Big daddy is watching you! You don’t agree? Well … I don’t mean that you are being watched when you indulge yourself. You allow so many apps today to capture your location information using your smartphone or your internet IP, a lot of times it does seem like that all your friends (read online contacts) are watching you.

Latest addition to this war of location based services (LBS) is PlayCez.

Few FAQs:

So, what is PlayCez?

PlayCez is a social app which helps you discover places of interest close to you. It also gives some weight to your previous likes and your friends’ (again read online contacts) recommendations.

How do I use it?

You need to open a new browser window/tab and open the website www.playcez.com, and login using your facebook account. Yes, you cannot use PlayCez if you hate facebook. Not my problem.

Why should I use it?

A lot of times you run out of playcez (grrr … places I mean) where you could go out with your girl/woman/wife/boy/man/husband etc. PlayCez can help you out of such situations. Having a smartphone with good internet connection is a necessary condition though.

Does it work everywhere?

Sadly, no. It is primarily based in India and with presence only in major cities right now. The PlayCez team is planning to expand its presence, but it may take a while.

What is great about PlayCez?

- User experience is really great and innovative. Oh…you don’t know what it looks like? Well, its a mash up of Google Maps and Playcez’s own emoticons.

- Expressing yourself is very easy with eight to-the-point emoticons. You are free to add your own ‘expert’ comments though.

- Easy to login with your facebook login. It also makes your reviews visible to your already big fan following on fb. That means you can also see where your friends are hanging out.

- The more you use PlayCez, the more points you earn. These points might earn you some real world goodies.

What is not so good about PlayCez?

- They still do not have a native app for iPhone or android based phones. It is actually very irritating to type p…l…a…y…c…e…z…….c…o…m and then hit return key on your smartphone. I say this because smartphone users are going to be the biggest users of this service.

- You cannot log in if you don’t use facebook (very unlikely). But I guess there are quite a handful of influencial facebook haters who might want to use this app (hypothetical situation).

Who made this?

Oh…didn’t I tell you. Anirudh Maitra (ex Google) and Ashwani Gaur (ex Deloitte). You can find more about them here.

P.S. I know one of the founders personally. Please pardon me if you find any bias in favour of PlayCez.

The internet was already abuzz with reviews of this amazing phone, and all techies blogging about how this phone was much superior to the iPhone 4. And it definitely was. It was also priced suitably lower than the already getting old iPhone 4. So, I finally bought the world’s best smartphone ever. Wow!

Everyone was so jealous of me for having THE Samsung Galaxy S II. And now I had already gotten used to the Marketplace – the Android app store. I was loving this phone for lots of good things. Few of them mentioned here:

• Amazing display and a 4.3 inch screen
• Impeccable touchscreen experience
• Awesome 8MP camera, with 1080p video recording
• Sleek shape and light bodyweight
• Amazing battery life

But as we already know that nothing can be really perfect, this phone too gave me a few not good experiences, listed below:

• The WiFi bulb is not one of the best ones around
• The microphone also does not respond really well if you do not hold the phone at an angle of tan^-1(1.714) to the equator and tan^-1(0.685) to the prime meridian (further help on tan^-1 can be found here)
• Even with a 1.2Ghz processor and a 1GB RAM, the awesome Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread got stuck a few times when I tried running lots of (read 4-5) apps in parallel
• The software interface ‘Kies’ between the phone and a desktop/laptop responds real slow
• The awesome 8MP camera starts looking quite ordinary when you try using it at a 4x zoom

Nonetheless, I love this phone as I had spent a fortune buying this phone, and is the best phone (technically) available as of now. I will wait for iPhone 6 though.

Pictures taken at 1x and 4x zoom. You can definitely see the loss of sharpness when zoomed in at 4x.

Introduction

History: Formed by Kashyap Dalal and Navneet Rai in December 2007. Kashyap and Navneet are former batchmates from the 2002 IITB batch.

What do they do? -- They get your designs and slogans printed on T-shirts and other merchandise like caps, mugs, posters etc. Inkfruit focuses primarily on T-shirts.

How do they do? -- They get designs online from its users, and get them printed through vendors. The T-shirts are then sold online and through stores. The business is divided almost 50-50 between the online and offline channels. One quarter of the online business comes from overseas.

Who else does this? -- There are a lot of companies which have been around for quite some time now, and have been doing pretty good business. A few to name are Myntra, Dilsebol, Pringoo, Xtees, etc.

How is Inkfruit different? -- Inkfruit has the idea of being the democratic company which has all its designs created and voted by its users. Other companies do not have this level of customization. The older players allow you to customize only to the level of your name or some slogan being printed. Also, collection of Inkfruit designs was good as compared to others.

Revenue: With almost 5000 T-shirts being sold every month, and an average price of Rs. 220 per shirt, the net revenue comes to about Rs. 11,00,000 per month. Thats pretty good! They are planning to push up the sales to almost 15000 T-shirts by the end of FY 2009-10. They are also planning to foray into collared T-shirt printing.

Thumbs up for Inkfruit:

• Collection of designs is really good. The idea of being democratic has really clicked, and now Inkfruit probably has one of the best collection amongst all the players in this domain.
• Working equally hard on the offline front really highlights their deep understanding of the Indian market and mentality.
• T-shirt and printing quality is good.

Thumbs down for Inkfruit:

• I faced some login issues. Their login popup was not working properly on Google Chrome. Next thing, it does not allow me to login with my credentials even after I verified my login details from the email they sent.
• Femme collection was very small. Probably they are missing out on a large section of the customers.
• Total dependency on democratic designers. They might run out of good designs if the outsourced designers do not come up with good designs regularly. Microreviews recommends that they should hire some full time designers, given that they are looking to treble their sales in the next six months.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Yamaha Fazer 150cc is a bike which has been designed typically for the Indian market. Fazer was launched in July, 2009. This bike has been typically targeting the upcoming sector of long distance travelers or tourers. Priced at Rs. 72000, the Fazer does not come very heavy on your wallet. With a mileage of almost 60 kmpl, this bike ensures that you could plan some long drives.

Let us have a quick look at the specifications and features:

• Air cooled 153cc engine
• Dry/Kerb weight -- 130/141 kg
• 12 liter fuel tank
• 5 speed gearbox
• Electric start
• Brakes: Front/Rear -- Disc/Drum
• Twin 35W headlamps
• Wide 140mm tubeless tyres
• 7-times adjustable monocross suspension
• LCD meter console
• Meter console and headlamp placed on cowl/hood

The features mentioned above definitely does not having anything which is a breakthrough technology or something which is very new in the market. But let us analyse that how these features are going to affect the performance and ride quality, specially for long distance rides.

The good points:

• With a superb mileage, you could always go long distances without ever worrying about money.
• The low kerb weight of Fazer makes handling very easy.
• Twin headlamps and the LCD meter console give you much better visibility on highways at night.
• The cowl/hood gets you rid of the headlamp weight from the handle. This makes your bike handle very light and suitable for long distance drives.
• The wide tyres give you better control for long distance and straight driving.
• 7-times adustable monocross suspension gives you a lot of flexibility on the ride quality according to the road conditions.
• Tubeless tyres make the ride safe and less prone to be being flattened on being punctured.

The bad points:

• Designed for long distance traveling, Fazer should have come with an oil cooled engine. Absence of this could lead to overheating of engine when the bike is driven for very long distances continuously, specially in hot conditions.
• Absence of kick start could leave you stranded in the middle of a highway if your electric start malfunctioned.
• Wide tyres give better control, but reduce fuel efficiency. So, if this bike was being projected as a tourer bike, the tyres could have been less wider.
• No provision has been made for keeping or tying up your extra luggage. You cannot travel long distances with a small pooch bag on your shoulders. You need to carry a lot of stuff.

The riding posture is pretty good for long distances. But the major drawback is that Fazer inherits most of its design and engine from FZ16, which was designed for city driving. With the same design and minor modifications, you cannot just push a bike for long distance travelling. The gear changing in FZ16, and hence in Fazer, is very short, which is very good for quick pickup and fast city driving. With the same gearbox you cannot go long distances.

As we have heard, the Yamaha Fazer had a large number of bookings, but the suppliers have failed to deliver all the bikes on time. This is a serious thumbs down and has badly hit the popularity of this bike. Its a good bike, but if you wish to wait, then probably you could get hold of some better versions of this bike.

Overall rating: 7/10

• 90di is a very innovative and very much needed travel guide.
• Quite excellent search for well known places.
• Does not give satisfactory results when your search for lesser known or smaller towns.
• Excellent online interface.

90di.com

Here goes our second post in the series of start-up reviews and interviews. Today it is the turn of Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited which is creating quite a lot of buzz with 90di.com. 90di.com is  WEB 3.0, the intelligent web as they would say. In brief, it is a  travel search from Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited . We have gone through the site ourselves and done some test searches ourselves, to see what the fuss was all about. We must say that the site did impress us with its easy-on-the-eye simple user interface and its functionality to a certain extent.Firstly, we would like to acknowledge the fact that this is a novel attempt at having all the possible travel searches under one roof. However, that tag comes with its portion of setbacks.

Before you go on to read our analysis, lets give a peek into how this thing works and when it fails you.

• The first search we did was a simple one -- Mumbai to Cuttack. Cuttack is a well known town situated in Orissa. The results were quite satisfactory. We got good results for direct routes and a list of backup indirect routes.

• The second search we did was a little more difficult one -- Mumbai to Nazira. Some background -- Nazira is a small town in Assam, but still a very important one. ONGC has a very big colony in Nazira. Global giants like Schlumberger and Halliburton have their working bases in Nazira. The results which we got were pretty disappointing. No matching results found. We were hoping that 90di would list out a train to Nizamuddin and then the Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express and then a bus from Dibrugarh to Nazira. But, we were disappointed.

• The third search was a complex one -- Mumbai to Jammu via Lucknow. The intent was to search for break journey results. But we were disappointed when the search was not sorted by relevance. The first few results were direct routes to Jammu, bypassing the ‘via Lucknow’ condition. Probably a bit more work has to done by the 90di team on identifying tags like via and listing the search result according to relevance.

Now lets begin our analysis. Positives first. When it comes to major cities and the related travel information available, 90di.com does a very good job. In addition to the different trains available and their timings it gives you the facility to check the availability of seats. After which you can book your tickets on IRCTC.

So far so good. This feature works great between major towns and cities and to be more specific, for direct routes. If someone wants to travel from Bangalore to Kolkata via Mumbai , the search engine starts to stutter. It gives you information on the direct route first and at the fag end of the list you get to see a very vague set of options that conform to your search criteria. That defeats the purpose of such an offering. It is not always that travelers take direct trains, for a variety of reasons. To them, these results would be disappointing considering the fact that their criteria was given last preference and threw irrelevant data. Google as a search engine prospered only because they believed in placing relevant information at the top of the list, thus achieving their goal of lessening the time spent by the user in getting his information.

The cracks seem to get a lot wider when you search for information between lesser known routes. We admit that a majority of the urban population would be interested in the more popular sectors of travel, but taking only that portion of the population into account would be to miss the whole point of creating such a service. This point becomes more relevant when we consider someone who would need the services of this website, only when he needs to go the lesser known places. His purpose would be defeated in such a scenario.

90di still has a long way to go on a few more things. The fact that 90di gets all its information from online sources keeps the whole 90di team quite busy in checking that whether the information available is the latest one or not. They are doing a commendable job at this one, but still a long way to go. Until and unless they create a very solid offline mode for collecting and validating data, the information provided by 90di cannot be very reliable. It would paint a very sorry picture for 90di if they listed a train timing which was updated a few days ago. We do not intend to question their accountability for the data they provide, but, when we recommend a service to our readers we provide a crystal-clear picture of what they should expect.

One major positive is that, whether or not a route exists between two stations, the search engine recommends the route closest to the one that has been entered. That feature has proven accurate in many cases that we had tested. Overall the intent and package of 90di.com is commendable. Barring the glitches that we had mentioned, it is an extremely useful site. It does have a long way to go before it becomes the one-stop-shop for all travel related searches , but definitely one to be looked-out for.

That being said, we would like you to hear what one of the founders of 90di.com has to say for himself about his pet project and his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. We got an opportunity to ask him a few questions that might interest you and help you in judging the site yourself. We would like to take this opportunity and thank Kiran for taking time off his busy schedule to help us understand what 90di is all about.

Following is the transcript of our chat with him :

Microreviews: Hi Kiran. Good evening…can we get started?

Kiran: Good evening…yes lets start.

Microreviews: Ok…we have used 90di.com…but lets hear about it in your own words.

Kiran: 90di.com is a vertical search engine. Google and others are horizontal search engines. They give information on almost anything, but not the complete information.Vertical search covers information that is deeply hidden in the Internet and focusing on one particular domain, like travel.

Microreviews: Lets start with the 90di team. I guess you are a group of 3 people. Maybe we could start with a small introduction about your team.

Kiran: Yes, we are three people…Mr. Khushnood Naqvi, Abhinit Kumar and myself. All of us earlier worked at Infosys, Bangalore.

Microreviews: And what background do you all guys have in travel?

Kiran: Khushnood worked for 12 years at Infy and we both worked together for 4 years. None of us were precisely in travel related domain to say. We started discussing the ideas about starting something on our own…

…In US kayak.com was the most popular travel search site. We have Flight and Train modes of travel which covers most part of India.  But no websites used to give the routes which involved mixed-mode routes. And we saw a scope here.

Microreviews: So When did u actually start working on this?

Kiran: We agreed upon this and we both quit Infy and started Ninety Degree Internet Software Private Limited. We started our company in mid May 2007. And our initial version was up in September 2007.

Microreviews: Wow…but how did you formulate the  travel logic so easily…that too within 4 months flat?

Kiran: (smiles)

Microreviews: We mean…what logic did you use?

Kiran: The logic was not travel specific. It was a routing algorithm which we came up with. And, since we all were from technical background, we didn’t face much problem in this area (development).

Microreviews: You must be Comp Sc grads we are assuming…from which college?

Kiran: Khushnood holds a Bachelors of  Technology degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. I am a MCA graduate from Mangalore university. Abhinit Kumar holds a Bachelors degree in Information Technology from Delhi University.

Microreviews: Okay, great…and is the algorithm pretty complex?

Kiran: Algorithm is not hi-fi, but definitely a complex bit of code, which needs to be refined now and then.

Microreviews: That was the algorithm part…which you had to develop…probably that must have been the easier part. We guess the difficult part would have been to get so much of travel database built.

Kiran: The information was freely available on the Internet. We developed some crawlers to get that information.

Microreviews: And we heard that the Indian railways API is very costly…have you used it?

Kiran: No we have not used their APIs.

Microreviews: Wow…that means you built some great crawlers.

Kiran: You may say that…(smiles)

Microreviews: How do you show up the railway data then…to what granularity do you plan to go? Like how are you parsing the response?

Kiran: It is similar to how we interpret the data manually, i.e, using our browsers. The crawlers are kind of good enough to change the way they look for the data in a given web page.

Microreviews: Okay…something like web page scrapping.

Kiran: Yes.

Microreviews: So how do your crawlers know that which of the train schedule is the latest one? Are you caching and on availability you are making the request?

Kiran: Schedules…it is challenge to keep it updated…definitely, we do a lot of caching.

Microreviews: So how difficult is it for only 3 of you to maintain and update so much of data?

Kiran: Actually it is not that much difficult. Within one day we can update all the data.And it is a parallel and ongoing activity for us.

Microreviews : We have checked your search quiet a bit…. there is still some work…on rural India. Are you taking that up sometime in the future.

Kiran: We want to become the Google for travel search in India. Hopefully we will cover all the travel related information for any place in India. We are working towards that.

Microreviews: But we see one roadblock here…your data is totally dependent on what is available on the internet.

Kiran: Since we are in Internet space, yes our current source is the Internet. But we are also looking at user driven data also.

Microreviews: Could our elaborate a more on that…and how you intend to collect that data?

Kiran: One can avail our services only if he/she uses Internet. So, if some information is not available, they can share the info with us…simple, which many are doing already..

Microreviews: Okay.

Kiran: A social touch…(smiles).

Microreviews: So what is the next thing we are going to see from your team?

Kiran: We are planning to integrate with small and medium travel agents. We are parallely working on some consulting also. But, 90di.com will be our child.

Microreviews: But kiran…time and again one doubt comes up to us that which of the data is credible and which is not? Did you have any good user feedbacks till now?

Kiran: I guess you are referring to the user driven data. Well, we do get lots of  feedbacks. Good and Bad. Bad helps us to improve. Good keeps us going.

Microreviews: So what is the accountability quotient for the data which you provide online?

Kiran: Since we show the data from other sources -- Railways, Airlines, bus providers, we can’t guarantee 100%. But we do try to keep it up to date and correct.

Microreviews: So what is the next thing we are going to see from your team? Even if it is outside 90di.com.

Kiran: As you are aware, we have recently launched a twitter statistics on India, http://www.90di.com/twitter/ which is becoming popular.

Microreviews: Yes,we have seen that.

Kiran: We are planning to do something in that area. Also as I said earlier, we are planning couple of things to the small and medium travel agnets. We already have a online travel agnets directory, which many don’t know -- 90di.com/travelagent/

Microreviews: Okay…on to the business model…what is the revenue source? We do not really see much.

Kiran: We are self funded. The revenue model is through referrals.

Microreviews: Referrals…can u elaborate a bit?

Kiran: We send highly qualified leads to the airlines and bus provider/booking sites. When a user searches on 90di.com, the book link takes them directly to the actual provider’s booking page.

Microreviews: Okay…and are you taking up any work outside your products like in service industry…and the prospects for a job at your place? For others…is that an option?

Kiran: (smiles)  Good question. The answer is “Yes, but not now”.

Microreviews: And your marketing is completely social media based we guess?

Kiran : We are focusing on print media as well. Have been covered by few leading news papers like The Hindu. Some links are available at http://90di.com/travel/getBuzzPage

Microreviews: What are the average hit counts you get in a day?

Kiran : We get couple of thousand searches daily. We started some kind of marketing very recently. Since last 3-4 months, the traffic is increasing rapidly on month by month basis.

Microreviews: Thats great to hear. And do you have a small message for the people starting up?

Kiran: We have lot of messages to say by our learning in these 2 years. Be focused on your product, be ready to accept  lots of criticism. Better to be self-funded rather than VC-funded.

Microreviews: Well said…

Kiran: “Remember that things take much longer than you plan for”

Microreviews: Thanks a lot for your time…you were brilliant. We shall publish this tomorrow on our collaborative blog.

Kiran: Very kind of you. Looking forward to that.

Microreviews: Yeah…will keep taking updates from you on 90di and more.

That concludes our preliminary analysis of www.90di.com. We will keep you updated on further improvements and updates that may be of importance and use to you.

Buying this bike is a very simple affair. Just stash all your money in a briefcase and visit any nearby Bajaj Probiking store. They promise to deliver the bike within 10 days if you have sufficient documents for registration. Though I had a a hard time as Mumbai is a bit short on Probiking stores, and I also didnt have enough documents with me. This mean machine will cost you something less than Rs. 73000 in Mumbai (the taxes are pretty high here). The money was  the only thing I had with me. So, they took the money and booked one for me. And they did deliver the bike as soon as I had the documents given to them. Price of the bike is very very competitive…when you compare the price with other bikes like the Yamaha FZ-16 or Yamaha Fazer or TVS Apache RTR-180, then you will realize that pulsar 180 has got the biggest engine for the least price, with the best features and dashboard functionalities.

The waiting part is over. Now its you and your dream machine. Now what…just ride and ride. Let your bike take the first toddling steps. Dont cross 60 kmph for the first 500 kms. Its good for the engine. Once you cross 500 kms, send your bike for its first checkup. Dont worry…everythings fine with your bike…they just wanna change the engine oil.

Now that your bike is out of the nursing home…it is ready to become what it was destined to…the beast…the mean machine. This is the time I felt that this bike needs some extra attention…cuz its special…much better than its predecessors.

• Acceleration is superb…you could beat any machine out on the road.
• Handling is superb…with wider tyres…you could just come out of any turning very smoothly.
• Efficiency…best in its category…you can easily get a mileage of upto 40 kmpl in city driving…and something better than this while on the highway.
• Gear shifting is pretty smooth…when you are anything above 4500 rpm…the gears change like butter.
• Brakes…superb…with the rear 130mm mechanically transmitted drum brake and front 260mm hydraulic disc brakes…you can always be sure that you will stop before you hit anything else other than the breaks .
• Looks…that was the first thing I had in mind when I bought this…so no doubt…its a killer…speacially the one wearing the midnight black colour.

With a better sitting posture and only-toe operated gear lever you could actually think of going long distances on this bike. One more good thing which this bike has got is that you dont have to worry switching off the turn-blinkers/indicators once you have navigated through a turning…they turn off automatically sometime after you turned them on. So, no need to worry for the gadgets on your dashboard…just concentrate on riding.

This bike has done away with kick-start. But dont panick…the self start worked fine even after the bike was standing still for 4 days in rain. The only painful part could be if your the self-start didnt work for some reason. Though it has never failed till now…but have your bike checked-up regularly to avoid any stuck-on-the-highway problems.

Engine of this bike performs better than its older versions. No vibrations even when you are nearing 100 kmph. Thats the best of all the enhancements this new version of the bike has got. Safety has improved with the introduction of tubeless tyres. This does not mean that they wont get punctured, but they are more balanced and do not burst when they get punctured. Other changes in the bike only improve the look factor…and hardly have any effect on the performance.

The best thing about this bike is that it is a great performer everywhere…city…highway…power…cruise…and still does not eat up your money as the mileage is decent enough. This bike is a survivor, as you all might be aware that production of Pulsar 200 has been stopped and prices of Pulsar 220 had to be slashed, but this bike has already been the first love of occasional power riders. And, with so many improvisations in the bike…it is the right time for bike hunters to go for the kill.

Rating: 8/10

Recommended.

These three companies mentioned above have been late entrants in the Indian broadband scene (compared to BSNL and VSNL) but have grown since then to become three significant players in the field. I will try to compare their services as per my experience.

RELIANCE : I had a reliance 600kbps connection a few months back.
pros: very good connection. used to get perfect bandwidth most of the time. At night it even registered
speeds like 80KB/s and never used to go below 60-65KB/s. Online video streaming was completely smooth.
cons: If something did go wrong they won’t respond to your complaints for days on end. Actually that was
finally the reason I had to unsubscribe.

Update1 25th Aug): Here we have someone really complaining about reliance customer service.

It used to cost me Rs.1600/month( from BTM layout Bangalore)

For reliance and finding it was tough Please visit here and find out your own plans.

TATA :  Currently I have a TATA wimax connection at 384kbps.
pros: Can’t find any.( From BTM layout Bangalore)

@Arkid : I however had a TATA INDICOM connection and it worked absolutely brilliant. The only problem was when it got disconnected, their people donot respond that easily ( From Aundh,Pune)

cons: The speeds are pathetic. Sometimes during rush hours (read 7PM -- 11PM) bandwidth falls below 10KB/s. We have complained repeatedly to no avail. Besides it disconnects at it’s own whim at all sorts of odd times. Imagine you have placed a large file for download and disconnects midway, or even worse at 95%.( from BTM layout Bangalore)

I’m shelling out Rs.1100/month for this

For Tata Indicom tariffs please visit here.

AIRTEL :  I haven’t had the opportunity to try it out personally. I have seen it at a friends place. My friend has an airtel    turbo connection, which provides 512kbps in the morning and 1mbps at night.
pros: excellent connection. My friend gets nearly the entire promised bandwidth all the time, and the 1mbps
at night is really cool. best connection i have seen.
cons: coverage is very limited. I am one such unfortunate person whose area doesn’t come under it’s coverage.

It’s costing him Rs.1300/month for this.( from BTM layout,Bangalore)

@Arkid : I have a similiar connection in Andheri Mumbai, and even I agree it works out brilliant ( Andheri East, Mumbai)

For Airtel BroadBand Tariffs please visit here.

Wakoopa.com is this innovative service which tracks which software applications you are using. Also tells you about the applications getting used by other people who are using this Wakoopa tracking utility.User Interface  as well as the usability rock big time. Seamless is the word which I need to use here. You have widgets about the software being used by you. Small things like giving each person a tag like enthusiast or fanatic work big time. You get a very nice idea what stuff people are using and how twitter has grown.A nice idea about what you are yourself addicted to.Overall a thumbs up from me for the application. Each one of us can give this a try.