Category / Regulars

All posts which are not featured in the sliding header. This will be used to make sure featured posts are not shown twice on the home page.

by Nirupam Biswas

Why Is PayPal Screwing Indians? Short version.

Today I received the following mail from PayPal

As part of our commitment to provide a high level of customer service, we would like to give you a 30-day advance notice on changes to our user agreement for India.

With effect from 1 March 2011, you are required to comply with the requirements set out in the notification of the Reserve Bank of India governing the processing and settlement of export-related receipts facilitated by online payment gateways (“RBI Guidelines”).

In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, our user agreement in India will be amended for the following services as follows:

  1. Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and
  2. Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.

PayPal always conviniently quote RBI for all wrong doings but from a post – Why Is PayPal Screwing Indians? An ex-RBI Employee Tells Me The Facts, I came to know of the reason. Which can be summarized as, any organization which stores others’ money for more than 7 days need to be treated as banks. Also all inflow of cash of more than 500 USD needs to be reported to RBI. Paypal neither wants to follow the bank regulations nor it wants to go into hassle of informing RBI. So, finally all Indian startups end up loosing.

I wonder what is keeping banks like ICICI, Citi or HDFC to start such a service in India? This is a great new open market with practically no competition in India.

by Nirupam Biswas

Windows Phone 7 is, as we speak, losing fantastic applications because of its approval process.

Designer Silverlight » Blog Archive » Windows Phone 7 UX – One Size Does Not Fit All.

I would like to quote one para from the linked post.

I can’t overestimate how frustrated my clients are with the Microsoft approval process. It ranges from sadness to fury. Clients who are on virtually all other platforms are expressing frustration that they have never had so much trouble getting through an approval process. The rejection reports are inconsistent, spotty, and fragmented. We will submit an app 5 times and get different “errors” back each time. Nine times out of ten, those errors are not errors, but complaints about UX functionality. Of those, at least half of them are complaints about functionality that, if fixed, would worsen the user experience.

I love Microsoft and I love Windows Phone 7, but rejecting apps based on the UX guidelines (while not giving us the tools to abide by the guidelines effectively) is a recipe for suicide.

by Nirupam Biswas

Maybe Pizzas and Subways have caused some allergies in me

Like many I have feasted over many Pizzas and ‘healthy’ Subway burgers. Infrequently and sporadically I have seem to get allergy attacks where hives form on your skin [1].

Hives will cause lot small swellings to form on your body, as it happens in case of insect bites, but all throughout the body. Many of the swelling may merge to form bigger islands. Along with that you will get extreme burning sensation throughout your body over your skin and incessant itching, but itching only spreads the hive formations.

I remember, I had this for the first time in my life, more a year ago. I had a Domino’s Non-veg pizza and after 15-20 mins I went to a local market, where it was hot and sweaty. I started having itchy sensations over my head and arms, along with some hives. The hives were not red and looked like it happened as a result of some mosquito bite. Then when I started scratching them then the situation aggravated. In half hour I was back home and my body was full with hives and islands and it was burning my skin. I took a cold shower, even though it gave a little relief, but it felt like thousand stings. My roomies grew concerned about my situation so we went to a doctor and took a shot of an anti-allergy medicine. It took about an hour to recover after that.

Later I called Dominos to query about any ingredients they put which is known to cause allergy, but as I expected they did know of anything. I had the dreaded thought that I have developed allergy of chicken! Finally I concluded may the heat, sweat and dirt caused this. Time passed and I had many more pizzas and I never had such an issue except for one another day. This time I was at home and was cool and dry. This time I tired not to scratch and in 15-20 mins I recovered.

It has been now one year and today after having Subway burger that same hive allergy struck me. Today also I was cool and dry and I tried not to scratch myself and I recovered in 15-20 mins, but now I could not ignore this anymore. So, I googled and found loads of information. So my final conclusion is I have developed allergy against corn syrup.

Conclusion

It seems I have developed allergy against High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). This is a very dangerous substance and unfortunately, as I found out today, it is present in almost all fast foods. Including Subway burgers and Domino’s Pizzas [2][3][4]. This is also known to cause allergies, like hives [5].

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