Anjanesh

Linkedin's April Fool Hoaxes

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:29:16 PDT

Every year we want to know Google's april fools' hoaxes. This year was no different. But has anyone noticed linkedin ? This is what I found on linkedin from my People You May Know section.

(Click on the image to view the full "resume")

Google Agarbatti (Incense)

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:55:48 PDT

My friend Sudhir bought this from the local store.

Read : Google Agarbatti. (Agarbatti = Incense)

Update : Thanks to Sumit Ashok Kesarkar for the clarification. its Gugal which means Guggul == made from the sap of the plant "Commiphora mukul"

Email Newsletter Subscription via GFC & GAE

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:11:37 PDT

There is one major limitation when sending out legit mass emails via SMTP ("compose") - a daily cap on the number of emails allowed to be sent from a mailbox. This applies to most e-mail service providers.
Google Apps Standard, the free edition, allows a maximum of 500 outgoing mails per day for each user id.
Even the Primier edition which costs $50 per user a year limits outgoing mails at 2000 per day for every email id.

There are two cost-effective ways to send out newsletter emails via Google's services - Google Friend Connect (GFC) and Google App Engine (GAE).

Google Friend Connect

A lot of people are not unaware of the fact that you can actually send out newsletters for free to your subscribers via Google Friend Connect (GFC).
The catch is that the users have to be susbcribed exclusively via Google's Subscribe button without which there is no way for the newsletter to reach the user.
This is really a tough catch as you got to have it's subscribe button right from launch date.
Its a major turnoff, especially when a website collects registration infomation via a form and sends the data to a database, after which emails are sent separately.
Most email marketing systems like aweber, mailchimp, emailbrain, constantcontact, madmimi etc have the option to add subscribers manually externally.
And with GFC, you would not be able to retrieve the subscribed users' email ids via the control panel - export gives only names, ids, open id urls and thumbnail images.
So, at a later point in time, if you decide to switch to another email marketing system, you would need to send one last email asking them to re-subscribe to a new system.
Another bad news is that the subscriber's email address must be an open id ! (google a/c, yahoo a/c, twitter, AIM, netlog or any other openid)
Looks like all bad news, but if you think from the users' perspective, this is a good deal.
Its secure since there is no way for emails to be leaked accidentally.
Its safe because there is no room for errors in accidentally sending out mails to users who have unsubscribed.
Regarding the sender / from email address - It would be the same as the google account username. So if you don't want it sent from myusername@gmail.com, then create a google account under your app id. (This dual account chaos would be resolved soon : Google Apps Accounts Will Also Be Personal Google Accounts)
GFC is straigtforward, only bit of major work required is getting the audience to hit the google subscribe button.

Google App Engine

If you are not convinced with GFC then check out GAE - Google App Engine.
It has a daily free quota of sending emails to 2000 recipients. Link
After that, its billed at $0.0001 per recipient - thats just $1 for sending to an additional 10,000 recipients which can execute in about 2 minutes ! Link
But you've got to code to take advantage of GAE and your website should most probably be powered by GAE as well.

Google Groups

Then there is always google's mailing list at google groups.

But this cannot really be act a newsletter system.

If you want to submit ideas / suggestions to the Google team for its products, you can submit or vote at Google Product Ideas which is open to the public.

To WWW or not to

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:08:10 PDT

I've always been fond of naked domains. (FYI, http://mydomain.com is a naked domain, since it doesn't have www in front of it).
Lesser characters to type, see, spell out, hear and read. Much lesser overall energy.
I've always wondered why google.com always redirected to www.google.com and why Google App Engine stopped supporting mapping of an app to a naked URL. May not be the reason as mentioned here, but it does have its advantages.
So I joined the party a bit too late, but I am glad that I was not any later.
One of the advantages of using a subdomain (www is also a subdomain, it just so happens to be the default typing scheme for a website when the World Wide Web was born) is that cookies, if any, are transported to and forth - in the request and response headers - for that subdomain only.
If you have Web Developer, a FireFox addon, you can view all the cookies associated with a URL in the address bar.

Here is a one liner php script to demonstrate this :

<?php setcookie("UserID", "23", time() + 3600, "/", "anjanesh.net") ?>

http://www.anjanesh.net/cookie.php

http://test.anjanesh.net/cookie.jpg

Lets re-iterate the above, this time without typing in www for the first URL. CTRL + SHIFT + DEL and clear all cookies.

http://anjanesh.net/cookie.php

http://test.anjanesh.net/cookie.jpg

Now, when requesting for a pure jpg image, the cookie information is sent across to the server which is 17 bytes (Cookie: UserID=23) of useless data.
You can use Live HTTP Headers FireFox addon to view real-time browser-request and server-response headers.

http://anjanesh.net/cookie.php

GET /cookie.php HTTP/1.1
Host: anjanesh.net
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8pre) Gecko/20100710 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Namoroka/3.6.8pre
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2010 01:14:18 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.11
Set-Cookie: UserID=23; expires=Fri, 25-Jul-2010 02:14:18 GMT; path=/; domain=anjanesh.net
Content-Encoding: gzip
----------------------------------------------------------
http://test.anjanesh.net/cookie.jpg

GET /cookie.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: test.anjanesh.net
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8pre) Gecko/20100710 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Namoroka/3.6.8pre
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: UserID=23

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2010 01:14:21 GMT
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:54:05 GMT
Etag: "27284bc-8291-4400943e7f140"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 33425
----------------------------------------------------------

From Y!'s Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site :

If your domain is www.example.org, you can host your static components on static.example.org. However, if you've already set cookies on the top-level domain example.org as opposed to www.example.org, then all the requests to static.example.org will include those cookies.

But its not always possible to safe-guard this if your users don't type the www and you forget to force redirection to http://www
The best solution would be use a completely different domain name as a cookieless domain for static content.

Initially, I did not set the path & domain parameters in setcookie()

<?php setcookie("UserID", "23", time() + 3600) ?>

This does not send cookies across to the subdomain requests even when the cookie was set to the naked URL.
This does not even send cookies across to different paths.
But some browsers, or old browsers may behave differently, automatically adding cookies to *.example.org as Y! pointed out.

Dual-Monitors on Ubuntu

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:28:40 PDT

I recently got a second LCD monitor for my Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit machine and now I am using dual monitors which is pretty cool.
The first one is a 22" LG Flatron L222WS (1680 x 1050) and the recent one, which is now the primary one, is a 23" Dell SP2309W (2048 x 1152).
I had these connected to a 1GB nVidia GeForce 8600 GT graphics card. The LG via VGA (blue cable) and Dell via DVI (white cable).
Dual monitors don't seem to be enabled automatically. It has to specified in the graphics card's control panel. The following is for NVidia.

Sytem > Administration > NVIDIA X Server Settings

Enable your disabled monitor !
Enable Xinerama.
Save to Configuration File. (Click the button Save to Configuration File)
Logout & Re-Login to restart X - (CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE may or may not work)

Now, to get the panel onto the second monitor so that everything doesn't show as tabs on one monitor, you need to actually set a new (separate) panel for that monitor.

Right click on the current panel > New Panel. The new panel would probably be located on the right of the current monitor.
Right click on the new panel > Properties > Uncheck Expand, so that you can move the bar around to the next monitor
New panel > Properties > Orientation : Bottom
New panel > Add to Panel > Window List and Add.

You should now be able to minimize your second monitor tabs to the secnd monitor's panel.

Faster & Now Even Faster

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Mon, 31 May 2010 05:20:22 PDT

Navi Mumbai is really a happening place.
Now that I am in office all day long, I decided to downgrade my internet from 1Mbps unlimited to a 6GB per month limit. And the latter is at 4Mbps ! And for Rs 500 (~$10) a month. Last time I checked with almost every ISP in Navi Mumbai, a 1Mbps was like Rs 5,000 (~$100) a month ! I tried to get this at office, but the ISP is providing this only within Navi Mumbai.

10Mbps at Rs 1,400 (~$30) ! Now we are getting somewhere to afford what once was a luxury.
Update : 10Mbps at Rs 1000 (~$20)

HDD Media Cable Burnt !

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:41:53 PDT

I came back from office yesterday night, left my Ubuntu 10.04b1 PC switched on the whole night for an OS update and even though the update as like 30 mins tops, I was so sleepy that I didn't bother to wait that long.
When I got up in the morning, I had to reboot after the update, but I had to cold-reboot for some reason (GNOME was working with wierd characters).
But my machine never booted - and this was not at even the OS level as I was getting this message.

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.

No bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key

So no grub or bootloader missing fix etc.

I went to BIOS > Boot

Boot Menu Type : Normal
Boot Device Priority : <CD/DVD-ROM Drive>
                       <Hard Disk Drive>
                       <Floppy Drive>
                       <Ethernet>
Hard Driver Order    : No Hard Disk Drive
CD/DVD ROM Drive Order : <PT-TSSTcorp CDDV>
Removable Drive Order : No Removable Drive

I opened the chasis (which I should've right in the beginning saving all that time searching for a boot fix), and found that the power cable to the hard-disk was badly burnt !

E-Commerce Setup Costs based on Magento

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:36:16 PST

Money Suckers ! Thats the idea most clients seem to get when proposing a rough cost estimate range (±25%) for an e-commerce website based on Magento Commerce.
If you are dead serious about selling online, you should also be ready to invest a fair amount on a system that is run by an organization which is dedicated in making the best possible open-source e-commerce platform available. Open-Source does not necessarily mean free, though most are.

Magento comes in two flavours : Community and Enterprise.
The Enterprise has some additional features which are lacking in the Community edition, but because both are open-source, ideally you could make an Enterprise edition from the Community edition if you got that much time and energy.

Here is a rough annual cost for just setting up an online store based out of Magento Commerce. (raw material)

Note : Magento has the ability to run multiple websites (e-shops) running on a single Magento installation. An SSL Certificate and a unique IP address are required for each domain separately.

	Magento Community Edition	Magento Enterprise Edition
Magento Cost	$0	$11,125	See whats the difference between the two
Web Hosting	$102	$4,200	Guys at WebFaction are really helpful in maintaining a robust platform - they really go out of their way answering issues posted on forums too
SSL Certificate Per Domain	$29	$84	You get Thawte's SSL Certificates from DirectI
Dedicated IP Address per Domain	$60	$60	Multiply this with the number of magento websites you want
Email Newsletter Campaign	$96 - $8,388	$96 - $8,388	With MadMimi's you can get achieve almost 100% branding
OneStepCheckOut Magento Module	€190	€590	The CheckOut experience is the most important part in a sale. Magento's default one-page checkout is 6 steps - which is 6 clicks
Amazon S3 for Static File Storage	~$50	~$100	This is really varies based on your bandwidth usage. It can be from $1 a month for a low-traffic site to $100 a month for a high-traffic site
Amazon CloudFront for CDN	~$50	~$100	This is really varies based on the geographic location
Google Apps	$0	$50 per user id (email id)	I prefer insist on using ASchroder's SMTP module to native mail so that all sent mails are reflected in Google Apps Email, so that you or the client can actually validate what mail contents are going through. (Many Email providers don't store sent mails sent via SMTP remotely, on their servers)
	~ $700	~ $17,000

The most popular free & open-source e-commerce system is OsCommerce which has dominated the e-commerce industry in the last decade. If selling products is not your primary business, Magento Community Edition or OsCommerce will just suffice. After all, even Google uses OsCommerce at google-store.com

SMS Gateways and Services for Indian Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:46:21 PST

If there one thing that is really booming in India right now, recession or no recession, its SMS - Short Messaging Service. The boom is evident straight from Twitter - Twitter users have grown phenomenally in India in 2009 especially after Twitter securing an SMS deal with India's largest mobile-service provider, AirTel at 110+ million userbase.

With the Twitter model, its easy to subscribe to updates. Google recently joined the race in SMS at Google India Labs : SMS Channels. Both these services require users to subscribe before any updates can be sent.

With SMS solutions becoming a major player in India, various SMS service providers have sprouted quickly.

General facts on SMS solutions :

Most of these SMS Solutions have a 160 or 320 character limit and cost 1 SMS credit for every 160 characters.
Most of them support all networks : All India GSM + CDMA Coverage including BSNL and Reliance IndiaMobile & TataIndicom.
Some support international networks as well, but for USA, delivery to some mobile networks is not a guarantee. It instead ended up in my brother's inbox when I tried to send to his Chicago number. This varies from operator to operator and unlike in India, operators may charge for incoming messages ! If international SMS delivery is important, either send a support ticket asking which mobile networks are supported or you can directly opt for an international gateway provider like Clickatell.
Short Codes for 2 way SMS are normally at an additional cost. The additional cost is not for the Short Code itself, but for a keyword that is used in the message when replying to the short code to identify your account / campaign. Most of these providers provide an unlimited number or a large number of short code keywords.
In order to avoid being responsible for SPAM, an SMS API is not something that providers are eager to give away so easily. Most providers will either charge an amount or require documents, application for API usage which are screened thoroughly for an approval process. Some may further require an official letter to prove your brand trademark or a latter claiming responsibility for unfair API usage, incase of any.
Official Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's website is trai.gov.in
The National Do-Not-Call Registry has a database of mobile numbers which have been registered for Don-Not-Disturb. Legally you'll need to cross-check the recipient's number at the DND Check. So far there is no official API for bulks checks, so this is something you'll have to process manually once a while. Do-Not-Call = Do-Not-Disturb = No SMS please.
List of mobile service providers : http://www.trai.gov.in/serviceproviderslist.asp
Since February 2009, TRAI has made it mandatory to prepend 2 letters and a hyphen with the SenderID thus reducing it from 11 letters to 8 letters for a name. The first letter stands for the mobile service operator's name and the second letter for the location of the SMS being sent from. You can find this list here.
Direct tie-up with a mobile operator requires a minimum monthly commitment that runs in lakhs of rupees, approx Rs 60 lakhs a month from one source. So some of these SMS providers may be resellers of bigger SMS providers.

Here are some useful SMS solutions for your business to market and promote your brand.

IndyaRocks / SMS Gold

Price : Starts at Rs 0.25 per SMS down to Rs 0.08 per SMS. Price exclusive of 10.3% service tax.
Validity : Unlimited
Payment Options : Net Banking, Wire-Transfer, Demand Draft
API : Not available for all. Free, only on request for their Rs 8,000 package customers after strict screening and approval on official documentation on API usage.
SenderID : Yes. Free for now. Requires documentary proof and will be activated only after the authentication process which may take upto 7 working days.
Free SMS : Yes. Unlimited SMS. 140 character limit appended by -Indayrocks at end of message.

SMS Country

SMS Country is more for the more business minded. They charge for SenderID, API and deliver to 200+ countries (international rates vary).
International Coverage : 200+ countries at different rates. Does not cover most USA mobile networks.
Validity : 6 months from the last date of purchase
Payment Options : PayPal, Credit Card, NetBanking, Wire-Transfer, Cheque, Demand Draft, Money Order, Cash Deposit, ItzCash
API : HTTP (GET / POST), XML, SMTP, COM. Requires a fixed IP address of server using API. $145 for setup and $131 annually with 2 sendernames and $78 annually for no sendernames.
SenderID : Yes. Rs 1500 or $40. Validity of Sender ID is for 1 year.
Free SMS : 10 SMS Credits.
160 by 2 is a new initiative by SMS Country with currently 6+ million users. It provides FREE SMS service even to selected International networks. Right now its mainly to Middle Eastern countries and South East Asia. The catch is that its supported by 80 characters-limit ads which are appended to your 80 characters-limit message.

My SMS Mantra

Price : Starts at Rs 0.30 per SMS down to Rs 0.04 per SMS. Price exclusive of 10.3% tax.
Validity : 3 Years
Payment Options : PayPal, Cheque, Demand Draft.
API : HTTP (GET / POST)
SenderID : Yes. Free. Approval from mobile service provider in a few hours.
Its 2 way SMS has a "Toll Free SMS" feature, where website visitors can send SMS to your mobile number at no cost. The Website owner pays for incoming messages from these visitors.

FOO SMS

Price : Starts at Rs 0.25 per SMS down to Rs 0.05 per SMS. Price inclusive of tax.
International Coverage : Yes.
Validity : Unlimited
Payment Options : Wire-Transfer, Cheque, PayPal.
API : HTTP GET, SMPP, XML
SenderID : Yes. Free. Approval from mobile service provider in a few hours.
Free SMS : 10 credits on request.

Gateway4SMS

Price : Starts at Rs 0.15 per SMS down to Rs 0.06 per SMS. Price exclusive of 12.36% service tax.
Validity : 30 / 60 / 120 days
Payment Options : Wire-Transfer, PayPal
API : HTTP GET, SMPP, XML
SenderID : Yes. Costs additional Rs 500. Takes upto 24 hours on receipt of documents.
2 Way SMS : Yes. Starts at Rs 3500 per month.
Free SMS : 5 credits

Snowebs

Snowebs, originally a desktop application that connects your mobile to your PC to send messages, now has a web interface as well.
Price : Starts at Rs 0.60 per SMS till Rs 0.30 per SMS. Price inclusive of tax.
International Coverage : Yes - USA, UK, Australia, South Africa, UAE and Germany
Validity : 30 / 60 / 90 / 180 / 365 days
Payment Options : Wire-Transfer, Cheque, Cash, DD, PayPal.
API : HTTP GET.
SenderID : Yes. 5 Free. Additional SenderIDs at Rs 75 each.
Free SMS : 2 credits.

Go For SMS

Price : Starts at Rs 0.60 per SMS down to Rs 0.28 per SMS. Price inclusive of tax.
Validity : 7 / 15 / 30 / 45 / 60 / 180 / 270 days
Payment Options : Wire-Transfer, PayPal, Eazy2Pay.
API : HTTP GET
SenderID : Yes. Free. Requires documentation for approval process. Default SenderID is GoForSMS
Free SMS : Yes (delivery is not guaranteed)

ZNI SMS

Price : Starts at Rs 0.90 per SMS down to Rs 0.15 per SMS. Price inclusive of tax.
Validity : 60 days
Payment Options : Online, Wire-Transfer
API : HTTP GET, XML
Free SMS : No
SenderID : Yes. Free. Requires documentation for approval process. Default SenderID is SMSALERT

SMS Junction

Price : Starts at Rs 0.25 per SMS down to Rs 0.08 per SMS. Price exclusive of service tax.
Validity : Monthly SMS Usage/Consumption
Payment Options :
API : HTTP (GET / POST), SMPP, E-Mail
SenderID : Yes

Full2SMS

Full2sms is a desktop application that sends messages from your PC via the Internet
Price : Starts at Rs 0.12 per SMS down to Rs 0.06 per SMS.
Validity : 45 days to 3 years
Payment Options : Wire-Transfer, DD, Cheque, Cash, PayPal.
API : HTTP (GET / POST)
SenderID : Yes.

Pipex & AirTel Logos

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:23:33 PST

I just couldn't help noticing - two of the biggest broadband companies in the world have their logo themes in inverse.

Dog Catcher

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:32:07 PST

I was on my way back from CARBO XXIV recently and I got a shot of a dog-catcher (animal control) putting away stray dogs at Ahmedabad station. This video I got a shot of was at the reservation counter.

Webfaction

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:29:42 PDT

I am not going to get into another general shared-hosting review. Infact this is something in between shared-hosting and a VPS.

I signed up for 2 webfaction accounts - I was primarily looking for a VPS switch, for which I already decided on SliceHost.
But there are 2 challenges to SliceHost - one, it costs $20/month for 10GB/100GB space/bandwidth which is still pretty expensive for Indian standards.
Two, since its unmanged, a fair amount of linux sys admin skills is required to keep it up and running without downtimes.

WebFaction is mainly known for its Python hosting (previously python-hosting.com), but the best part is that you can run it like a VPS. The base install managed by the hosting company itself and the custom installs mananged by the customers themselves. For example, you can install another version of MySQL in your HOME directory and run it at a custom port (each user account gets a predefined range of ports for use in custom setups). And yes, you can install anything else not natively available in WebFaction. This is awesome, since you don't get the overhead of managing the entire server - instead you just manage what you install.

The other interesting fact about WebFaction is setting ACLs without the need of root.
Normally we would want a couple of directories (like user photos) writable by the web-server so that the web-interface can save to that directory.
In most shared-hosts, the only solution would be setting 0777 or 0755 permissions on a directory.

On my Ubuntu PC, I would do : (www-data is apache2)

sudo chgrp -R www-data <directory>
chmod -R g+w <directory>

In WebFaction they have a command-line script that does this for users.

setfacl -R -m u:apache:rwx <directory>
setfacl -R -m default:u:$USER:rwx <directory>

Con - no sendmail path defined - hence PHP's native mail() will not work. This was done inorder to avoid mail abuse. The general method of substitution in PHP would be to use a mail library like SwiftMailer to use SMTP to send out the mails.

Whats up with Yahoo!?

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:16:07 PDT

A few months ago, I blogged about Yahoo! shutting down its Kisckstart service.
Well, off lately Yahoo! has been shutting down a whole lot of its services most notably Yahoo! 360 - soon in July 2009.

The other common services of Yahoo! that shutdown were :

Yahoo! Mash, a social networking service lasted for a year ended in September 2008.
Yahoo! Live, a real-time video broadcasting experiment ended after a 6 months stint in December 2008.
Yahoo! Content Match, a Google Adsense clone shuts down in Europe.
Jumpcut, an online video editing tool closed down just a couple of days back (15th June 2009).
Yahoo! Podcasts, a podcasting directory end after 2 years in October 2007.
Yahoo! Auctions, an eBay competitor ended in September 2008.
Yahoo! Photos shut down in September 2007 but got replaced with their better acquired service, Flickr.
Yahoo Briefcase, a free storage service ended after a decade in March 2009.
Geocities, the 90's most famous free static website hosting service is closing this year - but this one is not as a result of failure - after all it was one of the biggest success stories in the 90s - it just got worn off - retired - antique - much better ones available/evolved over the last 15 years.

Yahoo! may not be dying, but its definitely try to recover its No.1 position it had a decade-and-a-half ago.

Hiring => Aquiring ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:41:20 PDT

With jobs cut stories being published everyday, more and more smaller companies are sprouting up daily. While on the quest for a job myself, most of the recent postings at various job portals like Naukri and Monster are from startups companies with 5 to 25 employees. I was going through various companies' websites and came across many more startup companies and related websites that seems very fascinating. I don't remember all the websites I've been through except for one which was uniquely enough to be rememberable - IonLab.

Big companies are now looking to aquire rather than hire. Google and Microsoft have been acquiring constantly in the recent years. But Google has pushed this even further with Google Ventures - a $100 million annual funding for startups and Google App Engine - web hosting on Google's high-end scalable servers. Commenting on Microsoft's Bing, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that :

"We have been wandering around looking at all of the different companies. With the big ones, we haven't come across anything we've particularly liked. We are definitely talking to a number of smaller companies but we've done that routinely. We primarily look for technology. It's a typical build versus buy"

But this isn't limited to big giants alone - even Twitter, (small company now with big money), bought Summize for their search part.

And start-up guru, Paul Graham who apparently hates running a startup has funded about 150 startups !

Startups in India are creating a buzz (read: Related Links) : StartupBuzz, StartupDunia, Pluggd In

Wolfram Alpha

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 17 May 2009 11:34:34 PDT

There is a lot of hype on Wolfram Alpha that launched on 15th - a brand new search engine, from the company famous for its Mathematica software.
But this search engine is math based (no surprise) - which calculate 'answers' to your questions - or rather tries to figure out answers to the questions you are querying.

They even posted their infrastructure details - having the 44th largest supercomputer, mirrored at 5 different locations and can handle 175+ million queries a day.

I tried a little more than a couple of queries, most of which returned Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.
I tried queries based on my hometown, Trivandrum, Kerala which I keep track of on the net from time to time. Given "Where is Trivandrum", it showed the map of India with Trivandrum marked. But it doesn't seem to know anything about kerala - one of the top 50 tourist locations in the world (National Geographic). If this isn't in their current database of 10+ trillion of pieces of data, its going to be hard for me to find information using it.

Then I tried input queries on stuff it could 'definitely' search on - maths. 10000! gave the first bunch of 35660 digits but you can easily extend the number of digits. But even expressions like "5+132!-59^5*sin(32)/5log(12)15" showed results with neat details. Over 20 years in the making of Mathematica, Wolfram would probably have the best number search engine. But "Knowledge" based ? It doesn't seem to have a lot of knowledge as of now.

After a while it just got tired of searching.

Everyone is curious about who or what will be the next Google. There is a big surety among many, even by Tim Berners Lee, that semantic web search will overtake statistical based web search (GYM). Wolfram Alpha is going to take a while to catch up, but results from statistical data is still more important to users with the current available data on the net. Right now, Wolfram Alpha is a really cool Internet Calculator.

Finally a full-time job

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Mon, 18 May 2009 06:16:32 PDT

Last year I worked with a client here in Mumbai for their online store, BombayElectric.in which is based on Magento, an open-source platform. My client was the national winner of British Council's Young Fashion Entrepreneur (YFE) Award 2009.

For the last 4 and so years I've always shyed away from a full-time job since I managed to get freelance work right after college. After a ring of uneventful events last year, I decided to shift base and take up the stature of an employee. Earlier last month, I finally took up a full-time job in an internet ad/marketing agency here in Mumbai. To my surprise, I discovered that the guy who runs this small unique company happens to be the national winner of British Council's Young Communications Entrepreneur (YXE) award 2009 !

Quite a Coincidence !

Update : I ended up quitting from this awesome advertising firm. This is the longest (just 3 months) I've lasted so far as a full-time employee. Back to job-hunting !

Yahoo! Kickstart already kicked out

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:17:44 PST

Its just over year since Yahoo! launched Kickstart in beta but as of now (probably just a few hours back), its already closed.

Kickstart was a Yahoo initiative to compete with Facebook, Linkedin etc but focused specifically on college students, alumni etc to connect them to jobs (professional networking space) to kickstart careers.

Right now, Kickstart shows "Thanks for trying Kickstart ! Please check out Yahoo! HotJobs for your job search needs." and links to their hotjobs site.
Given the economy slowdown, Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition disagreement, Facebook buyout failure and Y! 360 not catching up, they definitely seem to want to focus on revenue generating products instead.

Busy Dodging Bullets in Colaba

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:47:41 PST

So I've been real busy on Wednesday night. Believe it or not, on that night I was dodging bullets in colaba causeway at the bomb-blast site near Nariman House.
I at my client's office which is right next to the Taj hotel and had left office at about 11pm with my client. We were trying to cross the blast site that happened an hour before when all of a sudden there was firing and was in the middle of crossfire. Apparently the bullets were originating from the 3rd or 4th floor of Nariman House. Though this could have been easily mistaken for police firing back. I was literally running for life !
Q: And why was I trying to cross the blast site ? A: In order to reach my friend's house 1km down that lane for shelter as CST station was attacked too and there was no means to commute by train or taxi. Nor was any hotel taking in any new guests. Plus, the level of the intensity of the situation was underestimated at the time.
I dont know how the hell it happened, but my phone's camera got dysfunctional !

That proabably was my most terrifying 2 hours of my life. As Im typing this, Narman House encounter is almost one with !

Tech Contests

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:13:52 PST

The World Economy has taken a real hit. But this hasn't slowed down IT innovation especially in open-source. Jonathan of Sun has mentioned that this is the time when more of open-source would be adopted with the obvious reason of cutting down cost on proprietary software. Even though the gradual change to open-source software would be hard to gulp down so soon, it would be the only solution to keep their business from going out of business. The current crisis has not stopped IT giants from motivating tech enthusiasts from coding. A couple of contests are currently running which are worth mentioning :

Cisco Developer Contest : http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/axpdev/index.html
Nokia : http://www.callingallinnovators.com/enter.asp
Sun Code for Freedom Contest (for Indian Students only) : http://in.sun.com/communities/univ/codeforfreedom/

Uploading and Extracting files without Shell Access on a Shared Host

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:10:01 PDT

The easiest way to upload a large number of files to your website hosting server is to zip the files first on your local PC, upload the zip file to your hosting account and then use a shell command like unzip to extract. Unfortunately, most shared hosting environments don't provide shell access due to security reasons. But from a business perspective, users who require shell access access would be really requiring a custom setup on a dedicated server.

But if you have an entire directory of files to upload to your shared hosting account, there is still a way to extract the contents online using a simple PHP script. For this to work you got to have PHP 5.2 or later enabled.

<?php
if (isset($_GET['f']))
 $file = $_GET['f'];
else
 die("arg 1 required");

$zip = new ZipArchive;

if ($zip->open($file) === FALSE)
 die("Failed to open $file");

if (!$zip->extractTo('.'))
 echo "Extract not successful";
else
 echo "Extract successful";

$zip->close();
?>

Zip the folder on your local PC using WinZip or whatever (say sample.zip).
Upload the zip file sample.zip via FTP to your host (say in temp folder).
Upload the PHP file unzip.php to temp folder.
Enter in your browser the following address http://mywebsite.com/temp/unzip.php?f=sample.zip
If you look in your host server's temp folder, you should see the contents of sample.zip extracted.

One issue you would face is the owner permissions of that extracted directory. Since the extract part was done by a script, the owner of that folder would be apache instead of your username. The only workaround of this is to login to your web control panel, browse files and reset ownership of that folder. For example, in a control panel like DirectAdmin you could just Browse for files and click on Recursively.

Viagara Milkshake !

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:56:15 PDT

At one particular restaurant in Tamil Nadu, I came across a Viagara Milkshake listed on the menu under the "Ice Creams" section !

And no, I didn't order it !

Good Year for linux ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:59:02 PDT

This year I'm slowly making a transition to Linux. Though I cannot leave Windows behind as I am too accustomed to it, I intend to spend a lot of time on Linux to be able to get a very good grip of it.

I've started off with Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit edition and so far it has been pretty exciting. I've seen many linux users say that we should not think Windows when moving to GUI Linux like Ubuntu - but reality is, Windows GUI has more than 90% marketshare and most people don't like spending time finding alternatives. If Windows users could just seamlessly resume their work on Linux, it would be an ideal solution. So from a practical point of view, Windows users should be able to find most of their stuff on Linux desktops. For example, the "Windows key" is used on Windows PCs to access the Start menu. In Ubuntu this is not the default, but this can be changed in Keyboard Shortcuts (Windows Key is referred to as the "SuperKey" in Linux). On the other hand, to quickly access the desktop using the keyboard, Ubuntu's default is CTRL+ALT+D. And so far I haven't found a solution to making it Windows Key + D. While it doesn't bother me & many other Linux fans to use the new combination, it seems to be a pain for many users - only because of the fact that their fingers are already synchronized to it & hence prefer it that way. I don't want to keep ranting about what can be done in Windows & that can't be done in Linux.

But there are 2 good reasons to try out Linux this year :

Wine 1.0 - after nearly 15 years in development, the stable version of Wine got released - for running Windows exe files. But this still yet to work with all EXEs.
OpenOffice 3.0 - Support for MS Office 2007 formats and since ver 2.2 no more long startup times which was terrible when compared to MS Office which runs natively unlike OO which is Java dependent.

Bike Accident

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:16:15 PST

I had quite a major bike accident on Wednesday evening at around 5 P.M. A car hit me from the opposite direction while I was making a slow right turn. But luckily the injuries were few. My left arm is completely immobilized. For 2 months max my left arm will be non-functional - had surgery on left elbow for removal of glass pieces (that got entered from the car's side windows). I was EXTREMELY LUCKY to have no other injuries especially on my head considering the fact that I was thrown off my bike and landed on my back. I am typing this from my hospital bed. Hopefully I would be discharged next week. Here are some pics of the operation taken by the surgeon.

WARNING ! Some of these photos contain very graphic images. Viewer Discretion is Strongly Advised. Click here to show the photos.

IFSC Search

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:42:43 PST

Sometime in November 2007, PayPal added a new feature : Widthdraw funds to an Indian bank account. Theres a fee of Rs 50 for withdrawals less than Rs 7,000 , otherwise there is no fee. You'll need to provide the IFSC (Indian Financial System Code) number of your bank though to get this working.

I've created a small form here to search for IFSC codes from 3 separate sources.
Reason for 3 databases is that there isnt any official source that has all the banks' IFSC data - so its better off to compare all sources and check if they match. I'll add more database(s) if I find a different source. The most reliable source is, the bank-branch itself - obviously.

Disclaimer: None of the information is guaranteed to be 100% accurate.

MySQL Road Show India 2008!

noreply@blogger.com (Anjanesh) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:48:19 PST

Last week, on Thursday, the 21st, I attended the MySQL Road Show India 2008 in Mumbai. The co-founder and the director of technologies gave their tech-talks. About 100+ database pros attended the seminar.

The primary discussion was on their upcoming final release of MySQL 5.1 - new features and functionality :

High Availability - stressed a lot on this
Clustering
Partioning
Row-based replication
XML : Native support for XML. This is becoming common is every aspect of a coder's life.
Event scheduler - crons in MySQL !
Faster ALTER/DROP index
Faster data import using threading --use-threads
mysqlslap
PBXT

A bit was also said about MySQL 6.0 & its Falcon storage engine.

And the day before yesterday, Jonathan Schwartz announced the acquisition of MySQL for $1 billion. A lot Java enthusiasts are hoping to witness a wave of low-budget Java shared-webhosting.