Siteseeing - 7

Cybercafe Search Engine and Cybercafes

In these days of wireless. connectivity and hand-held devices that help you connect up wherever you are, who needs cybercafes? Well, until Editor Sahib ponies up more dineros for his hard-working freelancers, I do. You see, WiFi is still pretty expensive in this country, and not exactly ubiquitous. And as for connecting up via cellphone or other hand-helds, you’re hostage to phone-provider signal, which can be spotty, to say the least, in some parts of the country. Cybercafes still rule for the likes of me, when I’m rambling. I tried searches on both of them. Cybercafes seems more flexible. It doesn’t have any obvious submission method, so perhaps the database doesn’t get spammed. It list just 417 establishments all-India, as of this writing. Cybercaptive has Country Search disabled, and doesn’t recognise the Indian state names I tried, so I wasn’t able to get a comparative figure. It does list other means of access, though, like cruise ships, hotels and airlines, and is, overall, friendlier in its tone, though a design overhaul is long overdue, methinks. Both deliver better results for North America searches, so if that’s where you’re headed, you’ll like them both. Got to go now. My home net connection is down, so I need to find a caf from where I can send this in.

Published in Outlook Traveller, June 2007.

Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing