Scribez

I am a film addict. At this point who isn’t? I remember a time when mentioning names like Wong Kar Wai or Akira Kurusawa in a conversation would result in raised eyebrows and sneers. Now, every other dawg is an Almadovar fan or a Fellini freak. I really don’t know how much of the works by these directors are being understood by this new wave of (pseudo?) cine-philes. My fix of films come from the good old pirated CD/DVD dealers in Cochin. There is this little shop where the dude will get me any movie I ask for, even if no one else wants it; he’d get me one copy. We have a relationship going back over 5 years. There is a whole black market of pirated stuff here and it is quite efficient. I have found gems in these shops that are not found in bigger metros like Banglore and Chennai.

The new anti-piracy drive by the Govt. is a blatant attempt at killing my supply of illicit escapism. Here’s what is happening-

The Police are raiding stores and DVD/VCD rental shops, and confisticating everything they have. My good friend, the pirate of cochin had his entire collection confisticated. This man is not only a pirate, he is a serious movie buff. He has 3 versions of Citizen Kane with him- DVD conversions of varying quality. He is a collector and supplier par excellence. But it’s all illegal. The cops even confisticated blank CDs and DVDs. All in all, this brother lost over Rs. 9 lakhs in merchandise. Woah!

I know that piracy is wrong, that it is illegal and kills the movie industry. But here is my argument for it. The Malayalam film industry is a con. The home videos are of such low quality that you’d wonder where the Rs.300 you shell out for a DVD is spent. The conversion is bad- some of the older films are actually converted from video cassettes. There are no multiple audio tracks. There is no bonus material whatsoever. A rough estimation by me pegs the true value of these DVDs (including a generous profit) at about Rs.120. The pirated version is only Rs.100. So why shell out more for the same shit. The legal version of the DVD should provide the consumers with some incentives for it’s purchase.

I don’t always go for the pirated DVDs; I have a collection of original DVDs (foreign films) too. There is quality in conversions and a slew of bonus features that I wouldn’t get in a pirated DVD, so I have no reservations in paying the price printed on it’s back. Some of the films that you really want never make it legally to the CD/DVD shops. Films by Ozu, Kobayashi, Kar Wai, to name a few, are not there on any shelves in any CD/DVD shops selling legal DVDs. Ordering it online is an option, but I’ve done it and I’ve gotten a broken disc with me to remind me to never try that again.

Another point I’d like to raise is the censorship of original DVD content by the Censor Board. The original DVD of Irreversible by Gasper Noe is actually 16 minutes shorter than the actual film. Y Tu Mama Tambien has been cut too- very abrupt cuts. The pirated DVDs feature pristine conversions and no such censoring. Not to mention, films like The Last Temptation Of Christ are actually banned in India and piracy is the only way of getting it.

So in a country where good films seldom reach theatres, where there are no incentives for buying an original CD/DVD, where half the films that do reach legally are censored, why should I buy or wait for an original DVD? I agree again that piracy is illegal. But in many cases, it is the only option. It is a thriving business because of this, even with the raids on. I can still get the DVDs from the pirates of Cochin and I will keep buying it.

powered by performancing firefox

This is an article that stemmed in my head when I was thinking about starting my own web 2.0 based business. Considering the various factors that go into any such business, one of the chief concerns that pop into this is the web-design itself. The typical way this would work is I approach a Web-designer and buy a design / pay him to develop a design for me. And then I buy the design from him. The web-designer, if he’s smart enough would charge for

1. Time for designing
2. The design itself
3. Implementing / Customizing the design for a webpage.

Now, thinking as a smart web-designer, if you think that the Web-site is going to be a hit and will involve evolution of the site itself, you’d swarm the entity [person/firm] who’s enrolled you to create the design into a maintenance contract. This would ensure you that you are paid enough money for enhancing the current design. This could also be offered by you as a designer for a certain amount of money.

Thinking as an smarter web-designer, with a little bit of know-how on the Web2.0 upcoming boom, with enough money slowly being pumped in, you can advertise yourself as a Web2.0 Web-designer [basically pastel shades, with Aqua like alpha, AJAX based interfaces yada yada yada] and what you can actually do, is if you feel that the web-site is going to a tremendous hit, you should try and rope in a “percentage cut model”. IOW, depending on the traffic, you can ask for a cut of the profit that the website is making. More like an investment. Now, depending on your experience you’ll know how to rope in your customers and offer which model ;-)! However, this is just a suggestion that I thought many web-designers may not have thought about.

As a web-designer, what do you think about this particular business model? Is it good/bad/so-so? Lemme know in your comments.

Posted by gurupanguji.

Open Source: The buzz word for the year 2007. From being a bunch of geeks who revolutionized the computing industry, it has grown quite a lot. The world, well at least the computing world, agrees that it’s the next best thing to sliced cheese [and trust me sliced cheese is God sent to the people in the computing world]. I was reading up on the Open Source Business Model, wondering how and what was the money maker of Open Source based companies - web based and stand-alone applications wise. This got me thinking, as a professional software developer, the amount of opportunity and the threats it presents and poses to people like me.

Now, let me define Professional Software Developer: It’s a term that I coined right now to define, and include those developers who write code to make a living, well at least anyone who develops software to make some money out of the process of “coding”.

Now, what is the Open Source Business Model for Software? Traditionally, companies put a lot of value to the actual source code, for a variety of reasons [1]. Now, the code itself is not idolized anymore. How? Well, by providing the source code, free of charge to anyone who wants to use it / understand it / contribute to it, under a variety of “public licenses” - viz. GPL, CC, to name a few. This is a major shift from the “closed source” paradigm.

Under the closed source paradigm, software developers were paid - a lot of money at times - to develop the code base. This had a lot of value, understandably as the company paid quite a hefty amount of money to get it developed, in spite of getting it done real cheap in outsourcing sweatshops in India ;-).

Under the open source paradigm, most of the companies rely on volunteers [a queer word comes into my mind - developer volunteers ???] to develop the code - read Software Developers with a lot of free time??! Now, this cuts down the value of the “source code” to NIL! Save for the laptop sticker (optional), a few T-shirts and due credits given in the “About Us” page ;-), which costs the company practically NOTHING! Now, this also shifts the company’s focus from a traditional software sweatshop to focusing on products, features, service, support, and other value-add services. And it’s these things, which is going to fetch the money to the company anyway, at least in the long run. The software code base itself has no value. Furthermore, it only makes sense for people to contribute to it and have a community based brainstorming for adding features, removing bugs etc.

E.g. Consider the major technologies used in the Web-Applications today - Java, Apache, Linux, MySQL, PHP, etc!! All Open Source, Worthy mentions are of course .Net Web Services, however, let’s not include that here. =D!

P.S. This makes an excellent case for any start-up with limited technology resources to vote and opt - Open Source btw

So, what does this mean to you as a Professional Software Developer? There are two situations you can read from here - Opportunity and Despair.

Let’s tackle the positive one first - Opportunity. One word - NDAs / Contracts. The Closed Source Paradigm typically enforces the software developer cannot use code from his just done / developing project for any of his practical use. Furthermore, majority of the companies for which you will work for, will also have a “Service Agreement” clause, which will not let you work for ANY OTHER COMPANY/product other than for the one you are working, until your contract expires/is revoked by your company. Also, any development you do is NOT your property but is officially the company’s Intellectual Property, for which it gets to file the patents and get the royalty.

The Open Source Paradigm caters to the I-want-variety-in-this-boring-existence-of-mine side of the software development. You can go independent and work for any project you want, which is ready to “hire” you for major concerns of development as well as design decisions. Not only that, it also allows you to go independent and put your hand in a variety of projects, some which pay, some which cater to your interest in the world [Ok!! Development world :-P]. So, you can consider this as an opportunity to grow and expand your profile.

Now, if you can write as well, start a blog, which accounts for your daily experience in the programming world. As there are no NDAs with the projects you work on, you can use real life example code for your work, put Adsense and tada - you’re making money out of what you do best and what you really like - developing code. So, that’s so much for opportunity!!

Despair: Now, let’s give some attention to despair - the negative aspect of this. As a software developer, as soon as the company you are working for realizes that the ROI in maintaining closed source is not worth paying the current set of developers in the payroll, you are out of a job. Just as outsourcing was a major job-cutter, Open Source and Ready to work for real cheap money College Students with development experience are going to handle the code! As tough as this may seem, this could be a prediction of the future.

However, things are not so glum. As part of your “career objectives” set in your company, I am sure that one of the clauses would be “Improve Technology Knowledge” or “Update yourself with the latest trends in technology” or something to that effect. Everybody’s been through that. Now, it’s time to actually make use of some company time to actually enforce that particular Responsibility Area. Get involved in the latest Open Source Technologies / trends like PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, Apache, AJAX, yada yada yada. You get what I mean, learn it and make sure that you highlight that you have done justice to that objective in your next appraisal. And when the time comes that the company decides to try out Open Source technologies, you are way up there in the forefront, already having knowledge of the same. A time for promotion?? I think so ;-)!

Note: This situation is applicable ONLY to the general software development companies and it DOES NOT incorporate the niche software development companies like Medical Solutions or Financial Solutions. Although certain aspects of even these applications will be at the very least BASED on Open Source Technologies soon. Companies involved in these have already spent WAY too much money and resources in developing something that’s so highly proprietary that they will not, at least for a very good amount of time, say 10-20 years even consider making the source code of the binaries that earns them MILLIONS of $$$ a year, OPEN!!

Also, there are companies like IBM and Novell, who are neither here, nor fully there, the in-betweens, who are software houses developing Open Source software - Ideal place to work right now for the Open Source oriented Professional Software Developer, eh ;-)!

Footnotes:
[1] Reasons include theft, software / IP patents on the source code, competitors using to reverse engineer the system design, malicious use of the source code for hacking/cracking/gain private information etc.

Sources / Further Reading about Open Source Business Models
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_vs._closed_source
[2] http://www.extropia.com/tutorials/misc/opensourcebiz.html
[3] http://web.corante.com/editorial/archives/2006/07/the_open_source_revenue_model.php

Posted by gurupanguji

Update: A lot of people misunderstood what I meant by Link spamming. First of all Modifying and releasing the themes with your link in the credit is not at all wrong. But when you do underhand stuff like adding NOFollow Tags to the original authors and on top of that making minimal changes and try to hid your link in the credit it is VERY VERY Wrong.
Update: Since a Lot of people don’t know or can’t seem to understand I added an explanation of the NOFOLLOW tag from the Official Google Blog.
Update:Melvin Ng the owner of
http://wpthemegallery.com/ has resolved the issue with Sadish here and has removed his links from Sadish Themes.
Update: Thilak said he released those themes a long time ago.
Update: This Topics of this post was not in order of Priority. If you feel that not giving Credit to the Orginal theme owner and Adding NOFOLLOW Tags is ok they my friend you have a major crisis with your moral values that is all I can say. But you are right its not illegal.

Explanation of the NoFollow Tag read more from the Official Google Blog

If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it. From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

We’ve also discussed this issue with colleagues at our fellow search engines and would like to thank MSN Search and Yahoo! for supporting this initiative. Here are a few guidelines for anyone else who wants to join the cause.

I might be kicking up a lot of dirt and upsetting a few people here. Originally I was going to write about Link Spamming after I caught a few well know blogs actively doing it, but after reading the post on wpthemes: Please Respect our Copyright, CopyBlogger: Is it ok to steal Someones Design and the recent fiasco where Google got royally screwed from blogger all over the blogsphere for copying the IE7’s Promotion Page design from Yahoo. I decided to generalize it. to include Plagiarism, Splogs and Paid Reviews. Some of these terms might not sound familiar to the average Joe or reader but if your are a regular blogger you need to know these things.

• Link Spamming
• Plagiarism And Splogs
• Paid Reviews

To understand some of these terms you need to know what SEO is, most average Internet surfers know what this is and I can already see some people yawning so don’t worry I am not going to go into it much. If your a noob when it comes to SEO then head towards the end of this post to read a brief introduction to SEO. We’ll tackle more serious issues here. So what do Link Spamming, Plagiarism, Splogs and Paid Reviews have in common? Its WordPress. Its a well know fact that most of the top bloggers TechCrunch, Scoble use WordPress heck even Matt Cutts Google’s Engineer and SEO Expert uses WordPress even though Google has its own Blogging platform Blogger. Apart from the excellent blogging features which other free blogging platforms lack it is an excellent tool when it comes to SEO and also because of the large number of excellent themes which are SEO Oriented.

Link Spamming

If your on wordpress you know what Askimet is and chances are that you get a lot of spam Comments which Askiment catches for you. The purpose of these spam comments are to leave a link on your blog to their site that they rank well in search Engines for that particular keywords(A typical Black Hat SEO Technique). A while back I found that some people had found a legitimate way to link spam using Wordpress Themes/Templates.

Case 1: http://tech-buzz.net/ I noticed it when I chanced upon a blog run by Thilak called Tech-Buzz while searching on Technorati, he seemed to have a high Technorati Rank since a large number of people seemed to be linking to him his blog. What he did was, modify Themes/Templates to a certain degree and release those Themes/Templates on his website while adding his link to the footer of the theme with those of the original theme owners and designers. At first it was hard for me to notice his link since he seemed to have hidden it somewhere inside the source code Check out Coalitionagainsthate.org , http://www.scottgrizzard.com or http://www.nhlanalysis.com they are all running one of Thilak theme which is originally a K2 theme modified into a 3 column by John T P (who is Currently seems busy trying to get into the Top Techorati ranking with a Technorati Fav exchage SIGH People) which was further modified by Thilak. But the funny thing is you won’t notice the link added by thilak in the footer of the theme it is cleverly hidden (Hover your Mouse over the T in word TripleK2 to see his link) you need to go to the HTML source to see the link to his blog but it gets worse he added a NOFOLLOW Html Tag (Special HTML Code to tell search engines not to take the link into account) to the original authors links.

Case 2: http://www.kaushalsheth.com/ This guy’s themes get regularly featured on http://planet.wordpress.org/ The official aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world. While I appreciate what he does by porting other people’s CSS/XHTML themes to wordpress he also makes it a point to leave a sponsored link in all his themes.

Case 3. http://wpthemegallery.com/ Collects themes from different locations and adds a link to his site and distributes them.

Its more of a matter of ethics here since most of the Themes for wordpress are released under GPL or Creative Commons Share Alike Licence then these people do have a right to modify and add their links i.e. without removing the original copyright links. Though Case 1: is very questionable.

Plagiarism and Splogs.

I don’t have to define Plagiarism, Splogs are Blogs which are automated using programs that steal other people content word for words this mostly done using software called scrapers. These Scarper site are leechs that feed off other people content and have Google Ads(Adsense). Initially when I had switched to partial feeds on Scribez a while back few of our authors and readers voiced their displeasure since Full Feeds are one of the most common ways by which these scraper sites work (Scribez currently has Full feeds you might want to read http://www.fullfeeds.com and debate on Full Feeds Vs Partial Feeds ). Lorelle hates full feed. The Cartoon below illustrators this very well.

Case 1. http://33rockers.com/ The Previous Owner of 33rockers.com (its been sold to Warren Cardinal) Karthik Kastury was caught plagiarising by Maxpower Ironically Thilak seems to be very upset that Karthik Kastury was stealing his content.

Case 2. People are so lazy in the blogsphere that they blog about what other people blogging and leave a link back to the original source because they are too lazy to write their own content. While technically not plagiarising or Splogging a lot of blogger especially tech blogger make it seem that this is OK. Which is also why Thilaks blog got banned from DIGG.

My URL has been banned (reported as a middle man), but they never lifted the ban.. more over they give rude replies when I tried to contact them

Example of a Splog: http://digitalnewsflash.com this site feeds of other people RSS Feeds.

How to deal with sploggers and plagiarists

What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content Dealing With Website Plagiarism: When Someone Copies Your Blog Content ?

Paid Blogging

This is a grey area a lot of blogger out there in the blogsphere seem to be divided over this issue. I am talking about services like payperpost.com and reviewme.com which pay the blogger to write a review for a particular product. payperpost.com is more controversial since you have the option on not disclosing to your readers that your being paid to write a review. This could lead to a more sophisticated form of spam example a company which is just starting out could pay blogger to blog about them this not only help to achieve their Viral marketing strategy but also helps boost their presence on Search engines to outdo their rivals. Jason Calacanis has a good post about it here and Labnol both have confirmed this in Matt Cutts own words “Google wants to do a good job of detecting paid links. Paid links that affect search engines (whether paid text links or a paid review) can cause a site to lose trust in Google.”

Why Bother with SEO in the first place

SEO is a vast subject I am just going to touch upon it here. I suggest you read up Aaron Wall’s blog if your interested to know more about it especially his article on Search engine relevancy he is one of the best SEO gurus out there. For the average blogger this is not a big issue but if your a pro blogger or are trying to reach a wider audience you need to know about SEO since 80% of the traffic on the Internet is generated from search engines and if the search engines cannot find you then your losing a major chunk of your audience. SEO are factors which if implemented correctly help to boost your reach and visibility on search engines. Factors for SEO can be divided in two categories

• Internal SEO
• External SEO

Internal Factors

Without getting too technical these are factors which the the blogger has to take care of such as the Content on your blog the keywords/Keyword density that you use, the way you code your Website/Web pages. With wordpress and some of the excellent themes developed by the community members this factor is not such a big issue. Which is why blogs on Wordpress.com and wordpress blogs in general have a better chance on search engines than blogs created on blogger, live journal etc (I’ll do a post on this later on why wordpress is much better if your into SEO than other blogging platforms)

External Factors

These factors are how many website are linking to your website/blog etc that why you see people building up there Blog rolls.

This is something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now and I thought I really couldn’t put it in words so I didn’t bother to write. Truth is, I still doubt I’ll be able to write much.

It’s something we read in the papers every single day. Rape, dowry deaths, assault, forced prostitution etc…. but somehow, the gravity of the situation seldom strikes us. It never strikes us until our friends/family members are victims in some way or the other. I’ve been listening to a lot (a LOT) of stuff from some of my close friends from Chennai, Bangalore and even Hyderabad and it’s disturbing and sickening to see that women in our country  have to lead a restricted existense just because of some of the perverts that roam our/your streets.

Not surprisingly, it isn’t restricted to the middle and lower classes. And it isn’t even endemic to our country.

A  friend of mine, Selva has written a post titled, ‘Will my wife and daughters be safe in this world?’ It’s an amazingly well researched, thought out and written piece.

So what does the law do to the perpetrators of these heinous crimes? Will a jail term do? Will execution do? Will anything that is done repair the lives of the traumatised victims?

Posted by The Prestidigitator 

November 14th is when Children’s Day is celebrated in India. With celebrations happening all over the nation we felt it appropriate to share with you a video that we received a while back. Take this time to reflect on the time we were once kids!

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8248777211522641547&hl=en]

Hopefully this video made you smile

Posted by WildGrey.

Scrybe™ is a groundbreaking online organizer that caters to today’s lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way.

We have online photo storage [ala Flickr , Zooomr , Photobucket], Online To-do Lists [ala Ta-Da Lists and countless others], Online Documents and Spreadsheets [of the erstwhile Writely fame and now the Google Docs and Spreadsheets fame, on which this is being edited by wildgrey and gurupanguji btw], and so on and so forth. Well, we are sure you see the trend - else BOOM - here it is - It’s ONLINE folks!! Yup, the future is Web-Apps. And working to conquer the web-traffic are giants and the pillars of the Blue stocks now - Microsoft , Google , Yahoo!

With Google acquiring Writely and managing to spearhead the online collaborative editing of documents and spreadsheets, Microsoft had started on the Microsoft Office Live! Hopefully its answer should be a comprehensive Office package online. Yet, the news today is of Scrybe - a truly innovative Web 2.0 App!! [Yeah it holds a dear place in our hearts, coz we sound similar - not the same feeling that the Elvis’ of the world get, but yeah something along those lines]
Scrybe allows you to create your own personal calendars, lists, notes and allows you to share them with others and/or publish them. So what’s new you may ask [If you didn’t WHOA - Yo!! *shaking u vigorously - and in a slow stoned tone - “Dude, it’s the 21st century…”*]. Let’s see what we got in this genre - there’s Google Calendar, iCal, Microsoft Outlook but none of them have been able to solve the one issue that has plagued web-apps - ’synchronizing both offline and online data’. Trying to bridge the divide - b/w what’s web and what’s not - Scrybe has managed to come out with an excellent solution to the age old problem [or so they claim and we are gonna test that claim]!
OfflineSync™, which arguably is the flagship of this entire Scrybe application, allows you to work with the application both offline and online. Therefore assuming that you are not connected to the internet you could still work with the application by simply choosing the ”Work Offline’ mode available in most of the current browsers, and working the same way you would if you were online. The next time you happen to get connected to the Internet, all the data that you worked while being offline gets synchronized with your online data thereby seamlessly integrating your work - bridging the divide - enabling you to concentrate on your organizing - and not be bothered with the synchronization and other menial tasks!
Before we begin our odessey exploring and testing what Scrybe can do for us, let’s just compare the various so-called - Personal Organizer - applications that you have a choice from as of now

Note: Soon to be added - Microsoft Office Live! I am keeping an eye on that for the simple reason that Live search [http://live.com/] is definitely a search engine worth mentioning :-)! I LOVE their jazzy effects!! I still use Google, but hey eye-candy - call Live!!

Ok - We’ll give you a minute now - Scratch those itching hands and brain - Done?? Ok - here we go!! Presenting…….
SCRYBE….
1. Login:

What you see here is the quintessential Web2.0 login screen. Now there are a couple of things that you need to note here besides the Web2.0 glamor [Yawn, now everything seems so drab - there was a point in time when Wordpress deleted those posts and comments, my mind used to go - WOW!!].

• Enable OfflineSync checkbox: You would wanna check this guy [or girl for the gender equality person]! After all it’s OfflineSync(TM) that we are just waiting to test. Unless you enable this during your login you will not be able to experience the seamless nature of this application as you will not be able to work offline. If you check the box and login, the application will store your online and offline data into a temporary folder in your system.
• Rewrite offline data from scratch checkbox: Assuming some error has occurred with your data (say invalid time zones) ticking this checkbox will ensure your data is created ‘error-free’ for offline purposes. (We recommend this box be checked just to be on the safer side of things)

2. Working Space - It’s all about views folks!

After the loading screen - you reach this page! See anything familiar? Yup - you got that right - that IS a calendar. Even I was searching for something that’s outta the world after all the hype :P. But, then I realised, after all it’s a personal organizer - it better show a calendar!
Work Area: The workspace for this application consists of a main work area where the calendar gets displayed. There are also a couple of other window panes that allow you to work with the various elements of the application.
Views:
There are 4 view modes available for your calendar

1. Day - highlights the day’s events with the timing clearly demarcated and showing what are the times free - what’s occupied etc.
2. Week - Easy view of the busy days - not so busy days etc [helped by clicking on the day to quickly find out in a lil bit more detail if you are busy or not]
3. Month - A 7 column [for the days of the week] arrangement of the dates of the month.[See pic above]
4. Year - All the months arranged

Well, AJAX Flash for shows all its capabilities with the intuitive UI designed by the folks over at Scrybe. Apparently it’s all about the click [wondering if there are keyboard shortcuts for the keyboard oriented people]. What you see is generally by default a month-view [Any options to set default views folks?]. Click on a particular date, and well - it blooms out to a semi expanded view where you can see the events for a particular day with a slightly higher amount of detail.
Intuitive UI [should we be putting a (TM) symbol here?] takes it to the next level. Whenever you want more detail on something - just click on it - it blooms with more detail! We like the effect and appreciate it from Scribez! But warning, it could get pretty choppy at times on slower machines. Furthermore, we might just get tired off it. So well an option to change this might be a good idea. Furthermore, wonder how many people are gonna take notice of this in some time and start considering it as a “time-waster”. Well, Scrybe could also make a quasi-performance booster :P, but slowly decreasing the bloom out time. People wouldn’t realise it and just think that Scrybe is getting faster [Just a suggestion from the devious minds here!!]
Anyhoo - it’s all about the views folks. Want more detail, click on what you wanna get to know more - and it automatically takes you there in a single click [G’bye Double Click in Outlook - which we use generally]

Creating an Event
Creating an event can be done in a couple of ways

1. Clicking on a day from ‘Week Mode’ and entering details into an empty event holder you can get by clicking the ‘Add’ button
2. Navigate to the ‘Day Mode’ and enter you event details across a time slot of your need.

[COOL FEATURE ALERT]
When you add an event in [1] manner - you can type your event details as you would take notes

For e.g. Pickup Honey from airport at 5pm. Scrybe immediately picks up 5pm and allocates the event at that time.

Details Window PaneFor every event created certain details pertaining to it will get populated in the Details Window pane - a small window on the upper right corner of the screen. The pane has neatly organized tab like links discussed below:
a. General

• Shows general information about a particular event.
• You may change a created task from one date to another by simply choosing another date and clicking Update
• A text field called “Where” allows you to denote where the event will take place. This will be displayed when you hover the mouse over a particular event.
• You can add labels to an event. You may even choose to associate certain colors with certain labels. Currently there are only 4 colors available - Beige, Pink ,Lavender and Green. But it might just be a matter of time before they include customizable colors for labels.
• The only problem we noticed was with the delete. It did not ask for a confirmation for that action which we believe is necessary - especially with crazy touch sensitive touchpads coming with the laptops.

b. Reminder

• This will send you a reminder concerning an event that was created.
• Reminders can be send to a email address or email address of a mobile phone(via text message). Indeed a very welcome feature for those times when getting online is just out of the question [*wink wink*]. However, only a few providers are listed as of now. We sincerely hope and pray that the list expands soon.

c. Repeat

• Will schedule an event for repeat daily/weekly/monthly/yearly. Pretty much the same for all the calendar users.

d. Notes

• You can add notes to a particular event.
• Link field - Probably to associate link to another event?

e. Sharing
Coming soon! Evaluating Formats iCal,hCal,RSS,SSE,Email.
f. Publish
Coming soon! Private/Public Shared. Provision to export and import.

3. Timezone - Synch it across multiple sites across the world
Working across multiple sites spread, rather scattered here and there. Your developers are in a remote corner in India? You are globetrotting with your laptop and your Treo? Your language translator is huddled up in Geneva? And the product Configuration Management is in the air-conditioned walls of New York? Well, then this feature just might help you to synch it across with all of them.
This is one one cool feature of Scrybe, which shall be useful when the Sharing feature becomes live. When an event is created the time associated with it is based on the time zone of the creator, and it gets synched to the time zone of the party with whom it’s shared.
A globe icon in the details window pane takes you to a timezone screen [Awesome UI here btw]. Here you can view various timezones and the difference in timings from each other as well as GMT. There is also a provision for you to view other time zones by dragging the clock available. Your timezone gets configured during the initial setup of the account. You may choose to modify your primary timezone by clicking on the time line displayed on the left of the screen. You can also select secondary timezones to know what the equivalent time is in another time zone :-)! So you can check to see that the developer in India is not going to be stuck on the notorious Hosur Road, when you are calling to talk to him about the latest design changes and remind him of the impending deadlines. [Not that this is gonna change that :P]
Pros:

• You can drag the clock for time to be displayed in Ajax Timeline similarity. As you drag the clock along you will notice the needles of the clock moving in clockwise or anti-clockwise direction depending on if you pulled it right or left. This level of attention to detail in every aspect of the application is just mind blowing.
• Drag to desired timezone and clock on nation to add it to you recently used time zone list.
• Ability to view multiple time zones (Secondary Time Zones) in day/week view.

Cons:

• Inablity to select a timezone for use by clicking the icon from the Details pane . One has to do that from Day/Week view.
• We also found out that this takes away an offsite consultant’s excuse to say that the time was wrong in the event calendar and we strongly protest against it!

4. Lists window pane
Aah the task list. When Microsoft Outlook, came out with this, one of the those people who was thrilled by this was Guru’s dad. Well, we use the feature once in a while. Nothing new about it, except for one thing you get to look out for
- Amazing intuition, where in you just paste a set of lines and it automatically creates a list out from that for you.
Features Review:

• This pane allows you to create something called list
• Imagine lists as a folder of your various ‘things to do’
• Detail pane changes to reflect actions that can be performed with a created list
  • General
    • Share with - Coming Soon
    • Personal Note - Coming Soon
    • Include task in email
  • Notes
    • Allows you to add notes for a particular task
    • Allows you to add tasks to a particular list
• Once a task is added Detail pane reflects actions that can be performed on the tasks
  • General
    • Allows you to attach a label to a task i.e assigning which list this task belongs to
    • Requires textfiled enables you to add anything in particular that needs to be to accomplish this task(can add only one such item -con)
    • Assign to - Coming Soon
    • You may set the date and time for this task (Shifting between AM and PM very hard. Multiple clicks required - possible buggy interface)
    • Remind me - should most probably be used to send you a reminder. Must have multiple ways to do it 1) Email me 2)Send me a text message(speculating at this point) because checking the textbox still keeps that drop down box an non-editable)
  • Notes
    • Lets you add notes for a task
    • Small checkable box adjacent to the task lets you mark it off as finished
    • Ability to star a task - activates the date/time and remind me option
  • Added tasks get displayed on day view pane
  • Ability to add multiple tasks at once(definite plus point)
  • Tasks marked as finished automatically get sorted to the bottom of lists while other remain on top
  • Ability to select multiple tasks at once (another plus)
  • You can also filter tasks based on labels,dates,required,and status

5. Themes
You can customize the theme the way you would like it to be by tweaking color,saturation and brightness (reminds us of our old televison sets).

6. Terms Of Service
Make sure you take a look through this not-so-conventional jargon before proceeding through with anything.
7. Keyboard Shorcuts
Ever since Gmail came out with this (thats the first place we saw it) everyone seems to be adding this handy little feature and Scrybe has its fair share. Useful if your the kind of person who loves to buy a keyboard every 3 months. Speaking about keyboards, check this baby out :drool
8. Coming Soon

• FluidContext
• GlobalTimez
• ListTransfer
• JumpContext
• PaperSync
• ThoughtPad
• Bookmarks

And to think we were thrilled with just the current set of features!! Bring it on Scrybe!
9. Upcoming modules
Now this is a tricky one. We’re yet to figure out the real purpose of this page. What we speculate is some sort of customization? perhaps? Its currently just a blank page so we’ll just have to wait and see what this little section is all about
10. Time Maps
Time Maps enable you to understand how busy you are for a certain day. This is indicated by a line with different shades depending on how busy you are. This in turn allows to have a quick glance at that schedule and know is you can spare a little time or not.
Now just when you thought it was all over heres some more.
12) PaperSync™
We are kinda thrilled about this and can’t wait for Monday to come and check out this nifty feature. Sounds cool though with the various formats available all aimed at the final end use :-)! Now, with PaperSync, if only they also developed a way by which they actually convert whatever changes we have made on to the paper back onto Scrybe ;-)!
Anyhoo, more about PaperSync, this allows you to print your lists and events into any one of the following formats

a. Classic

• Prints traditional calendar views, i.e. Year, Month, Week or Day, depending on the current selection.
• The Classic format, also allows you to print your task lists with the selected calendar view.

b. Booklet

• A 2-fold format that prints your calendar and lists on the top half of the printed paper. The remaining half contains empty lines for scribbling your notes.
• The size of the document, once folded, is roughly about that of a booklet. You can simply carry it in your folders, books, files, bags or brief cases.
• The Booklet print can be folded in less than 20 seconds, and requires no cuts, glue, or stapling on the printed paper.

c. Pocket

• A 3-fold format that prints your data in 3 sections. When you look at this document on a flat paper, the top section displayed to be printed upside-down. However, once you fold this document, it appears on top correctly, in the right direction, containing empty lines for scribbling your notes.
• The size of the document, once folded, is roughly about that of a wallet. You can simply carry it in your pockets, or wallets.
• The Pocket print can be folded in less than 30 seconds and requires no cuts, glue, or stapling on the printed paper.

Conclusion:
Aah the ending - we can take a nice nap now!! *YAWN* In conclusion to this sleep-obstructing post, here’s the dig!
Scrybe
Pros:

• Amazing idea
• OfflineSync™
• TimeMap
• Excellent UI
• PaperSync™
• Interesting features ahead
• Indians explaining the features in a Youtube video - promo for Scribez

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u3ekzwnYxw]
Cons:

• Non-resizable windows
• We don’t get to use time zones as excuses anymore with our managers *sigh*

Posted by wildgrey and gurupanguji

Technorati tags: Internet, Technology, Applications, Business, Web2.0, Videos, YouTube, India, Startups, News

This post is meant to be a continuation to the previous post entitled ‘Web2.0 or Web 3.0′ only this time with more focus on the Indian Web2.0 scene.

Oct 8, 19:22:

UPDATE:

India is all set to give its entrepreneurs a boost. PROTO is the brain child of TKF[The Knowledge Foundation]. The whole idea behind this initiative is to showcase the various fascinating ideas being developed by various Indian companies, along with working prototypes and pre-releases, both to the public and the Venture Capitalist circles. You can read all about it in the PROTO blog. They also have a website Proto.in. [No content there as of now.There is no direct link to the blog from the website.]

PROTO2006* is all set to happen on 20th and 21st of January,2007(Hence the star next to PROTO2006) in Chennai. TKF team consists of the same guys that hosted the highly acclaimed Blogcamp. Therefore this, most certainly, is set to be another extremely sucessful, and much needed, event. Keep monitoring they’re blog and site for updates.

P.S: The splash for Proto.in was designed by our very own bluesaze. I have been insisting, for quite some time, that he add a ‘Portfolio‘ section to his website but he seems to be very lazy to do so. Im not just saying this, but one has to check out the rest of his works too!

Oct 8,17:00:

Having heard a lot about Web2.0 and even having written a post or two in it i asked myself “What Indian Web2.0 companies are there?”. I mainly had to ask myself this question because so much has been said about the Indian IT industry and yet i had not heard of any Web2.0 company except Zoho. And thus began my quest for some of the best Indian Web2.0 companies out there. And in this post you will find what I found.

I have to say at this point that although I found quite a lot of them listed on various sites very few managed to make an impression. Those that did I have listed here and the rest you can find in the posts mentioned under Sources at the bottom of this post. So lets begin.

1. Taazza:

A fresh perspective for news from the Indian subcontinent!

Although their website currently says “We are launching soon!” and i didn’t get a chance to explore it, the site in itself made me want to be part of it. So i decided to dig around for people were saying about Tazza and this is what i found.

Bothack’s review on Taazza and Adle’s Taazza review.

After reading these reviews its fair to see why Taazza is so widely anticipated.

On the same trail i was sidetrack to some other Web2.0 websites that i would like to mention.

2.SimpleDesi: A very neatly presented site, with articles on the latest News, Business, Showbiz and much more.

3.Shunya.in: The site’s title says ‘Connecting the Indian Technocrats’

Welcome to shunya.in the only community news site in India where you can express your opinion on news and issues that affect you

Its clear enough from the name what this site is all about and after spending a few minutes at this site it was plain to see that the site actually lived up to its rather strong statements.

4.India47: This is an Indian News feed Aggregator which picks up news from a number of news services.

5. Neobiniaries: This is my personal favourite. This site has got what I would say a very impressive listing (a good 57 pages!) of pretty much everything Web2.0. And i have to say that I believe it just might have more on its list than Go2Web20. You can also add in your Web2.0 application, that is if you have one.

6. Ourmedia:

Ourmedia focuses on both sharing knowledge, media and tools in a community environment.

That pretty much sums up everything that you can do if you choose to participate in this site.

7.ForumsofIndia: This is Digg styled forum with its content Indian Oriented. This is a very impressive site and I’m sure you would spend quite some time here exploring and interacting.

8.GuruLib:

GuruLib is a free web service to help organize home libraries. Catalog your books, DVDs, music CDs, games and software online using a book shelf metaphor.

This is very unique site with respect to the fact that it not only gives you a control over your repository of things but also alerts you on certain events like when the price of an item that you want falls below a certain prize range. Quite interesting indeed, i must say!

9. ClearTrip: ClearTrip helps you organize your trip by helping you plan out your entire trip and also finding out the hotels in that area. What is worth mentioning about this site is something called SmallWorld which gives you all the information you would need (from a tourist’s perspective) about a particular location.

10. OnYoMo: This is a listing site that allows you to search for Outlets and businesses in a particular locality. Although its in its initial stages the site looks all set to deliver a lot. Oh and OnYoMo actually stands for ‘On Your Move’. Pretty Neat!

11.Terrawiz: Terrawiz claims to be the ‘Indian Search Engine‘.

One of the “true crawler based search engines” for India and India related content. Our patent pending algorithm automatically identifies India related content on the web and organizes in such a way that you get the most relevant results fast.

And fast it is! Ive tried it out myself. However at this point i must add that i am a little skeptical as to the results that were thrown up.

12 Complore: With a tag line of ‘Come Xplore‘ (the name is coined from these words), this website enables you to

• Share articles, bookmarks, events.
• Organize your work.
• Search research work submitted by others.
• Grow your network among research community.

Darn i wish this was up and running a long time ago!

13.IndianPad:

IndianPad is a social bookmarking and blogging site. That’s just a complicated way of saying that our USERS rule!

Its really nice when a company banks so much on its users. You can explore stories, audio. There is also something called Livecast which in my initial impression was a take on DiggSpy.

The following ones are really awesome.

14. Webyantra:

Webyantra is a tech blog that profiles Indian web products & services. It is ‘ground zero’ for Indian web startups, ecommerce websites and internet based businesses..

One of the unique ones on our list today, these guys profile some of the coolest things out there. The latest app that theyve mentioned is called SlideShare. Well like the name suggests, make your slides and share them!

“Its much more complicated than that!”

15. Startups.in: This is the by far the only one that really got my nerves tingling next to Neobinaries. The folks at this place have everything you would like to know about the latest and hottest startups from the land of India. This is defintely worth a moment of your time, that is if you are intersted in the subject.

Well although there are many many more Web2.0 companies that could be talked about here i am afraid this is the list of all that impressed me today. I would surely love to hear about any more impressive Indian Web2.0 companies so do drop in a line.

Sources:

1.Web 2.0 activities in India

2.India’s Web2.0 Entrepreneurs

3.Web 2.0 companies in India

4.Numsum spreadsheet list of Indian Companies - has Web2.0 and others too.

5. India Web2.0 not yet.

Technorati tags: Web2.0, India, Business, Startups

Update Sep 14: Added CNN-IBN Video from Youtube

Venue: Tidel park Chennai
Date: Sep 9 and 10 2006
Attendees: 300-350
Topics: Check here
Entry Fees: Free
Media: CNN IBN, NDTV, Headlines Today, BBC, Business Today, Business India, The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle, Indian Express, Rajasthan Patrika, Cyber Media and GigaOm.
Highlights: Interaction, Networking, Free Food, Freebies/Goodies, Wi-Fi, Blogcamp Party, Sunil Gavaskar, Robert scoble, Virtual Participation,

Blogcamp was a huge success. Just do a technorati search or search flickr or search Enewss with the tag blogcamp, there is so much info out there on blogcamp and the various experiences of different people from different backgrounds. This is the third time I have sat down to write about blogcamp. There is so much to write that I don’t know where to start. Apart from attending the blogcamp unconference I was also part of the organizing committee, I was mainly in charge of designing and printing all the backdrop, banners. How I joined blogcamp itself is a long story. If you have a blog it’s a very small world. I was picked up by kiruba (The guy who initiated the whole thing) after I designed a few badges for blogcamp.

What is an Unconference

An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance. To date, the term is primarily in use in the geek community. Courtesy the wikipedia.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words so here a picture of the Schedule/Sessions.

So how is the Schedule/Sessions worked out simple if you want to talk just write your topics in the slots that are available or if the slots are all full put up a sticky note so that in case the speaker doesn’t turn up or finishes early you get to speak. Also don’t expect the session to be one-to-many, its many-to-many anyone can interrupt and start discussing.
Sessions run in parallel. I.e. we had two auditoriums one of which was the main venue and the other was a smaller one on the first floor. Sessions running in the secondary auditorium were mainly geeky ones and most the geeks headed off straight to this place.

There is just too much to write about all that happened in blogcamp if you are really interested in reading what happened in detail you can read the blogs that had been live blogging as the events were going on. I personally recommend the following blogs katchucrap, xplore , bothack and maxiblog. I will describe the highlights of the blogcamp events.

(more…)