TechPluto

PayPal Halts Electronic Fund Transfer for Indians, Once Again…

Prashant Sharma — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:14:17 +0000

It appears that PayPal is playing Ping-Pong with its Indian customers at the moment. Just a couple of hours back, PayPal mailed all its Indian users regarding a ‘new’ update, that hardly sounds new to any Indian by now. PayPal notified all its customers in India regarding a recent change in Money withdrawal policy to Indian banks.

From July 29, 2010 onwards, PayPal will start restricting any electronic withdrawal of funds from a PayPal account, that belongs to an Indian customer. Until further notice, Indian PayPal customers will only be left with Money withdrawal through Cheque, which actually takes ages(2-3 weeks) to reach customers, here in India.

This policy of restricting Electronic Money Withdrawal for Indian PayPal customers will go into effect starting August 1, 2010 and PayPal is implementing this policy to stay in accordance with regulatory instructions(probably from Reserver Bank of India, RBI).

In earlier policy amendments, PayPal has already restricted Personal payments for Indian customers and electronic money withdrawals also went into trouble due to regulatory instructions from RBI. Later, electronic money withdrawal got reinstated with additional formalities and customer outrage toned down since then.

PayPal also forced every Indian customer to submit their PAN(Permanent Account Number), which could have been a mandatory instruction from RBI to PayPal, in order to allow electronic fund withdrawal.

But now, things are appearing to blow out of proportion. PayPal has quoted no specific reason why Electronic fund transfer has again been suspended indefinitely(until further notice). Just like a compensation of free bumper cases by Apple, PayPal has agreed to refund the $5 Cheque withdrawal fee, for all cheques requested on or after July 29, 2010, until the issue gets resolved.

With all these constant hiccups specific to Indian customers, PayPal customers from India are really annoyed and constantly looking for some reliable alternative to PayPal. (Golden moment for MoneyBookers ?)

Below is the email snapshot that PayPal sent all its Indian customers. Here is the official blog post over this issue.

Why Jailbreaking Won’t Shoot Up, Albeit, Being Declared ‘Legal’ in U.S.

Prashant Sharma — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 06:20:59 +0000

With newly added exemptions to DMCA act, Electronic Frontier Foundation has made some epic accomplishment in favor of Jailbreakers, Unlockers and Video artists. From now on, Jailbreaking is purely legal in U.S. and no jailbreaker in U.S. needs to bother about any legal ramifications if the hardware owner decides to jailbreak his mobile phone, making it to root access and willing to run unofficial third party apps on phone’s hardware.

This ruling comes as a major setback to Apple, which strongly condemns Jailbreaking of its ‘closed’ products such as iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. In an effort of keeping the overall environment in its firm control, Apple always desires to let users run pre-installed apps or approved apps downloaded/purchased from App Store. That’s one reason why Apple keeps plugging software exploits unearthed by hackers/jailbreakers and keeps releasing updated iOS versions with software fixes.

But now when ‘Jailbreaking’ has gone legal in U.S., Apple might not discourage ‘Jailbreaking’ the way it used to do it earlier.

This is how Apple will discourage ‘Jailbreaking’ from now on…

“Don’t Jailbreak your iOS device because….”

It will severely ‘degrade’ your software experience
It will make your device unstable/error prone
It will hamper hardware reliability
It will violate warranty of your iOS device

Still, i reckon, Apple need not worry about this epic judgement as Jailbreaking won’t really shoot up, even after becoming a legal activity in U.S.

Here’s why….

‘Jailbreaking’ isn’t a child’s play. It requires decent programming skills or at least deep understanding of digging the software roots.
Jailbreaking puts the device at the risk of ‘bricking’(permanent damage), if anything goes wrong while rooting your device.
‘Jailbreaking’ doesn’t offer huge rewards to any iOS device owner. It just enables you to run unauthorized third party apps on your hardware. To most of the iOS loyalists, 225000 approved apps are more than enough.
So far, only 10% of iOS devices are actually Jailbroken. That’s a pretty small minority which mostly comprises of hackers and geeks.
Majority of Apple’s cult is absurdly religious, willing to follow every word that Steve Jobs preaches and in this case, Steve Jobs/Apple discourages Jailbreaking and hence there are least chances for the cult to disobey their ‘God’(Steve!)

Rather i see a reverse-psychology happening with Jailbreakers and hackers. It might happen that ‘Jailbreaking’ may go down by itself, post this judgement.

Here’s why…

Jailbreakers/Crackers are defined by doing stuff that’s illegal. Doing illegal stuff actually brings motivation to Crackers as there’s no monetary incentive of doing stuff like that. Now that Jailbreaking is legal, hackers/jailbreakers may rather turn focus on doing other illegal stuff, not ‘legal’ Jailbreaking, which may appear rather ‘boring’ to them.

Hence Apple need not worry about this ruling. It just needs to keep releasing iOS updates with patches to latest exploits, something that Apple has been doing for years now.

Why I am Scared of Buying an iPad.

Prashant Sharma — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:45:48 +0000

The world of technology is so fascinating and fast-evolving today that it is mighty hard for an “informed” guy to abstain from spending money on buying latest gizmos. Whether it’s laptops, Netbooks, smartphones or gaming consoles, affordable pricing and irresistible offerings has exploded the sales of funky gadgets that once used to get sold to elite customers only.

This ever-growing hunger of new breed of consumerist-major generation has led to fierce competition at almost every tech landscape you talk about. Every major technology company today is either busy defending its own once-monopolistic business (Microsoft: Windows & Office, Google: Search & Advertising), aggressively invading into other’s businesses(Microsoft:Bing, Google: Chrome OS) or competing to dominate future-centric markets (Apple,Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, HP: Mobile OS and Apps).

And quite recently, an untouched breed has started to appear across tech world, which may soon define an all new category of devices, the category of Touch-enabled Tablet devices. It’s also the category that’s currently synonymized with Apple iPad, a meticulously crafted evidence of technological advancement, built by Apple.

Honestly, i can’t stop admiring iPad and there are countless reasons for that. Being a gadget freak myself, i am sold to the beauty of iPad already and want to own it anyway.

Still, I am scared of buying an iPad. Sounds strange ?. Here’s why i think so…

I own a Windows PC not an iMac
I own a Dell Laptop, not a Macbook
I own a Sony MP3 Player, not an iPod
I own a Motorola Droid(Android), not an iPhone

In short, I am happy keeping myself away from buying anything ‘Apple’. I am aware that Apple produces the best breed of desktop machines(iMac), the best laptops (Macbook), the best Music player(iPod) or possibly the best smartphone till date (iPhone, although i would love to argue on this), but all of that fails to convince me to turn to Apple.

Although I would have loved using that iMac ‘Magic Mouse’ or using that long battery Macbook or that beautiful iPhone etc etc but i am happy with my existing set of gadgets and don’t feel the need to expend unnecessarily over Apple’s high priced product line, just because that’s ‘cool’ or more ‘aesthetic’ and stuff like that.

But iPad has a different story altogether. When i think of consumer-oriented touch slate devices, i find no options but the iPad. It’s something that’s a little annoying to me as lack of options invites frustration to anyone (barring Apple Fanboys, of course) and we, the consumers are not used to having zero options. We choose, not accept !

Now, i admit that Apple has produced a futuristic device in the form of iPad and i would rather love falling for an iPad rather than waiting for HP or Acer or any other OEM to launch an iPad competitor.

But still, i am scared of buying an iPad. Not because…

I hate iPad (i already said i love it!)
I hate Apple (No, I admire Apple as a company for all its achievements and successfully building an absurdly religious cult)
I hate Apple products(Again, i don’t hate Apple products. They’re too awesome to hate )

I am scared of buying iPad because i am scared of becoming yet another Absurdly religious Apple Fanboy !

It’s a human tendency to admire and defend what you own. It’s because you’re not defending the ‘product’ you bought, you are actually defending “your decision” of buying that product.

And i realize that once i buy an iPad, i won’t be able to stop myself showing it off to every other guy and explaining folks why this sleek gadget is ‘magical’, ‘revolutionary’ , ‘extraordinary’ etc etc, an early symptom of becoming a Fanboy.

I can foresee that soon after buying an iPad and unleashing its crafted beauty, i will turn so addicted with it that i will start wondering how was i bearing those clumsy, non-glittering, poorly designed ‘Non-Apple’ gadgets i had been using all along.

And eventually, I will replace my PC with an iMac, my Dell laptop with a Macbook and my Droid with an iPhone. In other words, i will surrender to the Cult of Mac by becoming a part of it. All this transition won’t happen immediately but once all my existing device approach their expiry, i won’t choose anything but Apple’s.

Although iPad would cost me just $499 or more but in a couple of years, i will transform into an ATM machine for Apple, who will be ready to spare hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on every product launched by Apple and plenty of apps, music and other stuff from iTunes.

Ultimately, i will start to prefer ‘Apple‘ over ‘Options‘, ‘Affordability‘ & ‘Openness’. I will become a devoted Apple Fanboy !

All the above thoughts scare me so much that i prefer abstaining from taking that first step(buying an iPad) towards the Black Hole(Apple’s Ecosystem).

As I am quite happy with my Android smartphone(Droid) so far, i would love to buy an Android Tablet/Slate, as and when it hits the shelves. Till then, I better avoid thinking about iPad anymore !

Whoah! Facebook Blocks Access to All Bit.ly links. Marks Them “Abusive”!(Update)

Prashant Sharma — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:00:20 +0000

There’s something terrible happening behind Facebook right now, a blunder if not worst than that. Coming straight to the point, Facebook has blocked access to all bit.ly links spread across Facebook and telling the users that link has been reported “abusive” by other Facebook users.

If you try to update your status with a bit.ly link at this very moment, Facebook won’t let you do that. It says…

“This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.”

Bit.ly is the most popular URL shortener on web and there is no reason why Facebook would deliberately block all those tens of millions of existent bit.ly links on Facebook and prohibit any further bit.ly links from getting shared.

It is, of course, a huge blunder and some facebook employee is surely going to be screwed for making that mistake. We hope that Facebook will soon rectify the problem as too many folks must be reporting this problem to Facebook support every second at the moment.

We will update this post when Facebook fixes this bug !

Update: The bit.ly problem has been fixed by Facebook now.

Breaking: Apple to give away Free bumpers to every iPhone 4 buyer

Prashant Sharma — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:00:26 +0000

Friday conference at Apple headquarters is well over and Steve Jobs has given his final verdict on iPhone 4′s antenna fuss.

Apple has announced to give away free bumpers/cases to every iPhone 4 buyer(existing and future). Those who already purchased the bumper at their expense, will get full refund from Apple.

As speculated by us earlier, this act from Apple was much expected and honestly speaking, these rubber bumpers really saved Apple from falling into deep trap of Death grip.

However, it was odd to hear from Apple that they will stop handing out free bumpers to buyers who make iPhone 4′s purchase after September 30. Yeah, September 30 is the final deadline for getting free bumpers from Apple.

During the press conference, Steve Jobs explained all the facts and figures regarding the Antenna issues such as percentage of affected users, call drop rate, iPhone 4 return rate, among other things and reiterated that signal attenuation is a fact of life.

He went further saying that Apple cares about every single affected Apple customer and that’s why they’re giving away free bumpers, hence fixing all antenna issues, once for all.

We guess, Apple has done the needful, for now at least but it would still be sad to see that meticulously crafted, beautiful iPhone 4, covered with colorful (but ugly) rubber bumpers, which, in our opinion, gives iPhone 4 a toy like appearance.

Apple’s announcement on Friday: iOS Update, Free Bumpers or Total Recall ?

Prashant Sharma — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:50:16 +0000

The extent of media frenzy is going crazy at the moment. Since Consumer Reports voiced their opinion over the hardware flaw that iPhone 4 certainly has, Apple’s market worth has gone down by several billion dollars, every single media outlet is voicing way louder against Apple and consumers are getting furious at Apple’s stupid explanation or suggestions.

As Apple has just announced an emergency press conference regarding iPhone 4 on friday with only handful of Media journos on their Invite list, industry pundits are strongly pointing over some major announcement from Apple regarding the obvious issue of flawed antenna design.

It is obvious that consumers are plain unhappy with Apple at the moment and Apple can’t afford to loose all its priceless credibility earned over decades over this antenna issue so Apple has to address the problem and fix it.

Experts are estimating three possible ‘fixes’ from here…

1. iOS 4.01 Software Update : This is what Apple promised a week back and this software update is most likely to keep everything as it is. Now that iOS 4.01 update has already gone in the hands of developers, it’s more or less confirmed that software update will prove worthless to the consumers. In our opinion, Apple knows all of this very well and is not holding an emergency conference on Friday for releasing an ineffective software update. They’re onto something serious here !

2. Total Recall: Few media reports are suggesting that total iPhone recall is inevitable and Apple will have to bear billions of dollars of expenses to shield their priceless reputation from getting tarnished anymore. In our opinion, it is the worst that can happen to Apple and Apple is most unlikely to do so as that will call out for primary level manufacturing alternations which is next to impossible. Apple ‘luckily’ has an alternative solution(look below) to put forward.

3. Free Bumpers: This is by far the most feasible alternative that can save Apple from fast growing consumer & media fury. Bumpers are cheap and they solve the signal attenuation problem. In some vague estimation, Apple will have to bear only $1 per bumper if it decides to give it for free to every iPhone buyer. This would hardly affect Apple as they have tens of billions of cash in the bank already. For Apple, it would be like making $1 lesser profit on every iPhone sale. In our opinion, Apple is lucky enough that consumers are willing to accept this proposed solution of ruining the aesthetics of iPhone 4 by an ugly rubber bumper. And Apple will likely do so to cover their sinful act.

But the most interesting thing on friday announcement is going to be Apple’s admission of the fact that iPhone 4′s antenna design is an engineering defect or just ‘flawed’. Till date, Apple has bluntly refused any allegations or claims that Antenna design is flawed and now Apple will be forced to admit that “they were wrong”.

On the other side, Android’s most successful device till date, touted as “iDon’t Killer” from day one, the ‘Motorola Droid’, is going to drop its bigger(4.3 inch, 8MP) brother, Droid X today itself. And queues in front of Motorola stores have already started to appear.

This would put a huge pressure on Apple as extreme media outrage might convince Apple fanboys to return their iPhone 4 units and future iPhone 4 buyers might actually grab Droid X to play safe than sorry.

We will keep an eye on friday announcement. Stay tuned !

Here’s How Apple Could Have Fallen to the trap of ‘Death Grip’

Prashant Sharma — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:04:04 +0000

Around a week back, i wrote a piece on Apple iPhone 4 and the gist of the post was that no matter how *magical* iPhone 4 is, it bears a flawed antenna design.

And now, the very trustworthy Consumer Reports has put a big stamp on the flawed iPhone 4 claim. As a result, they have removed iPhone 4 from their list of recommended phones. And that’s really a BIG deal.

After rigorous lab testing of the iPhone 4, test engineers at Consumer Reports confirmed that iPhone 4 bears unusual levels of signal attenuation when held from the bottom, covering the lower right side of the phone, which is the most obvious position to hold any phone. Engineers also confirmed that the signal attenuation can deteriorate to a level where the voice/data communication may simply break off.

We all know Apple has done some remarkable innovations in the field of technology and immense success of iPod, iPhone and iPad undoubtedly validates this but that doesn’t guarantee that whatever innovations Apple brings to the table will be surely be groundbreaking and will be accepted without any objections.

In simpler words, anyone, no matter if that ‘anyone’ is as huge as Apple, can get wrong. It happened with Microsoft(Windows Vista), with Google(Wave) and has happened with any large-sized company in its history but the major difference here is that Apple is not willing to accept if any such problem really exists ?

As of now, all what Apple has to say about the Antenna flaw is that there is a problem with the way the signal bars are displayed on the phone and there is nothing wrong with the Antenna design or signal degradation when iPhone is held covering the right bottom side. With Apple’s claim that there isn’t any problem with iPhone 4 at all, Apple is only inviting more trouble than doing any good. Buyers are going furious and even Apple fanboys are not voicing in Apple’s favor.

As the problem is hardware based, the issue is likely to remain permanent and Apple will never be able to fix it by any software update. The only fix i can imagine now is Apple coming up with the next iPhone next year with the old, conventional antenna they used to have in earlier iPhones.

But whenever i think of this Antenna problem and how it could come into existence, it raises too many questions, all left unanswered.

With this new Antenna design, Apple introduced something that never existed before. In my opinion, any such hardware change must have called for heavy testing of phone’s signal performance and confirm if there’s any significant improvement with the new antenna design or not.

As of now, everyone(except Apple, of course) would agree that the new Antenna design did only bad rather than doing something good for Apple.

But at the same time, i can’t accept the fact that Apple tested, double tested, approved the new antenna design and went ahead with mass production and finally introduced (with full confidence) the iPhone 4 bearing new antenna design in front of the whole world ,without knowing about the Antenna flaw.

Apple “defending iPhone 4′s antenna issue after product release” sounds logical. If they won’t condemn media claims regarding flawed antenna design, they will soon see all their iPhone sales projections biting the dust.

But Apple “testing, approving and getting into mass production of iPhone 4 with a flawed design seems extremely unlikely to me. Were Apple’s engineers sleeping when prototype testing was happening ?

This is what could have possibly happened at the background !

Apple engineers came up with an innovative antenna design, aiming to outclass every conventional mobile device ever produced.

Apple’s engineering team went ahead with the prototype testing of the newly proposed antenna design.

Apple’s engineers approved the new antenna design with flying colors, somehow.

Apple gave green signal to iPhone 4′s mass production

While demo trials and field testing of iPhone 4 were going on, Apple did realize ‘something’ wrong with their design, with regard to handling it in certain manner.

As Apple couldn’t afford to back out due to heavy investment and deadline was hitting them hard too, so they came up with an alternative, offering “bumpers”, at a price of course.

Apple went ahead with the flawed design, taking users for granted and underestimating worst consequences.

Rest is all we know very well.

The only thing going in Apple’s favor here is that Apple’s product cycle isn’t too long to worry about. Since the arrival of iPhone in 2007, Apple has never missed the track and has consistently delivered an evolved iPhone to the market, year after year. This has kept the sales momentum going for Apple and Apple is most likely to continue so in the future.

Next year, Apple will most likely switch back to conventional antenna design in iPhone 5 and till then, Apple might choose to keep resisting any claims over Antenna reception, avoid any negative discussions and will try drifting attention of users over other highlights of iPhone 4 such as FaceTime and 720p video recording with glittering commercials, thereby minimizing harm caused due to negative publicity through various media channels around antenna flaws.

Smart Apple!

31 Year Old Indian Ditches Lavish Job to pursue Blogging as Full-Time Career

Prashant Sharma — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:38:15 +0000

Ever since i jumped into blogging bandwagon, one thing that kept me fascinated and enthusiastic about blogging was the endless possibilities it had.

If you’re a working professional and have taken up blogging as your hobby or part-time activity, you always carry a desire at the back of your mind and that is, to become a Full-time blogger, someday.

In other words, you aspire to make enough money from your creative writing skills, good enough that it would allow you to kick off you job and let you live your life the way you could only dream while working 9-to-6 day job.

More time, more money and most importantly, lots of Work satisfaction !

As blogging doesn’t offer too many promises and only handful of passionate folks actually turn it into their full-time profession, it’s certainly an achievement for anyone who decides to ditch his job for a full-time blogging career, that too when that ‘safe’ job is paying him off well over Rs.1 lakh($2200+) a month. It takes a lot of guts to do that !

I am talking about Raag Vamdatt, a Personal finance and Investment advisor, who recently kissed goodbye to his lavish job, only to pursue his passion. Raam Vamdatt is now one of those handful of Full-time bloggers that belong to India.

Raag blogs about personal finance, investments, tax queries, financial planning and whole bunch of financial topics you could possibly think of. And after going through couple of his articles, i find no surprises to hear that he has now turned his ‘hobby’ into a full-time career.

To know more about his journey to becoming a Full-time blogger and how a Job guy transformed into a Solopreneur, i threw at him a volley of questions to answer.

Take a look at his responses…especially if you ever wish to become a Full-time blogger anytime soon.

Q. When exactly did you start blogging. And what really inspired you to start blogging for the first time ?

When I was working as a business analyst with an information technology company, I had lots of friends from the technology side – I observed that they earned well, and being typical Indians, saved well too. However, they didn’t know how to invest well. They just bought some arbitrary insurance policies in February / March in order to save some income tax – at the advise of some insurance “advisors”.

I had good knowledge about the India markets, and I knew I had a firm grip on investment fundamentals. So I thought – why not use that to educate others about better ways of investing and planning their finances?

That is how I started RaagVamdatt.com in end-2007, and started a Hindi personal finance website PaisaPlanner in end-2009.

Q. Did you start blogging as a ‘hobby’ or you had strong conviction about turning ‘Blogging’ as a ‘Full time profession’ from day one ?

It started purely as a hobby – not even in my dreams did I imagine leaving my job for it someday! Yes, I had some advertising on the blog from the very beginning, but it was just to earn some money on the side so that I could pay for the domain name, hosting, etc.

Q. Tell us about the roadblocks/hiccups/compromises you had to deal with, while managing your day job with blogging.

I started the blog when I was in the USA. There, my employers offered very good work-life balance, which means that I could leave office at 5.00 – 5.30pm. That gave me good 4 – 5 hours at home to work on the blog. Of course, my wife had to compromise as she had to give up her time with me, but she was always very encouraging and supportive.

The situation changed when I had a son – of course, the time I had to give at home increased many-fold. So, the frequency of posting went down.

And then, I moved to India. As you would be aware, we are not big on work-life balance here in India. I was spending late hours at work, and that has a direct impact on the blog – I didn’t post anything meaningful for 3 straight months!

The blog is very dear to my heart, and I have a firm belief that I can make a difference through it by offering quality advise to people like you and me. Therefore, this situation was very painful for me.

I had to sacrifice one – either my blogs, or my job. And thats when I decided to sacrifice the latter.

Q. It must be a really tough decision to quit a lavish job (Salary of over 1 lakh/$2200 per month), relying solely on your blogging revenues, especially when you’ve several responsibilities to care about. Tell us more about that.

You can bet it was tough!

I knew I loved the blogs, and I loved what I was doing there. Still, leaving the job was a tough call, especially with the responsibility of a child. However, I knew I wanted to keep the blogs growing, and couldn’t do that along with the job. I did some calculations, and figured that I could take 2 years off to dedicate to my blogs and see if I can convert then into a profession.

When I realized that I would work full time on my blogs, I didn’t really have to convince my wife as she had seen me work hard for the last 2.5 years on the blogs and had seen the progress very closely. She knew my passion, and therefore I had her complete buy-in.

The tough part was to convince my parents and parents-in-law – parents on both sides have been in secure, government jobs all their lives, and it was difficult for them to digest that I was leaving a steady paycheck for the unknown. They never doubted my capability or the potential of the blogs, but still, the very idea of leaving a job was alien to them. But fortunately, I was able to convince them!

Q. On an average, how much revenues do you generate from blogging ?

Well, the income right now is peanuts – its more like 75K per year! But lets remember that this is what I was getting with part time effort, and without any advertising of my financial planning service.

Now, I would be reaching out to many more people in order to promote my services. Plus, I am introducing many more services, like training services in personal finance. I am also in the process of creating many info-products in the personal finance space.

Q. Tell us about anything you achieved with blogging that’s worth mentioning ?

The best thing that has happened to me is the response I have received from people – I have got tremendous satisfaction from guiding people and pointing them in the right direction. The numerous emails and comments praising my work is my biggest achievement!

Q. Now that you’ve become a full-time blogger, how do you foresee your future from here.

Well, I talked about some of it earlier – I have launched or am in the process of launching many new products and services.

Apart from that, I would also be more aggressive on my Hindi personal finance website www.PaisaPlanner.com, which is India’s first Hindi website on personal finance. I figure that through the Hindi website, I can spread the message of financial literacy to a very wide audience.

Q. How do you rate Indians among the whole blogosphere ?

To be frank, so far I haven’t got the time to network much with bloggers – Indian or otherwise. So, I don’t know too many of them.

But from what I see, we are a little behind. I mean, we don’t see an Indian in the top, A-list bloggers. I can think of Ramit Sethi, but he isn’t an “Indian” blogger – he’s an American blogger of Indian origin!

Q. Are you confident that you will never go back to ‘Job’ anytime soon ? If yes, what brings this confidence in you ?

I am quite certain about this. I have a passion for personal finance, and a passion for spreading good financial practices among common people. And I know I would be doing my best. Wherever there is passion, money follows. Which means no going back to a day job!

Q. Any advice/tips for all the aspiring bloggers out there ?

Never give up! I strongly believe that if you really like what you are writing about, it would take you places some day… So, hang in there, come what may!