Pathik Shah

Paypal will stop withdrawals by electronic fund transfer to India from July 29, 2010. It seems that the electronic fund transfer is working at least for now. Though the charge for withdrawal via check is only $5, it takes around 10 days to be delivered whereas the electronic transfer took only 3-4 days. I’m not sure if the check withdrawal method will also be stopped soon too “in accordance with regulatory instructions”. I would advise all Indians to withdraw their Paypal cash soon, preferably today while the electronic fund transfer option is still working.

Note: Some good news though, Paypal will refund the $5 check withdrawal charge for Indian withdrawals until further notice.

Here’s the official email:

Dear Pathik Shah,

In accordance with regulatory instructions, we would like to notify you about a change in our withdrawal functionality in India starting on August 1, 2010. At present you can request for either an electronic or cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account if you are an India user.

From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account.

While we are working hard to restore the electronic withdrawal service, in the meantime, we are bringing this matter to your attention so that you can plan your future withdrawal activities accordingly.
To request for a cheque withdrawal:
Log into your PayPal account, click on 'Withdraw'.
Click on the 'Request a cheque from PayPal' link.
Enter the withdrawal amount and select your mailing address, then click 'Continue'.
Click 'Submit' to confirm your request.

In order to help you with this change and until further notice, we will refund the $5 USD cheque withdrawal fee to you for cheque withdrawals made on July 29, 2010 onwards.

For any questions, please log into your PayPal account and click 'Contact Us' at the bottom of the page.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused from this change in our withdrawal functionality. We will provide ongoing updates to you here. We thank you for your attention and patience as we work tirelessly to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.

Thank you,

The PayPal Asia Team

This tutorial will explain how you can Root your Samsung Galaxy S (AT&T Captivate, T Mobile Vibrant).

Rooting your Samsung Galaxy S will give you full access to your phone.

How to root your Samsung Galaxy S

To root your Galaxy S, first download and install the Android SDK from Android SDK Download

The Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is an excellent tool which lets you manage your phone from your computer. It is included in the Android ASK installation alongwith USB drivers for your phone.

Download this file: update.zip and copy it to your SD card.

Connect your Samsung Galaxy S to your PC via USB and use the ADB console to type this command:

adb reboot recovery

In the recovery menu, select “apply sdcard:update.zip” by pressing Home + Volume_Down

Your Galaxy S will now reboot and is successfully rooted. You now have root access to your phone as a Super User.

via Leshak at Samdroid

Top 10 Blogs and Websites for Startups and Entrepreneurship Advice

Here’s a list of the best blogs and websites I’ve come across which focus on startups and entrepreneurship. Most of these blogs have really informative articles which provide excellent advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start their own company.

Top 10 Startup Blogs

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Paul Graham

Paul Graham is the founder of Viaweb, Y Combinator (the most popular startup incubator which provides seed funding and advice to early stage startups) and Hacker News. His essays are some of the best articles on startups and entrepreneurship ever and should be on the reading list of every aspiring entrepreneur.

Mixergy

Mixergy is a blog by Andrew Warner, a successful entrepreneur which has a collection of interviews with a lot of startup founders including Paul Graham, Jason Fried, Jason Calacanis, Anand Shimpi, Alexis Ohanian etc about their early startup days and their experiences.

Onstartups

A startup blog offering basic advice about startup marketing, funding, raising capital etc by Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot and Pyramid Digital Solutions.

Steve Blank

A blog on startups by Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur turned professor who taught a course on entrepreneurship to students at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University. Excellent advice for new startups.

Both Sides of the Table

A startup blog by Mark Suster, an entrepreneur turned VC. Has some great insights on entrepreneurship and advice on how to raise venture capital.

Marc Andreessen

The blog of Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and Opsware. He is now a VC (Andreessen Horowitz) and his blog offers some of the best startup advice you can find online.

Chris Dixon

It’s the blog of Chris Dixon, the co-founder of Hunch and an early investor in many successful startups like Skype, Foursquare, Stack Overflow, TrialPay, DocVerse and Invite Media.

A VC

A blog by Fred Wilson, a VC (Union Square Ventures). Great tips on
raising venture capital and other advice on how to deal with VCs.

Startup Lessons Learned

A startup blog by Eric Ries, a proponent of the Lean Startup Methodology. Some really good posts there.

A Smart Bear

A startup blog by Jason Cohen, a successful entrepreneur (Smart Bear Software) with some nice posts for startup founders.

EDIT:

Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is a successful entrepreneur turned VC (He is the co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz). His blog is relatively new but is frequently updated with great advice for startups.

Gabriel Weinberg

Gabriel Weinberg is the founder of Duck Duck Go, a really cool search engine which gives accurate results and an angel investor. His blog has some really good posts on startups, angel investing and such.

Startup News

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Techcrunch

Techcrunch is basically a tech news blog which covers technology startups and also features articles and guest posts on entrepreneurship and startups from time to time.

GigaOM

GigaOM is a blog by Om Malik, a technology journalist which covers tech news and has some nice articles and interviews on tech startups.

ReadWriteStart

ReadWriteStart is part of the ReadWriteWeb network which focuses on budding startups and has a lot of interviews of successful entrepreneurs.

PluGGd.in

The best startup blog focusing on Indian startups. It covers new Indian startups, features really good startup advice and has some excellent guest posts by successful Indian entrepreneurs.

Mashable

Mashable is another tech news blog which covers web and social media startups.

If you like this post, please bump it on Hacker News and Reddit.

Note: Please comment and point me to any good startup blog that I may have missed.

Super Mario Bros Crossover

Best. Game. Ever. #awesome #win

Samsung is launching the new Android powered Samsung Galaxy S and the Bada OS powered Samsung Wave in India, today at the Samsung Mumbai Blogger Meet.

Samsung Galaxy S I9000

The Samsung Galaxy S is one of the best Android smartphones. Considering that the Motorola Droid X and the HTC Evo 4G are eons away from being launched in India, the Galaxy S will be the best Android device option for Indian users.

The Galaxy S has everything you would want in a smartphone: Android 2.1 with TouchWiz 3.0 and Swype (will soon be upgraded to Android 2.2), a gorgeous 4 inch SuperAMOLED display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, 1 GHz ARM Cortex processor, 512 MB RAM, 8 GB internal memory with upto 32 GB microSD support, a 5 MP camera with autofocus which can record 720p video at 30 FPS, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, a GPS transceiver with A-GPS and much more.

This will probably be my next phone (if I don’t get floored by the Samsung Wave).

The Samsung Galaxy S will be priced at around INR 31000.

Samsung Wave S8500

The Samsung Wave is the first smartphone powered by Samsung’s new Bada OS.

It is an excellent phone with superb hardware specs. It has a 3.3 inch SuperAMOLED capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. It is powered by the new Samsung Bada OS with the TouchWiz 3.0 UI. It has a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 512 MB RAM, 1.5 GB internal memory (partitioned) and supports upto 32 GB microSD cards. It is a multimedia powerhouse with a 5 MP camera with autofocus and LED flash which can record 720p video at 30 FPS and has features like face, smile, blink detection and touch focus. It also has the usual connectivity options: 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP and GPS.

It can play DivX, XviD and MKV files right out of the box and comes with DNSe which results in excellent audio quality.

The Samsung Wave is expected to be priced around INR 19000.

Bada OS is still in a nascent stage and it couldn’t have had a better launch vehicle than the Samsung Wave.

The Bada Application Store is supposed to have around 100 free applications at launch. As it grows popular, more and more developers will flock to it resulting in more, better applications being available. Check out http://www.bada.com/badadevices for more details on Bada OS and their developer tools.
Samsung also has a Bada OS Developer Challenge going on with a total prize money of 2.7 million dollars.