My 2nd life!

Start of the Start - Talk at Bangalore Barcamp 11

2012-02-11T20:39:00.004+05:30

Here is the mind-map I made for the talk at the Bangalore Barcamp 11.

Had some initial hiccups when my laptop did not connect to the network, then I started whiteboarding - meanwhile some kind soul setup his laptop and I was able to continue my presentation.

It was well received - I was quite satisfied, but when I look back it could have been better. I missed out some interesting anecdotes I had gathered - the non-internet thing frazzled me at the beginning. I was planning to download this mindmap and show it locally - but I woke up late on Saturday morning - and murphy's law struck - as always.

<p>an</p>

can you spot my session? :)

ApartmentADDA turns 3 Years!

2011-11-12T10:26:00.004+05:30

We launched ApartmentADDA on Nov 12th, 2008 and today this site turns 3 !

I think it is apt to look at the analytics like how we would look at a kid - how tall he or she has grown! The above snapshot is from Google Analytics of Visitors from the beginning of time till today.

The mini spike after Nov 2008 was on January 2009 - when I informed about this venture in my batch's email list. Facebook had not taken off then yet.

The next big spike after Nov 2009 was on January 2010 - when Bangalore Mirror put us on Front page! Today we get more than 3 times that much traffic in a day.

Google Analytics now gives realtime reporting - it is surreal to watch the clicks and the dots show up on the world's map.

So what is next for this kid? "Changing Orbits" of course - quoting our good friend and mentor Mr.Sharad Sharma.

CyanogenMod on Samsung Galaxy S and 3 Button fix

2011-10-24T11:13:00.001+05:30

I did not brick my phone this time. And now I am on CyanogenMod 7 - with Gingerbread. It looks beautiful and is very responsive ( thanks to the Hardcore's Speedmod kernel ) - Samsung Galaxy S feels like a new phone once again.

Some of the SGS had the 3 button method ( Volume button + Home + Power key ) to reboot into Recovery or Download mode disabled - which is essential to install any kernels or ROMS.

The trick was to enable the 3 Button Fix and it becomes easy to install ROMS. In my previous failed attempt I tried to accomplish the same using adb and bricked my phone. ( http://venkat2.blogspot.com/2011/09/android-adventures-how-i-bricked-my.html )

1. Root SGS

This is quite simple. Download SuperOneClick from shortfuse ( http://shortfuse.org/?page_id=2 ) and root the phone.

2. Enable the 3 button fix

If you can go to download / recovery mode with the 3 buttons you can skip this step. Use the below link and it worked without any hiccups : http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/fix-3-button-combo-download-recovery-mode-in-samsung-galaxy-s-gt-i9000/. Has links to Odin and a PDA file which will enable the 3 buttons.

There is a similar article in androidadvices.com - you can give it a pass.

One word of caution : ALWAYS read the comments before you get your hands dirty. I read horror stories of some Samsung Galaxy S 4G ( newer models ) that got completely bricked as this is not supported.

3. Now I can install ROMs using Clockworkmod. The instructions in cyanogenMod wiki were so straightforward it was as simple as installing Ubuntu ( from Version 6 I guess ) and the whole process was done under 2 minutes.

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S

Here are some screenshots - I could not take the lock screen though - it came out blank. There are 5 "pages". The one in the middle is the landing zone.

To the left I put my "fun" stuff

Further left is google+, twitter and facebook.

To the right of my home is "work"

Yet to organize better. And guess what - the bottom tray - even that is configurable. The = sign is the calculator - yet another reason why android can never beat iOS. I can drag any app to this dock - something I could not do in Froyo ( don't know if this is a Gingerbread thingy or Cyanogenmod's gift )

And so far the phone responds really fast and had no app crashes. I doubt if there is any improvement on battery life - it is already visibly down ( had a 1.2 hour run today morning with GPS and music player on ), and was playing music at home through an amplifier after that. I saw a setting where I can switch the CPU for performance or battery.. right now it is in optimal setting.

And btw - these things void your warranty - but totally worth doing it. If you have a SGS and want it rooted just ping me - I can help you.

Finally - great work Cyanogenmod team - simply amazing.

An Identity Crisis!

2011-09-23T21:57:00.003+05:30

Whoosh... that is how the time went the last 3 years. Sep 18th, 2008 - the day the Lehman Brothers collapsed and the sub prime crisis erupted - I started my entrepreneurial journey.

3 years down the lane - I still feel young and wide eyed. And this brings us to an identity crisis I am having. How do I introduce myself to strangers? Earlier it was easy - I work for an IT company and the other party just imagines me walking in with a laptop bag, boarding a flight to US of A and bringing back lot of foreign chocolates - and of course living the high life and someone who can afford the high rents and bribes. [ honestly this is not true, and I am always frustrated when the non-ITians think that we are having an easy life ]

Now I honestly do not know how to introduce myself. Here are the few attempts :

I run a startup. The problem is - it is now my 4th year. How long will i keep starting should I not have started up by now? Also it feels as if I am toying with an idea or a business model - and the other party might not take me seriously. Anyone else other than the entrepreneurial community will not even understand the term "startup" correctly. So I stopped using this.

I run a business. This I tell with the least confidence. Because to me a business man is one who wears a suit / dhoti ( I was b&bup from Coimbatore ) , chews paan, has a waddle of cash, is chauffeured around in a car, tips heavily,speaks loudly to everyone, and is on phone all the time. I am none of them - and I do not sound confident because something inside me is trying to shut my mouth when I use this introduction.

I am an entrepreneur. It took ages for me to get the spelling right. And I attended a french class for 2 weeks - not that it helped but at least I can tell it is a french word. Aside anything that sounds french is cool ( expose, creme-da-la-creme, fiancee ). I love this introduction - however the majority cannot identify this word.

I have my company. Lame.. Doesnt excite me one bit - how will the other party even talk to me after such a dead introduction.

Hopefully by next year I should have a good introduction. Till then I will shake hands and tell the first thing that comes to my mind and keep trying various options.

Android Adventures - How I brick'd my phone

2011-09-05T07:39:00.006+05:30

There is one more advantage to Running. It helped me skip a Puja shopping session - citing pain because of my run the previous day - and had a nice 6 hour window for myself.

I have been using Samsung Galaxy S for the last 1 year. It is a fantastic phone and has helped me in my running, exploring unknown places, keeping an eye on the server without booting up a laptop every time.

The PoS called Kies allowed me to upgrade to Froyo ( 2.2 ) from Eclairs ( 2.1 ). However it does not upgrade to Gingerbread (2.3) for whatever reason. While the rest of the Android world is enjoying Gingerbread I am stuck on Froyo. It was a long time dream to understand what this Android ecosystem is all about - and finally I found the time to sit and read about it and perhaps install Gingerbread.

Here are the steps to brick a phone.

1. Root the phone. This is the easy part. It does not brick it - totally harmless.

2. Get ADB. There is a defect in my phone. The hardware way of reaching recovery screen ( Volume Up + Home button + Power button ) does not work. A few SGS phones have this problem. The workaround is to install Android SDK. This gives you Android Debug Bridge ( ADB ) which can reboot your phone into recovery or download mode by running a command from the console ( adb reboot recovery or adb reboot download )

3. ClockworkMod. What an Idea Sirji! - Free download from App Market. It can install any ROM / firmware. You do not need ODIN ( coming up in a minute ) - just install this app, copy the ROM to your SD Card, reboot and install it. Also helps you to do a backup of your existing ROM - so you can revert back to a working copy.

4. Stock 3e. This is the recovery console that Froyo has put - and it is incompatible with ClockworkMod. When you install it will say Unable to verify signature. Lots of googling ( how did people ever live before Google? ) and I had to downgrade it to 2e.

5. ODIN. In order to downgrade to Stock 2e I had to flash a different Kernel. This video has good instructions : http://www.dkszone.net/install-android-2.3-gingerbread-samsung-galaxy-s-i9000-custom-rom-ultibread. Using ODIN is not that hard - and I feel this is the best way to flash ROMs or Kernels.

6. Confidence increases. Still my phone was working after every reboot. For a geek where things keep working one after the other - the confidence builds up. I typically watch for these signs as law of average will kick in soon and something bad will happen.

7. Installing Gingerbread. I was as excited as a child. I downloaded Gingerbread, copied it to sdcard, rebooted into recovery mode ( 2e now ), and started the installation process...and was enjoying reading the messages scrolling.

Removing the crap you installed before....
InStaLin, Hold OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNN!!
Unmounting mount points...
Your phone is now High, ReBo0t .

8. The Brick. The phone didnt ReBo0t after the installation and it went to the 3e console. I should have panicked here but I was ignorant. I happily rebooted the phone and thankfully the SGS splash screen came. But then the screen started going crazy. The phone started making androidish noises. Waited for a while with my BP rising. Powered the phone again and the screen was stuck at the SGS splash screen.

9. The hardware defect surfaces. The 3 button trick to reboot to recovery console does not work. The phone has to first get picked up by the Laptop so I can run adb reboot recovery. Adb kept saying device not found. After lots of trial and error ( plug the usb cable and power up the phone, plug cable before splash screen comes up, plug cable after splash screen ) some combination worked and was able to reboot the phone. But the recovery mode never came and the phone kept hanging. Here I switched on the fan as I was sweating.

10. ODIN saves the day. I had left ODIN ON and while I was trying to get adb to recognize the phone - so I can run reboot command - while switching windows I happened to notice that the phone was showing in one of the COM ports of ODIN. This gave me some hope. I downloaded the same Froyo version I had at the beginning of this adventure - it is a 190MB download - while reading more of the How Tos to unbrick a phone. Did a adb reboot download mode - the Android icon with the spade icon showed up, loaded it on ODIN, installed it, phone rebooted and the regular Samsung Galaxy S 1900 showed up and the second animated Samsung Galaxy S icon came up. No I didnt thank God but I thanked the entire Android community for bringing back the phone.

I was too exhausted at the end of this. Now I have the phone in the exact state I started it - ( lost the apps etc. - which is not a big deal anyway ). Since I have everything tied to Google - got all the contacts back.

You might wonder - why did I download a Froyo ROM and not the Gingerbread ROM - since anyway I was going to flash. Remember the thing I said above about law of averages? I wasn't prepared to take any more chances. I just wanted my phone in a working condition - I was even prepared to go back to the slow Eclairs with the infamous Lag.

Quite an adventure!

My Talk at BSPIN-North - The Manual of an Agile Warrior

2011-08-24T09:43:00.003+05:30

Here are the slides from my presentation in Manyata Tech Park for http://www.bspin.org/ on Aug 23rd, 2011.

Manual of an agile warrior

Note : Its actually only 15 slides. Slideshare counts each text bullet also as a slide.

Why any product needs "Mac Users"

2011-08-07T12:42:00.005+05:30

First the Disclaimer : This is not a mac fanboy post. I am loosely stereotyping the 3 kinds of users based on the 3 OSes - Mac, Windows and Linux. This is mainly to drive home the point of how an "ideal user" will help your product become better and better. The "Mac User", who I call - can also be a Windows, Linux,BeOs,OS 390.... user. OS X has been successful mainly because of their Users - look at the amount of podcasts, fan sites, hints sites, magazines for this platform alone. Apple listens to these feedbacks - and incorporates some into every release of their OS.

I am tending to call these "ideal users" as "Mac Users". Had linux/windows had the same level of success - will be labeling them likewise. Shall we move on? :)

Here are some reasons why you need Mac users.

1. They demand Perfection

This is from my personal experience. Some of the CxO users, ex-Entrepreneurs who use our product - just cannot stand mediocrity or minor bugs. As developers we gloss over things and we fail to cross the 't's and dot the 'i's. But this irritates the hell out of these high achievers. When I look things through their eyes - it does make sense. Any aberrations - big or small - breaks the flow and harmony.

Switch to Linux Desktop. The flow gets broken everywhere. The applications are not consistent - each one I have to remember where I should go to do a certain thing. There are KDE apps, and Gnome Apps - and some apps who do not follow any school of UI philosophy. It kills me. Linux as a Desktop has a very long way to go.

Windows 7 has come a long way from the Windows ME days. Still there are certain things that does not make sense - like exporting an Excel file as a CSV file - you have to put up with 3 dialog boxes - twice. This is sheer madness.

2. They improve your Product

The best part of working with the "Mac users" is they give great ideas. We built the initial product based on our knowledge / creativity. After that the product has grown from these inputs given by our users. They bring lot of expertise and cross-functional knowledge to the table. The earlier you identify them it is better for the product. Any prototypes you are building, or just want to bounce an idea about a feature - these are the users you should call first. They have a big picture view of your product - on functionality / usability / and even marketability.

Then there are the linux and windows users. Linux users will be bent on functionality without any respect to the marketability of the feature. Stay away. The Windows users might want a feature that is there in an X ( eg. in Tally or SAP ). They will not understand that building it will flush the usability down the drain - or how it does not fit with the overall design philosophy. Give them a hearing, explain why you might not incorporate - leave it at that.

3. The Best Part - They pay you

These demanding users also pay you - ungrudgingly. They do not haggle with you, they respect your business model, they do not ask you to sell Pizza online and give the product free, they do not ask you to do what X is doing and follow their model and hence give the product free. They respect what you have built - and pay because they see value. If they are not paying - then there is no value in the product. Loud and Clear.

Now going back to the 3 OSes - OS X, Linux and Windows - see the kind of users / followers each group has. Apple is lucky to have the kind of crowd following them ( Power users, artists, designers... ). All apple has to do now onwards is to listen - the best ideas come from their users - not from 1, Infinite Loop anymore.

So - have you identified your Mac Users?

Business Card Title

2011-04-26T14:16:00.001+05:30

A startup has many challenges - market, cash flow, competition, support, hack attacks, attrition, power cut, hunt for the perfect coffee - add one more to the long list - Business Card Title.

Today, Sangeeta and I had a chat on IM ( yes we are in the same office - long story :) ) regarding what will be the title. We cannot have traditional roles like CxO, X Manager etc. - as in a startup you have to specifically generalize.

When we started ApartmentAdda, I had a short title on my Business card - Chief. - with a period at the end. I was ragged for 15 minutes by one committee when I had gone for a demo. Also later Sachin who was our Product Innovation Lead - used to tease me - Chief What?

So when we went for a reprint had it printed as Chief, Technology. That explains one aspect of my job - the primary role. But there are lot other things I handle daily - support, IS, patching, backups, opening office, UPS rationing, analytics, accounting, server, domain renewals, organize team outings...

Over to Sangeeta. She does Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Support and lot other things like - hunting for the perfect coffee, head hunting, accounting, Weekly quicksters ( check our page on http://facebook.com/apartmentadda ).

Taking all the factors into consideration - customers,partners,vendors,investors - we finally decided to have functional titles based on our primary roles.

This will be the 3rd reprint of my card and the Title is a little bigger than last years. Curious to know? Will do the handshake next time we meet and give my card :)

So - what are the titles in your startup/organization ?

Couple of tweets I received on this :

ulaar Vishy Kuruganti

@venkat2 Hmm.. The business card STILL lives on in this day and age? ;)

vivekshukla Vivek Shukla

You can use "Vision Manager" RT @venkat2: Finding a designation for the Business card is not easy. #startup

Thoughts on Goal

2010-11-20T10:31:00.000+05:30

Last month I was in Justbooks around the time they were closing so just picked 2 books as directed by my subconscious. Once I started reading I realised that I heard about this book first in the 2007 Ooty Thoughtworks Awayday. Apparently the subconscious mind remembered about this book when I was going to randomly pick 2 books - amazing how neurons work

Goal was written by Dr.Eliyahu M.Goldratt as a marketing ploy to sell their software which did some scheduling. No one knows about the software - but the book became a roaring success - after rejects by 20 publishers.

The book brings out some interesting concepts - even though it revolves around a manufacturing plant - it soon becomes apparent that the concepts can be applied against any industry or business.

What is the Goal?

Alex is the head of a production plant. Orders are always delayed and is a loss making plant. His boss gives him 3 months to turn it around or close the plant. Alex meets his high school physics teacher who mentors him into finding the right path - and the first question he asks is - what is the Goal of your production plant.

Is it quality, productivity - no - the goal is to make money now and in the future. This very realization sets a whole chain of interesting concepts.

Herbie the fat kid

This is a must read part of the book - they bring out the concept of bottleneck in a brilliant manner. Some 20 boy scouts go on a 8 mile trek led by Alex. As per common sense the fastest kid is put on the front of the trial - so he will set a fast pace and they can cover the distance quickly.

They stop for lunch ( mid day ) and realize that they have not covered even 2 miles of the 8 miles. At this pace it will be quite dark by the time they reach the destination.

Soon Alex finds out that Herbie - the fat kid - is in the middle of the trial and he is slowing people down behind him. So he moves him to the end of the trial. Even this does not work and the pace does not improve.

Then he moves Herbie to the front of the line and also take some load off his back - so Herbie can walk a bit faster. Wonder of wonders - the pace improves drastically and they reach the destination on time.

The reasoning is brilliant - you go read the book - I wont spoil it for you :)

In any system - identifying Herbie - or the bottle neck is of utmost importance. Once identified you can either move it to the front of the chain ( will not be possible in most of the cases ), or add more resources and optimize the bottle neck.

There are lots of advantages of the bottle neck :

1. Bottleneck determines the throughput of the system

2. This helps in scheduling things around it - so the quantity and delivery time can be predicted accurately.

3. The inventory can be planned more smartly with this information - hence reducing the warehouse costs

Herbies are the weakest link, or the slowest part of the system. They determine the strength of the whole chain.

And the bottleneck will keep moving as the Herbie gets identified and gets optimized. Other Herbies will start springing up - and have to be dealt with.

Theory of Constraints

This brings us to a brilliant deduction :

The Rate of achieving a goal is limited by atleast one constraining process.Only by increasing flow through this constraint the overall throughput can be increased.

Simple, common sense - but we totally miss this.

5 Focussing Steps

Identify the constraint (the resource or policy that prevents the organization from obtaining more of the goal)
Decide how to exploit the constraint (get the most capacity out of the constrained process)
Subordinate all other processes to above decision (align the whole system or organization to support the decision made above)
Elevate the constraint (make other major changes needed to break the constraint.
If, as a result of these steps, the constraint has moved, return to Step 1. Don't let inertia become the constraint.

That is all there is - and this philosophy can be applied to any system.

BootStrapping and VCs

2010-11-14T12:38:00.000+05:30

Last week I attended the Nasscom Product Conclave. Lots of take aways.

Bootstrapping

I am reading Goal now ( a dedicated post is needed for the book ) and it taught me a new life lesson. Constraints are not a bad thing - they are the best thing that can ever happen to you. A few sessions reflected this thought process and brought some clarity.

For a Bootstrapped Startup - Cashflow / Money is the constraint. It shapes the way we think and act. Every Rupee that is spent is well thought out. Wastage is out of question. No unwanted feature creeps into the product - keeping the product spiffy and on its toes. The code / server is optimized to extract every ounce of performance as infrastructure is expensive and eats into the bottomline.

I can keep adding lot other things - I appreciate the constraint bootstrapping provides - it is actually creating the character of the future company that has started shaping up.

VCs

This brings me to the other side of the coin. I felt bad for VCs - they got bashed up in this mela. Almost every session had something or the other against VCs. Yes, VCs are bad for early stage startups which are not capital intensive. Actually money works to the detriment.

There is a place for VCs when the Orbits have to be shifted - sadly none of the VC bashers spoke about it. This also reflects how nascent this industry still is. The startups are just starting to take off. Only a few are feeling the need for VC funding.

Also Dr.Wadhwa gave enough statistics to prove how the VC industry is imploding in Silicon Valley. This will definitely make it harder for our startups and VCs in the near future. Perhaps the model is not right - perhaps it was not done right - we will never know.

Viral Loop

2010-10-18T22:06:00.000+05:30

It has been a while since I finished reading Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg - which traces the story of Internet companies right from Netscape to Facebook and Twitter.

The book is sinking in slowly. Being in the .com business it was exciting and scary to read the history of various startups.

The book covers the journey of the following startups.

Netscape
Hotmail
Ebay
Paypal
Amazon
Hot or not
MySpace
Flickr
Bebo
Ning
Twitter
Facebook

And there is a recurring pattern in all of them

1. The founder is invariably a developer

All these are essentially Web applications - and having the founder-developer part of the nucleus is ideal . Things change at the speed of light - and the founder being at the helm can immediately sense the course corrections that are needed - and correct them himself - instead of having outsourced the core work, or giving instructions to a team of techies and waiting for them to create magic.

3 Cheers to Developers - we are the makers of the world!

Free Tip Warning :) : If you are a developer and evaluating whether to take a Project Management position - turn it down if you have startup aspirations - instead focus on becoming a better developer - some day you can run your own startup.

2. Scaling

Finding the right idea is not enough; finding customers to come to your site is not enough - the site has to scale. This is the single biggest problem faced by all of the above startups. This is a good problem to have - and you should be happy when scaling pains hit you.

It is a tough decision. Should you spend enough resources and build a complex architecture that can scale VS build your product as fast as possible and handle scaling when the time comes. Honestly I do not know the answer. There are pros and cons for both.

The universal answer "Depends" is, as always, the right answer :)

3. Viral co-efficient

And they have formed a mathematical equation to explain the Viral phenomenon - why some ideas spread like wild fire. The magic is in the viral co-efficient. As long as it is above a certain number the idea will succeed. This is what Malcolm Gladwell calls it as the Tipping Point.

The book is full of interesting anecdotes. Ebay bought Bill Point and tried to kill Paypal ( which refused to be bought out by Ebay ). In order to promote Bill Point, Ebay made its banner big, had a easy sign up process. Whereas for Paypal - Ebay had a 2 step signup - and made Paypal's banner smaller and towards the bottom of the page. The community revolted and brought back Paypal.

Once an idea catches up - the community will make sure it stays on the right track.

On the downside - this book glorifies Ning. Perhaps it was written before the downward spiral started for Ning.

Ning had rounds of funding ( Mr.Sharad Sharma joked in one of his speeches that Ning has got more funding than what it took Chandrayaan to be sent to the moon ) - and still Ning is struggling. They recently turned off their free communities and made the entire site a paid one. As an idea Ning is great - but as a business model - they could not sustain. It will be interesting to watch if Ning can turn things around.

We are exactly in the middle of a huge flux. So many questions are yet to be answered :

What is a successful business model for a Web product?
Is Freemium the right model?
Is Banner Ad-Revenue sustainable in the long run?
Is 37 signals / DHH philosophy the right one for a Web Startup?

Perhaps a few years down the lane we will know better. Till then let us keep guessing and keep updating our status and tweeting inane things!

Release elsewhere vs Release in a Startup

2010-09-01T11:59:00.000+05:30

In August we had 4 Major Releases and 8 Minor releases. I was thinking how the Releases were in my previous life ( few in a year ) and how it is now ( few in a month ).

Things are much more demanding in a startup - the developer's job is not done by just pushing things to Prod and making sure things are fine. He has to do lot of follow up work. Looks like lot of fun isn't it! :)

Stay away from Microsoft Fonts for Ubuntu

2010-08-29T12:32:00.000+05:30

I installed Microsoft fonts by mistake ( msttcorefonts ) and forgot all about it. However it messed up the entire system. These fonts are not anti-aliased or smoothened and they are razor sharp.

If you have installed - just remove them sudo apt-get remove msttcorefonts and sanity will be restored.

Penguin Zindaabaad - Ubuntu 10.04 review

2010-05-30T18:23:00.000+05:30

They : Is this Apple?

Me : No. This is Ubuntu !

They : Huh?

Me : Yep!

The above conversation happened yesterday when I had gone to give a demo to an Association Committee. Half an hour we were discussing on Ubuntu and then I realized I have come here to sell my product and not Ubuntu - and went on with the demo!

That's the screenshot of my desktop - on Ubuntu 10.04. Very minimal, OS Xish, smooth, fast, snappy, extremely responsive - and a conversation piece at every demo.

In May 2009 - a year back I installed Ubuntu 9.04 with dual boot with Vista ( http://venkat2.blogspot.com/2009/05/finally-switched-from-vista-to-ubuntu-9.html). Now after a year - in may 2010 - I clean formatted the laptop and have gifted the entire hard drive, boot sector et all to Ubuntu 10.04. I am confident / convinced that Windows is not needed any more.

In fact I am very grateful to Microsoft for having produced a crappy OS. If Vista was a little better I would have lived with it - how I lived through Win 98, Win ME, Win XP ( truly the best of the lot ). But Vista is a class apart - bloated, slow, buggy, random, restrictive, frustrating....!

Here is my take on the new Ubuntu.

Speed

The new one boots fast ( however not the 10 second boot time everyone is raving ) - I count 15 dots in the new bootup screen everytime - and by the time I login - the system has picked up the wireless, I click on Chrome - one jump on the dock and Chrome shows up. Not the same with firefox though - man it is bloated.

Almost all the applications ( Open Office, Filezilla, Gimp ) open up really fast.

Dock

I missed the OS X Tray. In the earlier avatars I tried Gnome Do and few other hacks - but nothing came close to the OS X dock. Now the new Docky has come pretty close to the real thing. It is included in the repository - just apt-get install it.

Ubuntu Software Center

Earlier I had to google and then learn about an app, then search in synaptics package manager. All that is gone - the new software center kicks ass. If you had used Fink Commander for OS X you will love using this. My only gripe is there should be a more button - minimal is nice - but once in a while it is a pain.

Compiz

The wobble, desktop cube, cover flow view on ALT-TAB - all are very smooth. In fact when I use Windows ( 7 of course ) it looks pedestrian. Moving the windows gives me a stiff back - why are they so rigid?

Expose ( we call it scale ) works perfectly. I have most of the head spinning effects disabled - perhaps will leave them on before demos and get a few oohs and aahs for the OS also ( apart from the oohs and aahs for the apartmentadda demo :) )

Copy dialog

The copy dialog goes and sits at the top right corner - double click and you get the copy window - neat.

Switch user

Works. In 9.04 the OS will hang. However it is not as fast as "fast user switching" in OS X - when they released this feature in 2004 or something.

Tata Photon

It shows up in the networking setup screen > mobile broadband - chose defaults - and it connected.

Laptop runs cool

With Ubuntu 9 it used to get really hot. I have the processor tray on my top panel and now it is like a placid ocean. Shoots up only when I start an application. I am not sure if it is the new Linux Kernel or there was a buggy app in the old release.

The Bad stuff

Penguin lovers close your eyes and ears.. Here are my gripes

Social media integration

Why are they wasting everyone's time? Linux is for serious users - the Canonical developers are just wasting time trying to build such stuff - which no one will use. In my opinion linux will not get widespread adoption because of such social stuff - but will get accepted if it is as usable as an OS X.

Window buttons on the left

Horror of horrors - why will they do that? Just by copying a small OS X style they are not going to get a usable OS. A google search solved it - it is a simple configuration change - need not even reboot.

Lack of a good iTunes alternative

There is none. zilch. I tried Amarok, rhythmbox - Sorry Mark Shuttleworthji - I will never recommend Linux to my friends for this very reason. Songbird has ditched Linux - and we are left with no options. I am seriously thinking of starting an open source project which will be a true iTunes alternative for linux.

I don't know what beer the developers of Amarok and rhythmbox are drinking - guys - if you want to beat Windows / OS X - we need a better jukebox - or atleast bribe or feed the ego of the Wine guys to make iTunes run in Linux. Sheesh - I am appalled.

Only good thing out of this is it makes me more productive. I do not waste time downloading, playing, dissecting songs on the laptop - my trusty iPod classic has all the stuff and I update it occasionally on my iMac.

Anyway - bottom line - I am one happy linux geek. 10.04 is truly the most awesomest OS Canonical has ever produced. I am hoping that, with 10.10 they will release Gnome 3 - and there will be no looking back. I will put Ubuntu on my 5 year old iMac ( damn chrome does not run on it because it is a power PC )

Penguin Zindaabaad !

After reading Outliers I write a time-travel letter to myself

2010-04-19T10:01:00.000+05:30

I finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell a couple of days back and lots of thoughts have been churning in my head. Putting them down as a letter to myself - a letter I would write to the 20 year old Venkat whose career is just beginning ( also applicable to anyone who is in college right now ).

Hi Venkat,

How are you doing? How is your new college? Here are some tips for you.

1. Eat Breakfast.

This is not from Outliers - but my personal advice. I never ate breakfast in college - slept late, woke up late and would miss breakfast. Just by eating your breakfast daily you will get a better grade. Trust me.

2. Work hard.

You see your class topper ace in all the subjects. You think he has got an extra chunk of grey matter. Take a peek into his life - he works hard and works effectively. Takes notes in class, brushes through the chapter before coming to class, and he practices the problems. His parents taught him the right methodology to study, perhaps he had a cousin who taught him early in his school days how to present answers attractively - so he always scored higher than his peers.

Why do, on an average, Asian kids ( Singapore, Korea, Hongkong ) consistently score higher than US/European kids in Mathematics? - It is because they work hard. It takes 20 mins to an hour to crack some concepts - like fractions,probability,calculus etc. They spend that time and effort - it is in their culture to work hard. The kids from Western nations do not have the patience to understand the concept - they never get the fundamentals right - and the hatred towards Mathematics carries on. This is just a crude generalization - however - the finalists in Maths Olympiads from all the countries are all at the same level - all these kids are hard workers.

The yield from a small match box size Rice paddy field is higher than a hectare of wheat field. The rice farmer wakes up very early before the sun rises, makes sure the water level is just right, when sun comes out and water gets hot he should drain away the water, he plucks the weeds one at a time, the harvesting has to happen quick and has to be done with utmost care. Wheat on the other hand needs very little care, can be automated using large farm equipment - and yield is considerably less.

The same happens with the brain. The more effort and more energy you will spend on your brain - the more yield you will get.

Being "gifted" does not guarantee success. They have done a 20 year study on a bunch of high IQ kids in California. They followed their career. What they found is that they did not do any better than the average IQ kids.

So work hard - yes, all the proverbs about working hard are all true.

3. 10,000 hours

After you pass out of college, you will get inspired by Jimmie Hendrix and Santana - and go join a guitar class. But you will drop out after a few months. You cannot give up just like that. Any art, talent takes time. Researchers have found that it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice before you can become an expert. They have analyzed the school years of high school music teachers and talented artists who play in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The successful artists would have spent 20-30 hours every week of their school life playing their instrument.

Mozart became famous only after 10 years into his career. Beatles played 8 hours at a stretch 7 days week in a shady bar for 3 years before they became world famous. Almost all the famous authors would have produced numerous works before they would have had a best seller. Whatever profession you are choosing - put in the hours - long hours, weekends - so you can quickly reach the 10,000 hours - and then magic will happen - and success will come along with it.

So good luck on your career. Life is hard and complex - and therein lies the beauty of it. If your life is simple or easy - then it will become boring. Whenever you find that your job / career has become easy and you are not learning anything - change your job. Try to keep searching for complexity - you can enjoy life a lot.

PS : I know you are curious to know who your life partner will be - sorry the time travel protocol does not allow me to reveal that :)

Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience

2010-04-03T22:45:00.000+05:30

This is a very interesting book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Have you ever wondered the difference between pleasure and enjoyment?

Pleasure :

When you are involved in a pleasurable activity - it takes your mind out of the worries you are having ( watching TV to escape from stress ) and satisfies the needs of the moment ( drinking coke to quench thirst ).

Enjoyment :

An "enjoyable" activity, not only gives you pleasure - but gives you the feeling of fulfilment, the feeling of joy and living life.

You need to put some effort to "enjoy". Playing a guitar, compiling linux, playing badminton - all these are very enjoyable activities. It takes effort, requires skill, practise and is extremely rewarding in the end.

There needs to be clear goals and feedback in such activities. 0 errors, 0 warnings is the reward in the end - till then you should keep tweaking,do more research, try different approaches.

You lose your self-consciousness and sense of time. Your entire concentration is on the job at hand - and will give you immense enjoyment.

Autotelic Experience

When you have really enjoyed an activity - you had just had an autotelic experience.

When you solve a sudoko puzzle - you really do not gain anything in the end. The boxes get filled - so what? It is the time you spent solving the puzzle that gives the maximum enjoyment. This is an example of Autotelic experience. The reward is the activity itself.

There are some who can derive this experience on all the activities they do in a day - watering plants, washing the car, answering customer support emails. These autotelic personalities can go from one task to the other - and their mind is always in the "zone" - they are happy throughout the day - they are immersed in the "now" and they enjoy their life.

There are lot of by-products - the task gets completed perfectly. There is a sense of peacefulness around this person - which affects everyone else in a positive way. It is a joy to work along side such people.

So how can one cultivate an Autotelic personality? :

The suggestion given by Mihaly is quite simple - for any activity :

Set a goal
Become immersed in that activity
Pay attention to what is happening
Learn to enjoy the immediate experience.

In Conclusion :

I started observing that I go into the "zone" when I code or when I write a blog post. I have talked about it here - http://venkat2.blogspot.com/2009/08/getting-into-zone.html.

This book just opened my inner brain - there are so many activities that we do in a day - exercise, playing with a kid, washing the car, cooking - what if we aim to go into the "zone" in all these activities? Thats when we will get "flow" in our life.

Then life would be more enjoyable - and more meaningful.

Peace.

How to handle Developers!

2010-03-30T15:14:00.000+05:30

Here are a few tips if you get pushed to managing a team of code monkeys..err..developers.

1. Deadline is 8 hours away and they are whiling away time by reading Joel Sposky or watching a South Indian actor dancing in a superman costume.

Ignore this - they are just warming up.

2. After the above intellectual stimulation they go for coffee.

Again, be patient. They are refueling.

3. Call them for a meeting to explain how grave the situation is. Only 6 hours is left.

Stop stop. Don't call them for a meeting now, it will just drain the warm up and caffeine effect they are having now. They are about to enter their "zone" where things will start "flowing".

4. How to know what the status is?

Hmm..it is a difficult thing. If you send an IM or an email it will interrupt their flow which will make them very angry, or they might mistake you for micro managing things. Wait for one of the developers to go for a bathroom break and follow them there. Of course you should be of the same gender.

There you ask - hi hows it going you are aware of the deadline today right? If the specimen nonchalantly asks - "what deadline" - don't panic. He is just messing with you. In fact the developers are very conscious of not being fired / or not getting the next hike - they usually would have a mammoth credit card bill - because of a 3G iPhone, or a flight ticket to Ladakh..

So don't worry..patiently explain to him that the clients want this by EOD - so it will be great if we can deliver it. He will just say a hmm and will take his own sweet time to comb his hair, or gargle, or one of the thousand things he can do to frustrate you - so do not wait for him but move back to your seat. Things are going smooth - if there was any problem or the deadline cannot be met he would have told you - trust me on this.

5. You see a few developers packing their bags

Time to go ask your QA team if everything is fine. If you had not troubled the developers throughout the day there is a good chance the stuff is done well and your team has met the deadline. Now you can prepare for the telecon with the clients and draft the congratulatory email to the team.

Of course it is not this cut and dry. Use your judgement - you will get better at it as you go. Understanding the developers mindset is having half the battle won.

Sharad Sharma's talk in Bangalore OCC - Mar 21

2010-03-21T21:41:00.000+05:30

Today I attended the Bangalore Open Coffee Club's meeting in an interesting venue called Jaaga. Before I jump into Mr.Sharad Sharma's speech / adrenaline shot - will talk a little about Jaaga. It is spear headed by Freeman Murray and Archana Prasad. They have identified an unused piece of land - and has built this structure with minimal and eco-friendly materials. This space can be used by NGOs or communities who want a place to get together, startups can come and plug in etc. They call it the Urban Community Art Architecutre Experiment - http://jaaga.wikidot.com/start. Brilliant concept and I am sure you will be visiting this place sometime in future - it is going to take off well.

Now to the Orbit Change Catalyst's lecture ( thats his twitter bio http://twitter.com/sharads )

Mr.Sharad Sharma took us through his entrepreneurial journey and kept giving his insights and his learning peppered with lot of interesting anecdotes.

1. Innovation Blow back

Innovations are happening right now in India; a few being cataract surgeries, cardiac operations at low cost and better success rates, bio technology startups, products on cloud computing, and so on. These technologies / businesses will now start out of the emerging markets like India and will become global. This is the innovation blow back.

He also asked the crowd to look out for the "Inflexion points" - Oil crisis is one, Systems biology is one ( where probability / mathematics is needed to take Biology to the next level ), Cloud computing being another. He advised to identify the inflexion point that excites you - "pick the one that tickles you to death".

Some interesting anecdotes:

* CDMA technology - first showed up in Korea ( because they could not penetrate US, Europe market where GSM was entrenched ) - and now it is percolating to the other regions.

* Airtel is having a return of 38% ARPU - Additional Revenue Per User. Whereas Verizon's return is only 12%. IBM, who consulted Airtel, is now taking this business model outside India.

* AT&T approached Infosys in 1993 for a buy out. Mr.Narayanan Murthy politely declined - and today Infosys has 3 times market cap than AT&T.

*It took $89 Million to launch Chandrayaan. Ning has so far obtained $140 Million as investment.

He also touched upon Early Adopters Vs Pragmatic Adopters and how today with the recession - the market is left with only Pragmatic Adopters ( who make the purchase decision only after they are convinced of the ROI and expect a whole product unlike the early adopter who makes quick decision after a view of the part product itself) - and Indian market always had only Pragmatic Adopters. He hit it right on the head; if you have sold to Indian customers you will know this first hand.

He credited Guy Kawasaki for starting this "Bootstrap movement" - where the startup has to think of making money from day 1 - unlike the startups during the dot com boom.

2. Essence of Entrepreneurship

It's a state of mind and there are a few important things

Be comfortable to be the underdog

Hold a contrarian point of view

Ability to influence without control

Ability to tell stories.

3. Rules for personal conduct

He said 7, but I missed one of them :)

Give more than what you take

Set up people for success

Say what you mean. Do what you say

Share good news and bad news

Cultivate a learning mindset.

Cultivate internal drive for excellence

Some books he suggested during his lecture that I will be adding to my reading list.

1. Getting to Plan B by Randy Komisar and John Mullins

2. Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A Moore

3. Whole new mind - Daniel Pink

Towards the end he conducted a role play of how VC money, Investor (LP) and Startup funding works and why it is essential to pitch for only the amount a Startup really needs.

This post is definitely not a complete record of the speech. Please add more if you were also at the event.

Finally it was great networking with lot of enthusiastic people - the next google / apple is brewing somewhere in them! Thanks to Amarinder, Ramjee, Vaibav and other organizers of the OCC for this event.

Review of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

2010-02-24T08:52:00.000+05:30

In summary - it is another brilliant book by Malcolm Gladwell. A little difficult to read - he uses so many names, numbers and you have to skip them while reading. Hi Malcolm here is a suggestion - use footnotes next time - your book will be half its size and will sell well.

Here are some interesting snapshots from the book I still remember.

Ketchup and Spaghetti sauce

This chapter is a follow up to his TED talk where he explains how there is no one perfect "taste" but there are perfect "tastes". There are so many spaghetti sauce varieties in the market and here is an enterprising person who tries to apply the same model to Ketchup and tries to go against Heinz - the market leader. However he is not as successful.

What I learnt from this chapter is that each product / market is different - what works in one will not work in another. When the inventor of "tastes" model was asked why it did not work for Ketchup he shrugged off saying "Ketchup is different".

Enron fiasco

This is an interesting chapter where Gladwell argues that Enron never hid the dismal finances it had. It was all out in the open in the thousands of pages of SEC filings it did. So when the CEOs were taken to trial it was pronounced that they did not disclose the truth - the judge was way off the mark. Yes, they were responsible for the mess that got created and were mute spectators to it - however they never hid the information. The point he tries to make is - it is difficult or at times even impossible to pick the "real information" hidden beneath the mountain of information.

How are we going to solve the problem of information over load? Is there another Enron which is quietly filing its annual reports with disaster hidden somewhere deep inside?

Talent myth

This is about McKinsey's philosophy of hiring the best and staffing your company with them. This is what they advised Enron too. During performance appraisal, they split the employees into A,B and C groups. A - are the best of the best - the ones who got promoted got a huge bonus. B - are the mediocre ones - made a decent salary and encouraged to become As. Cs are to be fired. They hired from all Ivy leagues, had fancy power points, ideas, business models - and the hot shots killed the company in the end.

In contrast, Walmart, P&G etc. do not hire hotshots, have a "mediocre" performance appraisal policy, conventional salary structure - and are still around and will be around for another century.

So, for big enterprises - perhaps the uber talents are not good. They have their place in the ecosystem and they would thrive well in smaller firms that are trying to become big, research and development companies, startups etc.

The above is just a snapshot of the chapters in the book. There are more interesting stories - dog training, hair dye market, FBI investigators on serial killers - and it breaks all the myths/stereotypes/conventions.

Very entertaining and very informative. Thumbs up!

Entrepreneurship ka side effects

2010-01-31T04:33:00.000+05:30

Here is a light hearted look at what a journey as an entrepreneur brings to you !

1. Sleeplessness

"Dreams are not what you have when you sleep, dreams are those that don't let you sleep." - Dr. Abdul Kalam

You would lay awake the night before meeting your first customer, day before product launch or because of one of the many excitements this journey brings. It is like when you are in love or you have spoken to your crush. And if you start getting a good nights sleep continuously - you should be worried - it is a lull before a storm!

2. Fatigue

You work really hard day in and day out, days at a stretch. And you would hit the wall. You cannot browse, go out, read a book or listen to music. Your brain will just refuse to co-operate. Solution is to just veg out - switch on the idiot box, make yourself comfortable and watch something that will not tax your brain. It will last an evening or a day max - see it through and you will be energised for another long run.

3. Ideas

Suddenly you notice that ideas flood your brain. Wherever you look around you get an idea. You read a news article, a blog post - and it gives you an idea or it opens a new path or teaches something new - so you can incorporate in your product, or the way you sell. It is great to get such ideas, but it is even more important to grab them and make them yours. Always keep a small notebook with you - and keep noting them down.

4. Respect

You will start appreciating other businesses who started from scratch - Apple, Microsoft, Tata, Infosys... list is endless. You will start respecting their founders even more. You respect your teams and your own strength and shortcomings. When you meet another hard-working entrepreneur you identify with him.

5. Belief in Kismat / Luck

People might say entrepreneurs create their own luck. There is nothing called chance - it is all because of the dedication and hard work. However, each entrepreneur knows inwardly that there is something called luck. It visits them at the right time - whenever a bad news / failed deal happens - they know that luck is sure to visit them soon. And it does without fail to lift the spirits and keep them going.

The above is a list from my personal experience in running my startup - ApartmentAdda. What do you think are entrepreneurship's side effects?

Debug PHP in IntelliJ IDEA

2010-01-25T10:24:00.000+05:30

IntelliJ IDEA 9.0.1 has support for PHP. And the fine folks at JetBrains have given debug support which is awesome squared !

In just a few minutes you can get debug going on for your PHP applications.

Note : These instructions are for the ultimate edition of IDEA ( not the community edition which does not have php support ), and Ubuntu 10.04.

1. Install xdebug :

sudo apt-get install php5-xdebug

2. Add xdebug configuration at the end of php.ini

sudo vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Append these lines at the end

xdebug.remote_enable=On

xdebug.remote_host="localhost"

xdebug.remote_port=9000

xdebug.remote_handler="dbgp"

3. Restart apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

4. In IntelliJ here is how I have configured. It is quite simple actually.

Here is the Run configuration

Here is the PHP Setting. Point the server root to your folders.

5. Now put a break point in your code and click on the debug button. A new browser window will be launched, navigate to the page you are testing and voila - it hits the break point.

I am yet to figure out how to display the variables with the values on the bottom pane. For now doing a mouse over shows the values which is good enough for me.

Happy Debugging !

Dont block facebook!

2009-12-20T09:41:00.000+05:30

A couple of days back a friend of mine working in the ad industry called me.

"Venkat, how do I block facebook chats, gmail chats? Should I block the domains?".

Answer is No. If you block Facebook, Gtalk - your team will find workarounds. All it takes is a google search nowadays. It will annoy the team and you will get bracketed with the "manager" managers.

So - here are some tips on how to engage your team effectively and reduce the hours spent on SN sites.

1. Daily Stand Ups

This is the most simplest and effective tool. It is a core practice in agile projects - however it will work for any project / environment. There are tons of resources on effective standups. I will give a brief primer :

Every one stands up - no slouching, no sitting. Keeps everyone alert and they talk less
Stand in a circle like rugby teams.
Give brief updates on what you did yesterday, what is your plan today, and any impediments in doing your work
Any long discussions do it after the standup.
The standup is sacred ( start on the same time daily, cut off trolling etc.. ). You have to protect its sanctity :)

Advantage is - the team's productivity will increase. They number of hours spent on idling will start coming down because the next day you have to give an update.

2. Give more responsibility

Ideally visiting social networking sites should be used to take a break from work - not the other way round. So make sure the plate is full. And coupled with standups they will try to finish off the work promptly.

3. Knowledge sharing sessions

You can introduce regular knowledge sharing sessions - can be on any topic - team could watch a TED talk, someone can critique on a movie, present on the new social media or any area you think will help the team become better. This will involve preparation ( except for TED talks of course ) and will also create a good competitive spirit.

So follow the above steps and your team will adore you and they will invite you for the informal team outings :)

Who is lifting the world on their shoulders?

2009-11-11T14:19:00.000+05:30

Who is lifting the world on their shoulders?

Politicians?
Philosophers?
Writers?
Philanthrophists?

None of the above. The right answer is - entrepreneurs / business folks - they are the ones lifting the world. They create new markets, promote new ideas, blaze new paths by fighting the system, fighting stereotypes, taking risks against all odds.

In this post I will introduce you to "Atlas Shrugged" - a magnum opus by Ayn Rand. This book glorifies the entrepreneurial spirit.

The key players :

Looters

These are the scum of the society - apparently holding top positions. The top brass in the Government, the industry lobbying heads - they do not produce anything but they loot - from the business and from the public. They know only to take and not give anything. They outnumber and control the producers.

Producers

The producers are the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the innovators. They are the ones fighting the system to introduce new ideas and keep the world ticking and moving forward.

Henry Rearden
He is a business man who invents a new kind of alloy that is cheaper and stronger than steel. The Government wants it because their research institute cannot produce anything close to this. He refuses and he is threatened with sanctions, taxes, a govt official watchdog is sent to curb his production ( because the steel industry is fast becoming reduntant ). Yet he fights the system to produce his alloy.

Francisco d'Anconia
A rich man who inherits a copper smelting business owned by his family. However he destroys all his fortune - but before that he lures the looters to buy all his stock and bonds - there by making them lose big.

Dagny Taggart
She runs a rail road. Her brother belongs to the looters group and is the President of the rail road. She fights him and fights the lobby industry to keep the trains running.

John Galt
He is the key person or the hero of this book. He invents a new type of electric device which can generate electricity from air ( its fiction remember ! ) - but he refuses to share it with the world run by looters. Along with this invention he takes the other producers ( Henry Rearden, Dangy Taggart and there are more - a musician, a writer, an oil digger, a banker etc. ) from the world and moves to a world he builds himself - among the mountains unknown to the world. And he brings the world to a halt.

This book is a fat one. 1000 pages with page after page of philosophy being dished out from different angles - on almost all the professions. Then there is a section where John Galt addresses the public on radio - it is a master piece. It runs for some 40 pages if I remember correctly and has thoughts on all aspects - love, honesty, dignity..you name it.

I had written about this book in my personal blog earlier. If you are interested you can read this post - Who is John Galt?.

If you are a bibliophile and an entrepreneur or planning to jump in - do read this book - it will give you brilliant new insights.

Some memorable quotes from the book:

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - This is the oath everyone who joins John Galt should take.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

and finally the quote that sums it all up beautifully :

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.

Evolution of UI of ApartmentAdda - 2

2009-11-10T20:02:00.000+05:30

I had written about the Evolution of UI of ApartmentAdda in March 2009 how the design evolved over the last 2 years.

We launched ApartmentAdda with the following UI designed by Cicada Media on Nov 12, 2008. It was a simple yet highly functional UI. Also it has got burnt into my retina - seeing it so many times a day :)

Somewhere down the line we realised it was time to give the site an upgrade. We kicked off the site redesign process with Leafgrafica in August. After a lot of designs and meetings ( and corner house's death by chocolate which was close by) - the following design won our hearts and mind.

I would like to thank both Cicada Media and Leafgrafica teams for having designed these beautiful sites ( and having put up with creativity stifling requirements from us :) )

How Windows 7 will "really" save money

2009-09-30T09:05:00.000+05:30

I read an article on infoworld where Steve Balmer cited an article by Gartner research how Windows 7 will save money. Now as you all know Gartner is a very trusted and honest research firm. They have earlier published how Linux is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing - Linux claims it is open source and free and all that - but you need expensive system engineers, expensive training, expensive hardware etc. So many ignorant CTOs were saved from making a wrong decision and continued to recommend Windows - because of Gartner..may God be with them ( and Microsoft's funding ).

Anyway, here is what Gartner missed in the report and I am filling in the gap to prove why Windows 7 will save lot of money for a company :

1. Save on Coffee, Milk, Sugar & Snacks

The Vista folks when they come to work and start their day, they switch on their laptop like every one else. But as you all know that it takes some where between 20-30 minutes before the machine is actually responsive, these folks go for coffee. Along with them they pull the other Windows XP, OS X, Ubuntu folks who have already started breaking the build.

With a record 10 second boot time of Windows 7 - these ex-Vista users will become super efficient and will break the build within 1 minute of them starting work. There by the organization can save money on Coffee and snacks - because the whole team will be busy fixing the build.

2. Save on Cooling charges ( applies only to Hotter climates )

In Vista the processor always runs at 100% - it is good because you are using all the GHz you paid for - but downside is machines and the room get hot quickly. Now with the super efficient kernel and indexing - Windows 7 will run lot cooler. If you are in Bangalore, you can turn off the AC and open the Windows ( the physical kind ).

However for our friends in cooler climates where they have to heat their building, I recommend all to switch to Vista - you will save on heating charges.

3. Save on Bandwidth

This is kind of negligible, but the kind of reporting Gartner does even the minimal saving should be reported - because they don't leave even a toothpick behind.

Because Windows 7 is "Vista correctly designed", there will not be any UI confusions like trying to understand UAC, or how to view the file name fully in the explorer window etc. So the users need not do a google ( or Bing ) search to find out how to turn off these annoyances - there by saving a lot of bandwidth.

Guess this makes the report complete.

and Mr. Balmer, you are welcome.

Make your idea stick

2009-09-18T04:08:00.000+05:30

In the book Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell ( my review ) says "stickiness" of an idea is an important criteria for the idea to tip.

"Made to stick" by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, is an offshoot of the stickiness chapter of Tipping Point where the authors analyze how and why ideas stick. They have even formed a mnemonic for it - SUCCES. Each one by itself will not guarantee your idea to stick - but if rightly applied together, the probability of your idea sticking is higher.

Simple : For an idea to stick, it has to be simple.For that you need to tear apart the unnecessary layers and go to the core of it.

Nike - Just do it.
FedEx - The World on Time
Audi - Vorsprung durch Technik ( ok this is an exception, and being Audi they can make anything stick :) ) Jokes apart it explains very well what Audi does - when tranlated it means - Advancement through technology.

Unexpected : The idea should rattle the listeners up. It should break pre conceived notions. Anything unusual is sticky.

When Apple launched Macbook Air, Steve Jobs pulled the Macbook Air out of an envelope in his keynote address. He did not dish out the numbers about the weight or the thickness of the laptop. Just that image - the unexpectedness of a laptop coming out of an envelope was enough to establish the product in everyone's mind - the thinnest laptop in the world.

Concrete : If your idea is abstract or vague or is like a puzzle, the probability of it sticking is hard. It should be direct and should not have any ambiguities about it.

Ratan Tata made a statement a couple of years back - "We will produce a car under Rs. 1 Lakh". It was a concrete statement with no ambiguities. It motivated his team to build this car and they launched a car - with 4 doors which is quite safe, efficient and adequately powerful. All this for under Rs 1 lakh - an incredible feat.

Credible : The idea to stick needs to have the backing of credible people. Quoting customer testimonials is the best example in this regard. If you notice most of the products will proudly present the awards, experts comments and opinions in their website and product brochure.

Emotional : We associate emotions to every incident,thought,object. If an idea generates emotion in your listener, then the probability of the idea being remembered and spread is higher. Try recollecting your favorite TV commercials - the successful ones will invariably appeal to one emotion or the other.

Stories : No one remembers facts, but we all remember stories. We all remember the moral values found in the stories of Panchatantra, Ramayan and Mahabarath. Imagine if we were just sermoned on just the moral values - will we remember any?

The book is filled with lots of anecdotes and case studies. You will never get bored reading this and it will give you many ideas to make your idea stick :)

Some quotations from the book :

"In Hollywood, people use core ideas called 'high-concept pitches.' You've probably heard some of them. Speed was 'Die Hard on a bus.'"

"Becoming an expert in something means that we become more and more fascinated by nuance and complexity. That's when the Curse of Knowledge kicks in, and we start to forget what it's like not to know what we know."

"Stories are like flight simulators for the brain."

"The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern."

Getting into the zone!

2009-08-17T07:58:00.000+05:30

Have you ever experienced being in "the zone"? You might have experienced for sure - but never noticed it. Once you are able to notice how it is to be in the zone - you can plan to get into the zone more often - for better productivity and happiness.

What is the zone?

The zone is a state of mind when time stops, creativity flows, your breathing is relaxed and steady, new ideas spring up and it leaves you energized wanting for more. In spite of working for hours at a stretch, if you are in the zone - you never feel tired.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Anna Karenina - are two books that I have read where they talk about this state of mind. Zen book says about getting into the zone on any activity that you do - could be washing dishes, could be fixing a motorcycle, could be writing a blog post. In Anna Karenina, one of the characters - Levin goes to cut corn along with his laborers - this chapter in the book is a masterpiece. Leo Tolstoy beautifully describes how it is to be in the zone - proving why he is one of the greatest brains of all time.

It took some time for me to discover this "getting into the zone" thing. Whenever I am in the zone the code that I produce is beautiful and bug free. New ideas, hidden potential bugs show up and I squash them even before they get a chance to show up.

How to get into the zone?

You need a ritual. Here are some of the things that I do to get ready to go into the zone

1. Music

Either classical music or some movie songs that I have heard a million times before - mostly AR Rahman songs - so they wont distract but will quieten the outside noise.

2. Clear out the feeds and empty inbox

I clear out all the feeds in bloglines, and also empty my inbox - so there is no thread running silently in the head draining resources.

3. Busy status in IM

IM is a big distractor. I educate my buddies not to disturb when I am on busy-status. If they do not respect - I either block them temporarily or sign off from IM.

4. Load up with water

I keep a big jug of water and keep sipping. It will keep the brain hyderated for the upcoming power session !

After this - when I hit the editor I will notice that time would have stopped, and the things around me will disappear and I will not even hear the music. It will be just me and the editor - and things will start flowing. Because now I will be in the zone!

What is your ritual to get into the zone?

Fuses blowing off is a good thing

2009-07-27T13:26:00.000+05:30

Can anyone spot what is wrong with this picture? Look closely - there are no fuse carriers and the lines have been shorted by a thick piece of wire.

Wondering what it means? - When an electric surge happens - there is no fuse that will blow and break the circuit. The surge will go right into the homes and kill all the devices which are On at that time - TVs, bulbs, mobile chargers...

I am not trying to educate BESCOM electricians - they are lazy & crazy and they don't read my blog - but this post is about unit tests.

Last week I answered a questionnaire for a friend of mine who is doing a course work about Agile - one of the questions was - Is it not absurd to write unit tests?

The above picture is the answer to the question. Unit tests are like fuses - they blow up in your build and prevent a blow up in production in future. Commenting out an unit test is like shorting the circuit with a thick piece of wire - like in the above picture.

For eg., when a developer forgets to do a null check - and the failing unit test is not fixed, but instead is commented out - your users will be greeted with a Null Pointer exception on the last screen of a payment page. Imagine how mad your client will be?

Anyway I rest my case - next time when you comment out a failing test - think of that picture - and imagine a surge happening and hitting a 52" Plasma TV showing the last ball of a 20-20 match...pattt...bshhhhhh - and a bunch of hideously laughing BESCOM electricians.

Microsoft's battles

2009-07-22T09:39:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is fighting lot of battles - that is one problem of being big.

OS : Windows vs OS X, Linux, Solaris, and now Google Chrome OS

Email : Hotmail/Live vs GMail, YMail

Search : Bing vs Google,Yahoo..

Database : MS Sql Server vs Oracle,MySQL,PostgreSql..

IM : MSN Messenger vs GTalk, Yahoo Messenger,IRC,Pidgin

Programming platform : .NET vs Java..

Languages : C#,VB.NET,ASP.NET vs Java, Ruby,Python,PHP,Perl..

Mobile OS : Windows Mobile vs Android, OS X, Symbian..

Media player : Zune vs iPod, Creative, Sony..

Office Suite : Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice, Google Apps

Browser : Internet Explorer vs Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera

Gaming Platform : XBox vs Nintendo, Sony and now iPhone

Vector graphics for web : Silverlight vs Flash, Flex

My head is spinning. If you notice the ones on the right of VS - for instance Opera - that is their entire life - the reason for their existence. They are focusing all their energies and souls into their products -yet Microsoft is able to match them and give a good fight.

Even though I am a MS baiter, I have to admit - Microsoft is good.

The above list is not complete. What other battles you think Microsoft is fighting?

Get inspired by the Spartans : "300" Movie Review

2009-07-22T04:55:00.000+05:30

Have you seen the movie - 300? It is the story of 300 Spartans who defy all logic and fight against wave after wave of attacks by a much bigger Persian army. Technically it is a well made movie and is a good entertainer - but as an entrepreneur you can draw lot of inspiration from this movie.

The Spartans were severely outnumbered - but they believed in their abilities, their training, the trust they had with one another - sounds familiar? :)

As an entreprenur you will have to fight lot of battles - thought not as gory as Spartans.

Fight against a well established player :

Like the Spartans, when Apple started they had to fight IBM. When Pepsi started it had to fight Coke. You can find so many stories where a small company challenged the giant in the industry. If you are one of those entrepreneurs fighting a bigger player - keep going. If you believe in your abilties, in your team - even if it is small - you can win the battle eventually.

Fight against established norms :

Spartans did not believe that they had to match the enemy one to one in number. If they had stuck to the established military principle - they would have lost the battle even before it began. But they defied the established norm and held the Persian army at bay.

When twitter started, there was criticism. Why will anyone want to limit their thoughts to 140 characters when there are blogs? - and look what is happening today.

In NewZealand, Tendulkar was sent to open the innings, and instead of protecting the wicket and seeing through the initial overs, he took advantage of the open boundaries and accelerated the score. Purists criticised him for rash play - but he changed Cricket forever.

Bend the rules to your advantage :

Spartans bent the rule by making Persians enter a smaller area to fight - so inspite of the Persian army having a larger force they were forced to send only a few at a time to fight with the Spartans - which the Spartans decimated.

This is what all management books say - find out what is your core competency, your strength - and try to focus on that - try and dictate how the battle has to be fought.

Take a couple of hours off - and you and your team watch this movie together - it will be quite an inspiration.

Some interesting quotes from the movie :

"Immortals... we put their name to the test. "

"We did what we were trained to do, what we were bred to do, what we were born to do! "

"Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty... For tonight, we dine in hell! "

"The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a God-king can bleed."

Staples Print Center's gift to me - Khatra.exe

2009-07-20T07:35:00.000+05:30

Last weekend I went to Staples Print Center in Marathahalli - Printo has closed shop and moved out. And when I got home I plugged the USB drive into Vista and AVG Anti Virus did not complain - but I saw a program called Khatra.exe asking for Admin privileges to run.

Then I rebooted into Ubuntu and was horrified to see the files that were there. There were folders and lots of exes. Now I am upset with 2 entities here.

1. Staples Print Center

Printo always scans the flash drives ( even if it used to take time ) and not once they loaded viruses on to my USB drive. Wish Staples learns from their competitor and educates their employees to follow proper process ( I am sure Staples will have it in their employee handbook ).

2. Vista

I did not give administrative privileges to Khatra.exe, still it managed to copy itself in the registry in some 10 places, got itself added to startup , and had the guts to ask again for administrative privileges when I rebooted.

I am shocked that inspite of all the zombie Windows XPs on the net, Microsoft has not learnt a thing - it is still a MG road platform - anyone can come, sit, pitch their tent and start doing business.

I am seriously considering investing in Codeweaver or trying out Virtual Box for Ubuntu - Office is one thing that forces me to reboot to Windows. It has wasted a few hours of my time - imagine the billions of hours people will be losing all over the world because of poor security measures in the OS.

ApartmentAdda Interview & an update

2009-07-15T12:57:00.000+05:30

TheIndianStartup.com interviewed us recently - you can read about the interview in their blog.

Now for the update, my startup is no more a sole-proprietorship. It is now a Private Limited firm - 3Five8 Technologies Pvt. Ltd. When I started - sole proprietorship made sense - because it did not cost anything, nothing to register and I can concentrate on building the portal.

However, after the launch and after winning Adda's first premium customer and the subsequent customers I dealt with all had this uneasiness doing business with a sole proprietor. I understood that sole proprietorship was not sufficient any more. Finally kicked off the process in April sometime - took close to 2 months in my case because of various reasons.

Having a Pvt. Ltd. company gives confidence to my customers.

And it did cost quite a bit :

1. It costs quite a lot to register.... around 27k.

2. Every year the company has to submit its audited finances - even if it makes a loss. This is again around 25k every year.

3. You cannot simply shutdown a company. The procedure is very cumbersome and one has to get NoCs from every possible nook and corner.

4. Had to deposit 1 Lakh as initial investment - or show assets worth 1 Lakh to start.

I cannot imagine what the formalities will be for making a Public Ltd. company. If I do it one day I will blog here :)

Are you wondering what is 3Five8? - There is a sound reasoning behind the name but I am still debating whether to explain it or let people keep guessing what it means !

Book reviews on my new blog

2009-07-10T08:06:00.000+05:30

I have started writing here in http://artofstart.theindianstartup.com. The theme mainly is books that are inspiring and valuable for an entrepreneur.

Here are the three posts I have written :

Follow your heart like Santiago - review of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Blaze a new path like Howard Roark - review of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Find the tipping point of your venture - review of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

I will continue writing in this blog about technical things and a developer's perspective of running a startup and of course my frustrations with that browser and that operating system :)

Find the tipping point of your venture

2009-07-09T15:14:00.000+05:30

"The Tipping Point" is another interesting book from Malcolm Gladwell. "Tipping points" are the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable. He analyses how social epidemics start and classifies 3 kinds of people you will need - who will help your product/portal/message reach the tipping point.

Connectors : Connectors are passive information passers. "Hi I heard about this cool website..." - is what they will say - and they will say this to quite a few.

Mavens : Mavens are more factual. "Do you know you can get this and this done in this website..." - is what they will say. They analyze threadbare the features/shortcomings and will help the listener make a fair judgement of the product.

Salesmen : Salesmen are more persuasive. "You should be using this website because it will save you time and effort...." is what they will say. They not only do the job of mavens - by giving you facts but they also will list out the advantages in such a manner that will make the listener run and get it.

You have to spot the connectors, mavens and salesmen among your customers. The tried and tested advertising is word of mouth - it is very hard to get this kind of advertising, but this is the only way you can "tip" your business.

So - rethink your strategy. How do you get people to talk about your product - is it through doing more SEO, is it through meaningful articles on a blog, is it by talking more to your customers? Wish I knew the right answer :) - but it does raise interesting questions - and in the answers lie the strategy to help your venture reach its tipping point.

Some interesting quotes from the book :

"The three rules of the Tipping Point -- The Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power of Context -- offer a way of making sense of epidemics. They provide us with direction for how to go about reaching a Tipping Point."

" Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are."

"Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."

Blaze a new path like Howard Roark

2009-06-29T14:00:00.000+05:30

"The FountainHead" by Ayn Rand is an eye opener in many ways. Howard Roark is an architecture school student who has a different philosophy on how buildings should be built. He wanted to build structures that will be aesthetically pleasing, economically meaningful, in tune with the environment and the building should make a statement. Whereas the industry was aping what the Gothic and romantic architectures of the past had built - with meaningless arches, facades and wasted space.

He is thrown out of his college because he refuses to design the traditional architecture and struggles for work - but he never once compromises on his ideals. He waits and his time comes and the world accepts his style of architecture. It is one man against a well established industry who tries hard to keep him down. But the harder you push a ball into water - the faster it rises out and with more force - Howard Roark wins in the end.

As an entrepreneur - you might have battles yourself - as you are trying to blaze a new path, a new product, a new concept. You might be told many a times that your idea will not work. Listen to them to retune your product or offering - but do not get discouraged. If you have faith in your idea just stick to your guns - you will win in the end. There are so many success stories out there where perseverance and believing in oneself helped create an industry.

This book is a hard read - 600 or so pages - and it takes a full 100 pages before the pace picks up. And the first half of the book is quite discouraging because Howard Roark goes to the very bottom - but the second half gets very interesting and you can relish his victories. Somewhere in the middle while Howard Roark is fighting a battle, he gives courage to a drama writer - to take the hard path. The advice he gives very much will apply to an entrepreneur.

Some interesting quotes from the book :

"Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope ofthe hill to the valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had never seen that boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime"

" I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build!"

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me"

Howard Roark you are my hero :)

Follow your heart like Santiago

2009-06-22T14:47:00.000+05:30

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

This book written by the Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho - is a very very bad book - in a good way - because it has the potential to change your life upside down !! You can finish it on a weekend - 160 pages is all it is. It traces the journey of Santiago, the shepherd boy who goes in hunt of a treasure.

This book will have a huge impact on your life. While reading and after reading it will leave you disturbed, questioning yourself, and if you had suppressed a dream - a dream of starting your own business, or learning something like guitar which you keep postponing, or going on a crazy bike ride to another city - anything - these dreams will come alive and will dance before you.

The book teaches you to follow your heart. It is as simple as that. In fact all of Paulo Coelho's books have this recurring theme - do not suppress your dream, you have one life and you have to allow it to go where it is destined to go. Do not restrict yourself saying this is all you were born to do - a 9 to 6 job, slogging at work day in and day out. Take risks, and let your heart decide what is to be done - and 9 out of 10 situations your heart will pick the right path.

Go ahead hunt for the treasure by listening to your heart - your heart already knows where the treasure is.

Some memorable quotations from the book:

"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

"There is only one way to learn. It's through action."

"Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World and it will one day return there."

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

If you are interested you can read what I wrote about this book a year back on my personal blog - when I was still working 9 to 6 - http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/07/alchemist.html

Finally Switched from Vista to Ubuntu 9

2009-05-25T07:35:00.000+05:30

Finally I have made the jump from Windows to Linux - the 3rd time. First 2 times I did it when I was on a J2EE project ( weblogic environment ) and a SOA project ( Tomcat ). Once I rolled off the projects again I had to go back to Windows.

Now this is the 3rd time I am switching and along with it the development environment of Apartment Adda to Ubuntu and I will be here for quite some time - perhaps till I get a powerbook ;) The build and production are already on linux - so it was easy to make the switch - the scripts were all working. A few things were holding me back - like Nokia PC Suite, ITunes, Chrome - but I am feeling better already for having made the choice.

1. Ubuntu 9 is slick, good on eyes and blazingly fast

My thumbrule for judging the performance of an OS is - everything should launch like how a notepad launches in Windows XP ( vista notepad takes longer than XP notepad). In Ubuntu most of the apps meet the critieria. Ubuntu boots really fast and is immediately responsive after desktop comes up and doesn't cheat like XP or Vista.

2. Terminal

I had putty for SSHing, a cygwin window for tailing error file, and a command prompt for building, running tests - I know I could have merged cygwin window and command prompt - habits die hard. Now I have one window - with tabs for each of the above. Really neat - and I have switched to the mainframe green - gives me a nostalgic feeling since thats where I started my career.

3. Multiple Workspaces

I am a big fan of multiple workspaces. Missed it in Windows and earlier OS X versions. Helps segregate work and fun. Now with extended desktop and multiple workspace - it is productivity quadrapled. And to switch all I have to do is to move the mouse to the desktop area where there are no windows and scroll the mouse wheel - and it switches.

4. Feeling light

I am not running any of the memory hogs :

1. AVG Anti virus
2. Windows Defender
3. Windows Firewall
4. Spybot S&D

5.Unixiness

Vi, cron jobs, apt-get ( debian specific though ), pipe, grep - the list of toys is endless. Now when I think back I should have switched in Jan 09 when I got this laptop. But kept postponing the switch thinking it will take time to set things up - apparently it took me half a day yesterday and the time / frustration saved from today onwards will pay back within a week.

What I will miss :

ITunes, Chrome, Nokia PC Suite, Tortoise SVN, HeidiSQL... Do let me know if youknow of some alternatives.

So after crying here : http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2009/02/vista-is-a.html and misjudging here : http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/04/rendezvous-with-vista.html - I have made the switch wholeheartedly and following is the request my machine will be making to the webservers all over the world - doesn't it look beautiful :)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042523 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.10

Specialization is for insects

2009-05-11T09:52:00.000+05:30

There is this age old debate - should you specialize on a skill, or generalize and become a jack of all trades?

Heres a quote that answers the question :

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

– Robert A. Heinlein — from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

There are exceptions - but as a generalization - the above quote is spot on. In any career you will have your main stream ( BA, Developer, QA, Architect etc. ) - but to become really kickass in your stream - you have to develop other surrounding skills.

Where I am coming at is - as an entrepreneur you will be forced to don many hats. I have met a few entrepreneurs who will dig through their card holder to give me their appropriate business card. They actually have multiple business cards with various designations like VP, Architect, CTO, Business development manager etc. Perhaps they might not be the best in all the roles - but overall they trump the specialists.

So go ahead. If you are a developer talk to your QA, BA, PM, HR, RM, BDM, MD - on what they do, how they do, problems they face, how they tackle - whenever you get a chance - these chats will help you in your career and will help you some day when you run a startup - where you have to be a little of everything.

So become the jack of all trades and a master of one or two.

Tech Choices a StartUp Developer has to make

2009-04-12T19:56:00.000+05:30

The eco system for programming languages and frameworks is well evolved - and is continously evolving. As a web developer you are faced with many choices. I have tried to capture some of the options I had to evaluate for Apartment Adda. I have left out the esoteric languages and frameworks which have not become mainstream yet.

Programming Language - Java, PHP, Ruby, Python

This is the first decision a developer has to make and might be the easiest choice - pick the one where you have the most expertise. However if you are well versed in more than one language - pick the one that will suit your startup - based on the funds you have ( cheapest to host will be php to Java hosting being expensive) , speed at which you want to release ( php/rails being fastest to Java being the slowest ), team's expertise ( java developers being easy to find and ruby developers being hard to find ) etc.

Framework Choices - Rails, ActiveRecord, CakePHP, Spring, Hibernate, Django..

In most of the cases the framework and language decision will go hand in hand. If you pick Rails and active record then you will be going with Ruby. If you pick Spring,Hibernate - then you will pick Java. In the end it all boils down to the passion and expertise you have with the languages and frameworks.

One advice I have here is - do not pick a language/framework to educate yourself. You can try to learn from a hobby project - but not with a startup. The honeymoon period is only till your launch date when you can learn/play/experiment. But after launch you cannot go back on any of your decisions - and you cannot afford to have downtime, bugs or incomplete features - customers these days are spoilt with high quality and feature rich applications like Gmail, Facebook etc. and they will expect the same out of your product too. So picking a language/framework where you are The Guru will save you from lot of trouble.

Database - MySQL,PostgreSQL

Tough choice here. Both are equally good. MySQL wins the popularity contest.

Javascript Frameworks - Dojo, MooTools,Prototype,Scriptaculous

Try looking at the showcases each framework provides and also look at the sample code. Pick the one that will suit your design and also factor in the size of the compressed file. I do not understand why the browsers won't include the javascript framework in their installers.

Development OS - OS X, Linux, Windows

Sometimes you are forced to work with an OS ( Windows because of Nokia PC software which will not work in linux). Some times you have no choice but to work with an OS ( linux for hosting / build machine ). Most of the time, for a startup, you will not have money for luxuries so you can only drool at OS X screenshots. Sigh.

Hosting - Shared or Dedicated

Avoid shared hosting. It will be the cheapest option - but you will have trouble later with ip address being blacklisted because a spammer was sitting next to you. Dedicated hosting costs a little more but it will be worth it and also you get full control.

GWT

A developer's dream come true - need not touch javascript. If you choose GWT most of the tech choices are already made for you.

HTML/CSS : Table vs DIV

I don't have enough expertise with DIVs so I built my layout with Tables - simple as that. Even though I hear lot of advantages of DIVs I decided to go with Tables - looks great even when browser is resized, resolution is changed, some content decides to grow out of hand etc.

Richeditor frameworks - YUI Rich Text editor, TinyMCE, NicEdit

No clear winner - each has its own quirks and strong points. This one you can easily change even after going live.

IDE - Eclipse, IDEA, Netbeans

Perhaps IDEA might be the first software license I purchased. There are open source alternatives for almost everything - Office, Photo editing etc. But IDEA burns all the open source alternatives to ash with its blazing speed and shortcuts.

I guess this covers most of the choices I think I made. Do point out any choices I might have missed and any better alternatives you have come across.

My Best Friend Linux

2009-03-27T08:38:00.000+05:30

Today I was setting up a cron job and suddenly realized - Linux has been such a good friend to me all these years and I never recognized this fact. This post is how Linux has stood by my side silently and quietly helped me do difficult things easily, has never once failed me, is always there when I wanted, does not require me to pay, teaches me cool tips & tricks and is a joy to talk with - what else can you expect from your best friend.

I will summarize some of the features I love linux for.

1. tail -f error.log

I use tail command a lot. Only Textpad in windows world has something equivalent of it and that too is a little jerky and with large log files Textpad becomes slow. Tell me if there is a better alternative to Textpad and Notepad++ ( should I have to always manually reload in Notepad++?).

2. crontab

Hats off to the geniuses behind crontab concept. Scheduling programs to run every minute to run on a particular day once a year - is so simple. Just by editing a text file you can schedule your programs to your needs.

3. CLI

I can do "anything" from the command line. It is much faster, can pipe actions, can script them and much more.

4. VI Editor

Navigation, search, replace - cannot be any simpler and faster. Emacs fans - I know you guys can get it done too - we are brothers here.

5. Permissions

Read, Write, Execute permissions - the first thing I learnt in Unix land and lets me sleep peacefully at night!

6. No License hassles

This is the biggest reason why I love linux. I can download it, burn it, install it in my machines and not worry about the license or legal issues. For a startup with a shoe string budget - this is a boon.

Of course there are numerous other benefits - lack of viruses, malware, great performance even in lowly hardware, ease of installing applications and countless others.

To all the people who have contributed to Linux - my sincere thanks.

5 Advantages and Disadvantages a Developer has when running his/her own Startup

2009-03-16T08:38:00.000+05:30

And before I begin the usual disclaimer : This post is for the developers who have a startup idea for a click and mortar business ( meaning an online portal or a software product ) and not the traditional brick and mortar types.

Hi there my developer friends and those developers who are contemplating a career as an entrepreneur and running their own startup. My recommendation - take the plunge - we have an unfair advantage already :)

In the world out side of World of warcraft I chose my career as a developer - not a cook, not an artisan, not an F1 driver, not a manager - but a developer. And now in my current role as an entrepreneur I am patting myself for the decisions I took on all the career forks that were put in front of me - and kept choosing the paths so I remained a developer.

Here is why being a developer/architect is perfect for an entrepreneurial stint.

Advantages

1. You will save a ton of money on developing your product.Currently my expenses are hosting, printing, hardware, internet charges, business cards, logo and stylesheet design. I don't pay myself yet - so it has been light on my pocket so far. If you had to hire developers it will cost a lot in building the prototype, the first release, maintaining it, enhancing it - software as you know very well is not static and development costs will keep growing.

2. If you are not a developer and employ a team, then you are at their mercy on the quality, deadlines, technological choices, performance etc. But being a developer you know first hand how to ensure your product is kick-ass on all fronts.

3. Intuition - over a period of time you gain these gut feelings for various scenarios. From a simple login page, to a complex account reconciliation screen. You know what will work and what will not work - it saves lot of headaches and rewrites down the line because you can do it right the first time itself.

4. Database design - if you are a developer who also can do good database design then you will do really well. You can do complex stuff easily without taking performance hits. Did I hear ORM - you cannot marry a dog and a cat - accept it. OO and relational tables are different species. ORM will be attractive initially but in the long run it will create lot of issues and you will be writing queries in your mapping files.

5. Process - Next to database design is the process. You can be a BA, QA or PM and as long as you are clear about the process you can release a bug free product on time. Developers have a huge edge here because we are the process ! And if you are an Agile devleoper - you will rock as an entrepreneur. Will be writing a post on how Agile process for an entrepreneur is like mock object for an unit test :)

Disadvantages / Short Comings

1. As a developer I am not hard wired to do Business Analysis. I once did a showcase when my BA and PM were held up on something and I learnt an important lesson. Even though we solve and implement complex business problems - when it comes to analysis and presenting our solution - we don't do a great job. At times there might be a feature that excites you as a developer but its not a big deal for customers and the reverse applies too. When you try to sell your product you should identify these things and let go off your turn ons ( ajaxy sortable tables..but customers wont even notice it ) and developer humility ( like SSL is no big deal but still you have to talk about it - it is important for customers ).

2. Being a developer I get carried away in trying to solve a non existent problem because it excites me. Since there is no hawky PM or a BA to convince that this cool thing is really needed - I just go ahead and do it and waste my time. I had to discipline myself in not going into these tangential excursions because time and effort is limited and I have to use it effectively.

3. Verbal communication - developers talk less and let the code / product do the talking. But as an entrepreneur you have to talk to lot of people about your product, your business. It is a new skill that you will be forced to acquire - and I feel this is an important addition to your skillset. Imagine a developer who can make a pitch - nothing can be better than that !

4. Written communication - Developers hate documentation. But now you have to write the FAQ, the sales pitch, the What and the Why, email broadcast on new features and the 1001 things. I am still learning the art of writing about my product so it has the right tone and there are no ambiguities.

5. Wearing a quality hat - This is the biggest challenge I have had so far while developing Apartment Adda. There are so many edge cases that as developers we do not think - we always try to make the product work and do not try to break it. You will have to do some serious rewiring of your brain :)

In the end - as a developer you have a huge advantage and a few disadvantages - but you can overcome these if you put your mind to it.

So if you have an idea you wanted to work on - go ahead and start working on it. Being a developer you are well equipped and have enough ammunition with you already.

What is the secret sauce of Apple,SAP,Nintendo...

2009-03-12T08:10:00.001+05:30

First the disclaimer - I don't have the answer to the question - What is the secret sauce of these companies. It is a rhetorical question.

Today morning I woke up to be greeted with iPod shuffle - and Apple has released a simple but very useful feature ( unlike the shuffle feature they bragged about in shuffle's first release ).

Now shuffle can talk to you about the song or the playlist name - very neat. Most of the time when you are working out or driving - it is hard to switch playlists - now this feature has made it really easy to use an iPod. I hope Apple updates its firmware so my iPod classic gets this feature.

But it makes me wonder how Apple can consistently come up with "cool" features. Is it the culture, is it because of Steve Jobs, is it some magic potion they put in the employee's food? I really wish Steve Jobs writes a book on Apple.

Nintendo is in the same league as Apple. Their graphics is rudimentary when compared to PS3 or XBOX 360. But Nintendo consistently captures the imagination of gamers - with their innovative products like Wii or a DS. Why is that Nintendo alone is able to rewrite the rules, while Sony,Microsoft keep staring like lost puppies.

SAP is another company I admire - they have built this really complex software that runs heavy business and does complex transactions - between continents, between various industries and suppliers, between various systems, databases. How did they achieve it? What is the secret process they follow - is it XP, Waterfall, RUP or some unique Technik.

There are so many successful companies and each one of them have a secret sauce.

What is the secret sauce my startup has?

Evolution of UI of Apartment Adda

2009-03-02T08:10:00.001+05:30

This is a post I wanted to write for a long time. Here are some screenshots of how Apartment Adda looked at different stages.

October 2007 : I spent a weekend creating a prototype of Apartment Adda. Got an open source web design template from owsd.org and was able to quickly create a working site.

We had one goal for our UI to begin with. When a user logs in he need not click on different pages to see what is happening in his or her Adda. In one click he should get to see all the updates and also get a bird's eye view of everything - without getting flooded with information.

We finally came up with a dashboard design that will show the latest updates in nice little widgets - where each widget will act like a summary page for the detailed page.

After this prototype was done we used this to brain storm about Apartment Adda and flush out the stories.

Around September 2008 when I started full time development on Apartment Adda, I got one more template from oswd.org. Decided to go with Php and this is how the UI looked like.

Home Page :

Resident's Dashboard :

Admin's Dashboard :

While I was developing the site, simultaneously we got the help of a UI design firm - Cicada Media, Bangalore. Mr. Binil designed the vibrant Apartment Adda logo and Mr.Balaji designed the style sheets, buttons and layout. Many thanks to Cicada team for the UI upgrade of Apartment Adda !!

Here is how Apartment Adda looks as of today.

HomePage :

Resident's Dashboard :

Admin's Dashboard :

Thanks for visiting Apartment Adda's Baby scrap page !!

Green build !!

2009-02-26T16:38:00.001+05:30

For a developer nothing in the world makes him happier than a green build. ( Well of course there are things like Wii, a power book, an iPhone, an Audi A4 - but they all cost..a lot.). There was one suite that was failing the build consistently for the past few days. I could have just commented it out and said to myself - will fix it later. It is as bad as Satyam's Raju inflating his accounts. Because the commented test will never get fixed ( trust me - it might get deleted but never fixed ) and more functionality will be built on this untested one. It is better to have a failing build than have a green build which just gives a delusion that everything is alright.

Anyway, I fixed the tests - it took some time but got a green build in the end and the world feels alright !

Hi Renault...

2009-02-24T09:37:00.000+05:30

At times when I feel bored, I will randomly pick an ip address from the logs and see where it is from ( http://ip2location.com ) - and wonder of wonders - this ip address originated from Renault's network in France. Hmm...when will Ferrari's computer browse Apartment Adda?

What the..

2009-02-16T08:16:00.001+05:30

An inspiring movie - 300

2009-02-09T18:27:00.001+05:30

Last weekend we saw the movie "300" - the amazing story of a crazy bunch of 300 Spartans who bring the mighty Persian army to its knees - almost. Had I watched this before I started working on Apartment Adda , I might have only appreciated this movie for its slick production and technicality. But I was emotionally involved and felt charged up while seeing this movie.

The Spartans believed firmly in their abilities - all their life they practiced for this one day. They were able to draw all their life's experiences and lessons to this one fight - which they know is extremely hard and odds are stacked heavily against them. Yet, they hold on amazingly as wave after wave of attacks hit them. It is a fantastic story that will inspire you and push you to do things that seem daunting - just like running any startup.

Like the Spartans, Apartment Adda is a lean team now - and we are trying to build useful features, build a brand name, sell the product, support our customers, fight the recession's scary omens and some more - the challenges that are confronting us are numerous. But what drives us is the sheer enthusiasm and determination to grow this little baby of ours into a great portal - that one day Apartment Adda will be counted with other useful and much loved Indian portals like a rediff, or yahoo or a money control. I wish I can imbibe atleast a fraction of the audacity and determination of those mighty Spartans.

Do watch "300" - and let it inspire you to do amazing things.

Ok... now I will put my sword back in it's sheath :) Shinnnng.

A mini milestone for Apartment Adda - 1000th Unique visitor

2009-02-01T19:42:00.001+05:30

Apartment Adda was launched on Nov 12th-2008 and today, Feb 1-2009, the 1000th "unique" visitor has visited our site.

It is a great feeling - something that we have created has been looked at by 1000 people - many of whom I might never meet or get to know. I feel as if I have shaken hands with those many people - virtually. Some might have patted my back, some might have rubbed their chin, some might have just said a neutral hmm.. - to all those pairs of eyes - Thanks for visiting Apartment Adda.

Next milestone - 10,000th unique visitor.

Setbacks are like Power Petrol

2009-01-29T09:08:00.000+05:30

My week is getting better and better - like the saying when it rains it pours - one challenge after another is coming my way.

When you are living through one of these setbacks it sucks big time. You really wish it passes off fast and the proverbial bend around the corner comes so things suddenly become alright. From my personal experience I have started appreciating these setbacks. When I look back at all the setbacks I ever had - each one of them has helped me add an important skill/value.

I once lost a job interview, and I became good in Performance tuning. We goofed up in a UAT drop and that lead to a foolproof automated deployment system. I lost a lead but now I know why and I am working on filling the gap. Each setback teaches something new.

How do we deal with setbacks?

1. Try to get to the bottom of a setback - I recently read about 5 Whys technique used in Amazon's fulfillment center. An employee cut his finger and they asked 5 Whys to go to the bottom of the truth. Its not easy to find out the final why - but it is a start.

"1.Why did the associate damage his thumb?

Because his thumb got caught in the conveyor.

2.Why did his thumb get caught in the conveyor?

Because he was chasing his bag, which was on a running conveyor.

3.Why did he chase his bag?

Because he placed his bag on the conveyor, but it then turned-on by surprise

4.Why was his bag on the conveyor?

Because he used the conveyor as a table

So, the root cause of the associate’s damaged thumb is that he simply needed a table, there wasn’t one around, so he used a conveyor as a table. To eliminate further safety incidences, we need to provide tables at the appropriate stations and update safety training. Also, look into preventative maintenance standard work."

2. Try not to get depressed - I know it is not an easy thing. Even recently I went into bouts of depression but try to get out of it quickly. Try to do something fun - eat that 3 scoop Banana split of Baskin Robbins and brood why. You will be enlightened in the end ( and a little fat :) )

3. Identifies the gaps in you - No one is perfect. Even the almighty iPod has some design failures ( when you use coverflow it stutters, videos take a long time to start) - but each revision removes these gaps. You might be an expert java developer but perhaps you do not know much about deployment and linux - It is a gap. Once you know it and you do something about it - you inch closer to perfection.

4. Negative feedback is extremely valuable - In Control Systems, positive feedback leads to an unstable system. Only negative feedback ensures system stability. There is mathematic proof for this ! If you keep getting one success after the other, and everyone keeps praising you - start suspecting. There is going to be a mighty fall ( eg. golden peacock award year after year for one Mr.Ramalinga Raju of Satyam ). Start appreciating the negative feedback that setbacks give you.

So now do you agree with me that setbacks are like power petrol. They fuel you to great heights.

The journey..

2009-01-25T19:06:00.001+05:30

It has been 5 months since I started my life as an entrepreneur. Things I miss - in no particular order !!

1. Salary!

2. Coffee machine gossip

3. 335E rides with a book in hand

4. Hearing aahaa moments from other developers

5. Architecture and design discussions/fights

6. Code Pairing, learning new techniques, stand ups, IPMs, Showcases!

7. Routine

What I experienced new

1. Feeling real exhaustion after 4-6 days of serious development. I thought I was the only one but another entrepreneur friend of mine confirmed the same feeling. At the end of it I am forced to take a break for a day because my brain switches off.

2. Learnt to think of things outside an IDE ( IntelliJ in this case ! )- branding, opening page text, vision, mission, goals - the art of written communication.

3. Getting into the zone more often. I start working slowly, and at one point I feel time stops and the air around me becomes still. Things flow smoothly and earlier unseen features,potential bugs automatically show up. It energizes me further, gives a positive gumption which nothing in the world can ever give me. In Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the main character Levin - goes to cut corn with his peasants and experiences it. In Zen and the art of motorcycle, Robert Pirsig describes this feeling well.

4. Watching my son grow, getting him ready for the day, playing with him whenever I take a break to sterilizing his bottles late in the night...I am really lucky !!

Now I have to rush out. There is more. Will be writing when I am taking an exhaustion break.

Hi Mr.Guy Kawasaki!

2009-01-18T12:44:00.000+05:30

Guy Kawasaki is following me on Twitter !!

Woohoo - I was shocked when I saw this message. Thanks Mr.Kawasaki!! Some day I will take you out for lunch - to a sushi bar or an Indian restaurant when we meet. You have been a great influence on how I think and run my startup.

India's ENRON

2009-01-08T08:33:00.001+05:30

Its a sad day for us. In the last post I was exulting that the next apple or google is being cooked up somewhere in India.

And yesterday I was shocked to hear about Satyam with its hand muddied with a Rs.8000 crore fraud. We have managed to create an ENRON. I hope other Indian Companies do not get in the rat race to give bigger better balance sheets compared to the previous year - in order to have better share market results. Focussing on near short term and missing out on the long term benefits - of happy customers, happier employees and a rock solid business.

Thank you Mr.Raju - you have in one stroke made us cheaters. Don't know how long it will take to clean up the tarnished image in the world's eyes.

To all the Men in the Arena !!

2009-01-06T11:43:00.000+05:30

I was not aware of the startups in India till I had my own startup. It is the same feeling you get when you are in the market for purchasing a Maruti Swift and suddenly you spot lot of Swifts. I am spotting startups in bus loads.

I am just bowled over by the number of ideas that are emanating out of India - not just Bangalore but from various parts of the country. Who said Indians are not creative enough? Yes we have been stifled a lot all these years because of various reasons and that could have given the impression that we are just followers and not leaders when it comes to ideas and technology.

But now our entrepreneurs are getting more adventurous - and people on the fence are letting it go and jumping into the fray - who knows the next Apple, Google is being cooked right now somewhere in an apartment.

Head over to this page - to see what I am talking. http://enbase.net/db/Main_Page

Wish luck to all my fellow startupians - you guys are crazy and be that way !!

Also I am dedicating this poem to you guys - The Man in the Arena by Theodre Roosevelt. My wife pointed this to me when I was down because my idea behind my startup was questioned.

"IT IS NOT THE CRITIC WHO COUNTS;
NOT THE MAN WHO POINTS OUT
HOW THE STRONG MAN STUMBLED,
OR WHERE THE DOER OF DEEDS
COULD HAVE DONE BETTER.

THE CREDIT BELONGS TO THE MAN
WHO IS ACTUALLY IN THE ARENA;

WHOSE FACE IS MARRED
BY DUST AND SWEAT AND BLOOD;
WHO STRIVES VALIANTLY;
WHO ERRS AND COMES SHORT
AGAIN AND AGAIN;

WHO KNOWS THE GREAT ENTHUSIASMS,
THE GREAT DEVOTIONS,
AND SPENDS HIMSELF IN A WORTHY CAUSE;

WHO AT BEST KNOWS IN THE END
THE TRIUMPH OF HIGH ACHIEVEMENT;
AND WHO AT THE WORST

IF HE FAILS,
AT LEAST FAILS WHILE DARING GREATLY;
SO THAT HIS PLACE SHALL NEVER BE
WITH THOSE COLD AND TIMID SOULS
WHO KNOW NEITHER VICTORY NOR DEFEAT."

-Theodore Roosevelt.

Keep up the good work.

IE gotcha - does not render row colors

2008-12-24T09:53:00.000+05:30

My dynamic table rendered by an AJAX call had alternating row colors - which as expected rendered beautifully in all the major browsers ( except IE of course ).

The row looked like this tr bgcolor="#EFEFEF"

I had to push the bgcolor into an inline style and then IE started showing the row color.

tr style="background-color:#EFEFEF"

Hope my IE posts get over, because to find every IE gotcha I spend quite a fair amount of my time.

IE will not render my dynamic table

2008-12-19T17:10:00.000+05:30

And today I wasted an entire afternoon trying to figure out why IE will not render my dynamic table got from an AJAX call. And as usual all the other browsers were rendering the table without skipping a beat.

I stripped out everything till nothing was remaining in the table and still IE will not render the table.

Finally I found out the culprit. I did not have a tbody tag. UGhhhh.

Should I send a bill to Bill for all the wasted hours because of this inconsistent browser?

Freebie alert - ajax loader generator

2008-12-18T17:48:00.000+05:30

I did not expect that such a thing will exist - but it does exist. You can customize your ajax loader circle here - http://www.ajaxload.info/ .

Here are some samples ( which blogger is converting to png - so you will not be able to see the gif animation )

Javascript : Attaching to an event with a function that takes parameters

2008-12-18T10:14:00.001+05:30

Thanks to IE refusing to play well on a dynamically loaded table with controls - I am learning new things.

Here is how to attach a function which takes parameters to a control.

document.getElementById('button').onclick=new Function("some_function('parameter')");

God bless IE.

another Gotcha - adding event to dynamically added control

2008-12-17T19:25:00.000+05:30

This time the culprits were Chrome and IE.

The table I dynamically pulled had a select all button. But the onclick was never getting fired. The work around was quite simple. I had to attach the event to the control once again. Then the onclick event worked.

Attaching the event is quite simple.

document.getElementById('button').onclick = functionName;

IE 7 does not show the table header - THEAD on AJAX call

2008-12-17T18:25:00.001+05:30

I would have spent more than an hour breaking my head with IE.

Problem : I have a table which is fetched using AJAX. Now this table has a thead with header contents and rendered fine in all the browsers except IE.

My code looked something like this
<table>
<thead>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Age</th>
</thead>
<tbody>

Solution : There should be a TR within the THEAD. Now the header started showing fine after the ajax call. The funny thing is - IE rendered it fine when this table was part of the page. When I moved it to be rendered from an AJAXy call this problem surfaced.

Now the code looks like this.
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Age</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>

Server issues but I am sticking with my hosting provider.

2008-12-16T18:09:00.000+05:30

It was a harrowing time yesterday. My virtual hosting provider had network issues and so ApartmentAdda was down for 1 hour 44 minutes. First time in it's short history that it has been unreachable. I discovered it after an hour and quickly changed the dns settings to point to a page that had please be patient - we are facing network issues message.

It seems they had a hardware fault in one of their main switches and the hazaar virtual hosts became unaccessible. Wondering who the service provider is - it is eapps.com.

I always wanted to write about them - but let me do it now. Perhaps they are getting a bad rap everywhere because of the downtime they had and their 9999 something went for a toss because of yesterday's down time. But I will stick to them. They are good.

Here is why : They are prompt and whoever I talked to is knowledgeable. Either they can call you ( yes I am in India and they use skype or something ), or you can chat with them - and they answer you any time of the day. Also the eapps support forum is pretty exhaustive and well written. Most of the set up issues can be resolved by going through their forums.

So if you are wondering whether to go with eapps - do try them out. They have not paid me anything for this post btw :)

Airtel GPRS - it is quite good.

2008-12-05T08:26:00.000+05:30

Next week I will be traveling to Calcutta to my in-laws place. Apartment Adda is live and I need to keep monitoring the servers, reply to support emails etc. and I cannot afford to be cut off. Also going to a cyber cafe is not an option - I am paranoid of key stroke loggers and what nots.

I did quite some research - USB cards, data access card - which were quite expensive for the 1 week access that I needed. Finally ended up trying Airtel GPRS. The speed is dial up - as advertised. My site loads up fast and I am able to SSH. That is all I will need.

You need a data cable for your phone - so you can use your phone as a modem. Then send the message "MO" to 6123 - this is a week plan for Rs 140 - unlimited usage. And when you want to stop the service send the message "MO CNCL" to 222. Simple isn't it?

Also with the frequent power cuts I am facing - probably I will go for the 1 month plan - 100MB for 350Rs or so.

Thanks AR Rahman for the tune and Airtel for your awesome service.

Google Chrome now shows alert

2008-12-04T22:01:00.001+05:30

My of late favorite browser has become my regular browser once again. It has started showing alert boxes in pop up windows. This is of build 0.4.154.29. Enjoy !!

The seed, the nucleus and the tribe

2008-12-03T11:00:00.000+05:30

I have been following Seth Godwin for a while - he posts frequently, and each post teaches me something new. Here is a video of him giving a speech on creating a nucleus and building around it - and identifying tribes and telling them a story - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/the-seed-the-pi.html

What I learnt?

* You need to sell your service to the whole world. Identify a little group of people - and show them your service, tell them your story - they will spread the word for you - if they like it and your service is good.

* Everything starts small - as a seed, as a nucleus. Hold on tight to it - and start developing on it - working around it and slowly let it evolve. Much like the agile process that I follow - in many iterations - adapting and modifying according to the feedback and what the customer wants.

Art of the start

2008-11-28T10:08:00.001+05:30

Art of starting...

Well this is the name of my blog, inspired by a great book - Art of The Start by Guy Kawasaki.

I bought this book on Nov 27,2006. ( I write the day I bought a book with an interesting event that day if I had one ) - and read it half way. But never finished it - gave me lot of crazy ideas and inspiration.

Now I picked the book again and re-reading from the beginning. And suddenly it makes sense - every word of it. Earlier when I read this book it was as if I was reading the syntax of a language in a book. Now when I read the book it is as if I am coding and compiling and running it.

If you are a wannabe entrepreneur, just starting like me, or a seasoned entrepreneur who eats VCs for breakfast - this is the one book you should have read back to back.

Comprehensive list of Tools for Web site testing

2008-11-20T11:13:00.000+05:30

http://uitest.com/en/analysis/

Accessibility,SEO,Validation,Load Time

Free website monitoring

2008-11-17T12:02:00.000+05:30

Site24x7.com

This is a very useful free resource. They let you monitor up to 2 websites free. Also they send a weekly report about your site uptime and performance. This is just one of the many free services that are available which we can take advantage of.

Browser shots !!

2008-11-14T08:59:00.000+05:30

So I was wondering how does Apartment Adda look like on different browsers, different platforms - is it loading fine or is it throwing errors? Head over to browsershots.org and give your url. It will take some time but your site is hit with 61 browsers from all the OS platforms of the world. I got my results back with errors on an old version of opera and chrome.

The entire development of Apartment Adda has been done on chome with occasional switch to firefox to use firebug. Need more investigation - you can download the results to your desktop and view each one of them carefully.

Very useful service.

Launching ApartmentAdda.com

2008-11-13T12:02:00.000+05:30

I am happy to announce the launch of ApartmentAdda.com - it is an online portal for communication and management for apartment communities.

Today most of the apartment communities network online using yahoo groups or google groups. Apartment Adda is a replacement to these groups and in addition provides more tools custom built for apartment communities - like notice board, file sharing, polls and also management tools like maintenance fee tracker, issue tracker etc.

It is close to 2 months since I started working on this. Has been quite a roller coaster ride. Had to take care of legal aspects, UI design, logo, the mantra, features page - it is endless !! Is my work over? -no in fact it is just beginning and things are getting really interesting !!

Head over to apartmentadda.com and see if it can benefit you. It sure will !!

Google chrome not showing alert and confirmation dialogs in popup

2008-11-06T18:41:00.000+05:30

Am I the only one noticing this? I have a pop up page which shows a confirmation dialog - it used to work with the earlier Chrome version. But the current chrome version ( 0.3.154.9 ) does not show the confirmation message.

The confirmation messages shows up fine in Firefox, IE ( holy guacomole ),Opera and Safari.

Weird.

Legalities of starting a business

2008-11-06T10:37:00.000+05:30

I always wondered what it takes to start a business in India.

Turns out that it is quite simple - no big bureaucratic red tape which I always thought India was. There are 3 major types.

Sole Proprietorship:

This is what I opted for. Nothing to register with the government, lawyer or auditor. You are fully responsible for your business. Liability is solely yours. What it means is you incur a huge loss - you have to pay from your personal property. You wake up in the middle of night and decide - man let me start a business. There you go - your business is born. As simple as that.

Want to open a bank account. No problem - tell them your company name and give address proof and PAN card number. Done.

Till 2 Lakhs of income, you pay 20% tax. Beyond that it is 30%.

Partnership:

You need help from an auditor for this purpose. You and your partner(s) decide what is the percentage you own the company ( and hence the liabilities ) etc. Costs some 5000Rs I guess. I did not dig deep into this as this was not the option I was taking.

Even if your firm made only 100Rs as profit you have to pay 30% tax.

Private Company:

This is the most expensive and longer router ( but safer route ). You first give a proposal to the government entity with a bunch of company names. Then they will tell you which one is available. Then you might have to spend to the tune of 1Lakh Rupees to get all done and it is a long drawn out process.

So you have a great idea - just go ahead and start doing it. Have a friend helping you out - cough up the 5K and continue your march.

I know what you are thinking - even I went through the same phase. What if someone stakes claim to my brand name by doing the legal 1Lakh Rupees way while you were slogging to popularise brand.

Well first accept that you are screwed. Like it helps !!

You have your user base - just change the name to something better - call it formerly known as blahblah.com. I am no expert in this - but when you are beginning do not worry about such things - if it did not cost a whopping 1Lakh I would have registered my company. But the 1Lakh can be spent in far better ways - getting a good UI designer, designing a fundoo logo, get a kickass server - so your pages load fast.

How about patenting? I still have not explored this area - might be doing it soon. Watch out for a post on that.

So have you started your business by now?

more funny probes..

2008-10-22T18:18:00.000+05:30

More funny bot probes..

File does not exist: /home/****/html/intl client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) script '/home/*****/html/thisdoesnotexistahaha.php' not found or unable to stat [Wed Oct 22 03:24:11 2008] [error] [client **.**.**.***] script '/home/*****/html/cmd.php' not found or unable to stat

Ajax Daddy

2008-10-20T13:48:00.000+05:30

I was researching on a ajaxy table edit and stumbled upon this useful site - ajaxdaddy.com

Bots hitting my site.

2008-10-20T11:13:00.000+05:30

The server is kind of up - not yet open to the public but the bots know about it already. I always keep checking the error logs for such abnormalities.It helps a great deal if you clean all the warning messages your Application is throwing - this way the errors that come up in error logs are genuine and you can monitor your server better.

Wondering if I should invest some time in a script to have a look at these logs - see if a "file does not exist" error happens in error_log and then take the ip address and see what got accessed in access_log - to see if the system is compromised.

On the below code scroll to the right to see the bot's probes.


[Mon Oct 20 01:39:29 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/README
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:29 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:29 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde2
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:29 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde3
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:29 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde-3.0.5
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:30 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde-3.0.6
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:31 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde-3.0.7
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:31 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde-3.0.8

[Mon Oct 20 01:39:31 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/horde-3.0.9
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:31 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/mail
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:31 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/email
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:32 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/webmail
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:32 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/newmail
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:32 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/mails
[Mon Oct 20 01:39:32 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/mailz
[Mon Oct 20 01:46:35 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/cacti
[Mon Oct 20 01:46:35 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/stats
[Mon Oct 20 01:46:35 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] script '/home/*****/html/graph_image.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:56 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] script '/home/*****/html/xmlrpc.php' not found or unable to stat
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:56 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/xmlrpc
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:56 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/xmlsrv
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:57 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/blog
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:57 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/drupal
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:57 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/community
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:58 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/blogs
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:58 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/blogs
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:58 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/blog
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:59 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/blogtest
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:59 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/b2
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:59 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/b2evo
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:59 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/wordpress
[Mon Oct 20 02:05:59 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/phpgroupware
home/*****/html/awstats.pl
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:17 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] script not found or unable to stat: /home/*****/cgi-bin/awstats.pl
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:17 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/scgi-bin
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:18 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /var/www/html/awstats/awstats.pl
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:18 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/scgi-bin
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:19 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/cgi
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:19 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/scgi
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:19 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/scripts
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:20 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/scgi-bin
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:20 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] script not found or unable to stat: /home/*****/cgi-bin/stats
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:20 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/scgi-bin
[Mon Oct 20 02:27:20 2008] [error] [client **.***.**.***] File does not exist: /home/*****/html/stats

Starting up on a bad economy

2008-10-17T13:42:00.000+05:30

With the US and Europe banks falling like bowling pins all around, I keep hearing - this is only the tip of the ice berg - I do question myself - Is it wise to start up now? So I keep my eyes peeled for any news on startup and recession in the same line.

Here is a an article on how its good to start a startup during recession.

For hackers - your competition is less. You cohackers and competitors are probably hanging tight to their jobs or going to join a job or doing their degree. Also things will be cheaper during recession. And Apple,Google,Microsoft all started on a recession.

For investors - buy when the market is bad. Invest in start ups now - against conventional wisdom - so when market picks up and start up is not start up any more - you reap better rewards.

Thats what I read ( I read what I want to hear :D) - you can make your own views from the article.

Paul Graham's why to start up on a bad economy

You Used that Programming Language to Write What??

2008-10-15T15:36:00.000+05:30

I stumbled upon this nice post about the tech choices we have. Resonates with my earlier post about PHP - how its good as a prototype bring it out fast language but needs to be re written in Java in the long run.

http://www.cio.com/article/193750/You_Used_THAT_Programming_Language_to_Write_What_

Office space under 500Rs !!

2008-10-11T22:28:00.000+05:30

My budget is for the stationery that I added - not the gizmos I had painstakingly collected over these years - that will be my next post - the stuff that runs on electricity.

Whats in my home office

1. Stickies - 40Rs

2. Color sketch pens - 20Rs

3. World Map - 200Rs

4. India Map - 150Rs

5. LIC diary - 0Rs ( given free by my agent )

I do miss having a white board but it is prohibitively expensive - a decent sized one costs 4000Rs - and also the white board markers are not cheap either.

The backside of the maps are very effective card walls - stickies cling on to them nicely. And I can move the card wall easily. Now I have a visual progression of my project.

You are wondering what is a card wall? It is a must have in any agile project - it visually depicts the "stories" waiting to be played, being played, the ones that are in QA's desk and the ones that have been passed by the QA.

In the first week I did not have the card wall and my partner ( Sangeeta - my wife who is supporting me in this venture) had a tough time visualizing where we are going. Then I hung the world map and laid out the stickies and both of us now have a better idea of what is happening. Now she is totally bought up on the card wall and has made her own now ( with the India map ).

I first thought of categorizing bugs, features, tech stuff with different colors - but then it became too corporatish so I decided to not worry about such things and now I use any sketch that comes to my hand. Its nice to doodle in different colors - keeps the brain in "invent" mode.

Next post : The hardware being used to create the online portal.

Why PHP?

2008-10-11T08:54:00.000+05:30

I have decided to build the online portal in PHP, supported by Apache, MySQL hosted on Linux. The most cliched LAMP model.

Did I consider other players?

* Ruby on Rails : It was very much on my plate. I have done small utilities ( a server status monitor and a code snippet repository ) in rails and was blown away by the speed and simplicity of doing things. However 2 things went against RoR.

ORM : My last project was a .NET project on Hibernate. It was a 2 year old project and already it felt like a legacy application with things tuned for performance to the maximum. They had crossed the return on investment period of Hibernate ( when relations stay simple at the beginning of any project ) and now were paying heavily for having Hibernate - performance, complexity, things moving to stored procedures..the usual pain points. So active Record did not interest me - being a one man army I did not want battles couple of months from now when I have to hack to implement a feature.

Server support: Nothing can beat mod_php running on Apache. I had to configure nothing. zilch. With ROR things are still emerging - and I do not have the confidence in this space. A good part of my time does go in administering Apache but its something I am quite familiar. I neednot muck with monit or spend lot of time playing with mongrel (a cluster inside one node!!) to have my app working. Apache just sits there smiling at me doing its work super efficiently.

*Java : I am more familiar with Java and its framework than PHP. But the pace of development, team that is required, hosting requirements is just not feasible nor affordable. When this portal takes off big time I will rewrite it in Java - with a team. That will scale well, be stable - rock solid, and well maintenable. But the goal here is to bring something out as fast as possible, give it to as many people as possible and create a mind space.

*ASP.NET : Forget it. I will not recommend it to anyone - even if I get a 1 billion dollar project to redo microsoft.com. ( well on second thoughts I might reconsider :D - I am not Howard Roark !!)

Hosting : LAMP Hosting is cheap. I decided to go with a Virtual Private Server - gives me lot of freedom and flexibility. It takes some effort and linux know how - but its worth the trouble. More on this later.

In conclusion Php suited me well for the portal I am building - fast and quick ( but dirty like hell imagine code spread all over the place : $this->some_function($this-variable); It hurts the eyes !! )

Next post : How I set up my office space for under 500Rs !!

A little about me and who this blog is for

2008-10-09T19:28:00.000+05:30

Who am I?

I am a "techie" who lives in Bangalore. But now I have taken a break to embark on a journey - auspiciously on the day Lehmann Brothers went bankrupt, Goldmann Sachs got degraded and blood bath happened in Wall Street. A journey to explore what it is like to go on your own - to be your own boss and create a business.

Currently I am building an apartment management plus residents communication portal targetted at mid to large sized apartment complexes. Its an alternative to yahoo groups, google groups and orkut that most of the residents use for apartment related communication.

Who this blog is for?

I have been toying with the idea of starting something on my own for quite a long time. Have read lot of blog posts, books and finally now I have taken the plunge. I intend to help out the souls who want to take the plunge - share my experience and learnings in this new life of mine. Also inviting ideas, tips, tricks that you think might help me in my quest.

Also, to keep myself committed to this blog, I am going to say what I am going to post next - on every post.

Next post is going to be about the choice of technology for my portal. Being a techie thats what I can think of first. Stay tuned!!