iXiGO - Travel search engine for Indian consumers

Yet another website to gain from the travel and tourism boom in India. A search engine for the best deals. Rest you can read what I have found from their 'About' section.

What is iXiGO?

iXiGO is a travel search engine for Indian consumers.

Our mission: to aggregate travel information and make it searchable and useful.
Our passion: technology that brings speed, usability and transparency to the travel world.

How are we different?

iXiGO is an infomediary, not an intermediary. That means we are NOT an online travel agency. We let you search directly across multiple airlines and online travel agencies in real-time so that you don't need to search a zillion travel websites. We thus aim to make your travel search easier for you, the same way Google does for information on websites.

We do not advertise any 0 Rs. fares, 1 Rs. fares, 99 Rs. fares on our site, for one simple reason - we let you cut through the crap and give you the raw deal - inclusive of all taxes and fees. We believe that travelers want all-inclusive price comparison, even for roundtrip fares, where selecting an onward and return flight separately is not only tedious but unnecessary. We show you all combinations with the actual price that hits your pocket.

iXiGO is a search of the traveler, by the traveler and for the traveler. When you use iXiGO, you retain complete control on your travel choices and preferences. You choose which provider you want to book your tickets with, and can complete the booking directly on the provider's site. This ensures that you retain a direct relationship with travel vendors and complete a transaction more efficiently. It also means that travel planning is no more stressful and you spend less time searching for tickets and more time on planning your stay.

Unlike travel agencies, there are no biases or commercially-motivated deals within our results. We don't sell placements within the search results, or allow anyone to pay for higher visibility. We give you objective, comprehensive, transparent information to help you make more informed buying (and traveling!) decisions. In addition, we provide you with cool tools to sort, filter and personalize your results, ensuring that you have fun while you search for that perfect travel deal for you.

iXiGO's utility and ease of use have made it India's best known travel search engine almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users.

So now you must have read all the above ones and can fully rely on this. I have tried and they take you directly to the airline website for the choice you make.

Go ahead and visit the website here.

Tripmela - brings together travel deals specially tailored for India's travelers

This is what the website claims in its 'About' page. "Tripmela is India's only online source for airfare specials, hotel deals, and great travel packages. No other website brings together travel deals specially tailored for India's travelers.

Tripmela is not an online booking site. Reservations are made directly with our partners, so you always know where you're booking. Our goal is simply to work with travel companies to bring you the lowest fares and cheapest hotel rates tailored for India's growing travel population.

In addition to publishing new deals daily at Tripmela.com, every Tuesday we send out the 10 Best Deals Weekly Newsletter, with our hottest specials for the week. Signup is free and tailored to India's travelers--no more will you have to sift through travel deals to places you don't want to go."

I chanced upon this website from search results and also from the various pop-ups from good well-known websites. Do I need to describe what they do when you would have already read above. I have marked the main objective of their's in red and hence you can refer this website as reference for various offers and offerings from so many Indian airlines and travel portals.

Visit Tripmela here.

I'm going to be rich by $11,801,017 in the next 10 years? What about you?

How much money will you be worth?

Just chanced upon this goodie fun website through johnchow.com and found by my huge surprise that I'm going to be rich by $11,801,017 in the next 10 years. Wow. Thats really cool. Considering my Indian citizenship I'm very very happy seeing this and have started dreaming. Lol. Its really a big amount for us here. Isn't it.

The pages are based on the question and answer system. 15 questions are asked which finally results in as to how rich you are going to be in the next 10 years.

Well, you could also test yourself of your richness in the next 10 years and see for yourself. Visit the website here.

Zoomin - A brief synopsis

Zoom.in is a new entrant to the online photo printing service in India and as well in the US. Apart from photo printing they also offer picture sharing and unlimited space for your online photo storage needs. Following are the features offered by the site

• Import your photos from Flickr and Picasa.

• You can edit your photo in zoom.in.

• Tag your photos and organize them.

• You could share your album to your friends.

• You can import your address book from Yahoo, GMail, MSN, AOL, Outlook, etc.

• The entire site is neatly designed with bright colors and has an easy to use interface.

• The prints are shipped very next day.

• Zoom.in is currently giving out 25 free prints on sign up after you verify the code you receive on the mobile number you have given during sign up.
  

Zoomin vs iTasveer - Online Indian photo printing websites

This is the Web 2.0 era wherein companies’ bank on user generated content to push their businesses. Its like people having the raw material and companies having the financial power combining themselves to deliver a final product. And hot on the heels are the new services like iTasveer, Pic Square and ZoomIn. These services enable the user to share their favorite photos and even print them. For the time being, we’ll be concentrating only on two services, ZoomIn which is relatively a new one and iTasveer. Let’s get a basic overview of what these websites offer and who has an upper hand on whom.

The core service offered by both these websites are same. And the main source of revenue for them is from users placing orders for their prints. This is a new concept in India as the conventional photo studios rule the roost. But to encourage users to use their service and print their photos from them, ZoomIn currently gives 20 (4X6) prints free and iTasveer gives 15 for the same size. This means that, you have to pay only for the shipping.

Storage Space: The disk space allocated on both the services is unlimited which can help you dump all your photos from your hard disk to their servers. Pretty Neat! However, there’s one catch found on iTasveer. If you again want to download all the pictures, you can download images not more than 100MB per month. That is the only restriction they have.

Uploading: Both the services are again at par. Uploading on both these sites is a breeze and they also support other photo sharing services like Picasa and Flickr.

Ordering: Here, ZoomIn is a clear winner. Ordering photos on ZoomIn is pretty easy and fast because of the AJAX based interface. On the other hand, iTasveer seems pretty cluttered and confusing for a first time user. However, one thing to be noticed on iTasveer is the cropping tool. This tool, which is absent on ZoomIn makes it handy that only the relevant subject comes in the print.

Pricing: Well this is the most important criteria. iTasveer’s prices are a tad expensive in comparison of ZoomIn. But the 4X6 prints which is the normal size for a family album is 50 paise cheaper than ZoomIn. This saving is not much but it can save some bucks for you if you’re ordering in bulk. The shipping price charged is also neck to neck with ZoomIn charging Rs. 25 whereas iTasveer charging Rs. 30 for a order.

Product Variety: iTasveer’s store clearly says it all. They print photos even on T-Shirts, Mugs, mousepads which lacks on ZoomIn. I am sure ZoomIn must be thinking to expand their product portfolio with something better and competitive.

As it’s said that nothing’s perfect in this world, neither of the services can be termed as perfect. It just depends on the user on how he uses it. In some points, ZoomIn won the accolades and in some iTasveer. As more and more players spring up, this service factory will be interesting to monitor.

GoSMS.in - Send smss to any mobile number in India for free

GoSMS.in brought to you by Cybase India. Uuff!! So many of these in this sector and so many yet to come. Seems Indian mobile subscribers are in for some good times.

Sometime back I read in a newspaper that Mobile Revolution will come from India itself. And seems we are seeing quite a few of them. From group messaging to every other services. Indian websites, servers and operators are providing everything.

So here we have yet another goodie website which allows you to send smss to any mobile number in India. Well, you can make a address book there. So you can chose which people you want the smss to be sent. So here are features which I observed.

• Address book feature is given. Its a neat simple interface.
• Only 80 characters are allowed for smsing.
• Mobile verification is needed. I did and the verification code came to my BSNL number in 5 seconds. And well you can anytime change your mobile number afterwards.
  
• They do not ask many things for signup hence making things easier for you.
• On every step they recognise the mobile numbers. So detection of States and places become easy. Thus making your work easier.
• You can schedule smss also.
• There are various options and tarriffs also to advertise with them. So you can take advantage with their advertising programm.
  
• There are channels and interests also to which you can subscribe and receive smss. The various channels and interests are.
  

Channels
Business [Get 2 - 3 SMS a week]
Movies [Get 2 - 3 SMS a week]
News [Get 3 - 4 SMS a week]
Sensex [Get 7 - 8 SMS a week]
Sports [Get 2 - 3 SMS a week]

Interests (Get 3 - 4 SMS a month)
Bikes & Cars
Clothing
Clubbing
Computers
Eating Out
Electronics
Fashion
Jewellery
Shoes
Shopping
Travel

So friends enjoy. Will come up with more websites and services same as this. Worry not. We Indian mobile users will have a great time. What is your view let me know here. Visit GoSMS.in here.

Check Indian Domestic Flight Status

A great search for all you Indian fliers. Check Indian Domestic Flight Status here or here.

There are two types of searches.
One is FLIGHT STATUS BY FLIGHT and the other one is FLIGHT STATUS BY ROUTE.

Got missed call? Find out who called and from where?

Is someone giving you numerous missed calls? Did sumone called you up and you couldn't figure out from which place was it? Then here is the thing for you.

Just found out a great website Information Madness which enables you to find out the Operator and Circle/Area of any Indian CDMA or GSM mobile number. Just enter the first 5 digits of the number and click Submit to get the Operator name and the Circle to which the number belongs to.

Visit and find here.