Some minutes back, Rajdeep Sardesai was moderating a CNN IBN studio debate between the Congress and BJP spokespersons on the UP serial blasts today. He alleged to both the spokespersons that why they are politicising the incident when both political parties should come together and work in solving the crisis in hand.

Well said, except for one thing. There was an irony. It was that the media was the one that seems to be politicising the issue more than anybody else.

I wonder why :

1.CNN IBN had to put resources on confirming the political party spokespersons and give so much airtime to the debate, when they should be running helpline numbers on their screens for the blast victims.

2. If some political parties are trying to politicise the issue, why did they have to pick it up? The media keeps talking about picking up relevant and important issues but this is what they chose to cover instead of the blast.

So even if political parties love politicising sensitive issues, the media loves getting mileage by blaming them for doing so, because they think that the audence would love them for being the watchdog. Well, the watchdog was being watched today.

It’s Diwali time. And so you might want to celebrate this festival of lights with your Orkut and Facebook friends. This is a list of the sites where you can get some of the best Diwali scraps and ecards that you can send to your friends on these social networking sites.

Cool Greeting Cards - This is a Facebook application with a good collection of greeting cards including Diwali ecards that you can send to your Facebook friends.

Diwali eCards for Orkut and Facebook - This is a collection of 11 nice Diwali eCards that you can paste on your friends’ scrapbooks on Orkut and Facebook.

Diwali Poojan eCard - A Diwali prayer ecard for sending to your Orkut and Facebook friends, complete with a long audio of the song ‘Om Jai Jagdish Hare, Swami Jai Jagdish Hare…’ Just copy paste the html and paste it on their scrap books. Now that’s one truly Indian style orkutting.

Happy Diwali Photo Zing - This one’s my favourite. You can upload your and your friend’s picture, decorate it with Diwali flashbulbs, resize the picture as you want, and paste it to your friend’s scrapbook. Check out the picture above as an example.

Diwali Glitter Graphics - Glittering Diwali graphics for your friends’ scrapbooks.

Prachina - More Diwali copy and paste images for Orkut scrapbooks. Lots of images of Gods and Goddesses.

Orkut Accessories - Three cool animated Diwali cards for Orkut scraps.

My Orkut World - Lots of animated Diwali cards for your friends’ scrapbooks.

Orkut-Scrapbook - Collection of 10 cool pictures of Ganesha, candles, lamps, swastika, decorations, etc.

Cool Orkut Graphics - Collection of animated lamps plus one Hum-Tum card to be copy pasted on your friends’ scrapbooks.

Xplore the World:Diwali Store - Five galleries of pictures of goddesses, lamps, and decorations for your Orkut friends.

Zabri Graphics - Big classy and animated Diwali cards for sending to your Orkut friends.

Orkut Glitters - One nice and warm Diwali card for your best Orkut friend.

Having written an article titled ‘10 cool ways to use Paypal‘ on Mashable, I expect myself to be a bit smart using the service Thankfully I managed to save face four times.

Recently I received four phishing mails with the subject ‘Critical Information Regarding Your Account’. The emails were designed to look like they were from Paypal. The contents read:
—————————————————
Dear PayPal member

You have recently updated your PayPal account according to our standard security procedures. Unfortunately the update procedure failed because some of the information you provided was incorrect.

Please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records.

However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension.

To update your PayPal records click on the following link:
Some link….http://

Thank You.
PayPal Service Department
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The first time I received the email, I ignored it. But when I received a similar mail for the fourth time, I thought I should just check it out properly. Two odd things I observed while reading it:

1. Although the sender’s display name was Paypal, the email domain was ‘ipaypal’.

2. The link mentioned on the mail was http://www.paypal.com/………., but when I hover my mouse over the link, my Firefox’s status bar showed me the actual link, which starts with something like http://ogk-d………

I forwarded the mail to spoof@paypal.com and they confirmed it was a phishing mail (email attempts to steal your identity, password, or other financial information). You can visit Paypal’s Security Center to learn more.

Related post: Withdraw Paypal money in Indian bank account now

Do you use Facebook status as your twitter and love updating your Facebook status regularly? Unlike Twitter that you can use from your IM or phone, you would have realised that you need to visit your Facebook profile page to update your status.

Not anymore. Now you can update your Facebook status from your Firefox browser with the Boost For Facebook addon. After installing the addon, it will reside on your browser as a toolbar showing a sidebar button, search Facebook box, Facebook shortcut links, and an ‘Update your Status’ box. You can type your new status in this box and hit enter on your system keyboard. That’s it. Your Facebook’s profile gets a new status update.

First time you installed the addon, you might not get the status update feature working on the toolbar. If so, visit the Boost for Facebook Help Page and see the instructions on the FAQ/ Feature Specific page.

To update your Facebook status from your mobile phone, add the Facebook Mobile application. This will allow you to text your status to Facebook. This application is currently available for users from the US, UK, and Canada.

What happened to the good old Exchange 4 Media and Agency FAQs? Where is the content? Two good examples of advertising sites overdoing the advertising.

Exchange4Media


AgencyFAQs

Is not this ironic? With all the talk about Google penalizing sites for using using sponsored text links and yet Text Link Ads and other text link broking services are advertised on Google Search result pages.

This is probably the greatest news for Indian Paypal users. Paypal has now started a new service through which you can withdraw your Paypal money to your Indian bank account.

The banks where you can withdraw your Paypal money are State Bank of India, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, ING VYSYA Bank, Axis Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, and Citibank. The money transfers will be completed in 7 working days and are free of cost for transfers above Rs. 7,000. For transfers below this amount, there is a charge of Rs. 50.

The best of this news is that there are no minimum or maximum withdrawal amounts for verified Paypal users. For unverified users, the upper limit is USD 500 per month though.

You can add your bank account by going to your Account Overview page and hovering your mouse on the Profile subtab. A drop down menu will appear. Click the ‘Add or Edit Bank Account’ link and on the page that follows, fill your bank account form. Pretty easy.

This new development means no more transferring Paypal money to our US relatives, or using other money transfer services. In the absence of this service, Indian users have been using services like Xoom and Virtual Money International ATM card.

Guess Paypal has finally recognised the rising Indian market.

Read more about this here.

paypal