Yay! The New IRCTC Rail Ticketing Booking Platform Works!

Yay! The New IRCTC Rail Ticketing Booking Platform Works!

Tuesday, July 1, 2014 / No Comments

Looks like the railways is delivering on a promise it made last year. Its ticketing website IRCTC has gotten a lot faster with the new update.

The new update, called Next Generation E-ticketing System

, seems to be quite snappy, even during peak hours. Although the new interface isn’t very slick, it seems to be very light.

Function over form seems to be the thinking. That works. I booked a couple of tickets this morning and was able to zip through the site, which would have otherwise taken much longer.

Obviously, the back end has been upgraded to support more users.

There are two captchas on the site, one at the time of logging in and the other after you fill in the passenger details. The second time, it gets a bit irritating. But otherwise, the site works like it should.

We hope the new platform stays up. It will probably take the Gross National Happiness Index a few notches up.

Google Shames Apple’s iOS For Adding What Android Did Years Ago

Google Shames Apple’s iOS For Adding What Android Did Years Ago

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Apple’s Tim Cook insulted Google at WWDC earlier this month saying “Android dominates the market in malware”, and quoted an article calling the fragmented open operating system a “toxic hellstew of vulnerabilities.” Well Google punched back this morning at its I/O conference when Sundar Pichai put up a slide showing Android’s progress over the years, noting “If you look at what other platforms are getting now, widgets, custom keyboards, many of these things came to Android four, maybe five years ago.”

And the Google fanboys and fangirls went wild.

Pichai never said Apple, but he was clearly jabbing at the recent announcement that iOS 8 would include widgets and custom keyboards. And to play a little defense, Pichai then described how Google was fighting Android malware by forcing all security updates to be pushed through Google Play so hackers can’t send them straight to unsuspecting victims.

For years, the fight between Apple and Google on mobile has been about iOS’ beauty vs Android’s power. But now Apple is opens up more developer flexibility, and Android is getting the new “Material” design overhaul. As the two mobile operating systems converge, expect this fight to get even dirtier. “Android is for robots!” “iOS is for toddlers!”

And poor Windows Phone wishes someone would at least make fun of it