Beautifully Ugly!!. Review on Smashits

This one is a fantastic site, yet the site with which the user may have the worst experience of his/her life. Confused? Read on!

Smashits.com has everything you want, literally. But what clears out all its credentials is the website’s POOR interface.

The site has audio but you can’t listen to them comfortably.

The site has videos but you can NEVER view them without distractions.

There are many blunders in the site which are:

SLOW SPEED: The speed of Smashits.com is extremely slow and it may take you hours to get on to the page you want. It is a terrible experience for the surfer, and he may just tear his hair in disgust. Want proofs? Check it out yourself!

FREQUENT REFRESHES: Though I may sound a bit funny, but this is true. If, after a long while, you reach you desired webpage, and suppose when the page loads you are surfing some other page in another browser, your Smashits.com webpage may get load and get refreshed automatically. So when you go and check whether it has loaded, it might get loaded all over again - without your command. How dare they!

ADVERTISEMENTS: They are annoying man, really annoying. Agreed that there are many other sites where there are ads and pop-ups but this site really gets on your nerves. I checked a page from the Smashits.com owners or somebody, who said that this is not their fault. While we may surf some other pages, and then open Smashits.com in the same browser, ads from the previous page may flow in. Really? So why doesn’t this happen with all the websites? Or is Smashits.com unique in it’s own?

DISTURBING INTERFACE: You might have a loads of problem accessing or finding the particular page you may want. The interface is so poor that you might end up searching for some other sites where you want the particular music file or video clip. I don’t know about the paid service, as I didn’t dare to pay for such a horrible service. [As a matter of fact, there is a sample page of the Ads-free service (now if ads really wasn’t a problem in thier website, why the hell did they launch this service?) where you can play the album Fiza in Real Player as well as Windows Media format. But Windows Media doesn’t work :-)]

Well, there is something good about the site as well. Here’s it:

HUGE DATABASE: Smashits.com really has a great database. If you have a good internet connection, you may really enjoy this. Right from pop music to olden era to Gen-X, the site features almost all songs possible. Besides, it has a great range of music videos / movie songs and movie scenes as well. There are many other songs as well, in regional languages - Tamil, Telegu, Bengali and many others. I have not heard them as I don’t understand any language, except Bengali to an extent.

NEWS: The site has some good news regarding Bollywood about it’s current happenings. At times, the news are outdated but that’s not much of a problem. Just recently, around 3-4 days back, I saw a news in Smashits.com that Akshay had reduced Amitabh’s role in WAQT, though this ’’rumour’’ spread by Mid-Day on April 1 was clarified on April 2 as an April Fool Joke. Apart from this, there are some other news too. Moreover, most of the news are based on rumours and gossips instead of facts. Nevertheless, it is quite nice overall. However, don’t rely on this site for regular Bollywood updates. Visit IndiaFM.com instead - it really rockz !!

OVERALL

Overall, as mentioned earlier, Smashits.com is one of the gem in terms of what it has, but suffers from a sub-standard presentation. It has soul, but has an ugly body. In short, put it as a well-made biryani minus salt.

Comments are, as always, more than welcome!

© Aliasgar Poonawala, 2005