New Sony Rolly in Motion - Uncut Demonstration

Watch the demonstration of the weired Music Player from Sony.

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This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

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Today, I got this e-mail from one of my friend, At first I though of it as those regular spamy chain-letter e-mail. But to spare few more seconds of my life opened it anyway. It was actually an interesting collection of pics showing some giant holes on the earth. Here I share it with you.

And here comes the Slide-show:

Post comment, and more pics if you have.

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The following pictures we taken on 15th July 2008. The event was my sweet Niece Swarnima(aka Tanu)’s 3rd BirthDay party.

More pics will be added soon.

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Recently ICANN changed the rules for grace deletions of new domains. For every domain registered, Domain Registrars pay a $0.20 fee to ICANN. Previously, this fee was refunded to us if the domain was grace deleted in the 5 day window. However, ICANN will now charge the fee even if the domain is deleted.

This  5 day grace deletion has been exploited by the big domain traders from the beginning. Domain traders used to register domain names in bulk and park them or try to sell them quickly. And if the domain name proved to be not worth the reg fee, they simply delete the domain and get back all the money from the registrar. This is also known as Domain Tasting. In January 2007 the top 10 domain tasters accounted for 95% of all deleted .com and .net domain names [Source].

Now, ICANN has changed the rules of the game. Domain tasting is still allowed but the domain registrar won’t be getting the $0.20 ICANN fee per domain refunded. So, this will discourage the registrar’s to let there users delete the domains and get back the refund Or at-least registrar;s would deduct that fee for deletion of the domain names(Domain Tasting).

I think it is a good move for the freedom of the Internet. I’ve been deleting the domain names, which I registered by mistake or the client simply changed his/her mind and asked me if I could get them another domain. Still I support the new rule. I don’t mind paying extra fee for grace deleting of the unwanted domains. At-least, this will now discourage the bulk registration of the domain names and leave some nice domain names for those who want them for genuine reasons.

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 Google is conducting comprehensive(online and offline) market research. Virtually every net user uses Google services daily, And Google has major impact on today’s Internet trends and online user experience. Google would pay the participants money for their time and valuable remarks. You can read more and join Google User Experience Research at: https://survey.google.com/wix/p0822776.aspx

And you can read the Frequently Asked Questions here: http://www.google.com/forms/user_faq.html

Now, the interesting part: Google would pay you for the surveys you participate in. According to FAQ they’ll pay about $75 per hour:

Do I get paid?

Yes – it depends on the type of study, but typically we pay $75 for each hour that you spend with a Google researcher, either in person or on the phone. Most studies last for one to one-and-a-half hours. We don’t pay for your travel time, or travel expenses, though. For online surveys, which you complete from your own computer, the amount varies, depending on the length of the survey.

 It is well known that Google’s main policy is “Do no evil”. And now they are also moving a step further and trying to adopt changes as per user feed backs. Google Rocks!

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Today I noticed that Google’s old(Capitol letter G with colored border) favicon has been replaced with a new simple lowercase ‘g’  in blue color with some gray gradiant.

 Google has recently updated its Google Reader favicon, and now its turn for its main favicon.

  It looks like Google is doing a whole brand identity update.

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eBay and PayPal claim to be the best e-commerce service providers online, But in-fact there stupid policies and useless fraud detection system causes trouble only to the genuine buyers and sellers. The fraudsters easily bait the buyers and run aways with the money, while the genuine users get there accounts under unprofessional scrutiny for no reason. And it not only causes inconvenience to the honest users, many times the users are forced to give up and loose control over there money and online reputation.

I am the partner in legally registered import export company. Our company conducts a part of our business through eBay and PayPal. We have eBay Store and use other paid services of eBay, also the attached PayPal account is verified. We have already submitted all the required documents to PayPal including  our Company’s ‘Certificate of Incorporation’ and ‘Telephone Bill’ etc.

We have 100% positive reputation on eBay through over 150 feed backs. I also have another eBay and PayPal account for personal use, which is also very old(over 7 years old) with 100% positive feedback.

But still we faced this weired problem with eBay and PayPal. Few days ago paypal limited our company’s paypal account for no valid reason and asked for various documents(address proof, dealer information etc.) for verification, which we provided immediately. Mean while company’s eBay account and my personal eBay accounts were also suspended. After few days wait and some attempts we received email from PayPal stating that : They are “not comfortable with the amount of risk your business exposes itself to.”  and they “would like to begin the process of ending our relationship in a manner that is least disruptive to your business.”

The Disbursement options they provided are:

1. Your remaining account balance can be used to provide refunds to your buyers (if applicable).

If you choose to provide refunds to your buyers, please provide a list of transaction IDs for the buyers that you would like to refund.

OR

2. Your remaining funds will be held in your PayPal account for 180 days from the date your account was limited. After 180 days, you will be notified via email about how to receive your remaining funds.

Now, we’ve already shipped the items to the buyers(we tend to ship the items within 24 hours of the payment received), So we can not refund the money. Now, the only option for us is to wait for 6 months(?) for our honestly earned money. Not only that we have to bear the debt for 6 moths on the items we sold and shipped, as there is no other option to get the money from PayPal before that.

On top of that, our eBay accounts are lost. We received the following canned response from the eBay support representative:

“I’ve looked at our records and see that your account was suspended because you owned or are associated with previously suspended eBay accounts.

We have reviewed your appeal and decided that your account will remain suspended. Our decision is based on evidence in our records as well as any additional information you may have provided.

At this point, we will not accept any additional appeals or requests for more information. Although we will read emails you send us in the future, we may not respond.”

Now, PayPal has our hard earned money(hopefully for 6 months only), also they have restricted our access to our eBay accounts and they would not even listen to our appeal.

This is really frustrating, the scampers easily con people on eBay and run away with the money. And the genuine users like us loose access there hard earned money and also the online reputation for no obvious reason. I think this is how PayPal compensates for there own loss. They get the money from honest people, when they lose it to the fraudsters.

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