Bobby

StanaCard Calling Card – direct dial and get up to $10 bonus

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Sign up for StanaCard and get up to $10 bonus: http://www.stanacard.com/?ref=329173

I recently came to know about StanaCard. The idea is awesome, seriously. It allows you to call international numbers which are mapped to a US number. You can map multiple US numbers to call multiple international numbers. I have been using RelianceIndiaCall for some time. In RelianceIndiaCall, you can set it up such that you dial the access number and then dial a shortcut key. So, if you program the access number as a speed dial on your phone, you have to press 2 keys to call. But that is still two steps. In StanaCard, you can dial an international number in just one step. Things could not be simpler than that!
I signed up for StanaCard through a friend’s referral. I signed up for $10 (the max initial charge), and I got $10 bonus and my friend got $10 too.
You can sign up for StanaCard by clicking the link below. You will get your initial charge ($5 or $10) as a bonus. So, if your initial charge is $10, you will get $20 of talk time.
Sign up for StanaCard and get up to $10 bonus: http://www.stanacard.com/?ref=329173
Please note that signing up using the link above will also provide me a referral bonus equal to your initial charge amount :). However, if you wish to sign up without providing me a referral bonus, you can go directly to the StanaCard website by typing www.stanacard.com into your browser. Once you sign up, you can refer your friends through the website or by sending them a link (like the one above) and earn referral bonuses.
I tried today and it works great. Call quality was good and the rates are great – 4.47 cents per minute to cell phones in India. However, they do note on their website that these lower rates are valid only till March 31, 2009. So, my guess is that they will increase their rates after March 21, 2009.

Roku Netflix Player

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2/4/2009: The Roku Netflix Digital Video Player is a $99 device which can be used to stream movies directly from Netflix to your TV. Netflix has 12,000+ movies available for watching online, or stream via Roku. I have tried the Netflix online streaming of movies and it works great. The only drawback is that the collection of movies available online is limited and there are not a lot of new releases. But I feel it is still a good deal because it has a flat fee ($8.99 per month for 1 DVD by mail and unlimited movies online) for unlimited online movies and does not have a per movie fee like Amazon Unbox and Blockbuster Online.
www.roku.com/netflixplayer/
www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices

“Streams Netflix Watch Now titles to your TV; affordable $100 price tag; unlimited viewing with no additional charge beyond standard ($8.95 or higher) monthly Netflix fee; PC-free movie watching; simple setup; includes built-in wired and 802.11g Wi-Fi networking; works with all TVs; upgradeable firmware allows for new features, interface improvements, and bug fixes.”
Courtesy: CNET

It always pays to be generous to others

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Today’s fortune:
“It always pays to be generous to others. Kindness, compassion, empathy have always been your strength. There is no harm in giving that side an expression, people are not so competitive to not appreciate a kind gesture. Keep up the good work!”
Courtesy: astrology.rediff.com

Yahoo! Domains – Price hiked to $35 – Don’t forget to cancel after transferring!

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Yahoo! Domains recently hiked their domain name renewal prices to $34.95. I had one domain name with them. And once I got the renewal notice email with the increased price, I decided to transfer my domain name to GoDaddy, my regular registrar. Domain name renewals currently cost $9.99 at GoDaddy. Yahoo! Domains sent me the renewal email notice 1 month in advance and I was able to transfer the domain in about 3 days without any issues.
Here is what happened next. A couple of days back (11/24), Yahoo! Domains charged me $34.95 for domain renewal fees even though I had already transferred my domain name on 10/29. So, they basically charged me for a service that they were not providing!
So, I tried to email customer service through their website and it turns out that I need to call them instead. In case anybody needs to call them in the future with this same issue, the number for Small Business Domains is 1-800-318-0870. Make sure you have your domain name, Yahoo! username, date of birth, credit card number handy, since they will use it for verification. Anyways, the customer service representative was pretty nice and she promptly cancelled my account and refunded the $34.95 charge. It turns out that Yahoo! would still charge me for the domain name renewal even after I had transferred it, if I did not proactively cancel the account.
Bottom line – don’t forget to cancel your Yahoo! Domains account even though you have already transferred your domain name to another registrar!
The question remains – why did Yahoo! hike its Domain name fees? The general opinion going around is that, with Yahoo! not doing very well these days, they are planning to get out of the domain name business. In fact, Yahoo! itself is not a domain name registrar. Their domain names are managed by Melbourne IT, which I believe also manages domains for Microsoft Office Live.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Be safe and eat well 🙂
Related Links:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/27/yahoo-hikes-domains.html
http://www.godaddy.com/
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/
http://www.melbourneit.com.au/

08/08/08 – Olympics start, 17000 marry in Beijing

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08/08/08 – The Beijing Summer 2008 Olympics officially start today. In addition to that, 17,000 couples in Beijing got married today. Great day to get married and to remember, indeed.

Image Courtesy: NY Times
“Couples said they were moved by national pride, but also by the Chinese enthusiasm for numerology. The Games began on Aug. 8, 2008, and the series of eights — eight sounding like the word for “fortune” — is irresistibly propitious.”

Citibank’s Virtual Account Numbers

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I knew that Citibank credit cards provide the “Virtual Account Number” option (also called “Controlled Payment Number” or “One-Time-Use Credit Card”). But I never used this feature previously. I tried out this feature today and was pleasantly surprised.


Image Courtesy: Citibank
Virtual Account Numbers are credit card numbers which are generated on the fly and can be used for online transactions. This is very helpful if you do not want to reveal your actual credit card number for online transactions. I always assumed that these numbers are one-time use only. But with the Citibank Virtual Account Numbers, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that you can set up the numbers to be multiple use and also specify limits and expiration dates (up to 12 months in the future). Bank of America credit cards also have this feature but I have not used it.
The “Virtual Account Number” is a great feature for credit card companies who constantly aspire to be “first in wallet”.
Update (7/2/2008): Bank of America’s one-time-use credit card feature is called ShopSafe.
Related Links:
– Citibank Virtual Account Numbers FAQs
– Controlled Payment Number – Wikipedia
– Orbiscom – the company which developed the technology

Two worlds, just across the street

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An insightful article and a good read. Highlights the ever widening gap between the growing Indian upper middle class and the poor who live next door.

Image Courtesy: NY Times

“These enclaves have emerged on the outskirts of prospering, overburdened cities, from this frontier town next to the capital to the edges of seam-splitting Bangalore. They allow their residents to buy their way out of the hardships that afflict vast multitudes in this country of more than one billion. And they reflect the desires of India’s small but growing ranks of wealthy professionals, giving them Western amenities along with Indian indulgences: an army of maids and chauffeurs live in a vast shantytown across the street.”

Read the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/world/asia/09gated.html

Virgle, Custom Time, gDay – April Fool’s Day from Google

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Google always has provided a April Fool’s Day practical joke on its main page. This time however, there are many more – on different Google products like Gmail, Orkut, YouTube and Google Docs. I came across 3 of them.

If you want to see the entire list (15 total) including the ones from previous years, you can check out the Google’s Hoaxes page at Wikipedia. I feel that there are too many this year. In fact, too many that it is a crowd. They should have stuck to the hoax on the main page and maybe a few more.

Protecting a folder in Unix/Linux using .htaccess and .htpasswd

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To protect a folder in Unix/Linux using .htaccess and .htpasswd, use the following steps:
[1] Go to folder you wish to protect and create a file called .htaccess with the following info:

AuthUserFile /home/your_username/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Restricted Area”
AuthType Basic
<Limit GET POST PUT>
require user admin
</Limit>

[2] Go to the location for your .htpasswd file (typically should be in your home area outside of the public_html folder). If the .htpasswd file does not exist, create it using the following syntax. Enter the password when asked for.
> cd /home/your_username/
> htpasswd -c .htpasswd admin
[3] Make sure your .htpasswd file is readable from the web – chmod it to 644.
> chmod 644 .htpasswd
[4] If additional users need to be allowed access to the same folder,
[4.1] add the users to the .htaccess file (edit the file mentioned in step 1):
require user admin user2 user3
[4.2] add the users to the .htpasswd file (update the file mentioned in step 3). Note that the “-c” option in step 3 is not used here. The “-c” is only used when creating the .htaccess file:
> htpasswd .htpasswd user2
> htpasswd .htpasswd user3
An excellent and easy tutorial is at: http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/user.html. A cached copy is here.

fungible

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I heard this word a couple of days back and I was wondering what it is. So, I finally googled for it. It means “interchangeable”.
Definition in Finance:
Interchangeable. The term is often used to apply to financial instruments which are identical in specifications. For example, options and futures contracts are highly fungible, since they are highly standardized arrangements. On the other hand, forwards and swaps are not, since they are customized arrangements. Instruments that are highly fungible tend to be very liquid, and so transaction costs tend to be low.
www.investorwords.com/2132/fungible.html
Definition in the Oil Industry:
Literally means “interchangeable in trade.” Commonly used to denote products which are suitable for transmission by pipeline. Ethanol is not considered fungible in this sense, in that it would absorb any water accumulating in pockets in a pipeline.
www.ethanol-gec.org/clean/cf13.htm
Related links:
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility
– www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define:fungible