Category: india

Why you should NOT watch Spiderman Homecoming at the box office

(image souce: Wikipedia)

It’s almost predictable what Spiderman movies would be like. Spin few webs here and there, save a big vehicle from disaster – a train or a ship or a plane, love a girl and use his skills to impress her and in the end fight an enemy, starting off with some small attacks being handled.

But Spiderman homecoming takes it to another level. The first half is barely interesting even for kids and I am not sure how Marvel thought they can keep the audience glued to the screen. The 3D effects are NOT the most brilliant or spectacular either. Bringing in the character of Stark to this movie the focus is split between the super heroes as well.

Add to that a friend knows who spiderman is makes it worse. Just to save the world from weapons of mass destruction spiderman brings down a plane carrying those weapons. I mean as though a person handling owning these weapons only had a planeful of them – kind of absurd for a company like Marvel to think of.

In short – its definitely NOT value for your money and you are better off waiting for it to appear on amazon or google movies to watch it at home. If you want to read how badly Spiderman did at the box office in USA, click here to read what Forbes has to say as well. You can see that the profits dip is one of the worst for the second week.

Save your money – and put it on something better at the box office.

Samsung note 5 gets Android Nougat 7.x Update in India

Samsung finally seems to be launching their Android naugat 7.x software update for the Samsung Galaxy note 5 mobile phones in India. The update which is roughly 1.03 GB in size mainly has all the components of the new operating system which brings about of fresh new user interface with lot of improvements and tweaks.

The installation itself did not take a long while over my 100 mbps home connection from ACT. Blazing fast downloads and followed by the install itself.
The usual sequence of upgrading all the possible applications for the new version of android and the installation is done. The new Nougat does look extremely cool on the rather old note 5 what with the note 7 fiasco. The icons are rounded, screen looks much better with the new layout and icons.
You can find the reasons to upgrade the note 5 to Nougat, and the reasons not to in this post.
Once you are thoroughly convinced then you can move over.

So far I did like the blue light filter setting which is rather cool, in addition to performace modes, private mode setting, and enhancements to power saving options.

Issues are bound to be there with any new update and till now I have faced only one problem which is a deal breaker for me. My fast charging has stopped now. And this is unacceptable. Are you facing issues after the upgrade? Leave your opinion in the comments below.

The new Nokia Lumia 900 review from The Verge website. Great phone, but software has to catch up a lot !!

 

The Verge put up a crisp review of the new Nokia Lumia 900 which was released by AT&T recently in the USA. One can compare this to the Samsung Galaxy Note in terms of dimensions. However this has a clear black display and not an AMOLED and the focus point about this phone is its industrial design in terms of hardware. Since microsoft uses lots of playing around with fonts for its menus, and not much of icons or pictures, the phone is definitely fast to use. However not many people would be comfortable with this mode of user interface and menus after seeing Apple and Android which would deter them from buying this phone. After the Nokia Lumia 800 dropped to 23000 from 30000, a straight 7000 jump in amount in India, it is clear that this is to make way for the next hardware beauty the Lumia 900. One can expect this to be priced at 30000 and further drop to about 25000 in coming months after launch.

What is left then is to see how people receive the windows software and how many more useful updates are provided by Microsoft in future. Hope you enjoyed the video. Do leave your comments and let us know if you will buy this phone or not?

 

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Longest Solar Eclipse begins its reign, Bengaluru sun feels strange

Today is the longest solar eclipse for this millenium. The next time you can view such a celestial episode is by 3043, and surely you will not be alive by any means by then 🙂 Rameshwaram and Kanniyakumari were two places where the eclipse looked great. Take a look at this video from Times Of India (Video has been removed).

The Bengaluru sky looked very overcast with no sunlight until almost 8am, and beyond that the sun tried peeking out of the clouds slowly and steadily. The atmosphere was one of some kind of devastation. No traffic on the roads, and no one to be seen doing their usual duties. The temples remained closed and by about 11am, the sun started showing up. The flare of the sunlight was brighter than usual, and most obviously even harmful too. Even with so much of sunlight, still the outdoors looked like being viewed with a tinted glass! There was a subtle amount of shade within the sun rays and even through office windows, the sunlight was pretty harsh.

Here are a few snaps I took of my crappy Blackberry 8520! Enjoy.

So when is the next such eclipse ? How about when you are married and have kids? Yes, its in 2020!

Airtel, once fairTel, now unfairTel – shortly finishedTel

Its was winter of 1999. JTM was one of Karnataka‘s best networks. Outgoing call rates were Rs.10/- per minute and incoming about Rs.3 a minute if I am not wrong. I was one of JTM’s customers at that time. Slowly JTM was taken over by Bharti Teleservices. That was the birth of AirTel, a company which would grow to be one of India’s most admired telcos over a period of a decade. They were the best when it came to customer services, while the nearest telcos Spice and Hutch (what is Vodafone now) were by no standards near airtel be it in infrastructure or in customer treatment. Airtel pioneered many a revolution down the line and its venture into landline services made it even more popular.

Spice’s mismanagement and Hutch’s troubled history of having bad networks and bad customer services only made it better and better for Airtel quite inorganically. Over the period of the last couple of years though, India and in particular Karnataka has seen a flurry of entries from many a new telco who are all vying to take a share of Airtel’s pie. Airtel’s troubles have started very recently, and they are compounding it by not brainstorming on the potential failures that are waiting to happen. Some of the key things about Airtel that are beginning to go wrong include and is not limited to the following:

  • Peak hour call jams rendering the service useless

  • Call drops that occur very often leading to frustration amongst users

  • Caller tunes and the amount of agony it has been able to cause for people not really interested in them

  • Ineffective blocking of Telemarketing calls and SMSes that disturb thousands of people day in and out

Of late some more laurels can rest with Airtel:

  • Airtel’s mismanaged and inexperienced customer service centers

  • Don’t care attitude that has set in among the franchisees managing these centers

  • Low level executives making a mess out of technical situations which they are unable to understand or explain

  • Higher level managers who do not follow up on these technical problems that people have

  • Erosion of brand value due to the way these executives perform

  • Airtel’s arrogance in maintaining the same call rates even when competition is eating into its flesh day by day

So then why are people still putting up with Airtel or for that matter any other operator? The answer is very simple to say the least. Its because they want to retain their mobile number without changing it.

For a moment lets then dwell into the case with other operators. Spice has gone one level up in capturing the youth market with a flurry of dual sim based phones and real low calling values. They are also busy fighting with their nearest and best rival Virgin mobile.  Airtel’s arch rival Vodafone is now one level ahead with its famed ZooZoo advertisements addressing the core values of branding in an effective way drawing huge crowds towards the service. Not to forget to mention their Pug ads were also so adorable. Vodafone’s prepaid plans now give you full talktime without any rentals or taxes even sometimes. Their low call quality and tower quality are now replenished to cover most of karnataka state.

Most of Vodafone’s calls don’t drop like before and their connectivity is at an all time high. Vodafone’s takeover of Hutch has only fuelled their appetite for competing with anyone coming their way to maintain their customer base.

With Aircel, MTS and Uninor into the picture now along with Tata Docomo, Airtel’s chances are only slimmer and slimmer day by day. Already Tata’s aggressive pricing plan has forced Airtel to realize its diminishing customer base though very late, and they have also launched the same per second billing plan to save their skin. With MTS being even more aggressive at 1/2 paise per second along with Uninor, Airtel has some serious competition breathing down its neck.

On the CDMA front, Reliance and Tata are ruling the roost and will continue to do so. The only thing then comes back to how to save your mobile number. With number portability in the offing at the year end, from TRAI, at a mere 19 bucks for a switch, its now very easy to retain your number and give your old operator a boot. This only spells more bad news for Airtel who are likely to lose their coveted tag of 10 million customers on India’s no more preferred network. Is it time then for Airtel, who were once FairTel, now unFairTel to go into history as a finishedTel ?

Only time will tell. And it will tell well enough.

If you like this post, please give it a rating!

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Citibank starts its new tantrums in India

Many of you might have noticed an email sent from Citibank very recently where they have increased the minimum account balance for non salary accounts that one has to maintain in order to be receiving the services of the bank. Citibank was known to be the pioneer in India to introduce online banking, and also for utility bill payments among other useful services. The bank’s image merged well with the minds of young engineers who adopted Citi as a part of their daily life since a decade.

There was also a point in time when Citibank was the new face of banking as against banks such as Canara Bank, SBI which our parents were accustomed to. While salary accounts of Citibank had the zero balance scheme, non salary accounts started off with a minimum account balance of Rs.1000/- in 1999, and grew to Rs.5000 and Rs.10000 subsequently. The email that most of us received a while ago, gave us nightmares when we saw that the new minimum balance for non salary accounts has now been increased to Rs.25000/-. While this kind of amount is perhaps the salary of many engineers across the country and perhaps the savings of a few wealthier folks, the mail also reflects the way Citibank is headed if they continue such tantrums.

Its about time that nationalized banks have increased their image in front of the public, and at a time when Citibank just came out of crisis in the USA, tantrums like these are bound to make people reject Citibank for banking and move to much more reasonable banks in the near future.

I happened to check out on Bank of Baroda, and was pleasantly left surprised at the kind of service they offered though they were still a bit naive to internet ways of banking. What mattered finally was that I could open an account in no time, and was a happy customer of theirs sooner than later. Canara Bank has lately restyled their logo trying to connect more to people as they continue their dream run forward. IDBI has now introduced banking for all to shed their image of only being a loan disbursement company. ICICI is already in the list of the not so good banks to deal with. HDFC and AXIS Banks have retained their image through tough times due to their consistent policies. SBI and its sister banking divisions have enhanced their images through beneficial loan schemes and exchange rates. ING Vysya is about to launch FD products giving 12% interest even in good economy upswings.

With all these banks vying hard to woo people, one wrong move that Citibank has done can start denting its Indian image pretty seriously. Today’s youth connect well with nationalized banks yet again and its only sooner than later that it will be the good old golden period of nationalized banking to the fore yet again.

As for me, I’ve decided to log off from Citibank for obvious reasons. Your choice is not yet made! Think for the longer term and make a wise choice.


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Seasons greetings

Its time to bid adieu to the old year and usher in the new once more. Lets hope that in the next year all of this years losses are made good for, all the lessons learnt this year are practised more efficiently and that the new year 2009 generates the same joy and enthusiasm that the recession of 2008 has subdued; all once more again.

Wish you all my dear readers, a very happy and fun filled prosperous year 2009!

 

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Thanks dear readers! Keep them coming :)

It could have been yet another post. But its not. This is time to thank my dear readers for making the Bengaluru blog, what it is today. That too in a short span of time.Agreed, not without turbulences, but something is better than nothing. My efforts to pass on knowledge through this website has paid off, and in a much better way than originally anticipated. And it also goes beyond saying to prove what blogging and bloggers and blog readers can do to the online world.

Here are some statistics of the Bengaluru Blog, which has made me immensely happy. And I do believe it will make you more enthusiastic in visiting this blog more often. Read for yourself ! And do visit again 🙂

  • 20000+ visitors in one year
  • 25000+ visitors with one and half times more page views in one year
  • PR 0/10 in 2007 to PR 3/10 in 2008
  • High quality knowledge posts to secure returning visitors
  • Worldwide reach of the blog
  • many bangalore related terms searched on google shows this blog on first page of results
  • the bengaluru blog search term shows this blog on result #4
  • bengalurus best photographic blog
  • growing Pagerank with an urge to perform better

I can keep writing more. But its finally all because of you and your continued support, that I am able to reach these heights. My quest has not ended. There is more to achieve. But I believe its a matter of time going forward.

A big thanks once again!

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Sultans school of speech, Garage and Marriage 94.3 comedy

[coolplayer width=”480″ height=”70″ autoplay=”0″ loop=”0″ charset=”utf-8″ download=”0″ mediatype=””]
Ulfat Sultan – Garriage and Marriage
[/coolplayer]

Hotel booking in India – the online angle

India has progressed a long way in harnessing the internet for all purchase related processes, be it a flight ticket, or home appliance or of late even hotel bookings. Hotel bookings were mostly restricted to filling up the required details online, and waiting endlessly for someone to either call you or mail you regarding your booking. This could be an agent or well, the hotel management itself in some cases where the hotel was well known.

There were many anomalies in this kind of scheme. One for instance is that I sent an email via the form on the internet only to receive no reply after – well about – 5 years now!! Another instance is that I got a response from the hotel after about a month, which was of no use practically for me since I had exhausted the travel date for my trip. Atleast this was bearable to some extent but there was one more case where I began receiving spam for the query I sent which made it a bit intolerable.

From those days, hotel booking has steadily progressed to be associated with branded websites who advertise services like hotel bookings, airline bookings, taxi bookings, etc on all media both print and television and even on the net on partner sites. There are a few sites that I would like to highlight for their services (of which I have already used some of them and found it extremely satisfactory)

 

www.Ezeego1.com

 

Ezeego1 is a website that is fairly simple to use (but I don’t think it is web 2.0 enabled as yet – which means more of page refreses than normally required) and gives me all the data I need to see neatly arranged on one single page. I can see the hotels, the photos of hotels, prices with and without taxes and even sort by popularity or price, etc. The site even provides me with a price slider which I can slide to knock off hotels out of my budget range.

This is a unique thing which I liked a lot. Try it out yourself! The photos of each hotel pop up in another window but what I did not like is that in the current age of digital cameras of 7MP and more, I still get to see photos which are dumb and thumbnail sized not giving me the true picture of what I can expect when I land at the hotel. Shame on such photography! The rest is rather straightforward – add hotel to cart, confirm cart, pay and off you go on your holiday equipped with an online confirmation!

Ezeego also has a chat option along with toll free telephone and email customer care.

 

www.travelguru.com

 

Travelguru is somewhat similar to Ezeego, but with some changes. First they are web 2.0 enabled which means I don’t divert away from the hotel booking search results page even if I want to say see some photos of a particular hotel or its rates or features. Everything refreshes then and there only in that part of the page. I am impressed! It’s just awesome to use web 2.0 technology! Travelguru also allows me to pay at the hotel which is an internet first that I have personally noted.

Travelguru has toll free telephone and email customer care.

www.cleartrip.com

Cleartrip is yet another hotel booking service of a different kind. Firstly all results are displayed much like in other sites, with prices of rooms with and without taxes neatly explained. What I also liked about this listing is that next to the hotel name, is a thumbnail photograph of the hotel, with relevant icons showing its available facilities (such as swimming pool, gym, etc). Upon clicking the thumbnail, there is an in browser page pop, using web 2.0 again, which shows some real good quality photos which presents more or less an actual picture of the hotel that is to be booked by you. With these photos, I am more or less confident of what I can expect at the actual hotel. You wont be probably disappointed.

The rest is the same, add to cart, present your details and make a payment. Cleartrip has among other things a toll free phone and email customer care.

 

www.hotelscombined.com

 

HotelsCombined is a multipartner hotel booking network which caters both national and international too. Their objective is simple; they search for a hotel in your city using their multipartner tie up to find the best deals for you. Since this is based on querying multiple hotel booking partners, you may most likely be diverted to the relevant website while you book a hotel offered by them. In that case you must remember to contact only the partner site in case of issues/queries and not Hotelscombined itself. I don’t really know if I would prefer something like this, since it sounds a bit complex for me to reach many other people.

The photos of the hotels themselves are picked from partner sites, so you may not expect the best photos that show you what you get at the hotel really. Sometimes I ve even found that the photos are just thumbnails only. The room cost does not include taxes and the taxes are shown as either at actuals, or zero or sometimes as ‘unknown’!! The partner website though has all room price details, etc with their own contact numbers to ensure you can do the booking of your choice easily from anywhere even outside of India.

It’s to be noted that Hotelscombined does not offer a direct toll free number to contact them for reasons beyond my understanding. While the local sites would go well with domestic customers, HotelsCombined would do a good job if you are looking at a hotel in another country/city from your current location and would provide more than enough details on such listings.

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