I'm pleased to say that the 18:00 Semi fast to Watford has departed on time so that's rather nice. Unlike yesterday when there were big time track failures and I had to lean on someone for about an hour and 12 minutes! When you are my height, let me tell you my fellow passengers, can you wash those armpits before walking down to Farringdon please.
Looking around the tube, there are lots of people looking busy, even the chap wearing sunglasses and I can see he's actually asleep. One lady is on her blackberry (remember those!) and tip tapping some emails about restaurants in Singapore to her work colleagues. I was going to recommend Saravabhavan to her, but perhaps not...
We also have a gentlemen looking at this
Anyways, on with the show.
App review: Mondo. So a few months ago, someone in the lab told me about this super cool startup that was disrupting the banking industry called Mondo. Not heard of them? Neither had I. I knew they must be doing something interesting as the Tesla UK CEO mentioned them on Twitter, so I went to their website and discovered it was more a case of 'shall we give you a card as you need to be supercool to have one' than dishing them out like they are some kind of new sweet ready for market testing. I applied and it said thanks a lot, your jokes are kinda of funny so we will put you on the shortlist at position number 37,365. Damn...Then at a recent Tesla Hackathon in the city, I met one of the developers, did the secret handshake and he let me have a card straight away. Yay!
So what's all the fuss I hear you ask? Well I been testing it for a few weeks now and it is rather marvellous. In essence it's a card you top up from your regular bank account and then magical things start to happen. Being Indian, I thought, yeah I'll stick £10 on it and see how it works out. However, I discovered that the minimum initial top up is £100. Remember that's supposed to be a small amount for cool people and they must presume you have saved that whilst you wait it in line by saving 3p a day or whatever the maths say. (Sorry the analytics lab is shut now for the day)
As the developer chap said as he handed me the card, "I can activate your card right now if you like", I gritted my teeth and tapped in the bank account details. Well I used Mrs Min's bank account. Indian innit...
The card is beautiful looking and I've found just by pulling it out of my wallet leads to 23 people running over to be my friend. Yes it's that cool.
In essence the app that comes with the card notifies you with everything that's going on. For example, you use it at the ATM...it tells you. You use it at Tesco to buy a cheese and pickle sandwich. It tells you. Not only that...it shows you on the map where you used it. Hurrah! No more what is this transaction on the 17th of April with a cryptic name of AnSumrs...
It's kind enough to automatically classify the type of spend as it knows the shop (or merchant in posh language).
And the best bit, and this is super awesome, you can take a pic of what you brought or the receipt if you are billing that sandwich back to the company as you were kinda thinking about work stuff as you were eating it...
And there is more. You can use the app to send or receive money from other card holders and also a very nice feature where you can chit chat online to customer service. How wonderful, so I suggest you start saving those pennies now as at last count that queue is now 110,000. Min marks out of 10. 9.87333
Quick look to today's Evening Standard and rather shocked to read that apparently someone gets stabbed in London every 53 seconds....Poor guy...
Boom, let's leave it there.
Wishing you a lovely sleep,
A small man called Min
