Author: Praval

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Reviews

Lightweight laptop backpack for those on the go – STM Impulse

I am a sucker for productivity apps and tools. As much as I love carrying over a dozen tools, cables, adapters and my 11K mAh (yes, you read it right!) battery pack with me, I try to make sure that I have the right laptop bag before I step out. Yeah, I have a fetish for bags – if there is one store than I’d stop by in a mall, it’s got to be the one which has bags on display!

For the past few months, I have been alternating between STM Revolution, STM Velo and a backpack from Samsonite. While STM Revolution is my all-time favorite backpack, I was looking at something which is smaller in size and lighter in weight – for days when I do not need to carry a lot of stuff. Something that is good enough to throw in the *must haves* and step out without much load on the back. I quite liked STM Impulse Backpack and thought of checking it out.

Fast forward a few weeks and I received a STM Impulse Backpack. I decided to go for the black, medium size bag. Packed in a shiny cellophane wrap, the tag & branding caught my attention, once again. The bag is lightweight – perfect to carry your Macbook Air, iPad, Kindle and a bunch of cables without hurting your back, while you’re on the road.

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Categories
Mobile Reviews

Mailbox for iPhone didn’t impress me much!

Today morning, I was lucky to get access to the MailBox app.

Mailbox is a nice email app, but there’s nothing revolutionary about it. After having used it for a day, I realise that it’s better marketed than built or conceived as a product. Early access to a few folks, brilliant idea of reserving the app in advance, and all that topped with the icing that allows you to download and keep looking at the ticker. This game looked very interesting.

However, while there was so much noise about this app ‘changing’ the way we’ll handle email, I realised that it is for a certain ‘kind’ of users. They’re definitely not the ones who have considerably high volume of emails coming in.

Not just that, it tries to mix the task app and the email app, which for me, serve very different purposes. I would instead wish for an excellent integration between the two. Not a replacement of either.

Reminds me of John Gruber, who rightly said that this app has a different target audience, those who are very gmail centric and have one email address.

I would agree with John on the fact that this won’t replace the Mail.app on iPhone for me. I love labels, folders and the ability to ‘manage’ email.

Bryan on Pandodaily correctly calls it a ‘feature’, not a product.

If you love giving away the control of your email and hide behind the curtain of procrastination fabricated within a good UI, you must try this app. 🙂

I had an chat with Tim Van Damme (@maxvoltar) of Instagram and Chris Herbert (@hrbrt) from MacWorld, on what they feel about Mailbox. Turns out that Tim is liking it for his personal email.

Categories
Opinion

Delivering Un-happiness!

Last year, a friend of mine recommended me a book – “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh. Entrepreneurs who run an eCommerce business would have read it at least once, if not more. But I know of some, who I guess, haven’t.

I want to order a copy each for those who run Zoomin and FloraIndia!

In the last 4 years, eCommerce stores have mushroomed in India at a never before pace, supposedly making our lives easier. Personally, I love this shift and believe that it’s a solution to multiple problems (We can talk about them, some other time).

From the time when using credit cards on the Internet was a nasty affair, to having Cash On Delivery as a payment option, today – we have come a long way. However, the eCommerce companies that are making this a bumpy ride for customers are the sorts I just mentioned. (Oh, I am REALLY serious about getting their postal addresses, for a hard-cover!)

Last week, it was a birthday of someone in the family and I ordered a photo frame from Zoomin and some flowers from Flora India. Little did I know (as if!) these two will conspire together to give an unpleasant experience and hence, make me rant about them!

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