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Keep international online payments secure in times of uncertainty

While it is hard to predict the overall impact of the current economic crisis, it is reasonable to assume that American banks will continue to act responsibly, and my feeling is that most people would feel that their money is more secure in a US bank, than in most others. People outside of the US, particularly in emerging economies within Eastern Europe, Asia and South America, are often concerned about the stability of their local banking systems.

American bank accounts are FDIC insured, and until recently, workers living outside the US did not have access to this fail-safe. Today however, by getting paid direct to Payoneer prepaid MasterCard cards that are issued by an American bank, international workers can enjoy the same FDIC protection. Furthermore, MasterCard offers Payoneer cardholders additional protections against unauthorized purchases.

We already see that when it comes to choosing an international payment method, there is a trend to move away from wires and checks that need to be deposited in local banks and toward prepaid cards that maintain the funds in a US bank until they are used, regardless of the location or local currency of the cardholder. For many, loading funds to a Payoneer card is simply more secure than depositing funds in their local bank.

For more information visit http://www.payoneer.com/.

Yuval Tal
CEO, Payoneer

I believe that anyone who visited Payoneer.com lately would noticed that they have updated their web design which I have to admit is really quite nice. There is more to the recent web update than just skin-deep, not only are they adding the Virtual US Bank Account option for members, they have just added a Community Forum http://community.payoneer.com which give us members to share our experiences with one another and allow Payoneer to fine tune their system for our benefits.

The Community Forum like the Virtual US Bank Account is currently under beta testing and may not look much at the moment but I can certainly say that this is certainly stepping in the right direction and could only benefit both Payoneer and ourselves. I certainly appreciate their Open Door policy.

I do encourage existing Payoneer members to sign up for a free account at Payoneer Community Forum http://community.payoneer.com  and let’s work together to make Payoneer a better payment platform to use.

My first experience with Payoneer was about a year ago when Plimus.com offered the Payoneer Master Debit Card as an option to withdraw my funds and I have not turned back ever since. Their support is certainly excellent and now with the new enhancements coming our way, I am glad that I stayed.

Incidentally, Payoneer was in the news again. Do check out http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/start-up-offers-a-way-to-pay-workers-abroad/ 

PS. Just an update, although the Payoneer Virtual US Account is still under beta, I was ensured that they are working as fast as they could to put it life. For those who think could benefit from it now and be able to test the service and contribute comments and suggestions, feel free to write to Payoneer and ask to be added to the closed beta group. I know that some have tried and got their account and loving it.

About a month or so ago, someone on Digital Point forum mentioned that Payoneer.com was offering Virtual US Bank accounts to some members of some affiliate program but I as I did not see the option available in my account, I did not really think much about it.

However, all that changed for me on July 20th 2008 when I’ve received an invitation to join the closed beta group from Payoneer.com and I jumped at the chance of joining this trial. I had in the past wanted to set up a US Bank account because at that point of time, the US Dollar was strong but because of the US Banking regulations, I found that it was more difficult than I thought and I stopped pursuing that option. But the Payoneer US Virtual Bank account option rekindles that.

In under an hour, I received an email containing my Payoneer Virtual Bank Account Number and ABA Number.

At the same time, I have the additional option under the Payoneer Control Panel entitled ‘Services’ which contains details about my Virtual US Bank account.

I started adding the Payoneer Virtual Bank Account to Paypal and within a few days, I received the two small deposits in my Payoneer account which I keyed into Paypal and my bank account is confirmed.

Now if I pay through Paypal, I have the option to Pay through the Payoneer Virtual Bank Account via Immediate Load and e-Check option. At the same time, as I am from Singapore, I can only make fees-free withdrawal for amounts above S$200 but now with the US Virtual Bank Account, there is no fees and no minimum sum I can withdraw and it takes only about 2 days instead of 5 days (when I withdraw to my bank account).

I can definitely see that this option would benefit those who either wants to receive all US Payments from various affiliate programs into a single account which they can withdraw via the Payoneer Debit Mastercard through their local ATM or use it to spend in the stores or online. It will be an added benefit for those from the 19 Paypal Supported Countries which can send and receive payments but can only withdraw to a US Bank account. These countries includes Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Cypruis, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

From my understanding, this option is not free and would cost US$99 a year and the loading options are priced at US$5 for Immediate Load (2 hours) and US$2 for Standard Load (2 Days). As this is still under beta, the rates are subjected to change.

This certainly is a good initiative by Payoneer.com and would certainly be a godsend to many as we no longer need to fly into the US to establish a bank account.

I have seen time and again that people just let their priced domain names expired and when their treasured sites get disabled that they start complaining. Personally, I do not quite understand why this situation should happen in the first place unless they do not want the domain name at all. I do at times just let some domain name expire because they outlived their usefulness in my books.

Here are just a few helpful tips which would prevent the hardship of losing your domain names.

1. Keep your Email Contact Current. Domain Name Registrars would usually email you several times prior to your domain name expiration date. Sometimes starting as soon as 3 months prior to the expiration followed by 1 month, 1 week and 1 day before it expires. By keeping your email contact valid, you will receive that notification. Just do not ignore it and take all steps to renew the domain name. Not only that, ICANN requires you to maintain accurate information for your domain name.

2. Ensure your Email Contact is not based on your Domain Name. Make sure that your email contact is one which is not associated to the domain name in question, ie if your domain name is yoursite.com , make sure your email contact is not yourname@yoursite.com . Use your ISP or even a Gmail email address would be a smarter idea because when your domain name expires, you will not only lose access to your website, you will also lose access to your emails too. Of course if you have more than one domain name then you can use the other domain name email address, just make sure they do not expire at the same time.

3. Renew your Domain Name at the earliest possible timeframe. When you renew your domain name for another year, it will tag on 12 months to the current expiry date so even if you renew earlier, you do not lose anything. For example, if your domain name expires in August and you renew in June, the 12 months extension is tagged on to the August expiration date and not to June.

4. Enable Auto-renewal. Most Domain Name Registrars would allow you to auto-renew your domain names as an additional security to not lose your domain name. By doing so, you will be ensured of keeping your domain name. Just make sure that your billing information is current and if your credit card expires, make sure the account is updated with the new expiration date and CVV2 number and you be fine.

5. Renew for more than one year. Most registrars allows you to renew the domain name for more than one year, some going as far as 10 years or 100 years. If you know you will keep the domain name, it might be a good idea to renew for a long term. Some registrars may even offer a discount for long term registration. By renewing longer than one year, it does not lock you in to that particular registrar, you can opt to transfer to a new domain name registrar at any point of time, after the initial 60 days. You will not lose any time too as when you transfer you will be assured that the new registrar will honor all the time left for the domain name and will tag on another 12 months to it.

6. Keep a check list of the domain names that you have. If you have more than 1 domain name, it is a good idea to visit your domain name registrar, sort the list of your domain names in order of the expiration date and print that out. File that so that you have a paper trail of your domain names and when they expire. Check this list on a regular basis. Of course, if you use more than one Domain Name Registrar, it might not be a bad idea to save the list to a Spreadsheet which you can update as and when you make changes to them.

7. Do not fall into the cheap first year fees. Some registrars offers cut-throat prices for the first year registration to entice you to sign up with them and there are those who make fall into the trap by registering more than they can afford or handle because on the second year onwards, the renewal fees would be much higher and would reflect standard pricing. I always make it a point to check the renewal fees before going about buying domain names because that is what I would be paying for the forseeable future and I want to be sure I can afford to keep them. I have seen people who signed up with lots of those cheap .info domain names and when it comes to renewal, they have a hard time coming up with the money to renew. This can lead to some nasty situation where people are forced to drop valuable domain names or try to avoid renewing them and hope the registrars do not notice them and hoping that by some miracles they get auto-renewed without any fees.

8. Do not buy more than what you need. Do not go about a domain name buying spree. Not only would that amount to a lot of wasted money, it would mean that those who actually need them may not get a chance to registrar them. Like anything in life, register what you really need and only if you have plans for them within the forseeable future. This will help you cut down on cost so that you can concentrate on developing quality websites rather than mediocre websites like those default Made for Adsense sites.

9. Do not fall for Free Domain Name. I understand that there are some web hosts which offers free domain name. Do not fall for this trick even if it looks attractive an offer. The trouble is that there are some unscrupulous web hosts who use this scam to trap you into hosting with them. What they may do is to register the domain name in their name so you will have no control over your domain name. So even if you break contract with them and try to move to a new web host, they will not let you move the domain name, some may allow you to do so if you pay them an insane amount of money to initiate the transfer. In the eyes of the law, they are not doing anything wrong because since on paper they own the domain name, you will not have any rights to it and be subjected to their blackmail tactics. Domain names are cheap in today’s context (usually under $10 year) so registering it separately would indeed be the best move. Do not be penny-wise pound-foolish here.

10. Lock your domain name. Ensure that you keep your domain name locked so that no one can transfer your domain name away from you without your permission. Also ensure that the password to your domain name registrar is secured and not too easily hacked into. Make sure you do not lose that password and do not share it with anyone else. By ensuring that your domain name registrar account is secured will give you the assurance that hackers do not enter into the account and change the email contact or anything to prevent you from receiving emails or losing your domain name. Also take steps to visit your domain name registrar by logging into the account at least once a month so that you be made aware of any matters which needs your attention.

Remember that a domain name is a precious asset and the onus is on you to renew them if you want to ensure that your website would always be accessible. Do not let your domain name expire because not only would it be troublesome to get them back, it can be expensive and can be embarrassing for you in light of your visitors and paying customers. You can renew the domain name at any point of time prior to it being expired so do so as soon as possible. Because if it expires, you have no one but yourself to blame.

I do hope that with this blog, people would take their domain name seriously and hope that those postings about losing domain names because they were allowed to lapse would be the thing of the past but I guess I am just too optimistic.

Enjoy!

I have seen people complaining because they only receive a couple of cents or dollars through Adsense and other Pay-Per-Click ads program but the truth of the matter is that as much as you can optimize your ads on your website, you cannot force your visitors to click on the advertisements or even determine what type of adsense ads would appear.

Although there are people who do make a good living out of Adsense, it would take more than just one website and a few thousand visitors each day to get to that.

The important thing would be to get visitors or eyeballs and in order to get that, your website must be known and that means either spending money to jumpstart traffic or spending a lot of time submitting to search engines and directory sites. The more unique your website, the better chance of being ranked higher on the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live and so on where people actually visit. Eyeballs does not guarantee more clicks but merely increases the possibility of people seeing your adsense ads.

Although Adsense allows you to set up Competitive Filters to by right weed out websites from your competitors but it has been used to weed out lower paying advertisers thus reducing the number of adsense ads appearing on your site. This however does not mean you get more clicks because visitors will only click on the adsense ads which are relevant to them and which would appeal to them at that point.

Adsense prevents you from drawing attention to their ads and to entice your visitors to click on the ads, it would mean that the ultimate control of whether you earn from adsense would depend wholly and soley on your visitors. Thus the level of income may not be constant, there are days when you may make a tidy sum and on certain days you may get nothing or a few cents ads.

Adsense Publishers through Adwords can set Geo-targetting and if your visitors are from countries which are geographically banned, your website may merely just show Public Service Advertisement (PSA) which will yield you zero income.

So my advise is not to depend on Adsense for your main source of income, treat it as just extra pocket money which may or may not appear. Create websites only if you believe in the topic you have chosen and do not do it just for the Adsense.

It is no secret that I am a Windows person but being a software developer myself, I have always been curious about other operating system and that is why I bought the Apple iMac years ago and did plan to get a new Apple Macbook once MAC OS X Leopard is out to replace my 4 years old Dell 600m Laptop but that is another story altogether.

So you may ask, what has the Apple to do with this story. Well, the thing is that I develop shareware for the Windows platform and little while back did create a simple program for the Mac. That was way back in 2001/2002 and surprisingly without any promotion, the program is still selling so I figured that there is definitely a market for it. The Mac OS X Leopard delay actually got me thinking since I do not have unlimited funds so I would need to get the best available option. I read about Codeweaver Crossover for Mac and what they did was to customized a version of WINE for the Mac OS X environment for the Intel-based CPU. It definitely looks like a great potential because now Windows program can run on the Mac OS X without rebooting and directly from the Mac interface. This actually means that if it works for my software, I do not need to rewrite any thing as a whole new market is opened up to me. Definitely a cool deal.

Well, the opportunity arises a few days ago when my trusty Dell 600m laptop’s Windows XP Pro decided to stop running programs. I still needed Windows but thought that this time since I needed to reformat the harddisk, I could partition it so as to be able to accommodate CentOS Linux so I downloaded the 6 ISO for CentOS 5.

The Windows Installation went smoothly then I went ahead and installed CentOS. I only have a few requirements, 1) Install WINE, 2) Install a Web Browser which supports JAVA and 3) Play my music and video collections (mainly MP4).

The first time I used QTParted, I messed up the Windows Partition so I had to reinstall it again. Then the CentOS installation went smoothly but when I tried to install and run some Linux program, it did not quite work. The Add/Remove program did not work because when I tried to add, it just tell me what it was going to add and when I confirm, it froze there. Okay. Then I tried playing my MP4 files, it told me that it does not have the MP4 decoder so that was a bummer. I tried going to my online banking website which requires Java Virtual Machine, it tells me that I needed to manually install that and I had to use terminal to do that. It did not come with WIFI support too. I tried installing some programs and the nasty message about not being able to find some dependencies flashed in front of me. That was nightmarish. I decided that I had enough and deleted the CentOS partition. I supposed it is great as a Server Operating System but it has years to go before it is made for the end-user.

I thought that was the end for my Linux adventure until I found an old copy of Ubuntu in my cupboard so I decided to get to the Ubuntu website and found that they have a new v7.04 which offers one-click installation for programs so I thought I give it a try. There was just 1 ISO file to download and the installation went very smoothly.

The first thing I did when I launched it was run Totem again and although the first time round it told me that it cannot play MP4 becomes i does not have the decoder, it gave me the option to download the whole decoder pack. I am impressed. Now not only my MP4 works, the Flash Videos works too. Then I went through the Add/Remove program and added a whole bunch of stuffs including Java support, WIFI support and most of all WINE.

When I launched Firefox, I had no problems with my online banking site. I had WIFI Support (I am on WIFI now) and I tried installing the Windows Program I have written in WINE and it installed and worked. Wow! The only thing is when I uninstalled a program, it still shows up in the WINE Folder. That is a minor issue.

So overall, Ubuntu is definitely worth the try if you want to have a Linux desktop. It is easy to use and some of the programs are familiar like Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office. I am indeed impressed. So no that I know my programs works with WINE, I am sure that it can run through Crossover (which runs WINE) on the MAC OS X on the Intel CPU.

There is a lot I need to learn but I am discovering new things along the way.

Wow! Finally after the long wait since Saturday, I am finally back online at Digitalpoint.

I just received this email in my post which reads

Dear eddy2099,

Digital Point Forums

I would definitely like to thank Richie Ni for helping me along the way. I was going out of my mind during the whole issue but I am finally back. I can basically do anything and everything that I would be able to do in the past.

Guess I will be busy replying those threads now. Thank you once again.

Well, it has been a while since I last posted anything here. I have been busy with work and I seems to be neglecting my blog and myspace. I guess I should spend sometime to keep the world updated on what is going on here.

Last October, I decided to move my sites which were hosted on The Planet’s dedicated servers to a reseller’s account because I thought that I should concentrate more on work rather than just on administering my servers. I found one which did appear to be highly recommended and they were quite good in the beginning and thus decided that since I am going for the long term, I went with their annual payment plan and did the prepayment. All was fine until about a month ago when they decided to make some changes to their server. Then suddenly, I was routed through Cogent and I was like experiencing numerous of incidents of slow access and downtimes. That cannot be good for business.

The final straw came when their server was like overloaded and took about 8 minutes before I can see a web page which really sucks. Before this, I knew that I was not going to sign up with them and plan to move out by mid August this year just a month and a half before my plan expires so I went hunting around. With the final straw, I decided to bite the bullet and move. I mean if I stayed, I think my business will suffer badly because I depend on my customers to visit my websites and if they cannot get it them, I will not earn an income.

At that time, I pretty decided that after several experiences with bad services with the reseller’s plans, I wanted to go back to dedicated servers because I love the control. You know having been on the driver seat for 6 years, the urge to drive is still there. I did consider going for the Virtual Private Server (VPS) solution but in the past I tried them and they were pretty slow. I thought the same happened. But after a review by someone at Web Hosting Talk, I decided what do I have to lose and got my 512mb VPS server from Futurehosting.biz after reading all the great reviews about them. I thought since they gave a 30 days money back guarantee, what do I have to lose so I signed up. Within minutes, I got responses and in 2 hours, the VPS was up and running. It was indeed quite neat and easy to use. I’ve managed to move my sites over and well, the speed was great. I love how it is that they provided a managed service too and that helped me a lot when I messed up a few times as their support was ready to help and not criticized me for my silly mistakes which were too many to mentioned. So pleased was I that I upgraded to their 768mb VPS plan. Great price with a great service so what more can I ask for ?

Back to the reseller’s account, I did complained about it and told them that I was to terminate my plan which they did. However, they were unable based on their policy to refund me the unusued portion of the service. Anyways, I’ll just consider it as lost. To compensate me for their numerous downtime, they actually offered me a 5gb backup space till the end of the year. I guess it is not all lost.

I had deal with another company which was good and came highly recommended but after a few months, service level dropped and I decided to quit but the same No Refund Policy came up again.

I guess in the end, it is probably better to stick with the monthly payment, well sure you be paying slightly more and you need to be prompt with your monthly payment but it is worth the while. In the end, when it comes to business, friendship and relationship should take less priority. It is no point sticking with a sinking ship because you know the captain. Save yourself so that you can save others on another day. Go down with the ship and people may remember you for a while and after which they may forget you.

Those who know me would know that I do not go round cheating anyone or indulge in any illegal activities but for some reasons this week, I got accussed of just that.

First, it came from a person whom I sold a website to as I have been clearing my server out as I was doing some internal reshuffling. In any case, to make the story short, the site got hacked a few days after he got the site into his system. Prior to that, the site when it was in my possession was sitting nicely without any incident of any abuse. He accused me of conspiring with others in the forum to launch an attack against him. He did hinted that he had a lot of enemies and I am really not part of that. I’ve seen him around the forum but never crossed path. I mean what do I have to gain by attacking him. I have always been honest with my business dealings and at times, I would go out of my way to help beyond what I am obligated to do so.

Second, came yesterday when I got an email from Google Adsense which claims that I abused their system by using auto-surfing tools and getting people and myself to click the advertisements on my sites. I did not do such thing, I read Terms and Conditions and I have always defended contracts that I’ve signed and been a party to. I asked Google to give me at least some indications of which sites were causing the problem but they say they cannot provide me with any information. Like how am I supposed to go about handling the issue if they do not want to tell me what they are ? Anyways, I decided it was best to just remove all the Google Ads from my websites. They were not paying any good and they it seems to be more trouble than it is. I started web sites because I believe in the contents, the ads are just there to fill in the gaps and maybe pay a little for maintaining the sites. I have also taken the step to terminate my advertisement through Google.

I can take criticisms but one thing I cannot stand is being accussed for something I have not done. I have only one life, one path to lead and in the end, I am answerable to God Almighty. I do have a conscience and if I wrong anyone, I will do everything in my power to right the wrong. I am not sure what is happening to this world, it just disappoints. I guess being honest and being the nice guy probably doesn’t cut it in today’s dog-eat-dog world.

Whatever happens, I know that God will judge the accusers and they will need to answer to HIM. It is not my place to judge, all I can do is move on. Life is too short to bother about such things.

Lindsay Rush is a gorgeous upcoming singer who is not only pleasant to the eyes but also to the ears. She is a girl who is very approachable, friendly and very unpretentious. It shows in her music. You can really see the passion she has for her music. Not only can Lindsay sing, she is a girl with a deep conviction, as spokeperson for mpower: musicians for mental health, she joins other musicians in being awareness to mental health issues of the young and offering them a helping hand.

At the age of 15, she moved into a new closed-knitted community and being an outsider, she was viewed differently from the others. Instead of doing anything foolish, she penned her life experiences in her songs. Being a talented girl as she is, she was able to pick up the guitar and penned the songs she wrote. She soon found herself performing at ‘Open Mic’ auditions and made a nice following to her brand of music, one which is close to the hearts of many. Her music appeals to everyone.

She has justed completed recording her new acoustic album ‘Makeup Off’ featuring 10 specially selected tracks which she wrote that are closed to her heart. Listen to the real Lindsay, only her and her guitar. There is only 100 pieces of this wonderful album available and once they are gone, they are gone forever. The album would be launched on October 9th 2006 but you could pre-order at her website at http://www.lindsayrushmusic.com/index4/store.htm . Buy now before it is gone. I’ve got mine so what are you waiting for.

You can listen to some of the songs on the album at her MySpace Page at http://www.myspace.com/lindsayrush

Lindsay Rush is truly a gem, musicians like hers with her quality do not appear every day. Get to know her and her songs.

Here is a video of Lindsay Rush giving you a tour of Studio where she is making her album