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Cgi-bin and the '500 Internet Server Error'
2008-06-05 20:00:00
I never knew that the world of cgi-bin was so cryptic.Cgi-bin has always been a good neighbor. Ever since I started developing, this folder was always somewhere in the vicinity. Even though we never had anything to do with each other, we always recognized the others presence. For all these years, things were good, but today suddenly everything changed.I have worked at length with perl on the command line, and quite like it as a language. As a matter of fact, I chose to start with PHP because I liked perl a lot and strangely php and perl looked a lot similar to me in the beginning. (Ofcourse I had never heard of PHP's mysql_real_escape_string till then)But today was different. I was runing perl through Cgi-bin and it turned out to be quite a different experience. Everything was fine till the perl script was running through the command line, but as soon as I ran it through Cgi-bin, all I got was this :500 Internal Server Error I wasn't quite sure what had I done wrong, but no matter ...
More About: Programming , Internet

Three things from IPL missing in our business
2008-06-04 19:08:00
Nobody really believed that the IPL would turn into a money making machine.But in just 45 days, with the help of some of the smartest men on this side of the world, they succeeded in turning one simple idea into a massive-mega success. In less than two months IPL scripted the change of the Indian cricket story. In about six weeks, Lalit Modi executed almost the one idea to perfection and managed to make it one of the biggest money churners this year, and that too in a sport where people were already making so much money that it seemed impossible that you could make even more.Now that its all over, its time to think about what did IPL have that my business does not. And maybe there is something there which can help our businesses as well. So here are the top three things in IPL which I think are missing from our business:Unsung HeroesThe IPL wasn't about Sachin Tendulkar. I quite adore the man, but I think the best thing that happened to the IPL was that Tendulkar was hurt. If he ha...
More About: Cricket , Business , Entrepreneurship , Missing , Things

Recruiting for Starups
2008-05-30 18:30:00
A company by definition is a collection of people.This means that every company, no matter how big or small, will always be looking for people. This was the very idea that made one of the biggest web companies in India - Naukri.com.Now when you think about it, there are so many sectors where an internet company could have made its mark, then how come the job sector became one the biggest successes in the Indian Internet History?The answer is easy. Looking for the right people, is hard. Earlier, there was no easy way to get them to come to you. You had to rely on your headhunters and friends to refer people. Jobs in the newspaper were not indexed. So if you missed a paper, you'll never see that job again. You had to wait for The Ascent every week, the other employment magazines and what not. Naukri.com changed that drastically. Naukri.com was the 'search' of the Indian Internet Industry. And they laughed (are still laughing) all the way to the bank.But if Naukri changed things so ...
More About: Recruiting , Startup , Recruitment

One Year in Business
2008-05-26 17:45:00
I was just reminded today that Vercingetorix Technologies has now completed one year of existence. At the very least, now we can't be one of those companies which die in the first year. And considering the way things are going, I don't think we're going down soon :)And I know that you wouldn't be surprised if I tell you that there are so many projects, which came our way through this blog. If you are still considering if blogging really works, believe me, you get the best of clients from your blog. I have.A big thanks to all of you for coming here.And by the way, if you're in Pune this weekend, do join us for drinks. :)
More About: Business , Year

Mbakarma Redux
2008-03-21 11:20:00
How long does it take to completely revamp a web application?Mbakarma needed a few major changes and I've been waiting for way too long to do them. So last sunday, I decided to start work on it again. I wrote down the features, walked through the details, and finally decided on a list of features and improvements which I think are essential.Now I didn't want to spend too much time on it, because you know you can spend forever with it and it would still not be complete, so I chalked down a small timeline in which I could add everything I needed.To make sure I'm doing things on time, there are a couple of really cool applications I'm using this time.One is Bean Stalk App, which is an online SVN repository. And with a few clicks it integrates with Twitter and the other project management application that I'm using. I'm still using the free account on BeanStalk, and if it all goes well I'll shift to the paid account soon. If you are a startup and thinking about starting work on y...

Of Code Rewrites and the people who do them
2008-02-26 23:56:00
Paul Tyma, previously the Chief Scientist at PreEmptive Solutions, now a Googler, is back to blogging after long. And his latest post reminded me just why I haven't been able to remove his feed from my reader. The Feed Readers have changed, but the feeds still go on. And that's just the way it is.Paul mentions that your customers are the most honest people that you would ever find. In his own words, "They vote with their credit cards and their attention." The success of our websites and applications comes only from their honest appreciation. It is not a refreshing new thought, but old wisdom, which needs to be said over and over again so that it stays fresh in our memory.But what I actually wanted to talk about was code rewrites. Every developer always finds himself better than the last one, and better than they were two years back. So every two years, given a chance, they would rewrite all their codes with the latest hip language using the most state-of-the-art design and coding ...
More About: People , Issues , Code , Idea , The People

The "Demigods" defending themselves
2008-02-26 23:13:00
Mike, from the 37signals blog, demystifies the myths perpetrated by the latest edition of Wired to 87367 people following their feeds, and 75000 who come there everyday.
More About: Company , Blogs

Another great reason for having a company blog
2008-02-25 17:01:00
Gautam Ghosh pointed out on Twitter today that google is showing results from bloggers in a slightly different fashion today. I checked it out and it sure looks great.This is definitely another great reason to start a company blog. Just replace my name in the picture with that of your company, and the posts by the services that you offer.So the next time somebody searches for your company, they know exactly what do you do, without even coming to your website. How cool would be that!!It's probably the best advertisement you can ever get.
More About: Google , Company , Tips , Blogs , Search

iPaper and the end of pdf as we know it
2008-02-20 14:17:00
The iPaper is here.Scribd, one of the hottest startups of last year, has just released the Scribd Platform. This would allow developers to integrate documents into their websites, with a simple and clean flash interface.I have loved Scribd from the moment they came on the scene and have covered them a number of times. But this time I think they have exceeded my expectations. The iPaper is an advanced version of Adobe's Flash Paper, and is specially created for the web. So its a lot faster and efficient, and I believe has the power to replace pdf files from the internet with this great technology.Since now you don't need to have pdf installed on your machine to view these files, I am sure iPaper is going to make a real killing on the internet.But the best part about it, is that Scribd managed to see something even mighty Adobe could not. 'Flash Paper' was originally created by Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe because they felt the competition. Now, when Adobe got Mac...
More About: Technology , Innovation , Idea , Startup

Political Entrepreneurs?
2008-02-20 12:17:00
There is a new startup on the political scene.The founders include 8 energetic men, aged 28-45, with degrees and business experience. The startup is still in beta, and you can't yet cast a vote. The priorities and mission statement has been defined, though the last one seems a little absurd, the other two are worth fighting for.There was another one of the kind, though it started down south. They could not pick up much traction and went down fighting amongst each other a few months later.We surely need more like them. I would like to wish them the best of luck. Their portal is up. Do check it out - Jago Party.So do you think you would be willing to bet on them?(found via Atanu Dey's Blog)
More About: Entrepreneurship , Political , Startup , Entrepreneurs

Lessons in Bootstrapping
2008-02-20 09:16:00
The internet is full of advice, both good and bad, and most of us keep running through hundreds of feeds every day, to make sure that if there is any good in there we will find it.So when you happen to reach a place where you find tons of excellent posts, it's hard not to talk about it. This is why I though I should be talking about Bootstrapping in Bangalore.Started by Saurabh Chandra, founder and CEO of Neevtech, this blog is exactly what it's name suggests - Bootstrapping in Bangalore, and if you're one of those bootstrappers, you are going to love it. And yes, you can read it even if you are bootstrapping elsewhere.Like all good things in life, the wisdom (read post) comes in slowly with enough time in between for you to digest and assimilate the information. Now, if you're just starting out, take care, read maybe half a post a day, or you're going to get a lot more than you'll be able to handle.Now, I might say that it is quite like Ask the Wizard, which is written by Dic...
More About: Business , Entrepreneurship , Company , Tips , Blogs

Why don't we shop online?
2008-02-15 15:07:00
Online shopping will never pick up in India.Atleast not the way it is currently designed.It has been 14 years since Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com. And for the last 14 years nobody has really tried to change anything about the way in which Online Shop ping is conducted. Ofcourse every year hundreds of startups with loads of funding try to tell us in different way, why they are better and why they give us a real choice. But the fact remains that even though the technology has been advancing for the last 14 years, nobody has really made a killing in the domain.And that is in the US. India is different. And all startups want to do here is to localize the services offered in the US. Yes, they say, that is the key. So we have India centric search engines, India centric social networks, India centric everything. As if a nation of a billion people doesn't have needs of its own. As if we don't know what we need.If we need to send flowers, they show us tiny 30x30 pixel photographs of flowers...
More About: Business , Internet , Design , Innovation

Twitter Shortcode for India - 5566511
2008-01-18 01:53:00
Twitter Mobile is now really here in India .You can message to Twitter directly by sending it to Shortcode 5566511.Happy Twittering.
More About: Twitter

CAT results out - Servers crash again
2008-01-08 14:08:00
Like always, the IIM servers have crashed again.As expected, the 240,000 students and their parents and friends are busy opening the same page and as a result the servers have not been able to handle the pressure.At peak load, I would expect no more than 240,000 x 10 requests over the one hour period when the results come out. A rate of about 650-700 requests per second.I haven't been able to get the exact page size of catiim.in site yet, but I would expect it to be less than 20kb. Hence the required download rate would be about 13.5 Mbps.Now, I have heard that IIMs usually outsource this part to a private company which can handle the data. So I did some checking up, and catiim.in site resides on a websrvr.soft.net server, which is believe it or not, from Software Technology Park of India , Bangalore.I find it strange that even they have failed to design a system which can handle the traffic. Either the budgets are too low, or there isn't enough technical expertise to handle the sa...
More About: Internet , Servers , Results , Karma

Building a widget / ecosystem of programmers
2008-01-08 00:56:00
QuarkRuby, one of the hottest shopping startups in India has a new post about building widgets. It is a great post and they talk about all sorts of widgets one can possibly make.On seeing a post on programming, it is surprising that most developers at Indian Startup s hardly ever talk much about the technology they are using. Maybe it's because none of us here are really innovating all that much, and most of it is not already available on the internet. But I am sure there are a lot of really good programmers out there with loads and loads of tricks up their sleeves. Somehow none of it ever comes out in the open.There are some like Vikas Patial of NGCoders, who is literally a God. Everybody always wanted RSS on Orkut, but he was the guy who actually brought it out. I know what everybody is thinking now, but no, that's not important. I don't care how much money he made off the script. What's important is that he made a script which worked like a charm, and he just put it out there ...
More About: Programming , Building , Widget , Ecosystem

CAT 2007 Results expected today
2008-01-07 23:10:00
The CAT 2007 Results are expected to be out today.Out of the 2,30,000 students who appeared for the exam, about 5000 would receive calls for the interviews. One in every 46. And then the next stage of the battle would begin.I have started a new blog as an experiment which talks about the CAT 2007 Results. Depending on the kind of traffic google generates for this blog, I would be able to really understand if SEO actually works. Even though I guess it should have really been started earlier. I would share the results after a few days.
More About: Today , Karma

How much does your company need to spend to acquire a new user?
2008-01-07 02:04:00
Recently heard over at AlooTechie, that BharatStudent.com, an India n social networking website for students is planning to spend about Rs 25 crore over the next two years.About Rs 6.25 crore would be the capital cost, while the remaining 18.75 crores "would be infused into scaling up our human resources pool, creating visibility of the portal and brand recalling involving online, TV and print media advertisements".I'm just a small time entrepreneur doing small gigs here and there, and I would love to get involved in big businesses like BharatStudent sometime. After all, 18.75 crore is over Rs 78 lakh a month, which is probably what 78 startups our size spend every month.Even though BharatStudent has been accused of spamming on Orkut, they have built up a huge following in a very short span of time.Though it's disheartening to see that the rate at which they are getting new users has been going down considerably over the last few months.The reason I say this is because I found anot...
More About: Social , Education , Website , Company

Wikia Results not available
2008-01-07 01:04:00
Wikipedia's new Google killer search engine - Wikia is going to launch today.It works on an interesting concept. It allows users to download a desktop application which you can find at Grub.org, which it uses to index the internet.Along with the download link for the software, there is a link to use the results of the indexed pages where you can search the status of web pages.It just checked it and it seems to be throwing a nasty error. Hmm.. So it's not just the Indian startups...
More About: Results , Issues , Search

The Desi (Martini) Deal
2007-12-19 21:13:00
Getting funding is easy.Recently, I had read Sujai Karampuri, founder of Sloka Telecom (henceforth, the Sloka guy) ranting about the fact that VCs were shying away from funding his company. I felt bad for for about half a second because it looks like a great idea, but then I moved on hoping that somebody on VentureWoods would give him some good insight. But it wasn't until today that I found out the reason why this guy has this amazing idea and no funding.It just so happened that as I was flushing posts from my Google Reader, I managed to read a few of them. And everywhere I went, I heard about the hot new deal in the Indian Web 2.0 scene. (I don't what the scene is, we're still on something like Web 0.5, just have a look at mbakarma). Anyways, so it was a hot new deal, and as you would expect this social networking site was sold for an undisclosed price.The site in question was desimartini.com (deap ubhi, the burrp guy, is*coughing*). Sine the price was undisclosed, somebody ta...
More About: News , Social , Entrepreneurship , Website , Tips

Marketing for startups
2007-12-19 10:05:00
Over the last one year or so, a number of Indian blogs have come up, which cater to upcoming webapps and entrepreneurship.I remember that when I had started there was only AlooTechie.com and WebYantra which I read almost everyday. But now there are really a lot of them - Trak.in (the latest of the lot), Watblog (major competitor of alootechie) and of course WebYantra (by the CEO of infinitely successful slideshare). But the one blog which has suddenly become a must read for me over the last few months is Pluggd.in, which is run by Ashish Sinha and his team. On more than a few occasions, Ashish has called it India's Techcrunch. If it was somebody else I would have liked to slam them for it, but somehow Pluggd.in manages to come up with some great posts every few days, and you get the feeling that if they are not there yet, they will definitely get there one day.For example, there was a post on Pluggd.in yesterday by Prashant, one of the new bloggers in the team, and it was far fro...
More About: Marketing , Entrepreneurship , Startup , Startups

ActiveMobs : Conferencing on Mobiles
2007-12-18 21:30:00
While surfing across the bid bad internet today, I came across two really cool mobile products. I believe both of them are amongst the pioneers in the India n mobile market, though it waits to be seen who really is going to dominate. But till that time comes, we as the customers should know what these guys are really doing. The first one in the list in Activemobs. The registration process is simple, you send an SMS to the activemobs number (9844622848) with your nickname. The second step is to create a group where you will be able to receive group sms. Finally in the last step, you invite friends to the group. Now when you send an SMS to the number stated above, it goes automatically to all of your friends.The sad part is that it is currently available only in Karnataka. But the good news is that they are already looking for funding, and possibly it might be available in other parts of the country soon.Activemobs have been quite hot in Karnataka, and over 30,000 people signed up in a...
More About: Mobile , Mobiles , Startup

Do you have a platform that I can build a business on?
2007-12-18 20:24:00
If you plan to start working in technology, this is the first and the last question you need to convince your customers about.As always, Seth Godin is right on target.
More About: Business , Entrepreneurship , Build , Platform

More on the company voice
2007-12-17 13:58:00
In the last post, I was talking about how big corporations need to have a human form while talking to customers. However, there are different kinds of companies and not all of them are always big. So like us, you are not one of those big companies with the multi-billion dollar revenues, how should you talk to your clients and users?The best way to answer that question is to quote a book by probably the best web development company around, (associated with 5 terrific products, and one exceptionally famous framework called Ruby on Rails). If you can't guess the name of the company yet, you need to do some more research before you start your online firm.To a self imposed question, it says If our tone seems too know-it-allish, bear with us. We think it's better to present ideas in bold strokes than to be wishy-washy about it. If that comes off as cocky or arrogant, so be it.Yes, that is what you need. It should be clear, concise and authoritative. The big corporations just over-do it ...
More About: Voice , Company

Writing customer service emails
2007-12-15 16:23:00
We hear about it all of the time.The age of monopolies is over. Your organization will never have the same kind of power over its customers ever again, because they, have now found a voice of their own. We hear that the customer now has some real powers in the relationship, and they strive to get more. If you can't give it to them, you are going down, and fast.One aspect of providing a more usable customer service environment is to talk in a language which people understand. Unlike the regular, we will get in touch with you soon, you need to come up with something much more human, if you want that customer to stay.Though it is the common belief that as companies start getting larger, they start losing their humanity, and start becoming corporations. But today I had the chance to view a beautiful email sent by one of the biggest of internet companies - Amazon. The customer went on to call it the 'Best Customer Service Email' they had ever received. So if you need to write emails f...
More About: Writing , Emails

Using Blogger with Blogger Gears - Hosted Blogger is now as fast as Wordpre
2007-11-20 20:08:00
I have been really excited for quite some time about Google Gears , the hot new plugin by Google which allows offline capabilities for website. Of course cookies have been there forever, but there was always a need for more advanced technology.So when today I found the blog gears implementation via the Google Code Updates, I was more than willing to try it out. Using this example, which uses Google gears, you can write/edit/delete posts even when you are offline. The interface is still very simple but it is awesome to try it out.I'm not too sure it works well with the hosted blogger blogs (like mine). But we are about to find out.On a similar note, has anybody worked it out for wordpress yet? Or would you have me built it myself. Come on guys, somebody pass on a link, I'm waiting...UPDATE : This thing is really awesome, now you don't have to wait for the whole thing to upload on your site. In less than 3 seconds after clicking the publish button, the post was sitting on my hosted ...
More About: Blogger , Fast , Hosted

The economics of working with Rent A Coder
2007-11-20 18:52:00
All startups need money, and when finding it is not easy, you will pick up any job as long as it gets something in the bank. This is when sites like rentacoder.com come into picture, and are quite useful as well.However, don't pin your hopes on it just yet. Doing business via the site (and most other sites too) is not really a very intelligent way to do business. You can only make about $7-$15 per hour working here. Even though the regular rate for a direct project would be around $15-$25 per hour per developer. But the point I would like to emphasize is the fees you need to pay.Rent ACoder charges a fee of 15% of bid amount. So if you bid $1000, RAC gets $150 off it right away, and you get to take the $850. After that, you can ask them to send a check ($35-$55) or ask them to transfer to paypal.If you ask for a wire transfer, you end up paying only about $35-$55 but will take upto a month to get the money in your account. However, if you ask them to send the money to paypal, things...
More About: Economics , Entrepreneurship , Working

On Innovation
2007-11-20 11:38:00
I am not sure where I had started but after spending a lot of time, moving from link to link, I started coming across articles which I realized I need to post about. Over the last two months or so, the impulse to blog has been missing, but today as I moved through the world wide web, I realized that this was something to talk about.In a strange article on Fast Company, I read thisJames Andrew, of the Boston Consulting Group, for example, argues that too many companies presume that they can boost profits merely by fostering creativity. "To be a truly innovative company is not just coming up with great new ideas, or products and services," he says. "It is coming up with ones than generate enough cash to cover your costs and reward your shareholders." more...And the sad part is that the more you think about it, the more you realize that its true.Maybe this is why most of Web 2.0 is doomed to failure like it's first version. The Wall Street is not about ideas but about quarterly report...
More About: Entrepreneurship , Innovation

Facebook is down
2007-11-16 15:49:00
Facebook, the 15 billion dollar mammoth, seems to have gone down. I'm waiting for it come back, what are the rest of the 25.999999 million people doing?
More About: Facebook

Care to join a software company which gives you Dry cleaning and laundry se
2007-10-17 23:35:00
and the rest of these..Medical, dental and vision plans with no premium for employees401(k) plan21 vacation days per year, plus 8 company holidays and 2 floating holidaysComplimentary catered breakfast, lunch and dinner dailyComplimentary beverages and snacksDry cleaning and laundry service onsiteFree downtown parking permitSubsidized gym membershipCatered Friday Happy Hours at the office$600/month housing subsidy if you live within one mile of the officeStandard-issue 30" LCD monitors and your option of 15" Apple MacBook Pro or IBM ThinkPadWorldwide notoriety by having your face on sample Facebook FlyersNo prizes now for guessing which company.All spam is welcome.
More About: Software , Laundry , Company , Cleaning , Care

Microsoft distributing source code with .NET Framework libraries
2007-10-04 16:28:00
This has got to be interesting. Scott Gu's blog announces that starting with the upcoming verisons of .NET Framework libraries, the would start distributing the source code as well. (.NET 3.5 and VS 2008)We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).You'll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.Link
More About: Source , Code , Source Code