629 (with 16 gigabytes of memory), compared to $499 starting price for the Wi-Fi only version that started selling a month ago. The reports are a good sign for Apple, which may or may not snag mainstream consumers with the iPad. Another good sign is that Apple has delayed its overseas launch of the iPad as it tries to meet demand in the U.S.

The 3G version sold an estimated 300,000 units over the weekend, according to Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. (The analyst made a more conservative estimate this time, as his estimate for the Wi-Fi only version was off the market by a few hundred thousand). Apple hasn’t provided its own sales figures, but Best Buy said it sold out of its limited inventory of models as of Sunday.

The Wi-Fi only iPad sold about 300,000 units during its opening weekend, although that device went on sale on a Saturday. Munster estimates that Apple has sold more than a million iPads altogether. While that’s a lot less than other big product launches (game consoles, for instance), it is a very respectable number for a tablet computer, which is a new category of device that consumers aren’t familiar with yet.

It will be very interesting to see if Apple can sustain sales of the iPad as rival tablet computers come on the market. Amazon has been beefing up its Kindle e-book reader, but models from players such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard (which just bought Palm in part so it can use its WebOS operating system in tablet computers and phones), aren’t hitting the market immediately.

Apple thus has a chance to grab a lot of the early adopter market for itself. If it really wants to sell a lot of units, it will probably have to consider cutting prices. The most expensive 3G model with 64 gigabytes of memory sells for $829. You can bet that clone makers will launch tablets that come in well under that price. Forrester Research estimates that Apple will sell 3 million iPads this year. Customers for the iPad 3G version will likely shell out extra money to get a data plan with AT&T, but the terms aren’t that tough, as no contract is required. AT&T is charging $14.99 a month for 250 megabytes of data and $29.99 a month for unlimited data.

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Apple rolls out iPad 3G today

Anuroop Kaiser — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:36:06 +0000

Apple later today will start selling iPads that are able to connect to the Internet over AT&T’s data network. Customers who pre-ordered the more expensive models of the tablet will also receive them today.

Priced from $629 to $829, the 3G-enabled iPad goes on sale at Apple’s retail stores and most Best Buy stores at 5 p.m. local time. The company’s stores will be closed between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. to prepare for the sales start.

Today’s debut of the 3G iPad follows the April 3 launch of the WiFi-only models. The 3G iPad cost $130 more than the corresponding WiFi-only model, a price increase that at least one expect has called “ridiculous.” According to research firm iSuppli, which did a physical teardown of the WiFi model, the additional parts required for 3G connectivity cost an estimated $24.50.

AT&T prepped potential iPad 3G customers earlier this week when it released details (download PDF) about the two data plans that users can access: a $15 per month plan that allows 250MB of data to be transferred to and from the iPad, and a $30 per month unlimited data plan.

Unlike typical cell phone data plans, such as the one that AT&T markets to iPhone owners, the iPad plans are month-to-month deals that can be dropped without penalty. Users who subscribe to the $15 per month plan are warned by the iPad when they have reached the 20%- and 10%-remaining milestones.

Apple also published instructions on its support site today to outline the steps iPad owners take to sign up with an AT&T data plan.

According to Web analytics firm NetApplications, the iPad has captured 0.04% of the worldwide online usage market, meaning that 4 out of every 1,000 devices used to browse the Internet are iPads. The iPad’s share of the global online usage market is on par with Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Apple has said it sold more than half a million WiFi-only iPads in the first week of availability, while other estimates — including Chitika Labs, which calculates sales by tracking unique iPad IP addresses that access its ad network — are currently as high as 1.17 million units.

The tablet’s brisk sales caught Apple by surprise. Earlier this month it said it was adding production to meet the strong demand. Most analysts argued that the shortages forced Apple to delay the international introduction of the iPad to the end of May.

Customers who order a WiFi+3G iPad today at Apple’s online store face a week-long wait before their tablets are shipped, according to the company’s site.

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