Category: Life in Bengaluru

Web hosts and deciding for yourself which ones to choose

In my past ten years of my web designing, I have had the need to switch my web hosts for many different reasons. Either the web host would one day pack up and not exist the next day, or their webservers would go horribly wrong with errors each time and take a long time to get alright. Or maybe sometimes I’ve wanted to upgrade from paying just one dollar to maybe something more for more facilities. Whatever has been the reason, I’ve always wanted a single place on the internet which gave me a clear picture of the existing webhosts who were popular during that time, along with details of their pricing and how many facilities and what did they have to offer. Most of all, I wanted to have all this in one place.

One such website that provides me this concise information is web hosting rating. They have a very nice site, listing out the top 10 webhosts and predominantly display their traffic offering and price offering, enabling readers to have a birds eye glance of what they need to choose. Also a detailed review of each web host service is available when the user clicks from the front page, giving more than enough details of the intricacies of the facilities offered by them.

They also have an educational set of articles about the web hosting practices, the costing, and what it means to choose a good host. You can see this article for instance which talks about a review of a particular host.

So what are you waiting for? Check out the best web hosts of 2008 and sign up with the one you think is worth it in your opinion. Make an informed decision and get the best for your website!

CBI junction Magic Box – yet to work its magic

Nowadays I have become a frequent traveler on Bellary road to my office and I cant help but ponder over the status of the CBI junction magic box work that is going on for almost months together now. Yesterday I happened to see a hoarding put up and I almost from its apperance thought that its ready for inaguration. But however upon looking closer I made out that without even tarring up the road, it was next to impossible to inagurate it.

Then upon looking even closer, I realized that its the Ganganagar BJP unit, which had put up the hoarding to welcome Rajnath Singh and Advani to Bangalore. I am sort of miffed with the way BJP is operating just because it has got a long term government in place. They dont seem to realize that roads are chaotic everywhere, and absolutely no progress has been made towards resolving these issues amongst other infrastructural ones pending so far.

With this said I do hope that they finish up CBI junction magic box on time and then we must have a smooth drive all the way from Raj Bhavan upto Hebbal Flyover and beyond!

Technorati : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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]

Life in Bangalore with Rajini Saaru – Releasing tomorrow – Superstar Rajinikanth in Kuselan

Technorati : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Break time!!

Wondering why there are lesser updates on this blog? Well I was off on a break of different sorts!

It was my cousin’s marriage after a long long while in the family. This called for a trip to Chennai city after really long years. And a new entrant this time was my son who was the show stopper around there in the function. Chennai was humid as compared to Bangalore which was freezing in the monsoon winds. The cold juice, the hot weather, the humid climate and the stuffiness without sea breeze on some days all made life kind of hell out there in Chennai. Just before starting my trip, my son got hurt twice on his forehead on the same spot, making life hell for himself.
Just when I thought the worst was over, my son fell down headlong from the cot bang on to the floor. Miraculously nothing went majorly wrong though I did have some extreme tense moments taking him to hospitals in the dead of the night at 11pm-ish for clarifiying that indeed nothing was wrong with him. I almost thought of cancelling the rest of the trip and heading home, but then I decided to be more careful with the remaining trip.
Then came the marriage – good food, dance and cultural events, story telling, performances, a grand reception, and then the culmination of months of preparation into the final tying of the knot. Enjoyed every moment of it honestly. Caught up with so many people after years – it was indeed a well deserved break.
Did it end there? You bet not! We reached Namma Bengaluru and a day later we took turns getting into bacterial infections one by one. Temperatures ranging between 100 and 105 (!!), severe throat infections, allergies due to severe antibiotic intake and general fatigues and weaknesses – enough was enough.
Now that I am out of all this mess, as google puts it – Now take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack! The above feature is part of Google Labs for severe mail-a-holics. Click on take a break on top right of the screen (after enabling this feature in Google labs) and the entire mail screen gets blocked for a full 15 minutes – Good, now I can get back to work!!

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.

Technorati : , , , , , , , , , , ,

Finally a paper that denounces sleaze

I was traveling along Trinity Church Road the other day near Trinity junction. I could not help noticing a bold big advert hoarding. The words read : IF I WANTED SLEAZE, I’D GO ONLINE and it was from Indian Express the well known newspaper in Bengaluru. From a long time, the Times Of India and the Bangalore Mirror, both from the Times Group, have metamorphed from being a good newspaper to read into a rather authoritative paper to the public, government and other organizations too. Not only that, they have slowly expanded the notion of page 3 partying articles to fill their entire newspaper with only news about gay marriages, or teaching young students about condom usage, or lots and lots of pictures of nude actors without any relevance to the article being printed about them. Worse still is the fact that they have begun to be a paper which has started to talk nonsense about every prominent personality and using words such as “public would like to know this”, “public wants answers”, etc, dragging readers and writers like us into the equation.

Though I do want to state here that IE (Indian Express) is not exactly the best newspaper around in town as of now, atleast they have made clear their stand on no nuisance articles only to be printed. Another paper I am getting addicted to of late is Deccan Chronicle, which seems to be the new avatar of what Deccan Herald should have been. I however have noticed that Asian Age is either dead w.r.t competition or just sulked away out of the limelight. The best paper in my opinion today is the Deccan Chronicle. Its even mix of articles and a promise of the whole monthly supply (minus the sleaze) for just Rs.67 makes it worthwhile to read.

The Advert though means more than it reads. It does point to the World Wide Web if people are interested to browse porn. This gesture though perhaps is wrong, but then just them writing does not mean you would be a wrong person unless you are a pervert yourself! I would have written about the debate on whether online sleaze is well worth it or not, but different people have different views. While some think its audacious to view something like that anywhere (either on TV or online), others who are into that industry might think of it as adult entertainment which makes them revenues. It is worth to note that in Western countries, adult entertainment has many dimensions, and its not just about inflicting people with sleazy content alone – its also about revenues for the right set of viewers/listeners and users.

Technorati : , , , , , , , , , , ,

GPS based chaffeured cabs to the Bengaluru International Airport

Its about a month or two since the BIAL started off operations, and we have a handful of cab services that now ferry people up and down to and from the aiport. Of these two are appointed by the BIAL as official cab providers – Meru cabs (080 – 4422 4422) and Easy cabs (both seem to be from mumbai).

Both these providers have sourced Mahindra Logan cars from M & M in large quantities and I strongly believe this is the right option as the car is very spacious which is the most required thing for a weary traveller commuting miles together and for hours together. With a big boot, it only adds more value to use this car than perhaps any other car!

Add to this that these are chaffeured by drivers who wear proper uniform and are properly trained to behave with (weary) travelers and that the cars themselves have GPS so that they can be tracked for their subsequent assignments or in general on their whereabouts, and this makes the proposition of using these services pretty hassle free and safe. I heard that these cars have the option of automatically messaging the control room and getting deactivated if the drivers hoodwink customers in any way. I want my readers to confirm this though!

While these services are more point to point, there are two other services that are multipoint to airport on a sharing basis that costs a person just Rs.300/- onwards making that an even better proposition, barring the fact that the safety may be at question. Airlift and Zoom airport express services are two providers working on the sharing model and while the former operates innova cars, the latter uses tata winger cars for commutes.

For more details check the websites! And enjoy your drive to BIAL!

Technorati : , , , , , , ,

Fcuk the poacher, save the tiger

I was driving home yesterday evening and could not help noticing this Tata safari in front of me, which boldly made a statement against the illegal tiger poachers – FUCK THE POACHERS, SAVE THE TIGERS. The car itself was an offroader to a great extent, and this message made it more synonymous with wildlife preservation efforts. The sticker of pug marks was big, bold and clear for everyone to see and understand. Way to go fellow, appreciate your sentiments a lot! The caption was daring bold and shows your attitude towards poachers!

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,