eWebBuddy - Your Online buddy - Tech Talk for Non-Techies

Indian Online Stores that accept Paypal Payment Method

Piyush Agarwal — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:29:53 +0000

After the PayPal India issue came up yesterday, I have been hunting for online Indian webstores where I can spend my PayPal money. Another motive behind this hunt was to see if there are ways I can save my Currency conversion costs. And I am happy to let you all know that I was successful in finding some such stores.

List of Indian Webstores which allow PayPal as payment method

1. Inkfruit – This is a great webstore for buying designer tees. The concept is more on the lines of “By the people, For the people”. The designer community of this site is awesome and very active. New designs are released almost every week. I had also blogged about their monsoon sale a few days back. Also, PayPal payment on this site does not involve currency conversion rates.

2. Bookscaterer – I am a book lover and am always looking for sites which have good discounts and collection of books. This site though has a limited collection of books, allows paypal payments without currency conversion rates. Most of the books are discounted as well so you save even more. There delivery is also good but customer care is not very professional.

3. Infibeam – This is like an online mall with a wide stretch of categories and things to buy. They accept paypal payments but I have generally found that the stuff listed here are bit overpriced. Still works for an option.

4. Coimbatore Mall – This mall is like infibeam but lacks great UI. They too have a wide range of products and accept paypal. Prices seemed a little high but I guess its still bearable. Do check out the store and give your views.

5. Webmall India – Another mall, good UI and lot of options. Pricing seems adequate and they accept Paypal payments, currency is converted according to the current rate so you save again.

6. Indiawithlove – This store has a wide variety of items more suitable if you are looking at sending a gift to your loved ones. Price-wise its very expensive but hello when has online gifting solutions been easy on pockets. They have direct prices in dollars so no currency conversion involved.

7. AllIndiaFlowers – Another gift store if you are interested in sending flowers/chocs/soft toys. Never experienced their service but according to another blogger ADITYA, it is NOT value for money. Still one must be aware of all the options.

8. Lynx-India – A Chandigarh based computer store for all your IT needs. I found the pricing competitive and they also have an ebay store. So you can buy your computer peripherals from here.

9. WayInfotech – Though people go for global webhosts these days, if you are looking for an Indian webhost who is reliable and very cost-effective then check-out this site. I have been using them for 3yrs now for many of my clients and have not come across even a single issue these days. Their support is pretty good as well. Hosting costs as low as Rs.875 which includes free domain. They have recently started accepting Paypal payments.

Hope, all of you find this list helpful and also the Paypal withdrawal issue is resolved soon. I will add more stores to the list as I find them, if you are aware of any do let me know.

Image Credit – Doteasy

PayPal India Issue Back – Electronic Transfer to be stopped

Piyush Agarwal — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:58:02 +0000

A few months back PayPal issue had been troubling Indian users in availing payments. For more than a month, Paypal users were left stranded as all the ways of requesting money withdrawal had been blocked.

After a lot of chaos and wait, PayPal came up with a solution according to Indian Regulations which will enable fund transfers with the help of Purpose codes. Things seemed to have been sorted out then and it seemed no more issues will creep in.

But to user’s dismay, the electronic transfers started taking more time than earlier and also since a PAN number was required, users (like me) were not able to operate multiple PayPal accounts. But still everything was fine as money was reaching the users.

This morning I received a mail from PayPal stating that they will be stopping the electronic fund transfer from 1st August’2010 yet again. From 29th July’10, users can request a cheque transfer, fees to which will be reimbursed. Though it is not so clear why these issue are happening, they are surely causing a lot of worry among Indian users as there are thousands of PayPal users in India who rely on it for their daily business and transactions.

As these issues are happening repeatedly, I feel users should now find PayPal alternatives are switch to whichever suits the best. Also check out this list of Indian webstores where you can spend your Paypal money. Below is the email received from Paypal.

In accordance with regulatory instructions, we would like to notify you about a change in our withdrawal functionality in India starting on August 1, 2010. At present you can request for either an electronic or cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account if you are an India user.

From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account.

While we are working hard to restore the electronic withdrawal service, in the meantime, we are bringing this matter to your attention so that you can plan your future withdrawal activities accordingly.
To request for a cheque withdrawal:

1. Log into your PayPal account, click on ‘Withdraw’.
2. Click on the ‘Request a cheque from PayPal’ link.
3. Enter the withdrawal amount and select your mailing address, then click ‘Continue’.
4. Click ‘Submit’ to confirm your request.

In order to help you with this change and until further notice, we will refund the $5 USD cheque withdrawal fee to you for cheque withdrawals made on July 29, 2010 onwards.

For any questions, please log into your PayPal account and click ‘Contact Us’ at the bottom of the page.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused from this change in our withdrawal functionality. We will provide ongoing updates to you here. We thank you for your attention and patience as we work tirelessly to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.

Thank you,

The PayPal Asia Team

eWebBuddy ditches Skribit and Kontera from today

Piyush Agarwal — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:16:51 +0000

It is very important for a blogger who is looking at blogging as a source of income to keep on experimenting and trying out new things. These new ways are generally not just included to improve site earnings but also overall usability.

Like many of my blogger friends here, I had started eWebBuddy as a medium to boost some earnings and make friends online. It also intended to share knowledge, information and updates over simple but important things. Awareness was supposed to be the key on engagement and I believe I have been doing that pretty well considering the latest Google Pagerank update.

Over the time period since inception of this blog, I added Google Ads, Chitika, Kontera, Paid Reviews and many other services for various purposes. Today, in an attempt to improve the user experience and also get rid of things that did not work for the site, I am ditching Skribit and Kontera.

Skribit was being used to enable users to provide queries, topics they would like to read about, I have received way better response via my contact form. I have used skribit on the site for more than 6months now and keeping in mind its performance, I have planned to remove it. This will also make the sidebar a little less cluttered.

Kontera are the text ads that you might have noticed on the posts earlier. The chose keywords from the text content of a page and double-underline them. When a user hovers over the link, the ad is displayed as a pop-out. The earnings of this ad-medium has been very disappointing and I have also received complains from readers stating that they found these ads to be annoying. So since my friends here do not like it and personally its not helping me much, it has to bite dust!

So from today no more pop-up ads or the green idea box in the sidebar. Some say change is meant for good, lets hope this one does! Let me know what do you think of the update. I would also really love to know if anyone has earned well with the help of Kontera text ads here. Would love to read your views. Do leave a comment below…

Download Free Adobe Flash Builder

Piyush Agarwal — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:52:19 +0000

Adobe is one of the leaders in multimedia tools which are very popular among designers, media specialists and even gamers. Their tools are quite expensive and one finds it tough to even find an application copy to learn and understand the tool.

Keeping this issue in mind, Adobe has come out with a new program where they are giving away copies of some of their tools for education purpose and for those professionals who are currently unemployed. These copies are meant for non-commercial tool and will prove helpful for all who are affected by the economic condition.

According to the Adobe site, the tools are free for:

Students, faculty and staff of eligible educational institutions
Software developers who are affected by the current economic condition and are currently unemployed
Event attendees who receive a special promotional code at their event

The tools currently available are:

ColdFusion 9
Coldfusion Builder
Flash Builder

So make the most of this offering and learn the tools for fun or career.

To download: https://freeriatools.adobe.com/

Cool Tees at Inkfruit Monsoon Sale

Piyush Agarwal — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:28:31 +0000

I had earlier posted about t-shirt sales from Threadless.com. Though many have liked those, my Indian friends have always complained for not being able to make best use of the offers. Well, here’s good news:

Just like threadless, Inkfruit is an Indian online tee store with loads of cool tees and a very active community of designers.

What is this site all about?

Well, it is about t-shirts, real cool ones. After bollywood flicks like “Wake up Sid” and “I Hate Luv Storys”, everyone is raving about witty, cool tees. And Inkfruit.com proves to be a great destination to find such tees.

Inkfuit is an active community of designer where daily contests are held to churn out interesting designs selected by the site users itself. Thus that ensures that the best design wins. These designs get printed and people can buy them at cool prices whereas the designer earns a lot of bucks.

Monsoon Sale

Generally these tees cost between Rs.300 to Rs.500 but Inkfuit has launched Monsoon sale from today where tees are being sold at upto 50% discount and along with that, free shipping across India. It really is raining tees! Make the most of it, grab those cool tees before they are sold out. I bought 2!

Whether you are a designer or a tee-freak, you are gonna love their site. One can

Type Rupee Symbol with your Keyboard – Buddy Tuts

Piyush Agarwal — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:22:31 +0000

On 16th July’2010, Indian Rupee joined the elite group of currencies which have their own symbol. This symbol has been designed by Bombay IIT Post-Graduate B. Udaya Kumar. Though the symbol has already had many explanations, everyone has accepted it with open arms.

Now that the symbol is out and you can start using it, the trouble comes as to how you can type it? Where all other currencies have this fixed, it will take a while for the Indian Currency to come with a dedicated key with the symbol on keyboards. But does not mean you cannot use it.

Steps to install Rupee Font

A new font designed by Foradian Technologies has been released which can be used to get this font. The steps to install the font are:

Download the Rupee font.
Copy the .ttf file to your fonts folder under control panel.
Go to a text editor like MS Word.
Select the Rupee font from your fonts list.
The ‘~’ key next to numerical ’1′ key is the one that will help you achieve the symbol.

That’s all it takes. Use the symbol where-ever you want, its just a key away.

In case you face any issues with versions or OS, consult this link.

WordPress Security Plugins and Tips – Buddy Tuts

Piyush Agarwal — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:08:37 +0000

So, how many of my friends use wordpress here? WordPress today being the most preferable and popular platform of all the blogging platforms, it would not be surprising if the numbers are quite steep.

But then the question that comes up is how many have you taken steps to ensure that your WordPress blog is secure?? I can see a lot of doubt on your face but worry not, this post will guide you to improve your security.

A recent event triggered this thought in my mind that I should check my WordPress security. If you might have noticed in the past couple of days, ewebbuddy was throwing a Database not Available error though I could not find anything wrong in my database. Recently I had upgraded my WP installation and I was worried that it might have been a result of some security loophole in which case I had to clean my installation and install everything back. The process is tedious but I couldn’t think of a better alternative. Thankfully I had backup of all the posts, so I was not afraid of losing any data. But further probing told me that it wasn’t a security issue but actually a issue due to certain changes made on the Cpanel by my host lunarpages. I was glad that the issue could be resolved but it got me thinking that is my blog secure enough?! And I took steps to ensure it is.

WordPress Security Tips

Here I have list down some of simplest things that you should check to improve your WP security:

Have strong Passwords - I know this might sound something that is told again and again but it is also one of the very crucial ones. It is very important that all your users have a strong password. That makes hacking with Brute force tough. Try to create a password which is alphanumeric, has some special characters and also has some letters in CAPS.
Delete/Rename Admin Account – When you install WordPress, by default an Admin account is created and a password is generated for you. Generally people tend to use this account for further use. Also, even if they make another account, they keep the admin account. This makes the account vulnerable. What you should do is that, either change the username “Admin” or simply create a new Administrator account and delete the ‘Admin’ account.
Select a good Host – Many of a times websites get hacked if the web-hosting company is not good enough and has vulnerabilities. I use Lunarpages which I have found over time to be a good host with an excellent support.
File/Folder Permissions – It is very important that your hosted files and folders are as tightly kept as possible. The permissions should ensure that it is not accessible to the outer world (read as hackers)! You can use an FTP tool like FileZilla to ensure that your File/Folder permissions are proper. Ensure that your all folders’ permission level is 755 and for files its 644.
Keep WP updated – Make sure that you always update your WordPress installation. Now WP has automatic upgrade option which makes this task a piece of cake. WordPress community is always upto making improvements to the platform and many security bugs are fixed with every release. Every upgrade make your installation less vulnerable.
Don’t Advertise your Version – Make sure that you do not go around and advertise your WP version anywhere. It may lead to someone making use of a security vulnerability for that particular version on your blog.
Secure WP-Config.php – This is the most important file of your installation as it contains the DB access credentials. To secure it, keep the file permissions to 750. Also you can move it One directory level up i.e. keep it outside the WordPress installation folder.

To know more and know it detail, check out the following post – Hardening WordPress

WordPress Security Plugins

Here are a couple of plugins that I have tested and found quite helpful in making your WP installation secure.

WordPress Security Scan – Scans your installation to ensure there are no vulnerabilities and you have taken all required steps to secure your installation.
Secure WordPress – Similar to WSS above but ensures further more security.
WordPress Firewall – Applies a firewall on your installation which stops any HTTP injections and other intrusions to happen. If a firewall breach is suspected, an email is sent you immediately.

There are more plugins which might prove helpful but I have found that these basic ones make your installation quite strong and secure.

Hope you find this post helpful and make your installation secure. In case you have further tips, plugins do share them below. Goood Day…!!

Image Credit – ClickonF5

Change Background of Google Homepage

Piyush Agarwal — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:37:56 +0000

Because I use the FireFox plug-in for Google Search, I had not noticed this earlier but I am glad I did today. Seems like Google is going Bing way in more than one way. I was also lucky enough earlier to catch the PacMan doodle on Google.

Earlier Google updated the way Search results came up and though I am a fan of Google I was not so happy with the update. The new looked so much like Bing that it was hard to tell how much innovation has got in there. But now I am used to the new UI and find it pretty handy.

So now back to main agenda of this post. Custom backgrounds for Google Homepage. Yup its on now! Go to Google.com (duh!) and you will be getting the option in the lower left side of the browser window. I have tried this in Firefox but I think it should work for all browsers.

Convert your Laptop into a Wi-Fi Hotspot with Windows 7 – Buddy Tuts

Amitkumar Hegde — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:33:16 +0000

Sharing internet over Wi-fi has become quite popular now a days. Since service providers themselves are providing Wi-fi routers, accessing internet on multiple devices such as laptops, PDAs, mobile phones with a single internet connection has become very easy.

But if you have a normal broadband connection and want to create your own wireless network for sharing internet, either you can buy a Wi-Fi router which costs around 2500 INR or use the Windows 7′s Wireless Hosted Network (Virtual Wi-fi) technology which will turn your Windows 7 Laptop in to a Wi-Fi hotspot without any additional hardware. If you want to share internet with a desktop that doesn’t support Wi-Fi, you can get a USB Wi-Fi adapter or a PCI Wireless network card.

How to convert Windows 7 into wifi Hotspot?

If you are wondering what a Wi-Fi Hotspot is, well it is simply put a device that enables users to access internet over wireless LAN. Now how do we set up our Windows 7 machine to act like a Wi-Fi Hotspot? Well actually there are couple of ways to do it.

Windows 7 comes with a feature called Ad-hoc network (This was available on Windows Vista also), using which you can share internet with another device. I tried the same but did not feel it to be quite impressive. Here is a youtube video which explains how to do it.

Better and easier way is to use a tool called Called Connectify Me

How to use Connectify Me?

With Connectify me all you need to do is just follow a simple wizard which will ask you a Network Name, a Password for the wireless network and the connection you would like to share.

Once you are done with the wizard, you can start the hotspot by clicking on Start Hotspot, which will make the network available for other devices. Just scan for the wireless network on another device, key in the password and you are done.

Connectify sits on your system tray and displays the number of clients connected to the network. Now starting and stopping the wireless network is just a click of button. Connectify also enables local sharing such as file sharing. All your shared folders will be available on the network, all you need to do is enter your windows login id and password to access your files wirelessly on another device.

This was a simple click and go method, but if you are interested in exploring more read on.

For the more Techie Readers here

If you wanted more features and wanted to change the functionality of the sharing then there is more for you.

There is a Open Source tool called Virtual Router on codeplex, which is entirely developed in C# 3.5 with WPF. Now comes the real fun, just download the code and create your own version of the Virtual Router…! You can go ahead and add a module to limit the internet bandwidth shared on the wireless network. You can add a module which logs all the URLs browsed on the wireless network for each connection, in case if you are planning to use it in an office environment, this will be helpful.

I tried both Connectify Me and Virtual Router from My Windows 7 laptop and could access internet on other devices such as another laptop, an iPhone, a blackberry mobile without any hiccups.

This is a guest post by my friend and another techie, Amitkumar Hegde.

Buy Fitness and Sports Goods Online – Makais.com

Piyush Agarwal — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:13:22 +0000

Someone once told me, “If you gotta stay happy, stay fit!” and I said, “Ya right” but that was the end. I could not make the lazy me get up and even go on jogging early in the morning. When it comes to sports, Sleeping is my favorite sport followed by I would say cycling.

Its been a long time since I have been cycling around coz,
a. Read para 1
b. I don’t have a bicycle.

Though there is hardly any solution for reason ‘a.’, if I would have been in US today this post would have been the answer for reason (b.). Yes, this post is a review of Makais.com, the look of which got me excited enough to go and check out the latest bicycles in town.

About Makais.com

Before I dive into my review on how the site looks and functions, its better to understand what it is all about. As we know every business has an interesting history behind it, so does Makais which was known as MakaiBikes earlier(in 2008) when they used to deal in only Cruiser bikes. As time passed, there business boomed and on customer demand new products were added to the list.

Today they have relaunched themselves with a bigger office in California and a new name Makais.com You can read about them from the Our Story section.

Makais.com is a online ecommerce story where one can order fitness and outdoor sports goods. They have a long list of positive feedback and many satisfied customers.

What do they sell?

Well one thing they sell is quite obvious by now, Bicycles but apart from that there are several outdoor and fitness gear lined up. They even sell unicycles and various kinds of trailers. I did not even know that such trailers existed. Apart from all the usual fitness equipments they have cool stuffs to help you with outdoor dining and even furniture.

Not only do they have such a great line-up, they are priced very low and they also offer free shipping.

Site Design

Well one thing that struck me the moment I saw their website was the lack of a logo. Though one can argue that the Name written in a specific font can act as a logo but in this case I disagree. For a ecommerce site with fitness/sports in mind, I feel a lively logo is a must. Somehow its also the most important step enabling branding and recognition.

The site design overall is very simple, easy flowing and pleasant. The design keeps everything straight-forward and easy to find. Something that I would say is a plus for the site. But still the freelance designer in me says that this site can do wonders with a redesign. Something that makes the site look more inviting and fun. Its about bicycles, adventure and outdoors afterall.

The current top sellers section in the right sidebar is good and works well. The product description page works with the overall site design and feel. So, the site design works and serves the purpose but it could have been better. But the folks at Makais should for sure get a logo that identifies themselves well.

eWebBuddy Review

Good website if you are in U.S. and you are looking forward to buying sports goods online. They have great feedback and free shipping on offer along with competitive price. Worth a try. I would really like to get one of those Unicycles.

Disclosure: This is a paid but unbiased post with 100% honest remarks. Get a paid Review for yourself here!