Connecting your domain hosted mail @ bluehost to your gmail account

Published December 2, 2013 6:38 pm

I have my own domain hosted on bluehost. I have not created personalized email address under our domain – thinking it will be tedious to manage another set of email accounts e.g. feedback@example.com or info@example.com and add to daily maintenance tasks. I have simply created an address on gmail and added forward rule to fwd the mails to my personal account @ gmail.

Few days back, I came to know from one of my friend that gmail allows to add “other” email accounts under your hosted domain like mentioned above, to your gmail account. That way you can manage multiple of your accounts – from one single dashboard – your personal gmail account. Today I decided to look into this and finished in order of 2 hours. In my case, the domain is hosted on bluehost.

bluehost itself give the sequences of steps. These steps are good and can be followed. In addition, following notes might help:

  1. Under settings in your gmail, you will find ‘accounts’ tab.
  2. For correct bluehost pop3/smtp server & port settings – refer here. I have used SSL settings for incoming pop3 and outgoing smtp.
  3. Update: I recently found that the above link is now broken. mail settings that works for me: incoming: mail.example.com, port 995, ssl; outgoing: mail.example.com, port 465, ssl; need  to replace your domain name in place of “example.com”
  4. Ensure that username is including the domain name; that is abc@example.com instead of just ‘abc’
  5. If correct settings are not used – you will get error “Server denied POP3 access for the given username and password”.
  6. I have checked ‘leave a copy of the retrieved message at the server’ for the time being. If left unchecked, message will be deleted from your webhost mailbox after retrieval.
  7. I have also checked ‘Label incoming messages’ options so that I can see all message from other account in one folder.
  8. Your gmail verification message might land up in your gmail account while you are checking in your hoster web mail client.
  9. Lastly – I wanted to ensure replying from my account @ mydomain.com for these messages. For this, steps from gmail help were useful.

It is also interesting to note that google provided google apps free edition for custom domain until dec 2012. Now, it costs USD 5 per user/month.

Transfer your PPF account from post office to a public bank

Published November 15, 2013 2:54 pm

postofficeI need to manage multiple PPF accounts of the family. There were all put in a local post office. After I moved to different part of the city, it was hassle to travel to the post office to manage the account. The agent who helped us with this work also confirmed that post office no longer gives any incentive to him. Hence, it is not worth for him also. I decided to explore transfer of the PPF account to a public or private bank.

sbi_logo_mainICICI bank was advertising for some time that people can open PPF account with them. but post office people refused to transfer to a private bank. They mentioned that they do not have any directive to do the transfer to a private bank. I have an option to transfer to another post office or a public bank like SBI. I found out that the SBI bank near my home provided the PPF account facility. Note: not all branches of the SBI provide PPF account facility. It is good to locate a public bank branch near your home. Further – public banks also do not operate hassle free. if you have an existing relation like FDs etc. with the branch that will help. In my case, I had existing relation with the SBI near my home.

My personal agent was of great help and guidance to finish the transfer. First transfer took order of months and multiple follow ups. He provided us with the transfer form which needs to be filled in multiple of 3. Following needs to be submitted to the post master of the office.

  1. transfer forms – 3 copies – afair.
  2. SBI branch details on a place paper including – branch code, location, and address. branch code needs to be obtained from the branch or their website.
  3. PPF passbook
  4. self attested Xerox of the photo identity like passport, voter id or pan card – name need to match the name on your PPF pass book.

I had kept the Xerox copy of the passbook and the transfer form for my reference. once this is submitted, post master gives you the counter foil of the transfer form and process is kick started. You will be informed that the cheque along with passbook and other details will be sent by post to your bank address. There is no transparency about the status or progress in the process after this. In our case, our agent  came to rescue to get the insider information and move the file ahead. Process – as far as I understood – is this

  1. Post master updates your passbook including interest. Sends to the higher up post officer for the approval and release cheque.
  2. The approving post officer verifies the details, approves, makes the cheque and send everything by post to the bank.

Our agent has helped with following:

  1. Followed up and confirmed when the file was sent to the approving officer.
  2. Approving officer was on leave. I got to know through him when there was delay in the process.
  3. He followed up again to ensure that the approval was through and documents were posted to the bank.

I had mentioned to the bank officer earlier regarding this. I checked a week after and found that the documents were received by them. It took 3 days to get the cheque credit and another 1-2 days to finish the account opening formality – like filling the form with 2- passport size photos and identity proof. You can apply and get the online access for the PPF account in SBI as well. That took additional week. bank process will take 3-4 visits in total.

I transferred only one account to test the process. Later, I initiated transfer of 2 more accounts and this got done in shorter time without less of the agent follow up.

Observations

  1. It is good to initiate the transfer after march when the FY interest is credited. There was confusion across who needs to the pay the interest in my case when the transfer when done mid year. I could resolve that matter yet. I was told by agent that for PPF interest is credited once a year and bank will give me for the whole year. I stopped following up on this. I need to check now whether I got the credit of interest for the whole year or not.
  2. If you have a good relation with your agent for your post office PPF account, it is good to seek his help and go through him. otherwise, process may work but like I mentioned there is no official way to know status and progress.
  3. Do not have high expectation. Have patience. Expect 1-2 month for the whole process. Follow up weekly.
  4. Choose a bank near you; otherwise hassles do not go down.
  5. Bank passbook is computer managed. It exudes more confidence than hand written post office passbook;) It probably gives you more peace of mind as well unless you like doing math of numbers like computing interest – and manually tracking – manual entries in passbook – for fun.
  6. Deposit into your PPF account in SBI is a two step process; you fill a challan along with your deposit cheque; you visit after 4-5 days to claim credit of the cheque, and get your passbook updated.

Redeem Kishan Vikas Patra in Post Office

Published October 30, 2013 3:39 pm

I had forgotten about the Kishan Vikas Patra purchased for my wife in year 2004. They matured in Feb 2013. I need to encash / get credit / redeem them. Since the post office is not near to home, I need to plan a visit to post office on a working day. I need to make two visits to get the credit of funds.

Few observations:

  1. If the certificates are not in your name, they need to be signed by the owning person before you go to the post office.
  2. If the owning person is not visiting along with you, you need to carry a letter of authorization signed by her.
  3. Identity proof like voter id/ pan card of the owning person. Name should match exactly as on the certificate.
  4. You can get a cheque in owning person name. I got the funds deposited into the PPF account with the same post office. Hence, I did not take the cheque for maturity amount.
  5. You need to visit the post office by 1:30 pm. I had visited around 12 pm.

A Trip to Botanical garden hyderabad

Published October 27, 2013 9:41 pm

Today’s trip to botanical garden @ kondapur, Hyderabad was impromptu when we woke late to go to WP_001996-002Necklace road. Hence, we decided to visit there instead. I have gone there many times. It indeed needs a mention and things we like about it.

It’s place providing breathing space midst the busy area of Kondapur & Gachibowli. Since the time we moved to kondapur, this garden has gone through quite a few changes for good and bad. The Good first. The maintenance of the garden has improved. Activities has been started for children. The Bad: Garden lost significant portion; that has been controversial and in news; I have not followed the happenings closely. but I came to know that there is hold order on the development work that is considered threat to the garden.

There is a nominal ticket INR 10/- and 5/- per adult and child-above-5 respectively. Entry for children below 5 is free. Regular morning walkers can get a monthly pass also. Park opens early morning and closes by 6PM. You need to park in the parking area on the opposite side of the road – in front of the main gate. There is a parking fee of INR 10/- for four wheeler.

`Right after entry in the garden, there are little rabbits which my children love. They spent few minutes watching them, dropping leaves for the rabbits. There are 4-5 rabbits out there. For a first time visitor with children, this is typically the first stop. We typically move to the open area behind the cage which is wide open space with green grass. Children run around there. There are few up and downs. Keep moving from there, you hit area with a set of children activities.

The most used activity is a big Trampoline installed there. WP_002000At a time, 3-6 children can play inside this comfortably. For my son, this has been attraction for the last two visits. They spend order of 10-20 minutes there. After that, I need to get them out to move to other areas. Another activity is rope mesh climbing. This can be used by children > 4 years. Child is given a safety support. which also helps him climb up the mesh. This is also fun activity and children find thrill of accomplishment when they touch the red ribbon at the top; Certainly they need the parent and friends encouragement to keep going up during first climb. WP_002012After first successful climb, my daughter wanted to do it again. I have to deny it multiple times to move on. She wanted to repeat the climb. She wanted to give up in the middle while on the first climb.

Apart from this, there are two other climbing activities but there are sparingly used afaik. There is a shooting area also (I think). I have not used it.

 

 

From here, we walked over to children play area. WP_002656Children play area is not kept very clean. but still has some attraction for kids. There is a big mean really BIG swing. It is hung of two big trees. Even elders can swing. WP_002654It is advisable to be used by 2-3 people at a time to keep it in good condition. It is still working though it is overloaded by visitors often. I would say this is the main attraction for elders in this area. Children can find slides, see-saws, merry-go-round, and two other kind of climbers. This is another area where we spend nearly 20-30 minutes.

Next we came back to area near main gate. On the right side, there are a WP_002718tortoise kind of concrete structure which houses various kind of cactus plants. Children do funny things. Instead of cactus, they found the pebbles in the nearby garden interesting. They picked some, threw some in the little pond area besides; it is formed by the rain water. I have to set limit. otherwise, they would have been at work to get all pebbles in the pond until evening! Next, they picked into the cactus housed in another room. All of them are under water.

Apart from this, my son loves this wooden bridge. WP_002706He wants to go across it whenever he reaches garden. We sat on tree made benches. There are people who are leaving leftover after eating there including plastic bags. It will certainly help if we can take our junk out along with us after enjoying the minutes midst nature.

In summary, if you are nature lover – this is a good place to explore. but good to get there in the weekends or morning/evening hours. your children will likely love the place. Give it a try. There is certainly more from my past visits like the rose garden, a big pond etc. there. but I need more time and words. For now, I need to get out. more next time.

 

Windows 8.1 upgrade – ms natural keyboard mapping went wrong

Published October 21, 2013 12:00 pm

Today, I upgraded to windows 8.1 few minutes back. All went pretty smooth; it took order of 1 hour and multiple auto-reboots before finalization. There is two issues I faced.

I use a ms natural keyboard 4000 model. After upgrade, shift + key combination was giving wrong characters. For example: shift + 2 gave ” rather than @; shift + ‘ gave @ instead of “. I binged but did not find a solution. I went to control panel ‘Control Panel\Clock, Language and Region\Language’ and followed to install the language pack English(United States). This may or may not be required. Mentioning it because I did it.

After this, rebooted the laptop once. It fixed the incorrect keyboard mapping problem.

2nd issue: when I connect my windows phone 7, zune was not launching. It mentioned no device detected/connect your abc-phone. I tried setting to forget the phone; reboot the OS. None of these worked. Finally reboot the phone worked.

Did you face the similar problem during upgrade? How did you fix it?