Although PayPal is the most popular platform that allows people to complete different online payments, some individuals are continuously looking for some other alternatives that give them the chance to benefit from better services. The reasons behind this action are due to various issues, such as availability, terms and conditions, restrictions and so on. If you are one of these individuals, you most probably want to find out the best PayPal alternatives. In order to help you with this issue, the following list present the top available options that come along with a succinct description of their activities.

Google Checkout

Google Checkout seems to be the best possible alternative to PayPal. Recommended for all users, this option allows anyone to benefit from a series of services, which are similar to those of PayPal. Therefore, the first thing that you should know about Google Checkout is that it allows its users to complete different online transactions. If you open a Google Checkout account, you can make payments to those individuals or businesses that accept Google Checkout. There are a few important pros of this service, including the fact that it is 100% free. Additionally, the signup process is not only free but also very fast and really convenient. Google Checkout also provides a great customer service, which gets back to its customers within 24 hours. The most important drawbacks relate to the fact that it is not available on eBay, it does not provide phone support and most of its services are quite limited for the moment.

Moneybookers

Having about 3.5 million users, this service is also recommended to different individuals. A truly great thing about this service is that the number of its users shows a continuous growth, which tells us that this service will become a very strong competitor for PayPal. Similar to PayPal, this service also allows its users to send or receive money via an e-mail address. As well, the service is present on eBay, so that you can easily close different deals. The pros that relate to this service highlight a few important considerations, such as the fact that the service is available around the world; the signup process is free for all users; its interface is user-friendly; and the platform can be used for different person-to-person, person-to-business, business-to-business and even auction transactions.

AlertPay

This is another important PayPal alternative, which represents an ideal solution for those people who intend to collect payments for their businesses. Additionally, it also allows people to send money via e-mail addresses. Thus, if you want to make any online payments, send or receive money, AlertPay can definitely support all these activities. This service also comes along with some great pros, which include free signups, low fees, fast and easy withdrawing process, and strong seller and buyer protection. Its cons highlight the fact that the platform is not yet available on eBay and the customer service via phone has some truly high fees.

In conclusion, if you are searching for the best PayPal alternatives, it is important to know that the aforementioned options are a real pleasure to use. Therefore, anyone who intends to open some new accounts for completing various online transactions should definitely consider these great PayPal alternatives.

[This is a guest article by author: Srikar Srinivasula, who blogs at - GadgetDust.com ]

Not so easy

For some reason best know to itself my Sky+ HD box decided to record only the second half of Stargate Universe this week.

No problem I thought, I’ll watch it on the much flaunted updated Sky Player that integrates with Windows 7 which was launched on the 19th November. Installation and registration onto my ASRock Nettop went fine and all initially appeared OK…

Sky's Sales Pitch

I log into the system and only see last weeks episode of Stargate Universe which is a real shame as nobody seems to have added this weeks episode yet (other series I have check before have been OK) . Now I’ll have to wait until they update it before I can watch the whole episode. Poot!

Whilst installing Sky Player it I did notice a few other oddities…

Some of the Episode details do not match up to the footage they are linked to, e.g. the present weeks episode of Modern Family actually has the title and synopsys of NEXT weeks episode. I saw the blurb and thought nice! I haven’t seen that one yet only to find it was this weeks which I had already seen! how disappointing :-/

When Installing Sky Player I noticed it said about the capabilities for integration into Windows 7′s Media Centre – there’s even a video of it. However the only info it says on how to actually access it is “Start Media Centre and select Sky Player”. But what if there is no SKY item listed as is the case with mine? it’s really not very helpful.

moving goalposts

I tried to check out the Forums (basically “you sod off and support yourself” so we can save money on any actual decent Support model) and that was  as buggy as hell too. The Posts are erratically displayed all over the place with many parts repeated and the Search box allows you to enter only grayed out text and when you click ‘Search’ it does nothing.

Actually – in the last few mins of writing this post the’re  forums have been taken down. The Link to it has been replaced with a “Register for free” button!

Come on guys! get your act together!

IMDb just turned 19. Yes, Techcrunch’s article reveals that the IMDb is actually older than the web browser. There’s a long ass explanation to that, which we’ll not be discussing here. But certainly, in these 19 years of web existence, IMDb is one of the most visited websites and also synonymous to the Wikipedia for movie lovers like me. We do have other ‘superior’ movie rating systems such as Metacritic or Rottentomatoes, but IMDb totally belongs to the viewer’s rating and is not limited to critics. And hence, IMDb movie ratings are often considered to be closer to the taste of the audience.
The obvious utility of IMDb is that it is the largest compilation of movies and is not limited to just Hollywood or for that matter Bollywood. Every movie lover I know goes to IMDb first to check out if a movie is worth watching or not, or even to just have a look at initial reactions of audiences on a movie. So, for world cinema lovers, this is the one stop to gather information on movies. But other than the obvious use of viewing a movie’s ratings, what are the other ways that you use IMDb for? I have listed a couple of them below.

1. Homepage:

The Homepage has a lot to offer by itself. The headings on the homepage are:

Tops at the Box Office: List of Box Office top grossers

Opening this Week: The releases of the week

Coming Soon: The upcoming releases

New on DVD and Blu Ray

Other than these, the trivia section on the Homepage is a lovely addition. Movie/TV quote of the day, Born today and Did you know.

2: IMDb Top 250:

We all movie lovers consider this as the Holy Scroll of movie favourites. The list of the Top 250 movies of all time. I do remember when Dark Knight’s soaring popularity made it an instant hit and how fanboyism votes made it quickly rise to the no.1 spot and dethrone its predecessor GodFather. But it wasn’t for long there. As of now [ Oct 19, 2009 ], the Shawshank Redemption is at the no.1 spot with a total of 449,943 votes and a rating of 9.1, whereas the Dark Knight is at no.9 with 8.8 .

But did you know how the rating is calculated? Here’s the formula:

weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

where:

• R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
• v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
• m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 1500)
• C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.8)

for the Top 250, only votes from regular voters are considered.

BTW, there’s also a Bottom 100 list.

3. Movie browsing by categories:

By Genre: Action, Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Drama, Comedy etc.

By Year/Decade:

4. Archives:

Award winners down the years.

All Time Box Office winners.

5. Movie details and People profiles:

Not only the movie rankings, but all related information. As in, who is the director of a particular movie. What other movies has he/she done. etc etc.

IMDb also has recorded information of Film personality profiles and a chronicling of their works.

Have I missed out on any other utility of IMDb that we use. Shout it out in the comments. Cheerio!

Initially, when I heard about the idea of a browser on a USB portable pen-drive, I started questioning about its applicability. I mean, why would someone not install an actual browser on the machine itself, and rather have it on a USB pen drive. The answer is simple: Portability. Not only of your favorite browser experience, but also of all that comes with it – bookmarks, addins etc etc. The applicability does not actually matter much if you access internet only at home, through your own machine [ in case of which, its better to just install it]. Or if work does not allow access to USB ports and installing of any new browsers, you are indeed forced to use whatever is available. But, if you do have access to USB ports at work, and you do not want to install your browser [ or are not allowed so by corpo firewall] , and also share your history data, bookmarks etc on your work machine – Portable browsers are the way to go.
Good news is – all your favorite flavours are available in their portable avatars. And here’s the list.

1. Firefox 3.0 on USB:

Portable Apps bring the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition. So, now you can take your bookmarks, passwords, history, extension with you. Visit the PortableApps website - Mozilla page to download the browser. It is just 9 MB in size, and after installation it expands to 27 -77 MB. I really don’t know what that * sign, beside the 77MB figure, means on the Download button.
Works fine on Win XP SP2 onwards, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.

2. My favorite – Sabka favorite – Google Chrome 2 Portable

No installation required. Just unzip the files in the folder and you can get started. To download your copy of Chrome Portable, go to this site [ the site is in German ]. The download link is here. Don’t worry, the software is indeed in English.
All your Chrome goodness are saved on the portable device. User settings such as Web History, Cookies are saved in the ‘Profile’ folder. And Program Settings are saved in ‘Chrome’ folder. Works fine in Win XP SP2 onwards, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.

3. And finally, Opera10 @USB

Opera USB is actually a private project by an Austrian Web Developer called Markus Obermair. Opera@USB has been certified to be tested by Opera. The portable version of the browser can carry out all the usual functionalities, and stores all the user data in the portable device itself.
Go here to download the USB version. Languages supported are: Deutsche, English and Russian, and there is an International Version as well.
The developer’s webpage suggests the only requirements to install Opera@USB are: a computer with an internet connection, and a USB Flashdrive with about 15MB space left. And oh yeah, it works with every Windows PC. hmmm, not quite sure about ‘EVERY’ Windows PC, but it surely works on WinXP SP2, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.

P.S. Sorry Linux and Mac users. And oh yeah, talking of browser, I am at work, where I don’t have access to USB drives, nor the admin rights to install Chrome/Firefox. That means I am using IE6. And this is what Tumblr reminds me.

This one is different you say. Filmfresh lets users purchase Legitimate DivX rips of latest Hollywood releases ranging from the Watchmen to the just released on DVD -17 again. The catch here is that it is not DRM-free, but can be played on all DivX supporting players and Sony PS3 etc. Also there is no expiry date on the downloaded movies. So it is not a rent model, but more like owning a lower Quality rip also without the DVD extras. The cost per movie download is 10$ -13$ which is on the higher side, since DVDs cost just a few bucks more.

Considering all of this, do we see a future for this particular business model? Take this.

Netflix rents out DVDs for $8.99 a month onwards for one-DVD for a month. This is almost a dollar cheaper than the DivX rip to be owned [assuming the user would order just a single DVD per month]. The DivX rip has no DVD extras, and the selection is going to anyway consist of lesser titles which customers want to own and keep as a showpiece in their personal library of titles. For such movies, such as the Matrix or the Star Wars trilogy, a cinema lover would not spend 10$ on a DivX copy, but spend a few bucks more to own the DVD or heck, the Blu-Ray [ which I know is expensive]. But, for a movie to be experimented with, consumers would adopt the renting system from Blockbusters or Netflix, which is far cheaper.

It’s being backed by Sony, Lionsgate, WB, Paramount etc. So it seems this is just not going to die yet. But yes, the pricing model has to be reevaluated to make this actually work. I suggest the service reduces the price to almost half of it- say around 5$ and also offer the entire DVD ripped along with the extras. Plus, the DivX has to be ripped with the best of settings.

Sorry, I can’t still convince myself to see this working. Why would someone pay(such a ridiculously higher price) to own a movie which is at a lower quality than DVD? The pricing has to compensate for all these losses.

Back in the day, we all used phones to communicate. Then Skype came along and changed the world. Sure, there were other systems before it, but Skype had it all sewn up with a neat little package that bundled the hallowed VOIP with a simple interface and of course – It was free!! Later, video was added (that Beta seemed to last forever!) and the whole thing really took off. Skype has always had some big hitters looking over its shoulder with the likes of the goliath Windows Messenger (Currently in its ‘Live’ incarnation) and the Gmail (With its flexibility and low resource usage) to name but a few.

With this in mind the major release of Skype 4.0 was much anticipated… What new wonders can we behold?… Well, I can tell you one thing – if you’re expecting better video you may be sadly disappointed.  :-\

Last week if you’d have asked me what my preferred video calling software was I’d have said Gmail and Skype were pretty much 50/50, this week however it has to be Gmail. The new Skype 4.0 video looks like a nasty police photo-fit or, worse, a deliberately pixelated news item. Yes it gets a little better if you give it a few minutes but the previous video was clearly better (IMHO). They have, however, done a good job with the voice side of things which is undoubtedly smooth, and sure, there are some new whistles and bells to play with (the “Open” or “Open with Video” seems so obvious now) but why would you release an update with worse performance on the one thing everybody stares at???…

Now if only Google could make their video a little more resilient to all those sudden crashes….

Hmm. Still not sure to find the right resources on the web. Still stuck with only the few websites that you know and want to know what the world is reading. (‘Course there are other ways to find that out). So if you search only on Google, have only a Facebook profile and get your mail inbox on Hotmail (you get the picture), check this out at the other options available. Special mention is the categorised catalog that has been done here. The website is called LowgoLink (guess the domain Logo Link wasn’t available, so they went for the phonetic sounding twin’s name). The categories available are:- News, Search, Video, Email, Social, Sport, Social Network , Games, Showbiz, Travel, Shopping, Money, Health, Food, Music and Movies.

It is indeed quite helpful to have all the bunch that matters. Have a look at the second pic after the jump.

Surfing made Easy. Click away all there is!

Have you always wanted to get out of a boring situation where there is your boring auntie to meet and all she can talk about is how her son is making a fortune. That’s when you wanted some friend to call you up and say, “Dude you need to be here”. Friendly crank calls are a big need of the day, be it to escape your boring aunt, your boss or a lousy housewarming party. And in case your friends are too busy to co-operate, no worries anymore.

Get hold of this awesome thing available for FREE. Yes, free. It’s called GetMOOH (Get Me Out Of Here). It’s as simple as this. Fill in your name, your country code, your mobile number, select the time and date when you want the call to come to your phone. Select from a range of voice samples, and you could even practice to the given samples with your preplanned replies.

Read the How it Works section for all the FAQs. Pretty much answers all the questions that would initially arise. For guys in the UK, it’s on BEBO.

How to set up? easy, meezy!! Get a password by entering your email ID, Name, Intl Prefix, and Mobile Number. The password will be then sent as a text message on your mobile. So ensure that the Mobile number is correct. As you get the password, go back to the Main Menu and enter it. You can use this password for all your future crank calls on GetMOOH.  What’s more interesting is the Notes section which has a funny Q&A.

Why is Getmooh free?: Because Google exists.

Bravo!