Category Archives: Reviews

5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites

Were excited about our 100th post!
This is our 100th post!

It’s the 100th post on prasadgupte.com and it’s time to celebrate! For long, I envied the Americans for having Groupon until I realized that there are several deal of the day websites – in fact, with better business models – to serve us. I have been a regular user of these websites, having bought at least 15 deals totaling over INR 15,000 with overall savings of 69%.

5 reasons to save your riches with these shops

1. It saves money: What’s more important that saving some money?
2. It’s easy: There is no upfront payment to receive these deals – they’re delivered to your phone & mailbox for free.
3. It’s safe, either ways: I have always (knock on wood) had a good experience transacting on the internet, and these sites are safe to use as they transact over a trusted gateway. If you fear spending online, you can always have the coupons delivered to your doorstep – free of cost!* So its safe either ways.
4. Keeps you aware: One huge benefit I found out of following these deals (even if you don’t want to buy) is that it keeps you aware of the new places in town and the margins that you can possibly cut in when striking a deal.
5. It’s cool: There’s no reason to be shy – like my dad likes to make me feel. It’s any day cool to be spending smart!

I’ve put together a list of the creme-de-la-creme in the order of *my* choice:

1. DealsAndYou

DealsAndYou
DealsAndYou

I purchased deals worth Rs. 9100 for Rs. 2593. This is one of my favorites! The website is neat, and the deals are fabulous. They take the entire payment upfront – so its a deal in the real sense as against a discount coupon. It covers for roughly 60% of my deal spend and growing, ever my trust in the brand was bolstered by their quick justification email. Continue reading 5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites

Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara

Wishing fellow Indians a happy Republic day! Just checked out the new version of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara today: 2 x 8 min videos… huh! And not that exciting! Check out the new ‘Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’: Part 1 | Part 2. Some immediate comments:

  • All pure instrumental portions are fantastic: Rahman, Anousha Shankar, tabla, Sivamani, Jazz, …
  • Great focus on renewable energy: Solar water heaters and aggregators in the background a couple of times
  • S-E-L (Shankar-Eshan-Loy) are great towards the end of their part
  • The old-age home (supposedly) & Kashmir parts are very sweet
  • Old is Gold: Original music has been tampered too much. Preferred the older Punjabi & Bengali parts (Is Shaan saying send me ‘SMS’?)
  • There seems to be no one besides movie stars in this…
  • Amitabh Bachchan has been made to sound wierd; he should’ve only been asked to read out the lines
  • A bit of over-acting from actors down-under
  • No Value Add: The Lux couple, Sonu Nigam, Shahid, Ranbir (in pajamas), Karan Johar
  • Salman, Deepika short of clothes
  • First 14 mins were great, and then SRK arrives with his silly hand gestures  🙁 as if he’s going to jerk of the whole world by closing his fist 😉 Just compare it to Aamir’s part
  • Thanks for paying homage to the military at the end

Notable comments from elsewhere:

  • why to ruin the good memories with bad bollywood experimentation. It is like comparing SHOLAY with RGV KI AAG
  • This “SUR” has become “BESUR” because of bollywood
  • Seriously, half of the people in this video didn’t deserve to be there

Continue reading Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara

Nokia E71: Missing & Suggested Features

After a fortnight with my new Nokia E71, I realized that there is a lot of feature addition possible with basic features. Despite of the E71 being feature rich, it has a great number of issues with basic functionality. If you know Pareto’s Law, these issues are in the 20% of all applications, which are used 80% of the time. I have listed down these issues in my ‘After a week with my new Nokia E71’ post, have a look. Here are a few suggested/missing features… Continue reading Nokia E71: Missing & Suggested Features

A week with my new Nokia E71

A new cell-phone had been on the top of my wishlist ever since I had full-filled the wish to have a website. I have been evaluating phones forever, but for over a year now, the intention has been to buy one 🙂 Last Diwali I had haunted for HTC Touch, a PDA that I had decided on buying. Unfortunately, it wasn’t readily available anywhere. At one store, I had seen the new Nokia E66 and E71 that made me rethink on Symbian phones. From that time to now, I had been saving money for a E71 that I finally got last Sunday. Here’s a quick review… Continue reading A week with my new Nokia E71

Review: (tata) Bata!

Can you think of any brand for leather shoes? An Indian with ‘need-based’ shopping habits won’t be able to think beyond Bata. But from my experience with Bata products over the last couple of years, I think it is high time we start looking for other brands. Here is my story of a 1500 rs pair of shoes that lasted less than 6 months – and I didn’t play football with them! Continue reading Review: (tata) Bata!

Review: Liferay Portal

I was going a Sun white-paper on Open Source technologies for Web applications; Sun was soft-marketing the Glass fishframework. My take from it was LifeRay, an open source portal technology. I never really of a Java-based portal other than Alfresco, and this is something so close to Sun. I created a demo site for myself to test the feature set. Continue reading Review: Liferay Portal