Malaysians Can Now Withdraw Money From PayPal

This news can to me in an e-mail and I couldn't believe my eyes. I just had to immediately share it with all my Malaysian readers as well. That's right, Malaysians can now withdraw money from their PayPal accounts into our local Credit Card or Debit Card. This is indeed great news as we were previously unable to enjoy this very important feature. For many years now Malaysians were only allowed to sign up for an account and do the normal transactions like sending money and making online purchases, using their PayPal accounts but unfortunately the funds accumulated there were not allowed to be withdrawn for local usage.

The usual means of actually getting to enjoy the money from our PayPal accounts in the past was to purchase products online or in some fortunate cases (people who had relatives or close friends living abroad) to transfer the said funds to another persons PayPal account who resides in a foreign country and they then transfer it back to us through cheques, telegraphic transfer, money order and so forth. And there were those who also began to use E-Trade accounts as well to access these funds which they had in their accounts.

But all these were considered to be time consuming and not to mention risky at the same time due to the fact that they could get their PayPal accounts possibly frozen in the process if they were not careful. Now all this is in the past as PayPal has graciously lifted the ban and opened their doors to all Malaysians to have direct access to their funds. So, as long as you have a Credit Card, Debit Card (in some cases they're called Check Cards, ATM Cards, or Banking Cards) that shows a Visa logo, you'll be verified and only then be granted to have this access.

As with all foreign currency transfers, there are certain charges incurred for all this. PayPal is currently imposing a USD5 fee on each of those transactions and expect 5 - 7 days for them to process your withdrawals.

I am sure that PayPal's lifting of the ban on Malaysians will spur us all to do well as we are now in the same leagues with other top influential countries. My only hope is that this feature will be a long standing one and hopefully no Malaysian out there should jeopardize the facility provided by PayPal. So what are you guy's waiting for, sign up for a PayPal Business or Premier account and start accepting credit card payments instantly.

Updates (October 1st, 2007) :

Apparently it seems that Malaysia was not the only country allowed to withdraw money through local bank cards, but this same access has been granted to an additional 26 other countries as well. Countries such as Philippines, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Turkey, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and so many more have also been given the big go ahead. To get a full picture on this, I highly recommend you make a trip over to the official PayPal site to see if your country is also listed into this same list.

How To Buy A Digital Camera ?

Buying a digital camera can be a real hard thing to do these days ... why is that so, you ask? Well for starters, there's just too many choices out there and deciding on a particular model can turn out to be a challenging task in itself. I really don't know about you guy's, but seriously, I've asked myself this question on a number of occasions, "How to buy a digital camera?" Learning the key elements to consider when buying that perfect digital camera can be tons of help.

Once you've decided that having a digital camera is the way to go, then you're on your way to the next phase ... choosing one! This is the part where you get all confused and for most parts of the time, you end up buying something simply because it suited your budget very nicely or either, got something just because you saw it in a TV ad. In my case, it was kind of both, "A match made in Heaven" so to speak, but after owning it for over a year, I soon begun to realize that its not really what I wanted actually.

Since there is an endless selection these days, make sure the final decision rests purely on your needs rather than buying on an impulse. List out the features you're looking for in a digital camera, and work along those lines. Because, if you look at it practically, there's no real need for you to spend thousands of dollars if you're just out there taking some simple 4X6 prints, or buying that branded one just so that you're "in", features proclaiming to have capabilities to print great looking large 8X10 prints but sadly find out later, that even your usual smaller prints turn out horrible, quality wise.

My best take on this, would be to buy at least a 3.0 megapixel digital camera (these are quite common in many of today's inexpensive camera's) if you're going to just use them for some regular shots or just to upload a couple of pictures to your blog. And for those who would want something more advanced and something more professional, you have start looking into camera's that have at least 4 - 10 megapixel capabilities. Now, this is where you get to enjoy photo-lab quality, large quality prints and great looking pictures all year round.

But with all that said, having a camera just based on its number of megapixel solely, can sometimes have a downside to it as well, due to its larger image size, a need to have a more expensive memory card, and as the image size are larger it's bound to take up more space in your computer's hard-drive, not to mention their sky high prices as well.

So here's a perfect video that I found that shares some pointers on "How to buy a Digital Camera" and hopefully after you have watched it, many of your questions can be answered and eventually help you decide better.

How To Make Your Own Home Cleaning Solution ?

Have you ever wondered what are the inexpensive ways to get things cleaned around your home? Well look no further, as I have just short listed a number of items that can be transformed into your best helping hand, which ultimately doesn't end up burning a big hole in your wallet. This post will in a way, show you how to make your own home cleaning solution. Many of us might overlook these easy-to-use natural alternatives which are commonly available in many of our homes today.

These non-toxic home cleaning solutions are effective and inexpensive to incorporate into your home maintenance regime. Besides that, it's an avenue for us to cut down on chemical-based products which can have high long term health concerns for any family, and possibly even environmental pollution caused by their manufacture, usage and in some cases, indiscriminate disposal of these harmful substances.

Baking Soda
This is basically sodium bicarbonate. It has a number of useful properties. It can neutralize acid, scrub shiny materials without scratching, deodorize, and extinguish grease fires. It can be used as a deodorizer in the refrigerator, on smelly carpets, on upholstery and on vinyl too. It can help deodorize drains as well. It can clean and polish aluminium, chrome, jewellery, plastic, porcelain, silver, stainless steel, and tin. It also tends to soften fabrics and removes certain stains. Baking soda can be used as an underarm deodorant and as a toothpaste too. Now, that one, I'm sure you didn't know??

Cornstarch
This is something that can be used to clean windows, polish furniture, shampoo carpets and rugs, and starch clothes.

Lemon Juice
Can be used to clean glass and remove stains from aluminium, clothes, and porcelain. It is a mild lightener or bleach if used with sunlight.

Mineral Oils
It is derived from seeds which is an ingredient in several furniture polish and floor wax recipes.

Soap
An all-purpose liquid soap can be made by simply dissolving the old ends of bar soap (or grated slivers of bar soap) in warm water.

Vinegar
It can dissolve mineral deposits, grease, remove traces of soap, remove mildew or wax build-up, polish some metals, and deodorize. Vinegar can clean brick or stone, and is an ingredient in some natural carpet cleaning recipes. Alternatively, you can also use vinegar to clean out the metallic taste in coffeepots and to shine windows without streaking. Vinegar is normally used in a solution with water, but it can be used straight too in certain situations.

Take note that in some cases the results may vary, given the type of products that you might be using or it's concentration levels and so forth. So, always try to test them first in a small hidden area and see if it works.

And if you ever decide to do this at home, when you're due for your next weekly/monthly clean-up session, always remember to "clean from the top down". Which means, save the carpets and the floors to be tackled last, as this will allow time for the dust to settle down before you begin your vacuuming regime.

What Is An Award ?

Have you ever asked yourself this question before, "What is an Award?" and "What does it mean to you?".

To be frank, blogging has taught me the value of friendship. Life has never been so fulfilling as now. Ever since the day I started my journey with Nihal's Anything n Everything, I have met so many beautiful people that come from all parts of the world. Though we come from different social backgrounds/religion, or our ideas or views may differ slightly in certain aspects, but non of this really matters much, as we're constantly united in friendship and that's the best part about blogging!! We tend to share so many good things together. Who said that blogging was all about money and nothing else???

One such wonderful thing is in the sharing and awarding of wonderful awards that goes around the blogging community. Each individual award having it's own unique characteristic and value. And as we know, there are thousands of bloggers out there who have so much of talent and with awards created by bloggers themselves, it's always wonderful to see them supporting another site with such recognition. To me it's more of a way of saying : "Hey, thanks for being my friend, I really value your friendship and I hope we will remain friends forever." Anyway, that's my personal opinion on an award and what it means to me ... I value friendship and that's me!

But for the last two months things have not been so systematic for my blog and a lot of stuff were not posted as scheduled. Friends awarded me stuff and I didn't post them up, and there are friends who even tagged me to do stuff and I'm still due on them and so forth. I feel really bad about this everyday, as I feel I've let all my friends down. So today, I decided to list down a couple of things that had passed by, as I have not mentioned about it earlier on at my blog. To my dear friends, I am forever grateful for all the support and encouragement all of you have shown.

July 12, 2007

My dear friend Eve, over at My Life is Murphy's Law awarded me with this wonderful award which was created by Christy from WritersReview. No doubt we live world's apart but that doesn't stop us from being best friends. I will never forget her support and encouragement from day one. Thank you once again Eve, and Christy for creating such a cool award for the bloggers. Christy has created numerous awards that recognizes each individual blogger for who they are and that's truly fantastic!


August 3rd, 2007

Jean Chia of A Great Pleasure is another great friend whom I got to know from Marzie. She is such a lovely girl for she really went out of her way to create this unique and very creative badge for all her close friends. I am really honored to have received this from you Jean, thank you so very much.


Then there are these three other beautiful lady friends of mine that awarded me with this great badge for my site : Marzie (September 2nd, 2007), Jesse (September 12th, 2007) and Erina Hart (September 13th, 2007) . I am deeply grateful to all three of them as they have been such great friends to me.

Marzie has always been there for me, and she never fails to add me into her list of activities. I sometimes wonder how lucky I am to have found such a wonderful person as her.

Jesse on the other hand, is a gem of a person. She is constantly progressing in her blogging career and I must say, this is one blogger that we can learn from.

Erina is such a Darling. She has become my most recent friend and I am so lucky to know her. She has recently changed her layout at her site and moved to a new domain which looks pretty cool. If you're looking for good read, this is the blog you should visit.


And Marzie, added yet another "nice one" (August 20th, 2007). How will I every repay her generosity and continuous support? Anyone who has a suggestion, feel free to let me know what I could do in return, to all this lovely people, I call friends. And as the creators of this beautiful badge suggests, the Award represents people who fall into this category - "All those who are nice people, good blog friends, and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others, that are there to lend support, or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world!"


And, to all of my friends who have taken the time to put me into their lists, there are no words that could express the gratitude I have for you and I must also say sorry if I have left anyone out in this list, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of these were done some time back, therefore I would have missed one or two of you. Please let me know if I accidentally missed out anyone.

So to end this, I say, Awards to me, is in it's own way, "an expression of our friendship and the understanding we have for each other" and trust me, I will never forget any of you :)

How Do I Earn Money From AuctionAds/ShoppingAds ?

Everyone knows that online auctions are kind of a hot trend these days. It's really an opportunity for everyone to earn a reasonable income. Think of it as an avenue where you get to grasp that extra couple of bucks in a week that would come in handy, maybe to pay for your babysitter perhaps or even to have a nice dinner out with the family, once in a while. So, how do I earn money from AuctionAds? Simply by leveraging on their very lucrative eBay affiliate system added with bits and pieces on keyword targeting!

As I emphasized in an earlier article of mine related to money making opportunities, Google AdSense is still my top earner, but then again, there are other affiliate programs which I'm involved in, that throws in that extra cash when you least expect, AuctionAds is one such program. AuctionAds is definitely not a contextual ad product, so running it alongside Google AdSense is perfectly alright.

But then again, not everyone would agree totally on this, as each individual blog out there behaves differently, there might be a program that works very well at one site, but doesn't do quite well at another. I on the other hand evaluate things differently, basically I don't give up so easily and my plan is to constantly evaluate the traffic that comes to my site and analyze the keywords that drives them here through the search engines. These information is then transferred onto my articles and thus allowing this site to have an average 80% of it's traffic generated through search engine queries alone.

Eventually this is the same thing you would need to do in order for you to sell a product at your site whether it's Google AdSense, AuctionAds/ShoppingAds, Photographs, Hyperlinks or even Meta tags (you're still considered selling it) where we use "keyword targeting" - How many times have you seen an ad that doesn't coincide with your article? Many a times I guess. This is because not many of us tend to address the importance of keywords. We normally copy and paste, and that's it, job done! Adding target keywords ultimately will give you the right ads that you want your readers to see complimented with it's location at your site, and perhaps when they see this they'll eventually end up making a purchase.

What is AuctionAds and how will it benefit me?

AuctionAds is basically an avenue where you get to open up an account as a Publisher which allows you to paste their ad code into your blog or blogs (with no limit to the number of ads placed on a single page or even at your multiple other sites). Relevant eBay products will then appear for auction at those given sites. Prices can be so low at times, it makes chances that much easier, to get a click through. Not only that, you get paid 1st of every month through PayPal, once you've reached their minimum $50 mark. On August 27 this year, they optimized their ad images so that it no longer looks stretched or even distorted. And then, on September 4th, 2007 they announced an increase in their affiliate payouts, from 2% initially to 5% on all revenue produced by publishers you refer, for the first 6 months of the new publisher's earning's. This is what we call smart leveraging!

Another good part about AuctionAds is that every time someone clicks the link from your site, AuctionAds will then place a 30-day cookie on those users and if they end up winning the bid (there are times, even if they don't win the bid, you still get paid) or converts into a signup (referral program) within that 30 day period, you will get paid! Just so that you know, they eventually will pay you a minimum 100% of the eBay commission revenue.

And I wanted to save the best information for last, effective September 5, 2007 all new publishers who signs up with AuctionAds, you will instantly receive $25.00 cash balance into your account! That's it, just sign up and receive $25.00... Wow, this is great news, and this is why I'm strongly encouraging my readers to see the bigger picture by being part of the AuctionAds affiliate program, which can eventually be a nice additional income stream for you.

Besides it's international targeting and large inventory of eBay products it is without a doubt yet safe to say, AuctionAds is one flexible advertising program!

AuctionAds : Join Now!

Pavarotti Has Passed Away

Today marks a day filled with sorrow, as the greatest celebrated opera singer to have lived - Luciano Pavarotti, has passed away in his home at 5am, local Italian time. This is indeed a huge loss for the music world.

Pavarotti was born in the outskirts of Modena, Italy on October 12th, 1935, and had captivated the opera world till his dying age of 71. Mention Pavarotti, and I imagine, charcoal black beard and seeing him in his famous tuxedo suit. To me, I shall remember him as a entertainer for his charismatic performances and ebullient showmanship.

The great Italian tenor, Pavarotti was indeed a talented singer renown for his vocal capabilities and humanitarian efforts along the way, when he received a medal (UN High Commission for Refugees) relating to works surrounding issues related to refugees. It is said that Pavarotti began showing his singing capabilities at a tender age of nine, when he used to sing alongside his father in their small local church choir. Pavarotti made his initial opera debut back in 1961 in his home front and it was not until February 1965, that he made his presence felt in the American shores through the Greater Miami Opera. Throughout his career, Luciano Pavarotti has released numerous musical DVD's that were outsold in weeks of their availability.

It was not till late last year when the Maestro was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - said to be one of the most dangerous forms of the disease, which he fought all along. Pavarotti had supposedly undergone further treatments to suppress the effects of the cancer, but to no avail and finally succumbing to his illness early this morning.

The thought of losing someone special is hard to comprehend, and I am thankful to God, as HE has allowed my parents to share their love with me thus far, for I can't imagine the day, when I will face this same situation as Pavarotti's children; Lorenza, Giuliana, Cristina (from his first wife) and Alice (from his second wife), who would be feeling so much sorrow moaning the loss of their beloved father.

For the millions of his fans, the natural beauty and the vibrantly high C's of Pavarotti's voice will be greatly missed, for I have never seen another opera singer who reached out to 1.5 billion people.

May his soul rest in peace and may the heavens enjoy the beauty of his great voice.

Uploading And Removing Borders From Picture

It is quite common that we usually upload an image or a diagram or even an illustration of some sort into our post. I usually try to add a picture or two into my post just to add some color into it but there are times when these pictures have some rather weird looking borders surrounding them. In this post I will share with you the simple steps in uploading as well as removing borders from picture, in which you intend to embed onto your Blogger post page. For this example we will use the image uploading tool found in Blogger.

Firstly, once you have logged into your Blogger account, click on this icon and it will generally bring you into your Blogger's post editor page. Once here, you would want to begin the process of uploading a selected image from your PC or even from a particular web page - this is something you should try not to do (taking pictures from other web pages) besides the worry of copyright laws and the simple reasoning that if you post a picture which is taken off from another web page, what's going to happen is that every time you load your blog, that particular picture is going to be loaded by their server, so if their server is down or slow for any given reason, this will ultimately effect your blog as well, besides the owner of that site likely incuring an expense at the same time, thanks to you.

Anyway, assuming you have now decided to upload a particular picture, look for this icon and click on it.

This would immediately open up a new window to help you make the necessary selection of image or images.


Next you would want to decide on the placement of the picture, whether it should go on the left, right or even at the center of your post. Customizing the appearance is also another way of showing your creativity in your post. It will also help you wrap your text around these pictures. Another benefit is that you're able to choose the right size deemed fit for that post. Do this by checking on the relevant "Choose a Layout" box and then finally, click "Upload Image" followed by "Done".

Once you have succesfully uploaded the image, click on the Edit Html tab, to make the necessary modifications to remove the said borders from appearing in your post page.

Normally when you upload a image in Blogger it is displayed as a hyperlink. If you would like to disable the hyperlink, remove the section marked in red.

This is an example markup of the inserted image, appearing on your post editor page.

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105259291560015234" border="0" /></a>

Note the closing </a> tag at the end of the example, remember to remove this.

Now, if you want to maintain the hyperlink and prefer not to have the borders surrounding the image, edit the img (tag) style attribute by inserting : border-style : none;

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF"><img style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/deleted/AMD+690.GIF" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5105259291560015234" border="0" /></a>

This would ultimately remove the border surrounding your image as well as remove the hyperlink pointer that would normally appear if you align the cursor on top of the picture.