A Verbit.ai Adventure – Fun, Learn, Earn

A few weeks ago, I took the plunge into becoming a transcriptionist from home for Quicktate.com. I mean, how hard can it be? You listen, type what you hear to the best of your ability and that’s pretty much it. Easy money, right?

Except if you had the chance to read my post about Quicktate, the only realistic way you’d earn enough money there to make it a viable full-time job is if you glue yourself in front of your computer as you wait for the audio files to trickle into the queue of transcriptionists like yourself. You end up waiting for minutes at a time, and when an audio file does come your way, I can safely say about 60% of them are either unintelligible or contains no audio at all. Considering you are paid by the number of words you type, no amount of words-per-minute can help you if you don’t even have ANYTHING to type most of the time.

Still, Quicktate is already in my pocket. It’s not going anywhere. But I had to act fast and find something better before I lose my Internet connection. (Yup, I’m there.) Through a stroke of luck, a chanced upon reacquainting with a good friend from about 15 years ago and she referred me to verbit.ai. (Thanks, foxxy roxxy!)

A skeptic isn’t a skeptic if he isn’t skeptical when skepticism is warranted. So of course I was skeptical. Getting into Quicktate cost me $15 (790 PhP). What will THIS job want? I went to their website.

Duuhhhh, look! A button! I went for it.

A Google form. Not very classy at all, but if it works and it’s free, who I am to argue with good business sense? I filled out all the questions and expected a response within the next few days.

After an hour (or maybe even less I think)… Whoah!

There was one specific phrase in the email that, to my eyes, was underlined, boldfaced and seemed about a dozen font sizes bigger: “Only 1 out of 10 candidates pass our test”. I am not easily fazed, but I have to admit that at this moment, my balls shifted a bit. What kind of test could this possibly be? Calculus? I mean, I’m pretty certain that a clear majority of people pass online IQ tests with fair results. Is it about typing speed? accuracy? Or is it gonna be another one of those Internet marketing and advertising jobs (which I pointedly did NOT like at all!).

I put it off for two days while I psyched myself and finally went for it. This was what their test screen looked like, and what their actual interface is when you’re already working for them:

So, where am I supposed to start typing? Why is there text already? And like 95% of them are correct, what is this? Does this mean I just have to VERIFY the text for spelling and put in punctuation marks??!

Apparently that is EXACTLY what it is!

At that moment, I thought if this was how the test is gonna be, then this is probably gonna be asking for a PERFECT transcription. This would all rely on my English comprehension of diction nuances as well as vocabulary and grammar. Now the screenshot above is from a video file I am already transcribing. Naturally the video from the test was something different, and most likely randomly assigned to test participants. I browsed through the text already laid out; it’s about Physics! I love Physics! This might be easier than I thought. I bucked up and started playing the audio…

To my horror, the speaker had a heavy HEAVY accent. She was like Schwarzenegger’s sister who still lived in Austria. Then again, how hard could this be if most of the text laid out is already correct? I played on. So far so good, I just had to insert punctuations, capitalizations and… what? I came into a sentence where the grammar was obviously wrong. I listened to the portion of that audio a few more times (which thankfully they had a hotkey for). The words laid out were spelled right, they seemed to perfectly match what the speaker was saying. After some more inspection, I found out those were NOT the words she was saying at all. That would be one of your constant struggles here; if you have weak vocab and grammar skills, you will most likely fail this exam and if you pass, you will have constant struggles with most any video file.

Back to the test. I have a fairly good grasp of Physics and their terminologies but this was still a lot of effort. By the end of the test, I had learned about a couple of dozen new terms, names of noted historical people and a few new concepts. The video was about 30 minutes; most likely part of an online physics course, specifically some history about the birth of the heliocentric view. There were a couple of sections I just could not understand at all and so I had to tag them as [inaudible]. I know it’s not perfect, but avoiding assumptions of what the speaker was saying, it was the best that I could do. I sent my work for review and hoped for the best.

After just one day,

Alright! I passed! So what’s the next step in the application?

Wha… That’s IT??!

And that concludes my account of undergoing verbit’s grueling application process. One test. Yes, it’d be harder for some people, but regardless it’s just one test. No interviews. That’s it.

I’m sharing this to be in theme with my blog. If you want to try becoming a transcriptionist for verbit, at least you’ll have a better idea how to go about it, and what to expect.

Now, what awaits you AFTER you get hired? It’s pretty simple.

Above is the main screen. Each file listed is work file. Also indicated to the right is the duration of the video file included, and to the right is how much it’s worth. Let’s talk about the usual things you’d be concerned about.

HOW IT WORKS:

• You click on a work file, it gets assigned to you.
• You can have only one work file assigned to you at a time.
• You can unassign yourself from a work file (if you think the video file is too hard?) but must officially indicate the reason why you are doing so. So far, I haven’t gotten any feedback from the admins about the few work files I dropped like a hot potato, so I hope that holds up.
• There is NO TIME LIMIT. Well, that’s not really true. If you are inactive for 2 straight hours on a work file, it gets reassigned to someone else and say goodbye to whatever you already worked on. But if you want a work file but are concerned you might not be able to finish it in one sitting for whatever reason, just play the video and type in some text every hour or so. So in a way, you can hold on to a work file indefinitely.
• For a majority of work files, there will be a separate set of guidelines in addition to the default ones. After reading the guidelines, you will need to answer a quiz with only 5 questions to confirm you understood the additional guidelines.
• They have no referral program.

PAY RATES:

• If you do the math for the first one listed above (which I’m currently working on), it’s 30 minutes multiplied by 40 cents — 12 dollars for 30 minutes of audio. If you work fast enough, maybe you can finish in an hour or so?
• They only use Paypal to send payment.
• They pay every other Monday based on your work from the previous 2 weeks

So far, after a week I’ve already worked on about 15 audio files that are on average about 25 minutes each in length. Here’s a screenshot of my expected pay at the moment.

If everything goes well and they actually DO pay up, I think this concludes my search for a full time job: By finding a job that technically isn’t full time, a job that is a no-brainer BUT at the same time, I get to learn a lot of interesting stuff which is perfect for my polymath tendencies, and of course, full control of my time, and I mean FULL control.

I sincerely hope this works out so I can work on music again because being a bum is such a bummer!! I will update you on what happens within the next week or so. Meanwhile, if you liked this post, feel free to like and share. Below is an AdFly link to Verbit. Have a great day!

Verbit website.

UPDATE: I got paid today. Awww…. yisssss!!!

Dabbling with Bitcoin Core

After a recent change to moonbitco.in where they suddenly dumped all my bits to some other new site, I became deeply anxious. I didn’t have much bits there, but it still signified more than a week’s worth of clicking and captcha solving. So I took a closer look at everything.

This new site (coinpot.co) was giving the option to link my email to the wallet address ID; something that moonbitco.in did not offer. But in order to do that, I either needed to deposit some bitcoin from my actual wallet to some other wallet address as verification that I in fact owned the wallet, or I needed to “sign a message” using my unique “digital wallet signature”. Things are starting to get hairy.

Now I had a fair grasp of technology and encryption. After doing some research, at the very least I understood that each wallet had a public key and a private key. The private key is used to “sign” a message. And that the encryption of this message would be verifiable and comparable to the public key, giving a way to confirm if the signee was in fact the real owner of a wallet without disclosing his private key. I was convinced it was safe enough.

Unfortunately, coins.ph being a Bitcoin digital wallet hybrid, did not have this feature as I confirmed from one of their representatives. Now I could also send an amount of satoshi to a certain destination that coinpot.co provided to confirm I owned the wallet, but unfortunately, coins.ph was trying to charge that transaction and I did not have enough to pay for the charges. Oh, and even if I did, I would not want to pay for that.

So back to searching on the Internet, I found some clues that pointed to a software that was almost as old as Bitcoin itself; Bitcoin Core. I did not delve too much into its features and what it could do. I just needed an advertised feature that would allow me to sign the message I needed to sign.

Little did I know then that it wasn’t as simple as I thought.

I’ll get right to it. I download Bitcoin Core and discovered that it was asking for 122 whopping gigabytes of space. After some research, I found out that the software was supposed to gradually download the whole blockchain, and from the size of it, this looked like all the Bitcoin transactions ever made since the very very first one which I’m guessing was sometime in 2013.

I already had a feeling I took a wrong turn, but I pushed on anyway. After a quick check of the “Sign message” feature Bitcoin Core offered, it was obvious that this would not work, and it did make sense. A wallet address ID does not have its private and public key embedded and hidden somewhere inside of it. I guess only coins.ph has the private key but as I said, they do not have the signing feature and I highly doubt they ever will.

I know this error sounds silly to veteran digital currency players, but I just can’t delve into all the intricacies involved so I’m trying to learn on a need-to-know basis. It’s trial and error, it’s risky, but then again, it’s not a significant amount of bits anyway.

Feeling demoralized but at the same time, trying to make the best of the situation, I decided to read more about Bitcoin Core’s features; maybe it could mine some bits for me. After some research, apparently it did; DID, as in past tense. The feature was removed when it reached a point that it was no longer cost-effective or even feasible to even hope it was worth solo-mining with the software. What other advantages? Becoming a full node to support the bitcoin network. I would normally be more than happy to do this, but unfortunately my 2 terabyte external drive just died a few months ago and I suddenly found myself starving in space. 122 gigabytes is a LOT of space; using it for bitcoin support doesn’t seem like a good idea. For now.

So, the very same day I uninstalled Bitcoin Core. It was literally a “dabble”; maybe even less than that. But I do want to support digital currency more. And as I said goodbye to the software as it was being removed, I became determined to put it back one day; when I know a lot more of the intricacies of Bitcoin. Maybe it’s too late for me to gain anything significant in this endeavor, but based on all the material I have read so far, I do know that at the very least, Bitcoin, despite all its volatility, is here to stay for a long time. Having a few bits stashed for whatever happens can’t hurt.

Bitcoin adventures (English)

It is only my 8th day and I am admittedly still a noob when it comes to Bitcoin and understanding all its nuances. I did spend a few hours looking it up in the beginning, though. I have a fairly firm understanding of technology so it wasn’t too hard to understand the gist of it. And that’s also why I decided to integrate Bitcoin collecting into my daily routine.

This is NOT a post that explains everything I understand about Bitcoin. To save you time, I’ll just lay down the bullet points.

• Bitcoin is real money – It doesn’t have physical form because it’s not tied with any bank or any country making it completely independent and unregulated by any single entity.
• There are TONS of ways to get Bitcoin for free – Too many to list. There are other sites who try to enumerate them as best as they can. I only use two sites but I will be discussing one particular Bitcoin source in depth later.
• Earning Bitcoin for free is SLOW – Some people choose to make this into a career, even investing hardware and lots of time into it. I don’t like that. I happen to like my current job and I value time more than money.

So how slow is slow?

To find out, you need to know how Bitcoin is expressed, as well as its market value. You can always check the most updated exchange rate on the Internet. Note that a dollar is to a cent as a Bitcoin is to a satoshi, but with much much more zeroes.

1 satoshi(or “bit”) = 0.00000001 Bitcoin(or “BTC”)

1 BTC = 2577.01 USD (as of 7/5/2017 10:40 AM)

There are sites that will give you an average of around 100 satoshi per hour by just clicking a button and solving a captcha every few minutes. These are called Bitcoin faucets. They require almost zero time or commitment; if you only use 1 or 2 sites. Naturally the more Bitcoin faucets and drops you want to catch, the more time you’re gonna spend running around the Internet. I honestly don’t think it’s worth it. And like I said, there are a lot more ways to collect Bitcoin. 

But I will tell you about one particular site I have been using a lot.

Freebitco

It’s a Bitcoin faucet that drops about 80 bits per hour but with LOADS of features and ways of winning.

• Lucky roll game – Every hour, you get to roll for a random number between 1 and 10000. Even if you get a 1, you still collect around 78-85 bits. If you hit the better lucky numbers though… well, check out their matrix below. Rolling 10,000 might not look like much, but that amount of bits is already worth $200.

• Free lottery – Everytime you roll and collect bits, you get 2 lottery tickets which are automatically included in the next lottery draw held once a week and there are 10 winners every draw. This is how the payout looks like:

• Free rewards points – You get two of these as well. This is like their internal currency. You can use this to increase your bits collection for 24 hours, purchase more lottery tickets, even purchase real stuff.

 

• Referral system – you can send your unique referral link to your friends and you earn more bits every time they collect bits, gamble, as well as do other things on the site.

 

• Gambling – I honestly don’t recommend this. You use your bits to play their Hi-Low game. I’d rather just play it safe and just collect bits and go back to whatever it was you were doing before. Less time on the site, and zero chances of losing your bits.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must replace the withdrawal address with your OWN wallet ID. To do this, click the Profile button then the Change Withdrawal Address button. If you do not have one yet, get one from xapo.com. If you do not do this, you would be giving your bitcoin to someone else when you try to withdraw.

So that’s it. A few seconds an hour is all it takes. Other sites accuse this site of just dangling a carrot on a stick. But I’ve already won an additional 16,800 bits from 3 lucky rolls. The chance of getting that 10,000 roll is astronomically slim, but for me that’s okay. It’s not like I’m spending any real money or time on it anyway.

Here are the links of the two sites I use including the freebitco site again:

Freebitco

Moonbit – a far more simpler site. Less features. 5 minute drips. Average of 80 bits per hour.

Below are my recommended wallets which you will need to withdraw your accumulated bitcoin:

Xapo.com

Coins – highly recommended for Filipinos!

Coins.ph. Anu ba talaga to?!

Nakita mo na malamang ang advertisement ng Coins.ph na may free 50 pesos daw on registration. Malamang, dinedma mo lang sya. Understandable. Madaming advertisements at websites at mobile apps na nangangako ng 50 o 100 o 200 pesos na credit pag nag-sign-up. Yun pala, yung pera na “binibigay” nila ay pwede lang gamitin sa loob ng site nila. So hindi talaga sya pera: internal credits lang; pwede mong tawaging artificial inflation ng value sa produkto nila gaya ng ginagawa ng maraming sites at retailers. Yung discount na makukuha mo sa Abensons pag cash pambayad mo? Hindi naka-discount yun. Yun ang mas malapit sa actual retail price ng produkto. Yung discounts na nakikita mo sa online sites gaya ng Lazada? Hindi rin discounts yun. Patungan nila presyo sabay lagay ng kunyaring anlakeng discount. Dami style na bulok na nagkalat, at lalo na sa Internet.

E ano pinagkaiba ng Coins.ph?

I’ll get to the point. Yung perang sinasabi nila na makukuha mo sa referral? Pwede mo i-withdraw. Sa kahit anong Security Bank ATM. Kahit wala kang Security Bank account. At walang kaltas! NO FEES! Bukod dun, madami pa syang benefits pag ginamit mo sya. (Reminder: 500 pesos ang minimum withdrawal nila, likely na rule ng Security Bank at hindi ng Coins.ph).

Paanong gagamitin? Ano ba talaga ang Coins.ph?

Kung anu man na pera ang meron ka sa Coins.ph, pwede mong gamitin in the following ways:

• pwede na pambayad mo ng bills (bigyan ka pa ng 100 pesos for every 5 bill payments),
• pangload sa gaming accounts(Steam, Garena, MOL),
• pangload sa cellphone mo (all networks) kahit kasingliit as 10 pesos (25 sa Globe dahil… Globe is the worst),
• padala ng pera or receive ng pera to and from anywhere in the world
• pang online shopping sa featured online stores

Hindi jan natatapos ang list. Madami pa syang services and benefits.

Of course, may mga online services na din na parang ganito din yung prinoprovide. Kaso syempre, lo-loadan mo pa. Parang Smart Money or GCash.

Ang (isa sa mga) pagkakaiba ng Coins.ph, mag-successfully refer ka lang ng friend, may 50 pesos ka na agad. At tuloy-tuloy yan (while promo lasts). For every successful na referral mo, dagdag 50 pesos. May nakikita pa nga akong active promo sa akin na pag naka-lima akong referral, may +250 pesos ako! Ke additional yan dun sa 50 pesos per referral o hindi, hindi pa rin masama ang free money. =)

And uulitin ko, kung anu man ang pera mong naipon o nailagay mo sa Coins.ph, pwede mo i-withdraw in multiple ways. Yung Security Bank ATM is just one way. And kung nabasa mo yung isa sa mga previous posts ko tungkol sa Bitcoin at farmer ka na rin, pwede mong i-direct yung mga ipon mong satoshis sa coins.ph account mo and convert it to PhP.

Okay, paano mag-refer?

Tapatin kita, kung umabot yung pagbabasa mo hanggang dito, ibig sabihin nainterest kita. Pwede ka naman pumunta direct sa Coins.ph at gumawa ng account dun tapos magstart ka na magrefer, pero ma-appreciate ko kung gagamitin mo yung referral link ko sa baba. At pagkatapos mo i-“verify” ang account mo, pareho tayo may 50 pesos.

https://coins.ph/m/join/mgyizr

IMPORTANT NOTE – Eto yung dadaanan mo sa pag-verify ng coins.ph account mo:

• email verification (usual na to sa karamihan ng sites gaya ng facebook)
• selfie (mag-selfie tapos upload mo dun sa page na hinihingi sya)
• ID verification (kunan mo ng picture ang government ID mo, front and back at upload sa appropriate page)

And once tapos ka na jan, magkaka-50 pesos tayong dalawa. Pwede mo na kunin yung sarili mong referral link at simulan na mag-refer sa sarili mong friends. And ipaalam mo rin sa kanila na pag-verify nila ng account nila, may 50 pesos sya at may 50 ka uli.

Parang networking lang, diba? Pero wala ka gastos. Walang malaking investment. Walang risk. Walang kakaining oras kundi ang pagshare mo lang ng referral link mo sa fb mo. Pwede ka narin gumawa ng sarili mo post. Or pwede rin na i-copy paste mo lang tong ginawa ko tapos palitan mo yung referral link ko ng sarili mong link.

FINAL NOTE: As far as I can tell, promotion tong ginagawa nila. Hindi to maglast permanently, so kung may ilang minutes ka to spare, I highly recommend you try it. And kung may kailangan sa inyo ng guide kung may steps kayo na hirap sa coins.ph, comment lang kayo sa baba. I will help in any way I can. Matter of fact, nag-submit na ko ng resume sa kanila to become a chat support representative. Sana matanggap! Hehehe. And please don’t forget to like and share! =)

Eto uli yung link:

https://coins.ph/m/join/mgyizr

Free education. Right under your nose.

Growing up, I had an insatiable craving for books. They weren’t that expensive back then. I remember I bought several books and they were all just around 90 – 150 PhP each. And mind you, this was about 20 years ago. Now ACTUAL books have become more of a luxury than a way of learning. It’s was extremely frustrating when after I saved up some 200 pesos to buy a new book and then when I got to National Bookstore, the price of the book had gone up to 399!

I don’t think most Filipinos realize how lucky they are during these times. Most here in our country, particularly the underprivileged, use the Internet for its obvious uses: facebook, online games, skype, emails and the like. Some women even resort to exhibiting themselves on their facebook profiles and webcams (and even in public netcafes) in the hopes of finding that foreigner husband to aggressively fall on (or prey on?) and find a way for themselves to the good life. To each his own, or her own. Whatever.

So why am I saying that we’re lucky? I’m getting there.

Any one raised by even half-decent parents have probably heard the droning sermon about getting an education and how important it is. And most of us, especially the previous generation, have it hardwired in their minds that education is equal to that coveted piece of fancy paper with their name in fancy writing: the diploma.

Granted. An actual diploma signifies not just the academic knowledge imparted by the school but also the character-building aspect of going through those grueling years. I even argue that THAT is the actual value of that paper; not the knowledge, but the attitude you would have had to develop to endure it all just to get it. Sure. But unfortunately, not all of us have this opportunity, and some like me, have blatantly wasted it.

So why are we lucky?! Fine. We are lucky because unbeknownst to a lot of us, academic education is right under our noses and most of us just don’t know about it. A lot of websites now generously provide hardcore educational content absolutely free. And when I say hardcore, I’m talking Astrophysics, Chemical Engineering, Linear Equations hardcore, not just basic introduction material designed just to entice you to actually spending money.

What’s the catch? I currently use edx to freshen up on my algebra chops. I’m hoping to put it to good use and help my son who will soon be tackling the subject. The educational content is all there. The catch is you don’t get a certificate or any evidence to show off to anyone that you took the course other than the actual knowledge you got. Well, you could, but for edx, it would cost you around $50 USD.

I can imagine people giving a litany of criticisms about this. “That still sounds useless without a diploma; Sure you learn stuff, but it doesn’t help me get a job; This is not the kind of education that will lead to anything; Without a diploma or even a certificate, it’s somewhat a waste of time.” I’m not saying that free online courses are a complete substitute to the actual University hurdles. I’m saying it just might be the next best thing for a lot of people if a formal diploma is just not a viable option for them for whatever reason. We spend hours upon hours using the Internet everyday for near-idle and inconsequential nothings. I bet sometimes we just stare at our phones and computer screens wondering what else to do. Why not spend a couple of those hours a day learning stuff that can possibly and practically help you along the way?

Dozens of renowned entrepreneurs were college drop-outs. Yes, they succeeded mostly because of their go-getter attitude. But not one of these famous people would have succeeded if they didn’t know enough about what they wanted to build or create. Yes, it was their passion and attitude that drove them to discover and learn and innovate and succeed. So I guess the question you have to ask yourself is, do you have ANY passion whatsoever to succeed in whatever you want to do? Because if you really do, there’s absolutely no excuse to not take advantage of free education.

If you want to check edx out and browse through the hundreds of subjects available there (and if you also liked this post), you can click on the links below. Note that you will be going through Adfly. Just wait a few seconds until the Skip Ad button appears at the top right corner of your browser and then click it.

edx

Below are more free online courses you might also want to check out. Credits to Tricia Miranda for introducing me to moocs! (massively open online courses).

University of the Philippines online courses – just a few courses currently available and not very interactive but still worth a look.

Alison and Coursera – I haven’t tried either one yet. I’m currently juggling too much stuff at the moment. I’m all set with two subjects for now.