Reach

Opera, the fastest browser on earth! Yes, it indeed is, I felt so. I was a devoted Opera user for past 2 years. Finally, my association with Opera came to an end. I switched to Maxthon.

Maxthon is based on IE engine. So whatever opens in IE, has to open in Maxthon. Well, that's what the site claims and is their USP. And the very same was Opera's biggest drawback. Some sites just did not render correctly. Nothing to blame to Opera since Opera browsers are web compliant. However, site designers tweak sites to render them perfect in IE.

So why did I switch from Opera -

• Issues with rendering few sites may be because of no fault of Opera at all.
• Memory leak in Opera. Opera keeps growing in memory and I had to restart it once after 3 days since it became unresponsive thereafter.
• Hogged a lot of CPU during data fetch.

Maxthon gives me Opera's features with IE's rendering capability. It runs smooth and takes much less memory for its operations. It has everything from Tabbed Browsing, Mouse gestures and so on.

One feature that lacks in Maxthon though and I dearly miss is the vim type search from Opera. In Opera, if I type slash (/) and search keyword, it would start looking it up in the current page. I simply loved that feature over to doing a Ctrl-F and then entering a search string. It would be great if Maxthon folks add it. Another one is partial rendering that Opera does. Opera goes on rendering the webpage as it fetches it. So you don't have to wait to view the parts of page until entire is fetched.

All in all, the memory leak issue that causes Opera becoming unresponsive was the main reason I considered to switch. I would certainly not have switched otherwise.


Cheers,
Manish.

Labels: browser, Maxthon, Opera

I see her travelling through the train,
And feel that this girl is very sane.

See her daily in the train lobby,
But I still don't know what's her hobby.

Dusky female with an angelic face,
Haven't talked with her, such a big disgrace.

This thing can't happen I new from the start,
Some people are destined to be very apart.

Pray that she finds her Perfect soon,
The guy will be born with a silver spoon!

Manish.

Labels: girl, poem, train

Found this site while browsing the internet - http://www.seat61.com/India.htm

Wanted to know about the different classes (First Class, Sleeper class) provided in trains of India. This site had covered them all with pictures of each.

The site also gives you details about ship and train travel across many countries - http://www.seat61.com

A wonderful source of information indeed!

Cheers,
Manish.

Labels: first class, sleeper, train

This post tries to analyse various online airline booking portals in India.

Well, I just wanted to check which site offers me the best deals to fly from Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai. I did not have to fly/book-tickets to do this, just check the deals provided on the websites :)

The sites I analysed were -
www.makemytrip.com
www.cleartrip.com
www.ndtvtravels.com (Powered by http://www.travelmartindia.com)

These are few of the most seeked airline reservation portals. Also, the assumption here is, you are ok to switch carriers. Else, you could accomodate flying miles from one carrier and acquire cheaper deals if you are a frequent flyer.

All the three sites competed farely well. The fairs are almost equivalent.

Let's compare them on a few comparison points:

1. Airlines included: MakeMyTrip does not offer deals on Air Deccan & Go Air. ClearTrip does not show deals for Go Air. Ndtv Travels shows what MakeMyTrip and ClearTrip show, plus Air Deccan & Go Air.
2. Lowest fairs: Well, it surely depends on the time of day you need to fly and whether you are OK with a budget carrier. If you are ok to fly with Air Deccan, MakeMyTrip is useless for you as it doesn't list Air Deccan. Air Deccan is one of the best airlines that offers lowest fairs. The caveats like frequent delays and no in-flight Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner go along with it though. So as far as lowest fairs go, ClearTrip surely gives the best deal. Though NDTV Travels offers Air Deccan in its portfolio, options provided by ClearTrip are far more as compared to NDTV Travels, primarily because NDTV Travels must be selecting some of the flights and not all during the day. For other airlines like Air Sahara, all the sites provide almost similar fair, Rs. 500 here and there.
3. Direct booking through carrier: Tried to check if the carriers offered me a better deal as compared to the aforementioned sites. Air Deccan did! I got a better deal on Air Deccan as compared to the ClearTrip offer. It is another story that ClearTrip helped me locate Air Deccan's flights and then I went to Air Deccan's website. Air Sahara's website asked for more fair than MakeMyTrip. MakeMyTrip had a discount offer going on for Air Sahara tickets at the time of writing this post. Kingfisher website offers better deals for Kingfisher airlines as compared to above portals. So if you want to fly kingfisher, try checking Kingfisher website for sure. If you are looking for a return journey through the same carrier, you must visit the airline website.

Conclusion: Which portal to choose ?

I would suggest to start with ClearTrip. It has coverage across most of the carriers and covers most of the flights within a day for a particular carrier. NDTV Travels does not list all flights within a day and MakeMyTrip does not list all the carriers.

The ClearTrip website also allows you to select/deselect airline carriers of your choice so that you would focus on airlines of your choice.

You may not be eligible for flying miles if you book these low fares. Please read the Terms and Conditions on websites if you are interested in earning flying miles.

Finally, if you want to choose different airline carriers for depature and return journey, you need these web portals. Else, if you are choosing the same carrier, make a point to visit the airline website after shortlisting a lowest deal from the web portal.

Cheers,
Manish.

Labels: airline, india, review, travel

Riya is a software firm that has pioneered image search.

It was long back when I first visited Riya, some 2 years back. Visited it again a couple of months back. Folks at Riya are really doing great work.

Where Riya clicks is, it looks inside the image. So, if you search for "Bill Gates", Riya would not merely look at image files with names as Bill Gates, but, would try to match the face to a known Bill Gates face. See - Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (move mouse over the image).

How do they do it ? That is their USP... With image file being merely bits floating around, they manage to identify the face/logos/text and match it up across different image files. That is great revolution in image search.

I was discussing the use cases with one of my friend Vivek, and here is one thing that came out of our discussion:

Riya could be used in matrimonial searches. Say, if you are looking for a girl who looks like Kareena Kapoor, fire a search on matrimonial site that is backed by Riya. If all goes fine, just approach the girls who match your criteria :)

Well, agreed that marriage is not merely based on looks, but the example use case tries to highlight the technological revolution Riya brings in.

Riya has already started "Visual Shopping". See - http://www.like.com/

Let's see where Riya takes its search from here and will Google pay a heed to it.

Cheers,
Manish.

Disclaimer: This is not my creation. I received it as a forward. Very interesting so thought of posting here. Forward does not mention original author...

पुण्याच्या पॊरी रॆ पुण्याच्या पॊरी,
बकुक्यांनचा मार आणी बॊलायची चॊरी.

दीसायला असॆल पडलॆला प्र्र्काश जरी,
मागावं श्रीउजबॆरी तर मीळतॆ मारी.

कुणी असॆल स्मार्ट तर कुणी असॆल गोरी,
जवळ जाऊन बघा ह्यांची पाटीच कोरी.

झाल्या कीती मॊठ्या तरी ऎकतील लॊरी,
पेंटहाऊसला जशी एक एटॆच मॊरी.

थोड्या आहॆत बाभळी अन् थोड्या बॊरी,
कुठलीही पोरगी तशी आहॆ फ़ासाचीच दोरी.

पुण्याच्या पॊरीन्चा असतो हजारदा रीटेक,
बाटींग करता करता उडलेली असते वीकेट.

TVS ची Scooty आणी बजाज ची Sunny,
शांपु लावला तरी सुटत नाही फणी.

बाहॆर जाताना ह्यान्चॆ तोंड असते झाकलेले,
आसावेत ह्यान्ना स्वताहाचे वीकपोईंट समजलेले.

पोरींन्ना वाटते आम्ही पावसाच्या गारा,
आगं, उडालेला फ्युज तुमचा तुम्ही तुटलेल्या तारा.

सांगायला सरळ असतात या पोरी वागायला - पाजी,
खाणार्यांन्नी जपुन खावी, ही तर कारल्याची भाजी.

म्हणूनच म्हणतॊ, पुण्याच्या पॊरी रॆ पुण्याच्या पॊरी,
सगळ्याच अश्या पोरी सॊडून माझी छोरी.

- Anonymous.

Can I go for the sky - asked me a boy,
Don't see a reason can't you why - told him I.

Far too it is - apprehensively, said the boy,
So is the moon but people still reached it - confidently, told him I.

How do I get there - asked the boy,
Catch someone who has already been there - told him I.

Will I find him - asked the boy,
If you can't, read the books he wrote about it - told him I.

Won't I fall down and die - asked the boy,
You might but if you don't the world will see you - told him I.

-Manish.

Wishing you and family a Happy Diwali ...