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Monthly Archives: July 2010
Paypal India Issue Resolved – Electronic Transfer to Continue
The first thing I was greeted with this morning when I opened my mailbox was a short mail from Paypal stating that Electronic Transfer for Indians will continue. What seemed a couple of days back when I had received a mail stating that the India Issue is back and Electronic Transfer would be discontinued from 1st August’10 brought a lot of distress among all Indians.
Couple of months back when the same issue over electronic transfer had erupted it had taken them more than a month to come up with a solution(Purpose codes). So today when I say the mail, I feared worse but was pleasantly surprised.
Now Electronic Transfer will still be available from 1st August’10. Also the $5 fee waived off on cheque withdrawal will still be there. I suspect this to be only a temporary thing and it might not be long when the issue is raised again. My advice would be to start testing alternate options and transfer more frequently to your bank accounts.
Without making you read more, the email from Paypal is below:
Dear Piyush Agarwal,
We’ve received good news. You can continue to enjoy electronic withdrawals just as you did before.
While we have received your appreciation for the advanced notice and the refund of the cheque processing fee, we also have heard loud and clear that you highly value the ease-of-use of our electronic withdrawal service. Our customers are our number one priority and we are working tirelessly to improve our service.
Thank you for your patience and in appreciation for your continued support, we will still provide the $5 USD processing fee refund for any cheque withdrawals made from July 29, 2010 until further notice.
For any enquiries, please contact PayPal customer support by logging into your PayPal account and clicking on ‘contact us’ at the bottom of the page.
Thank you,
The PayPal Asia Team
Indian Online Stores that accept Paypal Payment Method
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…!!