Doodle 4 Google: See your child's drawing on the Google homepage

We all know famous Google Doodles which celebrated scientists, artists, local events or special dates

Till now, Google Doodle are designed by 31-year-old, Dennis Hwang.

We’re now given a chance to design a doodle for Google, through Google’s doodle competition, Doodle 4 Google

The best doodles will be voted on by a panel of judges as well as by the Indian public, and the winning doodle will be featured on the Google India homepage for a day, to be viewed by millions of people. The final winner will also win his or her very own laptop!

But wait..this competition is only for school students (between the 1^st and 10^th standards).

So you don’t involve in this..Let’s your kid be!!

More info is available over here

A few Google doodles:

Children's Day, November 14

 

Rabindranath Tagore's birthday   

Solar eclipse, 2009

Interesting Tweets that made me whistle - 1

Here I am…Kick starting/adding one more to my ever ending series :)

Here I am sharing Interesting Tweets that made me whistle

Hope you will all enjoy.

Here we go…

	ByronNewMedia "I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
	keithkiker Take a look at your plan for the day. Eliminate 1 hour of waste. Choose to spend that time with family, a client, or a friend.
	TusharG Even 62 years later Jinnha's ghost gives Indian politicians sleepless nights.
	crumcakeThe bravest thing that men do is love women
	nchokkan@ksawme என்னை இணைய வடிவேலு ஆக்கப்பார்க்கும் உங்கள் முயற்சியைக் கன்மையாக வண்டிக்கிறேன், ச்சே, வன்மையாகக் கண்டிக்கிறேன் @anbudan_BALA
	crumcake When peoples on here say, "we got a secret way for u to make lots of money". What they mean is this, " we got a scam & hope u fall for it"
	crumcake dont talk to me when im talking to myself
	crumcake I’m not 30 I’m 18 with 12 years of experience.
	problogger Love these Long Exposure Shots -http://tinyurl.com/7lr8m3 (for your Stumbling Consideration)
	anbudan_BALA பஞ்ச்வசனம் பேசிப்புட்டா சூப்பர் ஸ்டாரா/நஞ்சுள்ள எல்லாமும் ராஜநாகமா?-கொஞ்சம்/நினைப்பு பொழப்பக் கெடுக்கும் விஜய்யும்/கனைக்கும் குதிரையும் சமம்

Hope you all liked it…I will be back :)

Happy Twittering….

How am I doing??!!

• If you are wondering ‘Hey..Why this question now? You haven't grown yet’, question me here
• If you feel ‘You are ok pal..Keep trying’, let me know that here
• If you don’t know what to say, no problem, let me know that here

Bottom line, I love to hear from you all :)

Thanks for visiting my blog :)

Oru kadhal devathai – Idhaya Thamarai - My favourite songs collection

Yipee… At last I found the video of one of my all time favourite song.

It is Oru Kadhal devathai song from Idhaya Thamarai

Singers

Sung beautifully by SPB and Chitra

Lyrics

None other than Vairamuthu. You have to listen to those beautiful lines. It speaks all ….

Music

Music by Shankar Ganesh. When I heard this song first in my childhood, I initially thought music is by Ilayaraja but surprised when came to know that it is Shankar Ganesh.

Surely Tamil cinema industry has wasted Shankar Ganesh talent by making them always tune to stereotype songs…

Cinematography

And cinematography is none other than the great P.C.Sriram

He clearly proved who is and most of the amazing shots are way ahead of their times. Even now, it looks new and fresh although he doesn’t have the technology during 1990’s

Hats off to him!!!

And here is the video…

Oru Vetkam Varuthe – Pasanga - My favourite songs collection

My latest favourite song. Lovely melody.

Beautiful lyrics penned by Thamarai

Mesmerizing Music by James Vasanthan

Sung melodiously by Naresh Iyer &  Shreya Ghoshal

Excellent photography by Prem Kumar

Cute and poetic choreography by Dinesh

Watch & Listen to it once and you will become a fan... I bet :)

I am alive!!!!

Hey All:
I get enquiries from my blog readers and tweeters whether I am still there...

I am very much held up in my work and I rarely get time to even tweet, leave alone blog...

I am missing you all... I am getting a blog and tweet sick :(

I am planning to put atleast one post in a week....

Thanks for all for your patience and following up my blog...

I will meet you soon

Regards,
Swami K

History of YouTube

Here again, I am kicking off new Web History series where I will share about History of various web initiatives. Hope I will do justification to these blog series by contributing decent content across each series in the coming days :) Wish me luck :)

Jokes apart, it always important to know the history which tells us how the current successful venture evolved and its early struggles. Hope you agree with me.

Whose History are we looking today??!!

Well, I know that you would have already guessed it from this blog post title.

But I have to announce it formally that it is going to be YouTube and put its logo before I begin this post :)

So here we go, lets see how YouTube born…

Who founded it?

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Haven’t seen them yet??!! Don’t worry, here they are

I hope you can identify who is Chad Hurly, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in the above snap..Go figure :)

So how it happened?

• Chad Hurley & Steve Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco.
• Jawed Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, and Chad Hurley commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party

"was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible."

When YouTube jump into the action??!!

• YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.
• The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 15, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.

First YouTube Video – Me at the zoo - an 18 seconds video!!!

The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site. You can watch the video here :)

As we speak now, February 16,2009 , this 18 seconds !! video is viewed 576,808 times

When YouTube went live and heights climbed thereon

• YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in November 2005.
• The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day.
• It is estimated that 13 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. In March 2008, YouTube's bandwidth costs were estimated at approximately US$1 million a day.
• Alexa ranks YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet, behind Yahoo! and Google. If you are interested in viewing the ranking details, it’s here for YouTube, Google and Yahoo

Google acquired YouTube

In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.

YouTube History Video

To add icing to the cake(yeah, you have to agree that this blog post of mine is indeed a delicious cake !!!), here is the video ‘The History of YouTube’

Hope you enjoyed it…

Stay tuned…

How am I doing??!!

• If you are wondering ‘Hey..Why this question now? You haven't grown yet’, question me here
• If you feel ‘You are ok pal..Keep trying’, let me know that here
• If you don’t know what to say, no problem, let me know that here

Bottom line, I love to hear from you all :)

Thanks for visiting my blog :)

Aaron Carter - Crazy Little Party Girl

One of my favorite song during my dancing days(which needs a separate series to share :) )..

Really a peppy number.. I like the kid Aaron Carter those days.. Not sure what he do now…

Let's party friends :)

How to report Spam in Twitter?

As any other social networking tool, Twitter also crowded with spammers every hour and every day.

You wake up one day and excited to see that Barack Obama is following you only later to realize that it’s a fake one

How to report Spam?

Reporting spammer to Twitter is very easy. Just two steps all together. All you have to do is

• Follow the official Twitter Spam report a/c which is @spam
• DM(Direct Message) to the @spam a/c under the following format – d spam <spam user name>

For Example, if you want to mark a spammer named @fakebarackobama, then you have to send a DM as

d spam @fakebarackobama

That’s it, Twitter will take care of dealing with the spam a/c & most of the time their response is very quick :)

Contribute to a cleaner & Greener Twitter environment

Start reporting spam to Twitter & contribute towards cleaner Twitter environment. I report averagely 6-10 spammers per week

Let’s make Twitter a great & peaceful place to communicate :)

Hope this helps

Happy Twittering !!!

What catches your eye in Google Logo?

We all have been googling for years now. Let’s do an exercise on this. Please answer the following question

What catches your eye in Google Logo?

Why this question?? And that too all of a sudden…

Well, when I am writing my first part of the ‘Great Facts from 'The Google Story' , my 3 year old daughter Kamali saw the Google logo in the book cover and said to me

Papa.. I can see there are 2 blue,2 red, one yellow and one green in it

How about that..It never striked me..been googling for years...Kids have and make amazing observations...

Hence had a thought of why don’t I ask the same question to you all and love to see different views on this…

So please participate in answering this question and it will be fun :)

Our NIIT Get together after 6+ years

Hi NIIT Vadapalani Mates:

Welcome you all again…After 6 years, some of us met on February 25, 2009 at Raahat Plaza, Vadapalani

People who came are Sathya, Subha, Shankar Suresh, Ragesh, Pradeesh, Harish and Me

It’s nice to meet them after such a long time and we had a blasting time at Namma Veedu Vasantha Bhavan.

Sankar started the good time by asking the waiter who came for the orders to first get two A/C ..as the a/c room was really hot… LOL…

Technically, we gave stress testing to the waiter by ordering items, cancelling some of them and reordered..believe me.. it’s total chaos over there but we enjoy every bit of it :)

TIDBITS

Let me give you small tidbits before sharing you the most awaited get together pictures…

• Subha Narmadha…unbelievable..she almost converted the get together meet to a MLM Insurance Meet by canvassing the insurance policy..man…we really had a tough time in bringing back the environment to Get ToGether…phew..ask Sathya…And more importantly, we all made sure that she will no more send a big mail especially with Ramarajan favourite pink,green color font…Sankar said he took the entire day to read her big mail and still couldn’t understand it…LOL
• Sankar is at it usual best..cracking jokes and pulling other people legs..
• Harish and Suresh stills seem younger as they were when we studied at NIIT.
• Harish looked the serious guy among the batch. Man…he recently bought a flat at Saligramam which is good given the market rate. When I asked him how many square feet was the flat..he shell shocked me saying it is 4000 and he got it for around 30 lakhs…World started to spin around me as I am shocked at the shocking cheep deal… He clarified me immediately that he meant Rs.4000 per sq.ft and flat is around 1200 sq ft..Phew…
• Suresh is down to the earth and measured his words. I can bet that he didn't speak more than 30-35 words that day. He is like a drunken oops sorry sleephish…Hmm..would have got strong instructions from his Home Minister :)
• Ragesh..lots of secrets..I can’t reveal it now..Loads of surprises awaits in the future
• Sathya..same old do good person. Hasn’t changed an iota. (Sathya, neenga sonna madiriye solliten. Payment en bank a/c la transfer pannidunga)
• Last but the not the least, myself and Pradeesh are the heavyweight people among the group with me clearly leading.. I am working on reducing my weight but don’t when I am going to succeed in that. Friends, wish me luck :)

PICTURES

As usual, first is the quick slideshow

Now to download the full resolution pictures with geo and face tagged, please go here

If you want to view photos by individual person, go here

What next?

You may ask..You should ask..Sankar marriage pictures coming up..Waiting for Ronald to pass on the pictures..

Stay tuned.. And don’t forget to drop your comments…

Will see you all soon…

Great Facts from ‘The Google Story’ – Part 2

Here I am back again, with the second part of Great Facts from 'The Google Story' 

Here we go..

What does the name Google mean?

"Google means a very large number," Page said. "It is the number V followed by 100 zeros. And we were trying to come up with a name. We were confused about how to spell this, and so we actually spelled it incorrectly. It is a mathematical term and it is spelled g-o-o-g-o-l. So that is the right way Google is spelled. Most people don't know that, fortunately."

Larry’s aim was to download the entire web in a week??!!

"Google was started when Sergey and I were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in computer science," Page began, "and we didn't know exactly what we wanted to do. I got this crazy idea that I was going to download the entire Web onto my computer. I told my advisor that it would only take a week. After about a year or so, I had some portion of it."

How does Google make money?

"Google gets paid for every search that happens, more or less, mostly through advertising," Page said. "People pay for advertising. We are very lucky in that we chose to make ads relevant rather than having flash banner ads. It helps us have the best search engine. We also get paid by other companies, like AOL, that use our search engine."

Having a healthy disregard for the impossible

"So optimism is important," he went on. "You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set. There is a phrase I learned in college called, 'Having a healthy disregard for the impossible,'" Page said. "That is a really good phrase. You should try to do things that most people would not."

Brin and Lary – made and depend for each other

Supremely confident about their achievements and vision, Brin and Page had been on a roll ever since they started working together. They wanted no one—neither competitors nor outside investors—to come between them or interfere in any way. That combination of dependence on each other, and independence from everyone else, had contributed immeasurably to their astounding success.

Do you think Google was the highlight of your career? the first student asked Brin and Page.

"I think it was the smallest of accomplishments that we hope to make over the next 20 years," said Brin. "But I think that if Google is all we create, I don't think I would be very disappointed."
Page felt otherwise. "I would be very disappointed," he said. "We have many years left to go."

Sergey Brin wants more failures before every success ??!! How about that??!!

"We run Google a little bit like a university," Brin explained. "We have lots of projects, about 100 of them. We like to have small groups of people, three or so people, working on projects. Some of them, for example, are related to molecular biology. Others involve building hardware. So we do lots of stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first."
The students applauded. The idea of eventually succeeding after failing first, of not being afraid to fall down, resonated with them immediately.

A Project closer to the Google Founder heart is TRANSLATION !!!

"A project that is closer to our hearts," Sergey continued, "involves translation, and I was asked about Hebrew to English, which is not one of the ones we are working on. One of the most important aspects of information access is that a lot of information is not in languages that you understand. We have an existing translation service, but we think we can make it exceptionally better."

Hope you like these facts too.. Let me know what do you feel..

If you missed the Part 1 of this series, you can view it here

Great Facts from 'The Google Story' – Part 1

Last week, I purchased an amazing book ‘The Google Story’ by David A.Vise & Mark Malseed from Landmark, Chennai.

Just finished the first chapter today titled ‘Introduction’. Many facts are very interesting and useful. So I thought, why don’t I share those great facts to you all and here I am kick starting Great Facts from ‘The Google Story’ series

Interesting facts from the book are given in block quotes and I just gave title to each fact !!! Hope you will find this useful

Yahoo prevented Google Founders to become Standford Ph.D’s..all because of just refuse to spend $1 million !!!

Yahoo!, AltaVista, and many other major search engine and technology companies approached by Stanford University turned down the chance to buy Google's search system for $1 million. Their refusals forced Stanford Ph.D. students Sergey Brin and Larry Page to reluctantly drop out of school and start the firm. By the summer of 2005, each of the founders had a net worth of more than $10 billion.

Google knowingly forego 10’s of millions of dollar ever day!!!

Google does not seek to make as much money as it could in the short run. The most obvious example of this is the Google homepage, considered the most valuable piece of real estate on the Internet. A quick trip to www.google.com will confirm that Google displays no advertising on this page, forgoing tens of millions of dollars in revenue and profits to give users a higher-quality search experience.

Google Servers aka PC!!! Yeah..You read it right

Most important technological advantage distinguishing Google from would-be competitors is that its employees assemble and customize all of the personal computers the company uses to carry out searches. This is perhaps Google's best-kept secret.

Experts generally regard personal computers as commodity products, akin to toasters, but Google assembles, deploys, and is constantly improving the performance capabilities of more than 200,000 inexpensive PCs. It builds and stacks them atop one another in refrigerator-size racks, stringing them together with patented software and wiring. No enterprise has more computing power than Google with its network of garden-variety PCs on steroids.

"They run the largest computer system in the world," Hennessy said. "I don't think there is even anything close."

How Sergey Brin, Larry Page & Eric Schmidt together make things happen?

When it comes to products, Brin and Page operate in a hands-on manner, pushing hard for the introduction of new features and offerings at a blistering pace. Some of these changes are highly visible; others, hidden from view, provide users with better and speedier search results. The founders have time to focus heavily on what matters to users because their colleague, chief executive officer Eric Schmidt, tends to the company's business affairs. This sets them free to do what they do best. However, the entire trio at the top gets involved in both business affairs and product development. Brin, it turns out, is quite a good deal-maker and Page is adept at finding ways to cut costs, notably in the vitally important area of electricity needed to power and cool Google's computers.

What's Google average team size….It is 3 !!!

At Google, the preference is for working in small teams of three, with individual employees expected to allot 20 percent of their time to exploring whatever ideas interest them most. The notion of "20 percent time" is borrowed from the academic world, where professors are given one day a week to pursue private interests. Because the company lacks the usual layers of middle management, the hierarchical structure found in traditional corporations is nonexistent. At the same time, no other company has Google's combination of brains, immense computing resources, and focus on long-term results, vaulting it into a league of its own. These days, other companies have a tough time competing against Google for employees.

To google means "to search." !!!

That the company's name has become a verb in English, German, and other languages is testament to its pervasive influence on global culture.

How far did the Google travelled till now?

Google and its founders have traveled far. At the same time, both they and the company are still young—and this is just the beginning.

And for this series too, it is just a beginning. I will share more great facts as and when I read those from this great book :)

Before I close, just want to add one more fact

My 3 year old daughter knows ‘The Google Story’!!!

While I compose this post, I just visited Amazon to get the purchase link for this book. My 3 year old daughter(she is just onto her pre school and just know to say ABCD orally) just passed by and happened to see the ‘The Google Story’ book cover on the site(given below). And you know what she said…

’Papa…Is it not the book that you were reading yesterday’

Wow!!! Power of Google!!!

Please remember that I have just extracted a drop from this great book and I highly recommend to but the book. It’s really worth the money…

Hope you liked this post…

Let me know what you feel about these great facts..

See you soon…

Handicraft by my 3 year old daughter

Last week, we had parents meet at my daughter’s school. My daughter is doing good this term as her teacher is all praise of her.

We happened to see my daughter’s file in the school and I thought why don’t I snap it as I am thrilled, amazed to see some my 3 year old daughter’s work :)

So we borrowed the file for a day and I did photoshoot with my old Kodak 3.2 MP point and shoot camera.

File Cover

Art work done by Kamali’s teacher..

My daughter’s handicraft starts from the next picture :)

Hand Impression

I never knew my daughter's right hand can be a masterpiece :)

Free Drawing

To me..not bad…amazed to see that she got the sun,ladder and lollypop almost right..

And I can see her modern art creativity on ball, balloon :)

Coloring

Fruits and vegetables looks good and seems fresh , because my angel colored it :)

Free Drawing

Wow..all the right hand side work are a touch of modern art by my cute little angel..

Look at the grapes for an example.. You agree with me :)

Finger printing

Hope you enjoyed my daughter’s work :)

Meet you soon….

How to become a Speaker from shouter

In this post, I am just sharing my thought of how to become a speaker from a shouter

No..No.. I didn’t mean speaker and shouter in the real sense

• By speaker..I meant an interesting blogger who work hard to have a decent audience to listen to his posts and
• By shouter..I meant a new kid on the blog world who tries to grab the attention through some weird/gimmick posts

Don’t be a shouter

• As you all know, all of a sudden, if one guy shouts on the road, immediately he will grab the attention of the people on the road. They will rush to him or try to listen why he was shouting. But if there is no specific reason for his shout, they curse him and move on their way
• If the same person, on the second day, shouts on the same road almost to the same people, some people might listen to him but most of them will already start ignoring him
• If he continues to shout similarly in following days, hardly anybody is going to notice him, leave alone listening to him…

Have you got it..?Yes..If you are new kid to the blog world, it is most obvious that you will try to

• Put some weird/wacky/gimmick posts which is potential enough to gain curiosity
• Send out/blast series of emails to your nears and dears that you have started blogging and inviting them to visit your posts
• Through social networking sites like twitter, Facebook, you continually start posting/spamming about your new blog posts

These are basic methods aka grave mistakes that a new blogger will try to do to drive traffic without knowing its consequences ..

But when the visitors come to your site and if your content stinks….mate..they are gone from your blog space…might be for ever..To some people..you might be even marked as a spammer…

These tactics may very well work in the beginning. But if you don’t change, one day you will become the only reader who reads his own blog

So what I have to do???

Be a speaker

• A speaker might get a low/limited audience at his first few gatherings
• At end of every gathering, a good Speaker
  • will note the audience reaction and take feedback/notes
  • will focus onto bettering his content,
  • will develop presentation skills after each event
  • will support fellow starter speakers and grow together
• Slowly over the period of time, his audience will be growing and one day he might be one of the better speakers in the world where people will throng in huge numbers to hear him

Yes. I know you got it..but let me put it for a blogger. As a upcoming blogger

• You have to continuously post some sensible, useful, interesting content. Don’t ask me how :( as I am a beginner and too early to suggest about that…
• Send invitations (in a sensible, non pestering way) to nears and dears first and let them be your initial audience. Ask them to openly give feedback to your posts.
• Build a decent network through some popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
• Start sending invitation/tweet/message (again..stressing in an sensible, non pestering way) to your network on your new posts and await feedback. Don’t pester them for comments/feedback
• Note your mistakes in the past and current posts, correct it and improve your content in your next blog post
• Slowly over a period of time, if you have interesting content, you can see your blog traffic going up/steady in an progressive way..

Who Am I

Well, at this stage,, I still consider myself as a shouter who realizes that he is just keep on shouting and now started taken steps to convert himself to be a entry level speaker…

To be frank, I used to shout sometimes to get new people but always work for becoming a better speaker :)

What I shared in this post is my experience and I hope this will help to some extent for new bloggers

So, be a good speaker and rock…and don’t remain as a shouter for ever

Go speaking :)

P.S

Thanks to Angsuman for his feedback tweets on my blog which was quite inspiring in making me write this post which I have been thinking for some time. You can follow him on twitter here

Shortest blog post ever posted on web

.

How to get comments to your blog post?

Seriously I don’t know :(

You may ask

Then why did you write this post?

I am a new kid on the blog world (just 25+ days as a serious blogger) and curious to know on how to make my blog readers respond aka comment to my posts..

ok..ok..I know that they are in small numbers now and you might say that I have to give it some more time..Agreed..But like to learn the trade of getting responses from my blog readers at the early stage itself and will strive to improve upon it as I blog.

Please write your ideas as comments here so that it helps me…I know that you will respond/comment this time [won't you :) ]

Know your twitter grade and rank

Today morning, I got an interesting tweet from Deepak Rajanikanth that he got a Twitter grade of 97/100 from Twitter Grader

Got curious and visited Twitter Grader site. A very interesting site where one can see his twitter grade and rank.

In the home page, enter your twitter user name and click on the big Get Grade button and voila…you will get your twitter grade and rank

How is it calculated?

It is calculated as a percentile score. A grade of means that @ scores higher than percent of the users that have been graded.

• The number of followers you have
• The power of this network of followers
• The pace of your updates
• The completeness of your profile
• ...a few others

I am not sure and very clear on how their algorithm works and if it meets the standards but I found the grading and ranking concept interesting, funny and encouraging for new twitters like me :)

What more..?

• Based on your rank and grade, they also suggests list of folks to follow
• There is a Twitter Elite section which lists out top most powerfully ranked/graded tweeple. Have very interesting people in the top grades like Michael Arrington(tech crunch), Pete Cashmore (mashable), Darren Rowse(pro blogger) to name a few.
• They offer you twitter grader badge which you can put in your blog/website. It will look something like this…

Yep..that’s my grade..44/100 at present and ranked 352,288 out of 1,035,703 as of January 19, 2009.. As you can see.. I have long way to go.. You can see my updated grade and rank here

As I have to set myself a benchmark to improve my twitter grade and rank in the coming days, I am now targeting to better my friend Anand Nataraj whose grade is it at present 96.1/100 and ranked 28,947 out of 1,035,703 as of January 19, 2009. You can see his grade and rank here

Hey Anand…here I come…be prepared :) and be alert as long as you can as I might take even years for me to beat yours :) :)

Happy twittering…

Make your blog a must read and avoid first blog pitfalls

I started blogging seriously just since December 24, 2008 (although I created this blog on April 2007 :) ) for following reasons

• Past few years, I was really inspired by
  • technical blogs of Scott Gu , Omar Al Zabir , Matt Berseth
  • personal blogs of my friends Sobee(this guy stopped writing for past 3 years or so..not sure why..) , Yagyaraman & recently Anand Nataraj
• One day, I want my blog to be inspiration to other bloggers :)

Since new to blogging, have browsed around web for things like

• how to make a blog interesting
• do’s and don’ts
• how to drive traffic
• possible pitfalls etc.,

After reading a bunch of articles, I thought why don’t I share the info which I found useful to me. After all, essence of Web 2.0 , Web 3.5 is all about sharing. And more so, I read that every desktop/laptop is a data center in the age of Web 3.5 :)

Hence I am starting with the first post in this series ‘blogging for beginners’ where I am going to share my views about

• Making your blog a must read
• Avoid first blog pitfalls

Make your blog a must read

Although this topic is not for beginners, it is useful for us to know how to make your blog a must read so that we are all prepared from our first few posts itself :)

On this topic, I came across an interesting article 5 Ways to Imitate the 10 Most Popular Blogs by Easton Ellsworth where he says following are 5 unmistakable ways to make your blog just like the 10 most popular blogs in the world

• Publish frequently.
• Have a team. Note that this might not apply to beginners…
• Offer hot news.
• Have an attitude.
• Be visual.

Avoid first blog pitfalls

As a first time blogger, we always try too many things by adding series of plug-ins, widgets, gadgets, images, videos and sometimes even ads where we might not now if they are useful or distraction to our blog readers.

Here is good article titled Avoiding First Blog Pitfalls by timethief where she advises us to avoid these pitfalls

• Too many posts on the front page (too slow to load)
• Too many images (too slow to load)
• Too many animated icons, embeds, etc.
• Broken links
• Not updated frequently enough

After 20+ days of some serious blogging, I realized that blog is like a wine and does take time to taste better for you and more so to your readers(by the way, I am a teetotaler :) )

Your writing, vision, ideas gets better and better as you start writing posts regularly. You can see this difference by going through your previous posts and clearly feel how much you have improved over your posts. As you became older… you became wiser and intellectual :)

So don’t expect heavy traffic to your newly started blog… allow it to grow by taking care, nurture it and after some time, you will reap the benefits…

Happy blogging…

How to succeed in your software services startup with clearly aware of its pitfalls

Today afternoon, I got a tweet from my friend Anand Nataraj (who is an entrepreneur and founder of Cogzidel groups, Agriya)

happy to advice two college folks on their desire to become an entrepreneur... they look how i behaved 8 years back. students means raw enthusiasm... when i advice them something they show results the next day... it is nice to groom people like them

This made me to write this post where I want to point out on

• how to achieve success in your entrepreneurship
• with clearly aware of its pitfalls which you shouldn’t let them to stop you

For the past few years, I can see a trend where many of the college/university teens like to become entrepreneurs especially in IT field. This is a welcoming trend but there isn’t much direct and simple guidance/info available for them which lists out the pros and cons for starting software services startups

Myself and my friends did some freelancing work during the recession time on 2001-2002 but we didn’t pursue it after we failed in bunch of our initiatives and landed up in jobs due to various factors(family pressure, unable to get new projects etc.,)

During the same period, Anand was also running up Agriya with his friend Aravind and their venture is a successful one. They achieved success despite coming from an moderate background and now Anand is onto Cogzidel, his second online initiative after he sold his stakes at Agriya.

So, mine is a case of failure in software services startup(though seriously I should admit that we did more of freelancing as getting jobs is really difficult during the 2001-2002 recession) and Anand’s a successful one.

How to succeed?

On how to succeed in your initiatives, I strongly recommend to read Anand’s article titled Tips for Software Services Startups as he shares his hard earned USP :)

This might not be a traditional technical/Harvard type of write up but it is indeed a powerful collection of words from a experienced entrepreneur who has gone through the hardships of startup and wants to share his success for others to benefit.

Here is the gist of his tips

• At least one founder must be a techie
• Use power of Reverse Auction Systems
• Hire fresher’s or students
• Communicate with clients regularly
• Work on shared office
• Outsource Non Core Functions
• Cross Sell
• Promote your corporate site & Blog
• Update your blog regularly
• Tie-ups
• Partnering
• Participate in forum
• Start Developing Products

Mind you, above is just a gist and I recommend to read his article where he talks about the above tips in neat and concise way

For new/want to be entrepreneurs, above article might pep you up and inspire for sure… but you should also be aware on the possible pitfalls of software services startups.

What are all the pitfalls?

I initially thought of listing my experience on this but changed my mind as I came across an interesting article by Eric Karjaluoto where he talks about Why your Web Startup will fail which also included the mistakes I did in my freelance period.

Here is gist of Eric’s point on possible pitfalls

• You won’t have an audience
• You're going to run out of cash
• You’ll get frustrated
• The emotional rollercoaster will beat you
• You’ll get excited about something else
• But it probably won’t be the competition

As told for Anand’s tip, above is just a gist and read Eric’s article for details

Closing note…

My intention is to encourage the new/want to be entrepreneurs to succeed in their venture and also being aware of potential pitfalls which they have to keep in mind in their endeavor. And definitely, not to stop or discourage anybody in try their hands on entrepreneurship.

My thing is one should

• always go positively in his endeavors with knowledge of pitfalls/cracks in the journey so that he is aware of it in advance and ready with the plan to tackle
• rather than facing it suddenly and then you will be falling from the mountain and it is difficult to get up again and continue the same journey

My wife Chitra always tell me that 18-28 years is a best time for anyone to achieve their dreams.. be it to become a entrepreneur, music composer, singer, sports professional etc., because during this period, they will be

• fresh and raring to go out for their dreams without much hesitation
• they are raw and will be hugely self motivated
• more possibility of not worrying about taking care of their family financial needs as their parents might still be working

And I do agree with her thought though it might vary by slight margins to different people in different countries…

Hope this helps…

Wishing you all the best :) and don’t forget to share your story with me :)

When will our home’s wall clock sleep??!!

Whenever my 3 year old daughter Kamali awakes beyond 10:00 p.m., myself and Chitra always telling her that let’s go to sleep as it is getting late… I know it is usual in any house and you may ask what so new in this… wait...

Yesterday, when I was telling her to go to bed as the time is 10:30 p.m.; she asked me an question which just amazed me… The question is

‘Papa…. when will our clock (wall clock) sleep as I see it is always running even when we go to sleep?’

Kids are just brilliant. I was wondering how their thought process works which is very unique and amazing…

What do you say??!!!

Relive (y)our NIIT Vadapalani Days

My dear NIIT Vadapalani mates,

As promised, here I am sharing our precious NIIT photos.

First and foremost, sincere thanks to our Ronald for taking the strain of preserving these memories so long. Without him, we won’t have a chance to relive these moments.

Ok, let’s jump to action… !!!

Trailer :)

Here is quick trailer of our NIIT moments. Just click the play button below and get start your journey….

Movie

Ok… Ok.. I know you will not be satisfied to just see trailer. Don’t worry… We have just started.

Movie first half

Click here to view the original pictures and what more…. you can download the full resolution(yes… full res pictures) pictures to your Hard Disk. Isn’t great.

Interval :) Have a coffee and do come back :) :) I have lined up few more interesting stuff in the second half

Movie second half

I know all though you will be happy to see our mates again, you will definitely think of below

“Although nice to see everyone, how to identify and download only my pictures or my close friends pictures?”

Well, you can :)

Click here to see all our NIIT mates. Click on your face or any of your mates to see set of photos where just you/your close friends present.

And what more…. move the mouse over any face in the photo, it will display their name. I made my best to name all the people. If I miss anybody, please let me know and I will update it.

End Credits

First of all, thanks for you to spend your time to read this far :) Just kidding.

Hope you have enjoyed the show. Please leave your comment on this post so that I will be glad to know that my message to you has been reached and you have seen our precious NIIT days. Please let us know if you have any other additional pictures(scanned or not scanned, whatever) and I will contact you in making sure those pictures are also included in our collection

If you like my blog, please join yourself in Google Friend Connect which can be located on top right corner of this blog.

If you like this and make it a hit, we might also release a sequel :)to this (provided Ronald able to locate rest of our NIIT photos)

Ok NIIT mates, hope you enjoyed the show. Please keep in touch.