How accurate is your guesstimate?

The iPhone application, which I am going to introduce today, the Guesstimate, has its own uniqueness and excellent functions for it to be called one of the top Lifestyle app on iPhone.

Everyday we all shop many things online and offline, but it can be hard to decide if you are paying more for something. So today Make Sense launches its new iPhone app that let you ask your Facebook friends for their Guesstimation. At first when I glanced at this app I could see that it was going to be useful for people who wants a guesstimate on services and products.

However as I dwelled deeper into this app I soon discovered it was a lot more. The idea behind Guesstimate is that the user can post a request asking friends, even public to guesstimate the item. The item can be either something user is looking forward to buy or sell. Other users can post their thoughts on the item, such as how much they think it would cost, where they have found it for that price etc. Here is the link to the developer website.

what is wanterr

Anyone who has been freelancing on the internet has surely crossed sites such as Fiverr.com, Goferr.com, Zeerk.com, and more.  However, I would be willing to bet they have not seen Wanterr.com yet.  Wanterr.com is a clone of the other sites, but with a special twist, that benefits the buyers more than the sellers. 

Wanterr.com has been designed to mimic the look and feel of these aforementioned sites, but it works on a reverse bidding system where the buyer is getting the best deal.  The process is simple.  Buyers set up gigs, also called a Ningo, for anything that they want and request bids from the sellers.  The sellers are able to submit a bid of any price; but it is in their best interest to give their best price, as they may not earn the gig approval otherwise.

As this creates competition, the buyer is assured that they will get a good rate on their gig, unless it is something totally unique.  An great example of this would be where a buyer is requesting 5000 verifiable backlinks.  There are plenty of online freelancers who offer this service for $5.00, but on Wanterr.com, the buyer could get it at less than $1.50 per order!  Another example would be someone who wanted elephant training tips.  Since there really is not a high demand for elephant training tips, the price may not be competitive.

Outsourcing work on the internet seems to be a very profitable niche for webmasters and freelancers alike; therefore, freelancers are going to be looking for the next site where they can maximize their profits.  As a buyer, you can take advantage of their desire to increase their bottom line.  As a seller, you can take advantage of the desire for a service that you can provide quickly and easy.  The more you can provide both faster and cheaper, the more you can make.

While many look at outsourcing badly, not all outsourcing is completed outside of the United States.  Most of the gigs are from United States residents, and most of the work completed is from locals you might even know.  You can even view the area that the sellers are from making it even easier to determine who you want to work for you.  Making the right decision is always the lowest price; sometimes it is the quality of the feedback the seller has and sometimes it is the timeline that they can promise the work in.  Whatever the reason is, you have it all at your disposal.

From what I can see, Wanterr.com is in their beta phase still as they are attempting to perfect the system.  For those who understand the risks associated with a beta site, this can be a great way to find good deals for services that might cost them more elsewhere.  For those freelancers looking to make even more money online, this is another viable outlet.  Online freelancing works best with multiple income streams, so this is a definite must for any online freelancers out there who have not tapped all of their resources.

Netflix now available on your iPhone and iPad

Netflix today announced the launch of iPhone/iPod/IPad application for movie streaming. The free app can be downloaded from the iTunes store. The existing users with a Netflix account can login from this apps and will not be charged anything extra for watching movies.


This is one of the iPhone applications I had been waiting eagerly as it’s going to help me watch the unlimited TV shows and movies during my daily commute. I did download the app to my phone as soon as the news broke and tried watching couple of movies. The streaming quality is not really that great compared to the YouTube app. But I feel it’s too early for rating the app as it’s in Version 1.1.0. Now let’s hope that they will not make the Android users to wait long to get it. read more posts .....

What is O2O Commerce???

As the technology is bringing more mobility to the world of internet, the demand for web sites doing O2O commerce will increase steadily in the coming future. By the way what is O2O commerce? O2O stands for Online to Offline business model. More precisely this is the business model behind recent successful startups like Groupon and NeGoBuY http://negobuy.com/ . What basically these companies do is to do a part of the business online and the rest of the part will be done offline. It’s not a new concept in the world of e-commerce. But we can see that many startups in recent years are one way or the other getting in to the O2O commerce.


Lets take for example someone if wanted to buy something online in early 2000 had to do it only from his home or office computer. I would think this as one of the reason for most of the dot com failure that time. Another factor which made O2O commerce infeasible in early 2000 was the cost of internet. As the number of persons being online is increasing day by day the importance of O2O commerce is going to grow.

O2O commerce can ad a great value for selling services online, which is impossible for a the B2B or B2C websites. There is no way that a B2C web site can sell a Gym or a Spa service online and get it delivered to your home. But with O2O commerce these web sites can fill this gap by providing a medium (For example NeGoBuy, http://negobuy.com/ does it through a digital coupon) . I would like to know what you all think about the business opportunities in this field and what would be the best way to tap those opportunities.

Why did I drop GWT and used jQuery for NeGoBuY

I have been a fan of Google Web Toolkit from the time they released their initial version in June 2006. I have developed more than 5 applications using GWT and related technologies like Ext GWT and GWT Ext. But I have decided to move on and use jQuery for my upcoming reverse bidding site http://negobuy.com/


GWT and GWT Ext are cool technologies and I am sure that these technologies are going to replace most of the Swing and SWT based desktop applications in the coming future. But when it comes to developing public websites GWT sucks! I did have a very bad experience of developing an SMS based viral marketing site, http://textitco.com for my client. So what is wrong it developing public website using GWT?

1) GWT complier converts the Java code into java script code which will basically manipulate the Dom. The JavaScript code generated are seldom recognized by any of the search engine including Google’s own search engine. This means that you will end up in creating a web application which is not visible to the public. I do agree that there are workaround for this, but while building an application similar to NegoBuy, these options may not be a feasible.

2) The search engine optimization (SEO) for a web page build with GWT is a pain. As the resulting pages have only minimum HTML code generated you will be in big trouble to optimize you pages.

3) The development time required for building pages in java is more than using markups like HTML and DHTML. Believe me I have been coding in java for more than 10 years and still say “Java isn’t meant for UI development”. Java was developed for solving more complex programming problems.

4) Also, with introduction of technologies like jQuery and YUI, developing web pages is a matter of couple of minutes.


5) GWT may not be the right option for developing a very dynamic web application like NeGoBuy.