Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts

July 2, 2014

Interconnected World and the hassles they bring along!

Hi Guys,

A post after a long time. I think this is the first time, I haven’t written anything for more than month since I started blogging. Adjusting to the routine of office hours kept me busy for a few days and then FIFA World Cup kept me busy towards the later part. With the rest days ahead of Quarter Finals, I also get the time to update my blog.

Somehow randomly this thought struck me as to how interconnected today’s world is becoming. Everyday a new device or app is developed to improve the communications and interconnectivity. Last week, my brother joined WhatsApp and I thought that incident would never happen. As he says it has become a necessity. The last time, he was out of India, each message I sent him would cost me Rs. 5. Now, I can send messages at nearly zero cost through WhatsApp.

The options that are provided with technology is also increasing. It is very good for people who love technology and are quick graspers. But, for people who are late adaptors and find it difficult to adapt, it is a big issue. As my dad says earlier, there was a simple download option in Gmail. Now, since Google’s Drive is proving to be a good tool for cloud storage, Google has integrated it with Gmail attachments and it becomes difficult for him to comprehend what is happening as Gmail provides 3 different options.

With the increasing number of Apps and facilities in the Internet and Smartphones, managing things has in itself become a head ache. Often, some useless groups are created in WhatsApp and whether you like it or not, you have to bear all the nonsense communications happening there. The best thing WhatsApp introduced was the privacy settings of blocking the time you were last present.

With the increased number of Accounts, managing Passwords is also a big trouble. I have a constant fear of my accounts being hacked by someone or me forgetting my password for a very important account (which has happened quite often and ‘Forget Password’ helping me most of the times) After one of my mail IDs was hacked, I became very conscious about the complexity of passwords I set and it has led to lot of confusions and mix ups.

Every good has a bad in it and every bad has good in it. It applies particularly well in the field of Technology. As the interconnectivity and ease of communication increases, the troubles they create also increases. The rate of development is too quick and keeping track of the developments is a difficult task. No ones knows what the future holds. There might be better technologies and apps and then these apps would look silly.

There are two ways of looking at things. As few people say, ‘The world was a better place when Apples and Blackberries were just fruits’. The positive way of looking at it is the comfortness these technologies have brought it and make use of it in a proper way.


Happy Reading!

February 20, 2014

Enhancing Productivity of Google Chrome through Extensions!

Hi Guys,

Google Chrome has become a primary browser for most of us. Though there are lot of people using Firefox and Opera, I find people commonly using Google Chrome. Today I experimented with a few extensions and thought that these extensions would be useful for you. They enhance your browsing experience. There are lot of extensions and you might find many other extensions useful or better, I am just sharing extensions that appealed me.

Ad Block Plus
Annoyed by all the Pop Up Ads and Banner Ads in Websites. This is the best way to filter them. After installing this Extension, I am having no trouble with Ads in any of the sites. Particularly, I used to face lot of trouble in ESPN Cricinfo and Times of India, where an Ad would just pop up and disturb. Now, no such Ads come. The best thing about this is that it filters the Advertisement Videos on Youtube too. You can enjoy Ad less videos.

Disconnect
There are lot of invisible websites that track your movement when you visit certain sites and slow down the speed of your browsing. They also make note of your data making your browsing unsecure. In order to avoid this, install Disconnect. It cancels all the requests made by such sites.

Lightshot
Taking Screenshot is a big headache many times. You need to Print the Screen and crop the image. This extension gives you an easy way of taking Screenshot and gives many options to process them.

Buffer
This is extremely useful if you use Facebook and Twitter frequently. This helps you to buffer your posting in such a way that more users note it. It also has a URL shortener and an easy RT option.

WOT
WOT stands for Web of Trust. You find lot of links when browsing. You are not entirely sure as to whether they are not safe or not. This Extension just gives you a green signal near the link if the website is safe. I have used this in past too and it is a very reliable means of finding out a site’s reliability.

MediaPlus
Mediaplus helps you to view Images and Videos with enhanced features. You can zoom images, videos and move them across. It would be useful, if you see lot of videos often.

mxHero
The name is quite confusing, but this extension enhances your Gmail by providing many options like tracking your email, scheduling your email and keeping your mail private.

Turn Off the Lights
This extension is simple. If you view a video and donot want disturbances, click the Bulb button and the surrounding area would turn dark.

I also found some other interesting extensions like Night Reading Mode to enhance Night Reading, Neat Bookmarks to have a more organized Bookmark folder and Page Rank Status, which gives you all the important ranks of a website.

There are many other similar apps and extensions in the Web Store. If you search for sometime, you have all chances of landing in a gold mine that would improve your productivity.


Happy Reading!

July 17, 2012

Is Flipkart losing its path?


Hi Guys,

Two or three days back, there were many angry views on Flipkart in Twitter. The reason was Flipkart increased the minimum price for Free Home Delivery from Rs. 200 to Rs. 300. There were already a few murmurs here and there and this announcement made e-shoppers fuming.

I still remember my first purchase on Flipkart. How I came to know about the site was far more interesting. It was nearly three years back or might be a little less than that. My dad was searching for a book that was a detailed city map of Chennai. He was not able to get it at most of the shops. A few days before this incident I read one of the Chetan Bhagat’s books and went to his website to see more details about him. That’s when I saw the link for Online Purchase. And so when my dad was searching, I thought why not try it online.

Of the two or three sites (that were actually referring to Chetan Bhagat’s books) Flipkart had the book my dad wanted and that was the first purchase. Its value was Rs.240. No discount was given for the book. Anyway we were impressed with the packing and my dad was not able to believe the service.

Days went by and I bought quite a lot of books at Flipkart. I started referring the site to my friends too (Flipkart was not advertising then). My classmates turned out to be a big customer for Flipkart in the following time (particularly during the Placement season). The free home delivery price was Rs. 100 then.

Next story is How I moved out of Flipkart. I can’t say I moved out completely, but then I detached myself from Flipkart Books service. The reasons were simple. I was able to find books at a cheaper price in some other sites. Sites such as Junglee, provided a comparison and gave the best offer. There were sites which gave Free Home Delivery for literally everything they sold.

Still, I made my brother buy his mobile phone through Flipkart and recently I too got it via Flipkart. In terms of mobile phones or electronic gadgets, I think Flipkart is still a very competitive one.

But in terms of books, which was their starting point, I think they are slowly losing their path. Most of the books cost below Rs. 300, so who will buy the books from Flipkart. The price might be cheaper than the book at a bookstore, but still to a customer, Rs. 30 seems to be a big value. And most of the other e-stores offer at a very less price.

And there has been many other complaints too. Some of the goods, they display as In Stock are actually Out of Stock. After making the order, someone calls you after a week and say that it is unavailable. How terrible will it be? It is happening particularly in the case of highly expensive low moving products. This makes the higher end customers move out.

On the whole, it seems like the biggest online store of India, that set example for many others is slowly losing its path. With competition coming in from various other sites in many parameters, if Flipkart doesn’t respond there is a huge chance of the company being overtaken by some other e-store.

Happy Reading!!!

May 10, 2012

Power of Mobile Internet in India!


Hi Guys,

Do you use mobile phone to access internet? If your answer is yes, then you contribute to one half of Internet population in India. Yes, one half of Indians use mobile phones to access internet. It was 2% in January 2009 and in a span of 3 years it has become 48% in April 2012. Maybe, by this time it would have crossed 50%

Most of the times, I browse through PC, but mobile has been a great companion for me. Mobile Internet users can be broadly classified into two types. The first one comprises of people who do not have access to PC or broadband or who feel broadband is expensive (a survey shows that Indian people are ready to spend Rs. 50 per month on an average). The second category is people, who use mobile to browse while travelling or not being at home. I belong to the second category.

Mobile Internet offers great tariffs. There are packages for 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, etc depending on service providers. So, whenever I am travelling I activate the 1 day pack for which I will ultimately spend very less. The main purpose I would need internet while travelling is to check mails, to access Facebook and to see any other important site. Many of my friends who stay outside use mobile phones as modem. They use monthly packs and it is both cheap and good enough for browsing.

Two years back, when I started using Internet on mobile, the speed was very low and connection was very poor. At many places, the towers won’t support EDGE (which is an advanced version of GPRS which enables high speed). These days the speeds have improved a lot (am speaking of 2G technology) and so have the infrastructure.

A month back, the modem in my home went berserk and hence I was not able to use broadband. I used my mobile as a modem and it was very handy.  The speed was not great, but it was good enough to browse and download basic stuffs. I was amazed to see speeds of 200 Kbps which is one tenth of my broadband speed.

If we are able to get such good speeds in 2G, then surely 3G would be superb. There are lot of issues with infrastructure and tariff. But remember that it is just blooming. Recently tariffs have been slashed hard. Earlier I had a doubt whether 3G will be successful in India. But in 2 years time, I think lot of people will start using 3G.

With lot of websites becoming mobile friendly (even my blog is mobile friendly – set so in blogger settings) and increase in sales of smart phones, I think browsing in Mobile would be as good as browsing in PC. With decrease in costs of smart phones and improvement in Infrastructure of service providers, definitely India is all set to become a Mobile Browsing country.

This post is written for Internet is Fun Conest (http://www.vodafone.in/fun) on Indiblogger. Indibloggers, please vote for my post at this page


Happy Reading!!!

December 10, 2011

Dropbox - the story of the digital storage service


Hi Guys,

It has been a long time since I wrote a post in my blog. I have been thinking of writing this post about Dropbox for a long time and I never got the time to do it. I read the article about Dropbox in the November issue of Forbes Asia magazine and it was an interesting article.

What is Dropbox?
Dropbox is a digital storage service that has 50 million users around the world. Dropbox was developed by Drew Houston. These days, the concept of Cloud Computing is so common. You keep your resources in the web and use the resources at any place with the help of Web. Dropbox provides the cloud storage for you. Dropbox provides you a free 2 GB storage when you sign up. You can upgrade the storage to 50 or 100 GB by paying monthly or yearly rental.

How did Drew Houston get the idea?
Drew Houston was a code geek right from his young age. At 14, he signed up for a beta version of online game and began rooting out security flaws. So, the company hired him. He has worked in 5 projects before starting Dropbox. His mother wanted him to be normal and tried everything to make him normal. But he spent most of his time coding at the MIT. By September 2006, he completed his MBA from Phi Delta Theta at the MIT.

His idea of Dropbox was formed 3 months later when he was travelling from Boston to New York. He planned to work during the four hour ride, but forgot his USB memory drive and had no code. He immediately started to build technology for syncing files on web. Four months later, he landed in San Francisco and got $15000 from Paul Graham of incubator Y Combinator. He spent 20 hours a day reverse engineering all the computers and understanding the concepts.

They presented Dropbox at Y Combinator event and it attracted investors. By 2008, it had 9 employees and 200,000 customers.

How did they attract Customers?
They used the right advertising strategy. They used Google Adwords. It sucked them $300 for one signup. It was not working. So, they turned their small customer base into sales people. They give 250MB of free storage for each referral. One quarter of customers still come to Dropbox in this fashion.

How I started using Dropbox?
I saw an article about Dropbox somewhere and started an account some 5-6 months ago. Recently when I was having lot of important stuffs, related to my higher studies I needed a backup device. My DVD drive was not working properly. Even if it works properly, I can’t keep on replacing files. USB drive was a good option, but then I was afraid of viruses. Just then, I remembered Dropbox and it is just amazing. I work with all the word documents and excel sheets inside Dropbox. It gets updated in web as soon as I save the file.  Now I have no fear of losing the files. 2 GB space is more than enough for me.

Interesting facts from the article
In the article, I read a few interesting facts about Dropbox.

  • Steve Jobs wanted to buy Dropbox, but Houston was determined not to sell the company.
  • Its revenue in 2011 was $240 mn, despite the fact that 96% of its users pay nothing (they use the free 2 GB storage)
  • Dropbox has only 70 employees.
  • Everyday 325 million files are saved to Dropbox.
  • Dropbox’s main competitors are Apple (iCloud), Google, Microsoft, YouSendIt, IDrive and conventional email.

Happy Reading!!!


External Links
Dropbox: Inside story of Tech's Hottest Startup - Article on Forbes
Join Dropbox now - Click here