What does ET think about desistartups?

To find out the answer go here – http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Corporate_Trends/In_blogs_start-ups_find_a_voice_of_their_own/articleshow/3083953.cms

Python api for slideshare?

How about a python api for slideshare? That too within a single night? Well the answer is here.

http://code.google.com/p/pyslideshare/

Happy slidesharing!

Is Gmail crashing your firefox?

Is gmail crashing your firefox, especially in Linux? Well you are not alone then. Here are some potential reasons.

• Too many AJAX calls which firefox is not handling cleanly and leaks memory before crashing.
• sound.swf – A flash file which produces the sound when someone comes online. This flash sometimes causes the flash plugin to run into an infinite loop, hence crashing the browser along with the plugin.

Simple fix is to disable gmail chat or use flashblock to block the particular flash from loading. Or better use opera like me 🙂

Is Google A ready for Enterprise?

After using Google A for Enterprise for a while, here are some of my thoughts about that.

Definitely need a way to turn off spam filter

A number of my customer emails go to the spam folder. This makes me check the spam folder more often than the inbox!

Lists functionality is unreliable

Sometimes, my emails to my own lists gets rejected and I get a nice little help link that says “Google has detected that you are trying to spam”. WTF, you are talking about serious business here and sometimes ignoring certain things is better being over cautious. Please learn this dear Google.

Where is group by email feature?

By default, gmail groups by thread. That is fine. But for enterprise, we need more than that. Group by Email, Group by date in ascending order etc. Typical features clients like Thunderbird or outlook provides you.

Centralized Address Book

As soon as the number of employees cross more than 20, it becomes very necessary to have a centralized address book, since a number of contact information change quite frequently like extension number, personal contact numbers, current project etc.

I am sure, others can add more to this list. So overall, my impression is that when you startup, you can use Google A, since the standard edition is free. But once you grow and start to think about business seriously, better setup your own infrastructure.

And Google, if you are thinking of beating Microsoft, then a web based platform is definitely not the way to go. Buy mozilla and see if you can make thunderbird and other collaboration software, enterprise friendly and business ready.

When is an RSS reader not a reader?

If it is Google Reader!

The beauty of RSS is that you decide when to check the website. Any damn RSS reader out there would have an option for “Refresh interval”. Even if they dont have, clicking a button called “Refresh” would definitely get you the latest posts.

Where as our Google Reader is so adamant that it will keep ignoring your clicks for refresh and sometime doesn’t show up the latest post for more than 3 hours. Apparently, I am not the only one to complain.

Is it so difficult to code this – make an AJAX call to a feed url and render the feed on the fly? Google, do you need any part-time contributions?

Is it time to upgrade my laptop?

A guy in my apartment told me that he has bought a new system with 1 GB Memory. I was thinking whatz the big deal in that. Then he stressed the point 1 GB Graphics Card. I said wow. Do we need such a higher end machine? I have been happily using a 256 Mb RAM (no graphics card) laptop all these days and it runs XP pretty smoothly. Infact, this was the only laptop that was working well with the projector during Webcamp.

Do you think it is time for me to upgrade? If yes, any suggestions for me?

Insider information regarding desistartups

Some of the Insider Information regarding my Indian Startups Blog. Thought it might be useful for someone.

How a topic gets selected?

Usually people asking me to review their site. Or sometimes, I will choose a startup randomly (Based on recent posts in other blogs, Recent buzz)

Anything special about the titles of your posts?

I spend a lot of time, to choose the best title for my post. I usually name the title with something that excited me to write that particular post. Below are some examples.

• BlogAdda Vs IndiBlogger – Read this today! – Tag line of Blog Adda is “who are you reading today”
• Our viewpoint about instablogs – Tag line of InstaBlogs “Everyone has a viewpoint”
• Lets criticize criticat – This post starts with “Shweta’s Life has become more beautiful”. This is because her blog has the title “Life is Beautiful”
• Continue working on the same lines, you can find all the easter eggs!

What will I do if I find a startup promising, but don’t want to blog about it immediately?

I will add it to the Indian Startups Directory, which has become matured enough now.

How many Review request mails am I getting?

One or two request mails per week.

Revenue Model

I am not going to worry about any revenue from this blog for another couple of years. Pure focus on continuing to write something interesting and useful.

Other plans

Just started a new blog focused on UK based startups. No time for podcasting or video interviews. But I will be doing more and more Email Interviews down the line.

Firefox 3 – Lets start the false hype yet again

I happened to see this post. I was waiting for Mike or Scoble to give a nice reply to this. Since no one commented, I am going ahead with this post. First of all, is Opera and Safari the latest version used for the comparison? Also does it take a simulation software to prove that Firefox is memory hogging. Any average computer user, who knows how to open task manager can see for himself, how much memory our Firefox eats up. Have Firefox and Thunderbird open at the same time, forget a big chunk of your RAM, simple.

While I agree with the fact that firefox 3 has lesser memory leak than firefox 2, I will not accept the fact anytime soon, that firefox is all set to beat opera for the light weight browser title.

USD to GBP Conversion formula

Still thinking 1 GBP = 2 USD? Well buddy, that doesn’t hold good in all the cases. Use this post as a reference for your currency conversion needs.

Electronics

For every $500, reduce GBP 100. Lets see some examples

• iPod Touch: US Price: $299, UK Price: GBP 199 (Reduce 100)

• Dell XPS 1530: US Price: $799, UK Price: GBP 599 (Reduce 200, since the amount > 500)

• Nintendo Wii: US Price: $249, UK Price: GBP 159

Food:

1 GBP = 1 USD

$4.99 Burger at Mc. Donald’s would cost you GBP 4.99 here in UK simple. Prices of all other items including groceries also maintain the number.

Housing:

• London: 2 GBP = 1 USD.

• Rest of UK: 1 GBP = 1 USD

Keep you posted, as and when I figure out other things here.

New city and New start?

I didn’t get a chance to tell all my friends, fans, well-wishers about this. Hence making this post, so that people could know where I am right now, in case they are not aware of.

I am in London right now. I ended up coming here due to a number of unavoidable reasons. Fortunately, I got a job here on day 1 with an interesting company, which I might reveal in due course.

For now, take a look at some of the photos of my new workplace and also feel free to check out my public album.

London Office