Multi-lingual menus

Seeing Jan’s post about multi-lingual menus, I’m reminded of this picture I took while I was in Goa few years ago. Yes, Japanese menu (and lovely visual chart of the breakfast thali) in the heart of Goa. And no, there wasn’t any sign of a Japanese settlement in the vicinity!

Sorry, store’s closed!

Is this the only website in the world that virtually “closes down” for few hours everyday???? A classic case of technical limitations, rather than users’ needs, driving the specifications!

Upcoming events

A variety of (potentially) interesting events coming up over the next few weeks/months…

• TiE New Delhi’s organizing a retail summit on July 27.
• India Retail Forum: Sep 4-6, 2007 in Mumbai.
• Design Yatra 2007: Sep 6-8 in Goa.
• EPIC 2007: Oct 3-6, 2007 in Colorado, USA.

Let me know if you’re headed to any of these. I’m still making up my mind…

More innovation with traffic

Continuing from my previous story about RouteGuru, wanted to also share couple of other increasingly popular traffic related innovations happening in India (incidentally, both originating from Bangalore)…

Mapunity has put together this application for the Bangalore Traffic Police. It shows live traffic information for the entire city, using the cell phone networks across the city. Depending on the presence of cellphones (and therefore, people), the map shows you how crowded/dense that area is currently.

Of course, it’s not meant to be exact or precise in terms of the number of people/vehicles on the street…but it does the job…you get a sense of how smooth the traffic flow is or isn’t currently.

And the second one, which has been around for some time now and far more publicised and popular, Commute Easy, for car & bike-pooling. The techies in Bangalore seem to be loving it!

With the phenomenal boom in cell phones in the country, and with almost every one in the urban cities carrying (at least) one cell phone, no wonder both these concepts are relying and using mobile phones to make things easy for users. Way to go!

Driving directions, the Indian way

Yet another startup geared towards Indian users, RouteGuru. And based on a quick look (and use) of the site, I loved it!

Unlike in the most other parts of the world, the best way to get driving directions in India has always been…to just stop and ask somebody!! Of course, at times it does get frustrating when all you get is “ekdam seedha jaao“…meaning, “Just go straight!!”

So, it’s really interesting to see RouteGuru has used this technique, of using landmarks to point people in the right direction. Check this out…I did a sample search for Delhi (other cities aren’t active yet), from the domestic airport (Palam airport) to Alaknanda. And here’s what it came up with (a snapshot of the detailed directions)…

I love the way it says “Start with overhead tank on your right side” and even better, “Pass by taxi stand on right”. I can almost visualize somebody on the street directing me there. Good stuff!

They’ve also added in a nice feature of sending an SMS to your mobile with these directions.

Will get back with more updates (if any) after I’ve spent more time with this. Hopefully the Bangalore version will be active soon.

Ticket booking blues

Before I get back to further updates on ‘The Shop’ conference, here’s couple of things I noticed while looking up flight tickets online…

On the SpiceJet website, I’m at the page where you enter the traveller information and payment details. What irritated me was, that they haven’t (clearly) specified the total cost of the ticket!!

The fare is split into: “1 Adult @ Rs.1,899″ and “Taxes/Fees – Rs.1,375″. I would expect a travel site like this to total the cost and mention (in a large size) what I finally ending up paying. Just made the whole experience of booking a ticket very unpleasant. Of course, I didn’t complete the booking (there were better fares on other websites anyways).

Moving on, I was looking up options on Cleartrip, by far, my most preferred Indian travel site. The list of cities displayed “Madras” instead of “Chennai”.

The history (for those not familiar) is that the Madras/Chennai state government decided to change the British name (“Madras”) and get back to a more local name..and “Chennai” was the chosen name, for whatever reason.

It’s probably been 8-10 years (or is it more?) since the official name change. But, folks like me who’ve grown up on the good ol’ British name, “Madras”, continue to refer to the city by that name. However, most businesses including websites have made the change several years ago. So, seeing the cleartrip website continue to use “Madras” was a bit of a surprise.

I guess it wouldn’t make much of a difference to local users, but for somebody who’s new to the country, who’s probably familiar with the new name, “Chennai”, it could be a bit of a pain to first look up Chennai and not find it…and then get to know that “Madras” is the option he/she’s got to select!