Tuesday, January 31, 2017

How to Add Push Notifications on Your Blogger Blog for Free

Push notifications are the trend now. They are not only proving to be the best way to deliver update notifications but also improves more engagement on blogs. It is good for every blogger to add push notifications on his/her blog from day one as it will help them to easily share update notifications with the readers even when they are not on your blog.

If you have a wordpress blog than it is really easy for you to Add push notification by using Wordpress plugin. But what if you are a blogger on blogspot platform. There is no plugin for blogspot platform. Don`t worry still I am here to help you to add push notification on your blogspot blog.

You can now add push notifications on your blogger blog using code. It is really easy to install. You can use a third party service PushCrew.
  • Register on PushCrew.
  • Enter your detail and blog url.
  • Now you will get inside the dashboard.
  • You will see a Javascript code.
  • Copy that code
  • Now go to your blogger blog
  • Go to Template
  • Click on Edit HTML
  • Paste the code below <head> tag
  • Click on Save settings
  • It`s done.
Now open your blog and you will see a push notification bar at the top of your blog. Currently the free limit is only for first 500 subscribers after that you need to upgrade the plan.


Monday, January 23, 2017

App Review: Socrative

There is nothing quite like real-time feedback to determine if students really got it! Just about every faculty experiences that look—students’ eyes indicating that they understand or do not understand the explanation given or the conclusions just drawn. But how do we really know that our students are not merely acting the part when they nod in agreement, trying to get us to believe that they understand something when they do not? I have no idea what is really taking place behind those eyes or what is going on in a students’ brain so this is where Socrative comes to the rescue.
Socrative, which runs on tablets, smartphones, and laptops, is an interesting app because it allows me to pose a question and have students respond in real time to my inquiry. I can assess on the fly and best of all, students can use their portable media to provide me with near instant feedback. Clickers do this but the benefit of Socrative is that students do not have to buy anything and I do not have to spend a lot of time developing quizzes using any certain format.

There is, however, one challenge for anyone wishing to use Socrative and that is managing students’ use of their personal portable devices. I well remember reading a blog in The Chronicle of Higher Education where the author said that allowing students to use their portable devices in the classroom is like giving them permission to bring their entertainment center to class. Interesting! That being the case, if you plan on using Socrative or similar apps, you will need to have a plan for how, when, and where during class that you will allow their use. Purposeful use of technology is one thing, but unplanned and unstructured use is an invitation to possible distraction. That being said, finding a way to obtain feedback, using the feedback to create opportunities for expanded discussions, and having the feedback influence students learning is one of the benefits of using a tools such as Socrative.

OK, enough of the preaching; more to the point of using the app. There are two versions of Socrative—a student version and an instructor version. Upon logging in, students enter a room number. The instructor can then see how many students are in the room (he/she can also clear the room), and begin posing questions to the students. The different question options range from multiple choice, True/False, or open-ended questions. Socrative also compiles all the answers and presents it to you on your screen or via email.

Summary:
How should you use Socrative? When would the app prove to be most useful? What guidelines need to be in place to ensure that the focus is on the task at hand and not somewhere else? These are questions that faculty will have to consider prior to using this interactive app. Socrative is a really neat tool and one with a lot of potential as faculty gain experience using it. There are other ways to obtain feedback, e.g. Twitter, e-mail (sounds strange but yes this can work), Blackboard, and another app that I recently found— BaiBoard HD—and need to spend some time with. Best of all, the app is free for both students and faculty (a teacher and student version) and it works well with existing Wi-Fi systems in college classrooms. Best of all, it’s not just for Apple products, there is a version of Socrative for Android users as well.

How to make the perfect plan for the weekend online

Author: Srikanth Marripudi, Known for his skill in writing, and with his fluency, is passionate about blogging. He is well versed with the world of online shopping and has a command over words as a shopping blogger. His aim is to help people shop easy and have a delightful experience while shopping online. He has a good eye in researching shopping hacks for all the internet folks.

Spending the weekend at the movies is the best pastime to relax your mind and take it easy. With a couple of friends, a hit movie off the blockbusters, and popcorn, now doesn’t that make it a perfect weekend plan? Now, who is interested in waiting in lines for a booking, it is too stressful and we would rather spend time enjoying rather than rushing early in order to book tickets. Life is easier with everything online these days, even booking tickets! At one glance you can check what theatres or cinemas are around and what movies are playing.


With bookmyshow, you can conveniently book for movie tickets online, and you can also find offers for the same. With the opportunity to browse through a number of theatres around your city, you can also check out what movies are on, for the present day and also the next couple of days so you can book in advance. Keep your weekend plans ready and booked, so that you don’t have to worry about it later. And you can also get discounts and cashback offers with bookmyshow. Have a great day with your loved ones with plans made in a jiffy online, get online and jump the queue, and save time and money!

No more standing in lines or over spending for a weekend relaxing time. With online portal to book your ticket, and even add a meal you can plan your weekend early. And the festive season is a delightful time to avail offers with bookmyshow coupons. And another great save is by paying using your card or by online wallet you can get exciting offs and cashback deals in bookymyshow. Find movies from regional languages and English, for every movie fanatic this is the best place to be! And travel in comfort through the busy city roads in an Ola cab.

With the start of online portals, life has become much simpler, as now everything happens at lightning speed with just one click! Find showtimes near you, and also avail free ticket offers and loyalty rewards on selected offers. Enjoy your day with pampering yourself and your loved ones with a movie time and lunch. The perfect deal for a movie date, with bookmyshow weekend, offer you can plan a great day, and with the choice in your hands for the pick of movie, place and even food!, pay online and avail exciting offers along with it. Book a cab through which you can pay with ola cabs discount fares too!



Hurry and book the most awaited movies in advance with advance booking mechanism, which lets you book early, and pick your choice of seats as well. The internet world is fast and user-friendly, with online booking you can even carry your tickets online on your phone, now isn’t that a smart deal. Get faster and more efficient with apps online, within seconds you can create any transaction and your purchase is done, and most importantly, it is more beneficial as it is often cheaper than offline. Keep updated with the online and movie updates with bookmyshow and grab tickets to the upcoming hit movie hot off the charts.

Paytm app updated with new features

Digital payment platform Paytm has updated its mobile app with some new features.

After the update, merchants will be able to accept up to Rs 50,000 directly into their bank accounts. They will now be able to declare themselves on the app itself and start accepting up to Rs. 50,000 directly. The amount is settled at midnight every day, with the settlement charges staying at 0%.

In order to self-declare, merchants need to click on 'Accept Payment' and then select 'bank account' and enter the details and confirm. Wallet balance of a self-declared merchant should not exceed Rs 20,000, post which the amount is settled directly to the merchant's bank account.

The update also brings fingerprint support to the app. Users can now set their fingerprint as the password. Along with this, they will also be able to scan the recipients' Paytm QR codes from their phone's image gallery. In order to do this, users just need to tap on the upper-right corner of the screen and tap on 'Scan Paytm QR from Gallery' option.

Lastly, the app provides the users access to 'Paytm Community Forums' option, where they can get all their queries answered.
Recently, Paytm announced that its wallet business will soon be transferred to its payments bank. The company mentioned that the Paytm Wallet will soon be transferred to the newly incorporated Paytm Payments Bank automatically but added that the m-wallets will work even after January 15.

Things like login details, wallet balance and user experience will remain the same as well.

In case users choose to discontinue their Paytm wallets, they can send an email to care@paytm.com or log in to Paytm.com/care to notify the choice of opting out and redeeming the balance by a one-time transfer to their own bank account.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Publishing your first app in the Play Store: what you need to know


The easiest way to distribute an Android app is via the Google Play store. It isn’t the only distribution method, but it is the simplest way to reach millions of potential users. Publishing your first app in the Play Store isn’t hard, with a few tips and pointers you can have your app ready for download in next to no time.
Google has a one time $25 registration fee which you need to pay before you can upload an app.
The starting point is the
. It is Google’s dedicated dashboard for developers that lets you manage your apps in the Play Store. Google has a one time $25 registration fee which you need to pay before you can upload an app. Google says it encourages higher quality products, i.e. less SPAM. If you don’t like the idea then it helps to look at Apple’s and Microsoft’s policies for their app stores. Apple charges $99 per year. Microsoft charges between $12 and $99 per year, depending on the account type.

You also need to be in a supported country to distribute apps. Countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are on Google’s approved list, but countries like New Zealand and Singapore aren’t. Also, some of the recent additions to the European Union like Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia don’t make it onto Google’s list.
After you have signed up and payed the registration fee, you need to complete your account details, including your Developer Name – the name that is displayed on the Google Play store. Once that is all done you might need to wait a little as officially it can take up to 48 hours for your Google Play Developer registration to be fully processed.
At this point it is probably worth taking a look at the Google Play Apps Policy Center and the Android Developer Help Center to avoid uploading content which is in violation of the Google Play terms and conditions. Any apps which violate the terms and conditions will be suspended from the store and repeated violations can result in the termination of your developer account. That probably sounds worse than it actually is. If you are creating original and well behaved apps then you don’t really have to worry.


Before uploading your app to the Play Store you need to prepare a few things. One of the questions you need to answer during the publishing process is about the maturity rating of your app. Google has four rating levels: Everyone, Low maturity, Medium maturity and High maturity. Google has a guide to help you rate your app content for Google Play. Basically if your app includes references to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling, or violence it will need to carry one of the higher maturity ratings. Apps with mild cartoon violence need to carry the Low Maturity rating as a minimum.
The Play Store listing is probably one of the most important elements for promoting your app.
You also need to watch the final size of your app. Google only allows apps of 50MB or less to be published as a single APK file. Any apps which exceed that size need to use Android’s APK Expansion Files API. With it you can build your app so that it downloads up to an additional 4GB from Google’s servers. On most devices, Google Play downloads the extra data at the same time as the app. In some cases, however, the app must download the files from Google Play when it starts.
The Play Store listing is probably one of the most important elements for promoting your app. A poor Play Store listing will result in few downloads and probably negative comments. Your Play Store listing needs to be engaging, informative and friendly. To help attract users, Google lets you supply a variety of promotional graphics, videos and screenshots that will appear on the apps listing on the Play Store. Since these graphic are a key part of a successful Play Store listing, Google says that “you should consider having a professional produce them for you.”
The feature graphic needs to be bold, vivid, fun and enticing.
The first graphics you need are the screenshots. You need to provide at least two phone screenshots. However for best results you should upload 8 screenshots (the most allowed by Google). You should also upload screen shots of your app running on a 7-inch tablet and on a 10-inch tablet. Google’s instructions say that “for your app to be showcased in the ‘Designed for tablets’ list in the Play Store, you need to upload at least one 7-inch and one 10-inch screenshot.”
Along with the screenshots you will need to prepare a Hi-res icon (512 x 512), a Feature graphic (1024 x 500) and a Promo graphic (180 x 120). The last two are marked as optional, but you really should consider them as mandatory. Without a Feature image your app can’t be featured anywhere within Google Play.

Example of a good featured image.
The feature graphic needs to be bold, vivid, fun and enticing. It should use colors which stand out on plain backgrounds and it should promote your brand. It shouldn’t be text heavy and neither should it be overloaded with graphic details. Anything more than the app name and maybe a few descriptive words will be lost on smaller screens.
Setting the price to free is permanent, you can't change it back to paid once it has been published.
The final part of the Play Store listing is to set the price of your app and in which countries it should be distributed. If the app is free then you simply mark it as free. However it is worth noting that setting the price to free is permanent, you can’t change it back to paid once it has been published.
For paid apps you need to set the price. You can just set the price in USD and then let Google calculate the prices for each of the local markets, or you can set prices individually for the different currencies. The latter option gives you the flexibility to adjust the local prices according to market conditions and exchange rates.
Once you are happy with your Play Store listing you can upload the APK file and click the Publish button. It takes a few hours for the app to appear. The publication process is automatic and it isn’t too long before your app becomes available for download.
If you are uploading your first Android app then the Android Authority team wants to wish you every success!

10 Powerful Tips to Write and Sell Your First eBook (SBO)

Writing an eBook can be both a challenge and self-gratifying. If this is part of your bucket list, you will find out that writing your first eBook is not as easy as it seems. That is why once you have finally completed your eBook and get around to selling it online, it will be one of the major accomplishments of your life.

To start off, here’s a question that will help you write and sell your eBook: what would you like to write about? Is it a compilation of your life’s experiences? It is a novel that you have been longing to get published and become famous for? Or are you planning to write one of those self-help books?

Whatever the topic may be, you have to organize your thoughts and be sure of what you want to write about. This way it will be easy for you to set out an outline on the kind of format you would like your eBook to be. It will also make it easier for you to do your revisions once your outline is in place.

If you are hitting some snags while writing, don’t hesitate to get some help. You might experience a bad case of writer’s block or you need some materials to add to your resources.

In these situations where in you will encounter some obstacles in completing your eBook, you may want to reach out to other writers. They will prove to be very helpful in providing you the assistance you will need and may even direct you to the best references available.

There are other matters you will need to take care of once you sit down and start writing your eBook. For additional tips on how to get you started you can browse through this Infographic. This could be of great help to you too.

10 Powerful Tips to Write and Sell Your First eBook (SBO)

Friday, January 20, 2017

Google Really Kills Off Toolbar PageRank - Good Riddance

Google officially killed off Toolbar PageRank scores to the few browser tools and web site tools that use it. The 0 to 10 PageRank score that was heavily used by SEOs and webmasters in the early 2000s will be completely unavailable to all within two weeks. Google told me it takes time for all the servers to completely remove the score.
So technically, March 7th was the last Google Toolbar PageRank update, which essentially removed the data used by external tools.
I should make it clear that Google does use PageRank internally and it is still an important factor in their algorithm. But the external PageRank score shown in these tools and the Toolbar was between 0 and 10, whereas the score used by Google internally is way more complex.
Google has been killing off PageRank in the toolbar for years and years. In 2007, Google asked webmasters for feedback on removing PageRank and then in 2009, Google removed showing PageRank like data in Webmaster Tools (Search Console). But in 2013, Matt Cutts told us Google probably will never kill off PageRank in the toolbar. Well, Matt is no longer there and it was done.
Then in 2012, Google stopped updating external PageRank by accident updated PR in December 2013. Since then Google told us time and time again that Google will never update PageRank in the toolbar again.
The good thing, most webmaster forums I am reading are like "whatever" and "no big deal" and "who cares" and "why is this news." That is an excellent reaction, the reaction Google wants to hear. And this move will solidify all of that going forward.
The funny thing, when I reported it yesterday, some people didn't believe me. Google has confirmed it in real life if you do not believe me.

PayPal.Me, A Simpler Way To Request Money Using Your Own Personalized URL

PayPal today is launching a new take on peer-to-peer payments with the debut of a platform it’s calling PayPal.Me. For the first time, PayPal customers will be able to set up their own user profiles which are associated with a personalized URL (e.g. paypal.me/username), which can then be shared with others via text, over email, on instant messenger, via social media, or anywhere else, as a way to request money.
This is not PayPal’s only entry into the peer-to-peer payments space, of course. In addition to offering a “request money” feature on its website, the company also operates Venmo. That social app is especially popular with a younger, highly mobile demographic who uses it as a way to do things like pay back friends for money borrowed, or split a check at a restaurant, for example.
So it may seem odd that PayPal is launching what at first appears to be something of a competitive product to Venmo. But the company explains that, unlike with Venmo, which only works with U.S. banks, credit and debit cards, PayPal.Me is targeting the company’s much broader global user base.
The company today has 170 million active users worldwide, who already take advantage of PayPal to send and request money. With PayPal.Me, however, the idea was to create a mobile-first user experience that makes doing so simpler and faster than with the company’s traditional tools.
PP.Me_2 plus note
The company found that people’s smaller debts – the IOUs between friends and family – actually add up to a sizable number when totaled. Globally, adults are owed some $51 billion in total, but most tend to feel uncomfortable asking others to pay them back.
PayPal.Me doesn’t eliminate the need for the ask, of course, but it offers an easier way for those who owe money to send a payment.
“As conversations became more digital, we needed to find a way to contextualize peer-to-peer payments, and make it easy and intuitive across any different channel, any different device, and any communication means, be it email, text message, instant messenger, etc.,” explains PayPal’s Senior Director of Global Consumer Products, Meron Colbeci, of why the company headed in this direction.
According to Colbeci, PayPal.Me will not replace the older experience offered via the web, but instead will just be another option for users.
Unlike the traditional online experience, using PayPal.Me is designed to take far fewer steps. In the past, users would have to login to the PayPal website, access the “request money” feature, then enter in another user’s email address to create the request. But PayPal.Me lets you simply share a link.
The link itself is easy to remember, as users will claim their own usernames on the service. (E.g. mine is paypal.me/sarahperez.) After setting up your username, you can also customize your profile theme and specify whether you’re using the link for payments between friends and family, or for more professional purposes, like goods and services. Afterwards, to get paid, you just send your link to a friend who clicks it, logs in with their own PayPal information, then reviews and completes the payment on one screen, optionally adding a personal note, if they choose.
To make it even easier on those paying, you can also append a number to the end of a personal link to pre-fill in the correct amount. For instance, paypal.me/username/50 would ask for $50.00.
Though accessed via the web instead of a native mobile app, the site is mobile-optimized, and alerts about payments are sent out through email as well as via push notifications for those with the PayPal app installed. Payments from one PayPal account to another are immediate, though extracting funds to a bank account will take more time, depending on your bank and your location.
PP.Me_1 you sent money to david
In the future, PayPal.Me will also integrate with PayPal’s instant checkout service OneTouch to eliminate the step where users fill in usernames and passwords, assuming they’ve already logged in using PayPal elsewhere on the web or mobile web. (OneTouch lets PayPal users stay logged in across sites.) That will make the payment process even faster.
The company says the PayPal.Me service is launching in 18 markets, including  the U.S., Germany, U.K., Australia, Canada, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria.
The service is intended for now as a “1.0” product,” the company says.
“We’re trying to understand how users will want to use this. We’ll collect feedback, and based on that we’ll iterate and make product improvements and features,” notes Colbeci.
Those features could include things like bringing in a more social element to the service, where users could perhaps have easier access to a friend list of sorts. Or it could roll out features meant to enhance the business user’s experience. But nothing like that is in development yet, we should clarify.
PayPal.Me competes with a handful of peer-to-peer payment apps, including Square Cash, as well as payment options offered by Facebook (in Messenger), Google (in Gmail and Google Wallet) and Snapchat (powered by Square Cash, in the app).
Users can sign up for their own username at PayPal.Me starting now.

10 Beginner SEO Tips You Must Know

Author bio: Sam Cyrus is CEO and co-founder of SEO Sydney, an innovative digital marketing company. Sam is also a creative writer and his interests include entrepreneurship, business, online marketing, SEO and social media.


If you intend to use online space for growing your business, then you cannot avoid the story about SEO. Your website is your virtual office, and you want to position your office so that many people can easily notice it. Search Engine Optimisation boosts your website search rankings with engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, making it more exposed to potential customers. High exposure, in most cases, translates into more traffic to your websites, and consequently more clients.
Whether you want to tackle the task of SEO yourselves, or you want to hire an SEO agency to do it for you, it would be good to familiarise with basic concepts of SEO. This article will present 10 useful tips for people who are new to Search Engine Optimisation in order to give you base for further exploration on the subject, or to give you tool to recognise good SEO agency when hiring one.

1. Analyse Your Current Position

Analysis of data generated by tools such as Google Analytics is important, and must be done constantly. This predominantly means to check your referrer log in order to see how people find your site, what is your demographic, and where your visitors come from. This last information is becoming more and more important, because people have started using their mobile devices more to browse and shop. If you have low number of visitors from mobile devices, you should check and see whether your website is navigable on them.

2. Research Your Keywords

Keywords and negative keywords are probably the most important element of any SEO strategy. You can use your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts to help you narrow down the most important keywords for your business, but you should also do your own research. Do not disregard long-tail keywords, since it is usually easier to rank higher with them. Remember, most of the SEO relies on good keywords, so invest as much time as you need to obtain high quality ones.

3. Use Your Keywords

After you finish finding the appropriate keywords, you must incorporate them in your website. The best possible places are URLs, titles, content and picture titles. Although you should make a conscious effort to place your keywords in these places, make them sound naturally. In case there is a conflict, you should place your content first, since it is more important for your potential customers.
One other piece of advice regarding the keywords is that you shouldn’t go overboard. Spread them carefully across your website, and use them as much as possible, but always take into account the quality of the content first. Search engines have the tools to penalise those sites who stuff too much keywords.

4. Use Internal Links

According to many experts, this is one of the essential strategies for SEO. You should acquire a habit, when creating new content for your website, to link your previous posts or pages. In this way you organically boost traffic to specific pages, and if your anchor text comprises keywords, it is more likely that the page will appear in search results. Similarly to keywords, you shouldn’t overuse links. Make them appropriate and relevant.

5. Make a Map of Your Site

If you add a site map, search engine crawlers will extract information they need more easily and quickly. Moreover, this will give you an opportunity to review your website’s structure. If you notice that you need more than two clicks to reach a piece of information, try to rearrange the content. Online visitors get annoyed quickly.

6. Make Your URLs Easy to Read

You should give your URLs clear names and incorporate keywords if possible. This will make them more search-engine-friendly. For example, if you read ‘www.abcbookstore.com/horror/stephen_king’ you will immediately know where you are, as opposed to a coded classification such as ‘www.abcbookstore.com/bg06/w3045’.

7. Keep Your Website Simple

By this, SEO experts mean that you should avoid using AJAX, Flash and Frames. The reason for this is that it is impossible to link to a single page. If you have to give your website some make-up, try to avoid Frames all together and use AJAX and Flash moderately.

8. Update Your Content Regularly

One of the best ways to improve your website’s ranking is to constantly produce new content. The sites that contain up-to-date and useful information about their business are those who attract the most attention. The easiest way to do this is to incorporate a blog into your site. Blogging is not an easy thing to do, and shouldn’t be taken lightly, but there are many tips you can find on how to keep producing new material and where to find inspiration.

9. Don’t Forget Social Networks

By placing links to your website across your social media accounts, you expand the number of people who can potentially see them. Traffic on social media constantly increases, and you can redirect some of it to your website by teasing social media users to follow links and find out more about you and your business.

10. Create Networks with Others

Another way to attract additional traffic to your site is to link with other sites. You should contact administrators of well positioned websites and ask them to link your site. You would respond by adding links to their websites, thus creating a network in which everyone can benefit. Be attentive when picking these partner sites. If a website is suspicious and has bad SEO, it can cause damage to your SEO and lower your rankings.

Conclusion


SEO is a complex web marketing strategy, and it evolves constantly. You must always be up-to-date with all the changes in order to stay ahead of your competition. These 10 tips will give you a good foundation, but they are by no means a comprehensive SEO strategy. For those who are interested in learning more, you have a lot of reading ahead of you. 

Mail me for Guest Posts in dilipstechnoblog.com (dilipgeoffrey@gmail.com)

Google Drive Outage: Users Experience Slow Load Times When Accessing Docs Stored In Cloud


Google Drive is driving a lot of users crazy this Tuesday. The secure cloud storage and file backup service is apparently experiencing major outage in the U.S., so many users are unable to load their files quickly or not load them at all. 

According to CNET, the Google Drive issue was experienced mainly by U.S. users. The service’s speed when it comes to loading has greatly diminished that some users were unable to access the documents they stored in the cloud. 

Google has already recognized the existence of this outage. On the G Suite Status Dashboard, it is stated there that the problem started around 8:41 a.m. PT. When the issue began, less than 10.3 percent of active users were affected. Google added that it was carrying out an investigation to solve the issue. 

A few hours later, Google stated that the service has already been restored for some of its users. However, the company failed to disclose the estimated percentage of users that were still experiencing the slow load times. 

Amid the outage, many disappointed users took to social media to voice out their concern, as reported by The Next Web. Many people use Google’s service when storing documents for work or for personal use. Google Keep and Google Classroom users were also affected by the problem. Hence, it is not surprising that Twitter became flooded with questions about Google Drive since t




How the Aadhaar-linked payment system will change the game for digital transactions

Unlike other cards and e-wallets, which charge for cashless transactions, the UIDAI's Aadhaar app will pay a commission to merchants.

The Unique Identification Authority of India is working with banks and the Reserve Bank of India to ensure that merchants who use its mobile-based application for digital transactions earn a commission of up to 1% of the transaction value.
With UIDAI suggesting it is on path to get this in place in a couple of months, the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System could give debit cards and e-wallets a run for their money. In contrast to what UIDAI is advocating, all other forms of digital payments require merchants to pay a fee or commission for the use of technology.
“The Aadhaar-based system is being used for PDS [public distribution system] in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. We are also in discussions with Haryana,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer, UIDAI. “We are enrolling banks so that they start accepting Aadhaar-based payments. Two banks have already agreed. The process of integrating merchants with banks will be completed in the next few weeks.”

Merchants as business correspondents

Once implemented, this model envisages doing away with all charges that are associated with a typical point-of-sale machine. Under the system, UIDAI would enlist merchants as business correspondents. These merchants would use their phones linked to biometric devices for the transactions.
These require a customer to key in their Aadhaar number and verify their fingerprint on the biometric reader connected to the phone.
To enable a wide acceptability, the government has pushed for linking all savings bank accounts to Aadhaar numbers against a stiff deadline.
Whenever a customer transacts with a merchant through Aadhaar Enabled Payment System, the merchant would receive the same incentive that business correspondents employed by banks do, UIDAI has said.
Different banks provide different incentives to business correspondents on the basis of their performance. For instance, the Vidharbha Konkan Gramin Bank, a regional rural bank provides Rs 10 for every new account opened by a business correspondent. If someone deposits money through PoS terminals, the correspondent gets 0.5% of the money. For mobilising a term deposit, the correspondent gets 0.25% of the amount. Similarly, various incentives, as a proportion of the transaction amount, are given to correspondents.
“Merchants will now be doing the job of a business correspondent,” said Pandey. “So what was being paid as incentives to the correspondent would be extended to merchants.”
Over time, he suggested, this would reduce the need for banking correspondents as more and more merchants use the Aadhaar app on their phones for transactions. The app itself has been tested by a couple of banks and is being finalised, Pandey said.
The UIDAI business model would mean the banking system taking on the burden of incentivising the spread of Aadhaar-based payments through mobile phones.
In contrast, at the moment, they earn from other digital transactions. But Pandey said UIDAI was convincing banks that the commission must be seen in the light of existing commission structures for correspondents and the cost of cash transactions.

Costs of going cashless

A look at the fee structure of PoS machines used to carry out card transactions indicates a substantial cost for the merchant. A third-party PoS provider has multiple layers of charges. These machines are not sold but often given on rent by banks and third-party vendors. Some banks charge the merchants a monthly rental of Rs 400 for a portable PoS machine for two years.
Some banks also recover something called a “commitment charge”. These charges can be a burden on smaller merchants with low volumes of sales. Merchants with a lower sale volume have to pay a higher commitment charge. Competition between different vendors and banks has been bringing down these costs, though, over time.
Banks such as the State Bank of India and its public-sector peers offer machines on more lenient terms than third-party vendors. SBI, for instance, says that it doesn’t take a one-time installation charge from any merchant.
The final layer of the cost of using a PoS machine is the merchant discount rate. This is the charge that banks collect from merchants whenever a card is swiped on the machine. Banks usually charge a lower rate if their own debit cards are used on their PoS machines.
Before January 1, the charges were 0.75% for transactions of value up to Rs 2,000. For transactions above Rs 2,000, a rate of 1% of the transaction value was recovered from the merchant. Foreign cards attracted double the rate while credit card transactions were charged at 1.5%. This was either borne by the merchant or passed on to the customer.
After demonetisation, RBI introduced an additional layer of merchant discount rate through a notification issued on December 16, 2016. Between January 1 and March 31 this year, the merchant discount rate for transactions up to Rs 1,000 is to be 0.25%. All others would continue to be charged as before. The rate has been capped at 1%. Clearly, the multiple charges add up to a significant amount for a merchant who has little option but to either bear the cost or to pass it on to their customers.

Game-changer?

RBI data show that PoS transactions through debit cards touched Rs 31,600 crore in November 2016. In November 2015, this figure stood at Rs 14,800 crore. Banks quite clearly stand to make a killing through these multiple layers of charges.
Mobile wallets, too, are known to charge as high as 4% for certain types of transactions. Mobile wallet transactions were Rs 3,300 crore in November 2016 as compared to Rs 1,900 crore in November 2015.
That’s where the Aadhaar-linked payment system could be a major disruptor.
At the moment, the National Payments Corporation of India charges 1% on every financial transaction through the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System from the bank. The bank passes this on to the merchant. It’s unclear if these charges would be set off too.
Pandey told Business Standard that a favourable decision could come soon. If it does, it would completely turn the digital transactions ecosystem on its head.
The change of the business model for digital transactions would require many banks to come on board. NPCI data show that of the 46 public-sector banks and private banks in India, 44 are classified as “member banks” of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

This Gmail hacking attack is fooling even savvy users - WARNING Please READ & SHARE

Even though instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have gotten immensely popular, Email's

Gmail users beware, there's a new online scam targeting you. Termed Gmail phishing, it is said to be fooling even the technology-savvy users.

The scam has been discovered by Mark Maunder, CEO of WordPress security service Wordfence. According to Maunder, the scam has managed to convince even "experienced technical users", and is targeting other services in addition to Gmail.

The way the attack works is that an attacker sends an email to a Gmail user's account. The email is likely to come from someone you knows and who has had his account hacked using this same technique. It may also include an attachment that looks like something that you previously sent to this contact and is also likely to have a relevant subject line.

Once you will clicks on the image/attachment, expecting Gmail to give a preview of the attachment, it will instead open a new tab and prompts to sign-in into Gmail again. And once you sign-in, you fall into the trap laid by the hacker. It is very likely that the victims might not easily notice the hack, as a glance at the location bar shows 'accounts.google.com' in there.

Once the hackers get access to your account, they gain complete access to all your emails including an entire lot of emails sent and received. Chances are quite high that once they control the email address, they can also compromise a wide variety of other services that you use by using the password reset mechanism including other email accounts and more.
How to protect yourself from the attack

When you sign-in to any service, check the browser location bar and verify the protocol, then verify the hostname. Make sure that there is nothing before the hostname 'accounts.google.com' other than 'https://' and the lock symbol. You should also take special note of the green colour and lock symbol that appears on the left. If you can't verify the protocol and verify the hostname, stop and consider what you just clicked on to get to that sign-in page.

Similarly, you can also enable two-factor authentication if it is available on every service that you use. Enabling two-factor authentication makes it much more difficult for an attacker to sign into a service that you use, even if they manage to steal your password using this technique.

Top 3 Trends Impacting the Global eCommerce Market Through 2020

Author Bio : Rose Burg has been a Digitial Marketer for 6 years. She has designed websites, built brands and mastered social media in her time with EYStudios.com. An agency that is best at creating e-commerce experiences that will delight your customers and run circles around your competition.




Being an eCommerce business owner, it is critical to keep your eye on the future. Following trends, and keeping up to date on news, changes, technology, and industry standards is a must for success. So, what does the future hold for eCommerce? Have a gaze into the crystal ball to see what is in store for you and your eCommerce business.

Gone Mobile?

On April 21, 2016, Google sent the eCommerce world into a tizzy with their search algorithm changes. Referred to as “Mobilegeddon” in many SEO circles, it changed how Google displays the SERPs and gives mobile friendly websites a higher ranking. If this doesn’t give you an inkling into the future, nothing will.

Essentially, the use of smartphones to make purchases is slowly edging out the computer. People are becoming savvier with their phones and other mobile devices. Giving visitors to your site the option to buy from their phone easily is quickly becoming a must. As of November 2015, mobile purchases represented 50.3% of all online purchases, while computers dropped to 49.7%.

This trend is likely to continue and even explode over the next 4 years. The great thing about this is that it levels out the playing field for the commerce giants like Amazon and the small, specialized boutiques. The eCommerce market is wide open and ready for you to grab your slice of the pie.

RTB: Real Time Bidding
Online ads are becoming a huge part of eCommerce marketing plans, for obvious reasons. Have you ever noticed when you go on a particular website that the ads seem to be directed to your preferences?

For example, if you recently searched for day planners and visited several websites, that information is saved in your history. Then, when you go to a new site for something else, say email or news, ads along the side of the news site are for day planners and other items related to day planners.

This is a result of RTB or real-time bidding. It is incredibly fast, happening only within 100 milliseconds from the time you clicked on the news URL. The process is simple: Once you click on the site, a request is sent to an ad exchange which assesses your information, including demographic, browsing history, location, and the URL you selected. Within milliseconds, a bidding war happens for certain ads to be displayed on the URL you are visiting.

As your page loads, the winning ads are what you see in the margins of the site. The whole process is automated, and bidding amounts are set by the advertisers, so ads are in place—literally—in milliseconds. This is an ever-growing business, and one to keep your eye on if you choose to get into the advertising side of eCommerce. RTB revenue is expected to reach $26 billion by 2020. THAT is a massive business in and of itself.

Brick and Mortar Venture Online
With the decline of brick and mortar that retailers are currently experiencing, the need to stay alive is ever more powerful. One way to stay in business is to expand the business online. The critical piece here is that the website must be done right or venturing to the online market will fail miserably.

One of the trends that brick and mortar stores are battling against is customers coming in to choose what items they want … to then purchase online. Customers have effectively turned the tables on brick and mortar stores by using them as showrooms, and then purchasing the same item at a discounted price, online from home.

To compete with this, retailers are coming up with an alternative. By having their own website (sometimes with discounted pricing, but not always), they are offering customers a chance to search the items online, and then come into the store to make their purchase. This behavior is called “webrooming,” and is the opposite of showrooming.

Either way, these sites need to be mobile friendly and easy to navigate to be able to compete with the smaller eCommerce sites that have the online presence locked up, with excellent knowledge and experience for using analytics and data to hone their sites to perfection. However, there is one thing that brick and mortar stores have over solely eCommerce sites: Retailers will staff their sites just like they staff their stores, to offer that personal touch customer service.

The eCommerce industry changes rapidly, just like any other technology-driven business. eCommerce owners who keep a birds-eye view on the business trends will see how the future will unfold. Watching from 10,000 feet above allows you to see patterns and trends beginning to form, which gives you the upper hand in staying ahead of the curve and making the necessary changes to keep your eCommerce business successful and profitable. 


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