July 2006 Archives

The much awaited Jaipur started only an hour late. That was quite an achievement considering that 26 young TeknoKrats had to wake up and be in office by 6 on a Saturday morning. Not surprisingly, Ashima turned up first and I came in soon after. I am the one who has to drive the farthest to reach office but somehow I always end up reaching before everybody else. Oh well.

So we took off around 7:30 and the party mood was immediately evident. Ashish kicked off fun and games. True to the age old tradition of our country, the game of choice was the evergreen antrakshri. That was followed by dumb charades and finally mafia and villagers. Somehow those sitting in the rear seats appeared to be in suspiciously high spirits.

Our first stop in Jaipur was Amer fort. The fort is pretty vast and full of history. Unfortunately we didn't have a tourist guide with us so I had to double up as one. The only fact that I was aware of (based on overhearing another tourist guide) was that the king had 12 wives. That gave me enough fodder to rewrite rest of the history. Some Teknokrats even started having a feeling of deja vu and claimed to have lived in the fort in a past life. I didn't realize how majestic the fort is until I saw Saad's photos (see the one above for example). It is funny how something look bland in real life but royal under a 8 megapixel camera with an infrared filter.

After checking into the hotel, a few people decided to go and shop. Rest of us headed to Chokhi Dhaani. "Chokhi Dhaani" means a small village in the local language. They have done a great job of recreating the Rajasthani village feel. So much so, that at the entrance, an old man with a spinning wheel yells out something incomprehensible at you. I have never lived in a village but somehow that felt very authentic. The highlight of Chokhi Dhaani is the dinner. Seated on small stools on the floor, you are served by traditionally dressed waiters. And again, true to Indian tradition of hospitality, they insist that you gorge on the food. In fact you can't say no to them. The waiters are really friendly and two of them placed their turbans on Manish and my heads. A couple of foreigners sitting across the room from us seemed amused. But they didn't eat much.

Post chokhi dhaani, most of the guys converged in Arvind's room where the secret party which everybody knew about was happening. Some of us decided to play some light hearted card games. My luck was running pretty low until I invoked the age old lucky charm of placing a coin on my forehead. There was no looking back after that and without exaggerating I can say it was a clean sweep.

We started the day a little late on Sunday morning. Our first stop was Birla Mandir. It is a nice temple. There is a "Birla museum" as well there. I put museum in quotes because hanging a few dozen photographs of a the original Birla in a room doesn't really qualify as a museum. So then we decided to go to a real museum - The Albert Hall. It is housed in a very impressive building which was built in the honor of some Biritish official or prince called Albert. This museum is also pretty boring and I would recommend skipping it should you visit Jaipur. The only real point of interest here is the thousands of pigeons that flock on the outside. There is also an Egyptian mummy housed inside the museum. The glass casing of the mummy seemed almost as ancient as the mummy itself.

The official plan was that we will take a 2 hour break so that those (read - girls) interested in shopping can do so. Unfortunately, all the markets in Jaipur are closed on Sundays. That is really lame and naturally upset a lot of people. Fortunately we were eventually able to spot some open shops and most people were able to get their shopping done.

Our final stop was Nahargarh fort. This is the place where parts of the famous movie Rang De Basanti were shot. This fort was definitely the high point of the trip. It is built on top of a hill and you get a breathtaking view of the entire city from there. This time around, we actually had a real tourist guide with us. While the guide was real, his history was definitely fictional. The guide told us juicy stories of the 7 ft 3 inches tall Maharaja who had built the fort exlusively for his 9 girlfriends (apparently his 1600 wives lived in another fort). Some of his stories (especially about the artwork on the walls) were really colorful. Ask me offline about those!

We left for Gurgaon around 5:30 in the evening. Everybody was dead tired by then but that didnt prevent another fierce boys v/s girls antrakshri from taking place. The bus journey was extreme fun. It is amazing how people develop incredible sense of humor in such situations. We hardly noticed the 5 hours of travel time on the way back.

So that was our maiden outstation trip. Very succesful by all accounts. Saad took almost 2 GB worth of photos so make sure to check his flickr feed

Photo credits: Saad, Kapil
More: read Ashish's account here.

Delhi is going to witness its first mobile unconference on August 5th.Called Mobile Monday (its happening on Saturday - dont ask me!), the idea is "bring together mobile enthusiasts, developers, technologists, business folks, entrepreneurs, VCs under a common forum. The chapter would channelize efforts to develop an active mobile community that can network and share information." It is really encouraging to see that technology community in Delhi is starting to actually look like a "community". We still have a long way to go but BarCamp and now MoMo Delhi we have made a good start!

Find out more at MoMo Delhi wiki.

Tomorrow morning the entire Tekriti team heads to Jaipur for the weekend. This is our first out of town trip as a company and I am really excited. Should be fun!

The Indian blogosphere is getting all worked up because blogpsot has been blocked off in India. (not giving any links - its flying all over the place anyway) Yes, it is a move that doesn't make much sense. Yes it is a form of censorship. Yes, the government is moronic enough to not realize that you cant really censor the internet.But for heaven's sake, just stop for a moment and try to understand what the government was intending to do. Government was not attempting to curtail anybody’s freedom of speech. There was credible information that certain blogs were being used to pass on sensitive information amongst terrorists. Since a serious terrorist attack happened just a few days back and 100s of lives were lost, it is not unimaginable that in a panic knee jerk reaction, they just blocked off everything. I don’t see how comparisons with China are relevant. A lot of folks in the blogosphere are tech savvy and they realize that nothing can really be blocked off (proxies et al) but your average government official is not that tech. savvy. In his/her effort to make sure that terrorist communication could be cut off, somebody ordered a blanket ban (or the ISPs interpreted it that way). Either way, it was an attempt to thwart terrorism. So it’s OK if we can’t get our dose of blogs for a few days. The terrorist attack itself didn’t evoke such a strong response in the blogosphere but we can’t access blogspot for a couple of days and suddenly it is the end of the world. Geez.

UPDATE: wow, what a response! Thanks everybody for the great discussion in the comments to this post. Looks like the ban is going to get lifted and it was indeed the ISPs who screwed up. Looking at the list of blocked sites, I must admit that this appears to have been politically motivated. But my original stand remains - we must be willing to put up with whatever inconveniences for the sake of fighting terrorism (though this particular instance apparently didn't have anything to do with that!).

(via Dave Winer) Why ugly design is important.

This is one of the best ideas I have heard in a long time!

Off to Chennai for a business trip over the weekend. I never ever imagined that I could actually get tired of travelling! I love travelling! But lately there has been so much of it that I am completely exhausted! I just hope there are no long queues at the airport due to the heightened security!

Jatin asks how long are we going to put up with this terrorism that our friendly neighbor inflicts upon us. Yesterday's terrorist attack was sickening and it caused lot of grief and pain across the country. There is perception amongst us that as a nation we are not aggressive enough. Why are we not like Israel? Or America? Well, I thank God that we are not like them. Unfortunately violence rarely, if ever, suppresses violence. If offense could end terrorism then why is Israel still blood soaked? And why are American soldiers still dying in Iraq? Does anybody seriously think that world is a safer place now that Iraq is no longer run by Saddam?

Even though it sounds pessimisitc, the fact is that there is no effective way to curb terrorism. It has never been done in the history of man kind. When you kill a terrorist, you create a martyr in the eyes of many who will grow up to emulate him. So each terrorist annhiliated means 3 more in the making. Its a vicious circle and at the root of it always is a strong (and often irrational) belief that injustice was meted out to a certain section of the society. I guess the best bet is to just let a generation of terrorists to grow old and die. That would make the next generation see the futility of terrorism. You gain nothing - not even martyrdom.

So even though we are sad, disturbed and enraged, we must resist the urge to fight terrorism with violence. It has never worked before and it wont this time as well.

After driving "midsize" rentals in the US, my Honda City was feeling really small and cramped yesterday morning. The steering seemed stiff and the accelarator appeared powerless. Clearly, I was back in the real world (India).

Our two week trip to the US was tiring, exhausting, exhiliriating, stressful, exciting, nostalgic all rolled into one. This was my 5th visit to the bay area but only the first one where I got a real feel of the valley and learnt what makes it such a special place. My earlier trips had been during the lull time in the Valley and moroever I was then a spoke in the big wheel so quite out of the loop from the whole startup scene. This time it was different. And even better, we were in the good company of Marc Canter who makes sure there is never a dull moment!

Here are some random notes from my visit.


On Bloggercon and BarCamp

We attended these two "unconferences" immediately on our arrival. I think the unconfernece format has been taken a little too far now. Bloggercon followed a discussion format where one discussion leader kicked off a discussion and then the audience participated. It was good except that the same set of people were vocal in all the discussions. At times I also felt that the topics that were getting discussed were the exact same conversations that happen in the blogosphere as well. You can think of it as if what the discussion leader said was a blog post and what everybody else were comments to that blog post! So some thing like a real life blogosphere. Anyway it was a great oppurtunity to meet up with many "A list" bloggers so I can't complain much. The barcamp was even more unconferenced. Maybe it was because we went on Sunday when everybody was tired and exhausted. But I got a chance to discuss microformats with Tantek and ask him when Technorati is gonna support rel=me tag.


On managing offshore teams

For the first time, I found myself on the opposite side of the fence (or time zones). The day went in meetings and the night was spent interacting with the team in India. It was a crunch time since we were very close to the ship date so communication was absolutely critical. I experienced first hand how difficult offshore team coordination can be. But at the same time, the advantages became more obvious as well. We spent the day going through the system looking for bugs and issues. I would then go over those with the dev team and by next morning they were all fixed! So the 24 hour work cycle really does work!


On Gnomedex

Gnomedex was the big event that we had actually flew in for. It was up in Seattle. Gnomedex was very well attended and was yet another chance to hook up with the A-list crowd. Chris Pirillo and Ponzi organized a kick-ass (un)confernece. Kudos to them! The conference followed the Bloggercon discussion leader format. Marc made his presence felt throughout the event - first by taking Senator John Edwards to task, then by falling asleep, and then by announcing People Aggregator.  There was a "backchannel" chat room as well where people were discussing the conference live. That was really fun and lot of smack talk ensued!


On People Aggrgeator launch

Marc announced People Aggregator at Gnomedex. It was amazing how many people had already heard of PeepAgg and actually understood the bigger idea behind it. It was also gratifying to get so many "congratulations" and "well dones" from the Gnomedex attendees especially because these are people whose opinion matters a lot. Shipping software is great! That is what makes our jobs exciting. Ourmedia, GoingOn, PeopleAggregator.... we pretty much OWN the social software space! :)


On BBM offsite

BBM is a very virtual company and PeepAgg launch also served as an offsite for the whole team to come together in one room. It was great to meet Phil, Paolo, Richard and Marc Senasac in person after having worked with them for so long. I was bummed that Paolo, inspite of being an Italian is not a football fan. Considering how Italy was performing, you would have expected an Italian to be hopping mad. But nope. Paolo had this "I couldnt care less" look throughout! Paolo - I hope you will at least watch the finals tomorrow!

On seeing Marc Canter in action

It was an experience in itself to see Marc in action. Marc is a passionate guy and he doesn't lose an oppurtunity to put his point across. His language and analogies are colorful, to say the least. Marc was the life of Gnomedex and by the end of the conference everybody knew who Marc Canter is and what People Aggregator is. This is his own unique style of marketing. Like Marc said - "Dude I only have to fall asleep in a confernece to get famous!".

On being back in Redmond and Seattle

Visting Redmond always gives me a sense of deja vu. As expected the place hasn't changed at all. Hanging out with old friends, drinking beer and joking about things we used to joke about before, it almost felt like I had never left the place. Life was easy back then. It was monotonous but easy. There was also stuff that I had really wanted to do while I was still there but didn't - like climbing Mt. Rainier, doing a road trip from coast to coast, taking the cruise to Alaska etc. For a monment, just for a moment, I missed not being there.

And finally, as I was leaving from Seattle, it rained. What is Seattle without rains? :)

Scoble (whom I actually met in person at Gnomedex!) has a very thoughful post on being thankful for what you have. Many times we feel that life is not being fair to us. But in fact life is like that only and we should be thankful for what we have. People have problems that are much worse and often insurmountable. And yet they do live on and make a life out of it. Life is a gift of God and even though at times life is a bitch, we got to try to live it to the max!

We are constantly getting asked what is PeopleAggregator and what problems does it solve. So I will summarize my thoughts here.

What is PeopleAggregator?

PeopleAggregator is a term that is used to describe many things:

1. It is a social networking application that runs at http://www.peopleaggregator.net. Yes, it appears like yet another social networking application like Orkut or MySpace. Yes, the UI has issues. Yes, we will be constantly updating it. Yes, you must immediately visit it and create an account there. :)

2. PeopleAggregator is also a do-it-yourself social networking system. Which means, if you want to build your own community, you could create it there at the click of a button. For example, one could create a network for Soccer enthusiasts at http://soccer.peopleaggregator.net. No coding required! Cool, huh? (Everything beyond this point on is geek speak. So you can directly skip down to the "Why I should care as a user" section at the bottom of this post)

3. PeopleAggregator is a development platform. This is a key differntiation that is not apparent when you visit the website. What this means is that the entire source code is available for download (Free for charities, non-profits and developers). So anybody can download the code, and host it else where. They can also modify it, extend the functionality, create a new user interface etc.

4. PeopleAggregator exposes open APIs and supports open standards. So all web applications that support these APIs can seamlessly share data between themselves. We also support open standards like microformats, structured blogging and identity systems like OpenID.

Why I should care?

1. As a developer: PeopleAggregator is a sophisticated yet easy to program to application development platform. It is built using open source technology so it is easy and cheap to deploy. It supports easy UI customizations. Upgrades are easy and automatic! So as a developer of social software, you would find PeopleAggregator saves you a lot of the grunt work involved in developing such applications. That leaves you plenty of time to focus on the specifics of your business logic.

2. As a site owner of another social software: PeopleAggregator exposes data thru open APIs. Which means, you can use our API to build compelling mashups that gel with your exisiting application. For example, a photo sharing site can allow its users to also pull in their photos stored in People Aggregator. And if your software also exposes APIs, then it allows us to integrate with it. That provides better experience to users and also drives traffic and visibility both ways.

3. As a USER! If you are a user of social software, nothing I have written so far would make sense to you. Then why should you care? PeopleAggregator puts forward several radical ideas. For example, the idea of allowing you to use your flickr ID to sign up means you have one password less to remember. By allowing you to export your profile data and content and move it to another application, we do not lock down users. So if tomorrow you move on to using another social networking application, you dont lose your data. By exposing "APIs" we allow you to use your data outside of PeopleAggregator as well. BUT all this starts to make sense only when others are willing to play along with us. Sure, we support a single login system, but what good is it if we are the only ones? Yes, we allow you to take your data with you. But that requires other applications to allow consumption of that data. We want to allows users to aggregate all their data in one place, doesnt matter if it is your photos on Yahoo, mail on Hotmail, or list of favorites on delicious. But we can't do that if Yahoo or Hotmail dont let you take your data with you. This notion of the application owning user data is often termed as a "Walled Garden". Today most web applications are walled gardens. They own your data and lock you in. PeopleAggregator is an attempt to change that. It is all about empowering the user and providing them the choice to do what with their content. This, obvious though it may sound, is radical by today's standards. That needs to change. Business models need to emerge that show that you don't have to be a Walled Garden to succeed. Users have to demand better online experience. And that is why you, as a user, should care! Become part of the effort!

Footnote: Tekriti's role in development of PeopleAggregator. This is another question we get asked a lot. Tekriti is the development partner of Broadband Mechanics (actually BBM was our very first client!) and bulk of the core engine and the application was built by our team in Gurgaon. Phil, Martin, Paolo, MarcS and a host of people across the world work with us on this project. Frankly, the vision is Marc Canter's and it took me months to just "grok" it. But once I got it I realized how important and far reaching it is.

I just realized that there are like 5 dozen people already blogging live from here. And wifi is really really slow. So no live blogging for me. I might as well turn off my laptop actually listen to what is being said out there.