It is time to plan "User Experience Optimization (UEO)"

It has been quite a long time I have been (almost 6 years now) watching SEO professionals fooling around businesses and their clients for Search Engine Visibility and other tasks.

I remember on March 2011, I quoted “SEO is not for long term success”, fortunately (or unfortunately) that time SEO was a successful business, strategies worked out and could get good amount sites on top of major search engines. But Still what could have been the strategy (that may not have got short term success)

Strategy required that time (Around 2010-11)

• Nice Social Media profiles and planned promotion
• Website developed and optimized keeping visitor in mind
• Promoting Website using web 2.0
• Create content and design that interests visitors.

Well SEOs thought my strategy was too simple, and due to law of nature, no one agreed to me that time. Now after about 4.5 years Google changed lot of his policies, What I was thinking back in March 2011 is now new strategy (it can again be short term if not done right).

But still unfortunately many people fool around people, May be because google keeps on changing policies and SEO professionals can easily get more money from their clients for new strategy for their website and stuff like that, but honestly if a website is properly optimized for users (your visitors), no Search Engine policy can ever hurt (in fact it will effect your website positively) your website. I can still see many of websites, I developed back in 2002 to 2010 in good rankings.

With this I definitely would like to bring new strategy that can help developers keep their clients happy without giving big amount money to SEO Professionals. And that strategy can be called “UEO (User Experience Optimization)”.

What do I mean by User Experience Optimization? How can that help your website rank higher on google.

First let us understand what Matt Cutts (Google) has been telling “The easier you can explain a topic, the better you appear to understand what you're saying”. I have been a Website Designer and Developer and have spent several years working with SEO Professionals, and honestly I never agreed to their ideas of developing and writing on website. I keep watching them fighting for short term success and keep saying “It is/was need of the time”. That is worst one can plan for the website “Keep fighting for need of the time”.

The time you say phrases like “Keyword, Google wants this/that, SEO, Description” you are completely missing idea, you are talking about developing / preparing your website for Search Engines and that is last thing Search Engine wants. Basic idea of Google or be it any other search engine is “to provide their user a best from their database, based on the keyword user has entered”.

Let us understand this with simple example, You are about to visit a store to buy fruits, and you see two stores, one has sign board and display ads like this. “Fruits, banana fruit, fresh fruit, best fruit, mango fruit, seasonal fruits and so on” and another shop says “Fruit Store, cleaned, organic and Fresh fruits like banana, mangoes, grapes, blueberries etc.” Which one would you visit? Do you need word “Fruit” for every type of fruit to understand a fruit store? or do you understand Banana it self is a fruit? I hope i made it clear.

Google is now working on Semantic Web So your website about bananas, mangoes, cherries, blueberries can also rank for fruit even if fruit is not in your content because now google is clever enough to understand these are fruits (users were already that smarter for ages).

Second problem is, that after these policies now Professionals want to change content to remove fruit and add as many fruit names to convince google that they are selling fruits, but again doing it for google, down ranks the website, makes that strategy short term, rather think what user will require, what is user behavior to buy their fruits.

It is now time to understand what Users want, study user behavior, write and optimize for users and remove the word “Search Engine” from mind and strategy completely, Search Engine Rank is byproduct when you are optimizing your website for users. Its now time to think “User Experience Optimization”. More on this and how to do it on next video blog soon.

Movie Review: Happy New Year - Doesn't Shahrukh have anything New?

Hello friends, don't expect this review to be high end reviewer filmy pandit review, this review is from general movie watcher (Mango person) with family. I watched this movie on Saturday 25th Oct, 2014 with my family and here is my view.

Right from the trailers I knew that movie will not be great, hence I did not prefer to watch this movie at expensive multiplex, I rather watched this movie at Drive-in Cinema at Ahmedabad.

I don't prefer to talk much about cast of the movie and background of each character as that will be found under so many films pandit reviews. Once movie starts its Shahrukh Khan, who wants to revenge his father's (Anupan Kher) death cheated by Jackie Shroff, who trapped him in wrong robbery case of Diamond and Shahrukh wants to take revenge by stealing 300 Cr diamonds from Jackie Shroff's safe.

This safe is said to be safest among world and can only be opened with finger print of Jackie's Son (Abhishek bachchan). And safe can only be reached through a duct which starts from a Hotel room which is booked by World Dance Championship, hence Shahrukh decides to take part in WDC so they get that room to reach the safe.

He brings together a gang (Boman Irani, Abhishekh Bachchan, Sonu Sood and new comer) and they all are looser on their own professions, and none of them knew dance, hence they take help of Dancer (Deepika Padukone) to learn dance. From here Actual Story starts. But the problem is, the preface of movie is tooooo long, it takes more than 1 hr to explain background of each member of the gang and actual movie starts when they start learning dance.

The part one of movie (before interval) could be shorten, its too stretched and really boring, movie picks up after Deepika's entry. Shahrukh Khan doesn't seem to have anything new now, he tries to survive with his old famous movie dialog repetitions and delivers almost nothing new. In fact in my opinion Abhishek did rather good.

Also characters of this movie are not understood properly, first they cheat deserving dance group to enter in WDC and in WDC they give up their own performance to help another dance group; which doesn't seem to suit their actual character described in the movie. But as expected by all viewers they are succeed to rob Diamonds from Jackie's safe but the journey of this mission is not breathtaking, it doesn't bring you at the edge of your seats and not exciting.

But movie sets are beautiful and performance of Shahrukh, Abhishek, Deepika are quite good and bearable. This movie can be seen once.

And here is how my Family Members felt about the movie.

My Daughter (10 years old) almost didn't watch movie, for her storyline was too complicated to understand and she was not able to understand what is going on.

My Son (14 years old) enjoyed second part of the movie but at Interval I had to explain him, what happened till interval, what's their plan and what they want to achieve and then he enjoyed little bit.

My Wife (34 years old) enjoyed the movie but same was my son, she almost wanted to go out of theater before interval and for me also movie was not so good before interval and final thought is,

Movie is all about robbing diamonds but during entire movie it feels like Movie is all about dance competition and we forget again and again that they are here to steal diamonds and director in entire movie had to repeat again and again that they are thieves and that weak point of movie. Can be seen once but don't spend too much movie, watch in silver ticket.

Wordpress Plugins that Makes Day to Day Development Life Easy

Wordpress holds highest market share for Content Management System (Source: W3Techs.com), Wordpress has become first choice of website owners and developers for its Ease of Use. Earlier it was considered to be blogging system and Joomla, Drupal were considered for websites but now things have changed and Wordpress has became capable of making all different kind of websites, Just to check what it is capable to do, you can check out themes here.

Over the period of time Wordpress has developed a large community and developers have developed large number of plugins to make Designers life easy, Use the Plugin and concentrate more on Design end. Many a times Designers get to develop a static kind of website that contains Images, Portfolio, Onside Blog and nice contact form specially specially when it is a website for small businesses or a B2B information website.

Here I would like to mention about some great plugins that will make your life super easy if you are into small business website development:

All in One SEO:
How does SEO matter for Designers? you might ask but just install this plugin and rest is just copy / paste or typing job to handle SEO stuff like, Title, Description, Keywords, Page Follow, Entry on Menu. Plugin works beautifully and even as designer, if you added it, it will make SEOs life easy to optimize pages for SEO.

Custom Permalinks:
We do have permalinks option on Wordpress that is capable of making SEO Friendly URLs but still what if you want to add .php or .html extension at the end of URL to make it file name (specially when you are re developing old static site to Wordpress and you need to retain old URLs), this plugin makes URL management very easy, after installation you just need to type whatever URL you want on page or post edit screen with whatever extension or directory structure you need and rest will be handled by this plugin.

Remove P:
Wordpress wraps whatever you put into page or post with <P> tag, that in a way is beauty to make page adding easy but it is annoying when you are adding some HTML stuff to your page when page requires special treatment with additional HTML. In this case if you have installed this plugin, just enable "Remove Extra Paragraphs in this page" while editing page and it will remove all <P> tags added by Wordpress for that page and will save your HTML tags and your format.

Layer Slider:
One of the most beautiful slider plugin that comes free as well as paid version, but free version can also do much stuff, You can create beautiful sliders, create multiple layers on single slider and animate them to pass your message in a visual way.

Shortcodes Ultimate:
Whatever you are developing for and whoever you are developing for, Just add this plugin to the site and you wont need to add much after this, it has everything a designer can ask for, Slider, Light boxes, tables, Carousel, Tabs, Toggles, Tips, Video, Frames and anything you can recall as design element on a website, you can also add your own class while adding any element that will help you redesign that element the way you want to match your theme.

Breadcrumb NavXT:
Very easy to use and easy to place plugin, it simply follows style you created for your breadcrumb and display breadcrumbs on your pages or posts, You can customize separator, the way linked and unlinked items are to be displayed, You may not ask for much for breadcrumb that what this plugin offers.

WP Responsive Menu:
Do you want beautiful, professional looking menu for your website on mobile Device, then this is great, easy to use plugin, you can select the menu you created for your primary site and define break point when primary menu switches to Mobile menu and job is done. You can also customize menu icon, colors and styles for the menu on free version.

WP Total Cache:
Faster web is now primary requirements from everybody and this plugin serves it best, install the plugin and setup cache settings, Minify CSS, HTML and JQuerry, Cache database and pages and you will see improvement on your websites load time. (Soon There will be article on optimizing your Wordpress site where you will get more details on configuring this plugin)

WP Smush.it:
You forgot to optimize images before putting them on your website? No Problem!, Install WP Smush.it and then just go to Media and Smush all images, and you are all done, it will optimize images with no complains, smaller image file sizes keeping optimum quality. Must have plugin for optimization.

Manual Image Crop:
One of the best plugin that will help you to manually crop the images on your Wordpress theme. After installation, you will get Crop link next to all images on your media library, click on it and you are ready to go.

Jetpack:
Finally sharing a beautiful site is everybody's desire and Jetpack can do it all, it has everything that you need for sharing, A built in URL shortner, Social Network based commenting system, Inbuilt spell checker, Sharing options and a gallery system. Check it out.

Hope you loved the article, soon there will be Wordpress website optimization article, and video, check them out, Thank you for reading.

Samsung Galaxy S5 vs Sony Xperia Z2 (Scene is different in India)

Overview (Galaxy S5 vs Xperia Z2)

There are two flagship phones getting popular and they are Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2. Both have their own pros and cons and they can easy confuse the buyer with almost similar specs but Here we will talk about comparison of both phones in India and for an Indian user which one to pick. 

In General globally if you look at both phones’ specs you will find them almost Similar. Here we will definitely won’t go to deep in specs but I just want to give overview so that it becomes easy for Indian user to pick their choice.

Samsung Galaxy S5   (Global)

Globally Samsung Galaxy S5 has Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Chipset clocking 2.5 GHz and 2 GB Ram and 16/32 GB Internal Memory. To Support graphics it has Adreno 330 GPU and features like Fingerprint scanner and water resistant under 1 meter water for 30 minutes and a heart beat scanner. (http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5-6033.php) 

Sony Xperia Z2

Now Looking at Xperia Z2, it has Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Chipset clocking 2.3 GHz and 3 GB Ram and 16 GB Internal Memory. To Support graphics it has Adreno 330 GPU and features like Sony’s Triluminos Display, Multitouch upto 10 fingers. (Source: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z2-6144.php) 

Now if you look at above Specs of both phones you will see almost no difference except Samsung has 2.5 GHz processor against Sony’s 2.3 GHz but Sony on other hand has 3 GB RAM under Z2. So if you want to buy on overall performance, Display and Camera quality, Brand value then you might choose Samsung galaxy S5 but for Indian buyers scene changes because of the different specs on Indian Version of Galaxy S5. 

Indian Version Galaxy S5

The Indian Version of Galaxy S5 has Quad Core 1.9 GHz Chipset and 2 GB Ram and 16/32 GB Internal Memory. To Support graphics it has Mali-T628 MP6 GPU (Source: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5_%28octa_core%29-6237.php). So major change in comparison of USA Version of S5. The problem with Octacore processor Indian Version S5 comes with is, It doesn’t support LTE (4G Network) so its not future proof as compared to Z2 which has Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor which supports LTE so you get 4G when it is available in India. 

Another major difference in Indian version of Galaxy S5 is It has Mali-T-628 GPU which is not supported by many games. Most of the game developers develop games for Adreno GPU first and then they might consider another GPU available. For e.g. Game Nova 3 is developed for Adreno GPU and doesn’t support Mali GPU as good so gaming performance on Mali is not as good as Adreno GPUs. So if you are gaming freak S5 is not for you. 

So if you are in India and looking for flagship phone from either Samsung or from Sony, you might want to consider Xperia Z2 for below reasons

• Better Looks and Build Quality
• Better Chipset (2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 in compared to Samsung’s 1.9 GHz Octacore.
• Better Graphic Experience (Adreno 330 with 3GB ram against Samsung’s Mali-T628 with 2 GB RAM)

In conclusion, go with Sony if you want better graphic and gaming experience and go with Samsung if you want better camera software, little bit better picture quality and another Samsung.

Website Design – Then and Now

It has been more than 12 years now since I started my career in Website Design and Development. As a matter of fact before year 2002 I was more in Graphic Designing and was designing Magazines, Brochures and other all kind of graphic design works.

But then in year 2002 my interested started to migrate in designing for Web and since then I am into website design and now I feel like share my experiences about Designing for Web then and now.

HTML Coding and Applications

When I started and designed my first ever website, it was for Human Rights Commission of Gujarat (India). I used Coreldraw as I just migrated from Graphic Design. I created all images I had to use on website in CorelDraw and then used Microsoft Frontpage for designing Web pages.

Those days Tables were used in HTML to setup elements on webpage, so I used to create tables, and merge and span table cells to create framework of my webpage. I created one and only animated element on the page which I created using GIF Animator software.

Responsive Design

Those days (back in 2000) in India 980px resolution monitors were new in India so web page we used to design was 767px width. But with 980px Monitors started hitting the market some of the website clients did not like their websites on center of screen with space both sides, they wanted their websites to accommodate on full width of monitor regardless of the resolution of monitor.

That condition was first in my life that I had to design website such a way it fits from 768px to 1080px monitor screen sizes taking full width of the screen. And I started designing webpages with main table width setup at 100% rather than pixel units, I used to set width of each cell in percentage Unit and finally got the results, those pages were fitting on any monitor sizes.

I don’t know I should call it responsive but that really was my first responsive experience.

Animated Sites

Then came the trend of Flash websites, Flash really created short term but yet powerful trend for almost all kind of websites, each client coming to me were looking for Flash website with music playing in background. Fortunately (or unfortunately) that since google was not able to read flash files, Flash trend washed off quickly except few industries like Movies, Auto as they still use or flash for their intros.

Complicated Navigation

I don’t know any of my friend designers experienced this in past or not but for some period of time I when flash was trending, people used to like complicated and tricky navigations just to show off. I still remember a case in my past that one of my client dealing in shoes wanted a navigation where you get all links coming out of shoe when user clicks on it. But like flash this trend also didn’t last long.

And Now....

But now days are changed, designs are created using HTML5, CSS3, using dreamweaver. I use Sublime Text 2 with Zen Coding plugin which makes like much easier for coding in HTML. We use jquery for basic animations and HTML5 (now google has launched web designer for html5 animations) for complicated animations.

Heavy graphics and animations, music playing in background disappeared. Laying out pages using table is forgotten. But the concept I faced in past (webpage spreads across whole width regardless of monitor resolution) is still alive but with different name.. Responsive Web Design but well the way we do it is different again.. Media Queries and HTML5

Even for SEOs life has changed drastically from then to now, google came up with regular updates to make search easy and SEO life hard. But about his SEO people may tell better unlike me.

Usability Testing or Website Testing, Human Tested or Tools?

Internet and Online Marketing has started to become primary medium of Marketing for many companies. Nowadays we see business running only on a website like amazon.com, ebay.com etc. More and more new ventures looking to develop website that earns for them, other many companies want their websites handle more part on their marketing department.

Once website designing part is done, even bigger concern takes part for any company or any online marketing company. It is testing a website not only for design and user experience but usability testing and conversion power of the website too. Because no matter your website is getting 500 or even 1000 unique visitor traffic per day, it will not be profitable for any company or website owner until it converts that traffic to your goal.

Now next question arises and a BIG ONE – How to test a website? Should a good tool to be used or hire a usability testing company which conducts human testing results? Or hire a usability consultant? Lets discussion these methods one by one and come to a conclusion.

Testing Website and Usability using a Tool

• There are tools to test websites, Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools has many features which tells about your websites.
• Woorank.com, iWebCHK.com, RavenTools.com and YSlow by Yahoo are some other tools test your website.
• First and biggest limitation you have testing your website via such tools is, they can only test your website technically e.g. it can check whether you have H1 tag on your webpage or not, but it will not suggest its position on the page.
• Tools can’t suggest you design and its user experience for real time, colors and color suggestions as effectively.
• Testing via tool can be handy as it is cheaper and they give you primary things on your websites quickly which you can correct to start with.
• Once you are satisfied the performance and ranks shown by these tools you can more further to other methods.
• When you buys such tool(s) please check their clients, take free demo, compare the things they will check and then subscribe for them, you may not need to get them for longer period of the time if you are working on only 1 – 2 websites.

Testing Website and Usability by Usability Consultant

• Hiring a Usability Consultant for full time or part time can be a good idea if you are working on lead generating websites in this constantly changing online marketing world.
• Once your website is tested and OK by most of the tools, usability consultant can suggest you colors and important element positioning on a web page which tool cannot do.
• Hiring a Consultant can be expensive for smaller companies and sometimes if consultant has not worked in your niche industry, he may not be able to produce results you are looking for.
• Before hiring consultant, make sure he has worked in your industry and try to check his clients’ reviews.
• After working so many years in website design and development field and having getting many sites tested by end users, I have came to conclusion that sometimes typical usability rules don’t work in real world hence relying only on consultant may not produce you results you are actually looking for.

Usability and Website Testing by Humans

• Most effective way of testing website specially eCommerce Websites, Lead Generation websites in some industries, Dating – Social Media Websites and Travelling Websites.
• As discussed earlier sometimes (in fact many times) real user surfing your website is completely different than your or your consultant’s thought process.
• Even in my website testing experiences I have seen real users not doing what I was taking as obvious to do on the website.
• Once I was working on a Travel website where I kept nice contract color form for inquiry on top right bar of the website and asked 15 users to visit and send inquiry and surprisingly 11 of the inquiries came through “Contact” page and not through that right side form.
• This method can be cheaper than hiring a usability consultant and you can opt for your ongoing website testing as you make changes.
• You can easily perform A/B testing on you website through this method.

Conclusion:

• If you are working on completely new website, it is good that you get a tool and complete primary tasks a tools suggest, but as discussed, tools can only check whether you have “Alt tag” on your image or not, but it can’t suggest what it should be.
• Once you are done with primary testing, go and either hire usability consultant if you are running big corporate website or information portal type website where you are targeting more on traffic and technical tasks to be performed on your website from specific niche.
• If you are running small lead generating website, sales oriented website definitely go for end user based usability testing having end users testing your website and don’t forget to do A/B testing on your website.

If you are looking to hire a usability consultant or want to A/B test your website or want your websites to be checked by end users, contact me via sonimanoj@gmail.com and I will definitely be more than happy to help you out and make your website performing better than it is now..

Using Micro Data on B2B Website

What is Micro Data?

It's been long since Micro Data has been discussed by various Website Masters, Web Developers and SEO People for various kind of purposes for various type of websites.

I am not going in too much basics on What is Micro Data as its already been discussed on various blogs. In single line it is a HTML5 specification which simply helps computers understand the content of the Web Page. Microdata has its own vocabulary as given by schema.org which include various tags like Organization, Person, Event, Product, Breadcrumb, Review, Offer etc. These vocabulary tags can be used on HTML using various Global Attributes like itemscope, itemprop etc.

Microdata on B2B Website

Its been about 3 years since I have started testing / implementing Microdata on various kind of websites, In most cases Microdata are used for eCommerce Websites, Event Websites or Article Sites like Blog sites. But I was brought to the situation that I had to use Microdata on B2B Website (e.g. A Website which is Website Design Service Provider which has pages talking about their services etc.)

Using Microdata on B2B Website is bit tricky, I studied the websites because usually You need Structured Data on your website where you have same format throughout all pages with various data (e.g. Product detail page of eCommerce Website all pages will display different product but structure of the page will remain same). But B2B sites I was given did not have same format which can be used to structure the data on page. 

Step 1: Identify the Data on B2B Website which can be used as Structured Data

First check out the B2B site which is given and identify vocabulary and attributes that can be used throughout the website mostly you will find one or more below things common across the pages

1. Breadcrumb
2. Organization name and address
3. Static Content / About Pages
4. Page Titles
5. Blog / Posts

Step 2: Adding the Microdata on Header / Footer and Breadcrumb

We can start with Breadcrumbs, The Microdata Breadcrumb we use is also called RDFa Rich Snippet which is recommended Rich Snippet by Google to recognize it. Check out recommendations by Google for RDFa Rick Snippet.

For a Normal Breadcrumb like shown below
          Home > Services > Web Design Services

You might have HTML code like below.

<a href="home-url">Home</a> &gt; <a href="services-url">Services</a> &gt; Web Design Services

After we add RDFa Rich snippet as per google recommendations (as given in above link) the code will look something like below.

   <div xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#">
   <span typeof="v:Breadcrumb">

     <a href="home-url" rel="v:url" property="v:title">Home</a>
   </span> &gt; 
   <span typeof="v:Breadcrumb">
     <a href="services-url" rel="v:url" property="v:title">Services</a>
   </span> &gt; 
     Web Design Services

After We are done with Adding Microdata on Breadcrumb second thing is Organization Name and Address, Which is recommended to be on footer of every page and a Organization Name on Header of Every page. In Short the header of every B2B Website mostly is like Company Logo, Main Navigation, Phone Number etc. 

Mark this header section using "Corporate" Schema, but make sure If your Main Navigation has Keywords in Anchor Text then Mark Navigation as "significantLinks" and if not then you can use  "SiteNavigationElement" so that search engines understands page structure better. You can get Help about How to use Corporation Schema from here. You can use "telephone" markup for your phone number and image mark up for logo.

Next is the footer of the site which as discussed earlier should have the Address of the Organization and Mark it as "postalAddress: schema. There are various tags for various parts of Postal Address like streetAddress, addressLocality, addressRegion, postOfficeBoxNumber and postalCode. You can get further help on postalAddress schema from here.

 If you have links on footer there are again two ways of marking it up. Either use "SiteNavigationElement" or use "significantLinks" but make sure you don't repeat same markup on header and footer. Decide which one you want to show search engines as Navigation of website and which one as Other Significant Links.

Step 3: Adding the Microdata on Static Content Page and Other Pages

After you are done on Breadcrumb, Header and Footer, Its turn to add Microdata on Static pages, Here you have mark your Main Heading which is H1 using "name" tag. If you have Image within the content of the page mark it up as "image". If there is event mentioned anywhere on the page mark it as "BusinessEvent".

Talking about About page, if you have Names of your employees, VPs, CEOs etc on that page you can mark them using Person tag. Get details of Person tag from here. 

Step 4: Adding the Microdata to the Blog

Good News about Adding Microdata is we have a google tool to add Microdata. Where you just enter URL of your post page and it will Help you to add various tags to your Blog. But for your information We use below tags for various parts of Blog.

1. Post Name (H1) as name

2. Main Content (Text Content) as articleBody

3. Image as image

4. Author as author

5. Posted on Date as dataPublished

Once you are done with Adding Microdata don't forget to test them using Google's Microdata Testing Tool.

If you have any question or need any help you can discuss on comments. Don't hesitate to draw my attention towards any oversight i might have made in the post.

Nice Price + Nice Features - couple of Cons = Z550

Hello All potential Mobile Buyers, Here is one more review from me after using my Sony Ericsson z550i for 9 months, so you must be sure that review would be close enough to the facts as after spending these much time with one mobile makes you real aware of all features, pros and cons of the product.

Before I bought this mobile I had only one in my mind and that was evergreen Nokia 6600 (at that time) but after looking at few comparisns on net i made mind on SE z550i. specially due to different look and Sony Quality (It looks like I am little biased towards sony quality, most of my gizmos are of Sony including my new digicam).

SORRY about few sidetrack things otherthan review so here I go.

LOOK
=====
By looking at Current Professional looking phones like Nokia N72, E50, SE P990 and current Trendy phones like SE w810i etc. this is nothing much professional and nothing much trendy, but still looks good enough in both professional and collegean’s hand. and that too at very affordable price, I bought it for 8200 and now available at about 7500.

FEATURES
=========
At the price given phone offers all the features current buyer may look for. It plays almost all kind of music files, you can set MP3 as ringtone. You can download many themes and ringtones from Internet, It has bluetooth Connectivity, Expandable memory slot with inbuilt 25 MB of space. it is a Flip Phone which attracts many flip phone lovers. big enough screen to view Videos or Photos. And yes nice quality 1.3 Megapixel camara which takes nice pictures. (more on camera after this). and yes, it has Radio too. finally you can download games etc. what more you want???

It also has got handsfree coming with it and with that you can listen your fav music with great quality, it has inbuilt preset equilizers which gives options between, normal, vocal, bass, trible you can set to your fav one (it doesn’t have Megabass which comes with w series only) and enjoy your music. What I did was I bought w series handsfree and attached with this phone and it gives same quality of music as W series phone by Sony (Except Megabass which i am not much crazy for).

You can also buy external speakers of Sony and attach to make it your mini music system with nice quality of sound. What I didn’t like at all is the sound of phone’s speaker, it sounds very less, sometimes I can’t hear the ring when I am on road. at full loud ringtone you would hear less than half loud setup of any nokia phone that is really pitty. you can’t hear mp3 music on speaker of phone. you will have to keep phone near your ear to hear them.

CAMERA
=======
Not as great as K750 but not as bad as Nokia 6600, 1.3 Megapixel camera produces nice images on good lighting conditions but it fails in low light, Nightmode does no improvement at all, and on otherhand night mode of Nokia 6600 is superb!!! I printed several 6x4 photos taken in nice light conditions and they came out great as far as mobile camera is concerned. It also has few modes like Burst Mode which takes 4 pictures in couple of seconds on 1 click that helps you to capture the moment. also penorama mode but it allows to take only 3 pictures to make panorama, well NOT enough you can’t even take 180 degree with only 3 pictures. finally it has b/w and sephia pictures if you love them. overall satisfying quality in daylight and pitty in the less light.

DISPLAY & OTHERS
================
Display of this phone is Awesome, it has 255K color display which shows nice themes and crispy text. few other things I would like to mention are, It has got nice buttons unlike W series phones, nice flip quality in 9 months i used the clip very roughly but still no problems and no looseness found. nice battery, enough talk time and standby time.

THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THIS PHONE
=============================
It has nice features at the price, nice quality sound in earpiece or external speakers. nice display.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE
=================
Poor Phone Speaker Sound, Poor Photos in less light (poor comparing to Nokia phones, even 6600). Have to use Sony Memory Stick only which is not useful in other phones, so your next phone must be Sony or sell current with memory stick. which gives hassel to take backup of data etc etc.

You may have found my review more like marketing article of Sony but it is like that only, except phone Speaker and camera I liked everything else in the phone. if you want nice phone with affordable price with different look and can live with less sound while it rings or you don’t love hearing songs on speaker phone. This Phone is for you.

Manoj

Basic Information to Ride bike Safely

Hello Guys,

Here I am trying to discuss top 10 Mistakes made by most of the bikers in India (atleast whom I seen). Well first thing i wound like to clear is, What is writen in this review is not my own, I found things while surfing the net. I myself is not auto consultant but I always like to share if i find something which i feel can be useful to others. Comments will be welcomed.

1. Wear Helment
Whatever you do in the life, Safety comes first i seen often that people don’t like to wear helment, here in Gujarat Helmet law just came but when people fill that Policeman won’t be on road they avoid to wear helment. We get life only once so let’s live it completely so we don’t regret at our last breath "God, I would have wear Helment." because than we won’t be able to do anything except seeing world last time

2. Breaking
Many bikers think that rear break should be applied first and than the front break but fact is that both breaks should be applied simultaniously, always keep habit of applying front break with rear break so when you suddenly need front break you are already habitual to it. Applying only one break hard in panic situation will end up with locking of the wheel and you laying on road.

3. Rear Mirrors
They look like Donkey’s Ear..... RIGHT? but keep in mind that they are life savers. Donkey live much more than racehorce, Life is important, nothing else.

4. Clutch
Most of people would agree that they use cluth to be in neutral gear, while moving fast if they want to slow down, they keep clutch applied that makes clutch plates wear out earlier. to slow down you don’t need clutch you need break, bike can go as slow as we are walking in first gear so why apply clutch? only use of clutch while riding is to change gear to stop or slow down its accelator and break.

5. Puncture: The puncture on a moving two wheeler is not necessarily dangerous, but a panic attack definitely is. Try to keep the bike vertical. The wheel with the puncture will tend to move sideways. Use your handlebar to counteract this turn. If your bike tilts to the side, it will be very difficult to prevent a fall, so use your handlbar to keep the bike from turning or tilting.

Try to continue riding in a straight line. Don’t think of turning the bike to the side of the road. If you try that at high speed with a puncture, you’ll have a nasty fall. Instead, try to keep going in a straight line. Once your speed is low enough for you to handle the bike easily, you can head towards the side of the road. Glance at the rear-view mirrors to make sure you’re not stepping in someone else’s way.

Don’t apply the brakes because the results might be unpredictable. Just let go of the throttle and let the bike slow down on its own. With a punctured tyre, there will be more friction and the bike will slow down quite well without brakes. Keeping your mind off the brakes will also allow you to concentrate better on keeping the bike vertical.

Once you’re slow enough, move to the side of the road. If your speed is low enough for you to put down your feet, apply the brakes to stop and balance your bike the usual way.

6. Gear Changing
Reduce your accelerator, pull in the clutch. Shift with a firm motion of your toe (or heel) and release the clutch as you rev the throttle. If you’re doing this properly, there will be no jerks. If there is Jerk, you did it wrong. If you need to change your speed, shift to lower gears as appropriate. Downshift if you need to accelerate before you shift to a higher gear.

7. Driving on Downslope:
Most common mistake bikers or any vehicle drivers do is put their vehicle in Neutral gear and let the vehicle move on downslope, this is very dangerous, at one point it will be so fast that you won’t be able to handle when you get someone suddenly infront of you. rather drive as you are going up on the slope, keep in appropriate gear and handle the speed with accelater, this way it won’t start moving so fast and stay in your control, don’t think of saving 20-50 rupees petrol as life is priceless... isn’t it??

8. Keep Distance
Try to keep distance from the vehicle moving ahead, specially don’t drive to close to bus / truck kind of big vehicles. two dangerous situations can take place
- If that breaks suddenly you’ll be helpless
- If any hazzard comes than you won’t have time to take turn and survive as it comes suddenly in front of you so safe way is keep reasonable distance from big vehicles.

I will update this if i find anything for informative and post here. Thanks.

Manoj Soni

Buland Bharat ki Buland Tasvir

Hello Guys

After driving my Pulsar 1000 Kms I am here to write about the bike, i was waiting for this day to put something about my bike. before i start with anything let me let you know which bikes i drove so far just because whatever i have written may be in comparison to those bikes i have allready driven, so the bikes i drove were Yamaha RX100, Yamaha YBX, Splendor, Honda Unicorn, TVS Apache, HH Karizma.

My initial thought was to buy performance bike so called HH Karizma but when i came to know its 17BHP against 16.5 for pulsar 180 i cancelled it and decided to wait till Pulsar 220cc comes and till than buy any 150cc bike, made choice on unicorn but after reading reviews here i changed by choice to Pulsar 150 DTSi self start and I recently finished 1000 Kms with the bike and below is what i know about my bike till now.

LOOKS
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Needless to say. right? everyone knows looks is great, sturdy. I like the look very much many of friends said why are you buying common bike but for me even Aishwariya Ray is common face seen everyday is much better than Rakhi Sawant seen seldom on TV.. hope i made my point. Looks is awesome no matter its common and its not even a reason that a good looking bike is everywhere that’s why we don’t deserve to have that look. Best thing i like about this bike that in the evenings when sun just start to rest, i switch on two pilot lamps both side of the head light and from front it looks like eyes of the bike, when i used to see other pulsars with such looks, i already dreamed to have one and now i have one.

PERFORMANCE
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Performance wise its great in 150cc segment, I haven’t drove upto its highest speed but cruising at 50-55 Km/hr is real joy of the bike, and reaching 50-55 from 0 is matter of less than 5 seconds. and engine doesn’t take that much stress too, i drove it upto 70 Km/pr and at that speed it doesn’t vibrate, drives steady with not much stress taken by engine. its good performer for everyone looking for city drive like me.

HANDLING
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Handles well, I mean very very well. Driving in city doing zig zag, sharp turns, breaking was never easy for me before. It has got 100/90 17" in rear which gives good road grip and no matter how sharp turn i have to take, I feel confidence just letting it do its job i just leaning and turning handle bar. and no fear in breaking haven’t got any skid yet onlything you need to break properly. when i use to drive 70 Km/ph i don’t feel i am on such good speed, it handles speed very well with great grip on road and being so stable and vibration free.

MILAGE
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I am wondering to have 55-57 Kmpl on this bike, i never thought i would get this much but pulsar is package of power and economy.

QUALITY OF PARTS
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I didn’t like headlight beam of this bike, i felt apache light was very bright comparing to this. except that parts are well built, quality looks great, during 1000 kms i have no problems, no unwanted sounds from bike even on very rough roads at 50 km/hr speeds. Another thing which is not real good is read suspensions, i feel they don’t work, but i am happy in the way when my wife sits a pillion and tell me that she feels too confirtable on this bike than any other bike i rode before. so as all says, rear shocks work better with pillion only. people alwyas talk about Gear Box, i would accept that gear box is not best quality but its not as bad as people as narrated (atleast not in new versions) i never had any problems with gear box so far.

MISC THINGS
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There are several other items I loved and i would like to mention, one of the thing i really liked is position of ideling screw a big screw near carburator is given and you can setup idle with your hands without looking for screw driver without having any knowledge of it, that really helps to keep bike ideling to the recommended RPM.

The fuel tank cap is desiged very good, and there is small tap covering keyhole which is nice protecting water leaking inside the tank. a mudguard given on back wheel is fragile but it does’t have any stress coming on it so its OK but looks nice there.

handle grip is really nice and thin and accelator is very smooth just little act on right hand moves bike so hard. i love it. and lower handle bar gives more confident while riding.

CONCLUSION
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This bike is for everyone who’s looking for nice bike with decent fuel economy nice handling, good breaking quality and riding quality, and to make everyone sure that this bike is not as confirtable as Unicorn while riding if your riding posture is not right but Unicorn gives you confirt at your riding posture it doesn’t ask you for any special posture that’s bigget benifit i found, but i don’t find myself in any trouble with pulsar. just take longer test ride and feel it and if you find confirtable than this bike is for you.

ALSO if i am missing to comment about anything let me know i will update the review right away.