This is great stuff. The Share My Dabba (Share My Tiffin) initiative is a joint effort between Happy Life Welfare Society and The Dabbawala Foundation that makes use of leftover food from the tiffins and is shared with hungry street children.
Read more about the Dabbawalas here.
How Google Managed to Up its Ante In India
Aatif Sumar, writing on UnleashThePhones, lists down 10 steps that Google has been strategically taking over the last 6 months to step up its game in India. If you look at all these as an Indian consumer, you’ll realize how much of a difference they actually make. He also makes a very good point:
Until Google has Operator Billing, all their efforts of making money from customers in India are in vain, since a vast majority of Indians do not have easy access to Credit Cards, or do not trust their Credit Card details being on the internet somewhere. In fact, most people don’t even have bank accounts in India. Using Debit Cards on the Play Store is hit and miss. Operator Billing is the perfect fit in such a market since all mobile users trust their Service Provider enough to purchase something that gets added to their mobile phone bill, or gets cut from their balance.
Consider the approach Samsung has been taking in India — fill the market up with phones for every price slab, offer different combinations of features and introduce their special “Duos” (Dual-SIM) phones. Today, almost every other smartphone you see out there in this country is a Samsung. And then combine this fact with the improvements Google has been bringing to Android lately.
I’m from the Apple “fanboy” club, but I’ll say the Cupertino giant has lost this race before it could even begin.
STAR Becomes IPL’s Associate Sponsor
But STAR’s gain could be pain for rival network Multi Screen Media (MSM), which operates the flagship Sony Entertainment channel, besides SET Max and Sony SIX. Sony competes directly with STAR Plus, which is the market leader in the Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) space.
Associate sponsorship, for which STAR is expected to fork out around Rs 30 crore, would mean the STAR brand would be a prominent feature during telecast of the matches on two of MSM’s channels. STAR will also have a strong on-ground presence, and MSM cannot blur the competitor’s logo.
This is like Google becoming a sponsor on Apple’s App Store and Apple having to display the Android logo all over the place. This is STAR effectively “trolling” Sony.
Apple today has updated the processors in their lineup of MacBook Pro with Retina Display and has also lowered their prices. The following is the updated Indian pricing for these is as follows:
13-inch MacBook Pro with 128GB – Rs. 99,900 [$1499 + tax in the US]
13-inch MacBook Pro with 256GB (2.6GHz) – Rs. 1,14,900 [$1699 + tax in the US]
13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB – Rs. 94,900 [$1399 + tax in the US]
Apple has also updated the 15-inch MacBook Pro with a faster 2.4GHz Quad-core processor in the base model and a 2.7GHz Quad-core processor with 16GB of memory in the top-of-the-line model.
Apple has just announced that iPad with Retina Display, commonly known as iPad 4, will be available in a 128GB version starting February 5th, 2013. This 128GB version will be sold along with the regular 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions of the iPad and will be available in all Apple Authorized Resellers and Apple Shops across the country.
Apple has also announced the prices of these new 128GB version iPads for India.
128GB Wi-Fi only Model: Rs. 46,900 ($799+tax in the US)
128GB Wi-Fi + Cellular Model: Rs. 56,900 ($929+tax in the US)
It’s interesting that the fully loaded a 128GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model of the iPad, that offers twice the storage capacity, is still cheaper than the full-loaded 64GB iPhone 5 sold in India, which costs Rs. Rs. 59,500.
Malgudi Days remains one of my fondest childhood memories. Based on R.K. Narayan’s work of the same name, this television series was hugely popular back in the eighties and nineties and as a kid, I used to remember finishing my homework earlier than expected just so I could watch the episodes.
Thanks to Rajshri.com, this TV series is now available for viewing on YouTube for Free. Go ahead and let this tickle your nostalgia.
Cleartrip Enables Passbook Support for Tickets
Cleartrip, my favorite online ticket-booking service for India, has announced that Passbook support has been enabled for all tickets booked through the service.
All confirmation emails sent by Cleartrip now have a pass file attached in addition to the PDF ticket. In addition, passes are available from within your Cleartrip Account through your desktop or mobile browser.
I was hoping they’d do this since October last year.
Zomato is now Available in London
We have a habit of pressure testing Zomato and our people by putting big challenges, six inches in front them. So, we decided, that this Christmas, Zomato is coming to London. This meant, we had to collect data for over 15,000 restaurants on foot in extreme cold, upload all the information, scan all the menus, and quality check everything before we could say London is live. On top of that, all the product and design changes that were needed to make sure that we were ready to compete in a market such as London, where we are going against some of the biggest, most respected players in the world.
That’s a mighty leap by Zomato. I’m a big fan of the work Zomato’s been doing over the last couple of years and it’s great to see them expand like this. If you’re in London, you can request access to their London content here.
[Via Medianama]