Monthly Archives: July 2011

eduVARTA – SMS-based education/jobs info-service for rural college students

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eduVARTA is a new

eduVARTA provides informational SMS updates to rural and semi-urban college students with a focus on educational, jobs, and skills information. The idea is to empower students, and increase the opportunities they get, in terms of more education, employment and self-employment opportunities.

eduVARTA hopes to reach 5 lakhs rural and semi-urban college students (11th std. and up). Considering that the people behind this initiative are the same as those behind SMSOne, which is already reaching 5 lakhs rural and semi-urban households with local updates and ads, it should not be difficult for them to achieve their target quickly.

There is a pressing need for a service like. While students of colleges in cities like Pune are very aware of what is going on in the world, and usually end up getting decent jobs, there are millions of students elsewhere who are so devoid of information, basic skills, and confidence that even a little trickle of information can pay huge dividends. And, at this time, there is no better way to reach this population than SMS.

The eduVARTA website points out that provide the students with this kind of information:

  • Notices, announcements, alerts, decisions
  • Courses, admission, fees, due dates
  • Trainings, workshops, seminars, guest lectures, camps, study tours
  • Researches, articles, references, books, publications
  • Competition, Events, youth festivals, programs, gathering
  • Exams, competitive exams, results, forms
  • Sports, magazine, cultural, social committee activities
  • Higher education, job opportunities
  • Facilities, needs, demands
  • Achievements, appointments, success news, sad news
  • Alumni news, guest visits
  • Scholarships, awards, prizes

And the information comes from the following sources:

  • National Innovation Foundation, IIM, Ahmedabad
  • CIET, National Center for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi
  • Stanford Mobile Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Network, USA
  • Youth Employment Summit, USA & New Delhi
  • Youth & Sports Committee of Planning Commission, GoI
  • Digital Empowerment Foundation, New Delhi
  • NASSCOM Foundation, Mumbai
  • Development Communication India, New Delhi
  • Nehru Yuva Kendra Sanghathan (NYKS), New Delhi
  • National Service Scheme (NSS), Maharashtra
  • National Youth Awardees Association
  • Universities, Researchers, Career guidance organizations
  • and many individual honorary contributors…

A few days back, at the mbillionth awards 2011, eduVARTA was given the VODAFONE “Mobile for Good” Award by VODAFONE INDIA Foundation & Digital Empowerment Foundation. The award carries a cash prize of Rs. 10L.

Check out the eduVARTA About Us Page to find out more about them.

New York Times profiles Pune’s PARI Robotics

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In an article that talks about how manufacturing companies have led to a surge of exports of sophisticated products out of India, the New York Times has picked Pune’s PARI Robotics as an example of companies that are leading the way in exporting high value products out of India (as opposed to our traditional export items like garments).

PARI Robotics is a company that sells automation products / services (i.e. industrial robots) to industry. They have robots for various different manufacturing applications, including automated welding, assembly, thermal cutting, automated storage and retrieval systems, surface coating, taking measurements, and a bunch of other uses. There a whole lot of interesting information on their website. Their customers include the who’s who of the automobile, home appliances, engineering goods and other manufacturing industries. Their success stories page also makes for interesting reading.

Here are some interesting excerpts about PARI from the New York Times article:

When Ranjit Date returned to India 20 years ago after earning a doctorate in robotics from an American university, he hoped to help automate factory assembly lines in his home country.

His company, Precision Automation and Robotics India, has done that. But more recently it has also begun selling robots to Western manufacturers like Caterpillar, Ford and Chrysler. This year, in fact, a third of Precision Automation’s sales will come from exports, up from almost nothing five years ago.

On how PARI got started:

Mr. Date started the business with a friend, Mangesh Kale, who, like him, grew up in Pune. After earning advanced degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., they returned to India in the early 1990s – just as policy makers were pushing through early economic changes.

At first many Indian manufacturers were unwilling to invest in robots, Mr. Date said, because labor in India was so cheap. But in the increasing global economy, Indian manufacturers had to improve productivity to meet rising demand and compete with foreign companies.

So, after all this, how are they doing now?

Mr. Date, the robotics entrepreneur, expects sales at his company to increase 20 percent this year, to $67 million. The company is building a second factory, a 150,000-square-foot plant on the outskirts of Pune, to keep up with demand for its robots and automated assembly lines. He said Precision Automation’s products were 10 to 50 percent less expensive than similar equipment made by Western suppliers.

Read full article

Why you should register to attend Python Conference Pune (Sept 2011) right now

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Disclaimer: I am one of the organizers of PyCon India 2011. I’m doing this as a volunteer to further the cause of Python and software development activities in India and Pune. Neither I nor PuneTech gain anything financially from promoting this activity.

PyCon India, the International Python Conference that happens in India every year, will be in Pune this year on September 16-18, 2011. Early Bird Registration – Rs. 300 (includes lunch, 3 days) is open until the end of the week August 15. Register now!

If you need convincing as to why you should attend Pycon, here are some reasons:

  • Raymond Hettinger, one of the top pythonistas in the world is the keynote speaker. Raymond (@raymondh on twitter) is a Python core developer. He is the author of the itertools and set modules and most of the collections modules in the standard library, the peephole optimizer for Python, and dozens of ASPN cookbook recipes. It will literally be many years before you get a chance to hear a technologist of this calibre.
  • Learn Python: This is your chance to learn Python. Start learning Python right now, and by September, you’ll be ready to get maximum value out of the tutorials in the conference (including Twitter/Facebook/Linked-in/Google Data hacking, web scraping, image processing, and functional programming using Python). If you need arguments on why everybody must learn python check here, here and here.
  • Excellent Talks: There are 24 high quality talks, on all kinds of interesting topics including Data Analysis and Business Intelligence, Python-to-Javascript cross-compliation, Telephony apps, Robotics, Web Apps, Python in Biology and Life-Sciences, Cloud Computing, Android, testing, GIS, and much more. There is also one talk on using Python to do your homework.
  • Meet Smart People: Even if you don’t agree that people who choose to work with Python are smarter than most others, you will have to agree that this will be one pretty darn interesting bunch of 500+ developers from all over India and outside. Rs. 300 to get a chance for that kind of networking is nothing.
  • Hire Smart People: If you are having trouble hiring top quality technology talent for your company, you definitely need to be at PyCon, handing out your card, and telling everybody what a cool company you work for. Far better use of your time than going through resumes sent to you by your recruiter.
  • Just Rs. 300: Early Bird Registration closes on 1st15th August, so act now. That’s only Rs. 300 for a high quality conference and it includes lunch and snacks for the 3 days of the conference. That’s right, you’ll be paying less than the cost of the food! And, unlike the other, regular tech events that happen in Pune, this is not a cheapo event – there will be swag – T-shirts and other stuff being given away. Did you realize that PyCon sponsors are paying for the privilege of giving you free stuff?
  • Make PyCon Pune the biggest PyCon: Pune now has a reputation to keep up – whenever any tech event that happens in different cities, invariably, the biggest turn-out is for the Pune instance. PHPCamp with 1000+ registrations and 700+ actual attendance is probably the biggest ever tech unconference/barcamp style event in the country. DocType HTML5 in Pune had far more registrations than other places and the organizers had to close registrations. Recently GizmoMeet had their biggest turnout in Pune. The Python community in Pune is far younger than the Python community in Bangalore, so it will be tough for Pune PyCon to beat the Bangalore PyCon, but we definitely need to give them a at least a tough fight.

What are you waiting for? Register now

(We’d like to mention here that amongst the various sponsors of PyCon (including Google and GitHub), are these cool Pune companies/institutions: Venue sponsor: Symbiosis, Gold: Vayana, Silver: Druva and GSLab)

PuneChips Event: PCI Express Architecture and Applications for FPGAs – July 30

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PuneChips invites everybody to a talk on PCI Express Architecture and Applications for FPGAs by Kiran Puranik, a Principal Architect at Xilinx. This talk will be on 30 July, 10:30am, at the Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road.

Abstract

Modern FPGA devices offer great advantages for designers of industrial imaging, networking, automation and control, data acquisition systems for test, industrial and medical applications. Apart from offering high performance programmable fabric, FPGAs offer a wide variety of IO standards to interface with networks, motors, sensors, transducers, offer built in high density data storage and the ability to interface to high speed external memory devices. But, most importantly FPGAs offer Gigabit serial connectivity via standards based protocols such as PCI ExpressTM. The ubiquitous nature of PCI Express technology enables development of FPGA based plug and play board and card products that interface with standard off-the-shelf embedded compute and communications platforms, running WindowsTM, Linux or other operating systems and custom device drivers. PCI Express 3.0 Architecture offers many reliability, availability and scalability features to address application needs, as well as advanced features such as relaxed transaction ordering, transaction processing hints, optimized buffer flush-fill, active power management to achieve the highest throughput performance possible within the platform’s power and thermal budgets.

About the speaker: Kiran Puranik

Kiran is a Principal Architect at Xilinx, Inc., responsible for serial connectivity protocol products such as PCI Express. He has spent the last 10 years at Xilinx engaged in architecture definition, design, development and verification of Intellectual Property blocks for several generations of FPGAs. Before Xilinx, Kiran held various engineering positions in the field of ASIC, ASSP design and ICCAD software development.

About PuneChips

PuneChips is a special interest group on semiconductor design and applications. It was formed to foster an environment for growth of companies in the semiconductor design and applications segment in the Pune area. Our goal is to build an ecosystem similar to PuneTech for companies in this field, where they can exchange information, consult with experts, and start & grow their businesses.

Please forward this information to anybody in Pune who is interested in renewable energy, solar technologies, semiconductors, chip design, VLSI design, chip testing, and embedded applications.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. No registration required.

GizmoMeet: An event for all gadget fans in Pune

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Annkur writes:

Organized across India by OnlyGizmos.com, GizmoMeet is one of its kind meetup for gadget lovers. Over 250 technology enthusiasts have attended our meetups in Delhi and Mumbai. Coming saturday We look forward to meet you over some coffee at Cafe 1730, Koregaon Park (5.30OM-8:30PM).

So here we give you a sneak peek in to some of the stuff you can expect to see at the GizmoMeet, Pune:

  • Mobile and web apps by various developers
  • Android 3.1 running on the first ever Honeycomb Tablet, Motorola Xoom
  • Mobile OS: Windows Phone 7 Mango Update
  • Super motion gaming device, Kinect for Xbox 3 (Make sure you get your kids coz they’ll love it)
  • The Apple series which includes iPhone 4, iPad and an iPad 2 as well (So look forward to experiencing some great gaming as well as utility apps on iOS)

Well this certainly isn’t an exhaustive list of all the gadgets that are going to be there at the GizmoMeet . We would like to keep some surprises as well.

So folks, mark the 16th of July on your calendars. We hope to see you all there and be part of the experience that was intended only for you and feel free to get along your other tech enthusiast friends as well.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please RSVP on one of these:

FB: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229957280358469

Twtvite: http://twtvite.com/gizmomeet5

Or, comment on this post: http://onlygizmos.com/gizmomeet-5-pune-we-are-coming/2011/06/

Event Report: Java 7 Launch Event in Pune

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(This article by guest writer Amit Naik, an architect at BMC Software, Pune, is a report of the Java 7 Launch event that happened in Pune last weekend.)

Harshad Oak started things off by pointing out that Java has a bit of ups & downs in the past couple of years. Hopefully Java 7 will reverse the trend. He also encouraged people to join the Pune Java User Group to stay connected with other Java users in Pune.

Then, we moved on to the main speaker: Chuk-Munn Lee (chuk-munn.lee@oracle.com). Fun fact – Chuk-Munn is a fan of Futurama and called out the fact that he is wearing a “Bender the Robot” T-Shirt.

These are the highlights of Chuk-Munn’s presentation:

The last Major release of Java – Java 6 was in 2006-7 and no major releases since then. JavaSE7 has a lot of gestation period. The big release of 7 is now broken down into 2 incremental releases Java 7 and Java 8 to get something out of the door faster and make it more manageable.

Reading is more important than writing for Programming Languages. Programs should be a Joy to read. Counter example PERL a Write-Only Language, or Looks Same Before and After AES Encryption. A Camel is a horse designed by committee. Very difficult to read and maintain. So very difficult to collaborate in large teams or large codebases where readability is important. This is where Java shines but it has sometimes got too much boilerplate code needed.

Applications in the commercial world compete on the basis of features – same should not apply to programming languages. In languages you want fewer features but they should work consistently. So it is difficult to add new features to Java consistently.

The main features new in Java 7 can be grouped into these categories:

Small Language Changes (Project Coin)

  • Binary Literals with underscores for clarity
  • Strings in Switch statements
  • Inferring types with <>
  • Varargs Warnings @SafeVarargs fixes problem of Heap Pollutions JLSv3 4.12.2.1
  • Multi-Catch – very useful in reducing boilerplate code if used properly!
  • Copying Streams – try-with-resources

NIO2

  • NIO2 (JSR -203) java.io.File does not work consistently across platforms, missing basic operations like copy, move, etc.
  • Path Class (Async I/O)
  • Features – Filesystem and Filestore support
  • Symlink support
  • Basic File operations
  • File attributes and Permissions support enhanced
  • Other interesting features
    • Watch files directories

Invokedynamic

Java may or may not be the first choice of everybody but JVM is massively popular and many, many languages are adopting it. The VM spec is from 1997 – fairly generic and not specifically wired to Java except for the 4 key bytecode instructions – invokespecial (constructor invocation), invokestatic (statics), invokeinterface (interface), invokevirtual (methods)

Java 7 is introducing a new instruction for Java 7 invokedynamic that will allow for late binding in languages such as JavaScript to be natively supported on the JVM.

Other Features

  • New Fork-Join framework
    • ForkJoinPool and ForkJoinTask along with fork keyword to natively support fork-join semantics
      natively on the VM
  • New decorators for Swing – Jlayer and LayerUI
  • Infiniband support – using a sockets direct protocol (SDP) over the wire
  • Utility methods for java.util.Objects

That was end of the main presentation.

Time for Audience Q/A

(All Questions/Answers paraphrased to best of my recollection)

  • Java 7 seems like an underwhelming release. Why?
    • There was a very long gap between Java 6 and Java 7 because of the inability to move things thru to conclusions fast enough in the JCP. All the big features were not done yet so it would have taken a lot longer to get everything finished. Oracle polled the community and the result was two releases – one with all the finished features and one with all the big features -Java 8- to follow shortly thereafter.
  • Will Oracle make Java more “restrictive” in terms of licensing etc.?, What is Oracle’s commitment to Java?
    • A very large part of Oracle’s internal codebase is on Java so Oracle has excellent commitment to Java and will move it forward Will it make it more restrictive license wise – this question has been comin up over the years and the answer is always NO. Most of Java is under a GPL-like license anyway so cannot be really made more restrictive.
  • With the departure of Apache Software Foundation from the JCP and the Lawsuit over Android against Goolge what is the future of JCP and the Java community?
    • Cannot comment on the lawsuit. If the situation with the ASF worries you personally then you should consult a lawyer. I (Chuk-Munn) ask myself this question – does it personally affect me in any manner? If not then I do not worry about it.
  • Is the support for dynamic languages increasing or decreasing with Java 7?
    • Increasing with the introduction of invokedynamic etc.

The PPT that was used by Chuk-Munn Lee is available from here (see attachment at the end of that page)

About the Author – Amit Naik

Amit Naik works as an Architect with BMC Software. He builds performant cloud solutions with a focus on heterogeneity and monitoring across different virtualization and provisioning vendors in the cloud computing space. His main focus is the Architecture and Design of BMC solutions with emphasis on building highly-scalable systems with REST and other SOA interfaces.

Amit has a Bachelor’s degree from College of Engineering Pune and a Master’s degree from Purdue Univ., West Lafayette. He has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry, much of it in the USA, across a variety of Technical and Techno-Managerial roles.

Interview with Mahendra Palsule – Editor at TechMeme

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(Mahendra Palsule is one of Pune’s most well-known people in the technology news / social web space in the world today due to his role as Editor at TechMeme, which is one of the most influential technology news websites. BlogAdda has a great interview of Mahendra where they cover his blogging, his work, personal life and other things. We have excerpted here, with permission, portions of that interview that are related to his work, for the benefit of PuneTech readers.)

Q: 19 years in IT industry and counting. You have been a witness to the fall and the rise of the industry. What have been your prominent observations in this period? Based on these observations and your experience, what changes do you predict in the next 10 years?

A: In the early days of my career, the entire IT industry in India was purely services-based. I always lamented the lack of product-based companies in India. Seeing the proliferation and rise of many Indian product-based companies and startups, is the most fulfilling observation in all these years.

Predictions for the future are always a dangerous game with many unknowns, but here are some I’d dare to make:

The Indian startup ecosystem will mature significantly in the coming years, making life a bit easier for entrepreneurs who undergo a difficult struggle today.
Indian IT outsourcing companies will face significant challenges and opportunities in several areas – getting qualified labor in India, diversifying geographically outside India, capitalizing on the growth of SaaS, etc.
In terms of overall online space, we are already witnessing a shift to a personalized experience. This will only get bolstered further in the coming years, with relevance filtering, giving you an optimal experience in everything you do online.
User behavior online will increasingly tend to share more publicly, leading to continued discussions and concerns about privacy.
User behavior online will increasingly tend to share more publicly, leading to continued discussions and concerns about privacy.
Q: Being a first ranker in college for all the years, is a fulfilling achievement. Can you share some very special moments from your college days that still bring a smile on your face when you think of it?

A: I was once asked by our Electronics professor to take a guest lecture on Multivibrators, in the middle of the year. When I started the lecture, I realized that my class wasn’t following me, because they had not understood what had been taught in the earlier months. So I reverted back, asked them if they knew how a transistor worked. By this time, our class got bold enough to be frank and replied in the negative.

So, I eventually ended up starting with basics of how diodes worked, followed by transistors, and then covering multivibrators over a span of 3 lectures. After I was done, my fellow-students suggested that we get rid of our Electronics professor and just use me instead.

Q: ‘Mahendra embodies the ideal Program Manager I would like to be working with’ & ‘He is one of the best Project Manager I’ve worked with’ is what some of your ex-colleagues say about you. You are now an editor at Techmeme. How and Why did this shift happen? Was it because of your keenness to explore new frontiers and realization that communicating well is your forte or was it something else? How did your friends and family react to this move?

A: The Project/Program Manager role in large Indian IT companies is a stressful balancing act dealing with challenges on three fronts – your bosses, your client, and your team. After 18 years of working in this role on several US & European projects, I realized I wanted a change.

I have always been an avid researcher, with a huge appetite for scanning a multitude of information sources and filtering the best from them. My present job goes hand-in-glove with this innate skill, and makes me think I was born to do this kind of work.

I have a hard time explaining what I do to my friends and family. Initially, they were skeptical, but over time, they’ve slowly realized the fulfilling nature of my work and accepted it. The fact that I work from home is an added benefit.

Q: Your current role at Techmeme is ‘Editor working as a human filter for automated algorithm’. Do you think an automated algorithm, no matter how intelligent it could develop into, can replace the intelligence and editor skills of a human? Also, is it better to ‘crowdsource’ and let users decide the relevancy and usefulness of a story, rather than an editor or team of editors doing it?

For a news aggregator, automated algorithms have limitations that can’t be overcomed.
A: For a news aggregator, automated algorithms have limitations that can’t be overcomed. Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme said it in 2008 when Techmeme hired its first editor.

Whether one decides to crowdsource or use an internal editorial team depends on one’s target audience – both models have been used online to varying degrees of success.

Q: ‘Relevance is the only solution to the problem of information overload’, according to you. Relevance is subjective. Do you feel the relevance could be influenced with popularity and things that might not have been relevant to someone would appear like one, just because it was shared by his/her friends or popular personalities? This seems like a constant challenge and it’ll be great to hear your views on how do you think this issue can be addressed and your suggestions for an individual to handle the information overload he faces everyday. You can even suggest tools if you like.

You will find both popularity-based and personalization-based relevance models to continue to coexist in the future.
A: Yes. As I described in the article, relevance is very dynamic and difficult to pin down. There are times when what is most popular is most relevant, and there are other times when a personalized approach is more relevant. This is why you will find both popularity-based and personalization-based relevance models to continue to coexist in the future.

My tips for handling information overload are listed on Quora:

Q: In one of your recent post, you opine that Facebook and Quora should be worried about Google+ but have not mentioned about Twitter, where asking questions, sharing links and speed seems to be the key. According to you, will Twitter not get affected by this? What kind of innovations do you want to see happening on Twitter, to counter any threats from other networks?

Twitter’s 140 character limit will remain its USP against Facebook and Google+
A: Twitter’s 140 character limit will remain its USP against Facebook and Google+. This limit makes it more suitable for sharing links & hence its suitability as a news-discovery network. Twitter needs a better on boarding process for new users and a flourishing developer ecosystem – both of which are weak areas today.

_(Please read the full interview at BlogAdda for more. Also check out the recent PuneTech article about Google+ which features the views of Mahendra on why Quora and Twitter should be afraid of Google+.)

Award winning PK Clean Technologies converts waste plastic to fuel in Pune

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PK Clean Technologies, a US-based company, but whose 10000 sq.ft. pilot plant is in Pune, has just won the 3rd prize in a Business Plan Competition for environment-friendly technologies held at Rice University, Texas, USA. PK Clean has also 4 other prizes this year, including MIT’s Clean Energy Prize in 2011, and is in the running for 2 other prizes.

What does PK Clean do?

PK Clean is able to transform the most painful form of waste into the most useful type of energy.

Specifically, they can convert plastics (which get thrown in garbage) into oil. From their website:

Our vision is to turn landfilled plastics into a $7 billion annual oil market, from selling the renewable fuel we produce to refineries. PK Clean has 100% ownership over our patented catalytic depolymerization process, which is now operating in a 20 ton per day pilot facility, and our MIT team has expertise in renewable energy and oil.

PK Clean is a US-based company, but their first plant, a pilot-plant that processes 20 tons of waste plastic per day and converts it into 80 barrels of fuel has been built in Pune, says CNN

PK Clean is seeking a $4 million investment to deploy the technology in the U.S. PK Clean will need to endure a lengthy permitting process before breaking ground. Still, Bakaya believes she’ll see a plant on American soil that can process 100 tons of plastic per day by 2014.

See more coverage from Indian Express

We are Number #1! (For “Pune Technology” search on Google)

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From almost the day we started PuneTech, one of our desires has been to build a site that is the top search result on Google for the search Pune Technology. Today, we are proud to report that, as far as we can tell, PuneTech has the top 2 results for this search.

For the last 10 years, the top ranked search result for “Pune Technology” has been a terrible, out-dated, incomplete, and pointless list of ‘IT Companies in Pune’ from PuneDiary.com. We’ve always hated the fact that the world saw that obsolete page instead of something more current, and a couple of months back, when we (reported that PuneTech now has a pagerank of 5](http://punetech.com/minor-celebration-time-punetech-com-now-has-a-google-page-rank-of-5/), we shamelessly let it be known that we wanted to dislodge PuneDiary from the number 1 slot.

We’re very happy that it has finally happened.

Drop in pagerank and PuneTech Wiki discontinued

Sadly, we have to report that our pagerank has once again dropped from 5 to 4. After some investigation, we believe that this drop is because of spam and vandalism happening on the PuneTech Wiki. Also, the PuneTech Wiki has not really lived up to our expectations, and hence, starting today, we have disabled the PuneTech wiki. Some of the pages in the Wiki have been migrated, but the rest is just gone. It wasn’t worth keeping around.

More details: The PuneTech Wiki was a section of the PuneTech website that was modeled after the wikipedia (and in fact used the same software (Mediawiki)). The idea was the the community would collaborate to create interesting and useful content. However after trying that for 3 years, we have given it up as a failed experiment. Most of the content on the wikipedia was added by us, and very little content came from others. The amount of work needed to keep the wiki free from spammers and vandals outweighed the benefits of having the wiki. That is the reason why we have turned off the wiki.

The PuneTech Directory

In its place we hope to create a PuneTech Directory. It already has a listing of the most important tech user groups, organizations and mailing lists in Pune, a way to find the most interesting techies in Pune, and a list of the top-ranked websites in Pune.

Other content, specially lists of companies (organized by industry/speciality) will be added soon. We will do it ourselves, manually, as and when we find time.

How to do SEO the hard way

It has taken us too long to reach number #1. The reason is that there are a lot of things that we should have done, but did not do.

We did not do SEO (Search Engine Optimization). We did not do link-building. We did not spend too much time thinking about crafting headlines and first paragraphs with search traffic in mind. We did not add lots of content on a regular basis to ensure a high flow of traffic. We did not keep an eye on what is ‘hot’ on any given week/month and then try to write stories around those concepts (keywords). (On a separate note: we also are aware that the design of the site is terrible and both the looks as well as the usability need lots of work.)

We do realize that all the above things are important – and that anybody building a website for commercial reasons must focus on the above issues, and much more. Specifically, we are NOT implying that these activities are somehow distasteful and that good people should not do them. In fact, we hope more good people focus on these things, and less of the bad people.

But, PuneTech is different. PuneTech is a non-commercial activity that we do in our free time because we like doing it. Because we are having fun doing it. And the SEO/design related activities are not our idea of fun. That is the only reason we have not spent too much time on them.

So how did we reach #1? The slow, painful, old-fashioned way. Content. Unique content. Good quality content. Articles that are interesting for people. Information that we think people should be reading. We are glad to report that “Content is King” is still true.

Thank You

There have been lots of people, too numerous to list, who have helped PuneTech in various ways, and had a big hand in making it what it is today. Special mention must go to the Pune Open Coffee Club, which started around the same time as PuneTech and the two forums have been very complementary to each other.

Together, we have made the Pune community one of the most active and vibrant communities in the country.