Ardent Announces the Launch of the Next Generation Portal 'HamaraShehar.com'

Hyderabad, June 9, 2000: We are happy to announce the launch of the true next generation multilingual city portal by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Sri. N. Chandrababu Naidu in a privately held conference at Secretariat. This horizontal portal in which each section competes with a vertical portal in its category has multiple entrances http://www.HamaraShehar.com, and a local variant of http://www.ManaPattanam.com. Other local variants of HamaraShehar.com will be made online as and when those languages are implemented. Currently, English and Telugu versions are made available to the public and Hindi version scheduled to be launched in the next few weeks.

Tight Integration: Unlike others, this portal is integrated across languages unless the integration of a particular section doesn't make sense. For instance, it does not make sense to include reviews of English books in Hindi section. Most of the features on the site are unique among portals.

Customization: Users can choose from the 15 available colour schemes and can continue to browse the site with those chosen. The customization section also provides the option to choose from various layout templates. The selected scheme is restored every time the user logs in.

Local Vs Localized Vs Western: The site promotes local talent and culture instead of just dumping western content. Among those are various cartoons, strip cartoons, photo cartoons, caption less cartoons, animated cartoons and puzzles translated across languages. "There is nothing wrong in providing foreign content, but, at the same time we should not ignore local culture, talent and values. Our visitors are looking for local content, not localized content and we are happy to satisfy their needs." says Prasad Bodepudi, Chairman and Founder of HamaraShehar.com.

First Queryable Portal Across Languages: Users can query on city level information including City bus information based on starting and ending points, Theater/ movie play times, Hotels, STD Codes, PIN Codes and Telephone directory. Work on City bus query feature that provides information based on city bus-stops is under progress.

Next Generation Technologies Today: It is interesting to note that this is the first Desi portal that has fully integrated E-mail, Organizer, Notepad, Taskpad. Address Book and Photo Album will be available any moment from now.

In association with 'Cyberscape Multimedia (P) Ltd.', in the next few weeks, along with the Hindi portal launch, all these state-of-the-art features will be available across the languages, meaning, citizens can input data, participate in discussions, chat, maintain all their data in the language that is being displayed.

Content Vs Flashing Images: Our site designers took typical download times and in-depth content on our site into consideration and chose to belong to the first category and provide images as and where it makes sense.

Travel & Tourism section has detailed information on about forty tourist spots along with hotel information. This information is being integrated with local travelling agents, guides, tourist operators, etc.

Health & Fitness section has in-depth articles by well-known doctors, especially from those who believe in "Vidya Devo Bhava" and are willing to provide social contribution. This section covers Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Allopathy along with others.

Discussion Groups: This moderated section has topics on national and very local issues and we saw tremendous interest on local issues and discussions on 'columns' section is integrated.

Just Analysis Vs Analysis with Facts: We are happy to have contributions from popular columnists who always give references to the facts along with dates rather than just writing something for the sake of writing.

Killing Traditional Business Vs Helping Them: Instead of starting real e-commerce on the net, we choose to bring consumer and the business including medium and small together and help both of them. This section educates consumer via consumer guides and helps them in finding right product at right price. Traditional business is being helped by bringing their databases on to the net and giving them more customers.

About the Company

Ardent Citylink Services Pvt. Ltd., promoters of the HamaraShehar.com, was established in January 2000 with headquarters at Hyderabad, A.P., India. It is promoted by V. N. Muralidhar (Director), K. Shankara Rao (Director) and NRIs Prasad Bodepudi (Chairman & CEO), ArunLatha Muralidhar and Vijaykumar Chalasani (Director). The company's web address is: http://www.HamaraShehar.com. This company can be reached at (91)-(40)-760-7433/ 766-3592.

HamaraShehar.com, MeraShehar.com, ApnaShehar.com and ManaPattanam.com are registered domains of Ardent Citylink Services Pvt. Ltd. All other domain names mentioned may be registered domains of the respective companies with which they are associated.