Tech Productivity

Paypal, a leading money transfer solution provider is actually quite irresponsible in taking care of their customers. I have been on various forums and saw each post regarding paypal negative. There is no positive post about paypal.

I have had my share in problems with paypal. A lot. They usually reply faster to a new customer, but only for the first time. Then leave him to gods mercy, they won’t look at your mails. I have send them mails regarding my ‘cheque arrival’ and ‘refunding some amount’ but i never heard of them. Their ‘contact us’ page says, ‘ We will get in touch as soon as possible’ (something like that). But they never got in touch. They seem to have turned deaf ear against account holders.

They should at least answer people’s query if they can’t solve them. Plus they sometimes charge hefty and they do sit backing while we await in tension for payments. Their phone call service is no better. Damn it ! I called paypal customer care and i thought i would be greeted by a customer representative. But i was greeted by some automated recording where i had to choose the options they spoke by ‘verbal speaking’ . I said ‘ Payments’ in verbal voice but i was leaded to ‘ My account option’. Can’t they keep Numbers ( Press 1,2,3,4..) to be pressed instead of speaking because that can cause a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings as everyone’s voice is not american. After 15 mins, any how i got to talk to a customer representative who said my payment can take upto 45 days and he was helpless in that matter. I argued that paypal mail which i first got said that i would get payment within 2 weeks. Does 2 weeks mean 45 days ? I asked him to inquire with India’s postal service. He said he can’t do that as it’s not in their hand. And now if you cancel that cheque , you pay some good $10-20 for cancellation. 

 Any way, i got the cheque pretty late and next time i would try to do that by online transfer. But paypal seems quite careless in customer satisfaction problem. I suppose after  e-bay took it, they became nasty guys. We really need a good alternative. Paypal sucks for now !

Researchers are bent upon improving the efficiency of solar cells. This time they researched and made it by 27 % . 1366 Technologies are coming up with commercial production of silicon made solar cells. They have used multi crystalline silicon chips which reduce the cost while put several small cells are connected  instead of a single cell. This was made in Emanuel Sachs laboratory and they plan to start production in an year’s time. They are actually adding some special type of texture that increases absorption of sunlight. In silicon cells, a part of sun rays will reflect back but this cells are designed such that they will be contained in the cell leading them into conversion into electricity. They will be about 15 cm wide.

It is important that you be organized at any place you work. Not only working only but organizing your work will help you in most work fields. I used to be lover of haphazard lazy life style but have recently seen that being organized helped me do my work on time without tensions and worry.

1. I have my feeds updates checked only at regular intervals instead of check 5 RSS now and 10 later.

2. Post regularly. Not to be lazy and delay posting and other work.

3. Although my current work requires me to start writing my topics as soon as i find them, i still manage to be regular instead of haphazard in working.

4. I keep a track of my works to be done and reminders in simple Notepad file. I haven’t felt the need of google reminder or other web applications. I have 2-3 notepad files (.txt , simple!) where i write down anything i have to do later on, like posting, interviewing some guy, sending remainders or mails, etc. Like for e.g, when i would hit upon some good article or news and i want that to be rewritten by my on this blog, i would write that idea in my notepad article. Also i would write down any any new ideas that struck me at odd times in that notepad so that i don’t forget them. This way i don’t miss any work to be done.

5. Don’t forget to check notepad from time to time ! Also delete that idea or work remainder from notepad file once its done. You don’t want to have cluster of useless texts in notepad.

6. I work out things in cluster. Like for e.g, i would collect work of same niche in bigger quantity and than start off. That saves a lot of time.

Don’t be sloppy. Be organized. That helps a lot in terms of saving time and getting work done better on time.

It is very much necessary to stay fit if you are working several hours online. I have recently developed back pain, not exactly back pain but severe pain in muscle at upper right area of back side. It is  paining since 1 month and i am helpless. The reason is because of continuous typing and working in odd styles (lol) on computer. The only way it seems now is to exercise regularly. I have tried couple of positions that would suit me as i have this pain, but nothing works and pain continues. Also i got to know that if i work by sitting straight instead of any other relaxing lofty manner, it would help me a lot. So you take care that you have proper sitting positions while working on computers ( especially desktop only ). Need to do regular exercise to avoid body muscle problems.

Microsoft bids $34 per share for yahoo. So its raised from $31 to $34. Its likely that it will soon settle somewhere near $35-36 because Microsoft badly needs yahoo and yahoo knows that too i suppose and so its waiting for right price. I already told in my earlier posts that Microsoft-yahoo deal will happen, just that it will take some time. Neither side is making haste. After $34 bid, i suppose CEO’s, jerry yang will contact Microsoft and settle for somewhere near $36 likely.

I never understood how social networking sites can keep running their servers by ad revenues. Because it has very less CPM and CTR. Also people are engaged and interested in networking instead of other things. Facebook, one of the most popular social networking site is starting its own IM. So, it now leveraging the power of its huge user base. So is it now thinking of some serious money ? How ?

First thing, if you are rolling out any application and want to succeed it, you need a large audience and facebook already has that thing. So i suppose it will have its own IM, which can be used to serve ads to huge people who will be using facebook IM. At least facebook addicts will use it. Also it can combine 3rd part services like music, games, videos, etc. to its IM as yahoo! IM does. This is the starting of it’s IM plans, let’s see what does it actually do.

Science daily has got another research article which shoes that electrons travel 100 times faster in graphene than in silicon. Graphene is currently the only semi-conductor element which has so much electron mobility at room temperature. So this opens doors to graphene replacing silicon chips. I have already written about this in my earlier post. Graphene is not much new than graphite, the one in your pencil. The carbon atoms in graphite are in single sheet type. Also graphene has 35 % less resistivity than copper metal at room temperature. Silicon as i said earlier is limited (the special grade needed) and we are developing PC’s at fast pace and we need something that can replace silicon chips in computers and other devices using semi-conductors. Also graphene doesn’t heat as much as silicon, rather to say that it cools faster than silicon which heats up much

A new search engine, Searchme has come up recently. I am not sure how much exactly old it is but they have currently 1 billion web pages indexed and users are requested there to submit web pages which they find not indexed for any specific search. Currently registration is by getting yourself invite, just do ‘signup for beta’ on homepage and you must receive it within a week. It is not open publicly for search, but only by getting selected by them after you approve to join their beta version 1.3 now. I took some of it screen shots as i got the beta user approval. Click on the photos to see its bigger view.

This is its search home page :

The home page took a while to load. Its too much graphics which seems useless when your focus is getting relevant results instead of colorful fancy flash. Flash takes time to load and what we need is relevant websites, not impressive graphics and flash.

The above is the screen shot which i took when i searched for keyword ’travel’. It gives screen shots of websites as results as you can see above. I have highlighted in circle the scroll bar which moves to different web pages (their screen shots).

Also it has results shown in text like google does. Too small space for it as you see. Pretty much flash developed, a high level coding ?

It also has settings on right top where you can filter adult content or change the theme (current one is night, other is day theme).

Also it will give results based on keyword. Like for e.g, when i searched for ‘travel’  and selected the cruise option, they showed a website related to holiday cruises. If you search for ‘internet’, you will get options like business news, internet and web services, stocks, etc.

Overall Review : The site i suppose gives more quality sites comparatively. In google, SEO tops. Here i see pretty good websites till now because if people want to see their sites in relevant searches, they need to submit it. I suppose they are picking websites carefully for their search engine. What the main drawback is it takes time to load comparing it to yahoo and google where you see whole bunch of sites at first shot while in Searchme, you will see only a site’s screen shot at a time. This is time consuming and search engines strength is to deliver good results as much fast as possible rather than have pleasing effects on eyes.

So finally Verizon wireless takes the major chunk of MHz spectrum auction with tiny bits of AT&T and echostar. I thought google would get a part of it at least, but unfortunately they didn’t do it.  It seemed that verizon kept on bidding in spite auction was to be open as if like a hungry dog trying to snatch meat, it didn’t wait for others and simply went on and get it acquired. It went to verizon with almost double amount than expected. Google got open network concession, pretty satisfied with it?

 It seemed as if Verizon really was burning hot inside after google got open network concession and just keep ramming up with intention to win this auction. We hope to see some very good reliable fast wireless internet in coming years in US.

We badly need an alternative source of pollution free energy to meet our day to day plus increasing development needs. Mineral oil reserves are estimated to last upto 2020 and coal upto 220 years more. So its not much far and it makes me go mad seeing the petrol and oil prices that would be 2018-2019. How many thousand dollars per barrel ? Leave oil prices, but just think how much pollution it will create. A day without electricity and oil is unimaginable. Though we are going fast in field on alternate sources like solar cells and even mass production of biodiesel, but especially talking about solar energy, it is currently expensive to produce as the metals and special grade silicon used to convert solar energy into electricity is very much less and expensive (silver is used in solar panels). Solar cells have less efficiency in converting solar energy into electricity.

Here is what science daily has come up with an article regarding future scopes of having plastic solar cells having higher efficiency than current solar cells plus cheap (that’s something we badly need). Currently just a research is conducted and results look positive at nanoscale with lots of limitations but they are solving that at nanoscale. But using it for practical means is still a big question. They have tried to raise the efficiency of plastic solar cells to 5.1 % from 3.4 % .