Gmail Down

My Gmail account is down from more than an hour.

I keep getting this message:

Server Error

We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem -- please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.

I have never experienced such outrage!! And my friends are able to login, it's just that I am experiencing this trouble. I used to forward my emails from other accounts onto GMail but now I am having second thoughts about it....

GMail is a great service but if it doesn't work - it's of no use...

Sunil & Tina

It's been more than a month since I got married with my beautiful wife Tina. Ever since I met her, it's been a new phase and a new beginning. I met her none other than independence day (15th August) to perhaps loose my independence :-)

So how long did it took to decide?? Days, weeks, months .. hmmm - not even couple of hours... we decided (actually God knows who decided) to tie the knot. Quite unusual for love marriages and perhaps even for arranged marriages these days in Delhi.

From 16th August, our Roka to 23rd September to our engagement and finally 29th September, time just flew by.

I haven't written blogs for days, marriage makes you busy man!! Had a beautiful honeymoon in austria, met some old pals in Salzburg, we had our first Karvachauth, had a great Diwali at my home in Patiala and currently enjoying my first few moments of happy married life :-) Lots of dinners at lots of places, gives enough reason to put up weight !!

I guess it gave me enough reasons to be away from the online world!

Enjoy the marriage video below..

LinknSurf Beta 1.0

Do checkout the latest version of LinknSurf Beta 1.0


- Enables you track your favorite blogs
- Share blogs via email, sms
- Share blogs via creating your own mobile communities

You can also recieve emails on LinknSurf, just forward your emails to username@linknsurf.com

LinknSurf now runs also on blackberry, so if you have Blackberry 7100G, you can enjoy tracking blogs and sharing them with your friends.

Download LinknSurf from the following links:
General MIDP2 Application (Nokia, SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung etc.)
linknsurf.jar
linknsurf.jad
Motorola Razr V3
linknsurf-moto.jar
linknsurf-moto.jad
Blackberry 7100G
linknsurf.cod

Or just point your mobile browser to http://linknsurf.com/download

So if you have a gprs connection, you can try the app out and can email me your feedback!

MomoDelhi Flashback

On 5th August, we had Mobile Monday Delhi chapter kick off and the first meet went off very well. We had people from all walks of life - mobile enthusiasts, NGOs, venture capitalists, mobile carriers, content developers, content aggregators, entrepreneurs, students,.... - so what more could you expect! It was a charged audience - around 90 people turned up!!

The meeting kick started at 10 with everyone giving a brief overview of themselves and one killer feature they would want in their mobile phone. After that we had an enlightening talk by Mr. Naresh Gupta - VP Adobe, Managing Director India. His take was SMS and Voice are the two killer applications and perhaps Location based Services might be the next - but wait and see...

And then we had a series of talks till lunch:
- Nishant Kavi from iGate presented their solution for content adaptation on mobiles, gave a demo.
- Lomesh Dutta from Wirkle Inc. gave a presentation on LinknSurf - product focussed for building community around media.
- Prerna Gupta - cofounder Yaari.com gave a presentation on Social Networking on Mobiles via SMS... I was surprised to see my name appearing in her demo :-) Sometime back I got an invite for Yaari.com and just made a brief profile.. Didn't give me stardom but may be one day :-)
- Rajan presented his thoughts on Mobile 2.0

And after that we broke up for lunch.

After lunch we had two parallel sessions:
Track one had the following presentations:
- Saurabh Jain presented his talk about Convergence in mobile world..
- Nimesh Bhandari from ValueFirst gave a talk on Business Model Innovation in Value Added Services
- And then it was my turn , and I gave a talk on Mobile 2.0 - I guess I asked too many questions trying to analyze what's mobile 2.0 :-) But got a great response from the audience.
- Mr Chirag Jain, VP Webaroo, gave a talk describing Webaroo's offline search solution.
- Milind Nimesh gave a talk on Pervasive Computing..


Track two had the following presentations:
- Kunal Bajaj gave a talk on Telecom policy
- Joshua and Ashok Datar from Koolpool talked about their SMS based solutions for car pooling in Mumbai
- Sunadini and Ekta from ACL Wireless gave a talk on Usability on Small Screens
- Girish gave a talk on tools for mobile development

And finally we had an open panel session. The panelists include:
- Mr Manoj Dawane - COO Airtel
- Mr Alok Mittal - Partner Cannan Partners, Band of Angels
- Mr Vish Bajaj, CEO ValueFirst
- Mr Kiranbir Nag, Silicon Valley Bank
- Mr Arvind Jha - VP Monsoon Multimedia
- Mr Chirag Jain - VP Webaroo

The star attraction of the panel, atleast from my perspective, was Mr Manoj Dawane. Even though I have been against the walled garden approach of the carrier, but the way Mr Dawane handled all the queries and presented his perspective, all hats to the man..

I missed completely the track two of presentations and even with other presentations, I was quite occupied with getting things streamlined - always happen when you are part of the organizing team.. But nonetheless we have been able to capture some of the videos and we will be uploading them to youtube..

Presentations will be uploaded onto the wiki, so be sure to check http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

Just posting down a pic of me and lomesh captured by Prashant. It was captured at the very end of the event, I was really exhausted....


Me and Lomesh

You can see other pics at flickr.

Mobile Monday Delhi

Finally Mobile Monday Delhi is on the rolls.. We are having the first meet of the delhi chapter of the mobile monday event on 5th August 2006 at Adobe's office in Noida.

Mobile Monday is a gathering of mobile enthusiasts, developers, carriers, VAS providers, VC's - anyone who is enthusiastic about the next digital revolution - Mobile!

So if you are in and around Delhi or may be far away, Mobile Monday is a must visit. We would like the initiative to carry on every month where people can meet, discuss and share their ideas, beliefs and technology. Adobe has been very kind to sponsor its conference hall and lunch facilities. It has taken over all the headache in arranging the event..

You can find details at http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com/

This mobile monday is unique in the sense that it's being held on Saturday,!! Yeah 5th August is Saturday and not Monday!!

Mobile Monday on Saturday - not many can chew it. So why not mobile saturday ? I guess mobile monday has an active community around it, secondly in indian context arranging on saturday makes more sense. In India, tech community mainly works quite late in offices and asking them to keep their Monday evening free looks hard. Companies have problem sponsoring the event on weekdays. So we thought why not do it on Saturday! I guess its an experiment and like any experiment we would learn and make the necessary corrections but at the end we would like to have an active community keep going on.

Details of Event are given Below:

Mobile Monday Delhi : “Mobile 2.0: Future Trends and Technology”

When?

05 August 2006 ( Mark your calendar ,it’s a Saturday)

Where?

Adobe Systems India Private Limited
Adobe Towers
I-1A, City Centre, Sector : 25A
Noida - 201301
Tel # 91-120-2444711

Want to participate ?? Register yourself at our wiki !!

http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

To keep you updated on latest developments Pre and Post event Please join our mailing list .

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/momodelhi/

Startups and Team members

I came back to India in September 2004 and from then I have been involved in setting up Wirkle with my colleagues. We are still an early stage company but have passed through different phases. From our initial half room office (3 people could barely fit in) to a bedroom and finally towards our current office, life has never been the same.

But this post is not about me or co-founders, this is about experiences of a team and its comparison across the borders. The experience I share is not yet mine but includes lot of my other friends who have been running their own startups from a while.

While everyone agrees the thing that makes a startup different is the team. VC's might call it a proven team with serial entrepreneurs, past experiences but my take is - at the end of the day its the developer's game. Well proven management teams can fail if the product/service is not just compelling enough. I am not undermining the role of management but both are equally important.

Though most of the initial startup team is technical, given today's circumstances its hard to get and manage high thrill enthusiastic startup teams. Any people who join startups should realize:

- Persistence: Startups take their time to become companies. No quick returns. Have patience and persistence.

- Fun/Hectic: It can be fun to work in a startup, at the same time it can be quite hectic. Tight deadlines, too much work pressure - only hard work pays. If you want a cool 9-5 job, startups are not perhaps your cup of tea.

- Responsibility: Work in a team but be personally responsibile for your work. Realize the importance of deadlines.

- Professional: Programming is not just about writing new code. Aim is not just to code but to develop a product/service. Build a finished product. And when a user gives great comments on your product, that's your greatest achievement.

- Domain experts: If you are working in a particular domain, try to be an expert in that. In India, I have seen people hop a lot amongst different technologies but no one ever tries to be an expert. Secondly, no one can make you an expert, you have to be the master of your own destiny.

- Insecurity: Finally don't feel insecure. Even if startups fail, you are going to win at the end. See my earlier post: Is joining Startup really a RISK?

For guys who join startups because of money :

I remember interviewing a candidate with around 8-9 months work experience. He was getting a package of around 3.3 - 3.5 lakhs. And I asked about what kind of renumeration package he is looking for? His answer was: After 2-3 months, I will get a bonus and my package will become 4.3-4.5 and if I join another company I might get 5 and since you are a startup, I am expecting around 6 lakhs. This kind of behaviour is totally ridiculous on part of the candidate, if he wants to join a startup.

I and most of my friends have had experience working abroad and then setting up a team in India. One of the contrasts that we all have seen is people aren't professional enough. Perhaps we ourselves weren't professional enough when we graduated but the environment changed us. It's very important for every team member in a startup to realize , at the end of the day what counts is professionalism. Will you use a broken television set or read a local magazine or buy sub-standard products ? If you yourself aren't going to do that why will someone else use/buy the product/service that you are developing if it has concerns. Be professional in whatever code you develop or debug. And if it implies, as some call it "dirty work" (testing and debugging), you are personally responsible to do it.

You will grow and mature much faster in a starup. So even if it appears to be a risky venture, that risk will pay off. Have fun!

Busy Busy Busy!!

Last few days had been quite hectic. We all at Wirkle had been quite busy from participating in a candle light procession against reservation at AIIMS to writing software code to releasing new version of LinkNSurf. Life has never been the same from the time when we all started the entrepreneurial journey.

Do checkout the new version of LinkNSurf, atleast guys that don't have a mobile phone can checkout the website! We have done a complete makeover of the website and will be putting up new things much faster.

With LinkNSurf you can TRACK and SHARE your favorite:

• Blogs (MySpace, Xanga, Blogspot,LiveJournal,TextAmerica, MSN Spaces),
• MySpace profile comments,
• Flickr Photos,
• Hot or Not, Sports, Movie Reviews, Celebrity Gossip, News and content from hundreds of other web sources.

MIDP2 jar and jad files are available here.
linknsurf.jar
linknsurf.jad
Looking forward for a feedback from all the audience out there.