Monday, October 16, 2000		Article

Get ready for e-kiss

For those who have a heart pierced by Cupid’s arrow, be prepared to exchange virtual kiss. Luvstation.com is a site that can compose mail in a variety of exciting romantic backgrounds, add love quotes from a choice of 336 quotes and compose music from 69 tunes, besides offering winks, roses, teddies and hugs, along with the text.

The architect of the portal is Manish Sinha, a Delhi-based Web consultant. The site that can say, "I love you" in 100 languages is different from other card sites because it provides the user with the facility of composing own mail. Most of the card sites generally require a link to be present in the body of the mail that takes the user to the card site and opens the card. Further, most of them offer only default cards that take long to download.

The subscriber is allotted 3 MB of space as e-mail storage capacity and those who log on to the site need to be above 18 years of age and supposed to work within the ambit of cyber manners and laws. The site boasts of 5,000 hits per day and the daily data transaction is between 3 MB to 15 MB.

The site is meant mainly for young lovers but since it also covers various relations like mother, father and brother, it can be used by anyone. It promises to have an added feature of voice mail, custom backgrounds, quotes and music on site within a few weeks. It also promises changes depending upon the feedback.

If the user does not want to receive any mails from certain addresses, he/she can configure the blocked addresses list that will prevent any mail to come to the mailbox. What’s more any spamming or unauthorised mail can be tracked easily.

Integrated Business Networks Limited (IBN), a Delhi-based e-commerce company, recently launched Hometuitions.com at Chandigarh. The site provides a teacher to every student who submits his/her requirement for tuitions within a day of his/her request and has more than 13, 000 teachers registered already.

Hometuitions.com provides offline services on a B2C platform and provides a plank for students, teachers, parents’ concerned and educational institutes.

The site, which is a combination of a vortal and a portal, aims at students between 12-25 years of age group as its primary audience. Incidentally, this is also the major Net surfer segment. Secondary consumer segment would consist of parents looking for educational aids for their kids and teachers on a lookout to supplement their income through teaching.

Besides tuitions, the portal is also loaded with information on colleges and institutes, along with more than 290 Indian universities. The site sells more than 12, 000 titles in textbooks of all major Indian publishers. — TNS