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CYBER
CHATTER
By
Sudeep Chakrvarti
NEW KID
IN TOWN
 A
16-year-old from Chandigarh claims to have done it. Advertised as a meta-search
engine for India-cum-Indian language e-mail service, HumHaiIndia.com
(HHI) slumps with e-mail service (couldn't locate fonts) but sizzles as
a search engine. I didn't time responses to a nanosecond, but tried simple
word searches on the site that currently searches through Yahoo, Infoseek
and Fast-India Today, nuclear submarine, and well, sex. Happily, almost
every India Today Group entity and channels popped up in the top ranks.
The nuke search, auto-customised to India, filtered out the Russian submarine
in the Barents Sea and flashed agencies and stories relevant to India.
The sex search should gratify any India-centric voyeur. Then I benchmarked
it with an identical search on rediff.com. Maybe Rediff was having a bad-hair
day, but HHI was quicker-though it could have grouped nukes better. Kids
...
ATTITUDE
'R US
 It's
new, and settling in. So parts of tringtring.com,
Aptech's new ISP site that offers as-you-use prices for Internet time,
seems a little ragged when compared to, say, satyamonline.com. But already,
it has attitude. Decidedly aimed at youngsters, it's packed with funky
design and chat clubs. Highlighted, in-your-face come-ons on the home
page like "Want to chat?", "Study abroad?", "Prepare
for an Interview" and "The right dress style" may not attract
baby boomers, but it's in sync with Aptech's recognition factor as an
outfit that offers computer/it courses to students and such. Who else
would go to a site called tring tring?
WRAP
UP
This is
an interesting one to tell your NRI family and friends about for that
bulk purchase or the next shopping trip back home.
Although
the name gives a different impression, calcuttasarees.com
has information, deals and contact for sari styles and shops that go beyond
Bengal. Essentially for traders, exporters and importers, it lists shops
in Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Dhaka; provides a few
links to sites of sari manufacturers and exporters; and has a buyers posting
where you can list the kind of sari you want (Crepe, Tangail, Banarasi
and so on), price range and quantity.
And in case
people have forgotten how, there's a step-by-step graphic help-along to
tie a sari.
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Hot
Off The Web
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| Eyeball
Contact: Not all the work in a nascent, blazing market gets done
on the web. ITNation.com, the three-year old it industry service and
trading site that has recently been partnered by Ariba, a major global
e-commerce platform provider, is aggressively targeting its sales
people to go meet prospective clients. Logic lesson: start-ups in
a start-up industry may need to roll up their sleeves and hard sell
with eyeball contact of a real kind. |
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Fantastic
Theory: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) says
it plans to form a committee to regulate investment advisory on
the Net. There's a hitch: the only people who could listen to SEBI
are registered e-broking sites, not those which offer free advice
with tips or research, often brazenly plugging a favoured share.
SEBI
officials say one way out would be to figure a way for getting these
sites to charge a fee in some way so they can be brought under mandatory
SEBI registration. They also want to plug advertising on all sites.
Somebody isn't thinking.
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Fast
Takes
-
Katiesoft's new browser: The king of split-window is back
with a neater version that allows browsing four sites simultaneously.
Free downloads (shy of 2.3 MB) at katiesoft.com/download/download.
Supports Word, Excel, Power Point, Napster.
-
Siemens WAP phones: The company has launched three new models,
priced between Rs 14,500 and Rs 21,500.
-
Foodworld on the Net: The major grocery retail chain plans to
go Net in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Coimbatore.
But a proposed credit card service charge of 5 per cent a transaction?
Ouch!
- The
dotcom grab: If you hear a dotcom has been bought out or into
by a brick-and-mortar company, don't flinch. It's already the
hot Merger & Acquisition trend after pure dotcom M&As.
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The
stock markets are humming, and it's feel-good time once again, writes
INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 
