Tech Collage

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick..."

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:32:51 -0700

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something”

- Randy Pausch (1960-10-23 – 2008-07-25)

Interpreting: "Oh I am never going to work with that IDIOT ever again!"

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:44:48 -0700

Throughout our lives we have this sense of Deja Vu, of meeting people/personalities and you get this feeling man I wish never ever work with this person again. But heres a perspective, our experiences make us who we are. Instead of taking flight response and shunning to person, work with them for just once. You will learn a thing or two about human nature and dynamics of dealing with it.

I call it Pain Karma, the more pain you take today the lesser difficulty you will have dealing with them later in you life. So go ahead, credit some Pain Karma in you account.

Lessons from doing Business with Indian SMEs

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:32:00 -0700

Its been two years, since Fafadia Tech is pursuing its passion for helping small and medium enterprise becoming more efficient reliable and competitive. Following are some of the insights I would like to share with the world with having some success and many failures over course of almost two years.

SMEs are man power & cash constrained
SMEs are afraid of complex systems
SMEs care more about service than product

They most certainly don’t care about your SaaS based business model, neither do they care if you Python based Cloud Computing infrastructure is relevant.

Learning Erlang

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:47:03 -0700

Its been couple of years since Joe Armstrong’s book has been lying in my bookshelf. Since I have time to upgrade myself time to learn little erlang programming. One of the things that attracted me towards learning erlang is the fact that it allows hot swapping. I can’t think of practical application but sure seems like an interesting feature. On the side-node Facebook’s Thrift has code generators for erlang. What this implies is you can have client binding in different languages.

Would like to blog more about it, as soon as I have something worthy.

Building Company == Revolutionary Culture

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:55:00 -0700

Culture defines who we are, what we do. Its the essential DNA that dictates behavior when exposed to risk, taking action necessary to grab opportunity. Running a company over two years, I still have a dissatisfaction towards not having spent enough time thinking about the culture of company and figuring out competitive advantage.

When I look at companies I respect the most, it seems central aspect to their uniqueness was their culture. I see common patterns emerging with respect to qualities they lived by

Focus on constant innovation
Taking risks, and learning from failures
Always looking at the big picture

Like most things in life simple things are often ignored. Do you work at a company that has revolutionary culture? Do you even think about it?

Interesting content from Quora: 2011-07-14

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:58:57 -0700

Since its raining heavily in Mumbai, I decided to take some time off from routine work and surf Quora. I must tell you, its a great site for discovering content. I used to use FriendFeed, Hacker News, TechCrunch for content. But I would guess I am spending more and more time on Quora.

Summary: David S. Rose on pitching to VCs

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:32:53 -0700

So found this cool recommendation on Quora on list of must watch videos for Entrepreneurs. I am going to post bullet point from the talk

Single most important thing while pitching to VCs: YOU!.
18mins ideal dropoff for VCs pitch.
Integrity, Passion, Experience, Knowledge, Skills, Leadership, Commitment, Vision, Realism and Coachable are things that VCs look at.
Garbing attention and taking VCs for an upward ride.
The way to do this is: Preparation
Good: Short, short bullet points
Better: Just headline
Best: Only images
Structure of a Pitch
Company Logo
30 sec elevator pitch
2 mins business overview
Management Team
Market
Product
Business Model
Strategic Relationship
Competition
Barriers to Entry
Financial Overview
Use of Proceeds
Capital & Valuation

Some more tips

Use remote
Handouts are not presentations
Dont read you speech
Never ever look at your screen

Interesting, need to start pitching.

My new about.me profile

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:35:32 -0700

My new about.me profile

Asking the right question

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 03:08:00 -0700

Some one on Quora asked Whats the best launch strategy? Robert as usual had an amazing insight. Summary of his answer was ask the right questions.

How do I make a product so strategically important that Steve Jobs buys it within a month.

Wow! Simply amazing, why didn’t I think of this before.

Seems like reduction, that I had learned in Algorithm’s class. So I guess its the art of asking right questions, one needs to master to innovate.

Living example of passion and belief

Sun, 15 May 2011 23:34:17 -0700

Mumbai trains are always amusing, considering that average mumbaikar spends 1/3 of their professional working time in trains things get pretty interesting. Today I boarded a train from Vile Parle at 8.48 around Andheri I met this gentleman

Prof. Sandeep Desai hes an engineer, MBA graduate from NMIMS and was a Professor at S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research. What a stranger like me gets an impression of him when you see him hear and speak is strength in his intentions, passion for his mission. He goes an extra mile for his mission, he raises funds for building school for the under-privileged kids by literally begging in Trains. Hats-off and thanks for showing me what power of passion and belief can do. A great lesson in entrepreneurship and humanity in general.

Keynote awesome iPad app

Thu, 12 May 2011 03:49:00 -0700

Creating a presentation was never so simpler. Now I can use my iPad to show-off what Fafadia Tech is cooking. This was a humble reminder from Apple on how simple and elegant solutions are derived from truly understanding your users.

On use of Mockups for better communication

Mon, 09 May 2011 20:05:00 -0700

Like many software developers out there we use Balsamiq, and there is adjoining community that keeps crunching out better stencils for everyone. So why use a mockup, well for one it helps better communication. Low cost of chaining/tweaking things ahead of time since doing it after implementation are difficult. Apart from that, I feels a great tool that even customers are happy to see of how the product will turn out.

Shout-out to all my fellow developers — start using it.

Python links

Mon, 02 May 2011 09:47:56 -0700

PyPy 1.5 is released. PyPy is alternative to CPython implementation. Although to be honest I thought Unladen Swallow would make it to CPython branch.
Its back to basics with Have you read your python docs lately?
Tamarin - Django application for parsing logs in S3

When in doubt, make fool of your self

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:30:43 -0700

Take it as a complement when some one says: You don’t make any sense. I am pretty sure, thats not a common thing you hear. But consider this when Galileo discovered that earth wasn’t at center but sun was, people laughed at him. Similarly lot of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Mark Zukerberg, Steven Spilberg, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs are known for being revolutionaries. I guess first step towards becoming revolutionary is overcoming your fear to making fool of ones-self.

Entrepreneurs its not you, its them. When Henry Ford asked people what they wanted. They always said they wanted faster horses. No one said they wanted cars.

Rapid prototyping with Google App Engine

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:15:47 -0700

I have been extensively using google app engine for most of our mobile project, even our Fafadia Tech’s main website runs on GAE. What appeals to me is the simplicity of it use. You basically write models and controllers use Datastore as models. And simply run appcfg.py update <some_dir> and you’re done. So need to install,configure and deploy. It gives you a nice interface for monitoring your application. And did I mention its free for 1MM pages.

However what missing and they are promising its going to come is SQL support. Right now its their own system with interfaces exposed to external world for use. BTW this time we are doing a little different we will be opensoucing one of our android app. So stay tuned.

Thoughts on Data and Governance

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:14:22 -0700

No I am not going to be talking about Wikileaks style data, I am talking about an innovative initiative called Code For America. Whats interesting about this project is how effectively crowd-sourcing has been leveraged. They are getting hold of students, entrepreneurs and web professional to make data available to public in general.

Tasks range from simply massaging data to creating visualizations. Along the lines we should have Code For India initiative. List of issues facing India is long, but lets make a baby step to solve it. Starting today I pledge to make more data available to India, and take it to next steps.

Building better products

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:00:06 -0700

There are tons of discussion on what makes a great product person, but what I believe it really boils down to approach and personality. Following are qualities I think are important that I have seen in great product people

~~Good~~ Better Taste: Not only critique but a strong personality and intuition on what the client/user is going to like.
Great Communicators: Its all about convincing people, which in turn boils down to communication. Getting ideas across, making a point
Pragmatist: These guys know what 80/20 rule is all about, have good intuition on what will work and what won’t.

Some day, surely I would love to see some sort of analytical framework around what makes designs/designers remarkable.

Book Review: Only the Paranoid Survive

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 05:31:12 -0700

Flipkart.com is a great way to shop book Amazon style in India. They accept COD too along with credit cards. Which is great if you know what book do you want to buy.

This books is great, take in note that this book was written pre Google and Youtube era. It talks about Strategic Inflection Point things that make underdogs bigger, stronger and better. Groove talks about changes in following that makes/breaks companies

Competition
Technology
Customer
Supplier
Complements
Regulations

Its interesting how he puts Strategic Inflection Point in perspective, both when it broke Intel (Competition from Japanese Memory manufacturers) and when it made Intel (Change in buying patterns in PC era).

Overall its a must read for techies and nerds alike. I would rate this book 4/5. Not a bad read.

Mobile Technology for rural India

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:00:06 -0700

I believe in next 3 years following are some use cases where mobile technologies can be disruptive for bringing social change. Partially whats fueling this grown is penetration of mobile handsets in India and 3G networks that is rolling out.

Early Warning and Emergency Response: Lot of damage control in Japan wouldn’t be possible had they not installed Early warning systems. Each year many people die of natural calamities most of the due to floods. If a community
Education: With lack of sheer numbers of schools in India, video conferencing and online testing will help education in masses. Imagine kids learning Trigonometry Khan’s Academy Style.
Healthcare: Imagine doctors sending prescription to their remote clients via SMS or patients registering their symptoms via phone. Or taking photo and uploading it for doctor’s diagnosis.

There would be couple of challenges in mostly will be relevant to creating apps that are multi-lingual and interfaces that will cater masses of people who aren’t educated. Nevertheless would be a great experiment to try and learn.

Mobile innovation for Asian Markets

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:51:24 -0700

According to UN India has more cellphones than toilets. I agree thats the scene on grass roots. These days you get entry level Android phone from Micromax for a little over $100 What implications this has on India markets are as follows

Tighter integration of mobile into our day today life. I mean not just getting SMS of you kids score card, tracking your kids in real time via there phone would be a norm.
Lot of services like healthcare, education etc would be available from your phones.
Organization will look for phone to make their operations smoother and faster. Some of its is already getting into managing large sales force and getting results in real time.

So seems like exciting times for Mobile developers to be in India and gives huge scope for innovation to happen.