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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Review: Sanskriti, Tripigator and My Clean India
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Review: Sanskriti, Tripigator and My Clean India

Three new government appsfor events, trip planning, and the Swachh Bharat initiativeare missing some essential elements

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NEW DELHI :

Government websites and apps tend to have a reputation for being poor in design, with a confusing interface. The Union government’s three latest mobile apps, launched in October, seem better designed than earlier ones, but they still need a lot of work.

Sanskriti

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Sanskriti seeks to increase user-engagement through feedback about the event, with a rating and comments section. Keeping it social-media friendly, the event-details page also gives users the option of clicking “favourite" and sharing via email or on popular social-media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

At the moment, the app offers information for 20-plus cities. All the metros,obviously, but also smaller cities with cultural traditions like Udaipur, Kozhikode, Patiala and Thanjavur.

We tried searching for popular venues like the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), National School of Drama (NSD) and National Science Centre (NSC), among others, but hit a “no record found" message. What we missed sorely was the option of buying tickets, or even getting information about places where tickets were available.

Platform:Android

Download from:www.indiaculture.nic.in/sanskriti-app

Tripigator

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Part of the Incredible India campaign, the app has been customized for planning a trip in India. So far, it has got an average rating of 4.5 stars on the Google Play store.

With an aesthetic design and a clean app interface, Tripigator reflects the objectives of the Incredible India campaign. You can sign into the app with your Facebook or email accounts.

The app, which has a minimalistic menu, offers three options—My Trips, Plan a Trip and Discover Places. While planning a trip, it asks a user for information on starting location, destination, interests, date of journey, duration of journey, and budget.

The app uses algorithms which automatically prepare an itinerary depending on the number of destinations. Once all the information has been keyed in, the app shows you trip possibilities in a flow chart, including hotels, air fare, cab fare and local itineraries. You can modify itineraries depending on your choice of places, hotels or flights.

It lets you save the itinerary, collaborate with friends and family, and make changes to the plan via Facebook or email. It provides information about more than 350 destinations, 4,000 activities, 20,000 restaurants and 18,000 hotels across the country.

An interesting feature is the Discover Places option which suggests destinations depending on your current GPS location.

As of now, the app only provides itineraries based on popular tourist destinations. If you are looking for off-beat experiences, there isn’t much on offer. Moreover, though it is a trip-planning app, you cannot book a trip, which makes it a waste of time. There is no mention of any government lodging options, which is odd in an official app.

And when we tried to plan a week-long trip, we got a partial itinerary. We tried planning a seven-nights trip between Kollam, the Periyar Tiger Reserve and Kochi. The automatic itinerary just gave options for five nights. In reviews, some users have mentioned how many popular locations are missing, especially from states like Chhattisgarh, or national parks like Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh. The app is also a battery-guzzler.

Some chinks, like not being able to save the trip, collaborate with people or find feasible routes, have been addressed in a November update. But compared to the other planner apps available, Tripigator still falls short.

Platform:Android

Download from: Google Play store

My Clean India

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Several duplicate and unofficial apps, such as Swachh Bharat, Swachh Bharat Swachh Bengaluru and I Clean India, have flooded other private app stores like Google, eating into the share of the official app. These unofficial apps are definitely a lot more user-friendly than the My Clean India app.

The menu is very basic, with options like Home, My Profile, Clean India Video, and a page about the Clean India Movement. Curated content like videos and pictures of users taking up the “Why Clean India?" challenge show up on the app’s home page.

A largely interactive app, it uses a two-step procedure. The first step lets you upload a picture, with a description of the spot you intend to clean. In the second step, you record a video of the place you cleaned, and nominate friends and family. Since it uses your Facebook profile as your login ID, tagging friends is easier. Once done, you will be prompted to post it on Facebook.

As your Facebook account is connected to the app, you end up uploading everything on your account, not on the app. So when you tap on a picture or a video appearing on the app’s home-page feed, it takes you to the Facebook profile of the person or entity who shared the pictures and videos. We believe that the clunky home page will not let this app get too many repeat users.

Platform: Android

Download from: “Mobile Seva" AppStore and Google Play store

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Published: 11 Nov 2014, 08:23 PM IST
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