Blogging For Money

Google has featured a “Merdeka-Raya” doodle as a nod towards the dual occasions of Eid al-Fitr and Malaysia’s Independence Day which falls on the 30th and 31st of August respectively this year. The doodle features the “ketupat”, which is a type of packed rice delicacy unique to the region (Southeast Asia), especially in Malaysia, and also the Malaysian national flag, the Jalur Gemilang. I checked both versions of Google and apparently the doodle is featured on both the .com and .com.my versions. This means that the doodle can be seen worldwide and not just in Malaysia alone. I consider this to be Google’s acknowledgement of Malaysia and perhaps signifies the growing importance of the Malaysian online market in Google’s viewpoint.

Having said this, I would like to take the opportunity to wish all Muslim readers a blessed Eid and Selamat Menyambut Hari Kebangsaan to all Malaysians.

Incoming search terms:

• google eid doodle
• google doodle raya
• merdeka raya google doodle
• google eid doodle 2011
• www ibnjuferi net

Have you observed that banks are really increasing advertising about their high interest rates for checking and savings accounts? Why are they doing this? How are they able to do it?

Banks make profit in the economic system by bringing in loans. The sum of money that banks can lend is immediately affected by the reserve prerequisite set by the Federal Reserve. The reserve requirement is currently 3 percent to 10 percent of a bank’s total deposits. This amount of money can be held either in hard cash or in the bank’s reserve fund with the Fed. To see how this bears upon the economy, think of it like this. When a bank gets a alluvial of $100, bearing a reserve requirement of 10 percent, the bank can then lend out $90. That $90 comes back into the economy, purchasing trade goods or services, and usually winds up deposited in another bank. That bank can then lend out $81 of that $90 deposit, and that $81 enters the economy to buy goods or services and in the end is posited into another bank that continues to loan out a per centum of it.

While the cost to loan individual money goes down for a bank, the bank can bring down your interest on a charge card or financing for a home. As is true on the banking side, since banks are acquiring a break recently on the cost to lend, they don’t need as much interest from the customer to cover up the spread. They could either hang on to the additional revenue for themselves or propose an incentive to the customer by providing a higher interest rate on free checking and savings accounts. This benefits current clients and lures new customers in. Since banking has become so competing, most banks follow suit so they will not be left out.

The banks do put conditions on some of these account statements that you need to be aware of. You may have limits on withdrawals, number of checks you write, and you may have to have a minimal number of dealings per month. The main reason the banks have stipulations is simple; its all geared in their favor. Limiting withdrawals keeps more of your money in the bank that they use to invest and loan and make more money for, well, the bank. Constraining the number of checks you compose saves the bank money because it costs them further to process paper. And, it also forces you to use your debit card more. And that is why they have a minimum number of transactions, so you use the debit card more. By using the debit card or credit card, merchants are paying up a fee to the bank for every transaction. Put differently, never mind how you slice it, the banks are making money. It then adds up to try to get more or less of that money back in a high interest checking accounts or savings accounts.

There may be penalties for not complying with these conditions. Most of the requirements banks have are not overly constraining. At the end of the day, higher interest rates for checking and savings accounts are a great chance to gain some base in this economic system.

One needs money without a doubt to pay the bills and buy items. Sometimes not all of us have enough savings in our bank accounts that can be used for emergencies. What if you need cash quickly in order to use it for an emergency? Not to worry, as you can now get overnight loans through this company called Pacific Advance. All you have to do is to make the necessary application via their payday loans online system and voila! There will be no problems after that and you can use that cash to pay your outstanding bills. So easy and very fast, without any hassle or time-wasting problems when you are in a bind and need to pay those bills quickly.

This is a cool test to see how fast this blog post will rank for awkzaqza. Some people are ranking for this keyword and I want to see if I can do the same too. This is not a spam message. awkzaqza will conquer the world, hahaha.

More updates after the break.

Just when I was thinking of expanding the usage of this service on all my websites and blogs, Yahoo! just had to drop the bombshell by announcing that they will shut down MyBlogLog starting from 24th May 2011 onwards.

Apart from Delicious and Flickr, MyBlogLog is probably the only service affiliated with Yahoo! that I am using heavily at the moment. Its really a shame that they had to shut down such a great service which allows you to see who had viewed your website or blog. I really do not understand what Yahoo! is up to. Perhaps this is a telling sign that Yahoo! will be going bust anytime soon.

I am not sure how the Prime Minister’s Office got my e-mail, but I received the above e-mail, signed by Najib Razak, in my inbox two days ago. Apart from the fact that there is no reason to send me a greeting card on the occasion of Chinese New Year, I have never sanctioned or consented that my e-mail address receive any form of bulk messaging from his website. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt at spam and really, the person who decided to mass-spam this to my account should be ashamed of himself.

Which brings to the next question: If the Prime Minister was able to get my unsolicited email address, what other information was he able to obtain without my consent?

Incoming search terms:

• malaysian spam
• i received greeting card from malaysia prime minister

Confused about the term “Cloud Computing”? Want to be “with the times” when you talk about new technology buzzwords? I found this interesting video which explains it all.