Startup In India - Manish Singh

Text is better.

Yes. Test is better. There are many reasons, but mainly because I can skip contents while reading. There is pile of information. It has been gathering there since long. I am in mood of picking what interests me and leave the rest. Sure, audio includes some emotional touch, but text is better. It's my time, my preferences and my mood!

But,
I really loved Steve jobs speech. I would like to hear it live, in audio. Maybe because I have read it many times and I know the context. Hearing it would be a nice addition. I also have a audio of Larry page, giving some speech. It's long.  Roughly 1 hour. Even though I want to, I never really had patience to go through it all. I cannot skip what I don't want.

Lately I have been cribbing a lot.
Nothing unusual for me. People usually keep their mouth shut when I try to dive into a topic, hardly of their interest.

But sometimes situations change. Smart people do take interest and conversation becomes two-way. Lot of points come up which I could have never thought alone. Many of them, I would like to be reminded later.

Can I preserve those conversations? I have been thinking a lot about buying a recording device, so that I can record these short moments of two way fruitful discussion.

I am looking for,
 - Very small recording device.
 - Good microphone. Should record great even when in pocket.
 - At least 4 hours of recording.
 - (Great to have) Automatic conversion to bit rate I prefer (32kbps ogg/mp3 is good enough for voice recordings.)

Ex-Microsoft Exec Sued Over Google Job

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) sued Google Inc. (GOOG) on Tuesday, accusing it of poaching a top executive the search engine company had wooed away to head a new research lab in China.

The Redmond-based software power also sued the executive, Kai-Fu Lee, whose appointment Google trumpeted in a news release announcing the lab's establishment.
Full Story

I was in bathroom today, and one Idea struck me. Nothing unusual, But what is unusual is I went ahead and prepared a write-up.

What next?

Well something happened which also no unusual and happens all time to my best ideas, it is illegal.

just in case you are interested, I am posting what I was thinking and why it is not legal. If you want you can tell me your comments.

=======================================================================
www.BetterIR.com

As name suggests, it is 'Better Indian Railways.com'. If you are also sick of IR site like me, see the benefits BetterIR will provide

Remove all annoyances of IndianRail.gov.in
    Super fast search
    No Graphic/flashing ads
    No Irritating javascript
    No Pop ups!
    Will work on any browser you work with.
    99.999% uptime guaranteed.

Additional features
    Contact a travel agent, get tickets delivered at doorstep.
    Meet people traveling with you.

Technology
--------------
Prefetch pages from IndianRailways.com and cache.
Show queries based on internal cache.

Use rules like trains normally don't change route to validate cache.
Add additional information like weather inf
=======================================================================

After doing all this, I looked at  www.indianrail.gov.in
It says,

Limited Permission to Copy

You are permitted to print or download extracts from these pages for your personal use only. Any copies of these pages saved to disk or to any other storage medium may only be used for subsequent viewing purposes or to print extracts for personal use. You may not (whether directly or through the use of any software program) create a database in electronic or structured manual form by regularly or systematically downloading and storing all or any part of the pages from this site. No part of The Site may be reproduced or transmitted to or stored in any other web site, nor may any of its pages or part thereof be disseminated in any electronic or non electronic form, nor included in any public or private electronic retrieval system or service without Government of India, Ministry of Railways's prior written permission.

:(

If google does not prohibit somebody to fetch their content and show. Why these people?

I am feeling very helpless now

Keeping spirit level up

Long ago I wrote about keeping passion up. I still believe it. You need constant small successes for keep your desire burning. It's very easy to notice drastic drop in productivity,

Symptoms are,
    • Low focus
    • Extremely low productivity
    • Procrastination
    • Drawing pictures in mind instead of getting something done
    • Seeking consolation ?
    • Frustration ?

What are various setbacks?
    • Working but not seeing any results
    • Not able to determine clearly what to do
    • Focus diverted in too many directions.
    • Cannot validate what I am doing is correct
    • 80:20 rules, am I doing that 20 % stuff or that 80% stuff.


Steve Pavlina has some good points on how to reduce procrastination. I tried it and it did help. Still issues like clarity of actions and validations are not possible. Anyway, I need to keep myself reminded of that,

The best thing you can do is the right thing,
The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Keep working.

You’ve got to find what you love

This is an excerpt from the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

It’s well worth a read.

Stanford Report: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

[ Full Article ]

- Lot's of stuff. Mostly static pages, but doesen't feel like it.

 - Extremely simple to use and straight forward.

 - Very cool colors have been used. Mix of content and design is excellent.

 - Places ads in non-intrusive manner. Got atleast 3 click from me!

 - Job Hunt is great. KoolKampus themselves subscribe to various yahoo groups and allow users to see each groups mails there. No need of subscribing to any group. Bravo!
 

Lankmark: Yesterday, 09 May, 2005.

Agranee made first move towards generating money. Google page ads are now up on the site. Go on, click on some ads :)

How much money we make is irrelevent, important is we are moving forward. There are lot's of idea's in pipeline. Once functionality is complete, my next target would be to move towards marketing it.

Manish Singh

dot net spider

Another cool site from india on technology. Aimint purely at developers in .NET related technologies. According to website, they get 70000 hits per day. Sounds intresting. Good achievement in 11 months.  What is even more intresting is their quotation for offshore development center. I believe in typical services based industry, contracts are given to friends only.

As quoted by Mark, a notable writer on management practices,

"Everything being equal, a contract will be given to a friend. If everything is not equal, contract will still be given to a friend."

That's why services companies spend huge amounts on building contacts. If possible, I wish to see how many contracts dotnetspider got without actuall contacts?

Hi,

Yesterday, Prashant and biswas sent me excellent links of Chetna-jobs and nestjobs. Thanks guys.

I have decided to add Job related posting also on Agranee. Things in my mind are

People looking for resume
Send a mail to job@agranee.com, their mail is automatically forwarded to all registered memebers of Agranee.

People searching for job
Register themselves at http://agranee.com/joblisting and any mail forwarded to job@agranee.com will also be sent to them in daily digest form.

Difference from Chetna or nestjobs.
Agranee will also host these postings on its website. No need to get registered if you don't want to. Just visit site and latest posts is available in searchable format.


Best of both worlds

As Mailing list
http://agranee.com/joblisting will act as yahoo groups mailing list where mails are basic way of communication. Send mails to post/search/share job related information and receive mail to get informed.

As Jobsite like naukri or moster
A searchable collection of all posts. Activities like Deletion, modification, managing will be done by moderators.

I have also prepared a look and feel version of website. I need your comments,  I have never used such services.

Send in your suggestions.
Have a good day,
--- Sig ---

Vyom World
--------------
 - Lot's of google ads sprinkled over entire web page. Maybe it is generating good revenue for vyom group.
 - Around 3700 questions related to mainframes to Seibel
 - People don't look at c++ questions anymore. Even seibel gets some attention.
 - Poorely formatted answers.
 - ebook at 250 rupees - good ploy to generate money
 - 1388000 visits in two years i.e. around 2000 hits per day, this thing has potential
 - vyomworld is in
        new job postings
        free links
        free downloads
        free source code
 - Payment options of buying book: ICICI online transfer, dd, money order or simple old wrap money.
 - Vyom world claims to reach 16 million people simultaneiously.
 - Many questions have such lengthy answers, and rediculasly formatted, that it becomes a pain to read them.
 - Users cannot vote. I don't see any reason why not.

Suggestions for us
---------------------
 - Keep answers formatted
 - Cagegorise better
 - Allow people to search questions
 - Use pages more consisely
 - Include link to tutorial/help pages if somebody wants more information about it. Use images if possible.

I just received a mail from prashant, he sent link to some yahoo group, Chetna-jobs.

Prashant, is really finding some good links. They are quite helpful in reading the industry mindset. From now on, I would try to record what intrests me and post here.

These are my first notes on what I read,
---------------------------------------------
Chetna jobs reached 50000 members in 1 single year.
Chetna[the lady] gets 300 subscriptions, 250 messages per day
Chetna-jobs cost around Rs. 2500 per month.
Chetna-jobs is supirior to job sites because
     - Anybody can post job, not just companies or HR
     - Exceedingly simple to use. Just subscribe to group


How we can improve
-----------------------
People submitting jobs not only companies.
Website view of what is available.
A mailing list application - Imitate yahoo group
Send mails as daily bunch
Human moderator. Use baysian algorithm to reduce load.

I have been watching what is the return of people just by spreading the news. It has been around 34 page views per day. I don't know if it is bad or good, but it surely stresses that advertising is next way to go. It dosen't make people exited to talk about. Maybe that's not something I want to do.

Anyway, somebody truely said, The best thing you can do is the RIGHT thing, and worst you can do is NOTHING. I believe I am not doing the worst thing.

Today www.agranee.com went live!

It is just one hour since I have added page counter, and it is already well past 50. Good growth. My intentions are to keep it growing at the current pace.

While working on website, I was caught by do it best and for forever in first go syndrome. I kept trying and kept failing. I am Sorry, I know software development is an iterative process and one should proceed like that. This is specially true for software large amount of audience (like a website). What is important is keep moving forward than delaying forever for something nobody wants.

Fortunately I was able to come out of that syndrome. I uploaded whatever was cooked. It is fully working without few bells and wsitles and no open bugs ofcourse. Now strategy is to get it live, open it to few users (by not telling everybody) and see what they say? We did that and got few extremely valuable feedback. It's nice to hear from people about their first reactions.

Important aspect is to keep updating content so that people keep on coming back. Number of unique visitors is often 5% of total visitors, so it is very important for us to pull back existing visitors. They are important!

Let's move forward, I will be fixing few things before making new enhancements.

There are few things which needs to be fixed.
 - Fix formatting of questions and answers.
 - Fix IE bug which couses answers to get highlighted

Likewise, many things which needs to be done in immediate future,
 - Add sections for skill levels
 - Change index page to contain announcements, links to new questions added.
 - Highlight new questions in a different format
 - Enable email for new questions added.
 - ... list go on.

It is ironic, but working knowledge sometimes does not suffie in cracking interviews. Because of typical interview patterns (specially here in India), it becomes incresingly difficult for a good developer to face interviews after long quality working years. Various reasons could be but not limited to

# Working too focused on typical technologies nobody wants now
# Doing only what was needed to get things done etc
# Intervier asking for everything he has ever heard of
etc


I have created site http://manishsingh.topcities.com for assembling various types of interview questions at one place. Let's hope it serves its purpose.

_ManishSingh_

This is what I am going to adopt as development methodology for Agranee. There are various types of methods available, but the one, which suits us most, is " eXtreme Programming", because

- It is lightweight
- Well suited for Small teams
- Stress on Zero Defect Development (different from zero bug)
- Better results with novice programmers
- Test driven development
- And more

Lightweight - How I see it as something, which is easy to understand, adopt and use. If I don't understand it, I won't adopt it, If I don't adopt it, I won't use it and If I won't use it, who could I ever benefit from it. Coming from "Zen of Python", if an idea is hard to explain (thus hard to understand) it might be a bad idea in first place.

We really have to stress on Zero defect Development.  We are in product development; we may not get more chances of screwing up every now and then. Unlike those project-based companies where once payment is made, client is stuck and sucked forever. Companies end up paying even more to those "Change Management" managers who promise they can make it fly, what has not even be able to stand for years. It is very important for us to release stable builds rather than a featured monster filled with bugs.

eXtreme programming stress on pair programming. My past experience says it is very fruitful once you have clear goal and design in place. I believe, most of programmers, we would be hiring, would be starting to program for first time in real world application. Joining heads together is certainly going to help.

Test-driven development usually takes twice as much time as it will take you to code without writing test cases first. But eventually, each small change (change is inevitable) or bug will cost you at least 20 times to fix. Believe me, finding and fixing bugs on production environment is a nightmare. There are so many things that can go wrong. Eliminating those potential candidates takes lot more time and patience then I could ever have imagined. Bottom line, write test cases before you write functionality. If bugs are found, reproduce them in test case and then fix it.

I will keep writing about my learning's as I place guidelines in place and execute them. One thing I understand is, Software development process is slow. It's going to take time. What is important is keep moving in right direction.

Have a nice day!

This weekend, I tried going to Company Registration office, and register my company.

Though, as expected, Office was closed. Hope to see it open on weekday, i.e. when I go there next.

I am all geared up for starting my own company. I want to share my thoughts as I go along. What would be better place than a blog.

This is my first startup. According to SUCCESS rates in technology startups, your chances of reading what went wrong are very high. Hence, for all my non existent readers as of now, I want to put an STATUARY WARNING

NOT FOR FAINT HEARTED. THOSE WITH GUTS TO PAY FOR THEIR DREAMS SHOULD ONLY READ.

Thank You!
Manish

Iti Shree....