Sunday, December 28, 2008

IITJEE preparations : the smarter way

With the globalization being strengthened, opened are the ways to do things in a more open, and a very collaborative way. One such good example is served by youmarks preparations.

The IITJEE online coaching institute, I would better call it, because you can now share IITJEE problems, discuss IITJEE problems and more over discover new ones. I remember our times when just one of such site existed. With the people realizing the importance of online collaborations, I really am very excited to think on how much value it can be added by helping students for their IITJEE preparations in a more smarter way.

Best of luck for all aspirants and others anyways :P

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Page Rank 5

Just an update. We got google page rank 5 @ http://preps.youmarks.com/forum and 4 on all other pages. Definitely a payoff for the hard work we did.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Open social applications.. how to make the most out of them?

Thanks to opensocial people. Now one can get their applications and products to whole world in just one click. But the whole point now is since they are open to you, they are open to million others :). How to survive the opensocial burst.

I am not expert but this is how I am going to dive in. The first and foremost thing before thinking of the information architecture of your open social application is for which social framework the application is targeted. So, the linkedin app may not be suitable to add on orkut or the other way. The guiding principle for deciding the architecture and plan is to list down all the problems you are solving in your services. Categorize them according to social applications. Then decide the architecture for solving the same problems while publicizing yourself in the social framework. Now the application can be a single feature among the infinite ones you giving at your website. But it should be useful to people and should survive in sense that a person who has added your application should not remove it as thing are not happening. Make it lively. Refer social design best practices.

e.g., if I have a picture album feature among infinite others where people upload their pic and other people add stories to the particular picture and an album is linked with say a particular location on the map making sense. Then @ orkut I may be posting the pics as they are loaded and @ twitter I may be adding user stories for the album and on linked in I may be adding the location info showing where the man had been.

Good luck with your application. :)

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Haversine implementation in PHP. (Calculate distance in google maps)

This is how haversine formulae can be used to calculate distance between two places represented by latitude and longitude in degrees

$radius = 6378100; // radius of earth in meters
$latDist = $lat - $lat2;
$lngDist = $lng - $lng2;
$latDistRad = deg2rad($latDist);
$lngDistRad = deg2rad($lngDist);
$sinLatD = sin($latDistRad);
$sinLngD = sin($lngDistRad);
$cosLat1 = cos(deg2rad($lat));
$cosLat2 = cos(deg2rad($lat2));
$a = $sinLatD*$sinLatD + $cosLat1*$cosLat2*$sinLngD*$sinLngD*$sinLngD;
if($a<0) $a = -1*$a;
$c = 2*atan2(sqrt($a), sqrt(1-$a));
$distance = $radius*$c;


The variable $distance is the distance between the two points in meters

Friday, November 7, 2008

Facebook Connect

Tried facebook connect today. It really makes you connect to the facebook. So what?

As a third party website one would never want to just connect without fetching any user info. But what facebook has done will really help you solving problems and seriously saying, building business would be whole lot difficult.

Still facebook connect can be used in an intelligent way by sending users updates in your applications

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Tweet Tweet!

Twitter no doubt is the genext rss replacement for individuals to throw real time alerts to people. As in my position, I should be looking at the latency of message dispatching (thats what I work :P), I must say that twitter is an awesome tool too to integrate in websites along with rss and newsletters.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The new craze.. solve problems

Solving problems online. Seems like a cool idea but it turns out that the definitions of problems are whole lot different in this arena. From what I've learnt, there exists basically two types of problems which can be solved online:

1. Real World Problems: In the online context, solving real world problems not at all means solving poverty or child labour problem, here we deal with solving problems that makes meaning to make life comfortable and things which makes meaning in the sense they sort of become required for day to day life. So orkut is solving real world problem of connecting to friends. But take the example of twitter. Its not required but its fun sharing what you are doing with friends.

2. Virtual World Problems: Solving these problems are sort of add ons on day to day life. Twitter has set a good example of how solving virtual world problem can become a phenomena.

Though there exists no clear way of classifying the two types of problems. e.g., twitter one day may be solving real world problem replacing orkut and orkut may be solving then the virtual world problem. Now suppose an app which tells users to update what fun they have done and send tweets to the interested users who want to know about such things, twitter wil be solving real world problem then. There may be cases when some solution is solving real world problems for some people while solving virtual world problem for others.

So thats the background you should be knowing. A month back I was having a discussion with Vineesh creating a virtual world application similar to google maps but creating a new virtual world where everything will start from scratch with a hope that 10 years later may be people are setting up their business over the app. And thats the same talk where started the loxlog (LOG your LOCationS) concept solving some real world problems using mobi alerts.

The craze now of solving problems is bubbling up from inside and out(at my app in dev :P).
to be continued...

Thursday, October 2, 2008

hummmm haah

mash ups.. m loving them. And anyways, its not a time to blog. I should be working :).

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The right plan - hit or click

"Just looking for a big plan". Trust me, everybody thinks so. But how exactly to look for the plan.

Each day is full of lot of plans but how to decide which plan to look for and which not. Lot of plans are dropped from life just without any reason. But there do exist a definite way of figuring out the right plan for you.

Think of any plan that came to your mind and you did not work on it. There may exist several reasons but lot of reasons will surely be "I dunno". Now pick the plan and follow these steps:

1. Try to live in world with your plan for sometime. If you like it go ahead otherwise just drop it

2. Now figure out the market for your plan and start browsing to find out how such plans work in terms of clients' participation. If the plan is unique and solving problems then just go analytically to figure out the participation. It is , trust me, fun.

3. Try to figure out the revenue channel/s from your plan and hwo much you will be able to generate by considering point 2 and charging feasibility considering client psychee, market and usefulness of your service.

4. Now figure out do you want to go ahead. Is this the plan which can satisfy you for now? If yes, go ahead.

So next time you think anything, just remember to read this. I would be glad if somebody corrects or modify me here.

Friday, August 15, 2008

EDITED :(

Since I am a graduate now, lets start talking some serious stuff. The old undergraduate time was fun and I would proudly call myself a serial entrepreneur who failed in all the attempts he made. I was just figuring out the reasons why it was so. The major ones being:

1. Lack of patience

2. Lack of coming out with a good revenue model

3. Lack of investment

4. I almost coded every product I thought would be fun and could make revenue for me.

5. Lack of a good plan in mind though here I may admit that I missed the real good plans in life in which I could have afforded to settle for some years. The main reason being I was just afraid of starting the whole thing on my own.


That was it. I am working currently at "xxxxxxx" and very much satisfied with the job I am doing, so much that I could think of thinking that its good that no plan worked for me because I could have missed the opportunity of working in "xxxxxxx". The culture, challenges (and remunerations :P ) are so cool that I admit that its like my dream job of starting with a start up. (though "xxxxxxx" is far ahead of start ups but my every day is just like working for a start up here)


Although I learnt very crucial things while my stay at IIT, I am just not satisfied with days of my life there. The big things, I learnt and should be known for anyone who is starting up are taking care of following things regarding your plan

1. Market: What kind of market the plan is targeted. And most importantly, how easy is to reach that market. The strategies of reaching the market should not be the point at this time but having an idea is really good.

2. Technical feasibility: This is another important you should not miss out. You need to figure out are you capable of making the things done or you will need people for the plan. Keep a good care of people if latter is the case and hit them at the right time. All you need to know is his expectations and give him a penny more.

3. Investors' interest: You need to know what kind of investors you going to approach (in case you want to one). Keep the things done keeping this in mind. Best example is choosing php vs jsp and servlets. I hope you know what I am talking about.

4. Data Collection: The biggest part. Nobody is going to do it and you need to design strategies how to keep in contact with parties of interest and most importantly how to get in contact with them. e.g., if I am launching preparations, I need to invest my mind a lot on how to get contact of every coaching institute in India. This is the biggest challenge of the whole game and is the most important thing which makes the game adventurous.


THE DREAM BIG.... BIGGER

I must admit that I am very much a restless kind of man whose mind surprises him with the thoughts. But I really dream of dreaming something big on which I work and make it bigger than imaginations. But every day, (try it any day you meet me) there is a plan cropping in my mind which goes to my diary if at the end of the day I start looking dreams or go to bin if obstacles and feasibility is seen. So the biggest requirement is the plaNext.
Enough for today. May the spirit lives within. Aameen :P

Sunday, April 27, 2008

7th of July, 2015

Well nothing particular about the day. But I like the date- 07/07. May be because 7 is my lucky number and on 07/07/07, I did something unusual, very much unexpected from me. But whatever.
School days were whole lot of fun. I dunno where this all suddenly dropped into but I want to discuss that part first before I discuss our 2015.
People used to look at me and scold the bloody system which is making life so much tough for us. Yes, I am talking about the overloaded bags. I kinda was always irritated when people used to do that. Why don't they make one e-notepad cum reader for me when they pity so much on me. That was seriously unacceptable.

April 27, 2008: I forgot all those days but someone ignited it all back.


July 7, 2015:
The Class: The class bell rings. The big screen is turned on and here we continue with Newton's Second Law animations. Blah Blah happens, children download the content to their janter devices and class is over now.

The Test: The master janter is turned on. Everybody's janters' content and networking except with master is locked. And the test is passed to poor kids. They fill them with their handwriting (most of them are ugly ones, I bet). The time is over and all the tests are submitted in the next millisecond. The janters are again unlocked and the parents receive a mail of what their prides have done.

Monday, March 31, 2008

The Stages

Product Development
The first and foremost thing is have to your product. It is assumed that market research has been done, competitors have been figured out and the revenue generation module has been thought of and well surveyed.
Then comes, the phase of product planning. The rule is simple, be one step or atleast at par to your competitor. If you fail this step, you have failed in your venture.
Product Development should be as per product planning. Not this is important point. Don’t run from technical issues. Deal with every micro issue with full details.

Creating Up Front
What actually is upfront. It is not necessarily a fake series of steps you need to take or implement which involves brand building stag. Win some innovative venture of the year etc. prizes or do whatever according to your product. But building a product upfront is whole lot important than your marketing and promotion.

Marketing and promotion
You know better than me. You wouldn’t have been reading it otherwise. But my experiences say people dive into this stage very much earlier because they are impatient to see the result of their innovation. But if you have confidence in your product, go with the proper stages.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Reseller opportunities

I was just looking for domain reseller opportunities and came across several nice opportunities in resellers as general. Just wanted to blog on these.

Computer Resellers
www.inetstart.com have come with a good concept of reselling hardwares from your front end. You will obtain a reseller license after which you can contact merchants and as you get an order, you just call the merchant and they ship to your customer with your company's name. The concept has not been implemented in India but doing well in US, UK and Canada.

Domain Resellers
Buy a reseller account from any hosting company like godaddy. You need to pay an initial money and will receive commission from each domain purchase from your front end. I needed a small hosting reseller opportunity too along with the domain reseller. But what godaddy is providing is too much for the general customers, so I haven't still purchased domain reselling till now. The basic plan costs $99 per year. If they would have given small hosting reseller opportunity too, I would have definately chosen it.
Currently I am looking for reseller club. and yeah no need to mention google adwords resellers