Always remember Carpe Diem
One of the hard lessons that I have learned this year is “Always remember Carpe Diem“. The corollary is that “If you don’t execute on your idea quick, someone else definitely will.”
For example, long back Vikram had this idea that there should be a company which takes care of odd chores such as electrical maintenance or plumbing, basically handyman work. Yesterday, I saw www.handiman.in on the back of an auto rickshaw. I came home and checked it out and it does exactly that. It’s a very useful service and seems reasonably affordable, at least for IT people. I’m sure lot of people in Bangalore will go for it.
Today, Mrinal pointed to www.indimeme.com, a TechMeme for the Indian blogosphere.
I started kicking myself.
I’ve had this idea for months but I couldn’t really move on it because I don’t have the knowledge yet, for example, about clustering algorithms. However, I did brainstorm it with a couple of friends and thought we’ll work it out. But a single person beat us to it.
There is a range of reasons why such a website is a good idea, probably the same reasons why TechMeme is indispensable too:
- Allows people to see what are the latest topics that Indian bloggers are talking about.
- Allows people to see the discussions across blogs, not just one blog
and its comments.
- Encourages the above type of discussion.
- The portal can become the gateway of the Indian blogosphere.
- For the website creator’s point of view, it can bring in a lot of visitors. And subsequently, advertisers.
- An indispensable website means the creator of the website is indispensable too. Just like Gabe Rivera is everything behind the scenes of TechMeme. (Let’s face it, we’re all replaceable in our workplaces.)
And so on.
Anyway, the only downside I’ve noticed about IndiMeme.com is that the clustering results aren’t good yet, but the thing is it is already out there. It has been executed. It needs refinement. And I’m sure it’ll get there.
I don’t know whether I should add this idea to my already-long personal ‘deadpool’. Sigh.
When I started thinking about this idea, I came across one paper called Mining blog stories using community-based and temporal clustering which explained how this is a special type of clustering that takes time into account. They call it:
“[the] Content-Community-Time model that can leverage the content of entries, their timestamps, and the community structure of the blogs, to automatically discover stories. Doing so also allows us to discover hot stories.”
I was thinking whether the same idea can be applied to an RSS aggregator and then I found that was done too as well.
I guess there are simply no low-hanging fruit left in this accelerated world.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Biking to Ooty
It all started on Monday last week when Lakshman tweeted if anybody was game for a weekend trip. Ashwin tweeted back saying yes.
Later they asked me over email. My reply was “Why Ooty!?”. They replied saying “It doesn’t matter. We’re going for the drive.” Two days later, we three were driving to Ooty on bikes at night.
My descriptions below are in twitter style as an ode to how the trip
happened. ( But of course, my usual writing style will resume after
this post 
)
We started off at 8 at night. First stop was some lip-smacking food at Kamat Lokaruchi:
9.10 pm : We’re on the way! 3 twitterers on bikes.
9.25 pm : Getting out of Bangalore is the toughest thing.
9.30 pm : @scorpion032 says 2020 will also be the year of the linux desktop.
10.32 pm : @cruisemaniac and @scorpion032 are tweeting away…
1.40 am : Taking a break.
2.33 am : Admiring the mysore palace…
3.16 am : Sleep getting to me… But we’re taking breaks and having fun. In Nanjangud.
3.20 am : Another break.
3.34 am : Listening to My Sacrifice at 330 am at 70 kmph on bike with the wind in your hair is something to be experienced.
4.10 am : We find a freakin’ coffee day in the middle of nowhere. Waiting for capuccino.
6.15 am : Mudumulai forest.
6.20 am : Animals! Elephant, deer, peacock, mongoose, eagle, woodpecker, … All right there next to us… Thank heavens the elephant didn’t think we were pesky…
6.45 am : Exiting Mudumulai forest.
My favorite photo from this trip (notice the clouds and the bike):
Why You Should Run
One fine day, I was running by myself. It was a few weeks before Barcamp Bangalore 5. I got an idea that I should talk about a non-techie topic at Barcamp since I’ve been giving tech talks for the past few years and I wanted a change of pace. I brainstormed many ideas on the reason for the talk, what to say and how to explain, etc. all during that one run.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend BCB5. But I stored the notes in a safe place. And when BCB6 was announced, I wanted to be sure to talk this time around.
A few weeks back, Ramjee called me and asked whether we can talk about running. I smiled and thought to myself “Great minds think alike”. Or at least “Runners think alike”.
So I made a ppt and we landed at Barcamp on Saturday morning. We had never discussed the presentation. And we were going to give a session on it. Truly unconference style.
Note: The slides below have been modified to make it useful for a web audience. It has a lot more text now.
| DownloadBarcamp crowds are very inquisitive and so we didn’t actually go past half the slides, which is actually a good thing. Instead, we discussed a wide range of things about running right from finding good places to run to trouble with dogs.
In spite of the delays causing us to start at 12:45 (which means almost lunch time) the discussion went on till 1:45 and 90% of the 30-40 odd crowd were present till the end. When we went to grab what was left of lunch, lot of people asked us questions including how to avoid knee pain (tip: it’s the shoes). Since questions are always a good sign, I think it was a successful discussion.
We both still consider ourselves amateurs at running but at the end of the day its an activity we like and Barcamp is a perfect platform to talk about our passions.
Oh, and if you’re still not a believer, I’ll end with a quote:
Games require skill. Running requires endurance, character, pride, physical strength, and mental toughness. Running is a test, not a game. A test of faith, belief, will, and trust in ones self. So hardcore that it needs a category all to itself to define the pain. When game players criticize, it’s because they aren’t willing to understand, not because they’re stronger. Running is more than a sport; it’s a lifestyle. If you have to ask us why we run, you’ll never understand, so just accept.
– Jessica Propst
Update: SlideShare decided to make it a Barcamp spotlight presentation:
The online slides has had 1274 views and 116 downloads as of this writing (2008-05-04 Sun 10:04 PM).
Web dev frameworks vs RIA
How do traditional web development frameworks cope with RIAs?
By RIAs, I am referring to the Flex/Silverlight model (Ajax has a hybrid model in my view, so I’m not discussing that here since I don’t want to muddle up the question).
Coming back to topic, I see that the traditional web development frameworks are inside-out and RIA development as outside-in:
| Traditional web dev frameworks | RIA frameworks |
|---|---|
| Flow: controller ⇒ model ⇒ view (pages) | view ⇒ controller ⇒ model | Everything built into the framework. View is generated via templates. | View is designed separately and it’s what runs first. Backend is a bunch of web services. |
Question: How is this resolved practically?
For example, how do people using Django or Ruby on Rails actually write, say, Flex frontends for their websites?
Do they ditch their templates/rhtml? Do they design the RIA first and then the web service, or the other way around? … etc.
I couldn’t figure out the answer and since there are people out there doing it, I’m hoping the “hoosgot” i.e. lazy web gods will answer.
What is NDTV’s online strategy?
I wonder if all of these are actually part of some game plan:
- ndtv.com
- ndtvtravels.com
- ndtvgadgets.com
- ndtvshopping.com
- ndtvlumiere.com
- ndtvmovies.com
- ndtvmusic.com
- ndtvgoodtimes.com
- ndtvcooks.com
- ndtvprofit.com
- ndtvimagine.com
- doctorndtv.com
- cricketndtv.com
- etc.
It looks to me like they’re trying to mimic Network18’s portfolio:
- ibnlive.com
- tech20.com
- storeguru.com
- buzz18.com
- cricketnext.com
- indiwo.com
- moneycontrol.com
- jobstreet.com
- commoditiescontrol.com
- yatra.com
- bookmyshow.com
- compareindia.com
- etc.
The reason why I say that is because Network18 seems to be putting in effort to make each vertical the best-of-breed in the respective categories. For example, MoneyControl, Yatra, BookMyShow, Tech2.0 are popular.
But many of NDTV’s counterparts don’t seem to have any value-add. That’s the impression I get when comparing, say, ndtvgadgets.com and tech2.com.
It’s interesting how these offline media businesses are venturing online and how they’re faring.
A productive homepage
I recently started using my own home page in Firefox as a start-point for all the important links that I should visit from time to time. It’s been a good boost for productivity since it keeps the main thing the main thing:
This was just a simple ‘idealet’ inspired by Opera’s Speed Dial feature.
The advantages to using this are:
- Quick access to things you need to access like your website management page or your bank website, instead of hunting around in the bookmarks menu.
- Avoids the need for a bookmarks toolbar. I feel a toolbar takes too much screen real-estate compared to its usefulness.
- When you’re bored, you open your homepage and visit some of the vast websites where you can learn stuff, like the ones under the ‘Grey Matter’ section.
- It jogs your memory to visit some of the websites that you should visit from time to time, like any forums that you want to be updated on (instead of letting them flood your inbox).
- Having a simple local HTML page as the homepage is much faster than an online start-page.
- Backing up/restoring/editing a HTML file is simpler than a bookmarks database.
The only thing missing is that when I open a new tab, it should
automatically open with the home page instead of a blank page. This can
be done using the Tabbrowser Preferences add-on.
Update: Or you can simply use the many Speed Dial addons to Firefox out there…
How about an Indian amateur music album?
My latest “power song” is the flagship song of the Colourblind band. Who are these guys? I have no idea. From what I read on their website, they were/are a couple of rockers who got their album recorded with Sony Music India in 1999. Not sure how many copies they actually sold. They had got great reviews by newspapers but apparently still didn’t get support from their recording company:
We sold 10,000 copies in 2 weeks. Regardless of that Sony didn’t put out more copies in the market and published only 500 CDs.
Nine years later, we have the ubiquitous www giving opportunities for everyone to spread their music. For example Kal-Jug by Azad Zeeshan to some awesome fusion flute by Bapu Padmanabha on Muziboo and many more bands featured in the RadioVerve channels.
Unfortunately, you get to hear these songs only online inside a browser. Why is this a problem? Because I listen to most of my music on my iPod during commute, runs or walks.
This is why I really wish Muziboo/RadioVerve/etc. would consider producing an Indian “amateur” music album. A while back, Niara and myself were discussing that the potential is really big considering the online virality (do a couple of youtube videos or at least put some of the mp3s online) all the way to marketing at the national level in cahoots with a big production house. Imagine how many college bands would want to be featured.
Oh heck, you could even do a reality show on TV to select the bands whose songs get to be in the album! (well, okay, maybe this one is a stretch)
On the other hand, I sorely wish there was an indie iTunes store in India where I could purchase these songs. Or perhaps even a Sell-a-Band for an Indian audience.
For now, I’m waiting for MusicYogi.com to deliver my copy of The Raghu Dixit Project’s new album. Can’t wait to listen to ‘Mysore Se Aayi Re’ on my iPod.
Why does crowdsourcing work?
Tim O’Reilly’s definition of Web 2.0 makes it clear that “crowdsourcing” is one of the defining features of Web 2.0, not only RIAs:
“The service automatically gets better the more people use it.”
Crowdsourcing is about taking it to the next step where people ‘contribute’ something to the ’system’.
There are many people and companies trying to make crowdsourcing work in different areas. For example, at Kluster, the participants get to design a product, etc. and the participants who back the winning idea get to share the reward. What is interesting is the story behind Kluster:
Kaufman came up with the idea for Kluster at his last startup, Mophie, which makes iPod accessories and was recently sold to mStation for an undisclosed sum. One of Mophie’s hit products is the Bevy, an all-in-one iPod Shuffle case, bottle opener, cord-wrap, and keychain. The company designed it at last year’s MacWorld conference in 72 hours with input from 30,000 customers using software that was a precursor to Kluster. According to Kaufman, Mophie sold hundreds of thousands of the $15 cases.
And from the June 2006 Wired magazine article:
Melcarek (a registered user at InnoCentive.com) solved a problem that stumped the in-house researchers at Colgate-Palmolive. The giant packaged goods company needed a way to inject fluoride powder into a toothpaste tube without it dispersing into the surrounding air. Melcarek knew he had a solution by the time he’d finished reading the challenge: Impart an electric charge to the powder while grounding the tube. The positively charged fluoride particles would be attracted to the tube without any significant dispersion.
“It was really a very simple solution,” says Melcarek. Why hadn’t Colgate thought of it? “They’re probably test tube guys without any training in physics.” Melcarek earned $25,000 for his efforts. Paying Colgate-Palmolive’s R&D staff to produce the same solution could have cost several times that amount – if they even solved it at all.
More examples are:
- Dell Idea Storm where customers vote for what products they want Dell to do next - this is how Dell’s recent introduction of Linux laptops happened.
- Get Satisfaction which is “people-powered customer service”
- Intel asking the crowd on what is the next Google
- MicroPledge and co fund os where people pledge their money for software ideas they like, once a good amount is reached, someone takes up that pledge and works on it. If he/she completes it successfully, they get the money and the crowd gets the software they want. This is the crowdsourced version of a bounty.
- Sell-a-Band where people pledge their money on bands they like. Sufficient money implies the band gets to record an album with that money. If the album sells, the crowd, the band and the SellaBand website share the profit.
- Kiva for microfinance loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.
- Wesabe for personal finance.
- CrowdSpirit for electronics.
- Threadless for T-shirts.
- Everywhere Mag for a travel magazine.
- Crowdsourcing.com is crowdsourcing a book on crowdsourcing. Say that fast thrice.
- We can also include Youtube under the entertainment category.
- And many many more.
Heck, we even have an O’Reilly book on ‘Programming Collective Intelligence’ (which has been sitting on my to-read list for too long).
The biggest and best example, of course, is Wikipedia, one of the top 10 largest websites in the world.
The article that blew my mind (and got me wondering about crowdsourcing in the first place) is the Wikipedia page on British crown succession (via IndiaUncut) - this page lists 1388+ people who are in the succession line for the crown!
But I wonder, why did Wikipedia work? Or rather, what makes people contribute to Wikipedia?
The best research on this topic that I found was the article What Motivates Wikipedians? in the CACM monthly magazine:
I wonder if the companies mentioned above are specifically tapping into some of these motivations.
The article goes on to explain the relative importance of these motivations in their survey. I was seriously surprised at how high Ideology and Values rank here! If you get a chance, do read the whole article, it’s a good piece of research.
Another interesting research was the paper Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia which traces how a casual visitor starts reading Wikipedia and goes on to become a member of the community, and how the social structure and technological aspects enable this.
I think I’m now beginning to understand what Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) said when he was asked the same question:
Love. It isn’t very popular in technical circles to say a lot of mushy stuff about love, but frankly it’s a very very important part of what holds our project together.
I have always viewed the mission of Wikipedia to be much bigger than just creating a killer website. We’re doing that of course, and having a lot of fun doing it, but a big part of what motivates us is our larger mission to affect the world in a positive way.
…
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.
Although this reasoning may apply to Wikipedia which is an encyclopedia and information-centric, I wonder whether the same applies to the other examples above. For example, consider Threadless.com for T-shirt designs… what are the motivations for people in that community? And how much does the website’s social and technological structure play a role? What are the magic ingredients that make a crowdsourcing website become successful?
Maybe I should crowdsource this question. Hmmm.
Maybe it is not different from any other kind of website which becomes successful but I think crowdsourcing websites are distinct from content websites like SmashingMagazine.com or e-commerce websites like Amazon/eBay, etc.
Now, the next question is has anybody successfully crowdsourced anything in an India-specific way?
Update on 2008 May 13: ReadWriteWeb has a similar list.
Useful Websites for India
Like a broken record, I keep coming back to What are the killer web applications for India? So, I decided to make a list.
A list of websites that are useful for most people in India. But what kind of websites am I looking at? The website should be something useful enough to compel a person without internet access to go to a cybercafe just to access this website.
Here’s what I have so far:
- RedBus.in for bus tickets
- Also KSRTC.in for govt bus tickets in Karnataka
- IRCTC.co.in for train tickets
- Inasra.com to book hotel rooms
- HungryZone.com (especially HungryBangalore.com) for restaurant reservations and home delivery
- YellowPages.Sulekha.com for finding local businesses and services
- BookMyShow.com for movie tickets
- MapMyIndia for maps and driving directions (even in Bangalore)
- Handiman for handyman services
Note: The definition of usefulness here is in terms of the concept. However, these websites are not verified in any sense. There’s no guarantee that they are good or even trustworthy, but I would encourage you to check out their services if they are useful. That’s the whole point.
I’ll keep updating this list as and when I find more such websites.
Update: Added BookMyShow, KRSTC.in, MapMyIndia.
Update on 2008 May 15 : Added Handiman
Web Innovation 2007 Day 2
Yesterday, I attended Day 2 of the Web Innovation 2007 conference.
The irony to note is that the conference website is so NOT Web 2.0. For example, where are the slides that people can download? These guys can learn a thing or two from the foss.in website and conference. Again, for a web innovation conference, why is there no wifi? How are you supposed to access the websites?
On the other hand, this conference has been surprising to me in the sense that it actually turned out to be interesting. I think the quality of people who have come to speak here is high and that’s probably because these people are high up in the decision-making chain and they have come to talk about what they do best - websites and business.
Of course, the other half of the speakers are doing just boring sales pitches but that didn’t deter the audience from asking tough questions and seeking their value from it. They even directly questioned how their company lives up to what was described in the presentation.
Continuing Day 1’s trend, here are the transcribed notes:
Jayabalan (CTO, Netmagic) on “Building scalable and resilient infrastructure for web applications”
- Users, Connectivity, IT infrastructure, Application infrastructure
- Challenges - Growth (number of concurrent users), Hardware failure, Software bugs, Security threats
- Management and maintenance, Connectivity/routing issues, Secure connectivity, Cost
- Failures can’t be avoided
- Features and functionality alone not sufficient, Performance also required
- Difficult to get people with end-to-end knowledge
- Recommended setup - Storage, SANSw, Web + App + DB, Switching, Accelerator, Firewall
- Develop for future - scalability in all layers
- Performance optimizing techniques - Compression, TCP multiplexing, TCP optimization, TCP buffering, Caching, CDN, Load balancing, URL/content/cookie switching, Content modification, SSL offloading, Surge protection
- Please outsource parts of these infrastructure to experts who have good infrastructure and service
- Netmagic caters to all of the above (can it get more blatant than this?)
- jb at netmagicsolutions.com
- Replies to audience that Yes, Providers in India do have such infrastructure now. Power and Connectivity are major issues that you can’t scale in-house, so outsource it.
Rohit Varma (Founder and CEO, Techtribe) on “Delivering Value through Social Networks”
- (Unfortunately, missed this session in the business track because the session in the other tech track was long)
- Get into the press, only way, do not depend on viral marketing
Web Innovation 2007 Day 1
Yesterday, I attended Day 1 of the Web Innovation 2007 conference.
The first half of the day was quite useful, but the latter half turned out to be pure marketing pitches by the sponsors.
First and foremost, I think the title of the conference is a misnomer. Although it says “Web Innovation 2007: The Nextgen Web Technology Revolution: 2.0 & Beyond”, it should have been “Web 2.0 : How can India catch up” - the discussions were really about the ‘current’ situation of things rather than ‘innovation’ or ‘future’. By ‘current’ I mean, the internet products and services market in the western world and how India can catch up.
The No.1 and possibly only gripe that most speakers mentioned which is a barrier for internet and Web 2.0 to become omnipresent is that broadband connectivity is pitiful in India.
I agree to this as far as locality reach, reliability, and pricing is concerned. However, let’s compare it to mobile phones which is the second-most discussed topic, on how it is booming and all that. Why did mobile phones take off and not broadband? I think it’s because mobile phones had a killer application - communication. That too, communication any time, anywhere.
Similarly, let’s take the case of computers in many shops and distributors - accounting solutions whether it is by the local software shop or well-known ones like Tally, they bought computers just so that they can use these software. Just like Lotus 1-2-3 for Apple Mac I in the history of computers.
Unless we have killer applications that people in India want to use, why would anyone want to buy a computer or a broadband connection? And if there are killer applications, won’t there be demand for broadband connections, and won’t supply follow? Just like the mobile telephony market today?
Maybe I’m completely off on this one, but I still don’t yet see killer applications on the web today for the common man in India, let alone Web 2.0-style applications. Forget common man, how about the educational aspects of things, if there are products and services that can be beneficial to school and college students, that alone is a big deal. As B V Naidu (one of the advisors in the Karnataka IT committee) said, 54% of the Indian population is below 20 years!
Naidu also mentioned that there are 7 million new phones being bought every month, you won’t find such a high number anywhere else in the world. Yet, there are a meagre 1.6 million mobile internet users. Again, what are the killer applications for them? At least, I never felt the need for internet on my mobile phone. (As an aside, getting it working for the first time is a pain which is another major factor).
