How to receive money through paypal to sri lanka, the easy way...

I know as a freelancer in Sri Lanka the first major issue you face is that you cannot able to receive your earned income to a bank account in here because PayPal Pte Ltd only allow Sri Lankan PayPal account holders to send payments and Sri Lanka Central Bank still not looking at that matter at all. But there is a very easy and secured method to receive money through PayPal to Sri Lanka as I describe below

In this case you have to do a little trick but do not hesitate to do that because it is not illegal. OK so let's begin.

First you have to go to a Hatton National Bank branch in your area and create a savings account there. If you already have one then skip that step.

Then you will be given a form to fill for getting a HNB debit card so before filling that form go and talk to them informing that you need to activate internet money transferring facility for your card. They will then give you extra set of forms. Fill them carefully and return them to the reception informing again to ensure that they remember your need.

As I remember you have to wait for two weeks to get your debit card but make sure to call them after two weeks of requesting, then you must go to the branch again and collect your card.

After that you have to activate your new card by inserting it to the ATM machine. You can then use your card for local transactions.

Then go home and call HNB card center. Tell them you need to activate your debit card for joining a PayPal account. They will then ask you a few personal questions and ask you how much longer do you want to activate it. You can tell them to activate permanently but I recommend you to activate for a year. After that year has been passed you can again call them and ask to activate.

Now you are almost done so let's begin the connecting process of your card to a verified PayPal account.

Open up your internet browser and go to PayPal.com and click Sign Up. If you already have a Sri Lankan PayPal account you also have to create a new account as I say because you can only send money via your Sri Lankan account but cannot receive.

As the screenshot above, choose Malaysia as your country. Then click Get Started button for a Premier account (Premier accounts have cheaper rates than Personal accounts when sending and receiving money). Fill in the details of yours in the given form but always use your real name and real details as you provided for your bank account, otherwise your account will be banned from the system. Leave the country as Malaysia but use your real personal address for the rest.

After creating log in to your account and click Profile>Add edit credit cards. Fill the details as mentioned in your HNB debit card and finish up the process. Then wait for two days and go to your PayPal account home. Click Get verified. It will ask you for a four digit number. Now call HNB card center again and ask for the PayPal verification code. They will again ask you some questions and provide you the code. Enter it in the field and your done.

Now you have a verified fully functional international PayPal account so you can use it to receive and send money to anywhere around the world. Your received money will transfer to your HNB bank account so you do not have worry about it either.

Using the HNB debit card will not cost you any yearly fees or hidden charges as Sampath web card do. I always prefer it no matter what.

Enjoy earning and buying!!

Drive More Traffic to Your Blog or Website using Easy and Effective Methods!

In this article we discuss easy and effective methods to increase your blog traffic without wasting time for instance, paying attention to search engine optimization. What you write is all that matters.

When I search through the internet, the most discussed topics I can see are always about 'How you can increase your website views and traffic easily' but most of these articles which claims to have the easiest methods to increase traffic cannot be understood by a newbie when he/she just started his or her first blog for the first time and is looking for something easy to help them with increasing page views. So all you need is a simple guide that will show you how to increase your blog traffic effectively using simple techniques.

Pick the most perfect

To achieve that we need to look at how our blog URL looks like so be creative in this always. Micheal-is-awesome-blah-blah.com is not a good URL to put in your blog. Why bother waiting I can show you a good example of my own experience. Just look at most famous website URLs on the internet today. Did they mention some name or any personal information in the URL? No, it should be just a combination of some common words which can remain in human memory quite for a long time.

And in the Title area you have to be tricky so you can put part of your name here because you always have to pick a unique title for each of your blogs separately so they will show up in search engines as fast as they could. Another method is using the URL name as your Title because when some new visitors first visit your website they always look at the title first so when they want to come again they will surely type your website Title.com on the address bar first. Afterwards write the description of your blog to describe what is it all about. Better use one sentence for that but make it interesting to see.

Be creative

Then write a few articles which can attract more viewers attention due to the date. What it means is as you know world is changing everyday so you have to write about what people discuss today, not yesterday. And don't forget to add an attractive picture for your post as well.

Use Tags

The next step is when you are writing your posts there is an option called Labels on the left hand on the writing area of the page which will let you tag important keywords about your specific posts in the blog. For an instance, if you are writing about how to choose a car, then you can use the labels car, BMW, Ferrari, acceleration likewise.

Share

After all, share your blog on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter to get better views among your friends and followers. And do not forget to join your Google+ profile with your blogger account because it will also let your friends and circles know about your blog posts as quickly as they submitted. You can also submit your articles to Reddit or StumbleUpon but make sure to pick the most suitable subcategory and also your post must contain something related to people all around the world so remember to use proper English as well.

Good luck and go ahead.

IT HAS BEEN 10 DAYS SINCE THE ISSUE CAME UP!!

As you may already noticed Google's domain switching function is currently disabled due to a very long maintenance as they say. So when you purchase a domain name through Google, GoDaddy or whatever service you prefer, you cannot use it to your Blogger blog since the issue occurred. And we're still waiting with the faith thinking that one day soon they will solve it though...

Building a perfect PC for your photography work...

OK here I am gonna discuss about how you should build your new PC or modify your already owned one to get more efficient use for your photography things. So first we must think about the benefits having such a good PC for those things.

As a photographer I guess you already care lot about the look and feel of the things which you capture on the way.  After you capture them what you always wanted to do is edit and optimize them using a computer for a better look. Because we all know that when we capture something at a naked place like a beach or a jungle or wherever, lot of interferences will affect the photos we capture due to unpredictable lighting conditions and our own physical or mental conditions as well. Then the outputs we get after that will never come in handy like we expected before and that's why we need a little editing after all.

Whether you are a professional photographer or do those things just as a hobby in most cases I know you use a digital SLR camera than an old fashioned analog camera these days. And the outputs you get from your camera are kind of heavy when comparing with the outputs get from a point and shoot camera so you need a good computer for better editing and do optimizations with those.

First thing we need to look for is a good processor. If you regularly use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom like software it is always advisable to go for at least a Core 2 duo or better processor with at least 2MB of catch memory because when it comes to 2D graphics editing and large scale image manipulation your CPU (processor) will get more attention than your graphic card (Quad core will always do better).

Mainstream graphics cards outclassed the needs of 2D applications long ago. Most of the things that Photoshop will be slow on are the result of CPU and RAM intensive tasks, not display issues. Photoshop will occasionally use the 3D aspect of your video card to do certain transformations, but many photographers and designers will never even use those specific filters in the first place.

When you load up a huge image in Photoshop, it's not going onto your VRAM, only your 'screen' does. When you apply a lens blur filter, it's your main CPU that is doing all the complex specialized (and in this case likely proprietary) math, not a generic video card GPU. Even when you zoom in and out of your image, it's not a case of the graphics card scaling a window, and is why text gets fuzzy in such instances.

Though with the release of Photoshop CS4 and CS5 they say you can get advantage of your graphic card with the support of GPU acceleration, releasing your CPU load for other things (multitasking). But as my personal experience you can never get 100% satisfaction about this GPU acceleration support because whether you have the most powerful graphics card in the market, it still need your PC to have a good CPU for better operation because heavy 2D graphics work will never use 100% of your VRAM (only 5% to 20% at most) and it needs up to 80% of the CPU load instead.

Resource> http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/gpu-opengl-support-photoshop-cs4.html

Let's get back to the topic so then we need a fast RAM which can handle a large amount of data with fast transfer speed between the CPU and the storage so your editing will happen quick and fast. I would recommend at least 2GB of DDR2 or DDR3 RAM with 800+ bus speed for your built (nowadays you can get a pair of dual channel DDR3 4GBs for cheap).

Then it's the time for choosing a suitable graphics card for your system. In 1990's when we need to do any 2D work we always needed a good graphics card for the job because at that era there were no any motherboard integrated graphics chips and to fulfill each task we needed a separate part for that. Matrox and ATI acted a major role in computers used by professional photographers. But nowadays we all know that every cheap motherboard comes with integrated graphics chip which can handle high definition videos and do most 2D works for everyday use. If you are a laptop PC owner you also know that your laptop has a integrated or dedicated graphics chip as well (dedicated chips are better). By the way when you are building your PC you don't have to pick a very expensive graphics card because most of them are intended for 3D manipulation and high end gaming. But in my personal experience I know a decent separate graphics card will outrun any integrated chip by a lot. And when it comes to panorama or HDR image creation you will always need a graphics card which supports them. So we can make a guess here. I would say all the 100$+ cards are for gaming and under 100$ cards are mainly intended for HD video playback and fast 2D tasks so you can get an AMD (previously ATI) radeon HD 5450 for under 5500Rs (40$) or HD 6450 for under 7500Rs. ATI were always better than Nvidia when it comes to 2D image tasks handling (Nvidia always target gaming market than professional work) and the monitor outputs are crystal clear and vivid. Although if you are an owner of a large scale photography firm and looking for something more suitable for industry work there are workstation graphics cards for you too. But they are highly expensive (sometimes cost more than 1500$) and gives you the opportunity to get ultra multitasking with more than four monitors. Nvidia Quadro series and AMD Fire Pro series are the major ones today. When you want to get a laptop for doing your things go for something with dedicated graphics chip like AMD 6370M, Nvidia GT230M or better.

We can consider about the storage device according to your usage requirements but to get the fast performance of the PC you need to get a fast SATA hard drive or a SSD (320GB/500GB SATA III 3 GB/s drive will be suitable).

Now comes an important one, the monitor. Nowadays most people choose LED monitors because of their low power consumption and the unbeatable quality. When choosing this you need to look whether it supports high resolutions with the minimal response time (2ms or 5ms is good). And go for a good brand like Viewsonic, Sony or anything which can satisfy your eyes. Though look whether they can connect to your PC through DVI or HDMI interfaces because many cheap monitors still comes with only analog VGA support. When you are using the analog mode the picture manipulated by your PC will always differ than what you see on the monitor screen. Because when converting the digital signals to analog signals by the graphics card that will cause a quality loss so you will not get the 100% quality image onto the display with that. If you are doing heavy photo editing you will need a two monitor setup. Separate graphic cards can help you with that too.

Oh and finally you can pick other parts such as power supply unit, casing, motherboard, keyboard/mouse and speakers to match your previously discussed peripherals so I am not gonna talk about them now. Well I think you can get some idea about choosing something to help you with your everyday photography work so good luck with that.

Read my previous post to learn more...

Tips for choosing a Laptop/Notebook to match your busy lifestyle

Nowadays many people buy Laptop computers instead of buying desktops because most of them want to use their PC's during every time in the day so they have to carry it wherever they go.
In this article I am going to show you how to buy a good Laptop computer with all the features you need for a reasonable price.
First thing you have to consider is it's processor so look for intel i5/i7 or AMD phenom II or Athlon X4/X6 CPUs but do not go for Intel Atom or AMD Turion CPUs because they are so much weak and only capable of browsing internet and handling documents.
Then look for other things like Hard disk, Graphics processor and so on. In my opinion I would like to say if it has 320/500GB hard disk that's enough because you can extend the storage lately as you need by buying some additional external hard drives but you cannot replace the Graphics processor comes with it because it cost you more than you think so especially look for a perfect GPU for a good performance. I recommend you to look for AMD Radeon HD5000/6000/7000 series or Nvidia Geforce GTX 300/400/500 series for better gaming and better look. 1GB or 2GB is good enough for GPU memory because it is not the main memory of your PC so it only affects when you do large scale 3D manipulations..
After that go for a good RAM. Look for 4GB or 6/8GB RAM because if you have enough money it will not waste.
Afterwards see if the display fits enough for you. It has to be a HD widescreen LED display that fits into the recent movies and blue ray playback.
Then you can consider other things such as Hi Def audio devices, Web cams, Wifi/Bluetooth, eSATA ports etc but most of them comes with all of the above features already so you do not have to worry much.
Finally You can choose a good design that fits you the most but specially look for a strong and light weight one if you travel a lot.
You may think why didn't I mention about brands but this is why most of the people know about good brands like Dell, Toshiba, HP, Asus likewise. Anyway I recommend you not to choose Acer, Lenovo or HP/Compaq because they are over priced but does not have a good performance or quality that previous ones do.
And I think you can find a good one around 800-1000 dollars at a reasonable store. Well do not forget to ask for a good warranty like 2 or 3 years international.

Thanks and keep in touch.
(This article is kinda old because I wrote it a year ago but I hope you can still find it useful anyways)