They say retirement planning is one of the most complex problems to solve since it involves a lot of moving parts – Known variables Unknown variables Typically, people use Known.1&2&3 and estimate Unknown.1&2&3 to arrive at Future Corpus Size that will be needed to comfortably retire. But that’s the typical approach that everyone takes –… Continue reading Building a retirement calculator with GenAI tools
Author: kamalgaur
“Audible to allow importing any book wishlist from Amazon”
Audible is owned by Amazon. As a result, it should be relatively trivial to allow for integration between Audible and Amazon. It’s surprising to see an empty Audible library & wishlist, and no way to fill it except by adding books manually one by one. I already have hundreds of books on my Amazon wishlist,… Continue reading “Audible to allow importing any book wishlist from Amazon”
The stats of owning an EV performance vehicle
I find myself in between cars, having sold my Honda City in Feb 2023 after owning it for 13 years. I had just crossed 80K kms, which if I ignore the 2 years the car sat unattended in Bangalore, comes to approx 606 km per month (513 km per month if I include all 13… Continue reading The stats of owning an EV performance vehicle
“Amazon to add a filter for ‘number of ratings'”
Jeff Bezos is famous for focusing not on his competition, but on what the customer needs. He’s been quoted as saying – “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.” With that in mind, I find it surprising that Amazon still hasn’t put in place one… Continue reading “Amazon to add a filter for ‘number of ratings’”
“Amazon to explore a secondary marketplace for ‘used’ Kindle ebooks”
This idea is derived from the earlier idea I’d posted about around peer-to-peer lending & borrowing of Kindle ebooks. If you take that a step further, and tweak the lending duration from ‘x weeks/months’ to ‘forever’ – then it becomes nothing but a secondary sale market for ‘used’ Kindle ebooks. Amazon would be hard pressed… Continue reading “Amazon to explore a secondary marketplace for ‘used’ Kindle ebooks”
“Cred to allow users to change the color of their virtual cards”
Currently Cred allows for users to add their cards in the app so as to track spends and make payments on time. However, as you load any card, the Cred app automatically decides what color to assign to the corresponding visual card image that it shows within the app. The idea is to let users… Continue reading “Cred to allow users to change the color of their virtual cards”
“Automating away the issue around high network transaction fees”
2021 has seen a stark increase in transaction fees on popular crypto networks, none so more than Ethereum, where user-facing fees have regularly crossed $100 for long periods of time. The idea is that every platform, centralized or decentralized, worth its salt should provide the “ability to let users schedule a transaction when the associated… Continue reading “Automating away the issue around high network transaction fees”
“Leverage smart contracts in the world of UPI to reduce occurrence of scams”
As the UPI payment ecosystem in India has grown by leaps & bounds in the past few years, one of the challenges that users are facing is the finality of transactions, or what one would call, the irreversibility of transactions for the sender. This has led to an uptick in online scams, primarily driven by… Continue reading “Leverage smart contracts in the world of UPI to reduce occurrence of scams”
“Online shopping platforms to allow customers to split their spends using multiple payment options”
Online shopping platforms allow for multiple types of payment options like credit cards, debit cards, online banking, UPI, and wallets. However, not sure how many people have noticed that there’s one glaring opportunity that is being missed out, which is completely in the control of these online shopping platforms. The idea is to allow for… Continue reading “Online shopping platforms to allow customers to split their spends using multiple payment options”
“QR codes should be accompanied by underlying text to reduce fraud”
The use of QR (Quick Response) codes has proliferated in places like India as it acts as a quick and simple way to transfer money to the recipient without having to even key in the 10-digit mobile number (and waiting for apps like Google Pay to live search on their database to show you the… Continue reading “QR codes should be accompanied by underlying text to reduce fraud”