Mar
30
As some one who does not use the internet for downloading movies and songs, bit torrent and desi torrent were a great mystery to me . This article on Torrents and Free Downloads explains how it works and why it is so popular.
It also shows that selling any digital product online to consumers will be difficult in India, it will be shared for free online.
Rajshri Films web venture is given extensive coverage in the online blogs, but the numbers paint a different picture.
Rajjat’s strategy is to support free views with advertising, and charge users $9.99 to buy newly released movies ($4.99 for older releases). Still, Rajjat’s paid-for content has precious few takers—no more than 1,000 a month, he confesses, and mainly NRIs.
There are many smaller companies which have better revenues. If you are not compensated fairly for your efforts, you are likely to look out for other options.
Mar
27
You can conveniently recharge your prepaid mobile online directly using your ICICI or HDFC bank account at
http://www.icicibank.com/Personal-Banking/onlineservice/online-services/PrepaidMobileRecharge/prepaid-mobile-recharge.html
http://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/payments/prepaid_refill/pre_refill.htm
It is available for
Operator Name / Circle
Airtel – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chennai, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Mumbai,Maharashtra,Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (East),Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal
BPL – Mumbai
Vodafone - Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka,Kerala, Kolkata, Maharashtra,Mumbai, Punjab, Rajasthan,Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal
Idea – Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West)
Reliance India Mobile – All India
Tata Indicom – All India
Aircel – Tamil Nadu
BSNL – Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, MP & Chattisgarh, Punjab, Rajasthan. Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh (East & West), Maharashtra
Recharge Limit per mobile number per day – Rs 1,000
Recharge amounts are:
Airtel – 50, 99, 100, 200, 300, 333, 444, 500, 1000 (fixed denominations)
Aircel – 50 to 10,000 (flexi recharge)
BSNL – 55 to 6,000 (flexi recharge)
Reliance GSM – 500, 400, 300, 299, 285, 201, 200, 199, 145, 110, 105, 100, 75, 60, 50, 40, 30, 25, 20, 10
Reliance CDMA – 50 to 10,000 (flexi recharge)
Loop – 50 – 10,000 (flexi recharge)
TATA – 50 to 10,000 (flexi recharge)
Virgin – 50 to 10,000 (flexi recharge)
Vodafone – 50 to 10,000 (flexi recharge)
* Please note: All flexi recharges are subject to availability of the recharge plan with the mobile operators during the transaction period. Request you to please confirm the plan details with your respective mobile operator before entering the denomination
Some of the amounts are top up for lifetime validity prepaid mobile accounts, others are valid for 30 days.
Mar
26
Beneath the gloss and hype of press releases in the mainstream media, is the real culture of a company – whether the company is really the law abiding corporate citizen it claims it is.
Only when you deal with the company either as a customer, vendor or an employee, do you know what you are up against.
Asian Food Worker has some interesting insights into the culture of intimidation and harassment of certain companies.
Mar
24
Tata Photon plus USB broadband connection is available as a prepaid and postpaid connection. The postpaid connection can be ordered online at Ichoose.in but the prepaid option cannot be ordered online.
Earlier the price was Rs 3500, but now it has been reduced. The prepaid connection details from
http://www.tataphoton.com/tata-photon-plus-prepaid.aspx are:
Get a TATA Photon Plus Prepaid connection at Rs. 2399/-
Get 1 GB Usage free valid over 1 month with every new TATA Photon+ USB Modem
Recharge Vouchers
| Amount |
Usage |
Validity |
| Rs. 200 |
250 MB |
30 days |
| Rs. 500 |
650 MB |
30 days |
| Rs. 700 |
1 GB (1024 MB) |
30 days |
| Rs. 850 |
2 GB (2048 MB) |
30 days |
| Rs. 1000 |
4 GB (4096 MB) |
30 days |
| Rs. 1200 |
5 GB (5120 MB) |
30 days |
If you call 1800 420 8282 (the number specified on their website) , they will take down your phone number and the customer care executive will promise that some one will contact within 48 hours, but no one will contact you.
Mar
18
From http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/jaimonjoseph/326/61644/has-paypal-given-you-problems-yet.html
One lakh seventy thousand Indians regularly receive or send money abroad, through the online banking website PayPal. Actually, about 1.6 million Indians are signed up for the service, though not all of them are regular users. That’s according to Anuj Nayar, Director of Global Communications, at PayPal.com.
There are many blogs that claim to cover India’s online industry , but this is one major segment that they conveniently ignore. Facebook and Twitter are the latest fad (slowly replacing Orkut and Myspace), but if they are down, people’s lives are not affected. Nowadays, in many companies in India, the amount of time you spend in office is an indicator of how “hard working” you are, and when there is no real work , employees spend time on these social networking websites, boosting their traffic.
Websites backed by big media houses have the resources to send out Press Releases and get media coverage, but rarely spend any time understanding the customer needs. Most of these companies and their employees have a very patronizing attitude if you are not well known, but in fact their audience is usually limited to India and NRIs, while many online publishers work with advertisers through out the world.
Also motivation levels differ. An employee with a big media firm will just be doing a job, compiling information from various famous websites, at the end of the day they will get their salary. On the other hand, if you own an online business, you are always experimenting with new things, you have to understand the market, find reliable business partners. There is no replacement for practical experience online. The big companies can hire hackers to sabotage your business, hoping you will sell your websites. But no one can take away what you have learnt, and you can always start again from scratch.
Mar
14
From
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/03/13/stories/2010031352990400.htm
‘.in’ registrations have crossed six-lakh mark. Of total registrations (6.1 lakh), as much as 3.8 lakh registrations have been booked in India and 2.3 lakh overseas.
From
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/12/15/stories/2009121551320400.htm
There are nearly 1.4 million domain names – an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet – registered in India. Of this, .COM is around 800,000 and .IN around 500,000.
While there are 35 million Net users, there are only 1.4 million domain names registered from India – translating to 2 per cent as compared to 25 per cent in the US; 17 per cent in Europe; 9 per cent in Latin America and 7 per cent in China. The poor response in India is due to lack of awareness among companies and individuals on owning domain names.
Though India has a large number of I.T professionals and software companies, most of them are service providers and this attitude continues with respect to the internet. While providing services are low risk, they are also difficult to scale without hiring a lot of people. Developing a money making website is difficult, especially when you are in India and have limited options, but it finally depends on what your long term goals are.
Many people in India prefer to create content / applications for social networking websites like Facebook, Orkut and Linkedin, but if you create the same content on your own domain name, it opens up many options for you. A domain name costs very little (.in domains cost less Rs 100 now for the first year) and can create value in the long term.
Mar
11
Trying to compile a list of secure email clients based on feedback from users.
Most corporations use :
Groupwise
Lotus Notes
Microsoft Exchange
For home users and small businesses, the popular email clients are:
Outlook Express - Not suitable for a large number of emails.
Thunderbird – common error, This folder is being processed. Please wait till processing is complete to get messages.
MS Outlook - seems to be the least secure email client, can easily be hacked.
Plain text is always the best, the possibility of malicious scripts getting downloaded are minimized. Other options are:
Poppeeper.com
PocoMail
Popcorn by Ultrafunk
Kmail (for KDE on Linux)
Pine (replaced by Alpine)
Mar
10
Last week I received confirmation that some mail sent to me never reached my in box ( in fact mails from that sender have not been reaching me for this month). I am trying to trace the problem, and these articles provide some information.
http://askbobrankin.com/missing_emails.html
http://luxsci.com/blog/wheres-the-email-the-case-of-missing-or-disappearing-messages.html
Mar
6
After nearly 5 weeks, Paypal resumed bank withdrawal to India on 4th March 2010 IST. No specific purpose code was to be entered, only the purpose for which the money was being withdrawn was to be selected from the drop down menu. The status of the withdrawal was shown as pending for about 24 hours and then shown as completed. Earlier Indian Paypal account holders could withdraw funds to their debit or credit card up to $500 per day, for a fee of $5 USD, but now that option is no longer available. Earlier all ad networks would pay Indians using Masspay, but now some are not using the option, especially if most of the Paypal accounts are personal or premier. Account holders who requested checks received them after 15-20 days.
Also some personal and premier Paypal account holders are reporting that their Paypal account have been limited. They have to provide proof of the source of funds like Invoices, emails, chat transcripts and then the limitation on the account is removed. Also many Indian paypal account holders have verified their account using Virtual Credit Cards (VCCs) linked to the bank accounts of the VCC seller, not their own bank account and may be facing problems.
Indian banks seem to be becoming more strict regarding wire transfers and people receiving payments from Moneybookers are getting phone calls regarding the transaction, especially HDFC bank. Many Indian banks charge a fee for an incoming SWIFT transfer and so check with the customer regarding the transfer. Sometimes, you have to fill a form confirming that you agree to transfer and pay the fees.
Mar
3
Making money online gets tougher – covers the business models and problems faced making money online in India. I have noted some of my observations based on personal experience, since I have a pure play online business model. Basically internet business income (not a service provider) is unstable, you can earn US$5,000+ in one month and less than $1000 the other due to factors beyond your control.
Your ability to make money online over the long term depends on a number of factors like:
- How you manage your overheads – if you keep them sufficiently low, it is much easier to survive.
- Your family responsibilities and finances – if you have a lot of loans, a dependent wife and children, it can be difficult to survive during the downturn.
- Level of technical competence and ability to learn – if you can do the server admin, content writing and manage advertising yourself it helps
- Diversification – revenue from multiple sources ensures that there are fewer variations in income.
- Ability to take risks – If your business is doing well, it is easy to become complacent, but if you do not take risks and fail, it can adversely affect your future business.
- Choice of business partners – it is important to work with reliable companies who provide good customer support.
- Compared to Western countries making money online is a lot more difficult, you cannot sign up for many advertising networks (since you are from India), affiliate commissions are routinely stolen due to cookie stuffing, so you have to spend a lot of time in front of the computer experimenting to find out what works. Some people may get bored or lack the discipline to do so.
- Lifestyle – If you lead a lavish lifestyle, parties,expensive luxury products, foreign holidays, you have less to see you through difficult times, so a job is better for you.
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