Atul Karmarkar.Com» Internet

RIP Steve Jobs

Atul Karmarkar — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:00:29 +0000

Steve, you were truly one of a kind and left well before your time was up. R.I.P

Roasting in PayPal and RBI Hell… Again!

Atul Karmarkar — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 03:16:44 +0000

Yes, PayPal is at it… again. Over the past few years, I’ve found PayPal to be a convenient mode of payment, so it’s somewhat frustrating to keep getting these updates with regard to compliance with RBI policies. This mail I received last night was another bolt from the blue;

Dear Atul Karmarkar,

As part of our commitment to provide a high level of customer service, we would like to give you a 30-day advance notice on changes to our user agreement for India.

With effect from 1 March 2011, you are required to comply with the requirements set out in the notification of the Reserve Bank of India governing the processing and settlement of export-related receipts facilitated by online payment gateways (“RBI Guidelines”).

In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, our user agreement in India will be amended for the following services as follows:

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.

We seek your understanding as we continue to employ our best efforts to comply with the RBI Guidelines in a timely manner.

We regret any inconvenience caused to you and hope the advance notice will enable you to plan your future use of our services accordingly. For further information, click here.

If you have any questions, please contact PayPal customer support by logging into your PayPal account and clicking on ‘contact us’ at the bottom of the page. We sincerely thank you for your patience and continued support.

Sincerely,

The PayPal Team

Now the size of my PayPal transactions isn’t really all that large, but a restriction of accepting payments upto $500 per transaction into your PayPal account does seem somewhat unfair, especially for all the SMBs, entrepreneurs, bloggers and freelancers out there.

On the basis of what I’ve seen and heard so far, it seems ‘keeping’ the money with them for more than 7 days is likely to get PayPal regulated as a bank (as per RBI norms), which obviously they don’t want. Secondly, transactions exceeding $500 have to be reported to the RBI and Govt, so they’re neatly side-stepping this requirement also.

Sigh.. time to look at some alternatives I guess…

McKinsey Quarterly goes free, to phase out Premium Membership

Atul Karmarkar — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:05:57 +0000

Yup, this is the mail I received in my inbox a while ago. Rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and read the mail again to see if there was a catch somewhere. Finally, I had to concede there was no catch, and that McKinsey Quarterly was indeed making it’s content freely accessible by phasing out it’s paid or Premium Membership option.

This is such a huge move that words fail me right now… All I can say is just go and enjoy the awesomeoness that is McQ…

BSNL Broadband sucks!

Atul Karmarkar — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:08:45 +0000

Theoretically, the post title says it all, no? :-p

Well, I’ve been using BSNL Broadband for the past 3 years and till early this year, had nothing but good things to say about their services. I recommended BSNL Broadband to friends, and even got application forms for some of them.

This bliss was shattered a few months ago, in mid-April to be precise, when one fine day, I was just not able to connect to the net. Inspite of numerous workarounds, the Error 891: message refused to disappear, and as expected, the BSNL call centre was non-responsive.

After a day, I finally managed to get through to the BSNL Salunke Vihar Exchange and then horror of horrors, the guy in charge, one Mr.Nale nonchalantly informed me that I was unable to connect because the account had been closed!!

I guess it’s easy to imagine all the #%#$%%^%^ uncomplimentary words going through my mind as I forced myself to patiently ask the guy exactly what he meant.

Turns out they had received an application for closure of the account. After almost 15 minutes, I convinced the guy there must be some mistake, and he said he’d ‘look into it’. He never called back, so the next day I did, only to see all his ‘josh’ and bluster reduced to a whimper as he grudgingly admitted they goofed up. Someone else wanted to close their account and by mistake these buggers closed mine, without even a cursory check of facts, which I found weird. How can you close an account just like that??!!

It took a week for them to restore my connection, assign a new username and password, and yes, a promise to adjust the billing amount for that month too.

Since then, it’s been a nightmare and a complete mockery of my Rs.1,350 per month ‘Unlimited’ broadband connection. The speed is so bad that on some occasions, I actually found my phone’s GPRS connection to be faster than the so-called ‘broadband’, which is even worse than dial-up now. On other occasions, it connects and disconnects within 5 minutes every time, making it a painful process if I have to get any work done at all. If anything, I know all the BSNL error codes by heart now, so I’m grateful to them for enhancing my knowledge to that extent. :p

Numerous calls and visits to the telephone exchange have yielded no results except more promises by the great Mr.Nale to look into the matter, and I think it’s finally time to give up my BSNL connection and opt for a different service provider, maybe Airtel, Tikona or Youtele.

Have any of you faced similar problems with BSNL? Which option would you suggest in Pune?

IRCTC site gets a makeover

Atul Karmarkar — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:29:49 +0000

One of India’s most heavily visited sites, http://www.irctc.co.in/ has gone in for a makeover.

The new site seems much more simpler, user friendly, and easier to navigate, though I haven’t tried out all options yet. It is presently labeled ‘Beta’, and keeping in tune with our Independence Day, will go live on 15-Aug-10.

Here is how it looks:

You can either click ‘Beta’ on the current site or directly access the new site by visiting https://www.irctc.co.in/cgi-bin/beta.dll/irctc/services/home.do

Happy Bookings!

PayPal payments to Indian customers

Atul Karmarkar — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:22:28 +0000

Some months ago, PayPal customers in India were suddenly caught unawares by changes in PayPal’s policies regarding payments and withdrawal of funds. Those problems however, were resolved and things seemed back to normal. Around 3-4 days ago, I received an email from PayPal as below;

Dear Atul Karmarkar,
In accordance with regulatory instructions, we would like to notify you about a change in our withdrawal functionality in India starting on August 1, 2010. At present you can request for either an electronic or cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account if you are an India user.
From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account.
While we are working hard to restore the electronic withdrawal service, in the meantime, we are bringing this matter to your attention so that you can plan your future withdrawal activities accordingly.
To request for a cheque withdrawal:
Log into your PayPal account, click on ‘Withdraw’.
Click on the ‘Request a cheque from PayPal’ link.
Enter the withdrawal amount and select your mailing address, then click ‘Continue’.
Click ‘Submit’ to confirm your request.
In order to help you with this change and until further notice, we will refund the $5 USD cheque withdrawal fee to you for cheque withdrawals made on July 29, 2010 onwards.
For any questions, please log into your PayPal account and click ‘Contact Us’ at the bottom of the page.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused from this change in our withdrawal functionality. We will provide ongoing updates to you here. We thank you for your attention and patience as we work tirelessly to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.

Thank you,
The PayPal Asia Team

Just when I was thinking here we go again, PayPal sent another mail earlier in the day, this time full of joy and happiness, stating;

Dear Atul Karmarkar,
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

No doubt this is a relief, but PayPal seriously needs to sit with the Indian authorities and sort out all these payment + withdrawal related issues once and for all, before account holders stop using their PayPal accounts purely due to such uncertainty or worse, start looking for alternatives.

Playing with Google’s bag of tricks

Atul Karmarkar — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:41:29 +0000

As a company, Google never ceases to amaze me in terms of their constant innovation and tinkering in order to ensure the end user has a satisfying experience. I was having a look at changes they’ve made recently and have been playing around with a few of their applications to see the difference. Here are some of them, in no particular order…

A preview of Gmail’s new look

Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web

Evolving the Google design and experience

Google Sites brings you over 100 new web fonts

Introducing the new Google Docs app for Android

12 new file formats in the Google Docs Viewer

Advanced sign-in security for your Google account

Priority Inbox in Gmail for Mobile

Editing your Google Docs on the go

WebP, a new image format for the Web

Google URL Shortener Gets a Website

R.I.P Google Wave

Call phones from Gmail

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox

Easier event scheduling in Google Calendar

A new look for AdSense for content ad units

Switch to the new version of AdSense for search

New in Labs: Find docs and sites quickly with Apps Search

Bringing improved PDF support to Google Chrome

Access two Gmail accounts at once in the same browser

Introducing the Google Command Line Tool

5 things you may not know you can do with attachments in Gmail

View .doc attachments right in your browser

An update on the AdSense Product Ideas page

Folder and tag renaming

Gooooaaal!

Tips & Tricks: Advanced Sorting Rules in Google spreadsheets

Optical character recognition (OCR) in Google Docs

The new Google Docs graduates

Tips & Tricks: Table of Contents in Google documents

Sharing

Death By Twitter

Atul Karmarkar — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:27:01 +0000

Pretty catchy title, huh? Kinda like the ‘Death By Chocolate’ one gets to drink at Pepinos…

But no, this one is different, deadly serious and a path breaker for sure. We are all living in a highly connected and networked world now where having a social profile somewhere is the norm, with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter being the most common ones to communicate thoughts or ‘status updates’.

Mark Shurtleff, Attorney General for the US state of Utah, used Twitter to convey his go-ahead for the death sentence to Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted murderer. Ronnie was executed by a firing squad, which seemed a rather archaic way to do so.

As expected, there were varying reactions, to executing someone like this or even announcing it in such a manner. Whatever one may say, using social media to communicate – whether official or personal, is definitely here to stay with more and more government officials and corporates getting online, hopefully not for such morbid announcements though!

WordPress 3.0 is here

Atul Karmarkar — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:57:23 +0000

WordPress 3.0 – Thelonious, the 13th major release of WordPress is out.

With 218 contributors, a lot of work has gone into it, with new APIs allowing for greater functionality and ease of use. One of the other big enhancements is the ability to merge WordPress and WordPress MU, the Multi User edition, making it possible to run multiple blogs from the same installation in a far more easier manner. Check out the tour video;

The new version promises much, though like with any major version, I prefer to wait a few days before jumping in to upgrade, and so it shall be in this case too.

You can download WordPress 3.0 and see for yourself.

Google’s Pac-Man logo marks a return to blogging

Atul Karmarkar — Wed, 26 May 2010 01:38:04 +0000

This past weekend was quite a fun filled and exciting one (offline) and as usual, trust Google to come up with something to stir up a frenzy online. Yes, if you were among the millions of people who use Google, you could not have missed seeing the Pac-Man logo, commemorating the game’s 30th anniversary.

Initially I thought it was among the regular logos that Google regularly puts out from time to time, but it was a pleasant surprise to find out that this ‘logo’ was actually a playable, full fledged 255 level game! All one had to do was to hit ‘Insert Coin’ and you were on your way.

Have to admit this was quite addictive and I ended up playing till the 3rd level, when it got kinda boring. All in all, it was fun to rediscover this game and spend time navigating through the maze. (and memory lane )

Google kept this on their homepage for a full 48 hours and just when one was wondering about usage statistics, RescueTime, (a Seattle-based company which offers Web-based time management and analytics tool for knowledge workers and their managers) came out with some numbers, putting the cost of Google’s Pac-Man at 4.82 million hours!

Quite something, huh…

Oh and by the way, I haven’t been regular on the blog for some time now (again!).. It’s been a combination of factors really.. what with a bad internet connection (thank you BSNL), writer’s block or just sheer laziness. Amidst all this, the blog’s RSS numbers haven’t declined and a big thanks to all you readers for keeping the faith.

Hopefully, all laziness issues have been set to rest now and you guys can look forward to my posts invading your inbox / rss readers again.

Atul Karmarkar.Com» Internet

RIP Steve Jobs

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