Technology @ nerd

Just got a new server to play with the corenetworks guys are awesome ! The bandwidth is good, they are bloody straight forward about what works and what does not.

Today, i reached Hyderabad on a one day stay (well, i am out by tomorrow evening). The weather here is so f**king awesome that it had to be documented. For the last one week, I have been trying to locate cities where I can live without getting a heat stroke. Reaching Hyderabad today really made my day, now i have located a city which is not going to become a desert any time soon.

The traffic was relatively less and the trip from the airport to the place where I am staying was smooth to say the least. Staying in Delhi for the last 8 years, I have completely forgotten a life without the dust, heat and super traffic (beep beep). At 27 degrees, its the perfect climate post a very dry and hot summer for the whole nation. Till now the electricity and power has been good to me, which is making me very very happy.

Here are some graphs which measure some of the temperature and rainfall averages for both the cities over the year. Delhi is clearly becoming hotter and dryer. Will need to see if i can find some data to support that. Have fun, for all the stat minded people out there.

Hyderabad

New Delhi

Amidst much excitement that is bubbling up at the Proto.in camp, we are happy to announce that the nominations for the upcoming edition are now open! The nominations will stay open till June 15th, and that is just a short stint away. Do race to it, and if you are a startup in the Indian landscape and absolutely believe that you have something to share, then this is the platform you’ve been waiting for. Nominations for Proto.in Pune

Date: July 25th, 2009
Venue: Devang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, Pune

We are doing quite a few things new this time.

1. Proto.in Pune will be a one day Extravaganza.
We are making Proto.in Pune as a one day event, but it goes on from 9am till 8pm in the evening. The day will be split into two moods. The first half of the day from 9am till 4:30pm will carry talks, sessions and interactive sessions  especially aimed at educating, nurturing and supporting the startup landscape of India. There are prominent speakers such as the likes of Bharat Goenka of Tally, Pravin Gandhi of SeedFund, etc who will be talking during the event. Post 5pm, the event will take on a tone of the Oscars. 20 of the best startups – and we mean, absolutely, mindblowingly, best technology startups (includes biotech, healthcare, robotics etc), will take on the stage to deliver a world-class pitch to woo the audience with what they have been working on. Sounds exciting? Read on..

2. Three Day Bootcamp.
For the presenting companies of Proto.in Pune, there will be a three day bootcamp prepped. Day one will focus on diving into the business plan you have for the company, and combing through all the fine details. We are determined to ensure that your focus for the next one year of operations, clients and the market is set during this day. Day two, we teach you and groom you with everything that goes into the mastery of delivering a pitch. We will be bringing in some of the gurus of the advertising world, to make you create words that can sway the hardest of clients, and the toughest of journalists in buying into your story. Don’t forget to add the investors into that list. Day three, is all about the stage. We have  had the priviledge of working with one of the country’s Best Event management company “BuzzWorks”. They, along with a team of stage directors will teach you how to handle yourself in front of the camera, what to do and what not to do when in a public forum – and these will help you make the most out of every speaking and forum opportunity you might get in the future – Starting with Proto.in

3. What about those who dont make the Shortlist.
We are a Startup Support platform remember? We get flooded with highly enthusiastic entrepreneurs every year, but apart from those who make it to the stage, what do we do for those who dont? Well, Every year, we ensure that we provide some feedback, especially to those who dont make it. This time and going forward, we want to ensure that we make it mandatory. All the folks who are helping us with the shortlisting are explicitly requested to spend more time with companies that arent quite there to ensure that they are helped in some way to help find the way. In our books, there are no bad companies – just companies that arent ready yet.

And thats just half the story. We already have some nominations from companies that are in the medical space, companies working on hardcore engineering solutions, companies in the defense sector, and they are all lead to just one conclusion – Its going to be one hell of a rocking event, in Pune. You simply cant afford to not be part of it.

There is a team of delegates, including high network individuals, investors, and startups coming in from abroad as well. And this will be the moment to make your mark.

The question now is quite simple. Are you going to let it pass? I surely hope not. Then Why wait. Go ahead, Nominate!

Note: Companies on being shortlisted for selection, have a Rs. 10,000 fee applicable. Nomination is free.

Well, for lack of better topics i will take this opportunity to talk about some cool things that i have started to learn namely the .NET platform. The best part is that i finally get exposed to complete GUI based tools to do nearly everything, (i am sure i will find a way to do most things on the commadline).

Well new things and seems i need to scale than the applications i work on . More soon.

If you notice i now have a RSS feed for kwippy on the sidebar. That is done by using RSS widget functionality within the wordpress theme section. The image below outline the complete setup which i use for my blog.

Its really simple to set this up .Enjoy.

Just created my first wordpress plugin, from concept to implementation in 3 hours . This plugin basically posts an update on kwippy when you publish a new blog post. This can be a good tutorial for someone trying to build their own plugins actually. Enjoy.

Updated:
Official WordPress plugin page :
http://snipper.in/86

There were a lot of important events in 2008, which can be defined as good or bad. Here is a list from what i remember of the year gone by.

1. Mumbai attacks – India hardens as a state, we have a new look in our diplomacy. We want action and not reactions from our under-performing politicians.
2. J&K elections – Another great event for our democracy. Finally, a new young CM who can make a difference if he chooses to. All the luck to Omar Abdullah so that he can fulfill his potential.
3. Delhi blasts – Was close to where it all happened, was terrible. Not much happened after that and people got on with their lives after that.
4. Kwippy – At a personal level, I started kwippy with Mayank and Kaa. It has been an awesome experience to work with them @ kwippy.
5. Multiplex movies – Movies like Dasvidinya are lowering the barrier for movie makers. The releases of the small budget movies mark the end of the multi crore movies binge bollywood was on.
6. Recession – A well covered event which as usual affected all the working classes. The rich held their money back, growth goes for a toss.
7. Barak Obama – Wanted him to win, feels right. Hopefully he will deliver for the world and not necessarily US.
8. Google Chrome – Yet another MS type move from google. Paying 100mil$ to mozilla foundation and then releasing its own browser. NOT COOL.
9. Windows 7 Beta – This might just save microsoft. Fast , usable and hopefully safer. Looking forward to the actual release.
10. Nuclear deal – cheaper and more power to the Indian masses. This may fuel more growth at some cost to our environment. Hopefully we get our thorium based reactors working, would remove uranium dependence going forward.

Phew, finally got the complete list going. Fear seems to be integrated in the list through the various bomb blasts. There is hope in new leaders and better software . Lets see how 2009 works out for everyone. Happy new year to everyone.

I think that a lot of people think that its easy to start a web startup and get funding, well part of that is true. Yes, the barrier to start something on the web is extremely low, but lately with the recession getting money for the same is way more difficult than before. So if you are hooked into the web business, here are some simple tips to get through these difficult times.

• Conserve cash – Guess it applies to everyone right now. Optimize for survivability and not being investor friendly. You will need the money later.
• Plan growth – If you are a consumer internet site without any business model (read revenue), control your growth. Optimize for server costs.
• Cut on features – Focus on current platform , make sure you implement absolutely necessary things. Spend time analyzing on why you need it
• Remove dead features – Gain some more resources, remove features which are not being used or not exposed. Most platforms tend to load up a lot in memory, free it for better things / traffic.
• Know when to quit – Sounds stupid, but you should know when to call it quits. There is always a point of diminishing returns. Sit down figure it out and make sure you know your limits.

These are things that I am learning at kwippy, this list more or less encapsulates what is need to run a lean and mean operation. I believe that lower entry barriers does not teach most of us young businessmen the “baniya” ways. Its time to learn that oceans are made of smaller drops of water , If you have anything more to add to this list, feel free to throw in a comment. Do forgive me for the naive techincal look at it.

In a blatant act of self promotion, now that pownce is finished, I can confidently write that we are the only other django based micro-blogging network with some traction. I do admit the user interface needs a bit of work, but if you interact with our community, you will realize that they are a set of amazing people.

So keeping in mind that you want to move on from pownce, try something new … or just try kwippy.

http://www.kwippy.com/signup/09b890abe5