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Glyde – Site Review

2010-02-26T20:42:13Z

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.

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Awesome Star Wars Stuff

2009-08-04T18:00:14Z

Just came across this brilliant post on Digg. If you are a Star wars fanatic like I am, then this will surely blow your mind. Here are a few things that I really loved. Check them all out here.

View Photo Album

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R.I.P The Pirate Bay

2009-07-19T00:55:18Z

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

2009-07-19T02:39:07Z

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

My thoughts on Braid

2009-05-31T18:02:49Z

I finished playing braid yesterday and as always quite late when it comes to finishing games . Given that I spent about less than an hour every day and no use of walkthroughs, it was quite an arduous task. I have to say as frustrating as it gets playing the game, it is really very satisfying when you figure things out on your own. Jonathan Blow has done a marvellous job in making this game. He had put all the right ingredients to make the game look innovative and yet familiar. Most people would confuse Braid to a platformer but it really is a puzzle game with an interesting time travel mechanic. It has a brilliant sound track and great visuals.

The story follows a typical Mario style adventure, an ordinary guy trying to rescue the princess. But when you get to the end of the game, it is kinda anti-climatic. I wouldn’t want to give too much away but it surprised me. I was shocked to say the least. It is for these kind of moments you become a gamer. You want to be surprised even if it is an unpleasant one. It was the shock that made me love FF6 when the world was destroyed half way through the game. It was the kind of shock that made me love KOTOR when I realized the main character was the Sith Lord, Raven. I could go on and on. The ending is, I would say on par with many great games but the game itself is not perfect.

My biggest gripe about the game is the stars that you have to collect at the end of the game. Having Speed runs is an interesting thing but collecting the stars is a really pain staking exercise. Most of them are hidden in really obscure place and takes a long long wait. I might still try to get them when I am absolutely bored but I wouldn’t try to attempt it otherwise. It also a short game for its price. There is very little to go back for once you done playing through once. Very little replay value. Even with all these complaints, I think Braid is a solid 8.5/10.

How to erase permanent marker from your dry erase board?

2009-05-29T03:56:58Z

Being the idiot that I usually am, I had done something really stupid yesterday morning. I was trying to add a few things to my to-do list on my dry erase board in the office. I mistakenly used a permanent marker on the board instead of a dry erase marker. I asked my girl friend if she had any ideas to erase it and she said its “permanent” and you cant erase it . She suggested that I could use some ethanol to make it lighter. I was even getting ready to ask one of my colleagues to get some ethanol from the chemistry lab. But, before that, I wanted to see what Google had to say about it.

I googled “how to erase permanent marker from dry erase board” and viola I got 122,000 results. I clicked one link that sent me to lifehacker (one of my favorite blogs) and it had a really simple solution (from Wikihow) involving 3 simple steps.

Get a dry erase marker (yes, you make marks to take marks away) and a dry eraser. The darker the color of marker you use, the easier the marks will disappear.
Draw over what you want to erase (make sure you draw slowly to fill it in better).
Erase what you’ve written over as you normally would. Surprise! It erases.

I actually just used a tissue to wipe it off and it all came out clean. Not even a spot or residue. I am completely impressed. This made me realize that I should trust the internet, no matter how stupid the idea is ) .

The mean streak

2009-05-29T04:14:15Z

So what do you do when you hate someone really bad and you have a chance to ruin them completely, would you do it? or would you just do let it slide?

If you answered yes to the first question, you have mastered the art of being Evil. I sometimes wish I was that brave. There are a few people in this world that I would love to see go down. These people are parasites who basically piggyback ride on other people’s backs. If there is one thing in this world that I really hate, it is the idiots who just have fun all they want and just mooching everything from the hardworking people. I sometimes wish I could do something really bad to them. I feel like a comic book villain plotting something mean and terrible to them.. but I just ending up doing something good for them anyway. I am just nice that way. I wish I could just take a swipe at them and ruin it for good but I just can’t help it. I can never do anything bad to anyone knowingly. I would never be able to live with myself for doing it.

Maybe I am just a sissy who can’t be Evil but seriously for a long time I had a mean streak going on. I could say the nastiest things about someone and not give a damn. It was just pure arrogance and ego and they are both sadly the reason for my downfall. I had it in my head that I am so better than anyone that I found it right to judge others and put them in place. Its amazing how things change so quickly. I have also become a lot softer since I met my girlfriend who helped me put things back on track.

Anyway, this is just a rant. Ignore it .

Major update!!