Review of Epic, the first Indian browser

I got excited when I read a post on techtree about the launch of a new browser Epic, made by an Indian for the Indians. This is made possible by a Bangalore based company Hidden Reflex. Of course,  people of other nationalities can also use this wonderful browser, but it has a couple of India specific features.  

About the company:  (source : techtree )

The company was founded by the then U.S. based Engineer Mr.Alok Bhardwaj in 2007. However, the company is currently based in Bangalore. They initially had a team of three members and have now grown to quite a bunch of people who are working on two separate products. The first one, Epic, has already been launched. The other one is still in the making.

About Epic:
  • Epic is based on the open source Mozilla platform
  • The first web browser by an Indian company
  • Built in anti virus protection
  • Hundreds of side bar apps/widgets
  • Anti phishing protection (nothing technical about this)
  • Inbuilt malicious website warning
  • The Collection Feature
  • Indian themes & wallpapers
  • Indic Language support (16 languages)
  • Built in word processor with support for 12 Indian languages
  • One click private browsing (romba mukiyam)


Features I loved :




  Collections : You can create a collection of your favourite websites and with a single click, you can open all the sites at once. For example, you can create a collection named "Blogs" and add your favourite blogs (for eg., http://www.anand-dattadri.blogspot.com/  :P )  to this collection & with a single click all the blogs will get opened in separate tabs in the same window.



 Sharing links : 
Sharing links of webpages & videos on 
- social networking sites like facebook, twitter, orkut, buzz, etc. 
- or bookmarking them on digg, delicious, etc.
- or posting on your blogs
is so easy. Just click on the "star" icon on the top of the page in the tab & you are done.




  Write is built in word processor (yes, within the browser) with Indic language support (16 languages)


This feature is good
ये एक अच्छी सुविधा है
இந்த விசேஷ அம்சம் ரொம்ப அருமை !!!









India content :  Lots of Indian content viz., News feeds in English, Hindi & regional languages from various news sites, City specific events, live TV (NDTV), selective video clips of various news & entertainment channels  & many other contents.



Using Epic Skins, the entire appearance of the browser can be modified. Lots & lots of India specific themes and wallpapers are available. My favourites picks are Katrina, Aish, SRK, A R Rahman,  IPL, Regional (Andaman & Nicobar Islands is marvellous), children (child with mehendi is very cute). You can have your own photos as the Epic's wallpaper.

Social Networking :  Sidebar apps available for accessing Twitter, facebook, orkut, gmail & yahoo mail as in a mobile device.


Lots of interesting & useful apps available, which can be installed easily by a few clicks.




Most of Epic's features may be available in Firefox browser as well (I haven't used Firefox much), as Epic is built on the Mozilla platform. But, still, I would say that it is a great effort on the part of the Hidden Reflex team taking into account the unique appearance, side bar apps, indian content & a host of other features. 

Congratulations to the Hidden Reflex team & best wishes for the Epic browser !!!

Click here to download Epic.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Google Buzz

Got to explore Google Buzz, the new tool for social networking, today...In some articles on the web, it was written, that Buzz is facebook & twitter put together. But, I feel it is exactly similar to twitter with provision for sharing of photos and videos. Also, one can send "mega" tweets...no 140 character restriction here.. You don't have communities or wall-like concepts in Buzz. It is just following others & being followed by others, similar to Twitter. Integration into Gmail is a plus, which assists, atleast initially, for getting followers & to follow others. Twitter lacks in this. Already some people opine that Buzz is the beginning of the end of Twitter as Buzz is integrated with Gmail. Further, one's picasa, youtube, twitter, blogger accounts can also be linked in Buzz. Facility to link picasa & youtube accounts will make sharing of photos & videos much simpler. Link to twitter feature is there, but it is one way. Public tweets in Twitt
Read more

Statistics about countries in the world.

A FAQ on geography is the total number of countries in the world. I just got curious to know the exact count & googled to find it out. While searching for this, I stumbled upon many other interesting facts. Total number of countries: Totally, there are 195 countries in the world. But, this figure includes Taiwan. Eventhough, Taiwan functions like an independent country with a separate capital & currency, it is not recognised so by most of the countries due to Chinese pressure. China claims Taiwan as its province. U.N. members: Amongst the remaining 194 countries, 192 are U.N. members. Vatican City & Kosovo, two recognized independent countries, are not members of U.N. World's Newest Countries: Kosovo is the newest country of the world. It was formed from Serbia in the year 2008. Prior to that Serbia & Montenegro got independence in the year 2006 (both formed from Yugoslavia). 33 new countries have been created since 1990. Most of them were formed due t
Read more

SEBI - a proactive investor friendly regulator.

A pleasant surprise for me, when I happened to check my savings account statement, today. I observed a credit of a few hundreds and was scratching my head, as to what it is. The transaction remark was not clear. It read like 'SEBI IPO'. But, when I read an article in rediff (link shown below), then I understood the reason for this credit. Source:  http://business.rediff.com/report/2010/apr/13/sebi-disburses-rs-20-crore-to-investors-in-ipo-scam.htm It was like unbelievable, but true. When there were stories doing the rounds that SEBI is planning to compensate the retail applicants affected by the IPO scam of 2004-05 in some way a couple of months back, I thought it was just a foolish idea, as it is an impossible thing to do so, looking into the complexity of such an exercise.  But, SEBI has done it !!! Rs. 20 crores collected from the IPO scamsters has been distributed to over 12.75 lakh retail investors, who would have otherwise profited by the share allotment in IPO. Though
Read more