The Good:

Opening up the data via API is definitely a strong and a progressive move by Rediff. As simple as it sounds, taking down the walled garden is not an easy job to accomplish, both conceptually and technically. I’m just surmising here, but I definitely think that the success of Orkut and Facebook applications had at least a small role to play in Rediff’s decision to open up their API.

Let’s take a closer look at Rediff’s API from a technical perspective. Aping Facebook’s approach, Rediff has provided three ways of accessing their API:

1) API exposed by a REST interface

2) Sociali Markup language (RBML)

3) Sociali Query Language (RQL)

If you take a closer look, the API currently has exposed methods that mainly revolve around user profiles, friends, news feed and ‘wall’.  Besides the profile data, I was able to locate access to only two types of application data via the API - iShare media related data and classifieds related data. As per Rediff execs, iShare is the first application they are starting with, and will slowly cover the rest of Rediff applications as well.

The Bad:

To begin with, I’m baffled as to why bulk of the Rediff API revolves around profiles, friends, wall and such features ? Not all the Rediff applications support these ’social’ features. Of the top of my head, only iShare, iLand, Blogs & Connexions (probably a couple more that I might be missing here) support user profiles, friends, wall and similar features. Part of these API methods will be useless from the perspective of other Rediff applications.

A large part of the disconnect seems to arise from the fact that several sections on Rediff are user generated content and hence revolve around user profiles etc., while several other sections like News, movies etc are editorially generated content. Unless a different set of APIs are released for the non UGC sections, the current set of API’s just wont work.

This also brings up another aspect related to the non UGC sections. It’s mainly the structured data that is generally most helpful when exposed via API. Say stock quotes and financial news related a particular stock. Or reviews, ratings and photos related to a movie etc. Exposing unstructured data via API yields limited benefits and inherently limits the scope of applications built around it.

The Ugly:

While I think that releasing the API is definitely a bold move on Rediff’s part, I think they should first consider cleaning up their messed up websites first. The biggest priority, in my opinion, should be implementing single sign on across the various Rediff services. Currently, when I login into Rediff Question and Answers, and then visit their iShare website, I need to enter my login credentials again. Take a point or two from Google and seamlessly integrate all your varied services first. Exposing data via API’s can afford to take a back seat.

In conclusion, Rediff’s API appears to be a great move on the surface. However, on digging deeper, it appears that the whole API thing hasnt been very well thought out and is a disappointment. It will definitely need much more tuning and tweaking before developers can leverage all the different Rediff sections into their applications.

Comments

• August 1, 2008, kerala commented: Why does rediff have to come up with a new data structure and RBML(whatever that means) in the first place. We have opensocial and before there is FBML(facebook mark up langauge - a very neat thing). Why does one more company spending $ and time to recreate something similar and expecting developers to work on RBML that is useless outside rediff network ? I think Social media apps should be portable beyond networks. Any way, I hope few Indian companies will make it big on rediff . It will be interesting to watch in the coming days :)
• August 1, 2008, Abhishek commented: We have developed application on rediff platform so I know little bit about it. RBML is FBML only just the name is changed. That is ok with me as they dont have to completely reinvent the wheel but I think the launch of the platform is immature. There are lots of bugs around and I am really not fan of ishare site itself. How many users can rediff get to this site with this UI and feature?
• August 3, 2008, vBharat.com » Rediff API - the good, the bad and the ugly commented: From vBharat.com » Rediff API - the good, the bad and the ugly... Its been about two weeks now since the news about Rediff API, Sociali, was leaked. The formal announcement about the API was made by Rediff during Proto. As part of the effort, Rediff will provide funding upto Rs. 2.5 lakhs for interesting application...
• August 3, 2008, pranav commented: Abhishek, thanks for sharing your first hand experiences with the api.
• August 17, 2008, Tarun commented: Great review. Thanks for the insight on the API, after facebook anyone opening their platform makes for interesting read. I agree rediff needs to enhance their user experience first. A lot of Indian sites though popular suck at their user inexperience, that is one area that Indians need to get serious about. If there is anything that iPod teaches is that external form is as important as the guts. Cheers

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On the surface, the service appears no different than some of the other content discovery services like Delicious, StumbleUpon, Mahalo, Wikipedia etc. However, once you give the service a spin, the differences become apparent.  Think of httpfuse to be like Wikipedia, only difference being that instead of housing the content itself, it has links to interesting content elsewhere.

The Magnolia groups feature is something similar to what httpfuse is offering. The same can also be accomplished by searching for the topic on Delicious. None the less, httpfuse is a pretty neat and on the whole an awesome product. It offers an interesting twist to the ’social’ bookmarking scenario.

Do try it out and let me know what you think.

Comments

• July 31, 2008, divakar commented: Please, change the poll. Its so old. Chittr is gone for toss..

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As the day passed, folks got sufficient time to try out the search engine and the reviews have been mixed. I tried out the service myself and couldnt agree more. While Cuil does offer some neat features, its nowhere near to usurping Google’s reign anytime soon. The search results seemed mediocre at best.

So, why and how exactly did Cuil end up getting so much hype in spite of having such an okay product ?

I attribute it to three reasons:

1) The core team behind Cuil are ex-Google employees and well respected search experts. That gives them tremendous credibility right from the get go. Building infrastructure and the ability to index 120 billion pages in such a short time is no mean feat by any regards

2) Great stealth and PR tactics by Cuil and the gullibility of the A-list bloggers who took the bait

3) The third and the single biggest reason is that people seriously want to see a potent Google competitor. Part of the gullibility I mention above might arise from the fact that people feel threatened by Google’s dominance over the search market. Even the faintest flicker of hope for a credible Google competitor sounds really exciting. Google has become too big and dominant in today’s market. No longer is it the underdog.  That explains why news about Cuil (for that matter Powerset too) got folks really excited and hopeful.

Its still too early to pass any extended judgement on Cuil yet. Its just a day old and Google has had about 10 years of headstart. I’m pretty sure the folks behind Cuil will be able to build up on all this hype, tweak and improve their product and hopefully give us a kick ass Google competitor — at least I hope they will.

What’s your take ?

Comments

• July 29, 2008, Web Service commented: Spend the day at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay and enjoy some good times with the family. Web Service
• July 29, 2008, Azez commented: Cross comment, but I've to new layout is very fresh and cool Cuil is not that bad wokay
• July 30, 2008, Rabi commented: Wht I likd about Cuil is the experience they provide rather than a plane search. The chances here are more that u'll stick to there website because of some useful features like"Browse by categry", "Suggestions" based on keywords etc.... Search is more enjoyable hr, but still every1 knows why google is at the top (KISS!)....moreover if they claim they dont track our private data, hw can they manage to earn money???
• July 30, 2008, Cyril Gupta commented: Hi, I find your third argument the most powerful. I think more than gullibility, it's hoping that something will come up and show Google a thing or two. The Internet community has had enough of Google's 'We're the Masters', and 'We don't answer to none' attitude. I don't know about Cuil, but I think this is the beginning of the end for Google if it doesn't become more responsible. If it won't be Cuil, it would be someone else. If not now then not very long way off. Maintaining the top position on the net is harder than getting to the top, because people are always looking for the next big thing. Cheers! Cyril
• July 30, 2008, Mohamed Azam commented: An amazing search engine. Good that Google's dominance is eing challenged with a simple interface but strong platform. Cheers!
• July 30, 2008, pranav commented: @rabi I agree - I like the very same features that you point out.. found them pretty likeable @cyril couldnt agree with you more..
• July 30, 2008, Gaurav commented: I think Google has become a 'necessary evil' in people's mind. Everyone needs it, but they are afraid of its growth. People are afraid of Google accumulating power as the time passes by and then turn evil (like it happens in the movies). Cuil, ain't cool. 1) Users are used to the look at SERPs top to bottom and not left to right. Cuil is trying to make user learn the way they thing it should be. It does not work this way, unless you have a really compelling product. 2) Categories - Look ok, but their navigation is an hindrance. Don't expect me to mouse-over each of the category to see the hidden results (see http://www.cuil.com/search?q=bollywood ). If you are confident about them, bring 'em out. On this specific query, it seems like they have old data. Been ages 'Jhoom Barabar Jhoom' was _famous_ 3) Better Results. At this time, 'china Olympics' seems to be showing documents based on just the keyword density. I think more than 2 term searches will mostly yield crappy results. PS - Like the new theme!
• August 10, 2008, Gautam Kshatriya commented: You often hear the phrase, "There's no such thing as bad publicity". In Cuil's case, I'm not so sure. While they did a great job of building up hype ("The Google killer has arrived!"), they fell short of delivery. And the startup community - especially bloggers have slammed them for this - pretty mercilessly. After searching for 3-4 terms as a test, I could immediately see the difference. When I keyed in the term 'Content Sutra' a few hits on contentsutramixer.eventbrite.com showed up, but no contentsutra.com. I tried again, this time searching for contentsutra.com - but didn't get much better results. This is fairly surprising given that CS is probably one of the most popular startup blogs in for the Indian Startup scene. I guess this is a good lesson on how 'too much PR' can be bad for you. That said, Compete.com shows that had 2mn unique monthly visitors in July. I wonder if that will be sustained, or indeed grow, once people have checked it out and been disappointed. I'm still hopeful however. I think Google's dominance needs to be challenged and I wish Cuil all the best. I am certainly going to check in on them now and then to see whether their results have improved. Gautam Kshatriya gautam.kshatriya@moneyvidya.com http://www.moneyvidya.com/blog

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Accel Partners has invested in BitTorrent, BrightCove, comScore, Facebook, Glam Media and several such companies.

Accel India Venture Fund will focus on early stage investing and delivering hands on strategic and operational guidance to entrepreneurs.

Congrats to the Erasmic team on the successful transition.

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So, is it time to pop that bottle of champagne and celebrate ?

Definitely. Second largest wireless market in the world -WOW !!! that’s indeed an incredibly mind blowing statistic.

But the celebration will probably be short-lived.

Why ?

Because as the graph below shows, even though we are well on way to become the world’s second largest mobile market, our average ARPU remains one of the lowest in the world.

As per the latest performance reports from TRAI, all India blended ARPU for GSM at the end of the latest quarter was Rs 261 while that for CDMA was Rs. 176 .

If you look at the stats over the past 9 months, they appear even more bleak. Over the past 9 months, ARPU has dropped 17.41% for GSM while it has dropped 10.20% for CDMA. Minutes of Use (MOU) per subscriber has increased by a measly 2.2% over the past 9 months for GSM players while it dropped by 11.56% for CDMA players.

Of this ARPU, what is the revenue breakup for various services / applications ?

Here’s a chart highlighting the revenue breakup for GSM:

Here’s a chart indicating the revenue breakup for CDMA players in India

This 9 month trend is more than likely to continue. Fierce competition to add new subscribers will continue to drive down the ARPU further. Number portability will only exacerbate the problem - operators will need to drop prices to keep the churn rate at a minimum and stay competitive. Voice and rental revenues - the two biggest contributors to the current ARPU, will continue to dwindle due to market pressures and as the market matures.  Operators will soon need to start looking for additional means to offset the ARPU deficit. And most likely, its going to come from data services.

So, will 3G be the saving grace ?

Globally, operators have yielded huge revenue gains from 3G rollout. Almost all have seen an uptick in data usage and in several cases (KDDI, DoCoMo, 3 UK, O2 UK etc.), data services are contributing more than 30% to the overall ARPU.

Will a 3G rollout in India exhibit similar behavior ? I’d definitely like to believe so.

But there are a number of challenges for 3G to be successful in India:

• Clear revenue sharing guidelines between operator and content producers. Currently, operators get a 60% chunk of the revenue, while the content owners get about 25% and 15% goes to the copyright owner. This breakup seems to unfairly skewed in favor of the operators. Seems like some progress is already happening on this front.

• High percentage of prepaid customers. About 90% of all GSM & CDMA subscribers in India are prepaid customers. Prepaid customers are low usage customers and contribute only 25-30% ARPU’s as compared to the post-paid segment (for GSM, post-paid customers contributed Rs 628 in ARPU while pre-paid customers contributed only Rs 219. for CDMA, post-paid customers contributed Rs 499 in ARPU while pre-paid customers contributed only Rs. 140). As mentioned earlier, the introduction of number portability will further worsen the attrition scenario, since it’ll make easy for users to change operators and keep their same number. Operators will have to devise means and offer plans to retain subscribers and also convert some of the pre-paid customers to post-paid ones.

• More choices for affordable, 3G capable handsets. While there exists a subset of subscribers who would pay more for a premium phone, affordability would be an issue for quite large section of the subscriber base. Currently, only 5% of all handsets in India are 3G capable.

• Copyright and piracy issues need to be addressed. The proposed amendments to the Indian IT Act, will most likely take care of this point.

• Getting users out of the vice like grip of SMS will be a challenging task

Inspite of all the hurdles, the challenges seem puny as compared to the benefits that India stands to gain from the 3G deployment. Rollout of 3G will give the much needed bandwidth that all stakeholders are hoping for. Without 3G (read high speed network), the cliched term “Mobile will be the Internet platform in India” will never become a reality.

Operators like Bharti Airtel seem to be raring to go - they’ve successfully tested 3G services in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and are waiting for the spectrum to be allocated. Mobile users, of course, can hardly wait for 3G to go live in India.

Comments

• April 23, 2008, Amardeep SIdana commented: Excellent article, can u possibly send me more figures from the MObile industry? Like total Market, with market share among service providers. Future technologies etc
• April 24, 2008, pranav commented: amardeep, check out the TRAI website www.trai.gov.in and the section on performance indicators. there you will find several reports on the data you are looking for. tx, -p
• May 4, 2008, Nilesh Trivedi commented: Comparing countries by absolute ARPU does not make sense. What matters for the industry is what percentage of the disposable income are consumers spending on telecommunication services. In other words, give us a plot of ARPU/Disposable Income. That would be a relevant industry parameter and not ARPU alone because the Telecom industry industry alone hardly has any influence on the Average disposable income of a country, cheers nilesh
• May 5, 2008, pranav commented: @nilesh - true...in fact, in india, telco operators are talking in terms of Average Margin Per User (AMPU) and not ARPU. However, you need a uniform metric while comparing this data at a global level. And even though ARPU may not be the best suited metric, it is still the most frequently used metric for reporting this data.
• June 27, 2008, Abhishek Sharma commented: Hi Pranav Its an interesting article but FYI the first figure shown by you is absolutely out of context. You wrote, "Because as the graph below shows, even though we are well on way to become the world’s second largest mobile market, our average ARPU remains one of the lowest in the world." On the other hand the data in the diagram talks about data as a percentage of ARPU... In plain English- Data usage (GPRS, SMS, etc.) in a ratio to total ARPU (inc voice). Hope u rectify...

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CitizenMatters is a new startup that hopes to highlight and address these civic issues and bring them into the limelight.

To quote them,

Our in-depth stories on the civic issues of Bangalore and coverage of our city’s vibrant arts and culture scene will not only help you understand the changing nature of our city, but you will also be provoked to get involved and shape Bangalore for the better.

The site has some pretty compelling content, especially if you are a Bangalore resident. Issues ranging from ‘Auto rate hike’ to ‘Metro work slows’, the site does a really good job at highlighting some of these issues affecting majority of Bangloreans. They also have an arts and culture section and list Bangalore events.

The site is developed in Rails and has a nice, intuitive design. As the usage and pageviews grow, I’d guess revenue would come from advertising from local sponsors.

Overall, I love the site for two reasons:

1) The site is an awesome initiative. Too often, people bitch about traffic and bad roads etc. amongst their friends. They go to sleep at night and next morning, its business as usual. This startup had the balls to finally take an initiative and do something about it. If they keep up the content quotient, it can turn out to be a lucrative, viable opportunity as well.

2) They explain why they started CitizenMatters:

We found that there are enough citizens bored of running into so much news and views about Britney Spears’ problems and Rakhi Sawant’s tantrums.

After my rant earlier today, I’d say I absolutely love these guys.

I wish these guys good luck for their venture and if you happen to be a Bangalore resident (or event otherwise), definitely check them out.

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So, HCL customers get discounted pricing on Airtel broadband connections while existing Airtel customers get Rs. 2000 - 3000 discounts to all Airtel landline customers.

Great win-win scenario for both.

via BS

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Interesting development…Are other startups based in Bangalore also facing similar problems ?

Comments

• May 23, 2007, Cool dude commented: Clovis is another name who has done the same for similar reasons. They folded india ops and moved 10 out of 50 odd personnel to Valley.
• May 28, 2007, Abhishek commented: In fact it is not only startups but even the mid-sized companies are also facing this problem. There is an acute shortage of quality people. I work with a newly setup IT company (I dont call it a startup as it's parent company has a big financial muscle) and we are also facing similar problem. It has a lot to do with a combination of Brand popularity and the salary package.If you have one of them, you can still find people but if you dont have both, it is gonna tough. The situation has worsened in last one year and there is no way it is going to improve because the supply side still has constraints.

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Huh ? Why do I need a SMS notification with my exam results ? I’ll just wait my turn to get them. The service makes no logical sense to me and if I were a student appearing for an exam — I see no benefits to be gained by using the service.

Although I personally did not try to register for the service, I wonder if they have any safeguards in place to prevent abuse - unauthorized access of confidential info.

via Hindu

Comments

• April 16, 2007, SASIDHAR commented: I want my results on my mobile without any cost.
• April 18, 2007, nanam samiksha commented: how we can send sms.we need the corret wy.
• April 18, 2007, sudhakar commented: hi we are happy to here that we can get quick results through mobile thank you very much sudhakar
• April 20, 2007, phani kumar kanchi commented: this is an excellent oppurtunity for finding out our results
• April 22, 2007, abbas commented: what is the way to know my results through idea mobile?
• April 24, 2007, vinay commented: I want my results on my mobile without any cost.
• April 24, 2007, kumar commented: this is a great oppurtunity for finding out our results on mobiles
• April 25, 2007, msr commented: To get any results, send sms to this number 099499 33333 sms format should be as follows result htno examname for full list of examnames please see resultsonmobile.com website
• May 11, 2007, kishore commented: i am saying thanks to the suchinfotechfor providing this oppurtunity
• May 30, 2007, brahmam commented: this is easy way to find results
• August 8, 2007, dinesh commented: send me the messages
• May 25, 2008, aziz commented: know my result on my mobile.my no is 9974311176
• May 25, 2008, aziz commented: no
• May 28, 2008, sagar commented: no comment
• May 28, 2008, sagar commented: hi Tell me the way to get SMS on my cell free of cost

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A job site whose USP is opportunities for students and fresh graduates.

True, there are many job sites in the market - and they do a great job. But if you are a young person looking for a part-time/ freelance or summer job, these sites don’t necessarily serve your needs.

With the popularity of JAM Magazine, I’m pretty sure they wont have any problems in marketing and content generation. And considering the market that JAM Magazine currently serves (youth), I think such a job portal would be a perfect extension for them. However, portals targetting part-time, freelancing jobs often tend to get cloaked with the spurious looking ‘Mystery Shoppers Wanted’ variety. I already noticed several such listings on the site.

Such a portal would be a strategic, sensible buy for big players such as Naukri, Monster India etc. My gut feeling tells me that the portal will get bought in an year or so - assuming the hit the right nerve with the target audience.
I wish Rashmi and the JAM Mag team all the best in their new endeavor.

Comments

• February 23, 2007, Rashmi Bansal commented: Hey, thanks for mentioning Jobokplease on this site. Just a small clarification. 'Mystery shopping' is a genuine job from a genuine company. It's a form of market research where folks are employed to visit shops, hotels and restaurants anonymously and rate the service quality/ salesmen/ hygiene etc. You can read about it here: http://www.jammag.com/careers/n/showart.php?art_id=63 (an article on mystery shopping published in JAM some time ago!)
• February 23, 2007, Pranav commented: Hi Rashmi, Its just that 'mystery shopping' has been so much abused by companies in the US, promising big bucks, free merchandise,designer wear and what not - that the term has pretty much acquired a negative image in my perception. Good luck with JobOkPlease !! -pranav.
• March 16, 2007, Karen commented: Yes, mystery shopping is a legitimate way to make money. However, it may be difficult for people to make a living at it. It's a great part-time job though! The following article discusses the legitimacy of it: http://www.become-a-secret-shopper.com/is-mystery-shopping-legitimate.html
• September 4, 2007, Rita commented: inform me about mystery jobs in india
• February 19, 2008, Stacy commented: Hey. I don't know of any mystery shopper companies in India, but if I do, I will post them here. I currently am a mystery shopper in Canada. It's not going to make you rich, but its a good part time job for me as I am a student. I now have a website(http://secret-shopper-review.com) to share some of my tips and advice from my mystery shopping career. I just posted an article on the site with some stats about mystery shopping. It's a whopping 800 Million Dollar industry in the US!
• August 19, 2008, suranjan commented: want to know any mystry shopping job in india

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From the WHT forum, it seems that following are the common problems with web hosts located in India

- Very expensive
- Poor customer service
- Uptime issues

However, if majority of your website visitors are going to be from India, opting for a host located in US can lead to increased latency and very high ping times (at times 300 ms) — which translates to slow website responses. On the forums, some even suggested opting for website hosting in a country which has geographical proximity to India and multiple hosting options (eg - Singapore, Hong Kong, UK etc.)
I got intrigued by the issue and decided to research on how many web hosting providers in India actually have their own data centers.

After a lot of digging and numerous Google queries, I found the following data centers in India:

1) TATA VSNL Data Center (website): They seem to have data centers located in various cities in India. Basic hosting costs Rs/- 550. Here’s their price chart.
2) Reliance Data Center (website): Again, data centers across various cities in India. Basic plan starts from Rs/- 9000. Here’s their price chart.

3) Sify hosting (website): Couldnt find details about price plans and such on their website. There’s a chance I overlooked - if so, please correct me.

4) Net4India (website): Enterprise plans start at Rs/- 12000 and basic plans start at Rs/- 1500. Here’s their price chart.

5) Palcom (website): Wide variety of hosting plans. Here’s their price chart.

6) Spectranet (website): Several hosting plans to choose from.

7) AirTel (website): Couldnt locate a pricing chart and neither could find a way to purchase online - please correct me if I overlooked.

Note: I make no claims that the above list is comprehensive. If I missed out any, please let me know, I’ll add them to the list.

The quest did not end there. I decided to find out where the Indian startups choose to host their site. So, I did a ‘tracert‘ and IP-to-country lookup for a small subset of Indian startups and below are the results:

Minglebox — Rackspace, USA
Onyomo - Delhi, India
Picsquare - go daddy, usa
Guruji - terrawiz, usa
Carwale - mumbai,india
Seventymm - sify hosting
Yatra - vsnl, mumbai

Hmm..Interesting findings. Feel free to provide your input about hosting related experiences in the comments. Your input may be valuable to the entire community.

Comments

• February 11, 2007, kamla commented: Rackspace is a proven player in this space. Although I can't say the same about VSNL. If their customer service for broadband is anything to go buy...I would think and think and think and think and then decide on another provider. VSNL's call center is one big dev null center. kamla
• February 11, 2007, pranav commented: Thnx Kamla for your valuable input. Other established US players who provide great customer support & amazing service are thePlanet.com, mediatemple, lunarpages, layeredtech etc..I've heard similar nightmares about VSNL from my friends. -pranav.
• February 13, 2007, Deepak Shenoy commented: You missed one of the big daddies of Indian telecom: BSNL Prices at http://www.bsnl.co.in/newsdetailed.php?news_id=353#webcolocation
• February 17, 2007, Praveen Modi commented: I would like to recommend NettiGritty.com(bangalore based) for Web Hosting. I am not sure how big is this company but they have an excellent service and prompt customer support. They never took more than 10 mins to respond to any service ticket. From the price perspective also they seems to be reasonable. www.nettigritty.com In past we hosted our website at IndiaTimes Hosting. I don't have words to express my frustration due to their pathetic customer support. Many times the server use to go down on weekend.. which get fixed only on monday morning. -Praveen www.allindiadeals.com
• February 19, 2007, Pranav commented: Thanks Praveen for your valuable input. -pranav.
• March 7, 2007, Jitesh Ghushe commented: Hi Yes the web hosting in India is very expensive. The main problem is that Bandwidth is very costly in India. The best datacenter and network in India are from Satyam, VSNL. We use VSNL 's Mumbai and Bangalore datacenter. If the customers are from India , then hosting in India will definetly provide benefits over USA based hosting. VSNL's global network reach is very good and unmatched by any other provider.
• March 23, 2007, Arun commented: Rediff - VSNL Mumbai / Reliance Mumbai
• March 29, 2007, Mahesh commented: The Cheapest web hosting as far as i know is www.manashosting.com located in bangalore. Check it out. - Mahesh
• March 29, 2007, pranav commented: Mahesh, Cheap is seldom better. I (and pretty sure several others too) wouldnt mind paying a few extra bucks for better service and reliable hosting. -pranav.
• March 30, 2007, Mahesh commented: Pranav, It has 360 dgree of service: cheap, reliability, BEST service, robust, servers are up all the time. [./.] Mahesh
• April 20, 2007, srijith commented: Hi, Very valuable input and Here in coimbatore a very well known group known as ABT Group of Sakthi sugars doing fantastic works on the side of webhosting services with very fantastic support. you can check with them for the services. visit them at www.abtinfo.net With regards, Srijith.
• April 24, 2007, Chandra commented: When I was planning to start a web 2.0 site targetted at Indian audience, I called up, Relliance, Sify and few other. Finally I thought its better never to buy a dedicated server in India because of the high costs and not so good customer service. I really suggest to go for RackForce Dedicated Servers for their technical expertise, lesser cost, perfect customer service. If you wanna go for hosting for a personal blog go for MediaTemple which I use for my blog and business web sites. I still really feel there is no world class web hosting , mainly dedicated server hosting, available in India at an affordable price. I might be some what harsh in saying that, but thats the realty I experienced when I was searching for a good dedicated server host which has its servers located in India.
• May 22, 2007, Amrita Walia commented: It is true in India dedicated server is costly but hosting is not now a days hosting is getting cheaper as they have dedicated server from US. When i was searching dedicated server i also end up finding US based. As it is fast and service is good. It is really unfortunate but have no other choice.
• June 9, 2007, Arun commented: After hitting around many walls i found this http://www.netmagicsolutions.com a bit costly but very reliable. All depends on SLA. Arun
• June 11, 2007, pranav commented: thanks arun..appreciate the input.
• June 24, 2007, Web Hosting Provider commented: Web Hosting Provider... A list of the best web hosting companies and hosting plans, recommended for hosting quality web sites, including blogs, forums, photo albums, PHP/MySQL, etc....
• June 30, 2007, Dedicated server India commented: Hello We have started operation at Netmagic datacenter in mumbai and will be booking a rack at their Bangalore datacenter also which is comming up in few months. We also operate at VSNL datacenter in Mumbai and Banagalore.
• July 4, 2007, Vaibhav commented: RackSpace in USA is really good data center for server hosting or web site hosting. I have visited to their US data center and also I am working with one of their venture company. So if you want to host a server or a web site in USA the best choice is RackSpace. Thanks, ~V
• July 24, 2007, rahul commented: plz dont go through manashosting.com.Very very pooor customer support.The whole money will be waste if you host on it.I hav enough experience in that.
• July 27, 2007, Anit commented: Thats right, manashosting.com are overselling a lot, hence the low prices. They rely upon the fact that users won't consume the whole space/bandwidth that they buy, but things would get messy once the server is overloaded. Haven't heard good things about their support either. I have my websites hosted at www.SpriteHost.com , their prices are good, and so is the service & support. They are based in Trivandrum, get in touch with Arun (09387662000) for details.
• July 31, 2007, aksha commented: i use web space from manashosting. they are very good. because i like thire tech support and thire server uptime and speed. they are real top hosting company of india.
• July 31, 2007, Manish commented: manashosting is absolutely waste. Once your site would go down, there would be no one to even bring it up. I have contacted customer support as well but no response.
• August 1, 2007, Saj commented: Manashosting people are pathetic - i don't know what is the problem , but seems they have a very big problem communicating in english and don't seem to understand what u are trying to tell them for atleast 3 days. Hopeless and pathetic sometimes they resemble the call center guys from india - don't grasp what the customer is trying to say....
• August 7, 2007, Travelsdesk commented: Manashosting is one of the leading webhosting companies.I am really getting good support from them and i have 65 domains with them .previously i was with other hosting companies but they cheated so much that i switched to Manashosting and i am really enjoying my space at 1500/ year
• August 7, 2007, Ashwin commented: Travelsdesk, Care to update us with the hosting companies that cheated you? - I would like to stay away from them. Please provide as many names as possible.
• August 21, 2007, debasis commented: Hi, we are facing the same problem . our website uttarparamunicipality.org is not running properly.
• August 22, 2007, Kannan commented: nettigritty.com does not have server is India i think.
• August 29, 2007, Jitender Mathur commented: I was with manashosting.com for sometime but that was the worse decision that I taken ever. They are just useless guys. After having too many issues I signed up with http://www.realvaluehosting.com about six months ago. They have good support and uptime is too good. I would recommend real value hosting to everybody who require reliable and good tech. support company.
• August 29, 2007, Bhishm commented: So which is best the best website hosting provider..??? still this question has not been answered.
• September 2, 2007, Pravin commented: I have tried around 30 odd hosts and I find Bluehost to be the best in the shared server sector and Wiredtree as far as VPS and Dedicated Servers go

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• February 10, 2007, Rajan commented: Mobile TV gets mentioned and discussed and inevitably discussed every time we meet at MoMo, though there are quite encouraging reports and reported encouraging responses those who are doing trials in it.In fact this was the subject of discussion in one of the MoMo talks http://bangalore.mobilemonday.in/2006/11/24/mobile-tv-the-operators-perspective/. Personally I am yet to be convinced of use cases of Mobile TV. Though some in India say that they are most encouraging trial responses came from rural areas. Cheers, Rajan
• February 10, 2007, pranav commented: Rajan, Yes, personally I have reservations about mobile TV too. But I get boggled by sheer numbers. 100 milllion subscribers (GSM only) and climbing. SMS started out small too -- but its caught up like crazy. Similarly, mobile TV may start out small - but who knows - it may shoot the roof. By the way, nice concept with Motvik - could be a huge market - using mobile camera phone as webcam. Pranav
• February 11, 2007, Rajan commented: Ya the growth in mobile number is stupendous and another interesting related point about Mobile TV is that about more than a billion dollar is being spent across Asia/Europe in funding mobile TV related initiatives, unfortunately we did not get the reliance presentation - there were some good studies and numbers related to Mobile TV. But looks like I am still looking for something more to be get convinced. Btw thanks for your encouraging words about Motvik. Cheers, Rajan

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I’ve tried to list down all the news (traditional media & blogs, in no specific order) I’ve come across lately about gaming and mobile TV. If I’ve missed any, feel free to tip me about it:

* Nokia announces special handsets for gaming

* Ideal cellular plans about mobile TV

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* Sify’s MMORPG A3 on Indiagames announced

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Conceptually, Taazza is along the same lines as Yahoo! OurCity mashup. Once you login, you have the option to select from a number of cities. When you select the specific city (say Mumbai), you are presented with news, photos (from Flickr), videos (from YouTube), events (from Upcoming), blogs (from Technorati) specific to Mumbai. Essentially, contextual aggregation (context of the selected city) drawing content from various sources. When the content from all these sources is brought together in a relevant context, it adds a meaningful dimension to the data. They also have a great feature of aggregating news by recent newsmakers. Let me explain what I mean - Lets say Sanjay Dutt is all over the news about getting hist bail extended. Taazza provides you the option of seeing all the news articles related to the newsmaker (Sanjay Dutt in this case). You can also alter the time window to include older news in the results.

Well, its not just the idea that makes Taazza so amazing. The execution and specifically the design are very refreshing (screenshots below). The design, effective use of AJAX make the end user experience very pleasing. Each feature seems to have been thought out pretty well. The UI make it stand way apart from the run of the mill news sites. Taazza is one of the best Indian startups in terms of implementation and design that I’ve come across. It remains to be seen if the idea clicks with the Indian audience and whether Taazza, as a business, is successful.

I do have a few suggestions for team Taazza:

1) Relying on too many external sources for the content may affect the response time of Taazza itself. So, the QoS will be dependent on the response times from Flickr, YouTube, Upcoming, Technorati etc. I’ve already discussed this issue with Arjun Ram, Taazza’s founder and they’re working on resolving these issues.

2) Provide the ability for users to comment on the news stories. This will generate original content for Taazza and propel audience participation

3) As an end user, I personally do not see the benefit of viewing Mumbai related photos from Flickr or Mumbai related videos. The only purpose they solve are as eye-candy. Add classifieds / local business information (leverage Burrp - they have a lot of listings already) and you can probably also make money from the ’sponsored/featured’ local businesses.

4) Launch soon !!!

I’m in awe of Taazza and the team Taazza for all the work they put into their baby.

The best way I could think of describing Taazza is - “Web2.0 personified”.

After all, Web 2.0 is all about open APIs, communities, disparate content sources, pleasant user experience etc. And Taazza personifies each of those aspects of Web 2.0. I am confident that if team Taazza keep steering it to the right direction, it can be a huge success. Good luck to Arjun and Arun for their endeavors.

Comments

• February 8, 2007, Arjun Ram commented: Hi Pranav, Thanks a lot for the detailed review. A couple of corrections: While we certainly have features that are similar to Yahoo's our city, we consider ourselves as next generation news service. We track you track news, slicing it by a metro (distinction between city and metro, yahoo doesnt support metros) is just one feature. We are working hard to resolve the issues that you have brought up. Already working on versions that would integrate with local business. We have an active beta community(like you) and we are addressing issues brought up by them. Launch is coming soon! Please keep playing around with the product, cuz there a few changes around the corner ;)
• February 8, 2007, admin commented: Arjun, Thnx for the clarification. I guess, this distinction (next generation news service) isnt easy to make. If news is the main focus then the modules on the right (photos,videos etc.) distract the focus a bit from the news. With this eye-candy, it gives more of a lite-portalish feel. None the less man, great job. Let me know if you're available for hire for design / dev ;-)
• February 8, 2007, Arjun Ram commented: The section on the right is supposed to provide context to the stories on the left .. We are working on getting focus back to the news story. Semantic analysis is performed on each story and we extract the relevant context. The eye candy is the social context .. Personally we as founders have found blogs/links very useful.. (We have even found reviews about taazza when looking at news about india or chennai). Eye candy (photos/videos are useful. The question is how do we offer this without distracting the news story .. we will have an answer soon! Hey i might be available ;) Can use it to boot strap taazza. I would suggest you go back take a look at the site with this new information. Might be useful for you and us (from feedback). Also pls take a look at the mobile version.
• February 8, 2007, admin commented: Ok, I'll revisit keeping in mind the 'news focus'. Social context eye candy is good from a regular user's perspective (being a techie, i guess you get a biased opinion) :-)....I forgot about the mobile version..will do and update my review..

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• September 12, 2007, dev commented: Indra Nooyi is truly an inspiration. A conversation between the two business leaders, and IIM alumni, truly a must read for every budding mgmt graduate.

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