New Delhi Times

Ever since Saad clued me into Gaping Void, it has become my super-favoritest blog. Do check it out!
p.s: no life isn’t really that fucked up or anything, but thanks for asking!

Somebody has copied an entire post of mine on their blog without attribution. Pretty lame. Thanks to this commenter for pointing it out. Not much one can do about this unfortunately.

The Egg

I am sure the world is waiting with bated breath to find out how much moolah I am raking in with my recent sell out (as Santosh puts it!) to commericalism. Well, you will all be excited to know that I am pulling in a princely 90 cents a day on an average! Woo hoo! Since it will take almost 2 years to collect enough to buy a Nokia 9500 at this rate, I am thinking I can instead use the 90 cents to buy an omlette paratha everyday from the dhaba downstairs from my office.
A little bit of research in to the whole adsense thing revealed that an industry exists solely on top of adsense revenues! There are scores of sites which provide tips on how to maximize the ad potential of your website. In fact many websites make over $30,000 a month only from Google ads! However, this is not easy money as it might first appear to be. To make that kind of money, your website needs to provide lot of useful content to be able to attract millions of visitors. The website content has to be such that Google delivers right kind of ads. So its a full time job but it pays well!
Any how, if I can’t soon upgrade myself from eating omlette parathas, these ads are going off my blog!

I am experimenting with google ads on my blog. I am curious to see if I can make any money at all from my blog. I want to buy the Nokia 9500 which costs roughly $700. Since I have never bought a cell phone (in US cell phone comes free with the plan), I am reluctant to pay for it out of my pocket (especially when that cell phone costs an arm and a leg!). So I have decided that all “proceeds” from blog ads will go to my cell phone kitty. I just hope my good old T-610 can last till then (unlikely…).

Paolo and Jon point out how some names are more often mispelled than others. Well, I am one of those whose name is almost always mispelled, especially by Americans. It is a mystery that has confounded me since the first day I landed on the shores of that glorious country and continues to puzzle me today when most of my communication with my American friends and colleagues is via email. My name is spelled G-A-U-R-A-V. But for some reason, 9 out of 10 Amercians spell it as G-U-A-R-A-V (note that the u comes before a). I am not so finicky about names and spellings but this happens with such consistency that it never ceases to amaze me. In fact, if you search for “GUARAV” on Google, you get more than 16,000 hits Though you have to give credit to Google for helpfully asking “Did you mean: gaurav”. And if I run a quick search on all the email in my Outlook for “guarav”, I get 159 results. That many people have mispelled my name in just the last few months!
When somebody consistently spells it wrong, I have to very reluctantly correct them. You don’t want to point out this kind of stuff because it makes the other person get really apologetic and of course they didn’t do it purposely! Sometimes I get interesting explanations for why people do it. Like this one time I was told that “guava” is the word closest to how my name is spelled so people subconciously type the u before the a. That explanation is, shall we say, not very fruitful. But it might have some juice in it because Microsoft Word does tend to auto-correct my name to “guava”.
Oh well, like Shakespeare said, what’s in a name? That which we call Gaurav by any other word would still remain me!
One day I will tell you about how my name is pronounced in different parts of the world. Now that I am safely back in my own backyard, I can laugh about it. But it wasn’t always so funny!

Staring at the screen
clouded thoughts and empty mind,
what to blog?

hmmm….. check out the comments on this post. People have setup their own mobile phone shops on my blog. Hey, I should be charging them for this!

For the last 2 years, my new year’s resolution has been plain and simple – “if I don’t like something, I will change it. If I can’t change it, I will shut up and not crib about it”. That’s easier said than done (I mean, if I stop cribbing what will I blog about?) but I have tried to follow it as much as possible. This year is going to be no different and I resolve to keep whining, cribbing and procastinating at a minimum. I think this outlook towards life keeps things simple. There are a million and one things that one doesn’t like about their life or surroundings. But of those there are only a handful that you have any control on. To be able to focus on those handful out of a million is key to getting things done and in general keeping you sanity.

As an entrepreneur, avoiding to procastinate is especially important. Hours, days and weeks can be wasted in thinking about and planning for imaginary what-if scenarios. Being able to cut through the chase and focus on the right problems is a key skill every entrepreneur needs to develop. So I am hoping my two years of practice will come handy in 2006 which is undoubtedly a very crucial year for Tekriti!

As for me -
In January
I heard the president speak
Fixed some interesting bugs
Got nominated for IndiBloggies
New Delhi Times got a page rank
In February
Worked very hard to bootstrap Tekriti!
Confessed being a Page 3 wannabe
Visited TeNeT group and got inspired
Got even busier bootstrapping Tekriti!
Wondered if I am living the right dream at last
Got first taste of hiring in India
In March
I introspected on the long journey ahead
Used Flickr for the first time
Couldn’t figure out a name for our company!
Launched Ourmedia.org!
In April
Completed 2 months of entrepreneurship
Got pissed off with the “booming services sector!”
Watched Sachin get bowled
In May
Finalized on company name – TEKRITI!
Tried to become a morning person (still trying…)
In June
Had my first conference call across 5 time zones (not the last one!)
Got a speeding ticket (damn!)
Teknokrats went bowling (our first major morale event!)
In July
Took a ride on the Delhi Metro (Go Delhi!)
Lindsay Lohan put Ourmedia on fire!
Tekriti released an AJAX-ian chat module for Drupal
In August
Tekriti grew 6 months old
Worked the whole night on my birthday
Tekriti became part of the TeNeT group!
Learnt more lessons in entrepreneurship!
In September
Marc Canter was in town!
Our first geek dinner!
New Delhi Times got a new look!
In October
Mom started blogging!
Completed almost one year of R2I
Moved to the new office!
New Delhi Times turned 1!
Tekriti’s first Diwali party!
In November
Setup Venturewoods blog with Alok
Finally learnt something about hiring!
Intropsected on future of Tekriti
In December
Watched history being made!
Didn’t make it to the “list”
Played Santa at the office party!