Start-up? Head to Bangalore

May18
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

If you are forming a start-up or planning to start one, then Bangalore is one of the best places where you can set this up. A simple search for jobs in bangalore will give you a huge listing of career opportunities in this city. Bangalore is definitely a contender for being the Silicon Valley of India.

What makes this city such an attractive spot for start-ups?

  • Perfectly located: Bangalore is easily reachable by air, road, rail and water. So cargo freight companies have their major offices in this city. The recent upgrade of the airport also has scaled up the air traffic capacity of the city. Visitors of the city who have been travelling in Bangalore for the past decade would know what I am talking about.
  • IT Hub: Bangalore is one of the first IT mega cities in the country. What this means is better infrastructure as compared to the other cities, a tolerant government and a nurturing ecosystem of good quality labour. Even today, it is still known that to setup a tech-based startup, you need to be in Bangalore
  • Follow the Money: A lot (and I mean A LOT) of Venture capital Firms are based in Bangalore. Firms such as Accel, Sequoia, Argonaut, DFJ are all based out of Bangalore and generally try to see whether the organization they are investing in can shift their bases to this city.
  • Awesome Weather: Throughout the year there’s only one cool temperature in this city. It amazes me as to how this can be, but there you have it.

Obviously, with such great pros there have to be a few cons (the traffic being amongst the main ones there!). Hey, its not Valhalla that we are talking about right? A lot of great tech-based startups are here … Flipkart, Myntra to name a few.

So, forget other places such as Mumbai (too expensive), or Hyderabad (no good programmers). Head on to Bangalore and setup a base there!

Posted in business - Tagged , , ,

Shortcodes in WordPress

May13
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

I love WordPress.

The blogging platform is a great content management system (CMS) to run on your website. Not only as a blog, but it can host your entire site. For example, most of the info pages on Pristine are on WP. In fact over the past year or so, my team has been learning how to create themes for WordPress.

At Pristine, we are providing the training schedules course-wise and city-wise on our different pages viz., for CFA Level I page, we are giving the schedule for all cities where CFA Level I is being conducted, for the Mumbai page, we are giving the schedule for all courses which are being conducted.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that there is a lot of duplicate information (which needs to be constantly updated) on different pages. With 8-10 centers and 6-7 courses that means anywhere between 50 to 70 pages which need to be updated whenever the training schedule changes. What a nightmare!

That’s where Shortcodes come in. Shortcodes are essentially functions that you can call from the WordPress CMS. Those of you who have used WP in the past would know that the WP platform is very easy to publish content ensures that you can only enter HTML in the publishing mode. We cannot write PHP scripts within the WP pages.

One way is to customize your templates, but if you want to run the script within your WordPress Publishable Content, then Shortcodes is the elegant solution. All you have to do is declare a function in the theme’s corresponding functions.php file, declare your short code and bind that to your new function. Voila! Now you have your own short code!

So, in this example, all I have to do is create a filterable query for the training schedule and pass either the city or the course as an argument in all my pages. Every time the schedule changes, all I have to do is update it once in the database, and the content will get auto-updated in all my 50-70 pages.

Posted in Technology - Tagged , ,

Bing eyes Desktop Search Market

May11
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Microsoft’s search engine is one of the lesser known search engines on the web. With lesser known I mean that its far behind in terms of market share with respect to the market leader – Google.

One thing that seems to be working in their favour though, is the So.cl is doing better than G+. Now, in an attempt to nudge out Google from the King of Search Engines, Microsoft has rolled out a new update with their Windows platform. The Bing Desktop.

Good features, and I do recommend this because I like beautiful wallpapers on my desktop :) , is that Bing auto-changes the desktop on my Windows. It’s a simple feature, but its different from what Google Desktop does. The rest of the features are pretty much the same as Google Desktop (including the search bar when you hit Ctrl twice).

Google increased their business by focusing on their main product – Search. I think Microsoft is taking a page from that strategic move … focus on pushing products via their flagship product – Windows.

Posted in Technology - Tagged , , , , ,

Corrupt Administration!

May11
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. – Plato

In an earlier post where I was complaining about the lack of revolutionaries in the system, little did I know that in a few days I would be experiencing the wisdom of Plato first hand.

We are in the process of shifting our offices from Goregaon to Andheri. The office is within 2km of my home, and pretty much what you call my locality. Due to my efforts in securing kindergarten admission for my daughter, I have also come in touch with our local administration.

Now, the person in charge of the sprucing up of the new office did not do his homework, and started the interior decoration of the office without any checks with the local authorities. Three months down the construction, when we have shifted into a makeshift office (its going to be our computer lab in the new office), and have no other alternative offices to go to, the local authorities intervened and stopped the construction.

Upon enquiry, we found out that a permission needs to be taken from the Buildings and Industries department of the Bruhanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Without this said permission, construction cannot go on.

Since the BMC officials refuse to parlay with “north-Indians” and they are from the Shiv Sena party, guess who has to liaison between the organization and the BMC :)

When I went to the officials, I was made to wait indefinitely biding for my time to come. Fortunately, I knew someone higher up in their chain of command and not wanting to play the waiting game, I made the required calls, and got to meet the concerned person.

I do not know whether it was my fortune or misfortune, but the person with whom I had clout in the administration was also the source of my predicament! It was his department that had raised the issue and was waiting for my organization to respond.

So began the diplomatic dance. The dance where you avoid saying the obvious and stick to the unsaid protocol. All said and done, I was presented with two choices – one, the way of the right, wherein we would have to chase this permission across the city for 3-6 months. The other, the way of the corrupt, wherein we have to pay for silencing the officials.

The sum mentioned was in the right range … I don’t know how these officials do it, but someone needs to learn pricing from them. The amount was not too high for us to outright say no, it was lower than the opportunity cost of keeping our employees at their homes :) , and yet it was high enough to grease the right palms and keep their pockets filled.

We are PWN’ed and most likely will give in to their demands. The price of sheer negligence on one senior partner’s part is a 2 lakh bribe. Talking about corruption is one thing, but when the efforts to fight the system means you will lose more than what you will save, then does it make sense to fight it? We would be writing it off this year.

Posted in social - Tagged , , , ,

Confessions of an Ambush Marketer

May09
2012 1 Comment Written by Prasad

Dear Internet Surfer, I have sinned.

  • Ever since I have found about HTML forms and Emailing systems, I have been lurking around in web-pages awaiting to spring that form on you
  • When I found about javascript and the onLoad event, I welcome you to my pages and bidded for my time. The time to spring my multi-inputted trap!
  • jQuery added to my arsenal of timed web-pages and put some smarts in my traps. My traps started looking good and how!
  • CSS helped me to create the singing sirens, beckoning you to click on my lovely form elements
  • Smart written form elements and squeeze pages made me more credible to you
  • Auto-responders helped me to have an active dialogue with you … making you think that I actually care to have a conversation
  • After well timed campaigns when you swiped your credit card and transferred your hard(ly) earned money to my account, I can only do but thank you for your efforts

In case, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, then please forget the money that you paid to me and consider this as a practical lesson learnt!

Posted in business, foo, funny - Tagged , , ,

Where are the revolutionaries?

May06
2012 1 Comment Written by Prasad

In the first half of the 20th century, when India was struggling to achieve it’s independence, the nation was under going two revolutions.

The primary being a change in power, a struggle to overthrow the British Raj and to stand on it’s own feet. This was possibly the right time for reform as well, social norms such as sati and child marriage were being questioned. Female education was one such issue that was also being addressed. The country was undergoing a change, and a large socio-cultural change at that. Revolutionaries were there who foresaw a future where these harmful practices were no longer the norm.

I am not saying that all of this happened overnight, in fact I am sure that in some of the rural areas these practices are still being done. But the goal was achieved for most of the nation and mind-sets were transformed.

It has been over 50 years of independence for India now, and somehow I feel things have gone astray.

Where are the revolutionaries these days? If you are going to tell me that there is Anna Hazare, then I will reply that he is a politician and not a revolutionary. There are these hordes of NGOs who in the name of doing good demand charity from the citizens. Asking for charity is not the bad part, the bad part is that setting up a business processing unit to run this charity.

The interesting part is the only place where you will get to hear the word transformation is either in corporate board rooms, or in medical surgery units! When the revolutionaries of yore used to write, they used to put forth their manifestos … a call to action for the society. Nowadays the only call-to-action that I know of are gradient buttons on websites.

The revolutionaries are out there, busy writing blogs and tweeting about society.

It’s not as if we as a social collective have forgotten about reform, if you search on the internet you will find enough rants such as this … on blogs, on twitter, etc. The point is that after we have vented and ranted, we let it go and that’s that. The easy access to vent our frustrations ensures that we never reach the tipping point!

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Google’s Zerg Rush Easter Egg

Apr27
2012 2 Comments Written by Prasad

I had earlier written about Google’s Easter Eggs, but the one I found about today was too good to resist.

For the uninitiated, Zerg is a race in the hit Blizzard series – Starcraft (its a RTS). In both Starcraft and Starcraft II, there is a common Zerg strategy of Rushing. A rush is where you send in a small squad of soldiers early on in the game to wreck havoc in your opponents economy. The Zerg Rush is particularly effective since you can execute it within the first 3 minutes of the game.

OK, now back to this post, heres what you do -

  1. Go to Google.com
  2. Type in Zerg Rush
  3. Watch as a swarm of Google O’s attack your search results!
  4. Defend against the swarm and See how many can you get before your search results are wiped out

I did 61 :)

Posted in games - Tagged , , , ,

KhanAcademy: Saviour of the American Youth

Apr27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

When I first heard of KhanAcademy (KA), it was a collection of Youtube videos. Each video was lucidly explaining simply fundamental topics in Maths, Science and even some in Finance. That was back in 2002 when Salman Khan (no, not the actor) was doing these videos in his free time and was giving them away for free. To see one man create such a rich set of learning media was inspiring.

The day KA received a 5 million USD funding, marked the critical change in the system. With the funding came a responsibility towards a greater good, a need for a vision that encompassed the funding and the need for a team who would embrace this vision and deliver this system.

And they haven’t disappointed. As I sit writing this post, I am also downloading the Python-based system of KA (which they have released as open-source). There are simple step by step instructions on their wiki to deploy the system as an offline server.

The KA CMS (pre-uploaded with the KA content) is given to the teachers and instructors of this world. For free! Not only that, but there is a dedicated team working with schools in the US to adapt these awesome set of exercises for their students.

Now, a celebrated speaker and a visionary in the field of education, Sal is often invited as a keynote speaker in different conferences, here’s on from the RSA conference (Courtesy: Rajat Swarup).

 

In the past, the US education system has received a lot of flak for not helping the students. So much so that there are more students who are losing faith in the system every year. When you lose faith in the system, thats the point when that system stops working.

KA, has restored faith of the American Youth in Education. The generation which was planning to drop-out of college (because thats what their heroes do) are now learning that the system is not flawed and that they can really learn something new when going to school. The lost generation has found its way.

Posted in Education, social - Tagged , , , ,

Google Search Update

Apr23
2012 2 Comments Written by Prasad

I had earlier posted about a starters guide to SEO. Back then my understanding of this was also developing and the only way I could add to my understanding of the subject was via experiments … that I carried out on this blog, and also at work.

Finally, we did arrive at a scalable solution. A solution for SEO which could easily be replicated and scaled for almost all my target keywords. Out of a target 5000+ keywords, we managed to get in the top 10 for a decent 3000 of them, and would have proceeded to touch base upon all of them as well (do remind me to release this as well!)

Had it not been for the upcoming Google, I would have went ahead with the plan. However, the new update effectively means that all black hat SEO tactics (which the Indian SEO industry is famous for) will be negatively penalized. So throw your keyword stuffing, badly written English to match your keywords, slightly different versions to match the keyword variants, and link submissions out of the best practices window.

I wonder what would be the extent of the penalty levied by the new algorithm on sites which are already way ahead on their link submissions. Getting those links off the 1000 or so directories is going to be tough!!

Here’s a parting thought, that Google Search is embedded in so many Digital Strategist’s plans, that people are not even considering to optimize their pages for other search engines (such as Bing). Isn’t it great how being a market leader can impact an entire industry?

Note to Self – Learn about Bing optimization and work on generating search traffic from Bing.

Posted in business, work - Tagged , , , , , ,

Johnny Walker Budget

Mar16
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Well, the Budget is out and the Hon. Fin. Min. (HFM … no, not the magazine) has finished his speech. I was going over the salient points and realized that the budget does not do anything great for the country or the economy.

  • An additional Service tax … iffy … yay! more money for the government
  • Tax slab revised by 20,000 INR. Meh, I am already in the highest tax slab. What about me :-)
  • Some forecasts on the GDP and the macro-economic rates, yawn
  • Okay, the Automobile industry can cheer about something

Some more such points which are only worth getting a yawn, meh or hmm.

I wonder by the HFM bothers with churning out such budgets, it talks of the attitude of if its working, then don’t fix it. So this is what they do after 1 year’s work? It’s really a Johnny Walker Budget .. nothing has changed pretty much … keep walking.

 

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