Sushrut Bidwai

Global warming or not, the city of Nasik which was till early 90’s (even late 90’s) was cool even in summers is experiencing very warm summers since last 2 years. Already in April we saw temperatures as high as 41C and May is still to come. Due to this weather we faced few issues which directly affected work.

1. Network equipment gets so hot that we experienced continuous packet drops and network drops.

2. Overall productivity of people.

I posted a query of Pune OpenCoffee club as to cheap solutions that can be applied. Here is a list of things people suggested. But before that a bit more information about our office.

Office is located on top floor. Its like a big hall with only one room separate for conference. There is very un-even distribution of people and machines in office with most of the folks sitting near east side of the office with west side kept empty for lunch and cricket. Due to my personal bad decision even inverters are near the crowded section of the office and hence this particular section was un-bearable to work in during peak heat hours few days ago.

Suggestions -

1. Flood roof with water.

Too much wastage of water and impractical.

2. Cover roof with grass, carpet or similar material.

Roof is a shared property and hence carpet etc could be stolen. There is a hospital in the same building and hence lot of people use roof.

3. Coat the roof with a special chemical like Dr. Fixit Heatshield or Surya Cool Cement

We received quote of around 55-60,000 Rs for doing these things. Since our’s is a rented place, we thought investing so much amount of money on something which we may not use for long is not a good idea. And hence parked this suggestion till we found some cheaper way.

4. False ceiling - Again cost + investment from long term was not favorable. Also would have taken much longer time and work would have affected while construction goes on.

5. Install more exhaust fans - We installed one and will be installing another one this weekend. Effect is pretty good.

6. We have north-east windows un-curtained. So suggestion was to put up vetiver curtains on these and water them. We are doing this. Cost of doing this was approximately Rs 2700. Result is very nice. Not only the place is cooler, it smells really good.

7. Put some matkas painted white on the roof. This will help in reflecting the sun rays and will reduce heating up of the roof. We bought 20 matkas, cut them in half. Painted them in white and put them around 3-4 feets from each other on the terrace. It does not cover entire area but covers the crowded and most affected portion. Reduced temperatures significantly.

8. Install ACs - Right now we do not have any ACs in the office. Reason is - cost + energy bills + inverter cost to keep them running during power outages (5 hours per day now with 2.5 hours slots). This was and is our last option. When we grow out of this office, we can take ACs with us, so investment is justified. But right now looking at the overall effect of measures we took, I dont think there is immediate need of ACs. Though we will always have the option open.

Hope this helps.

Misc heat, Ideas

Many people have written lot of things about Apple and Steve Jobs and there policies. Adobe Vs Apple. HTC Vs Apple and Apple app store policies have got worst press in history of technology products. But with 50 billion dollars in bank, they are of course not interested in listening. Here is my take on this problem.

Generally - when I buy a product I own that product. I can do any thing with that product. If I buy Nike shoes I can wear them on denims, shorts or with no cloths on. Nike can not bullshit me about what attire I should be wearing with those shoes. Similarly when I buy a PC, Netbook or Phone I should have complete ownership of that device. But Apple is exactly not allowing me to do that.

I am 28 and a programmer/hacker so I understand technology and would like to play around with my phone. Even if I can not recompile kernel of my Windows or Symbian machine like I can do with my Linux or Android machine, still I can do pretty much everything. I can install any app I want. I can install any softwares, third-party tools. I can run programs in any other language. I can watch porn if I want!

Apple and its terms and conditions now specify that we can not cross compile from LangX to C and run it on iEgo devices. Err.. why not Mr Steve Jobs? Whats exactly wrong with that? You are selling a phone and a phone experience or are you selling Objective C to developers? Why do you want to lock in people to a technology which you think is good? Next what - no SMS lingo when texting? All texts need to pass through spell-check before then can be sent out? Or no use of x-rated words in texts?

I can not install any app I want, I have to always install apps from app store. This is the most idiotic thing ever! Plus apple will take down any apps when ever they feel like.

The biggest problem is - Apple thinks users and developers of iEgo devices are witless dumbs and cant decide whats good for them on their own and need to police them always.

I personally never bought an iEgo device myself will never do so.

Misc apple, iEgo

Now this blogpost is not related to topics I generally write about, but anyways.

So some of the things that I would like twitter to do in 2010.

1. Ownership of my twitter page and stream - I should be more in control of my twitter stream. Since lot of people use twitter for professional purposes like getting business, putting up a strong profile to engage with tweple. So I should be able to customize my profile page. And by that I mean not just ability to put up a background page. But a bit more like widgets where I can put up rss feed for my blog. Click-able links to my linkedin profile, company website.

2. More features on conversation - This may not be possible or easy to do from technical standpoint, but what I would really like is to save a multi-part twitter conversation for future reference. Some thing like a favorite button, not for individual tweet but for entire conversations. And ability to play it back.

3. Analytics - If twitter implements my feature request 1, then analytics for all the links I publish. From where people are visiting my profile or my tweets and where they are going from my profile. Analytics related to retweets. Also analytics for links I tweet.

4. Stability - Please twitter, use that 100 milion you got in funding to provide a much much much more stable platform. I know its tough and very challenging but hope you can do it!

5. Spam control - Better way to keep those spammers out. May be implement superior crowd sourced things like if 10 people block a id you review it or something of that sorts. We want a clean followers list and currently burden is on users to keep it clean.

Misc 2010, twitter

Search owned most of this decade. Information search, product search, images, news, location based and so on. New decade will mostly be around numbers, statistics. Google is already moving towards it from trends we see this year.  We should expect this market to get really competitive and to come of age in next few years.

Misc Data, google, internet

I have been using google wave for managing few discussions and thought it would be good to share it with every one else.

First a bit of context -

Most of the teams I am part of (tech/sales/business) are distributed. Some people are in different timezones and hence managing a all-hands meeting/discussion is kind of tricky. Off course most of the things are taken care of over emails, but when you are at a particular milestone, its important to organize discussions in more disciplined manner.  So far meeting organizer would publish agenda 2 days ahead of time over email, or publish it on some sort of dashboard. Everybody goes through agenda, prepare their pre-meeting notes and bullet points. Then we conduct a voice conference using conference bridge or multi-party skype call. During meeting, everybody is taking down minutes, notes and publishing them after meeting is over. Meeting organizer will gather such feedback, inputs from every one and publish it as a road-map and follow up items. So far this worked well. But Google wave just helps us to make this a bit better.

How to use Google wave? Or rather how we are using it.

We create one wave and invite all concerned people (participants, observers, boards) to that wave. Meeting organizer will put down agenda as first message. Every body puts down their pre-meeting notes, inputs and organizer will keep on refining agenda taking this feedback. Any documents, links (including links to JIRA/Basecamp/Unfuddle) are posted to this first message. During meeting, we start talking about each bullet point from agenda message one by one. Call is still organized over skype or conf-bridge, but we make sure every body has access to wave during the call, so that minutes, notes are typed right there. So once meeting begins and every body has introduced, we start creating a message for each bullet point. Every body posts their thoughts, notes as we speak to this message as a reply. Once the meeting is completed, organizer will put up a concluding message on the wave with summary. No need to collate all minutes, as they happen in real time as we are speaking.

Benefit -

Typically most of us receive about 70-80 odd emails everyday. It is pain to keep track of all of them and their replies and play them back. Play back feature of wave is just a winner on its own! Second, we can attach various things to email, but we can embed them in wave. A slight difference, but a major benefit to make sure you can put context of the document and the document itself right next to each other. Real time notes sharing reduces time required to go through all of them and summarize. Since our use of wave is still limited, its easy to search through it much faster.

Typically we conduct road-map discussions for existing projects/products we are working on. This includes business discussions + technology. We also use this for preparing for a sales meeting and also for a sales meeting itself, when ever possible.

Hope this helps.

Misc google, Organizing, Wave

I got back from a 9 day break on Sunday. It has been a pure heaven. 

Well I love what I do and love to be around people I am working with. 

Having said so, there is so much of communication happening these days that its completely impossible to be give yourself a time. People pinging you all the time on chat, emails being exchanged, mobile going off all the time (well not for me as I tend to use mobile less and less everyday), landlines, twitter, orkut scraps, facebook notifications. Uff. The list is endless.

We all have come to a place where we are addicted to news and communication. 90% of news we consume is generally useless to us. But we do consume it.

For last days I checked my emails 15 mins everyday as it is impossible for me to be out of touch with the team and with clients. Updated twitter only couple of times. Did NOT even touched the god-damned mobile phone. 

I found myself thinking loud and may be clear in my head. Though about lot of stuff. Scribbled few poems. Read couple of books. Did lot of MASTI. Endured some physical work like taking 5-6Kms walk. Swim. 

No matter what profession you are in. No matter how many responsibilities you need to shoulder. Please do take breaks. 

Try to be alone with yourself once in a while. There is nothing like it.

Misc Break, Journey, Thoughts

Cloud is on the rise. No doubt about it. With cloud comes SaaS. I have already said that, these are two most important things to watch out for in 2009. But question is - have we really understood SaaS? From business point of view, I mean.

Let us study couple of Something aaS models we can find in current world.

Telecom - I think telecom companies have correctly understood this model. You pay for your usage. There is some basic monthly rental to cover wiring, instruments, infrastructure cost. But main thing is if you make a call, you know how much you will have to pay for it.

Roads - In India, when you buy a vehicle, based on your vehicle type you pay some road-tax. Irrespective Of whether you ever drive the vehicle or not you have to pay that tax. Almost all roads are free to drive on once you have paid this tax. In special cases, say some high speed highway/freeway you want to use, you have to pay for it before using. If you are going to use it every day, then you get subscription models.

Now the last statement, bold, above is very interesting. Models they offer you is - 1 time use, return usage, weekly/monthly subscriptions.

The way we are implementing SaaS for computer applications, provide me with only monthly subscriptions. Take example of Zoho pricing, all it provides me is various slots based on number of users for each of the application on a monthly basis. Same is the story with LinkedIn and many other SaaS business model implementers.

This is not what SaaS is. Period.

I will call this as rental model for software applications. You are paying rent. You pay it, whether you actually use the application or not.

How to implement SaaS for these applications?

Identify the bold point features your application provides. If you take example of Zoho projects, it is free for one project. USD 12 per month for upto 10 projects. Now I dont know how many projects I am going to have. Say I start with 1. Now when I acquire another project, I need to shell out 12 USD per month for that one project.  If I acquire another 8 projects, then they are free. For 11th project cost again is USD 8 per month. So the point is, there is no defined cost for one project.

Now such models create a BIG entry barrier for a small company like mine. This is the reason I do not use Zoho despite liking their products. If they would have given me something like 3 USD per project. It would have reduced entry barrier for me a LOT.

Let us see second example of LinkedIn. Now linkedin for professional users, charges some fixed fee. I am small time entrepreneur who needs these special features once in 2-3 months. Where I really need to connect with some one who is not in my network and I need that In Mail feature for that. But I will not take professional account, as I don’t need this feature all the time. So why not just ask me for 2 USD (say) for every feature request. 

You can have rental schemes too, along with such fine grained pricing structure. If over a period of time I notice that subscribing to rental schems is going to reduce my cost then I will.

I think such feature based model is the REAL SaaS business model. So if you do not have it, dont call it SaaS.

Ideas, Misc cloud, Linkedin, Pricing Model, saas, Zoho

Punetech is a blog started by highly experienced fellow technology enthu, Navin Kabra and he is being supported by excellent team like Amit Paranjape, Manas and others.  It is a must read blog for all start entrepreneurs, geeks and not just in Pune but every where.

10 Things I like about Punetech -

• Clear, concise, to the point.
• Started by a person who has been there done that. Not by some one who doesnt have expertise in commenting on startup things.
• Very vibrant offline presence.
• Helping in organizing events, meets in Pune.
• Leadership in taking up responsibilities for startup community with features Ask Punetech and other features like Wiki, Event schedule.
• Great coverage, live and review, of various events.
• Of the people, for the people by the people!
• I am always skeptical about organizations which are not for profit. Punetech is one of the very few organizations, and I call them organization not just a blog, which has maintained quality despite being not for profit.
• Most often a tech blog tend to get to focused on Web 2.0 stuff and forget rest of the things. Punetech does not lose focus like them. If you read there articles ranging from GNU to Supply chain management to twitter you get the entire range of technology happenings.
• Focus is on content and helping startup scene in Pune (in fact in India) and not on traffic. So stories, content on Punetech is much better than other startup blogs out there.
• This is 11th point but what the heck. If you compare startup activities in Pune 2 years back and today, you will see definite contribution by Punetech and various forums that Punetech supports like Pune Open Coffee Club.

Misc Navin Kabra, Pune, Punetech

Here is the presentation from my talk about How to bridge gap between Classroom and Cubicle.

Few points about the target audience -

• From a relatively smaller town.
• Not much exposure to Internet.
• No vision about career and various opportunities.
• Not vibrant, enthusiastic about career.

Implementing Concepts, Misc

Misc Blogging, SEO, Traffic