Microblogging seems to be the rage these days, so I was looking at Indian alternatives to Twitter, and I found Webaroo Gupshup (later I realized that I had already received an invite but hadn’t paid attention to it).

Gupshup seems to hit the sweet spot in the Indian context because its all about sms and mobile phones and combines it with the web. For example, you can start your own group and update your microblog via sms, and it’ll be automatically forwarded (as sms) to all those who subscribe to your channel. The posts are also available on a webpage. The added viral/social features are the ability to conduct your own polls or quizzes and even ratings.

I signed up for Gupshup and created my own microblog located at http://sms.webaroo.com/channels/Swaroop.

This got me thinking how people actually promote their microblog, and it turns out that one of the important things is a widget on their blog that points to the microblog, especially the Twitter badge.

So, I was looking for a widget for Gupshup as well but couldn’t find one. Why not write one myself?

It seemed pretty easy to create it using Flex because Gupshup now has RSS feeds. And just a hour and half of tinkering got me to create this:

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“When a friend moves away, they leave behind silence.”

The World’s First Midnight Marathon took place right here in Bangalore on Saturday midnight. It was held in the area surrounding the iGate office near ITPL.

Niara and myself had decided to run the half-marathon. We didn’t even think about the full marathon because we have had no preparation at all, and we were about to run the half marathon just like that. Just the previous week, we both were facing leg pains/injuries but that didn’t matter on the D-day.

The place had a festive atmosphere - with “dollu kunitha”, clowns on stilts and even fire-eaters. There were bands playing in the main area keeping people entertained when the run was going to start, they were playing pretty good music although I wish they had better presentation skills.

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The past couple of weeks has been a rollercoaster ride for us and for ion.

Sales has been very good so far, but our observation is that people in India are still hesitant to buy online from reasons such as credit card security concerns (understandably so) to recently Paypal changing their UI making it more difficult for the average person to understand what to do. So, we started accepting offline payments and that has worked out well.

What’s the response to ion? Simply amazing. I mean if you think about it, it’s just a charger (<marketing-pitch>and works really really well</marketing-pitch>), and yet people are so appreciative and supportive of what we are trying to do. The clincher is that it solves a real problem. I’ve often heard the phrase “I just needed something like this.”

As we say in our about page:

Moral of the story : “See a need, fill a need” — ‘Robots’ movie.

The three biggest points about “ion” (both the company and the product) that people like are:

1. We took the idea to execution. This alone amazes people. I still remember what Jace once said: “Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.”

2. The statement we make : “Made in India. Available only in India.” and “We are just Indians who want to make products for India.” Nothing much to be said here, except that we mean it and it’s not something we say lightly or say it for the sake of it. And no, we’re not going to rephrase it as “I’m just an Indian who wants to develop products in India for everyone in the World” as someone suggested.

3. We have a very good finishing - the ion itself and the packaging looks very good and has a professional presentation. At the right price point.

Another aspect is how word-of-mouth has helped ion and we were banking on that because we do not have a marketing budget other than the posters we are giving to our friends to put up in their company notice boards. Most people came to know about ion through emails, and it’s surprising how effective email forwards are - the chain just keeps going on and on, and many times my friends had come to know even before I sent it to them because someone had already forwarded it!

Processing all the ion emails is both a chore and fun…

The worst mail we’ve got is:

first time in india single click orkut programs launching a product,website,service etc. but dont have enough money to market your product,service,website etc.

there are more than 3 crore registered resident indian on orkut out of 8 crore indian internet user.noboby can question the potentional of orkut.

orkut single click tools can help u to reach 3 crore indians at cheapest price possible.

the features of orkut single click program are as follows:

1)Single click to scrap all your friends. 2)A Single click can directly take u to a user’s scrap book or album 3)A single click directly creates a topic in all the groups u have joined 4)A Single click helps u to join a community. 5)IDEAL for people who frequently use ORKUT,people who want to market their product.

Free stuff included : 1)orkut FAN FLOODing 2)DATABASE of 8 crore email address 3)FREE orkut tweaks

i m gonna give this full package in a cd for 500 rs and shipping 50 Rs extra

plz call 098________(Editor’s Note: Full number not reproduced to protect the guilty)

Some of the best mails we have received are:

I would like to congratulate all three of you for your New product - “ion | power your music”. I wish you three develop more and more usable products for all of us. I would like to buy it even though i don’t have any of the product which needs usb charging.

and

If you are devising a marketing strategy for your company and this product, I will be glad to offer any assistance. I have worked in pre-Sales Europe for quite some time and my experience, given the remarkable nature of your product may prove helpful.

and

I am a B.Tech-III Electronics student. Came to know about you through some forward. I actually have few such ideas (related to electronics), but don’t know how to commercialize them. Can you help me out? Though I can get placed in some MNC easily, I am more interested in implementing my ideas.

I think this last mail was the best we’ve ever got. I’m starting to believe what Vikram says that more and more of this generation are thinking like this, and “want to do things for India”, and he/we mean that in a non-political non-hyper-patriotic manner. It’s just that simple “ness” in us.

And finally, some of the blogs that have written about us are:

• Amit Agarwal
• Aarthi Ramamurthy
• Shashidhar Desai

All in all, there’s more work to be done, but so far so good. There’s more to it behind the scenes, and perhaps I’ll write about it in another post.

After a long wait, the Nandini Layout children sponsored by Yahoo! Bangalore Employees get their own school. And I’m so glad to see that the yahoo sense of humor and style remains:

Many of these ideas were pitched in by Shivashankari, one of the most passionate yahoos I’ve ever seen:

Note: More schools means a need for more volunteers, especially with the Summer Camp in progress. So, if you’re interested, do take a look at the Parikrma website.

My friend Abishek Nair and myself were recently having a conversation over email where I kept prodding him about what he’s going to do next. You see, being a Bangalorean, he’s not a software engineer! He’s a vfx whiz. In normal English, that means he’s one of those guys who creates the visual effects in ads or movies that you might have seen. A couple of days after that email exchange, Abishek calls me and says that he’s got a contract with a Singapore company (with whom he had just finished a project) and was going there to work on even more cooler stuff.

I was happy to hear that because I’ve seen some of his work and I think he really is talented, all he needs is a platform to showcase his skills, and this new gig should be a very good opportunity for him.

We met up a couple of days before he took off, just to catch up. He showed me some of his latest work and I was just blown away. You must have seen the latest Limca ad on TV featuring Riya Sen…

He went on to explain the software that he uses and how “node-based” software has shaked the vfx industry literally, thanks to the popularity of Apple Shake, and so on. I was surprised at how much painstaking effort is required to create these visual effects - we take movies like King Kong for granted but the amount of work behind the scenes is mind-boggling.

Coincidentally, Dad had recently bought a new Sony DCR-DVD 708E handycam and I had brought it over to show it to Abishek… I got a brainwave - why not make an interview? It need not be anything professional, just something that happened. I think Kiruba’s enthusiasm, while encouraging podcasters in a session at BarCampBangalore3, had rubbed off on me.

And here I present to you - the first ever video that I’ve ever shot! The best parts are the demos of Abishek’s works and his description of how it was created.

Note 1: You can also download the video for offline viewing.

Note 2: The audio quality is a little faint in the beginning, but much better after we switched off the fan

If you are interested to know more, you can write to Abishek - his email address is abisheknair (at) gmail.com.