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Glyde – Site Review

Jagadish — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:40:41 +0000

Glyde is an online portal which sells pre-owned (used) or NEW video games, music, books and DVDs. As far as I know, the things for sale on the site are entirely user submitted. Glyde only acts as a middle man to make the transaction possible. It is sort of like ebay without the whole bidding process. I had recently purchased an item on the site and I thought it would be a good idea to post a review for others curious about the service.

Glyde follows the minimalistic design made popular by Google. There is a big search box in the middle of the page (hard to miss ). It also comes up with suggestions as you keep typing. This is really quick if you are looking for something specific. However, if you want to browse through categories, you would have to click on all items at the bottom. There is also an option to click through daily deals on top of the site. There is no way to sort the games in alphabetical order or in terms of popularity or even by price. You can only filter them through categories and consoles. Again, let me be clear here: if you are looking for something specific, glyde automatically gives you the cheapest price of that product in different condition categories (New, Excelling, Good, Disc only).

If you are looking to sell your products, then all you do is enter the name of the product and pick one of the options (if your game is multi-platform). Glyde automatically picks a suitable price for you. You can increase or decrease the price to your liking. It also tells you how many people have priced the item lower than that. Considering the fact that there are many people trying to sell the same thing, it might be a good idea to price it lower than the prescribed price. Glyde will also ask you to pick the condition of the game. I am not sure about the payment procedure and such. I think the general idea is that your money gets deposit into your account once you request for it or you could use that money to buy other games on the site. I think the commission is 10% on sale price (again please read the FAQs on site for detailed information).

Coming to my experience with Glyde, I have purchased two games from the site and received one of them. I was a little worried about the purchase because unlike ebay there was no option contact the seller for pictures or get assurances about the condition of the item. There was no feedback score either. So, there was really no way of knowing if the seller’s interpretation of Excellent is same as mine. Also the shipping was painfully slow. For some reason, Glyde decided that they would mail the envelope (ala Netflix style) to the seller with the buyer’s address on it. And the seller would stick his game in that envelop and drop it in the mailbox. This means that there is twice as much shipping time involved compared to ebay. Essentially, most games take about two weeks to arrive. There is no expedited option for shipping either. If you are looking to get something quick, this is not the place to go. This is one of the major gripes I have with the service. I do not understand why Glyde does not just allow the seller to print the mailing receipt and stick it on a “Glyde prescribed envelope”. The bubble wrap media mail envelopes are like $2 or less and are available at every USPS store. I have to say, I did not like the waiting but the game I received allayed all my fears. The game was in great condition. It was “Like New” just as it should be . It made me go and buy another game .

I am not sure if I got lucky but my next purchase would tell. If you don’t mind the waiting time, Glyde is a great service to try. They have tons of games for all the current generation and the previous generation consoles as well as the current gen handhelds. You will definitely find a great price on that game you have been looking for. Make sure you search for Glyde coupons online before you click Buy Now. You could easily save $3 by using on these coupon codes: KOTAKU, UGO, HIATI. You could also follow them on Twitter (@Glyde) to get more deals and coupon codes. Glyde is a good service like ebay’s half.com if you are looking to buy something quickly. Just look at both sites and buy it from the cheaper place.

Pros:

Clean simplistic interface
One click buying.
Automatically finds the cheapest price for the product in each condition category.
Easy-mode selling. (no need to package or buy shipping supplies)
Get better trade-in values for your used games (better than gamestop).

Cons:

Long shipping times (2 weeks)
No option for expedited shipping.
Credibility: No way to trust the seller.
No pictures of the product before purchase (Just the stock picture).
No feedback option.

R.I.P The Pirate Bay

Jagadish — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:37:29 +0000

If you have been on the internet for awhile and had ventured into that dark alley of piracy, you would know what/who Piratebay is. It is the Google for pirates. You could just about get any game, software, music, movies, TV shows and even Porn by typing it in the search box on the site. You would be confounded to find that the most stuff you were paying for could be downloaded and used as easily as buying it in a store, for FREE. Of course, there is the little thing about all this being illegal.

I can understand pirating games is bad but I have always commended Piratebay for its fight against the Music industry (RIAA). RIAA has sued a lot of people for downloading music illegally and pushed the governments to create anti-piracy laws. I don’t understand why one has to “buy” so many versions of a song. I have a huge collection of cassettes back home. I spent a lot of money buying them too. I have a huge collection of Michael Jackson, Metallica, Bryan Adams, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, Deep purple and many more. Each cassette cost me over Rs 200 and considering that my pocket money per month was a meager Rs 50 per month, that was quite a large sum I spent making up that collection. They came up with CD’s next and I still bought some of the CD’s and they allowed to rip the mp3′s to be played on the computer but now they have DRM that prevents you from doing that. I just don’t understand how many formats of the same song, do we have to buy? Is it not enough that the artists themselves put several old songs in their new albums? Do we really have to buy a tape, CD, DVD and an mp3 version of the same album? Who is stupid enough to do that?

The copyright laws are incredibly ridiculous and you don’t even own the song you buy? Apparently, you pay $10 to buy an album (or $0.99 and more per song) but you down own it. That’s why I tend to lean into subscription based services these days. I paid to stream unlimited music on Napster for a month but I canceled it because I was not using it as much as I wanted to. I did download 5 songs for free so the subscription paid for itself really. I just use Lala now, you can add a web version of the song for 10cents and you can listen to it unlimited number of times. I also like the fact that you can export your existing music online using Lala’s music uploader. It will match your music library with their online library and automatically add it to your collection.

Anyway, the crux of this blog is that Piratebay has been sold to Global Gaming Factory on June 30th (this is old news really!). GGF says it wants to legalize the whole file sharing system(which probably means paying for content). I don’t blame Piratebay for selling out because they had a huge amount of money to pay because of the lawsuit and if this is a way to pay off the dues, good for them. They have been fighting this fight alone for a long time and its time they got their due. I commend them for giving the music industry a good fight. But in war, you will be honored if you die a hero and stoned if you surrender. So if people are giving Piratebay some slack for selling out, its only because they expected more from them. If you are into Pirating stuff, its time to move on to private trackers and make donations to keep them alive. I have been a Demonoid user for a long time now. I have seen them go up and down too but they have been surviving all this. People will keep finding new ways to share stuff because there will always be people who question the laws that most people take for granted. They might be branded as thieves and pirates by this generation but the future generations will see them as revolutionaries and innovators. Rest in peace Piratebay and thanks for the fight.

P.S: If you want an invite to Demonoid, just leave a comment saying you want one.

Things that happened since I last blogged

Jagadish — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:22:28 +0000

As always, there are too many things to write and too less time. I really enjoy teaching a lot and I love it when I teach these kids new things and they are just amazed like I did some magic trick. The thing I hate about teaching is that it takes up a lot of time. It really does not allow me to do other things. I spend a lot of time making homework problems, solutions for them and grading. The grading part of teaching is probably the most aggravating aspect. You see the kind of blunders they make in homeworks after going through all the trouble of explaining things, it really pisses me off.

Anyway, a lot of things happened since I last blogged. A few things I really hated and a very few things I enjoyed. Just thought I’d make a list in no particular order.

Nadal lost
Federer won French Open. I kinda expected this would happen though
Deccan chargers have won the IPL. Chennai kings lost in semis.
My girlfriend bought me a macbook. I don’t know if I should cheer about this or not. I am a windows guy, not a great fan of Mac. But I will have to try to use it and see I guess.
Apple released a new iPhone which I really wanted to get. I even planned to get out of my contract with Sprint but really not a wise move considering AT&T has really bad network. Coming from a Sprint customer that is a huge insult.
Palm pre, the most loved phone since the original iPhone has finally been realeased, it is another phone I still want but I might not get it because I just don’t want to spend all that money and change my existing $30 SERO plan.
E3 has come and gone and soo much to cheer about .
Microsoft – great show, highly impressed with Project Natal but I doubt it would work as well as they showed it would. It is not going to be an easy task pulling it off. And honestly, Peter Molyneux should shut the fuck up. He has a big mouth and I doubt if Milo would work as well he touted he would. Artificial intelligence is a still thing of science fiction and we are far from it. This is coming from a guy who does programming for a living, you better believe it .
Nintendo – probably the most boring show of all three. I am a rabid Nintendo fanboy and even I couldn’t help but yawn a few times but the announcement of Metroid: Other M has completely offset everything. Also I heard that there is a new Zelda in the making, there was a trailor for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and finally Little Big Planet Mario style. All exciting things but Nintendo is still missing that one puzzle piece, Wii-HD. Get it done, Nintendo. Give us HD.
Sony – Sony came up with the regular stuff. They had a brilliant show and very entertaining as well. God of War 3 was amazing, the Last Guardian trailer was awesome as well. Have to say, their motion controller seemed very interesting too. But they only showed a bunch of tech demos and no games yet. This kinda proves that MS and Sony have finally adopted the Nintendo philosophy and they jumped on the bandwagon a little too late. It might still take them a year or two to pull it off but HD is one thing Nintendo is far behind, so unless Nintendo comes up with Wii-HD, MS and Sony will be moving ahead this generation.
India lost the T20 World cup. They didn’t even qualify for the semis. They have been winning a lot lately, so this was expected to happen one day. I had no interest to start with anyway.
Lakers WON!! Enough said!

I guess that covers everything. Maybe I will blog often now that I have gotten that off my chest

Kneeling Bench to Prevent Splashing While Peeing

Jagadish — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:48:28 +0000

Honestly, this is the funniest thing I have seen all day. Boing Boing has crazy stuff. Click the link below for a complete description

Kneeling Bench to Prevent Splashing While Peeing – Boing Boing.

5 Must Have WordPress plugins

Jagadish — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:29:06 +0000

When I logged into my WordPress dashboard today, I noticed that there were about 98 spam comments. And thankfully, none of them got through the Akismet spam filter. I couldn’t help but wonder the kind of time I would’ve had to spend if I had not installed this plugin. So I decided to pick a few plugins that are absolutely necessary for everyone who has a WordPress blog. Here is my list.

Akismet: This is an absolute must-have for all the WordPress blogs out there. Spam is one of the biggest headaches on the internet. Akismet acts like the spam filter in your email. It automatically puts all the spam comments on hold, so you can approve them later if you feel they are not spam. You would be surprised how many comments you get are spam.
Ultimate Google Analytics: Once you get on the internet with a blog, I am sure the next thing you want to know is how many people actually visit your blog. Google Analytics is a stats tool that helps you with that kind of information. It tells you where all your visitors are coming from, what browser they use and a lot of other things you might or might not be interested in. To get that information, you have to place Google’s code in your blog in all the pages. This can be a headache if you don’t like messing with the templates. UGA, does it all for you. All you have to do is give your Google Analytics UID in the options page and it will be up and running. It even has the option of not logging your own visits. Use WordPress.com stats plugin if you need a simple plugin. (I use both )
WordPress video plugin: Do you like to embed a lot of videos without copy pasting all the embed tag? Well this plugin is a perfect choice if you like to embed a lot of videos from video sharing sites in your blog. All you need to do is get the video id and knowing how to use simple BB codes. You can even set the height and width of the video.
Google XML sitemaps: This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. XML-Sitemaps are basically used to index your site. This plugin automatically generates sitemaps for your site periodically telling the search engines.
All in SEO Pack: Search Engine Optimization helps your site get noticed on search engines. This plugin collects keywords from your blog titles, description and tags and sort of increases the volume of traffic you get to your blog through search engines.

I also use YARPP which displays related posts at the bottom of the each post, (C) Feed which puts a footer in the RSS feed to prevent splogging, WP-Cumulus to display the awesome 3D tag cloud in the sidebar, Tweet this for twitter integration.

New Google Labs Features.

Jagadish — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:30:19 +0000

Google labs is basically a place where Google experiments it new features. Based on the user interest and feedback, they make it to the final feature list of the Google products. Google recently added a couple of new features to its Google image search and Google News. These are Similar images and Google news timeline.

Similar Images: This feature lets the user find the images that are similar in nature. The video below demonstrates what it can do.

Google news timeline: This feature lets the user sort out the news according to a time line. The interface is really cool and you can sort the timeline by days, month and year. A simple search of Barack Obama gave me the following results:

Day viewWeek view

Month view

And finally just for the heck of it, I tried to look at the decade view. It was interesting to see 10 years worth of news in one single column.

Google suggest now in email!

Jagadish — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:54:14 +0000

This kind of sounds ridiculous but Google is now “suggesting” who you should be sending email to. This is a new feature that is being tested as a part of their Google labs program. This can be accessed by going to “Settings” in the Gmail and then clicking on the “Labs” tab. Then scroll down to the bottom and find the “Suggest More Friends” and click the “Enable” button. You should be good to go. I love some of the Google lab features that let you embed pictures and videos, Colored Labels, Tasks, Superstars (a few Gmail labs features of the many that I use) but this seems like they pushed it a little too far. I don’t know how useful this is really. I tried to test it but I really couldn’t get it to work. Maybe it requires some learning before it starts suggesting. But here is a picture that shows how it works (Source: Gmail blogs)

My new favorite sites..

Jagadish — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:32:17 +0000

Social networking has become the big thing in the past couple of years. I remember when I was in India, Orkut was a big hit among all the college going students. I couldn’t believe how often I often I would stumble into one of the long lost friends from school. It was oddly nice to get in touch with those old buddies remembering those good old times. It was also awkward when someone messages you saying they went to school with you and you really have no idea who they are! A peek into their picture album trying to figure out if you remember them. It would be worse if they had no pictures at all.
These are a few social networking sites that I spend my time on these days:
•    Facebook: I mentioned Orkut as the thing that was most popular when I was a student in India. That quickly changed when I came to US. Facebook and me were a match made to last. Even though I hate the new layout, its still a thing that I use to catch up with friends.
•    Twitter: Quite possibly, the next big thing after Facebook. The micro-blogging site is so popular that even the celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Coldplay and several others use it. This could possibly put the paparazzi and gossip sites out of business. If you want to check the complete list of celebrities on twitter, it is here.
•    Blip.fm: This is a new site I’ve been using lately. It works just like twitter except you post the songs you like. Its sort of like being a DJ for your listeners. You could also combine twitter and Blip, so that all your blips show us as tweets. Its fun believe me.
•    Lala: I ran into this site on the lifehacker blog. One of the irate commenters suggested they use this site after Apple has increased the prices of the popular songs on its iTunes music store. This site is amazing for the fact that you can get most popular songs for less than $0.90. But the best thing about this site is that you can carry your music collection anywhere. All you have to download their music mover and point it to the place where you stored your music. It will make a list of all the songs you have and it will match your songs with the catalog they have. Once it is done, you can listen to those songs anywhere you have access to the internet.
•    Pandora: I know pandora is so last year but I mention it because I love their mobile app. I love pandora mostly because I keep running into some really nice songs that I haven’t heard before. The fact that you can now listen to Pandora on mobile phone now is a nice addition for me.
Alright, thats mostly it. If you have any nice sites that you like, please leave them in the comments.

WordPress Vs Blogger

Jagadish — Wed, 23 May 2007 06:58:00 +0000

I am sure most of you guys are aware of the different blogging tools available online. Blogger is probably the only free blogging tool available and can afford to stay that way because of google. But I also found that Blogger is also the most basic blogging tool that there is. Even after the new beta, there is really nothing great you can do. If you look at the interface, it is the same old compose box except for the added tags. Even the settings and options hasn’t changed much. Even your templates look the same even though you can add a couple of widgets to the sidebar now when you had to tweak the template to do the same. But there is still a long way to go. One of the disadvantages of blogger is that there are no expandable posts. The whole blog post, no matter how long it is, will be shown on the page. Well ofcourse, you can add these expandable posts but it would require a lot of complicated tweaking. The new blogger template is not as easy to understand as the old one. The themes to choose from are very limited too. And I themes I found on other sites were not very pleasing either. There is only so much you could do here. I’m probably loading everything against blogger here but you would realize how cramped it is when you want to go beyond the default stuff blogger gives you.

Coming to WordPress, there are two flavours. One is WordPress.com and the other is WordPress.org. WordPress.com is similar to blogger, it is free and it gives you a .wordpress.com blog but as good as it looks, wordpress.com sucks because there is only so much you can do there. It is very restrictive, you cant put anything related to Javascript on the site. So you cant paste your google analytics code or other stuff here. Then there are the upgrades that you have to pay for. There are several templates available for you to play around with but if you want to make changes to it, you will have to cough up $15 for it. It is not a good thing to do really, especially when you cant even paste Javascript related code. But if you compare feature to feature, the default wordpress is far superior to blogger. The writing tools are amazing, inserting an image is easy peasy. Expandable post can be done with the click of a button. Youtube links can be added easily with [youtube="link"] tag. You can add widgets to the sidebars and there are some really good ones to play around with. But still no javascript related code is allowed. Your site statistics wont be as cool as the one from blogger. But wordpress has an inbuilt stats page, that will suffice I am sure .

Well if you want all the goodness of WordPress and more legroom, you need to get the wordpress blogging script that is available on wordpress.org site. Ofcourse, you will need your own hosting space and domain name. But it is the stuff made for bloggers. There are a million themes for you to play around with, there are umpteen number of plugins for every customization you need. It is just what you need to make your blog look professional like you mean business.

Calvin’s agony

Jagadish — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:59:22 +0000

I can totally understand the agony of Calvin. I’m glad I’ve a Dad who doesnt think technology is a bane. He has always encouraged me to embrace the new and upcoming technologies and be tech-savvy even though I’m known to misuse it more than he knows.