Sishir's Recommendations

23/06/2017

Walnut Android App

This is a perfect example of a common problem solved using the simplest solution. I inherited a philosophy that to maintain a good financial life, I should pay one-third of my income to the tax guy, save one third and spend the remaining guilt free.

Ever since I started earning, I always wanted to keep track on how much I am spending and on what. Instead of saying, may be 1,00,000 a month and I think, it is all because of the restaurant orders, I am placing. I wanted to be sure, so I can take necessary changes in habit to maximize impact.

It is only in the last 3 months, that I have finally found a solution at least for Android smartphones. There is an app call Walnut. It helps you track all your expenses in one place, categorised. It does so no intrusively by reading the confirmation SMS that you receive from your various banks after every transaction.

For example, when you swipe your card at Big Bazaar, say, for ₹1000, you get an SMS. Walnut reads this SMS and understands you have spent
₹1000 on groceries. If you fill up petrol, it automatically assigns the spend to fuel category and so on.

Also, Walnut is smart enough to not double count PayTm recharges and spends from your wallet balance. It also, doesn't double count ATM withdrawals and Cash spends.

It also takes your pan card and fetches all your linked accounts and displays them in one place so you can efficiently​ manage your funds across bank accounts and credit cards.

So far, I have reached a point where I am aware of where I spend most of my money which is on Amazon, buying something or the other every week as opposed to restaurants which I thought was where my spends are coming from.

Some of these insights are what I am working on to improve my finances.

Overall: simple concept executed​ to perfection with great UI.

If you share my problem, you will love this solution!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.daamitt.walnut.app

13/06/2017

This is a device that was specifically designed for Indian Customer who has over time accumulated hundreds of movies on hard disk's and still continues to use torrents to download more.

Often TVs other than Samsung find it difficult to read all the movie formats. My sister for one loves to watch a movie every night before falling asleep but her Sony TV in her bedroom barely plays one fourth of the movies she has in her hard drive. Even with a Samsung TV, about 20 percent of her movies would not play. She therefore watches them on her laptop as she finds the hassle of running a HDMI cable across the room to the TV a hassle.

One day, I brought this device home as one of my colleagues recommended it. We plugged it into the HDMI port of her TV. Next, we downloaded Teewe desktop application on to her laptop. A couple of well written instructions to connect the device to the same WiFi network as the laptop, we were all set.

She opens a movie on her laptop, it starts playing instantly on her TV. It was such a delight.

Best part is, although it runs of your WiFi network, it does not consume internet. It merely uses the LAN network created by your WiFi router to transfer data from your desktop to TV.

You can also do the same from your phone by downloading Teewe app. YouTube is also integrated seamlessly which means you can cast your YouTube videos as well (although this consumes internet data).

Here is the link on Amazon. It retails for about ₹2000.

http://www.amazon.in/Teewe-Wireless-Media-Streaming-Player/dp/B00XW7I8BG

Teewe is an HDMI dongle which plugs into your TV and lets you stream content from multiple sources onto your big screen in HD wirelessly. Your smartphone (or tablet / laptop / browser) is used as the content library and as a remote to control your playback. Whether the content is online or downlo...

08/06/2017

When I joined my new job, I was told I have to submit my petrol bills at the end of the year to claim my transportation allowance.

At first I was trying to store all of them in one place. It was painful to say the least. I was either losing them or getting torn or even fading when in contact with sweat and so on.

One day, I was searching for scanner apps on my phone to see if there are any convenient ones. Office Lens from Microsoft showed up and Oh boy! I was delighted.

All I need to do is
• choose if want to scan a photo, a document or a whiteboard
• hover the phone over the receipt

The app would automatically identify the contours of the receipt, adjust for any light conditions and tilts and complete the scan. I can then save the scan as an image or a PDF document or send as an email.

For those who are used to saving your stuff on Dropbox, it also has a very similar feature built into its mobile app which allows you to directly upload to a Dropbox folder.

I have later used this feature extensively to quickly scan documents or old photos in my house on the go. The quality and convenience of these scanners is immense.

24/05/2017

It has been a while since I have posted products worth recommending. While I have actively pursued a start-up, closed it and started a new job, I have also been exploring a bunch of new products and apps which I loved and I will be writing about them in the coming days... Just to give you a sneak peak, I will be covering apps like Office Lens, Walnut, etc and some gadgets like the Fire TV stick that I found be extremely relevant if you are staying in India.

13/07/2016

Post by Kanth Miriyala

Bose QuietComfort 15 Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones

Given the hefty price tag ($299), I postponed buying these headsets for a while. I travel a lot by air. And each time I was on the flight, I would kick myself for not getting those headphones. Especially if I saw some guy (funnily I have never seen a girl or a woman use this headphone set; Why? You might ask. I have no idea!) have them, my regret would be higher.

Finally, I gave in and bought them. I have never regretted. Not once. They are awesome on flights. Especially on international flights. These headphones come with an adapter that works with the airline audio outlets. So I can easily plug them in to watch movies and listen to audio like I could never do before. Its as if I deleted the entire context of the flight for all practical purposes.

Over time, I have learned to carry a few extra AAA batteries.

Bose now makes a newer version of these headphones:

http://amzn.to/1ocd0mR

Over 2000 people have rated these new headphones at over 4.5 stars, on Amazon. Absolutely worth the price; actually its an investment into all your future flights.

QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones are the best-performing around-ear headphones from Bose. They give you crisp, powerful sound--and quiet that lets you hear your music better. Bose advances their industry-leading headphones with the latest proprietary Bose Active EQ and TriPort...

12/07/2016

Post by Kanth Miriyala

Martha Stewart Throw

We have our TV above our fireplace. We have this really nice couch in front of the fire place. We sit in the couch on cold and freezing winter evenings in Chicago, with our feet warming up to a blazing fire from our fireplace. Our feet would be “toasty warm”, as my son likes to call it.

In spite of all of this, we would feel that there was still something missing. We would still be a tad chilly, even though, quite frankly, the room was at an ok temperature. When we went to Target the next time, we purchased a Martha Stewart throw. A red one. And cuddled up in in the next time we sat down to watch a movie in front of our fire place. Oh my goodness. It was heaven. Not only is the throw super soft and comfy, it is also amazingly warm. We literally wrap ourselves in it and put our feet up in front of the fire. By God, that is Heaven!

Try it. You will love it.

http://amzn.to/241WjuB

DOZZZ plush flannel blanket is one of a kind, using our proprietary process resulting in a ultra soft hand and velvety high sheen appeal that is unlike any other blanket you've felt. A softness and looks hat is so rich and plush it's almost indescribable. Indulge and treat yourself or loved ones ...

15/06/2016

Post by Kanth Miriyala

GetAround

We had just sold our minivan. We were car-less, in some sense and we had friends come from out of town that we wished to host. So we urgently wanted a car. Not just any car, but a reasonably nice one.

I normally go through one of the rental car companies. But then I don’t care about the kind of car I get. Once I got a bright, lemon yellow micro car of some make I don’t even remember. We knew we could not risk that.

We remembered that our daughter had tried a peer-to-peer car rental last year. So we called her. She said the website was www.getaround.com. We went there and booked a car in no time. For $80 a day we got a Lincoln MKZ. The rental was effortless. We went to the parking lot of the person renting. Used the app to get into the car and found the keys under the visor. That’s it. Simple.

Equally interesting was the availability of cars for $7 or $8 per hour. We thought that would be a super cool way for people to rent cars; especially if you wanted it only for a couple of hours. I am sure someone has done the calcuations to figure out if it is even worth owning a car any more in large cities such as Chicago, especially in the downtown area. Even when we did have a car, we found ourselves using Lyft most of the time.

So next time you want a car rental, you might want to head over to www.getaround.com.

While I have no explored it, it would be worth exploring the RoI of renting the car you drive on getaround. I have a feeling the RoI would be 20-30% or better. Of course, there are other things like depreciation etc that we need to take into account to see if there is a net positive RoI. I don’t know. But if you already own a car and list it on getaround, when you get requests in, you can still refuse to make it available if you need it at that time. So when you don’t need your car, you can convert it into an asset and use it to put money into your pocket.

28/05/2016

Guest Post by Rajat S

While buying my first DSLR camera in June 2011, I also decided to buy 2 lenses. I needed a vesatile general purpose lens. The Nikon 18-55mm kit lens was perfect to get started with photography. It covered the most used focal lengths from wide (18mm) to telephoto (55mm). It is the most popular kit lens for Nikon cameras.

The things I liked about the Nikon 18-55mm were:
- It is versatile covering the commonly used focal lengths from wide (18mm) to telephoto (55mm).
- It takes sharp photos despite being an affordable lens
- The VR system to reduce the blur in photos

While choosing the lens, there were few points/features which I didn't care too much about:
- The lens is made of plastic
- Using it to take photos of the stars is tricky

This lens has served me faithfully. I still use it often. It works great for landscape photography and as a general purpose lens. It is sharp as advertised. After about 3.5 years of use, there were small spots on the lens coating. However, they didn't impact the images. the sweet spot for this lens is at about 35mm f/4. It performs fabulously from 24-42mm f/4 to f/8. If you are just starting out with your first DSLR and are on a budget, I would very strongly recommend this as your first lens.

If you are in Bangalore, you can even try this lens out by renting on

https://www.usekaro.com/collections/electronics-and-appliances/products/nikon-18-55mm-lens

02/05/2016

Post by Sishir Kolli

Breakfast Cereal for Weight loss diet

Kashi Go Lean Crisp

One of the things I miss since moving back to India is the right breakfast cereal. I prefer to pack my diet with enough protein and a part of it should come from my breakfast. However, most of the yummy and tasty cereals I like contained mainly carbs and sugars.

I searched nutrition facts for a number of cereals available on the aisles of Duane Reade, Target, Trader Joe's and such before I discovered Kashi's Go Lean Crisp Cereal and later confirmed my choice with my friends too.

Go Lean Crisp has 9 grams of protein in 3/4 cup serving size along with 8 grams of Fiber - two things I value most in my cereal. It has about 180 calories per serving which is reasonable for the most important meal of the day. Having a non- GMO verification stamp is a bonus.

I regularly consumed around 3/4 to 1 cup of this cereal along with 1 cup of Soy Milk. The combination surprisingly tastes great, if not an acquired taste.

The protein in this cereal is Soy Protein. When I searched online the world was polarized on side effects of Soy Protein but I still decided to try it out. In more than a year of daily consumption, I have never experienced any of the so-called side effects.

I strongly recommend it for dieters who are trying to lose weight.

27/04/2016

Post by Sishir Kolli

Tour Organizer around New York

Www.Tours4Fun.com

First couple of years I lived in New York, I lived without owning a car nor having a driving license. Just like any young couple, we wanted to travel around quite often. It was not always possible to take long vacations nor was it in our budget to fly long distances like California, Vegas or Florida. We were happy to travel to nearby places.

As we looked around for tour buses that could help us experience new places without worrying about accommodation, food or transportation, we found this website Tours4fun.com.

It was like a gift for us.

First time, we and another couple planned a 2 day trip to Cape Cod and Martha's vineyards. Next time, 5 of us went for a Ski Tour to Mount Snow in Vermont.

Some things, I really enjoyed about the tours:

1. The price was super affordable - something like $300-400 for a couple including accommodation
2. Choice of 2 or 3 day tours in either direction of New York - perfect for weekends and long weekends
3. The tours are leisurely planned with plenty of time for us enjoy ourselves the way we like unlike some of the others who cram up itinerary with lots of things to see and everyone is running from one deadline to another.
4. Quality of accommodation was pretty good. Clean rooms and amenities. Definitely more worth than what we paid for.
5. Buses are clean and comfortable to sleep or spend time traveling
6. Travel guides are polite, knowledgeable and enthusiastic
7. Good choices of stops along the way - we stopped at places like barns where we took a Sleigh ride or along the bank of a river where we could stretch our legs and take a stroll, etc

Overall, extremely satisfied with the experience and have happy memories of the trips.

I must caution that most fellow tourists were East Asian. We couldn't really make
many new friends given we didn't speak
Mandarin or Cantonese. We had our own company, so that didn't bother us much.

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