As announced in the rail budget this year, Indian Railways is starting its free WiFi service in trains starting today. The first train to offer this service to its passengers is the New Delhi – Howrah Rajdhani Express.

The train will have a 4 Mbps connection which will be shared amongst all the passengers on the train (which is very low in our opinion). Passengers will have to provide their mobile number or PNR number in order to get the password over SMS to access the free WiFi service.

Users will be able to browse, check emails, chat and even watch YouTube videos (if the speed allows) on the free wifi connection. However, the service will block access to all porn sites and illegal sites.

Indian Railways plans to offer the free WiFi service to 50 other trains by the end of this year which includes all the Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto Express in addition to other trains. We hope that they also plan to increase the speed as 4 Mbps will be too low, especially on Shatabdi trains which will have passengers sitting during the day (as opposed to sleeping on overnight trains).

[via BGR India]

Exoticabazaar.com is an online store where you can order famous delicacies (sweets or namkeen) from all over India. Once ordered, you get the mouth watering dishes delivered to your home in a few days. Exoticabazaar has tied up with a lot of famous vendors from all over India. Here are some of the most famous items:

• Thaggu ke laddo from Kanpur
• Panchi petha from Agra
• Ram Chandra Sahai’s Nankhatai from Meerut
• Bhakarwadi from Pune
• Mysore Pak from Mysore
• Brijwasi pede from Mathura
• Banarsi kalakand (milk cake) from Alwar

The prices are more than the actual prices of these items in their respective cities. This is primarily because they have included the average courier charges from the respective points of origin.

The site takes payment via ccavenue which is secure and convenient. Once ordered, you get a confirmation email from ccavenue and exoticabazaar indicating about your order. Sadly, that is the only information you can get about your order as there is no order history or details section on the website (probably because there is no central warehouse for inventory).

I have tried the service a couple of times and they have always successfully delivered the food items within a week’s time. The items are fresh at the time of delivery. Hop on to exoticabazaar.com to order your favorite delicacy now!

In order to enable broadcasting companies offer more channels in India, the Government has decided to allow transponder capacity hiring from foreign satellite operator for broadcasters facing shortage of transponders on Indian satellites. TataSky is one such operator which is facing shortage of transponder capacity due to which they are unable to launch more HD channels on their platform.

DTH companies in India are not allowed to hire transponder space from foreign satellite operators without government’s approval. This is causing old players like TataSky to fall short of high capacity transponders capable of carrying HD channels thus making it difficult for them to compete with the new operators which have new transponders with much higher capacity and higher number of HD channels on their platform.

India is amidst a HD revolution and moves like this by the government are welcome by the consumers. This move should heat up the competition in the arena and offer much more choice to the consumers.

[via ET]

TOI is reporting that the Ministry of Civil Aviation of India has asked the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security to enable airline companies to issue barcoded boarding passes on mobile phones. The ministry wants to implement this system in the coming weeks, so that the domestic airline companies in India will soon be able to send mobile boarding passes to travelers on their email.

This is a welcome move and will surely benefit a lot of travelers and save a lot or trees. This will also result in shorter lines at the check in counters at the airports. Most smartphone vendors offer apps for such purposes which were otherwise useless before in India. Apple has Passbook app on the iPhone and Samsung has the wallet app on its Android based smartphones. After this move, these apps should be of some real use to India consumers.

Exclusivelane.com is a Noida based startup which offers authentic handicrafts for sale online. The site is one of a kind in India and aims to provide quality products with fantastic customer service.

Exclusivelane is also planning to start 24 hour delivery service within Delhi and will give you the products for free if they are not able to meet this deadline. This will also be first of a kind service by an ecommerce company in India.

The online store offers a good collection of handicrafts in various categories in all price ranges. One can argue that the same item can probably be bought at a cheaper price in the market, however, exclusivelane.com will offer convenience to those who cannot (or do not want to) go to such markets. Plus, you always have an option to return any defective product without any hassle.

The site is offering free shipping across India and flat 15% off if you sign up now.