What reminds me, a colleague used to get his payments through PP using a Brazilian company that has an office abroad.  He transferred them an amount through PP, they made a deposit on his bank account here in Brazil charging some fee. It wasn't cheap, but much cheaper than cashing a foreign cheque.  I don't know if he is still using it, now that we can get (I think) PP transfers to our credit cards.

cashing a foreign check is not that expensive here: USD 5 or 2% if I remember correctly, and you walk out with the dollars in your hand (or pocket). the problem is: checks are usually "lost" in the Post Office.

Does anyone have any good solutions?

I don't have a good solution, but I'll give you the one I'm using:
Paypal doesn't work with Argentinian banks, so the only viable option I found so far is Moneybookers and then transfer (all in USD so no conversion rate, just the ~USD2.50 transfer fee) to a local bank which does the currency conversion to Pesos, charges me a fee for the transfer.

my monitor used to do that last year.

the rest of the computer is still working (but i had to buy a new monitor).

this one?: http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_2.1_focus.php

i got the same private message last night, and forwarded it MP support.
I don't know how many photo buyers may be in Nigeria or Cote d'Ivoire (these are the places that came up when googling her name and email) or how many of them have problems getting the money of their dead husband's will (yes, that cames out in google too).... but if she has something to say she can say it directly in the private message, no need to ask me to email her to tell me what is it about.

just received an email from SXC announcing it

Stock.XCHNG joins the Getty Images family
Getty Images is proud to welcome Stock.XCHNG into its family of companies, as a result of Getty Images' purchase of Jupitermedia Corporation in February 2009. Everything about your day-to-day SXC experience will stay the same but you'll notice more opportunities to access iStockphoto, the world's leading royalty-free stock multimedia destination.

Perks for SXC members
Same free site: SXC is still a fantastic free site with more than 400,000 photos.
Easy access to iStockphoto: every search will display premium results from iStockphoto starting at $1. Buy credits, iStockphoto's currency, to download files.
Discover the Dollar Bin: iStockphoto's Dollar Bin has more than 230,000 stellar photos and illustrations between $1-7.
Get 10% off 26 or more credits when you sign up.
Enter promo code: SXCiStock1. Offer expires August 31, 2009.

seems like another nail in the coffin

i have the same thing, but in my case filezilla stops at ~9mb. uploading same files via browser worked fine.

it was also mentioned here: http://www.microstockgroup.com/veer-marketplace/problem-with-ftb-to-veer/, so it's probably not your connection.

well.. there are already a couple of FT affiliates in China (http://photo.maxlin.com/ and http://www.tuweimei.com/ that I know of) so... it shouldn't be any worse than before... right?

if it counts for something, SS and 123rf also have sites in chinese and it's not like there are cds or pirated images from SS everywhere...

ooops nevermind....





just kidding, if it brings more sales, good; if it brings more credit card refunds or sales only to burn pirate cds, bad. we'll probably never know for sure

am I the only one that sees a (VERY mild) Lucky Oliver watermark in the image? considering that watermark i'd say there's not much chance of it being legal.

hi, this is what i did when i wanted to scan my father's slides (~1000 done last year, ~2500 to go, �what was i thinking? )

i got an old bellows and slide copier from mercadolibre (the argentine version of ebay): the "pentax auto bellows m set"  (costed me something 60-70 USD)
you have to mount the bellows on the camera, the lens in the bellows (F35-80 in my case, it's supposed to work with a 50 on film but in a crop camera i found it needs something around 70mm), and then the slide copier in front of everything else.
then you set the white balance with the white plastic in the slide copier, put a slide in the copier, focus on the slide (with the bellow's rails) and close the lens diafragm (has to be and old lens with aperture ring, i used f/16, as more will difract a lot and less ended up out of focus because the slides were not exactly flat in my case).
now the setup is ready the procedure is: put slide -> green button (auto exposure in manual mode in a pentax) -> shoot. change slide and repeat.

it's not the easiest way, and not a one click way (two when already setup), but it gives 10mp (or whatever your camera has) "copies" of your slides. and you can also use the bellows for macros beyond 1:1.

note: all this works in a pentax body, i guess other brands made their own bellows (or you can use an old M42 with an adapter) and probably have a different way of metering (the k10d will meter even without a lens (and that's how the camera detects the bellows, it doesn't), not sure if all cameras will do that).

b79,

I was surprised to know that it's not Mother's Day in Argentina.  Here in Brazil it used to be May 12th, then later (but many years ago) it was changed to the second Sunday of May.  When I learnt it was the same in Europe and USA, I thought it was an almost international day.  What about other countries in Latin America, does anyone know?

Father's Day however is on the second Sunday of August, and as far as I can rememer it had always been in August.  I read that commerce did not want it to be in June, because there are other festivities here in June, and August didn't have any. 

here father's day is the third Sunday of June. (but i think i remember they moved it to the second sunday if it falls on the long weekend from Flag Day, which is June 20th). and in August (2nd Sunday it think, used to be first Sunday) is the Children's day (D�a del Ni�o).

Quote from: b79 on May 10, 2009, 14:37

is it today??
Just in case I just said "feliz d�a" (happy day in spanish) to my mother and she looked at me like if I was crazy...

(here in Argentina Mother's Day is in October) 

que tal b79? what about Feb 14 valentine's day?  in costa rica we don't call it valentine's day, but more "dia de amistad" where it is a day for all friends rather than just lovers or sweethearts, which i think is
better . as my best friend who is a spinster once told me: dia de amistad is more inclusive whereas valentine's day  frowns on being single.

 i can also understand your mother's reaction,  in other parts of latin america mothers will look at you and say , "por que solamente uno? dia de madre debe el ano entero, no solamente un dia en maio! !"
verdad?  (why? mother's day should be all year round).

Valentine's day (San Valent�n) started here a few years ago as an imported thing, but i guess it produced good sales because they are pushing it a lot lately. from what i remember there used to be a "dia de los enamorados" in september 21st, but that's also the Student's Day (Dia del estudiante) or Spring Day (Dia de la Primavera). The "dia de la amistad" (we call it "dia del amigo", Friend's day) here is July 20th because of the day the man landed on the Moon (yes, really because of that, and i know there's no possible relation)

And about the �por qu� solamente uno? (why only one?), I agree it makes no sense to have only one Mother's day (or father's day, or friend's day, or women's day, or Earth's day) because that would mean I care about it just that one day and screw it the rest of the year, BUT for retailers is easy to focus the advertising on one day for each thing that try to sell Mother's day all year round.

approximately how long will it last?

and where are you from?

the maximum duration will be 6m39s (i guess that is for the full eclipse at one place. from the start over India to the end over the Pacific will be over 5 hours).
I'm from Argentina, so no eclipse for me this time 

it works fine from here, and from there http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/dreamstime.com