If you are someone who reads a lot of books, follows technology, knows about different operating systems and enjoy watching sci-fi movies or TV series, then chances are you have either been called a ‘geek’ or a ‘nerd’.
I have always found both terms quite similar except that being called a ‘geek’ was cooler than being called a ‘nerd’. 🙂
So what are you? A geek or a nerd? Do drop in your comments.
About TDIS:Thank Devil Its Sunday [TDIS] are posts which are not the regular Dw fare about tutorials and updates. Posts under TDIS are usually more casual and personal.
More than a year ago, I reviewed MySmartPrice.com a website that allows people to compare the best prices from online retailers. For example you could look up the prices of a particular book from 4-5 websites that sold books. I was a little intrigued by this start-up as I knew its founder.
He was a not the typical 20 something, who are usually the ones who end up creating web start-up companies. He graduated from IIM – Bangalore and gave up a well-paying job along with financial security to create his own web start-up.
I decided to catch up with Sitakanta Ray the founder of MySmartPrice and interview him on his experience of creating an internet start-up company in India.
Q. Could you tell us about your enterprise MySmartPrice.com and what it does?
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With MySmartPrice, we want to answer two important questions that every shopper has in mind. They are ‘What to buy?’ and ‘Where to buy it?’. Currently MySmartPrice allows people to quickly compare price of a product across stores. At this point of time we cover mobiles, books, cameras, games and laptops. Over the next few months we will cover all major product categories. Our goal is to become the easiest way to get the best price, for anything sold online.
Apart from this we are also working on answering the what to buy question as well. You can find our first attempt at solving this problem at mysmartprice.com/mobile/finder. We plan to roll out some major improvements to this part of the product in the new future.
Q. MySmartPrice seems to be India centric at the moment and even though India has a very bright future when it comes to online retailing, it also has an unpredictable future. How difficult was it to draw up a business plan?
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I think once things become more predictable in an industry, start-ups will find it more difficult to succeed. The fact is big companies have more resource (both talent and money) than start-ups and a lot more experience about operating in stable, predictable times. The hope is to get in the game, understand it and get a big enough lead before they direct their best resources to the game.
Let me confess that I do worry about our own ability to put together the right team, move at the right speed and execute well. But I am much more comfortable about future of e-commerce in India. There are two simple observations that give me the confidence
Our cities are getting congested, rents are going up and we are having more money and less time. All of these will make online commerce more attractive.
If you look at our Tier-II and Tier-III cities, then you will find that supply is not keeping pace with demand. There has been a lot of increase in affordability. TV shows have taken the aspirations higher but supply is lagging behind. People are turning to online shopping to solve that issue.
Having said that now we work on a 12 month plan. There are so many variables, many of which we have no clue about. The idea is to keep extending that time period as we get more clarity both about the industry and our own abilities.
Q. What is your team like? Who came up with the idea of MySmartPrice?
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MySmartPrice was started by me and my friend Sulakshan. We have discussed hundreds of ideas in the past 10 years but price comparison was never one of them!! We sort of stumbled onto the idea of MySmartPrice.
I was coming back to coding after 5 years and needed a good challenge. Came across isbn.net.in of Swaroopch and found the problem interesting. So when I finally showed the idea to Sulakshan, he got excited about the possibility for e-commerce in general. That is how we moved from a self assigned project to a proper startup.
Q. How is MySmartPrice going to monetize? Will it serve up ads or sponsored reviews? Or are you looking at a different model which is not generic and relevant only to MySmartPrice?
Monetization is one of the areas where we are most clueless :-). For now we are surviving on AdSense money. The plan is to improve upon affiliate income part. Apart from that we have some ideas but we will need a higher scale to get them to work. It will be interesting to see how they will stack up when the hit the real world.
The trick will be to get the product execution right. If we can truly become the easiest way to find the best price, then monetization will not be a challenge.
Q. We often hear of young kids in their 20s creating a start-up after college well before having personal responsibilities like marriage and kids; in your case it (might?) be different. What were your challenges?
I wish someone had told me that starting your own company when you are young is really a better idea. We had been thinking of starting a company ever since we graduated from college. Every time we used to delay the decision by saying that it will be less risky once we cross this certain milestones. After 10 years we realized that entrepreneurship is never going to be a safe option so we better take the plunge now.
So finally when we decided to take the plunge, I had a 7 month old daughter and my wife had just left her job as well. So everyone in both the families completely freaked when I first mentioned about leaving my job. Fortunately my wife stood by me during that period. In a way that I have been a boring conservative guy all my life worked in my favour :-). Everyone assumed that I must have some Plan-B in my mind even though I had none.
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Q. You were in IIM – Bangalore and worked in finance domain for years. I heard you went back to coding after a good 5 years. Why would someone do that? What is love for coding or just that MySmartPrice needed a coding team more than a management team?
Once a geek, always a geek :-). In a way I realized how much I enjoy coding only once I stopped coding. On a more serious note, the final decision was a combination of both my passion and the need of the product. We wanted to build the easiest option to find the best price. Making a product that is absolutely easy and intuitive to use is something that gets Sulakshan excited, whereas I get my kick out of working with millions of records of data and deriving sense out of them. That is how we ended up with this division.
In India, starting new companies is difficult especially for people coming from an academical and services background. There is always family pressure to not start a business as it is termed ‘risky’. What were your challenges and advice to others creating start-ups.
I can talk about geeks and technology companies alone because I have no clue about any other business. (How much clue I have about technology businesses will be known in a couple of years only) If any geek out there is holding back because of worries about “what if my startup fails” then I will ask him to stop worrying right away. The probability a good geek will go jobless because of a failed startup is definitely less than Shahrukh going without a film offer because of some failed movie.
Having said that I can say that creating the product is definitely not the toughest part because we already know a good deal about it. Getting people to notice your product and hiring the talent required by the product are the toughest parts. It may be a good idea to learn about these things also, preferably at someone else’s company. By the way we are hiring. 🙂
Yesterday, I wrote about Google introducing ‘search plus your world’ which is basically a toggle for looking up personalized search results and normal search results. The problem is that, personalized search results only show up Google+ related links at the moment.
Another possible issue with Google’s new tweak to search, is that personalized results show up as default. See the image below which show personalized search results. You can click on the toggle to remove all personalized search results but we know most people will not use the toggle.
Twitter’s problem with personalized search results
Twitter seems to be a little nervous about Google search now being partial to Google+. At the moment the only social results showing up on personal results are from Google+. Links to Twitter and Facebook are conspicuously missing from personalized results.
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Twitter released an emailed statement shared by AllThingsD, explaining why the new developments are bad for Twitter and the internet in general.
For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet. Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic.
As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users
This might be a way for Google to force social networks to share data with itself. At the moment all links on Twitter are nofollow, which means a Google bot cannot follow the link on a tweet. Google is right in the sense if they cannot follow a link on a tweet, they cannot vouch for a tweet’s relevance either.
But then if all links on Facebook or Twitter were dofollow, these services could face a serious issue of spam, where webmasters might exploit these social networks for backlinks.
Even if that happens, I doubt Google will rank a link from social media very highly anyways, as it might affect the quality of its own search results.
I feel Twitter does have a point, but Google can hardly be expected to not leverage their own product. What are your views? Do drop in your comments.
Apple’s latest tablet in the iPad series that is iPad 3 is on its way and will be launched in the first quarter of 2012. As expected the internet and tech blogs are flooded with thousands of rumor related to iPad. Most of them are just gonna be rumors and we’re not going to repeat them here. We have just created a list of expected features of iPad 3 and based on them we will tell you whether it’s worth waiting for iPad 3 or you should buy an iPad 2 right now. Let’s have a look at them:
Expected features of Apple iPad 3:
Retina/HD display: Currently this feature is in iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S and most probably this feature will be there in iPad 3. A retina display not only gives you a very good screen graphics quality but it also enables to run many new applications which are based on Retina display only and gives you a better user experiences of those apps. Although the display of iPad 2 is good too and there’s no other tablet in the market which’s having this Retina display.
A6/Quad core Processor: This thing is also expected in iPad as Apple always upgrades the processor of their new product. If new quad-core processor is there in iPad 3 you should definitely wait for it as this high-speed processor will support so many new application and will give a better graphic quality. It will obviously increase the processing speed hence lesser time to do your tasks.
Siri: The artificial intelligence feature that made the iPhone 4S popular. If it comes in the new iPad then you should definitely wait for it and I think it will be there. But it’s totally your personal choice whether you want Siri in the new iPad or not. Some people are waiting for iPad 3 just because of Siri.
Better Camera: A new 8 M.P camera in iPad 3 is expected but the camera of iPad 2 is good too. I don’t think waiting for iPad 3 just because of a good camera is a nice idea.
Screen Size: Rumors says the new iPad is going to have a 7″ display but I don’t think it’s true, Apple won’t make iPads having screen size smaller than the current size. However they might launch two different iPads for that.
Battery Life: The new iPad will definitely have a better battery life which might increase its cost as well. But if you are getting a nice battery life in a Tablet PC then you should wait for it as battery life of a tablet matters a lot.
Price: Price is a main factor here. The cost of iPad 3 will be either equal to iPad 2 or it will be little expensive. If it will be the same as iPad 2 then Apple will slash the prices of iPad 2 by $100. That means even if you are planning to buy iPad 2 you should wait till the launch of iPad 3.
Well according to these points it’s quite clear that even if you are planning to buy iPad 2, you should wait for some time as you will either get a cheaper iPad 2 or you can get a new iPad with awesome new features. So just wait for some time to get a better deal. Stay connected for more updates on iPad.
2011 is gone and we’re talking a lot about what was most trending, most searched, popular tech events and all in 2011. Now let’s have a look at some Facebook user base and statistics till the end of 2011. This is an official data by Facebook which tells about the total number of users and their online interaction.
Statistics:
There are more than 800 million active users on Facebook.
More than 400 million users log in to Facebook on a single day.
An average user on Facebook has around 130 friends.
Facebook is available in 70+ languages.
75% of the total Facebook users are outside of United States.
900+ million pages, groups and events are there on Facebook.
An average of 250 million photos uploaded everyday to the site.
More than 20 million apps installed everyday by users.
7 million websites and applications are integrated with Facebook.
More than 350 million users access Facebook through Facebook mobile.
2011 was a good year for Facebook and important too because of the launch of their Timeline profiles. Though some people don’t like the new Timeline profiles but still we have to use it anyway or alternatively one can switch to Google+. Let’s see how Facebook is gonna do in 2012, will it continue to gain popularity or Google+ is going to overtake it.
You might have heard that Samsung has surpassed the sale records of other competitor mobile phone companies’; they even left Apple behind in number of smartphone sales. The two devices which contributed in Samsung’s record breaking sales are “Samsung Galaxy S II” & “Samsung Galaxy Note”.
I purchased Galaxy S II few months back and love Android OS because of its flexible nature and high level of customization capability. I had tried 100s of Apps and about 20 custom ROMs on my Galaxy S II.
I thought I will share with your app that I most love using on my Galaxy S II.
#1. Wi-Fi Keyboard
Wi-Fi Keyboard is an amazing and useful app for those who text a lot. It is tough to write a long email/text on a virtual keyboard. With this app, you can use your laptop/PC’s keyboard for typing text on phone.
What you need to do is, install the app and connect you phone and laptop with the same Wi-Fi access point. Now you can access the Wi-Fi keyboard and type on PC and see it typed on phone’s type box. 🙂
The only disadvantage which I feel in this app is this app hides the phone’s keyboard when you are using the Wi-Fi keyboard.
As the name explains itself, this app is a Wi-Fi based app. It shows your phone’s gallery contents on the PC web-browser with a beautiful 3D interface. You can view the gallery images in your phone on PC without copying/transferring them to PC. The app which I am using is the lite version with limited features.
With the Paid/Pro version of this app you can watch videos stored in your phone on PC over Wi-Fi connectivity. I am sure you will love the interface of this app.
If you are in India, you might be using online free messaging sites like 160by2, way2sms etc. I preferably use way2sms but what is dislike is that they do not have a great mobile version of their site. They do not have a official Android app either.
But while searching for their official app, I came across “Free SMS India” app. This app is just unbelievably amazing, it allows you send free messages using various SMS gateways like 160by2, way2sms and few others. I must say, “Give it a try!”
Everyone loves a good caller ring. For making a ringtone from full track one would need a mp3 cutter and a PC.
MP3 Ringtone maker will allow you to make ringtones instantly from your phone. Just you need to select the starting time and ending time and you will get your best quality ringtone and set it as your caller tune.
The year started with civil revolutions happening in Egypt, where a lot of credit (sometimes unfairly) was heaped on the role played by social media. By the end of the year Facebook had competition, Steve Jobs was no longer around and companies like Skype and Motorola had new owners.
Here are the 10 most interesting moments in technology in 2011.
The internet community started supporting the protests on social media websites and Egyptian protests intensified finally getting rid of its undemocratic government. The best tribute to Facebook came with ordinary Egyptians carrying posters thanking its role in the revolution.
#2. Steve Jobs presents iPad 2
Steve Jobs was ill and was already on leave from regular CEO duties at Apple. Jobs did show up one last time, at a keynote event for Apple and introduced iPad 2 to a rousing reception.
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iPad 2 has been a blockbuster hit for Apple in 2011 and rumours are that Apple is scrambling to release iPad 3 on Steve Jobs birth anniversary.
#3. Google has a new CEO
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to hire a professional as a CEO. His name was Eric Schmidt. Schmidt managed to look after Google quite well for over 10 years but 2011 was the year the passing of the torch was done. Larry Page took over as CEO of Google in April 2011.
Google had been working on a new social network for many months. It finally unveiled the new weapon against Facebook. The name was Google+ and it sort of borrowed ideas from Twitter and Facebook.
It did race to 10 million users in 2 weeks, but it has hardly dented Facebook as the undisputed king of social media. But it will be interesting to see how Google keeps tweaking and improving Google+ to match up to Facebook.
#5. Google Buys Motorola
Android OS never had its own hardware for optimal performance. This is what probably prompted Google in buying Motorola for $12.5 Billion. Motorola is an iconic company in the cell phone market but it had been losing out to Nokia, Samsung and Apple over the past few years.
We should expect to see a lot of new great products from Motorola in 2012.
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#6. Apple Rise to top
Apple overtook Microsoft in terms of profit. It had defeated its arch-nemesis in terms of profits. Apple rose to become the most valued company in 2011, with stock prices going through the roof. It apparently has more cash reserves than the US does as country. It will be interesting to see how Apple conducts itself now that it is no longer the underdog.
#7. Microsoft Buys Skype
Skype is one of the most used messenger for video chatting. Microsoft bought the company for a cool $8 Billion. This was Microsoft biggest acquisition but even months later, it is unclear how Microsoft will leverage Skype. Maybe with Windows 8 release in 2012, it might bring about something interesting.
#8. Steve Jobs Passes Away
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The magician at Apple, finally succumbed to cancer on October 05, 2011. Apple fans across the world were in mourning after Steve Jobs passed away. Tributes showered in from heads of states, politicians and his contemporaries in the technology world.
#9. Facebook’s Reacts to Google+ with Timelines
As Google+ rose to prominence, Facebook felt the heat. Facebook could take its user for granted for a long time but with Google+ around they had to pick up their game.
They introduced a massive re-design change called Timelines. Timelines has be received with mixed reviews and many are unhappy about it being so easy for other to look up their old Facebook updates. Timelines is still being unveiled slowly and the jury is still out on whether Facebook has come up with a winner.
#10. BlackBerry Outage
If you were a blackberry user, you probably were a victim of this outage. Blackberry’s messaging network had a downtime which lasted not for hours but for days. The outage was fixed but it will take some time to repair the damage done to BlackBerry’s reputation.
The year 2011 was full of ups and downs in the tech world. Famous technologists died, big companies and services flopped while newer names came into prominence. The year 2012 will probably be full of stories with its origins in this year.
Hope you enjoyed our coverage over the past year and let me wish all our readers a Happy New Year.
I hardly use e-mail to keep in touch with school friends or family members online. I end up using social media. This rise in social media has led to the notion that email might be dead in the near future.
Here is a infographic by visiblegains showing how Email is alive and kicking along with growing every year. Which is true for me too, as on an overall basis, I use email a lot more than ever.
There were 107 trillion emails sent in the past year, that is 3.3 million emails per second. Even if email is well and alive, on the downside a massive 45% of all email is spam.
What are your views on the future of Email? Do drop in your comments.
In recent times there has been a lot of buzz online about a Anti-Piracy Bill in the United States. Many internet companies like Mozilla, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo and more have stated their opposition to SOPA.
An organization backed by Mozilla, Creative Commons and Wikimedia has created this infographic below that shows the effect the bill could have on internet companies.
Considering a majority of the internet companies are in the US; this could have a global impact. Somewhere down the line, it seems legislation has to catch up with technology as older rules on copyright and publishing cannot be applied on internet communities where a lot of the content is user-generated.
Google auto-complete suggestions for search are probably based on what people search for most. But what people search for most changes according to geographic locations. There is also the average age of the internet user which keeps changing from country to country.
For example most people in the US, who use the internet or Google to search for stuff online are probably older than say Indians, where a lot of users are very young and in college.
We decided to check out how auto-suggestions change from US and India for the same query on Google.
The first image is from Google.com (US) and the next one is from Google.co.in (India). 🙂
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How to
Google.com (US)
Google.co.in (India)
Tutorial
Google.com (US)
Google.co.in (India)
Removing
Google.com (US)
Google.co.in (India)
The difference is a lot between the two countries. Google auto-complete suggestions do give interesting results. If you liked this post, you might enjoy these two posts which are based on similar ideas of auto-suggestions.
