Rev Can on the prowl

A story posted yesterday on the Globe And Mail web site states that the Canada Revenue Agency is now trolling eBay Canada for high volume sellers — looking to make sure eBay's biggest users are accurately reporting their income. They've successfully gotten a court order for the names, addresses, and other personal information for that website's biggest users.

'Canadians spend about $5-billion online each year and eBay is by far the largest electronic marketplace, accounting for about a quarter of the total sales. The site was visited by nearly 11 million Canadians in August, according to company figures. The CRA said in court filings that it is targeting people who qualified for eBay's PowerSeller program in 2004 and 2005. Only top eBay sellers can qualify for the program, which provides benefits to members. Those benefits include prioritized customer service, special promotions and sales tips.'

Not that I sell anything on eBay but I do know lots of people that do and while I don't know if they are PowerSellers or not, if it was me I would be making sure that I had receipts for tons of expenses.

A new blog widget

I have just added a new widget to my blog (down on the right hand side) to help publicize my blog.

BlogRush is a new, free service that allows you to earn points by displaying a widget of related, recent blog posts from other BlogRush members, and in return being advertised yourself. All you need is a name, a blog and an XML feed URL. If you have a blog, give it a try. Can't hurt to get some free publicity..

Free Online Backups

Everybody knows that they should backup their computer on a regular basis, right?. The question is how many actually do?

Well to be totally honest, I have always been a bit lax in backing up my personal machine. It was always too time consuming to locate all of the files that I needed to backup and then sorting thru to find the ones that had been updated. Then of course was finding the right media to backup onto. Should I use an old hard drive that I have lying around or maybe a few CDs or even a DVD? Not to mention the dilemma on where to store my backups? Should I just leave them in my desk drawer, put them into a safety deposit box, give them to a friend to hold just in case the house is broken into and all my computer stuff is stolen?

Well I have found a solution! Online Backups. No more worrying about any of the above and best of all I have found one that offers great services for free (2GB of data). Of course, there is a paid version (unlimited data for $4.95 a month) as well which I purchased.

The service is called Mozy and is available for Mac and Windows users. It is easy to set up, do it once and forget it as backups in the background.

The $5 per month is no big deal but I get piece of mind that my data is backed up and also encrypted (448-bit Blowfish encryption) so I know it is safe.

If you are looking for a good free backup solution give Mozy a try.

If you are running a blog, check out my post about backing up my blog.

Net Stuff

As many of you know that read this little blog, I have quite a few domains registered that I don't actually use. I think of it as investing others may think of it as waste but I do have a plan.

Currently most of those domains just sit and do absolutely nothing, just waiting for me to get around to creating a site for them. Now that in itself is not a bad thing, just a dumb thing. While the domain sits and waits it is actually accessible to the world and my domain registrar gets the traffic. OK, so what is the big deal you ask. Well let me explain it to you. On the landing pages for each of those domains the domain registrar puts a page which is generally called a parking page and on that page is advertiser links usually provided either thru Google Adsense or Yahoo Marketing. In short, they get to use my domain to create revenue. Good for them - not so great for me.

Well I have a solution to this. I have found a great service that for $1 per domain they allow me to park my domains on their servers. They provide relevant content for the domain (based on my keywords) and allow me to not only use my Google Adsense or Yahoo Marketing codes but also I can edit the pages and put in my own Clickbank, Commission Junction, Share-a-sale or other affiliate links. All for $1 per domain!

To see an example of this, look at a domain that I set up in 10 minutes - www.calgaryusedcars.ca. Now instead of wasting money every year for the domain name I have turned it into a revenue source with only 10 minutes of work!

Oh, by the way, if you are looking to registrar a new domain - click here to get a new domain name for just $1.99!

Geocaching History in Sarnia

Surprisingly Sarnia has a very active geocaching community. (I say surprisingly as Sarnia has the reputation for not having much to do.)

I spent the day today looking for some of Canada's history. How many of you know that Canada's second Prime Minister is buried in Sarnia? Not only did I get to see an area of Sarnia that I normally don't get to see very often I also got a bit of a history lesson.

In addition, there are military tanks, a Canadair Sabre 6 painted in Golden Hawks colours and the home of the first full-size submarine tunnel built in North America used as locations for geocaching. There are also different series of caches such as the Lambton County Cemetery cache series, the DownRiver series, Sarnia Parks series and even a series of caches focused around Highway 402.

If you need an excuse to get out and do something geocaching in the Sarnia area will definitely keep you busy.

Kiva Update

I was quite surprised to find emails in my mailbox from Kiva stating:

During our most recent audit, we were not able to verify that XXXXXX was the actual recipient of this loan. We are therefore repaying in full the balance. Thank you very much and we hope you will continue to support Kiva and its mission.

This, obviously, caused me some concern. I immediately posted to the Kiva Friends website and got lots of responses very quickly. Several others had also received the same message and where wondering what was going on. All I could think about was fraudulent loans and how the whole setup was a scam.

Well, I was partially right.

I found this post on line from Dr. Kendall Mau the CFO/COO of Prisma Microfinance. Prisma Microfinance is the Micro Finance company that operates in Nicaragua in conjunction with Kiva. His blog is located here.

He wrote:

Last week we discovered a problem with some loans posted on the Kiva website by our General Manager in Nicaragua. How did we notice that he was creating projects that in reality did not exist?

1. An investor asked to visit 2 projects while he was in Nicaragua. Our GM kept putting us off. He was finally forced to admit that the projects really didn't exist.
2. I noticed that our local cash position was not going down which should have happened if loans were being funded.

What was the motive for the fake loans? The GM was given a goal of producing 20 good small business loans per month to list on Kiva. When the GM could not produce enough good loans, he started making them up. It never occurred to him that the two indicators listed above would alert me to his shenanigans.

The only good thing about the whole situation was that the funds for these loans were still in the Kiva payment system and would not have been transferred to us for another 1.5 months. Therefore, the repayment of the loans will reduce the net amount Kiva owes us at the end of September 2007.

Someone on the Friends of Kiva website asked why I did a payback instead of a refund. Two reasons:

1. The Kiva automatic repayment system had already kicked in and grabbed the first month's payment. It gave me balances and I just finished them off.
2. Yesterday, I had trouble reaching my usual contact at Kiva to have her spend 2 hours with me trying to do a refund for each of the 30 loans. Kiva's system does not allow me to do refunds. To get around this obstacle, I just repaid all the loans. Better to get the money back to the investors ASAP than wait around and chase down the Kiva contact to do them for me.

When Chelsa gets back from her African tour, I'll ask her if she can easily switch the 30 loans to the refunded category with one push of the button.

My apologies to all our Kiva lenders. The GM has been dealt with

There are plenty of comments on this issue as well, as one would imagine. Needless to say that I was not impressed as this was my first experience with Kiva.

To their credit however, they did identify the problem and the funds were refunded to my Kiva account which I then moved back into my PayPal account. It took about a week for that to happen and I am now watching my other loans to see if there is a similar problem.

I am not stopping any loans that I had planed to make thru Kiva but I am slowing down until I feel a bit more comfortable with the people on the ground there.

Back to the Routine

Well that summer is over, it is back to the regular routine. For me, one of the things that means is bowling every Thursday night at Marcin Bowl in Point Edward. While I might not be quite ready to go the circuit with the pros of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA), I have fun and gives me a night out (and away from the machine for a few hours).

I currently have a 150 average which is the house average as I haven't bowled for a full season yet with this league due to my travels to Nicaragua earlier this year. I am hoping that with playing regularly and getting a little help from "The Ultimate Bowling Guide" I can improve my bowling game. I found this ebook online and it is just $27 so even if only I get one or two tips out of it, it will be worth it.

The other thing that starts next week is the local computer group, SCUG (Sarnia Computer Users Group) with their 3 meetings a month that I attend. There is the Digital Photography Group, the Windows Users Group (which I attend mainly to see how bad Windows is compared to my Mac) and then the General Monthly meeting. I plan on blogging about the group and meetings under a separate tag.

I hope everyone had a great summer - now get back to work ;) Oh and for those that are really interested, I bowled a 143, a 137 and a 172 (in other words right on my average).

September Focus

I have spent some time over the past month reading lots of other's people blogs and web sites on organization etc and just about everyone of them says WRITE IT DOWN!

So this is my first attempt at creating a monthly plan. These are not meant to be extremely detailed action by action lists but more of a way to focus on a particular topic or topics.

This month my plans are to get rid of more stuff that I never use. My plan is to use Freecycle and Goodwill here in Sarnia. Most of the usable items such as TVs, VCRs, computers etc will go on FreeCycle and clothing etc will go to Goodwill.

One of the blogs that I have been following is focused on Minimalist Living. Basically doing more with less. Maybe this is due to my time in Nicaragua but it seems to me that we (residents on the Western world) have too much junk and never use most of it. So why have it?

Sort of hand in hand with the minimalist ideas is to become completely debt free and drop out of the consumer driven lifestyle that I am stuck in. Only buy things that I need right now and can pay cash for. If I don't need it today then I don't buy it and if I can't pay cash then it is off the list.

Obviously there will be some exceptions but that will be the main theme. I will post updates throughout the month to let you know how I am doing.

Wish me luck ;)

Blog Action Day

On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

What Each Blogger Will Do

Bloggers can participate on Blog Action Day in one of two ways:

1. Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.

For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.

Posts do not need to have any specific agenda, they simply need to relate to the larger issue in whatever way suits the blogger and readership. Our aim is not to promote one particular viewpoint, only to push the issue to the table for discussion.

2. Commit to donating their day’s advertising earnings to an environmental charity of their choice. There is a list of "official" Blog Action Day charities on the site, however bloggers are also free to choose an alternate environmental charity to donate to if they wish.

And that’s it.

If they choose bloggers can also promote the initiative itself. However they are also free to simply post on topic on the right day or discreetly donate to a charity without publicizing Blog Action Day.