Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The IndiBloggies blogger awards, Pune blogs, and visibility… Please vote

Miscellaneous,

Quick summary: The IndiBloggies awards, started by Pune’s Debashish Chakrabarty, are, in spite of flaws, India’s top awards for blogging (and now for twittering). From thousands of submissions 6 Pune blogs have been nominated by a panel of prominent bloggers – which means that these blogs are worth checking out. And, to determine the winners, voting is in progress, so check out the nominees and vote for the ones you liked – the last day for voting is Thursday, 10th December. (Disclaimer: PuneTech is one of the nominees in the ‘Best MicroBlogs’ category & and I’m also connected to wogma.com one of the other nominees.)

Background

The blog world (or the blogosphere), by its very nature, is gloriously disorganized. Thousands, if not millions, of new blogs are born everyday, and probably an equal number fall into disuse. Most blogs are drab and dreary “Dear Diary” types, which are of no interest to anybody other than the author and a few close friends. But even if a very tiny fraction of a percent are good, insightful, informative, interesting blogs, that’s still a very large number of good blogs worth reading. There is everything from deep science, insights into technology, snippets of literary brilliance, and in-depth analysis of current events. It’s better than newspapers – trust me.

While some people enjoy the process of discovering great new blogs, many others would prefer that someone else did the searching for the needle through the haystack. That’s where blogging awards come in. And the most venerable one in India right now is IndiBloggies, started in 2003 by Pune blogger Debashish Chakrabarty. In recent times, they’ve been having trouble – there were no awards in 2007, and the 2008 awards are delayed until the end of 2009. There are other problems – it is a travesty that @sandygautam‘s The Mouse Trap did not get nominated, and instead a blog that is just a bot reposting a feed got nominated. And other glitches. But, almost by nature, all awards have such problems. In my mind the question isn’t whether they managed to find the best or not (although that would be great), but whether they managed to give visibility to good blogs, especially ones that did not have much visibility before. In this department, I think the IndiBloggies still score.

Pune Blogs nominated

“Creative Writing by Vikram Karve” find a nomination in the “Best Humanities IndiBlog” (section #4). Vikram blogs about a wide variety of topics, including a number of short stories. If you’re interested in literary writing, you should check it out. Even otherwise, you might want to check out, since he writes about cooking and technology and various other things.

“Without Giving the Movie Away” (aka wogma.com) the Hindi Movie Reviews website by meetu (aka meetumeetu) is nominated in the Best Entertainment IndiBlog (section #8).

In the “Best Science and Technology” category (section #11) there are two Pune nominees. Dhananjay Nene‘s /var/log/mind about programming and architecture is one of our favorite blogs and has been extensively covered and republished in Pune tech in the past. If you don’t know about it, you’ve not been paying attention. Brajeshwar, who writes about technology, and programming and linux, was until recently a Bombay blogger, but has recently moved to Pune, so now qualifies as a Pune nominee. They reason we’ve never covered anything by him in PuneTech is because he wasn’t in Pune. But check out his blog, its one of the more popular blogs in the tech world in India.

Trak.in is nominated in the “Best Business IndiBlog” (section #13). Please note that it is listed as “India Business Blog.” Trak.in by Arun Prabhudesai is probably Pune’s most read blog with a huge readership of hundreds of thousands from all around the world.

And finally in the “Best New Indi MicroBlog” (i.e. best twitter account) PuneTech is nominated.

(Note: since I am personally connected to both “PuneTech” and “Without Giving the Movie Away” I have refrained from giving my opinions on them.)

Of course, there are a number of non-Pune blogs there which are worth following. You should check them all out. Honorary Punekar Preeti Shenoy (who now lives in UK) is also nominated for Just a Mother of Two. The Ribbon Farm, by @vgr, is a must read if you’re into technology or business.

Vote

The final winners are going to be decided by a democratic poll over the internet. The url for voting is here: http://multivote.sparklit.com/web_poll.spark/21900

Check out the blogs, and vote. Most bloggers (at least most of those in the nominees list) are writing because they’re passionate about the subject. They get little or no tangible rewards other than appreciation of readers. And recognition in the form of nominations and awards helps keep them motivated. And, of course, the visibility results in increased readership, which is a good thing for both the readers as well as the bloggers. They don’t have any marketing budgets and don’t have ads on TV, but often their content is better than the rediffs of the world. Give visibility to deserving blogs – Vote.

Motherhood and Entrepreneurship

Miscellaneous, People, ,
Todays article is a guest post by Aparna Kalantri, a Pune-based mum-preneur. See the end of the article for more about her.
Today's article is a guest post by Aparna Kalantri, a Pune-based mum-preneur. See the end of the article for more about her.

I am in the process of setting up my own small business after my maternity break (is the break ever really over? :-). I have always been a high achiever in life, was doing very well in my career (IT in Oz), and had a steep career graph going for me. After having my baby, I decided to consciously take time-off. Now, the 9-5 (or is it 9-9?) routine does not suit me. But I still wanted to fulfil my individual potential and live out my best life, and would like to work professionally, but at my own pace. So now I am in my ‘onramp’ stage, and would like to share some of my thoughts on ‘Entrepreneurship after having kids’.

First in my series is – ‘The soft challenges of doing part-time entrepreneurial work’ (esp. with limited human resource even if you count the baby in 🙂

  • Ideas-Focus: The problem is not lack of ideas (as one would have expected), but rather too many of them. When I started, there were too many ideas that I wanted to do all at once. Having worked in a fast paced corporate environment (pre-babies of course), I was efficient at using the current working system to make the ideas happen. The shift now is to develop a new system on your own to make things happen. It takes time to adjust to the ‘new working you’. What can we do about this?
    • Learn to focus on and develop a few (couple) ideas. Need to analyse what is going to be my niche. Once the core idea sets in, then you can work on the allied services.
    • Need to use the strategy of ‘release and review’ with your customer base. But here we need to understand the effort/ output ratio. Come to a satisfactory stage/ get initial reviews from industry experts/ and release. Update and chart your course as per the feedback.
  • Instant gratification: Remember the pat-on-the-back by your boss for an excellent presentation/ or the extra-bonus/ or the successful release at 4 in the morning/ or simply the cheers at the morning coffee run? As trivial as they may seem these are important things. As a part-time mumpreneur, there may be no-one to provide this encouragement. These advantages of working in a collaborative effort are missing. Also, initially success may be slow in coming (incubation and setting up period more). This for a mother is more challenging due to the internal pressure she faces in order to succeed (to justify her effort away from her family).
    • Very simply – ‘Pat yourself’ 🙂 There are times when only you know how you’ve gone through that difficult day with being a mum, home-maker, wife etc. and have still managed to complete that little work. Be kind to yourself.
    • Surround yourself with positive people. Get honest feedback from the ‘knowers’.
  • Perceptions: Ever heard the expression ‘Just a mother / housewife’ – that is what I’m talking about. When you are doing a job, it’s easier for others to understand the structure of your life. So (generally) the expectations & their perception of you is very different. Our society, I feel, is quite biased in this regard. (That’s another discussion for another day). Since I work mostly from home, and schedule around my toddler’s timings, people don’t know where to draw the line with expectations. They tend to take our time for granted a lot more, and also do not understand that the work we do is as important (if not more). I am sure that this is probably something to do with the signals that we give out, but nevertheless it is an issue.
    • Highlight what your efforts are, and what you have achieved through them. Sometimes this doesn’t come naturally to us, especially if what we have achieved is not as much as before. You need to be able to tell people and believe yourself that it is important and a priority.
  • Being immersed in your work/ Losing flexibility: Remember the reason why we chose to do this type of work? We wanted a lifestyle of flexibility and independence in terms of time and accountability. In order to make it big fast, or to fuel the great early success, we tend to work on this more than a full time job. The work takes over our mind & time, and we find it difficult to switch-off when we need to. The goal of being more present (physically & mentally too) for our family / or of leading a more independent lifestyle is lost. For this we can apply various time/ priority management strategies.
    • Do not try to ‘have it all’ by doing it all. You must to understand when the business is big enough for you to recruit / partner with a team and delegate. Apply appropriate task management strategies.
    • These priorities in life may change depending upon various factors – there may be busy and slow periods. From time-to-time ask yourself and your loved ones – ‘Is this working for me?’/ ‘Are we happy with this?’.
  • Networking: I remember I had wanted to attend a Pune Open Coffee Club forum presentation. It was 45 minutes from my home. I was looking forward to it. During my maternity leave, this was an event to look forward to. To connect to my non-mummy/ non-nappy conversation mode 🙂 I observed that for most of the other participants it was just another casual meeting they had made way to after a busy day. Just one of the things that they did. For me, this meant pre-arranging for baby-sitting, making sure the feed/ nap times are taken care of, and arranging for stuff so the baby stays happy. Phew!! All this for a free forum meeting (which turned out to be really good, BTW). Now you understand the effort that we have to go through with networking. And I haven’t even talked about the soft-networking aspects (the golf games/the tennis games/ the tweet-ups/ the catch-ups/ the evening beer meetups etc. 🙂
    • Sometimes you just need to take that break from ‘mummyhood’ in order to connect to your other self. Even if it is a lot of effort, do take the time out to network. When you do make sure you don’t let the mummy-brain take over your personality 🙂
    • Use technology. When you cannot physically go out and network, use the abundance of technology at your disposal. Be careful that you are networking effectively and not just being part of groups which add no value to your goal.

So the above are some of the few things that I have tried and have worked for me during my on-ramping experience. Would love to hear what you all have to say. There are a lot more things in this series to talk about – we’ll see how we go :-).

About the Author – Aparna Kalantri

Aparna has recently moved to Pune. She has studied B.E. (computer science) from Pune University and then moved to Melbourne. There, she completed (with top honours) her Master’s in IT from Swinburne University. After her degree she worked in Melbourne & Sydney in banking domain doing various IT roles. After having spent seven years in Australia, she (along with her husband and a little baby) moved back to India (Pune).

She is in the process of setting up her own ‘Personal Excellence Centre’ for women. She is passionate about self-development activities, and has been involved in many such workshops in her corporate career. She aspires to help women achieve their full potential and live their best life. She too believes in living consciously and freely.

You can follow her on twitter at @aparnakalantri

Participatory Budgeting in Pune – Propose your additions to your local ward’s budget

Miscellaneous, Pune City,

(This is a guest post by Sanskriti Menon, who is a Programme Diretor, at the Center for Environment Education, Pune. PMC is now not only allowing citizens to suggest additions to the local budgets, but the form can be filled online (and that is why this item does belong to PuneTech.) The what, why and how are covered below, but if you do decide to submit an entry, please note the following: go to PuneCorporation.org, click on the “Participatory Budget 2010-11” link around the middle of the page, and then on the next page you get a page with instructions in Marathi. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Accept”. That will give you the actual form.)

What is Participatory Budgeting?

The Participatory Budget of the PMC provides an opportunity for citizens to give suggestions for works to be taken up in the next financial year. Citizens can make suggestions for streetlights, footpaths, public toilets, waste sorting shed/ biogas plant/ bulk compost unit, drainage etc, in spaces where such works are permissible and needed. Participatory Budget has been carried out in Pune over the last three years. It is a mechanism for citizens to give inputs for works to be carried out through the ward offices. The final decision regarding the budget of our city government is of course taken by our elected representatives with inputs from the administration.

What is the process citizens are to follow?

Citizens can make their suggestions online in the E-Budgeting application available on the PMC website from 26th October to 09 November 2009. The form is available at www.punecorporation.org

Suggestions can also be made in the prescribed forms available at ward offices.  All ward offices are also making arrangements for online entry. When submitting the paper form, citizens must ensure that it is duly in-warded at the ward office and the tear-off receipt with inward entry number is given. This number will be needed to the unique id number after computerization. Those submitting suggestions online will directly get the unique ID number on completion of the entry. This number will be needed to track the suggestion and what decision is taken about it.

Of course, citizens have to be clear that submission of suggestions does not necessarily mean that the work will be accepted. The PMC has to check the feasibility and the Prabhag Samiti will be making their decision too.

What is the benefit of Participatory Budgeting?

Participatory Budget is a refinement in the ‘institutional design’ of the democratic process to make it more responsive to citizens’ needs. Our democratic process is that we citizens elect our representatives to take decisions that are well thought out, in keeping with societal and environmental concerns, and responding to our needs. However, a necessary condition for representative democracy to function well is that citizens actively provide inputs to elected representatives. This happens in many ways through RTI, the media, NGOs etc. Draft master plans and new policy drafts are kept open for a specified period for public input. The most direct method is of course discussions with corporators. However, in a city where the ratio of representation is about 15000 citizens to one corporator this may pose some problems.

The participatory budget process helps to deepen our existing democratic framework. It is an evolving mechanism to enable the democratic process to function better. The underlying idea is that citizens get a formal opportunity to deliberate upon the needs of their areas and submit requests to the respective administrative ward offices.

What are the achievements so far?

A few thousand people have participated in the exercise over the years. Last year over 1300 suggestions for works were received. Over 35 crore worth of projects were incorporated into the main budget.  There is recognition that some project ideas are mundane (fix a pavement); but the fact that citizens have to ask for these is a telling comment on how these very aspects may be ignored in conventional budgeting processes. There are the not-so-usual ideas as well – sorting sheds, composting units, benches, hawking zone platforms, etc.

Is PB happening anywhere else?

In many parts of the world! Participatory Budgeting started in Latin American countries struggling to build or rebuild their democratic institutions and to eliminate corruption, improve transparency and accountability of government. The innovation of ‘participatory budgeting’ has been praised internationally as an example of “good” governance.

In Brazil, citizens deliberate on five thematic areas: transport and traffic circulation; education, leisure and culture; health and social welfare; economic development and taxation; city organization and urban development. Meetings are held in each neighbourhood, where residents draw up their list of priorities for investment in infrastructure. These inputs are provided to the municipal budget council who determines the distribution of funds for each priority among districts. The municipal budget council and the district budget fora also monitor spending year-round.

In UK, talking about participatory budgeting, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Hazel Blear said “councilors must not feel their democratic mandate is bypassed, and instead recognize that it will strengthen their relationship with their local community”.  Also, that, “I think the world has changed. I think voting every four years and basically handing over responsibility and power to other people and then doing nothing again for four years, I think our democracy is not like that any more.”  Ms Blear may well be talking about our city!

Intructions for Participatory Budgeting

PMC’s Citizen Suggestion Form is available online at www.punecorporation.org

(scroll down to ‘What would you like to do’ (above Swine Flu)

General instructions for suggesting works

  1. Please fill in all columns
  2. Citizens should note that suggesting a work does not necessarily mean its inclusion in the budget; the projects inclusion/ exclusion will be determined on technical and legal considerations
  3. All suggested works should be specific (location, description, quantity, category etc) (attach maps, photos where needed – fill a physical form in this case)
  4. Only projects that pertain to neighbourhood or locality level works are to be suggested, not city level infrastructure
  5. The cost of suggested works should preferably be below Rs 5 lakh
  6. Projects of the following type are admissible: pavements, water supply, drainage, bus stop (in consultation with PMT), parks and gardens (only repair works), bhawan (only repair works), public toilets, lights (roads and traffic), roads (only resurfacing)
  7. Projects of following type are not admissible: pedestrian bridges, speed breakers (prohibited by Supreme Court), garden (new provision), construction on land not owned by PMC
  8. Non budgetable projects should be avoided – For e.g. appointment of staff, minor repairs, clean up etc
  9. Deadline for submission is 09 Nov 2009
  10. When submitting the paper form, citizens must ensure that it is duly in-warded at the ward office and the tear-off receipt with inward entry number is given. This number will be needed to the unique id number after computerization. Those submitting suggestions online will directly get the unique ID number on completion of the entry. This number will be needed to track the suggestion and what decision is taken about it.
  11. Suggestions can also be made in the prescribed forms available at ward offices.  All ward offices are also making arrangements for online entry.

For more information, visit

www.janwani.org

http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Participatory_Budgeting_in_Pune

http://www.desd.org/efc/Participatory%20Budgeting.htm

About the Author – Sanskriti Menon

Sanskriti Menon is a Programme Director for the CEE Urban Programmes and Central Regional Cell of the Centre for Environment Education. CEE is an organization that works towards improving the awareness of environmental issues in our education system. It is supported by the Ministry of Envirnoment and Forests. Sanskriti also runs greenteacher.org, and she is also one of the primary driving forces behind the huge success of the Pune governance wiki.

38 organizations where a tech startup can apply for funds

In Depth, Miscellaneous, , , ,

The Venture Center is a not-for-profit technology startup incubator hosted in the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune. One of the services they provide their incubatee startups is a guide to the various government funds and schemes that a technology startup can avail of at different stages of their development, depending upon meeting certain criteria.

This is information that most entrepreneurs are not aware of. With this in mind, Venture Center has put out this guide to the Financing Landscape in India for Technology Ventures. This guide is a must read for all startups interested in funding.

You can simply browse this information, and read the rules and regulations of each of these 38 funds/organizations. Or, if you want to be handheld your way through the maze, you can avail of Venture Center’s advisory services.

For more information about Venture Center, you can see PuneTech’s interview of Kaushik Gala, the business development manager for Venture Center.

Pune-based startups, Onion.tv & Dubzer launch on the world stage – at TechCrunch50 and DEMO09

Featured, Miscellaneous

TechCrunch50 and Demo.com are easily the top startup conferences in the world and a chance to launch there is a huge opportunity that is available only to a handful of selected startups from all over the world. The bulk of these startups happen to be from the US/Europe, and it is rare for an Indian startup to feature in these conferences.

So it is a great feeling to be able to say that there are two “pure Pune” startups there this year, onion.tv that’s been selected for the TechCrunch 50 demopit, and dubzer.com that will launch during DEMO.com’s AlphaPitch next week. Both of these events are very difficult to get into, and being there will be a huge boost to these startups in terms of visibility, contacts, networking, feedback.

Onion.tv is the startup of POCC regulars Prashant Sachdev and Nilesh Diane, and it allows companies to publish out enhanced videos – with tags, and text and tables of content to give the users (viewers) a much better experience. Here is their pitch in their own words:

The content companies can integrate relevant information with audio / video and make their media more rich and useful. For example, educational companies can integrate a simple DVD-like table of contents with the videos, or even synchronize notes, code section and related material like Wikipedia pages with the video. This will help users enhance their learning experience. On the other hand, event companies can integrate tags, notes, comments to the event video and even synchronize a presentation with the video. This will help their users skim, filter, and search or even share parts of video with others, thereby making event videos much useful, as events typically cover wide range of topics and have diverse audience. Similarly, content companies in news, entertainment, and advertising can integrate their media with relevant content to enhance the experience of their users.

Here’s a tour of the features they offer.

Dubzer is the next venture of the team that brought us Bookeazy and Lipikaar. This time around, they are incubated by Persistent Systems, and as one of the 10 teams selected for AlphaPitch they are one of “the coolest earliest-stage companies around” according to Matt Marshall, Co-Executive Producer of DEMO. And as one of just 10 companies selected for AlphaPitch, they get:

  • sixty second pitch to the entire DEMO audience in the general session ballroom,
  • kiosk space in the DEMO pavilion,
  • two passes to attend DEMO, and
  • extensive promotional support on site and after the event on demo.com.

Unfortunately, they cannot tell us what they do until September 22nd (i.e. until after they’ve officially launched at DEMO), because that is one of the rules of launching at DEMO. Maybe we can have a fun contest guessing what they do (based on what we know about the founders – Santosh Dawara, Anjali Gupta and co., and their past activities.) Maybe it’s a software that allows easy dubbing of English movies into Hindi and easily creating subtitles for them in 18 languages (by people who don’t understand English). That will be fun!

(Note: we are not looking for “accurate” guesses here. We don’t want to encourage inadvertent breaking of their embargo. But it would be fun to get funny guesses. I think we can bring pressure upon Anjali to give a free Dubzer T-shirt to the funniest guess.)


Update: Dubzer has launched. See this PuneTech article for details. Shashikant and Rohan had posted comments that came too close to the truth for comfort, so we held them back in the moderation queue for a few days until Dubzer officially launched.

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5 things that Computer Science Engineering students should focus on

In Depth, Miscellaneous, ,

What should students be really focusing on? Somebody asked me this question recently – Imagine students who are in 2nd or 3rd year of their degree course right now. They’ll spend a few years finishing college, and a few years just learning the ropes at their first job. So it will really be about 5 years before their career really starts. What will the software technology world be like at that time, and what are the skills that students can work on acquiring right now to ensure that they are well positioned to thrive?

Of course, 5 years is a long time, and to quote Neils Bohr, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. Still I think some general trends are clear, and there are some other timeless skills that are worth looking at. Based on that I’m giving my list below.

Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

But wait!

Let me not bias your thoughts. Before you read my list, skip to the comments section below, and put down your list. Then read my list and critique it again in the comments. Hopefully we can have a good discussion that will benefit students.

So, here’s my list of areas students need to be thinking about:

  • The next billion customers: The IT revolution has probably reached a billion people of the world so far. In the next 5 years, it will reach the next billion. These will be a very different set of people. Many of them will be illiterate – so you need to focus on non-text, non-English interfaces – video, animations, voice recognition. Search for “English Seekho” to get an idea of what I mean. Most won’t have money or electricity for computers, so mobile devices will rule – so you need to start playing with mobile platforms like Android. In general, search for the “the next billion” and you’ll find some interesting material put together by the likes of Nokia, and MIT giving you ideas on what to focus on.
  • Usability: As IT touches the lives of more and more people, less and less of them will be “computer savvy”, and less and less of them will view computing devices as something that needs to be learnt. Consequently, the products that will succeed, will be the ones that are easy to use. And making something easy to use is rather difficult. It is a sub-discipline of computer science, and there is a lot of theory, and a bunch of well-defined algorithms and practices you can use to make things easy to use. The whole area is called HCI (Human Computer Interaction), and UCD (User Centered Design) is a part of it. It’s an area that you must be familiar with
  • Computer Science Fundamentals: This will never go out of fashion, and yes, when I look at students coming out of our colleges, this appears to be a rather neglected area. Far too much emphasis on specific programming languages, and specific “technologies” is a mistake. Whatever the future holds, you will be well served by knowing the basic theory of computer sciences. Learn data-structures and algorithms. If you don’t have a favourite data-structure, and an algorithm that you find beautiful, then your computer science education is incomplete. If, after seeing an algorithm, your first thought is not about the complexity of the algorithm (O(n), O(log n), etc.), then you need to hit your books again. If you’ve only learned Java and C#, and you don’t really understand pointers, heaps, stacks, you will sooner or later be at a disadvantage. Understand the basics. And while you’re at it, also learn mathematics and statistics.
  • Presentation skills: This is not a computer science skill, but this is one of the most important skills that computer science students are missing. You must treat presentation as equally important, or more important than your program, design, and algorithms. And you must spend as much time learning presentation (from books, in classes, and in practice) as you spent on programming languages, and computer science subjects. I’m sure you haven’t done that, hence this item in my list. You should know how to write well. Not just papers and documents, but much more importantly, emails, and blog posts, and facebook wall postings, and tweets. You must think about what the user/reader/client wants to know (instead of what you know and want to tell). And of course, you must know how to speak well. How to tell a story instead of listing some arcane facts about your work. How to leave out stuff that you find extremely interesting, but the listener doesn’t.
  • Economics: Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert says: “When you have a working knowledge of economics, it’s like having a mild super power.” Basically, if you understand the fundamentals of economics, you can see and understand what drives people and technologies and success and failure a lot better than people who do not understand it. I hated the fact that I was made to study economics in IIT for my computer science course. It seemed like a complete waste of my time. Now, looking back, I think it was probably the most important course.

What do you think students should be focusing on?

(Note: I’m supposed to be participating in a panel discussion in MIT on Monday, 7th Sept, on this topic. Instead of going there and spewing my gyaan, I thought I would take this opportunity to have a larger discussion on this topic, and your comments will help me do a better job (or go there with a better list), so please leave comments. Thanks.)

(Update: Please note: Many comments on this article are by 12th std. students who want to know how to select an engineering college or branch. In response to all of those, I’ve written an article on how 12th std students should select an engineering college/branch. Please read that article, and ask your doubts there. I will be deleting any comments on this post that are related 12th std choices.)

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Mentor India internship in system programming – Entrance exam on 20th July

Featured, Miscellaneous, , , , ,
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

Pune-based KQInfoTech is an organization started by Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra, both of whom chucked high-paying jobs in the industry because they felt that there was a desperate need to work on the quality of students that is being churned out by our colleges. For the 2 years or so, they have been trying various experiements in education, at the engineering college level. All their experiments are based on one basic premise: students’ ability to pay should not be a deterrent – in other words, the offerings should be free for the students; KQInfoTech focuses on finding alternative ways to pay for the costs of running the course.

This week, KQInfotech launches the second edition of “Mentor India: An Internship Program in System Programming”,  for the people looking for making a career in the system programming.

It is a program in “Gurukul” tradition of education. There are two unique features of this program.

  • Cost: Your education does not depend on your capacity to pay. Not only your education is free, you also get stipend during this program.
  • Work experience: You are also getting real industry work experience during your education. During this course, you will get one year worth industry experience.

Does working in Linux Kernel, writing device drivers for Unix and Windows, writing system level programs that interacts closely with operating system interests you? But you don’t have right skill sets for this.

KQInfotech is lead by people who have spend decades working in the area of file system, kernel programming, Linux kernel etc. They are ready to educate you in “Art of System Programming”. Are you ready for all the hard and interesting work required?

It is a unique post graduate program for one year, which would provide you education as well as work experience. This program will cover Unix internals, Linux kernel programming, Multi-threading, Windows internals, Writing device drivers etc.

Please visit www.kqinfotech.com/mentoring/ for more details.

Candidates for this course will be selected based on an entrance exam and interview.
Entrance will be based on C, Data Structure, O/S concepts and aptitude test.

Entrance Exam details:
Date: 20th July
Time: 10:00 AM
Duration: 90 Minutes
Venue: A-201, Mitrangan, Near Kapil Malhar, Baner Road, Baner, Pune 411045
Email: mentoring@kqinfotech.com

If you’re interested please fill the Online Registration Form for Entrance Exam.

Check out previous PuneTech articles on KQInfoTech. You might also be interested in the techstart program.

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BlogCampPune: Carpools, Buspool, What to Expect, Contacts, and other info

Events, Miscellaneous, , , , , , ,

(Tarun Chandel, one of the organizers of BlogCampPune, sent out this mail to all those signed up to attend BlogCampPune 2, and it is being reproduced here for the benefit of those who haven’t yet registered – in the hope of convincing you that this is where you want to be on Saturday. And of course, if you’re still not sure of why to attend the blogcamp, check out our reasons why.)

I am sure you are looking forward to this Saturday with as much excitement as I am. Rains have arrived in Pune, it’s cool, it’s green, it’s beautiful and it’s ready to host all the bloggers for the BlogCamp Pune 2.

Just a quick reminder about some cool sections of our wiki that you can use to reach the Blogcamp in more fun way.

Carpools/Bikepools/Bus Sharing:

If you are coming on your bike or car please add your name in the Bikepool and Carpool section of our wiki: http://barcamp.org/BlogCampPune2 as that will help you to meet a fellow blogger even before the camp. Now there is a special treat for those who are coming from Mumbai. You can join the rest of Mumbai Bloggers who are traveling together in a bus. Please contact Mohnish, a Mumbai based blogger, through this link http://itwit.in/pbc or sms your name, email & no. to 9768512770 (only sms). Kindly note that the phone number is an SMS gateway only, your calls will not be answered. You will help this earth in staying bit more green and you can have some awesome pre-blogcamp-networking 🙂

Time:

Please be there at 9:45am. We are going to start at 10am. If you are coming from any far flung corner of the city, start early. If you are coming from Mumbai start way too early else you are going to miss the fun part. If you wish to volunteer for helping us in setting up the venue, please be at SICSR at 8:30am.

Read:
I would suggest that you read the following post to get an idea about the BlogCamp Pune:

What to expect at the blogcamp pune.
If it is your first camp please read about the camp culture here.
Reasons to attend the Blogcamp Pune.
FAQs at our BlogCamp Pune wiki.

Contact:
In case you have any questions or you need to know about the venue please give us a call.

For venue and directions: Abhishek – +91 9970983032
For Blogcamp related queries: Tarun – +91 9819997412

Event: Blogcamp Pune 2
Date: Saturday, June 27, 2009 from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM (GMT+0530)
Location: SICSR (Symbiosis) Atur Centre, Gokhale Cross Road, Model Colony, Pune

See you on Saturday!

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Can Orkut/Facebook kill Flickr?

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Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

(Vibhushan Waghmare co-founder of Pune-based marketing analytics startup, MQuotient, wrote this post, titled “Orkut – Facebook as Photo Sharing Sites” on his blog, and is reproduced here with permission.)

Orkut and Facebook are the most popular social networking sites in India. Photo sharing has been a prime feature for both these socio-nets. Often we find friends uploading albums with photos from their recent trip/vacation to some place or some events in their life. These updates are actively tracked among the friends’ network and commenting and tagging of photos is quite common.

Image representing Orkut as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Given this, I am surprised that neither of these two socio-nets has a feature of image search among the friends’ network and public photos on these sites.

Often when we are planning a trip or vacation to some place, we try to search online about the destination. I would always love to know if any of my connection on either Orkut or Facebook has been there and has put up any photos of the place. A friend’s word would always carry more credibility than the most authentic commercial profile page/wiki for the place. In fact, a few days back Orkut themselves had run an online ad campaign wherein they showed one animated user talking about the great trip/vacation he had and other asking him to upload photos from this trip/vacation on Orkut. So I am quite sure that photo sharing (especially of specific locations) is a big traffic booster for Orkut and Facebook.

Image representing Flickr as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

However right now there are no means to find out if there are any photos of interest available on these socio-nets to which I have access. I have to turn to proper photo-sharing networks like Flickr.com and try my luck with photos from some stranger with whom I might never be able to connect (Yahoo! sucks in all its social network efforts :) ). This one application can overnight convert Orkut and Facebook into a serious competitor for all photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

This image search facility should allow me to search for photos to which I have access on these socio-nets, i.e. photos from my friends or photos which have been made public purposefully by their owners. This search can be based on tags/album name or whichever image search technology is best suited. I am sure Google with its best search technologies will not have much of an issue in developing an image search for Orkut. Besides, Google maps/Google world should be integrated with Orkut and geo-tagging of photos should be allowed. It will only make image search more accurate when searching for photos of a specific location.

While privacy has always been a key concern for these socio-nets, and more so with photos, this search facility needs to be very particular in searching only among those photos to which the searcher’s account have access to. Facebook has the famous privacy bug still unresolved wherein if any of your friend comments on a photo from a Facebook user who is not your friend, you still get to see the entire album of photos of that person. Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor’s private photos from Facebook had leaked out once because of this bug, however still it remains unresolved. Wonder if it is now an intentional bug that Facebook wants to be alive to drive more page-views.

As a plain user of these socio-nets, I sense a need here for an application which can provide this image search facility. I hope some Product Manager from either Google of Facebook listens to this and evaluates the opportunity. But before that, what do you guys think of it? Is there an opportunity for building such an application for Orkut or Facebook?

About the author – Vibhushan Waghmare

Vibhushan is a co-founder of MQuotient, a Pune-based startup that uses cutting-edge quantitative analytics and mathematical modeling to build software products for marketing analytics, and in general deliver solutions for enterprise marketing challenges. Before co-founding MQuotient, Vibhushan was managing the Search product at Yahoo! India. He is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and an Electrical Engineer from REC, Nagpur. He has also held positions with Amdocs & Cognizant Technology Solutions. Check out his blog, his linked-in page, or his twitter page for more about him.

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TZen: Community Powered Innovation with the PlanetAikon platform

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planet-aikon-logoPlanetAikon is a forum that allows “community powered innovation”. It is a Pune-based startup which allows its members to “connect, collaborate and co-create”. It strives to be a unique innovation ecosystem bringing together a community of ideators, contributors and sponsors – in other words, it connects the guys with the bright ideas, the guys with the money, and the guys with skills and time to implement the idea.

This is the story of TZen, one of PlanetAikon’s success stories. It is written by Prateek Dubey and originally appeared on the PlanetAikon Blog, and is republished here with permission.

TZen – The Tool whose Time has Come

Hi- I am Prateek Dubey and I have a Story to share with You – The Story of Tzen

The Inspiration and the Rationale

It all started when Zensar Technologies Testing Center of Excellence decided about 2 yrs ago to develop a test tool which will be used for Manual Testing for Projects in Zensar and to encourage use of Test Tools among associates. Add to that the prohibitive cost of branded Testing tools and the Training & Upgrade costs associated with it were the significant business drivers which strengthened our resolve to build such a tool.

Zensar Technologies Limited
Image via Wikipedia

We developed our first Test Tool prototype which was a Test Management Layer over an Opensource Defect Management Tool called “Bugzilla”, which was based on technologies like CGI, perl and mysql.

We soon realized that our prototype was not going to fulfil the future requirements of Test Management, as CGI was slow and handling large data in an efficient way was a challenge. This was the time when we started a new prototype which was based on new AJAX Technology. An article about a newly introduced web services concept called REST sparked further ideas. After a month of design and re-design we finally had a draft design ready. We chose php for implementing our web services to support the development of a quick, easy to understand and highly responsive tool. We wanted this application to be a full-fledged WebTop Application, keeping in mind that we were designing it for the future. We came up with a prototype which was named “TZen” by our project manager Vishal Wani. Vishal encouraged us to do a Demo of our Prototype to some internal projects. The Demo was an instant hit as nobody had ever seen a Web Application which loaded only once and then ran on the browser as a Desktop Application.

With Vishal’s and Testing Practice Head Prem Apte’s continued support, we started development of our product with help from Testing Community in Zensar. As we developed TZen further we were facing serious technology challenges as “Ajax” was a new technology and we were at par with rest of the world in exploration of the same. Thus, every time we ran into an issue we had to resolve it mostly by ourselves. We were also using Technologies like Yahoo UI library and Dojo, it took us around 6 months to come up with a first fully functional TZen prototype. We deployed it at various projects and got a lot of feedback on our implementation, TZen was still very basic in functionality and we still had a lot of work to be done. During this time we had a lot of organizational changes in team and finally we were left as a 2 member team from a 4 member team.

Reinventing TZen with Community Powered Innovation

TZen went slow for about 6 months until recently when it got revived by a Zensar Opensource Innovation initiative with the help of Planetaikon Platform. We started with significant doubts about what we could achieve through an Open Community involvement. But with support of NASSCOM (under their Innovation Initiatives) and the leadership at Zensar we soon found ourselves inundated by requests from individuals from other companies to join this initiative.

  1. We had the usual initial teething issues as folks were adapting to working on a on-line collaborative co-creation platform (as against meeting face-to-face or the “business-as-usual” of e-mail exchanges).
  2. We got a lot of feedback from participants which led us to shortlist 27 (twenty seven) new features to the existing version of our tool.
  3. Those who contributed did so because of their passion to create something and did so in after-office hours and on weekends. In approximately 5 months time we were able to come up with our Release 1.1 with those 27 additional features which we have again contributed back to the community.
  4. Our Vision is to develop TZen into the most successful Opensource Test Management Platform. Our Team size has now grown to 66 (Sixty Six)!
  5. TZen is designed ground up to be Opensource and Agile development compliant product. It can be developed quickly and tested easily. This was recently re-integrated when a small set of students with only a few days of TZen exposure, created a “Commenting System” for TZen , which is going to be featured in the next TZen release again a validation of the value that communities can provide

TZen – A Snapshot

TZen provides most features that a Test Management Tools must have. These include:

  • Requirement Management
  • Test Plan Management
  • Test Case Management
  • Test Execution Management
  • Defect Management (integrated with Mantis)
  • Reports and Exports at various levels

The Road Ahead

As we progress, we look forward to the community to help us take this product to new heights. Some of the features we plan to include are

  • Extensive graph and Chart support
  • Flexible Imports
  • Custom Fields
  • Server pull services and more….

TZen has got a lot of business, technical and innovation opportunity ready to be explored and taken forward, improvements at every level are in progress.

We are now throwing open another call to professionals who are keen to participate in taking TZen to its next high. We are looking for Php 5 developers, Testing Domain Experts, Usability Domain Professionals and Testers.

Come add to our adrenalin and let us show the world how the audacity of Ideas can be supported by the passion of communities.

Join us @TZen on Planetaikon. We are counting on YOU.

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