Make Money Online - The Real Money Making Secret

Making money online is the most tempting idea that has conquered the minds of about 85% of the internet users. It is an unobjectionable fact that almost all of them want to catch their fish without wetting their hands. At this moment, comes a tsunami of free money making sites offering “get paid to read email”, ”make money taking online surveys”, “earn by clicking ads” and so on. If you visit these sites you may see a number of testimonials about ‘successful money making’. They might even display the pictures of payout slips/cheques/drafts or even bank/paypal statements.

The real fact about these sites is that they appear to be legitimate outwardly but if you do a deep study, it is 100% sure that you will reach only one conclusion (guess what?). It is a truth that a greater half of the internet users don’t even know the basics of the ‘world wide web’ they use. This is the reason for the growth of these heartless, cunning and deceiving demons.

What are they and what do they want?

In technical tongue you can call them as FRAUDS and SCAMS. But actually they are much more than that. They are like the leeches. Once connected, they will suck your blood without you feeling it so that you don’t take it off. They are making money utilizing your precious time and resource. It is just as if you are their slaves. The following are some of the methods in which they cheat you:

Sending emails/surveys in such a rate/frequency/way that you will never reach the minimum payout even in your lifetime.

·   In case you are able reach the minimum payout, you will find that the minimum payout amount has been increased.

·   When you request payout, they will never give ‘your’ money.

There are many reasons that these sites can be dangerous. Like,

·   Use your email address for spamming and supply it to other spammers.

·   Misuse your important personal data/information (you cannot even imagine what would happen if your personal information reaches the hands of these wicked people).

·   Wastes your valuable time and resources (internet bandwidth, electricity, health etc).

Most of these sites are actually ‘network traffic handling mechanisms’ (I may refer it as NTHMs). When you click an ad or read an email or take a survey, the person who owns the corresponding NTHM gets paid. For each click they will get about 0.25$ (maximum). Then how come they pay you 1$ to 100$ per click. Are they NUTS? ABSOLUTELY NO, they are the most cunning people and they are cheating you.

I am writing this on the basis of my experience and dedicated study of the matter for more than two years. If you have any objections to my arguments, you can give it as a comment, provided you have a ‘valid proof’.

It is my strong request to all who are trying hard to make money online that, NEVER JOIN ANY FREE MONEY MAKING SITES. Any good looking offers these sites give are nothing but low class tricks to fool you. They just want you to join their sites and work as their servants. So once again I humbly request you not to join any such sites. I am asking this solely for your well being and not with any bad intentions.

How you can REALLY make money online?

I didn’t say that you cannot make money online. It is truly possible. But the ideas are not as easy as that you do for those fraudulent ‘free money making sites’. I would like to briefly explain a couple of them.

Online Trade: This is the most realistic way to make money online. Today there is countless numbers of e-commerce sites throughout the world. Most of them allow individuals to sell their products/items. I recommend ebay (www.ebay.com) since I have experience as an ebay seller. You can even sell used items on these sites. They also provide bidding facilities for your items.

The requirements to sell on these sites are – age limit, citizenship in prescribed countries, a valid email address, phone number and a bank account. For more information about selling on ebay, visit http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/index.html.

Websites/Blogs: This is another method to make money online. This is a method in which you should have good knowledge about websites and blogs. It is much more easier than the first method in that there are no external activities involved (purchase or shipping). But you need to work a lot with your computer if you want to make some bucks.

You need an active website or blog in order to do this. Active in the sense- updated regularly. The site should contain quality contents which can attract visitors. You should avoid any copyrighted materials in your site. If you don’t own a website or blog, you can get a free one from free website hosting sites and blogs. I recommend www.weebly.com and www.blogger.com.

After you have good postings and decent number of visitors you can apply for Google AdSense (www.google.co.in/adsense). Once approved, the Google AdSense will put selected Ads in your site and you will be paid when the user clicks an Ad.

Best soldering practice tips for the beginners

These are few soldering tips for the beginners in electronics.

1. Keep the soldering surface of the PCB (printed circuit board) clean. If you find that the surface is covered with some corrosive coating, then use a pen-knife and gently remove the contamination over the surface. You should do this carefully so as to avoid damaging the metal lining/plating of the PCB.

2. Never use too much or too little solder-lead for solder joints. Use only the optimum amount of lead so as to keep the component connected firmly to the PCB. Using too much solder may result in a short circuit. Also the circuit will appear ugly in this case. Use of too little solder will result in weak joint or open contacts, which will in turn, affect the working of the circuit.

3. It is not very easy to cut the ‘extra’ legs of the soldered components with a wire-stripper. Moreover it results in imperfect cutting. I recommend using a nail-cutter for this purpose. It will help in doing the cutting job easily and with perfection.

4. Do not use single strand wire for external wiring on PCBs. The reason is that they will break easily. Use suitable multi-strand wire instead (since they have good flexibility, they won’t break so easily). Before soldering, make sure that the insulation is sufficiently removed and the metal strands are properly twisted together at the soldering end of the wire.

5. Use a good quality soldering iron. A good soldering iron will allow the heat to flow to its tip very quickly and effectively thereby giving a better soldering experience. A 25 Watt Soldering iron is the best choice for the electronics beginners. I recommend Soldron iron for Indian hobbyists and Weller SP23LK Marksman for the all International electronics amateurs.  They are two of the best rated soldering irons available in the market. The Soldron iron is available on www.ebay.in or http://www.soldron.com/catalog.php (price around Rs.220-300) and Weller SP23LK Marksman iron on www.amazon.com  (price around 15$ for the iron and 45$ for the Soldering Station).

6. Never do soldering under the fan or near any cooling equipment. This will reduce the tip temperature of the iron and hence the solder-lead will not melt properly, causing a bad soldering experience.

7. Do not keep the soldering iron in contact with the soldering surface for long time. This will damage the electronic component which is being soldered and also it causes oxidants to accumulate on the PCB surface and thereby prevents the solder-lead from attaching to the metal plating of the PCB. As a result the soldering will fail. In this case you have to use a pen-knife to clean the metal surface as explained before.

8. To remove the extra solder attached to the iron-tip, give it a strong shake to the ground (while it is hot). This will cause the molten lead to detach from the iron and fall down. Remember, while doing this, you must be careful about your surroundings since the molten lead will be hot (though for a short time) and might cause damage, if fell on sensitive surfaces.

9. Do not use soldering iron for other purposes like melting plastic or polythene (e.g. for removal of wire insulation), wax, paints etc. It will cause such materials to get attached to the iron-tip and thereby interrupts the heat flow from iron to the solder lead. In this case, you will have to use either a ‘file’ (tool used to sharpen chisels) or a sandpaper to clean the iron-tip.

10. After using for a while, the tip of the soldering iron will wear-off (becomes curvy). This will cause difficulty in soldering. In this case, use a ‘file’ to suitably plain the tip. After long use and repeated ‘filing’, you will find the soldering tip to be very short and thereby causing uneasiness in soldering. In this case, you need to buy a new soldering ‘bit’ (tip) for your iron (provided your soldering iron has an changeable tip). The bit costs only a couple of bucks and is available at almost all electronics stores.

Things you should know before working with Microcontroller Programming

There are a lot of things you need to know before working with your microcontroller project code. I would like to explain some of the important ones. They are:


1.  PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE: A microcontroller program can be written in 3 languages – assembly, c and hex (with the help of a computer). The first two are the practical and most widely used languages. The third method is correct but impractical for large programs.
Each language has its own advantages and disadvantages. In assembly language the program is written using the microcontroller instruction set only. This makes programming in assembly, somewhat complex. The main advantage of using assembly is its fast execution. Because of this reason assembly language is highly preferred in real time systems, for which the time constraint is a serious matter. The ‘c’ language (actually it is micro-c), as its name indicates, is written in the same syntax of the original computer ‘c’ language. The advantage of writing in ‘c’ is the availability of a large number of functions that comes in handy while programming. But the ‘c’ programs are comparatively slower than the assembly programs. In either case you need the simulator software with assembler/compiler. I recommend using the latest version of ‘Keil uVision’ if you are working on 8051 microcontroller, ‘PIC Simulator IDE’ for PIC microcontroller and ‘AVR Studio’ for the AVR microcontroller.


2.  HEX FILE: Though you are initially writing the program code in assembly or ‘c’ language you will have to convert it to hex file before you can put it (program/burn) into a microcontroller flash memory. Usually, the conversion is done by the assembler program associated with the programming (simulator) software. Then the hex file can be loaded into the microcontroller using a suitable microcontroller programmer (hardware).


3.  MICROCONTROLLER PCB CIRCUIT: I recommend that you create a basic microcontroller circuit on a General PCB with the ‘Lock/Eject type’ IC base for the microcontroller. This will help a lot during the microcontroller programming by avoiding the uneasiness and various connection problems while using the breadboard circuit and it also eliminates the need for those costly and bulky development boards.


4.  CHECK YOUR MICROCONTROLLER: Before you test your program code on a microcontroller, you should check whether the microcontroller is functional or not. This can be done by burning a simple program in the microcontroller and checking the result (output). For example, the following test code is written for the said purpose. It is written for 8051 microcontroller in the assembly language:


ORG 00H          ; initialize microcontroller

LOP:

SETB P1.0        ; make p1.0 pin high

MOV R5, #0FH     ; approx. 1s delay

LOP2:

MOV R6, #0FFH

CALL DELAY

DJNZ R5, LOP2

CLR P1.0         ; make p1.0 pin low

MOV R5, #0FH     ; approx. 1s delay

LOP3:

MOV R6, #0FFH

CALL DELAY

DJNZ R5, LOP3

JMP LOP          ; go to ‘lop’ label

;****************************************

;           1s DELAY ROUTINE

;****************************************

DELAY:

DELAYL1: MOV R7, #0FFH

DELAYL2: DJNZ R7, DELAYL2

DJNZ R6, DELAYL1

RET

END


The above code will toggle the 8051 P1.0 pin between high (+5V) and low (0V) with a delay of approximately 1 second. You can see this state switching by means of an LED (with driver-recommended) circuit connected to the P1.0 pin.

Active Partition Problem in Windows 7

If you have accidentally changed the active partition of your system and thereby unable to boot your OS, then follow the below technique to change back your active partition to the original settings.

Run the repair console by tapping F8 key during bootup. If you cannot access the Repair console, then You will need the System Repair Disk to use Diskpart commands to mark the Windows 7 active partition.

After running the Repair Console/System Repair Disk, open the DOS Command Prompt and use the following commands to set the active partition:

DISKPART

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK # (# for Windows 7 disk)

LIST PARTITION

SELECT PARTITION # (# for Windows 7 partition, or 100mb system Reserved partition if you have it)

ACTIVE

EXIT

Tricks to restore deleted/virus hidden files in Windows 7

You might have wondered or more accurately 'frustrated' on seeing an empty HDD/USB storage, suddenly one day, in which you have kept all your important data. This occurs because of any one of the following reasons.

1. Someone has accidently(?) deleted the files.
2. Your flash/USB drive is damaged (hardware problem).
3. Your flash/USB drive is affected by virus, which hid your files.

To find out what has occured the first step you have to do is to plug the storage device to your computer, right-click the device icon and select the properties menu. If anywhere in this step your system hangs or the properties window shows 0bytes capacity, then case 2 is the possible problem. If so you have to consult a technical expert (hardware) for the data recovery.

If first step has no issues and the properties window shows 0bytes Used Space, then case 1 is the possible problem. In this situation, use a good data recovery software (I recommend 'Recuva' recovery software). Remember in this case, you should not put any file into the drive to be recovered. This is because, doing so will overwrite the deleted files (which are to be recovered) and they will become some useless pieces of junk data (unrecoverable).

Now, If your situation is different from the above 2 cases and  the properties window shows some bytes Used Space, then case 3 is the possible problem. If this is the case and you are not so good in dealing with viruses please seek an expert's help to check whether your system is virus infected or not. After cleaning the virus, follow the below step to restore (make visible) the hidden files in your device.

1. Open the command prompt (Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > Run > type "cmd" (without the "") into the box and press enter).
2. Go to the drive which contains your hidden files (eg: If your drive name is "D" then type "D:" and press enter).
3. Go to the folder which contains your hidden files (eg: If your folder location is "D:/Games/NFSMW" then type "cd Games/ NFSMW" and press enter).
4. Now type "attrib -s -h *.* /S /D" and press enter. This command will restore (make visible) all the files and folders in the specified location.

That's it. Enjoy recovering you lost files.