Category: Personal

Categories
Personal

Things I dislike about Google and it’s products!

I used to be die hard Google fan but now a days, I’m getting disappointed with Google and Google products. Let’s see!

  • Blogger sucks big time! It was okay and probably the best in the pre-wordpress age! But now? No plugin! A top bar that is not removable. What do you have unique? Nothing! WordPress rocks! Other services are providing the same or better services than Blogger. Dear Google, you might know that your Rival Microsoft is now migrating to WordPress leaving their old platform. Can you please wake up?
  • Gmail is sometimes delivering emails late. Specially when the email has large attachment. In my case I had to wait one whole day to receive 35MB emails. Shame! The attachment size is still pretty low! While Yahoo! and Hotmail is providing unlimited storage for my emails, Gmail asks me to buy extra storage! No way! Come on Google, you place more ads inside my inbox, still I have to pay more for extra storage? Sorry, I won’t!
  • Adsense is rejecting http://masnun.me referring to “inappropriate contents”. They don’t even bother to tell me what’s inappropriate about my site! Sorry Google, I’m not you! I can’t read people’s email mind! Adsense also randomly suspends accounts at will! This is just unacceptable. Why do you fear to show us the logs? Why don’t you state a clear reason for suspension?
  • Previously, I could add any number of users in my Google Apps account. Now it’s 50 only! Not only that, you need to pay for full features. Why do I have to use Google Chrome to register my apps mail service to be the default mail handler?
  • Google App Engine supports only Python and Java. I know Python and I use that. I don’t really like the idea of using other languages via JVM.
  • Why do I have to pay money to submit my Chrome extension to the official gallery? Can’t Google moderate the gallery to remove extensions manually?
  • What about Google talk? I can’t afford to keep my web browser open to remain online or do video chat. No major update to Google Talk for a long time now!
  • Google Chrome offers to remember password every time I log into some site. But never offers to remember the password when I need most. Yes, Chrome doesn’t offer to remember password for HTTP AUTH! 🙁

There’s many more to it! I just can’t remember them right now!

Categories
Personal

Using Moneybookers from Bangladesh

Moneybookers is a service similar to paypal except that they have less coverage and they let Bangladeshis sign up for their service and use it efficiently. www.moneybookers.com is the URL. Those who need to receive money from abroad ( mainly for outsourcing ) can use this service for efficient money transfer. Their service is cheap and affordable.

Case Study: My Story

I use ScriptLance for outsourcing and earn a decent amount of money working at my leisure side by side of my studies at KU. I also work as a part time remote web application engineer for BRE LLC. I used to use the verified paypal account of my partner at JOTIL21. But Moneybookers have made things even simpler. Both Scriplance and BRE LLC Authority sends me payment via moneybookers and I receive the money directly into my Dutch Bangla Bank Limited account with just a few clicks. I’ve added and verified my DBBL account to my Moneybookers account and it’s all done!

Adding and verifying your Bangladeshi bank account is quite easy. Let me walk you through:

1) Register at Moneybookers (www.moneybookers.com)

2) Add funds to your Moneybookers account from other online sources. ( Withdraw fund from your employer to Moneybookers ). I withdrew funds from Scriptlance to Moneybookers.

4) Add a bank account with their SWIFT code. SWIFT is a messaging system used by most Banks for international financial messaging ( mostly transaction related ). For DBBL, it is : “DBBLBDDH “.

3) Try to withdraw money. You’ll be asked to verify your address or Bank account. You will be able to withdraw less than 15 USD before you verify. So, I withdrew $14.99 to my DBBL account.

4) It took around 10 days for the money to arrive home. I went to DBBL Khulna Branch and asked for the verification code that came along the transaction.

5) I collected it and put into my moneybookers account. To do that, I tried to Withdraw again. They again asked me to verify, I picked up the option that said something like “I already have the code”. I entered the code and my account become verified.

Now, I can withdraw around $2000+ in a 90 days period. This limit can be pushed further by verifying your home address and debit/credit card. But I’m happy with what I’ve got. They charge around $2.16 for every transaction no matter the amount is small or large. I use the DBBL ATM card to withdraw money from anywhere in BD. 🙂

Categories
Personal Work

Created Another WordPress Theme

I have finally chosen web application engineering as my core subject of specialization. I have always appreciated the beauty and usability of web applications. You can easily paint your dreams on a web page, rather than on a desktop software. As I am still learning about desktop website design from the sites offered from Devio.digital, hence I have been concentrating only on developing mobile web sites. Its been almost three years now I have been doing mobile website design. I loved playing with WML and later XHTML along with bits of HTML. Later, when I realized that I have a good command over PHP, I looked at the web industry. I introduced myself to serious web development through my free lance career. The very first free lance job I got, involved setting a javascript countdown timer. I had to design the page and install the counter with a newsletter subscription form. I was in a mess with HTML and CSS. I was a newbie that time. (In fact, even today I don’t know much designing). Luckily the project was very simple and I didn’t have to code much. But still I got paid $30 🙂 I was inspired and started looking for more and more free lance jobs. Given my lackings in web design skills, I tried to find only projects which required programming alone.You can click this link and learn more. But I had little luck. I always had to play with bits of designing on almost all the projects. Gradually, I started learning HTML and CSS over time. When I joined Leevio, Hasin Vai introduced me to massive designing trends. I was amazed to see the beauty of web designs. Check it out at https://www.akeaweb.com/accessibility-consulting/.

I was using WordPress for my personal website for a long time. I was always interested in the WP API. But somehow I couldn’t make up my mind to do something with the API. Hasin vai inspired me a lot to work on WordPress. Finally, on a good day, I managed to build my first WP plugin — “gaf-text-link”. The plugin was featured by GAF and is available from the affiliates page of GAF (Now, freelancer.com). GAF paid me $100 appreciating my work as a marketing of their service. I was damn motivated to work on WordPress again — because of the money. Whenever I looked at the job listing at my favorite free lance sites, WP related projects were available in a large numbers and many of them involved good price 🙂 My desire to work with WP grew. If you’re interested then click here to buy knownhost wordpress hosting.

I later created another plugin to integrate admob ads into WP. Hasin Vai one day gave me links to a bunch of nice of books on WP. They were great and I really learnt a lot. I coded up my first WP theme which was being used on this site until yesterday night.

From yesterday, I started working to improve my design skills. I started with WP theme design so that I can gather knowledge on two topics from a single work. I have got decent command over CSS based styling now, but I am still falling short in layout designing. My design last night was not up to mark, at least it was not what I wanted. Hasin vai suggested me to use a CSS framework for layout. I had two primary options — fluid.gs for fluid layout and 960.gs for fixed width layout. I chose 960.gs since I wanted my layout to be fixed width. It was cool working with it. It saved me a lot of time and let me do what I really wanted to do! 😀 I am not willing to use raw CSS for layout again 😉

Not only CSS and HTML, I have also worked with GIMP for bit of image editing. I am very new to GIMP. Had to struggle a bit with the interface. I hope I will be able to cope up really soon.

I finished the theme just a few hours ago. I made it widget-ready this time. It’s not bad for me! I will keep digging with designs and see if I can come with something better 🙂