Review of IndianKanoon.com

By Vipin Agnihotri

Good news for all of you who are interested in getting details about Indian laws and its interpretation. New portal IndianKanoon.com has come into the fray. This portal acts as a search engine for Indian laws and court judgements.

It has been noticed that in India you have to pay loads of money to the lawyers if you are interested in getting some information out from them. With the help of this portal, not only you will save money but you also do need to contact the lawyer. You can get the information from the comfort of your home.

The main objective of IndianKanoon.com is to bring the knowledge of law to the common people. IndianKanoon.com accomplishes it by breaking law documents into smallest possible clause. In addition, it also integrates law/statutes with court judgments. No one is going to argue with the fact that a tight integration of court judgments with laws allows automatic evaluation of the most relevant clauses and court judgments.

In my opinion, IndianKanoon.com play a prominent part in assisting people to search regarding Indian laws and their interpretations. Indiankanoon.com sources data from indiacode.nic.in and all Supreme Court judgments from judis.nic.in. The forum of IndianKanoon.com is also top class.

The India Street rating: 8/10

Suggested Reading:

• WARNING: Avoid air trips to Bangalore

Review of SadakMap.com

By Vipin Agnihotri

SadakMap.com is a new, local listings + Google Maps mashup site. To use this site, first and foremost, you have to register for the service. Once you do that, you can place markers for any local businesses, restaurants, and places of interest on the map.

The best part about this site is that you can also add reviews to any listing and rate a listing. The first impression that I got from the site is that they want to form a social networking community. At this moment of time, site uses Google Maps API to leverage Google Maps as part of the collaborative interaction.

Point to be noted here is that Google Maps can very easily be substituted by other alternatives and mashed up with the data SadakMap has collected. SadakMap has taken the assistance of a map interface as a backdrop to display local information. It is quite straightforward for people to relate to information displayed on a map and making it interactive makes the map come alive.

The India Street Rating: 8/10

Suggested Reading:

• Review of Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk

Review of Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk

By Vipin Agnihotri

The best part about Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk is that the website is quite organized and simple to surf. Because of this, you will not face any problem in searching things of your choice.

Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk not only offers you a list of hotel deals and their costs per night but also more details regarding each hotel. The main objective of Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk is to assist their visitors in selecting the best hotel. It is worth mentioning in this regard that Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk work in collaboration with the leading hotel chains across the world.

Another good thing about Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk is that they have information about lots of European countries hotels such as United Kingdom and Ireland. ‘Last Minute Deals’ is also quite a good feature offered by them. With the help of this, you can find hotel for accommodation at an economical rate.

The India Street Rating: 8/10

Suggested Reading:

• Videocon, Porsche and Tanishq in news

AOL and ONEINDIA Form Strategic Alliance

Today I was informed that ONEINDIA and AOL have signed a strategic deal to provide Indian content on AOL in Hindi and Tamil. I feel the relationship is slightly premature given the low amount of Hindi and Tamil users on the web. However, when the number of Hindi and Tamil users increase, the language portals will have a superior advantage.

The Press Release follows:

AOL AND ONEINDIA FORGE A STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

TO POWER THE HINDI & TAMIL LANGUAGE CHANNELS OF AOL.IN

Bangalore (November 26, 2007): AOL, a division of Time Warner, one of the world’s largest media companies, and Oneindia, the leading online portal in Indian languages, today announced a strategic partnership for powering the content on the Hindi and Tamil language channels of AOL.in.

The language portals, aol.in/hindi & aol.in/tamil will offer compelling content ranging from news, movies, sports, Astrology to art & culture from various regions in India. The News section will be updated with stories as-they-happen including national and international news, while the movies section provides comprehensive coverage of Bollywood & Tollywood with stories on upcoming movies, reviews, actors/actresses interviews, special reports and latest gossip. Apart from daily horoscope, the Astrology channel will provide monthly & weekly forecasts.

“AOL.in will be able to leverage on Oneindia’s experience in providing language specific content on Internet. The strategic alliance will offer AOL’s audience with a one-stop destination for engaging and informative content on the Internet, in their own language” said Mr. B. G. Mahesh, CEO Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd., speaking on the occasion.

Commenting on the deal Mr. P.G.Ponnapa, AOL's Vice President, India, stated, "our partnership with Oneindia in launching the language portal will add strategic value to AOL’s plan in addressing the growing base of regional users and increasing share in the language market in India.”

About AOL

AOL is a global Web services company, and operates www.aol.in in India. AOL operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services, and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. AOL LLC is based in Dulles, Virginia. AOL and its subsidiaries also have operations in Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.

About ONENDIA

Oneindia (owned by Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd) is an integrated Internet portal delivering content, community and commerce to Indian consumers, businesses and the global Indian community. oneindia is the market leader in Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam) and has been serving the regional audiences since year 2000. The Indian Classifieds portal of Oneindia, Click.in, is available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada & Malayalam.

Learn more at www.oneindia.in / www.oneindia.mobi (WAP version)

Media Contact:

Oneindia

Sriram Hebbar

sriram.hebbar@greynium.com

+91.80.2518.0802

Review of GPS Insight

By Vipin Agnihotri

GPS Insight offers your company’s management the ability to report on activity detail, fuel consumption, landmark activity, vehicle performance and many other functions. GPS Insight is one of those websites, which gives all the tracking facilities for a truck. The best part about the machines of GPS Insight is that they give 90-day history of the machine.

Even better, GPS Insight have unique pricing system, which is not that expensive in nature. Before you purchase anything from them, you can see complete demo of their product. In case if you have any questions you can call their toll free number.

According to experts, GPS Insight is doing a tremendous job in providing a quality feedback to truck companies. With the help of GPS Insight plenty of companies get to know how their trucks are performing. This in turn can give them an overview of how much profits they are getting through their trucks. Not only it saves their time but also money and energy.

If you are not interested in trying their products full service you have an option of using their service for trial. After a trial period, if you come to the conclusion that the product of GPS Insight is up to the mark you can go for a full membership. If that is not the case you can cancel the membership.

At this moment of time, they are also giving strong 30-day money back guarantee on their product. This clearly shows that GPS Insight is quite confident of their services. So, you should not be fearful of the quality of their products.

GPS Insight takes the assistance of GPS satellites and cellular technologies to provide you with accurate vehicle locations every 2 minutes throughout the USA and Canada. With GPS vehicle tracking system fitted into your cars, it will allows the owners to know the real time information of the location of your vehicles.

The India Street Rating: 9/10

Suggested Reading:

• Our prediction on advanced world economies

Review of the Ford Fusion TDCi

By Vipin Agnihotri

With Fusion TDCi, Ford has made a serious attempt to trim costs by minimizing plastic quality. Because of this, Fusion not only maintains Ford’s tremendous build quality and sturdiness but also looks impressive from the outside.

In my opinion, the diesel engine in Fusion, which is borrowed from the Fiesta, does not feel out of place in the car. As a mater of fact, the slightly shorter car seems more agile in nature when one compares it with the Fiesta.

The best part about Ford Fusion TDCi is that the car is zesty at low speeds and handles beautifully because of its big, wide tyres. The downside of Ford Fusion TDCi is its 1399cc diesel engine, which produces only 68 horsepower.

Point to be noted here is that while the engine will get you moving to around 70-80 kmph without any sort of hassle but it starts straining after that. This lack of grunt is bound to annoy you especially when you are on a highway.

Officials of Ford has already announced in media that Ford will not be bringing in a larger diesel engine, though a 1600cc TDCi does exist in its stable. I guess this may primarily have to do with price.

The Fusion TDCi, which has lost a bit of length, as a matter of fact it comes in at below 4000 mm and has a diesel engine below 1400cc can be easily termed as the lower rate of excise for small cars. This is a bit surprising because of the simple reason that the Fusion does not give you an impression of a small car.

Rear seat legroom and bootspace is quite good in Fusion TDCi. The ex-showroom price of Fusion TDCi is Rs 6.59 lakh. If you drive a substantial distance every day then the Ford Fusion TDCi is tailor made for you.

The India Street Rating: 8/10

Review of the Nokia 390 Communicator

By Vipin Agnihotri

No doubt, Nokia E90 communicator is a mind-blowing device but when you hold it, you will get an impression that you have just buy one of those fancy new dumb-bells. In other words, Nokia E90 is heavy for a mobile device. Nokia on their part may argue that they sell E90 and other high-end N series devices as computers.

And that is where, when you think of Nokia E90 as an Ultra Mobile PC, it not that bad. The best part about Nokia E90 communicator is that it can make calls and costs only Rs 40,000.

In my opinion, the long screen of Nokia E90 is tremendous for reading mails and editing documents. Battery life of Nokia E90 is also quite good. It is worth mentioning in this regard that even if you keep your EDGE or Wi-Fi connection open accidentally, the battery does not drain away in minutes.

Talking about limitations of Nokia E90, you can’t send faxes on this one. On the other hand, you have a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus. Point to be noted here is that while typing on the keyboard remains easy, the old navigation key was simpler to use.

Not so long ago, the communicator could do things, which no other device could but at this moment of time every Nokia phone priced more than Rs 10,000 can do virtually everything it can. In general, while the E90 is a terribly good-looking phone, there are other phones in the E-series line that can get the job done equally well.

The India Street Rating: 7/10

Suggested Reading:

• OpenSocial and the Google Gphone – The Next Gold Rush?

Job Performance Review of Naukri.com

By Vipin Agnihotri

In my opinion, naukri.com is the number one Indian job site at this moment of time. I am not saying this just for the sake of it. According to Alexa, the traffic rank of naukri.com is 535, which is quite exceptional for a job site. The India Street is always interested in featuring the top individuals and companies. Therefore, we decided to review naukri.com.

The best part about naukri.com is that it offers job seekers comprehensive information on wide array of professional fields. For example, if you are banking or insurance professional, there is separate column for you where you can find all the jobs related to banking and insurance. You can search jobs on the basis of category, which gives user a much-needed comfort in terms of job search.

No doubt, there are plenty of other job portals such as Times Jobs and Monster but the job search options provided by naukri.com is mind blowing. In addition, naukri.com is quite popular among consultants world wide, so the chance of your resume viewing increases a lot.

Other good things about naukri.com is that new jobs are posted daily, email alerts are sent to the registered users for matching jobs and last but surely not the least most of the reputed companies prefer posting jobs in naukri.com, so there is no chance of you missing out on any opportunity.

The design of naukri.com is such that it offers easy access to users. For example, there is a separate walk-in section available. There are number of other categories to browse through such as company wise listing, position wise listing. If you are looking for a call center jobs, naukri.com is the recommended location. There are lots of international jobs as well in the naukri.com.

One complaint (and some may call this a non-issue) that we have is that the reponse to some of our ads has been tremendous and can last for days. In the last posting, we received over 150 response sin 7 days.

All in all, if you are looking for a new job or want to make a shift from your current job, naukri.com gives you an ideal platform for career growth.

The India Street rating: 8/10

Suggested Reading:

• Exclusive news of Anil Ambani and Tata Group

• Reviewing the Reviewer: A Review of India Hotel Review ...

• REVIEW: Top Celebrity Branded Real Estate Projects in India ~ The ...

• Review of Birla Sun Life’s New Dream Plan – Not Dreamy ~ The India ...

• Postcards from the Future – The Search for Future Hot Spots ~ The ...

Reviewing the Reviewer: A Review of India Hotel Review (Indiahotelreview.com)

I recently reviewed the site Indiahotelreview.com which is still in beta, but highly functional. As a test, I chose Bangalore as the city to review the site. I also selected the top hotels I typically stay in when visiting the city.

India Hotel Review claims it’s the largest online India hotel directory aggregating around 9000 Indian hotels spread across more than 800 destinations. “This includes wide category of stay options ranging from budget hotels to 5 stars luxury hotels, cottages, guest houses & home stays.”

IndiaHotelReview.com leading is aiming for both the budget minded and wealthy High Net Worth (HNW) individual and the local Indian and foreign Multi-National Corporate (MNC) business traveler for travel and vacation bookings.

The Positives:

• The site design is well done and is pleasing to the eye

• The range of hotels in the system appears to be the largest I have seen

• They seem to have access to hotel rooms not on other competitive sites

• The book by phone option is easy

• The hotel review by traveler option is good

• As the expert section, although there does not appear to be many responses yet

• The distance markers to nearby landmarks and transportation centers are a nice feature

The Negatives:

• Typing in a city – Pull down menu is too large to find a city quickly.

• I found some hotel reviews but they were disconnected from the actual booking pages. This makes it difficult to see how a hotel was rated by travelers prior to booking it.

• Some of the fares (see below) were far above what I found on other sites.

I also made some hotel reservations for the given dates below using my usual Expedia.com vs. Indiahotelreview.com The results were mixed, with Expedia cheaper than Indiahotelreview.com but IHR.com clearly had more options for my favorite hotels in Bangalore.

Date of Booking	Hotel Name	IHR.com Price	Expedia Price
Oct 10 – Oct 17 2007	Leela Palace	$3489 or INR 1,39,563	$3130 or INR 1,25,200
Oct 10 – Oct 17 2007	Chancery	$2893 or INR 1,15,720	$1463 or INR 58,520
Oct 10 – Oct 17 2007	Le Meridien	$2273 or INR 90,920	$2667 or INR 1,06,680
Oct 19 – Oct 23 2007	The Oberoi	$1476 or INR 59,056	No rooms available
Oct 10 – Oct 17 2007	Hotel Royal Orchid	$2110 or INR 84417	Expedia doesn’t have reservations for this hotel

In summary the site is very deep and a very good answer for last minute travelers or those looking for bargain options in India. Some of the fares for the higher end hotels appear to be hit and miss when comparing to competitive sites. While the site is new, if it builds out with more user generated content, it will make hotel booking easier and more transparent. Like always, use 2 or 3 travel sites when looking for the best options and price. I do plan to add Indiahotelreview.com to my list of sites to check before booking a hotel.

Similar Articles

• Weird, wacky, worth it? - Billboards in Delhi

• 11 Disrupting Web 2.0 Internet Companies that will Change India ...

• Postcards from the Future – The Search for Future Hot Spots ~ The ...

• Top Ten 10 Business Hotels in India ~ The India Street - Business ...
  

Review of Birla Sun Life’s New Dream Plan – Not Dreamy

By Vipin Agnihotri

The main advantage associated with Birla Sun Life’s new Dream Plan is it gives you a guaranteed maturity benefit that you set yourself. Birla Sun Life’s new Dream Plan is basically a top-down plan meaning that you set a target at the completion of the term and pay the premium on the basis of your target.

In an ideal scenario, a small sum is directed towards your insurance needs, which you can enhance depending on your needs. The policyholder is always guaranteed the maturity amount chosen and because of this he or she can plan his requirements.

In general, the policy period can vary from five to twenty five years but only for individuals between 18-60 years of age. It has come into the notice of The India Street that there are three choices under the guaranteed maturity benefit scheme, namely, 100 percent, 200 percent and 300 percent.

Fund values and guaranteed values will be minimized every month by reducing the units. It is worth mentioning in this regard that there is a fund management charge of 1 percent per annum. Talking about the limitation of Birla Sun Life’s new Dream Plan, for a basic sum assured, the charges are quite steep.

It is 8.45 percent for the first three years in a term of five years for a basic sum assured of Rs 1,133 and 12.26 percent for the remaining under the 100 percent maturity option. Remember that these charges vary as per different bands set under the policy. In my opinion, the overheads are very steep and the guarantee of 3 percent is not too exciting. Although, the plan does allow you to choose a mix of targets and options on offer- but that by itself does not really make it a dream plan.

Suggested Reading:

• Stock of the week: Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited

• Luxury Trains, Planes, Automobiles... and Buses

• Smart Money versus Dumb Money

• 11 Disrupting Web 2.0 Internet Companies that will Change India