CIMB Bank will discontinue their Western Union money transfer service

I am quite surprised to know that CIMB Bank will discontinue their Western Union money transfer service effective 29 August 2012.

Western Union is the most convenient and cost effective way for Malaysian to receive cash from Google Adsense.

We will need to look for other Western Union agents to receive payment from Google Adsense now.

Reference: http://www.cimbbank.com.my/index.php?tpt=cimb_bank#2

FBI seized Applanet.net, Appbucket.net and Snappzmarket.com for hosting pirated Android apps

The US government has shutdown 3 Android apps marketplace websites namely Applanet.net, Appbucket.net and Snappzmarket.com recently.

Those websites are known to host and distribute popular Android apps which are selling with a price in the official Google Play Store and/or Amazon Marketplace, etc.

Actually, most Android apps are selling at a low price, even lower than a cup of Starbucks coffee, and we just need to pay for once to download the apps and able to enjoy all future version updates/upgrades. Even when we changed to a new Android phone, the apps we purchased before will be automatically installed into the new phone.

Smartphone users should build the mentallity of paying for the apps that they find useful, which they like to keep in their phone for their use. Most of the time, the cost of the apps is less than 1% of the cost of their smartphone.

FBI seizure of these 3 piracy marketplaces is a meaningful move to somehow educate the users not to avoid paying for non-free apps. If the mobile developers are well rewarded by producing popular apps, that will encourage more and more fantastic apps to be produced.

Reference: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/376360/20120822/piracy-infringement-android-apps-download-applications.htm

Malaysia national and state public holidays for year 2013 announced

The 2013 national and state public holidays in Malaysia will be as below.

There are 14 days of national holiday, and 1 of them fall on Sunday and 3 fall on Saturday. Most of the states will have around 3 state holidays in addition to the national holidays.