Abhishek Tiwari

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

By now you must already know that Amazon has launched its MP3 download service to contend with the likes of iTunes. This has been a much anticipated move by Amazon, who is looking forward to displace iTunes from its leadership position.

So what would Amazon do to take on the goliath (iTunes)? Build the Earth’s Biggest Selection of a la Carte DRM-Free MP3 Music Downloads. With this selection they plan to offer cheaper, DRM free high quality music (256 kbps) to its users. The beta service boasts over 2 Million DRM free songs as part of their portfolio. These songs are available for direct high quality MP3 downloads, which allows them to compatible with “Any” device in the market.

Now, I am not going to review this service again for you. I am sure you can read Om Malik’s or Paul Stamatiou’s great posts or play with the service yourself. Although I am taking a critical look at the service as a consumer to see if it convinces me to move away from iTunes. So the intent here is to use the service as a user would and offer my verdict.

Read more »

Share This

I have been itching to write about this service for past few weeks. I have been part of their beta test program and am managing my finances through their service. Unfortunately they had a press embargo and hence I couldn’t blog about them. They officially launched yesterday at TechCrunch40 and lifted the restriction on bloggers.

Mint is a new service, which is taking on the likes of Quicken and MS Money. I have been a long time user of Quicken and wasn’t quite happy with it. Not all my banks supported Quicken and it was too complicated to use.

Now Mint tries to simplify all of that. It has a very simple interface for adding your banks and credit card accounts. Within minutes I registered all my banks with the service. I must say that some banks require additional registration information like ING Direct, which can cumbersome at times. Once registered Mint automatically downloads all the transactions from the banks and stores it in the account.

Once you have registered all your accounts, Mint automatically organizes all the transactions into pre-defined categories. These categories help understanding the nature of the transaction. In addition to the categories the service allows you to tag any specific transactions with your own data. One can change categories can even set rules for transactions of certain nature. Very similar to email rules, but simpler.

Read more »

Share This

Any new blogger knows that building reader traffic is long and hard process. I have been going through this process myself since inception of this blog. Bloggers typically use recommendations from experts like John Chow, ProBlogger etc. They offer multiple strategies for building traffic over time.

These strategies are sometimes expensive or really slow. BlogRush a new beta service aims to solve that in a very simple fashion. Once the blogger registers on their service, they receive code for enabling a widget (just like the one on the right column) on their respective blog.

The widget displays posts from other blogs with similar topics. However the important thing to note is that BlogRush displays posts from the registered blogger, on other blogs as many times the widget gets displayed. So if the blogger gets 100 page views, her / his blog headlines will be displayed 100 times on other blogs hosting BlogRush widget.

Read more »

Share This

Amazon who has clearly established itself as the Web Services Operating System has made another interesting announcement today. Amazon is launching a start-up contest with awards up to $100,000 in cash and Amazon credits. Not only that, the winner will receive an offer from Amazon to invest in their start-up. The key is that the start-ups must utilize Amazon’s web services for their offering. This includes S3, EC2, payment service etc.

Here is how it will work (from contest site):

To enter, developers, entrepreneurs, and start-ups begin by completing an online application by October 28, 2007. The Amazon judges’ panel will review all applications and choose five finalists, based on originality and creativity of the idea, likelihood of long-term success, how well it addresses a need in the marketplace, and implementation of pay-as-you-use Amazon Web Services.

Finalists will be announced in November and Amazon will produce a video of each finalist to post on aws.amazon.com where the community can vote for their favorite start-up.

For the Final Round, AWS will fly the finalists to Amazon Headquarters in Seattle to present their idea to the judges’ panel. That evening, the finalists will pitch their business to VCs, mingle with industry leaders and Amazon executives, and be featured at the AWS Start-Up Challenge Awards Dinner, where the grand prize winner will be announced.

This is a very interesting move by Amazon. Who knows they may end up setting up a fund for start-up utilizing AWS, very similar to the fund dedicated to Facebook apps.

So if you are an entrepreneur or a start-up already dabbling with AWS, go check it out.

Share This

Just yesterday I posted about ZOHO and their move in the small business marketplace and potential threat to Google. Google made a significant announcement today where it will partner with Cap Gemini to offer its office applications to enterprise customers. Cap Gemini already runs desktop services for over a million customers will starting offering Google apps to enable productivity and collaboration. Google offers following within its premier app edition:

• Gmail (with 10 GB)
• GTalk
• GCal
• Start page
• Page creator
• Docs and spreadsheet
• Management apps, enterprise support and
• API access

Well I was hoping that this was just another announcement among the plethora of press releases Google makes. However almost hours later this announcement is drawing heat from other big players in this space.

Read more »

Share This