Facebook and the Live feed suggestion
Just a quick post about the way live feed works in Facebook. Well, you see, a lot of my friends keep posting updates, which come and take up my whole of live feed, and more importantly these updates are mostly from third party apps and hence useless to me.
So, I often hide a few people’s updates from barging into my live feeds, and then as it happens, I tend to forget that these people are still alive and active as usual on facebook. Pretty bad..huh!. Request facebook to have more options than just simply saying “HIDE” or “SHOW” to a friend’s updates (maybe some level of control from where my friend’s updates are coming from or even showing only one consolidated update per day from the friend who I “HID” from my live feed ??)
Don’t know how this might work, but definitely would be a plus to have this slight little level of control on my live feed
The green colored tshirt I bought from Inkfruit
I have had a pretty good experience with
Inkfruit.com, their tees being of good quality and design, plus the order processing and shipping time. They have mostly got everything covered.
But then, which ecommerce startup is without some flaws; in fact not just an ecommerce startup, but every startup in general. I ordered this awesome designer tshirt from inkfruit, but as it turned out, after the first wash it turned from a darker shade to a lighter one, and worse, I got another of my white colored tshirt patched with green color in places. Uuff..should have listened to mom saying never wash dark clothes with lighter ones :|
But, frankly, I did not expect the tee to loose color. It’s been ages, since I have had a color tee loose color after washing. So, my friend came up with the most logical answer about why this tee lost color and other’s didn’t -
“A tee selling for 350 bucks, means they must be dying white colored tees to get the other desired colors, and obviously these will loose color on washing. On the other hand, the more expensive tees have the fabric inherently colored.”
Well, I’m no textile engineer nor someone with much fabric / cloth knowledge. So, whatever my friend said, sounded logical. He may be right, maybe wrong. But, the question that I have right now for inkfruit guys is whether there is any way to exchange this *almost useless* tshirt now, or am I supposed to spend 350 bucks for a one time wear ??
Tagged as:
inkfruit,
tshirts
While it might not be visible to a lot of people on the internet, but my being from an an e-commerce background I can’t help but think how cafegadgets.com is ruining the whole e-commerce experience of Indian internet users. The fact that the number of Indian internet users is increasing everyday, and more people are getting hooked on to e-commerce, it is both, surprising and sad to realize that these guys over at cafegadgets seem to get the whole concept of order processing and customer service absolutely wrong. The major problem with this is that a user’s trust from shopping online is lost, and this directly impacts the other e-commerce guys in India; as well as the fact that if India really has to grow the e-commerce industry then the best practices(as seen on major online retailers in other countries) need to be established first.
Why I write this, is because I have had two *forgettable* occasions when I had to shop at cafegadgets, and while I could ignore the first time, the same experience second time made me write this blog post (on the other hand I wrote this post about Inkfruit.com guys immediately after my first purchase with them !). You have to understand that “impatience is the new buzz”, and “third and last chance” has become “once and never again” for the new generation :)
Coming back to CafeGadgets, my first order took 20 days to be delivered (after about 4-5 telephone calls that the customer service guys picked up, 10-15 calls dying after “no answer” at the other end, and a bunch of mails being exchanged with the customer service reps as well as some top-level guys, and finally some jugaad to get my message through to the best possible authority). And yes, my order consisted of just a computer mouse and a keyboard. Now, when you are not selling any personalized stuff, item availability is either a “YES” or a “NO” and maybe “Will ship in X days”. Simple. So, it grew on me, why I had to wait 20 days to get something delivered, which is either in stock or not. So, either take the order for such an item or say no. Anyways, problems like these arise, and for once they can be neglected / overlooked. But, what if the same thing happens again ??!! Email them ? Call customer support ?? I tried both, but this time less frequently (going by the previous experience). And yes, this time I ordered a set of Sennheiser headphones (which BTW, are being thrown away by these guys, dirt cheap…and I suggest you order one asap !). It hasn’t been that long(5 days to be precise) ordering those headphones, but I just thought…“something these guys have put on sale..has to be in stock for sure…in fact in stock more than they are able to handle…that’s why the sale !”. Not good…definitely not impressive.
I just wish, someone from CafeGadgets reads this, and does something about my order, and more about how they are actually going about their e-commerce endeavor. These guys need to change / improve a lot and FAST, else they will be just another name in the past.
Well, it doesn’t really make much of a difference, since slicehost (after being acquired by Rackspace) is a part of Rackspace, and I could feel it instantly why everything in the rackspace cloud looks / behaves similar to slicehost..huh!
Why I moved is probably just because of the monthly charges that I had to face at slicehost. Frankly, my blog and the bunch of other time-pass apps that I had hosted over at slicehost, didn’t consume all the bandwidth that came bundled with the plan. So, there was essentially no point in paying what I was not using; hence the move to pay-per-use bandwidth…a.k.a the rackspace cloud. If you do a little math, then it’s not hard to realize that while one pays $20 for the entry level server at slicehost (with a 100GB bandwidth included), it would cost around the same at rackspace cloud also. Huh…!..who cares though…the day when I’ll reach the 100GB mark, I probably won’t mind paying a few extra dollars..in the meantime saving up some crucial bucks while I’m still poor :|
Why Rackspace cloud and not amazon ? It’s difficult to setup on EC2..frankly. S3 is simple, and the free data transfer from S3 to EC2 is a bonus. But, well, Rackspace offers a free CDN !! It’s upto you to decide, whether you prefer Amazon or Rackspace, cause honestly, there ain’t much difference between them when it comes to getting cloudified ! :)
Tagged as:
AWS,
Nginx,
rackspace,
slicehost,
web server
Not getting enough presents ? Why not just gift something to yourself. I’ve been following the same principle for the last 2 years, and while last year I gifted myself a cool little iPhone art from Infectious, this year I bought a bunch of designer t-shirts from Inkfruit.com.
See, the best part about all this, is that you will always love the gifts, and you will comfortable in the company of fellow gift-getters (that’s not even a term !) or feel like the king in the company of never-gift-getters (that’s random again, but I guess you get the point). And then, what better way to start off the new year than wear some cool new t-shirts and go bird-watching at the nearest mall :P
Tagged as:
new year,
self gift guide
Doodle Jump by Lima Sky
The most interesting story on mobilecrunch after a very long time. Well, it’s not exactly a story, but a piece of news, from the developers of Doodle Jump, Lima Sky.
2 brother, a number of iPhone games, and a cool little $700k in each brother’s bag, just from the Doodle Jump game. I wonder what the total amount these guys must have in their bags right now. Simply awesome stuff !
Whoever said you need a full team of developers and a big fat budget to build the most happening mobile games ?!
Ever wondered how people use facebook in India ? More importantly, how companies, big or small tend to or plan to use social media for their goodwill ?
Don’t know much in detail about each and every company or industry, but media / film industry is one of the early adopters of social media, and they are still following up what a lot of international celebrities are doing. Just found out this ad on facebook, which details about a facebook event, where you can video chat with Aamir, and have a quick QNA about his latest movie – 3 Idiots
3 Idiots and the facebook AD/ event
Not exactly how international bands do their new album launch on facebook / myspace. but still god enough for a start by the indian TV / music industry !
Tagged as:
3 idiots,
Bollywood,
facebook,
live chat with aamir
I wrote this piece of small article for PluggdIN, talking about how and what of emails for your business. Most of the time companies just send out mails, with little or no regard to the email standards. the question been – if you cry standard everywhere else, then why not emails ??
You can get the whole story of the “how” on pluggdin
I probably shouldn’t be writing this, being an ex-picsquare guy ;), but I just have to show some love..baby !
I’ve always wanted to buy some awesome designer tees, and have frankly tried threadless, but the shipping charges just blew me away. Imagine paying almost double the price of the tshirt, to get it shipped to India. And then, over the last 1-1.5 years, we have been keeping track of Inkfruit (since they are pretty much in the same domain of printing stuff…as we do at picsquare), but then they have never been a direct competitor (you can’t call zazzle and threadless to be competitors..can you ??!!)
So, while I have always been inclined towards buying some tees from infruit, to be really honest, the designs never seemed too appealing, specially when you consider things like t-shirts which are worn day-in-and-day-out, and hence need to be a class apart. (don’t take me wrong guys !). But then, yesterday, I saw this small little section in the newly opened bangalore central, colorfully titled “INKFRUIT”, and I just couldn’t stop checking out the stuff. And….5 minutes later I had a nice little tee in my shopping bag :)
Well, I could only find two reasons why I ever hesitated buying stuff from inkfruit online.
- First, the size matters ! Yes, nobody wants to enthusiastically open the shipment, and realize that the size is a wee-bit small..huh!! So much for all the shopping and returns !
- Secondly, and which I guess inkfruit guys need to really work on asap, is that the designs need to like way more appealing on the website than they are right now. The whole concept of designer tees, and designer community, just doesn’t work if you are not able to showcase the work in the most effective / /appropriate manner…
Well, enough of my 2 cents (yeah..I’m turning old and wise); the fact is, these guys have entered the retail market in a big way. Last when I was tracking them, they had the CCD deal going I guess (don’t remember the details), and suddenly the Central stuff….nice..nice !!
Tagged as:
bangalore central,
design,
infruit,
tshirts
