Microsoft continues to innovate with Silverlight (achieving Windows on Web) exposing new avenues. This indeed, brings cheers to both Windows & Web developers. Should the surfers now be concerned about more data (in the form of .xap, .cab files) getting downloaded to their machines.
Down the years, the amount of data downloaded to the "Temporary Internet files" would have increased exponentially, eating up the physical memory.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Idea mani
Shouting out few ideas. Are the VC's lending their ears?
1) Maintain favourite links online.
2) Browse favourite sites (Blogs, news feeds, social networking sites, mails,...)in a single site using a reader (an extension to aggregators) instead of multiple logins.
1) Maintain favourite links online.
2) Browse favourite sites (Blogs, news feeds, social networking sites, mails,...)in a single site using a reader (an extension to aggregators) instead of multiple logins.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Interview with Anand, CEO of Cogzidel Consultancy Services
My association with Anand
Heard about his entrepreneurial venture through one of my friend and have met him in couple of occassions. He has been a great inspiration and always wanted to have a mention of his entrepreneurial journey in my blog. He blogs here. Scroll down for more from horse's mouth.
Good Day Anand.
1) What prompted you to start a venture of your own & how was the choice for a partner made?
Frankly I was very poor in academics and I was forced to do it on my own because I know it would be difficult to find a job with my marks… Also from my childhood days by desires are big but not fulfilled and I wanted to make money from college days and I started with freelancing, this is how my entrepreneur journey started…
In commerce there is a saying “Selecting a partner is like selecting a wife”, but itz all theories in reality we select a partner who fills your needs, like money/technical competency/contacts etc… I selected a partner who was my beast mate and that was right at that point of time…
2) How much was the initial capital deployed & do you see lack of capital as a constraint for a startup?
Capital I invested was knowledge and time… But you know it takes time to evolve to grow without money… I frankly advice startups to start it without big capital as they don’t know many functions of business and for sure they are going to loose what ever they invest in the beginning… I’ve read and seen many startups investing a lot of money initially and loosing everything… Some were smart and took cues from the failure and survived and many vanished… Initially we think we can achieve everything if we have good capital and we think that is a constrain… But over long run and experience we realize that was blessing in disguise…
In short I might not know how to use a million dollar but now I know how to use it…
3) How did you strike your first project deal and what are the challenges faced?
Since I started as a student I didn’t face much problem in taking first three projects and infact I got that easily, which prompted me to form a company… It was after forming the company the challenge started, I didn’t get a single project for 14 months… During those times I was doing multiple woks to sustain like installing linux, giving real time projects for MCA students, Java training classes, man power consulting…
Also I was doing SEO without any focus or intent, also I had lot of time and I was doing to keep myself occupied… Then 14 months later I got an enquiry which came from google search… My efforts got results for more than 15 key words in top 10 listing in google… From then it was no looking back…
4) What kept you going during the tough times?
Initially when I wanted to start a company every one (parents, friends and relatives) criticized me, they hurt my ego telling I’m poor in academics and I’m not fit for business… So, for me loosing has become an ego issue and if I give up it was literally falling to my critics… That is what made me going during tough times…
5) Tell us about Cogzidel & its products and services
Cogzidel as a group has two companies,
Cogzidel Consultancy Services(www.cogzidel.in): CCS is into compliance management, HR solutions & Accounting services… In india there are many compliances which a company has to adore to and there are support functions like HR & accounts… We mange Compliance, HR (excluding recruitment) & accounts for companies… These are our service list
- Accounting Services (including Internal Audit)
- Payroll Processing
- Regn of company / society / trust / partnership firm
- Employee-friendly Tax planning
- Filing IT returns
- Obtaining PAN / TAN
- Statutory compliances - PF / ESI / Sales Tax / Service Tax / STPI etc
- Trademark / Patent Registration
- Business Incubation Services
- Bootstrapping
Cogzidel Technologies(www.cogzidel.com): CT is into web solutions which is into Web development, SEO/SEM, Social Media Consulting, Graphic Design, Semantic Web… These are our services
- Web Development
- Web & Graphic Design
- Web Programming
- Opensource Solutions
- Dedicated Offshore Staffing
- SEO(Search Engine Optimization) & SEM(Search Engine Marketing)
- Social media consulting
6) Tips for a startup to organize its financial position until substantial cash reserves are created.
I want to make one thing clear… Too much of money is dangerous for a startup in the mean time there must also be liquidity to concentrate on business… So, see to it that you make sure that you have generated that level of capital or residual income initially… I know a friend who formed a consortium of 100 friends (first degree and second degree friends)… He asked everyone to invest 1k each for 10 months which helped him raise Rs.1,00,000/- for next ten months… Also 1k every month was difficult for his friends… Also I read about Ma-Foi story and they formed a consortium of friends and relatives comprising of 258 people and now they are a closely help public company… So, making money from business is not the only option for an entrepreneur there are many avenues which has to be exploited…
7) How do you manage attrition & do you see that as a challenge in a booming market?
Yes attrition was always a challenge and frankly I didn’t find a solution till now… I tried different methods but still no result… Not it is recession time and I don’t have that headache and I stopped experimenting… Probably next boom cycle I might get some solution…
8) Does recession throw open an opportunity for developing country which thrives on outsourcing
Like I said every mistake/failure/downturn has an opportunity… Infact I was successful because of recession… In my first venture I got very good talents for no pay, they worked just for experience… You can think of products even outsourcing stops… Real recession comes only when your brain stops thinking and you fall short of ideas and solutions… Else boom market or recession is an opportunity for an entrepreneur…
9) Where do you see yourself & your company in 5 years from now?
Normally I don’t have a long term plan/goal… My immediate goal is to breakeven and add more value to customers and employees and also expand by forward and backward integration… Infact CCS is a backward diversification from CT… So, in 5 years might be we will become a small conglomerate…
10) Your advise / suggestions for startups?
Advice is a wrong term, instead I’ll give me recommendations… These are my recommendations;
Use shared office/co-working office
Share support resources or outsources it to companies like CCS.
Hire students or people with passion.
Network and grow your contacts.
Under every failure there is an opportunity, search for that opportunity.
Create an USP which comes by trying many things in initial/early days.
Ask for help and be open for any workable solutions.
Think and talk high about you and your company.
Spread you brand in as many possible ways like;
Wear a company t-shirt
Use social networks effectively
Attend event as much as networking events as possible..
Learn every details of your business.
=====> End of interview <=====
Thank you very much Anand for sparing your valuable time with me. Your answers were inspiring and motivating. Best wishes to you and your company in all the future endeavours. Keep us posted!
Heard about his entrepreneurial venture through one of my friend and have met him in couple of occassions. He has been a great inspiration and always wanted to have a mention of his entrepreneurial journey in my blog. He blogs here. Scroll down for more from horse's mouth.
Good Day Anand.
1) What prompted you to start a venture of your own & how was the choice for a partner made?
Frankly I was very poor in academics and I was forced to do it on my own because I know it would be difficult to find a job with my marks… Also from my childhood days by desires are big but not fulfilled and I wanted to make money from college days and I started with freelancing, this is how my entrepreneur journey started…
In commerce there is a saying “Selecting a partner is like selecting a wife”, but itz all theories in reality we select a partner who fills your needs, like money/technical competency/contacts etc… I selected a partner who was my beast mate and that was right at that point of time…
2) How much was the initial capital deployed & do you see lack of capital as a constraint for a startup?
Capital I invested was knowledge and time… But you know it takes time to evolve to grow without money… I frankly advice startups to start it without big capital as they don’t know many functions of business and for sure they are going to loose what ever they invest in the beginning… I’ve read and seen many startups investing a lot of money initially and loosing everything… Some were smart and took cues from the failure and survived and many vanished… Initially we think we can achieve everything if we have good capital and we think that is a constrain… But over long run and experience we realize that was blessing in disguise…
In short I might not know how to use a million dollar but now I know how to use it…
3) How did you strike your first project deal and what are the challenges faced?
Since I started as a student I didn’t face much problem in taking first three projects and infact I got that easily, which prompted me to form a company… It was after forming the company the challenge started, I didn’t get a single project for 14 months… During those times I was doing multiple woks to sustain like installing linux, giving real time projects for MCA students, Java training classes, man power consulting…
Also I was doing SEO without any focus or intent, also I had lot of time and I was doing to keep myself occupied… Then 14 months later I got an enquiry which came from google search… My efforts got results for more than 15 key words in top 10 listing in google… From then it was no looking back…
4) What kept you going during the tough times?
Initially when I wanted to start a company every one (parents, friends and relatives) criticized me, they hurt my ego telling I’m poor in academics and I’m not fit for business… So, for me loosing has become an ego issue and if I give up it was literally falling to my critics… That is what made me going during tough times…
5) Tell us about Cogzidel & its products and services
Cogzidel as a group has two companies,
Cogzidel Consultancy Services(www.cogzidel.in): CCS is into compliance management, HR solutions & Accounting services… In india there are many compliances which a company has to adore to and there are support functions like HR & accounts… We mange Compliance, HR (excluding recruitment) & accounts for companies… These are our service list
- Accounting Services (including Internal Audit)
- Payroll Processing
- Regn of company / society / trust / partnership firm
- Employee-friendly Tax planning
- Filing IT returns
- Obtaining PAN / TAN
- Statutory compliances - PF / ESI / Sales Tax / Service Tax / STPI etc
- Trademark / Patent Registration
- Business Incubation Services
- Bootstrapping
Cogzidel Technologies(www.cogzidel.com): CT is into web solutions which is into Web development, SEO/SEM, Social Media Consulting, Graphic Design, Semantic Web… These are our services
- Web Development
- Web & Graphic Design
- Web Programming
- Opensource Solutions
- Dedicated Offshore Staffing
- SEO(Search Engine Optimization) & SEM(Search Engine Marketing)
- Social media consulting
6) Tips for a startup to organize its financial position until substantial cash reserves are created.
I want to make one thing clear… Too much of money is dangerous for a startup in the mean time there must also be liquidity to concentrate on business… So, see to it that you make sure that you have generated that level of capital or residual income initially… I know a friend who formed a consortium of 100 friends (first degree and second degree friends)… He asked everyone to invest 1k each for 10 months which helped him raise Rs.1,00,000/- for next ten months… Also 1k every month was difficult for his friends… Also I read about Ma-Foi story and they formed a consortium of friends and relatives comprising of 258 people and now they are a closely help public company… So, making money from business is not the only option for an entrepreneur there are many avenues which has to be exploited…
7) How do you manage attrition & do you see that as a challenge in a booming market?
Yes attrition was always a challenge and frankly I didn’t find a solution till now… I tried different methods but still no result… Not it is recession time and I don’t have that headache and I stopped experimenting… Probably next boom cycle I might get some solution…
8) Does recession throw open an opportunity for developing country which thrives on outsourcing
Like I said every mistake/failure/downturn has an opportunity… Infact I was successful because of recession… In my first venture I got very good talents for no pay, they worked just for experience… You can think of products even outsourcing stops… Real recession comes only when your brain stops thinking and you fall short of ideas and solutions… Else boom market or recession is an opportunity for an entrepreneur…
9) Where do you see yourself & your company in 5 years from now?
Normally I don’t have a long term plan/goal… My immediate goal is to breakeven and add more value to customers and employees and also expand by forward and backward integration… Infact CCS is a backward diversification from CT… So, in 5 years might be we will become a small conglomerate…
10) Your advise / suggestions for startups?
Advice is a wrong term, instead I’ll give me recommendations… These are my recommendations;
Use shared office/co-working office
Share support resources or outsources it to companies like CCS.
Hire students or people with passion.
Network and grow your contacts.
Under every failure there is an opportunity, search for that opportunity.
Create an USP which comes by trying many things in initial/early days.
Ask for help and be open for any workable solutions.
Think and talk high about you and your company.
Spread you brand in as many possible ways like;
Wear a company t-shirt
Use social networks effectively
Attend event as much as networking events as possible..
Learn every details of your business.
=====> End of interview <=====
Thank you very much Anand for sparing your valuable time with me. Your answers were inspiring and motivating. Best wishes to you and your company in all the future endeavours. Keep us posted!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Regression - A tester's nightmare, Unit tests - A boon to developer
One of the greatest challenges to any software product development is a defect-free release. The QA is the most under scrutiny, though every participant in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is collectively responsibile.
The major hurdle in a QA sign off is the regression testing. A regression is a defect introduced, affecting the application's feature, believed to be working in the past. There is no effective means to curb this regression other than unit testing.
So, What is unit testing?
Unit testing is also a piece of code written by the developer which has the following benefits:
1)A developer can safeguard his code so as to prevent regression by the introduction of another code.
2)It also acts as a means to prove that the code introduced is tested, for the functionality it is supposed to deliver.
How does the Unit tests achieve the stated benefits?
Since unit tests are also code developed parallely with the main application as discussed earlier, they can be integrated with the build process. So, whenever a build is made, the unit tests are run in a sequence and any regression would be identified by the failure of a unit test with a negative result.
Some popular unit test software platform are JUnit (for Java), NUnit (for .Net). Apart from these freewares, Resharper offers an integrated Unit testing platform. Thanks to Visual Studio 2008, which creates unit tests on click of a button, saving much of a developer's time and alleviating the fears of writing unit tests for complex GUI code.
The major hurdle in a QA sign off is the regression testing. A regression is a defect introduced, affecting the application's feature, believed to be working in the past. There is no effective means to curb this regression other than unit testing.
So, What is unit testing?
Unit testing is also a piece of code written by the developer which has the following benefits:
1)A developer can safeguard his code so as to prevent regression by the introduction of another code.
2)It also acts as a means to prove that the code introduced is tested, for the functionality it is supposed to deliver.
How does the Unit tests achieve the stated benefits?
Since unit tests are also code developed parallely with the main application as discussed earlier, they can be integrated with the build process. So, whenever a build is made, the unit tests are run in a sequence and any regression would be identified by the failure of a unit test with a negative result.
Some popular unit test software platform are JUnit (for Java), NUnit (for .Net). Apart from these freewares, Resharper offers an integrated Unit testing platform. Thanks to Visual Studio 2008, which creates unit tests on click of a button, saving much of a developer's time and alleviating the fears of writing unit tests for complex GUI code.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Peter England
Peter (nicknamed so by his friends), an MBA aspirant, developed a flair towards English, which is widely used as an instrument for ogling. Though quick in grasping anything thats English, he is deprieved of his skills to learn telegu when he visited AP.
Finding it difficult to refer the south indian edibles in English, he coined his own dictionay (truncating the last sylaballe)
Dosai => Dosa
Vadai => Vada
Deepavali => Diwali
Bonda => 007
By the same logic,
Appam should get transformed into Appa. But, since appa is aka 'father' in tamil, it is spared.
Finding it difficult to refer the south indian edibles in English, he coined his own dictionay (truncating the last sylaballe)
Dosai => Dosa
Vadai => Vada
Deepavali => Diwali
Bonda => 007
By the same logic,
Appam should get transformed into Appa. But, since appa is aka 'father' in tamil, it is spared.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
My Paati - the genius
As like every other grandma, my paati (grand mother) is well versed with natural treatments for most of the illness. What makes makes me call her genius is what follows...
9 yard saree (9 Gajam pudavai) once the obligatory dress worn by married South Indian brahmins is now a history, and more likely, our next generation would be googling this term. My beloved grand mother (addressed as 'amma' by all her grandchildren), is always seen clad with a 9 yard (madisar) saree. Born to Mr.Venkatarama Sastry (not to be read as sastrigal) was a magistrate by profession. She was the apple of everyone's eye as she is the only girl child among the siblings.
Brought up with a rich tradition, she has learnt violin, carnatic vocal (no wonder she is from Thiruvaiyaru) and more surprisingly she has done her SSLC (under the british regime) . It was the time when education for girls was considered a sin (adupu oodhum pengalukku padippu edharku?) She can converse in english more fluently than many today.
Her general knowledge surpasses even those who are abreast of the latest happenings. Recently, while I was discussing about finding a tenant for my apartment, she suggested me to look ONLINE ( to advertise on the Internet..I was stumbled when I heard this term ONLINE from her mouth).
She seldom comes out of kitchen as like any lady of the yesteryears and does not talk to any strangers (gents esp.) But, what surprises me is, her source of knowledge! Soft spoken by nature, I doubt whether she knows any of the synonyms of the word 'anger'. Patience is her sibling (koodave porandhadhu) as I would term.
She implements many of the data structures such as Stack and Queue. She spawns a thread to lookup the stack of her memory lane and would do a context switch, back to the topic with the result. (Just to prove, Me the MCA ;D )
I believe she has her own dictionary, as she picks the words from, to be used not to hurt anyone. Getting up at 5:00 am is her routine (not to mention that she goes to bed only at 12:00).
9 yard saree (9 Gajam pudavai) once the obligatory dress worn by married South Indian brahmins is now a history, and more likely, our next generation would be googling this term. My beloved grand mother (addressed as 'amma' by all her grandchildren), is always seen clad with a 9 yard (madisar) saree. Born to Mr.Venkatarama Sastry (not to be read as sastrigal) was a magistrate by profession. She was the apple of everyone's eye as she is the only girl child among the siblings.
Brought up with a rich tradition, she has learnt violin, carnatic vocal (no wonder she is from Thiruvaiyaru) and more surprisingly she has done her SSLC (under the british regime) . It was the time when education for girls was considered a sin (adupu oodhum pengalukku padippu edharku?) She can converse in english more fluently than many today.
Her general knowledge surpasses even those who are abreast of the latest happenings. Recently, while I was discussing about finding a tenant for my apartment, she suggested me to look ONLINE ( to advertise on the Internet..I was stumbled when I heard this term ONLINE from her mouth).
She seldom comes out of kitchen as like any lady of the yesteryears and does not talk to any strangers (gents esp.) But, what surprises me is, her source of knowledge! Soft spoken by nature, I doubt whether she knows any of the synonyms of the word 'anger'. Patience is her sibling (koodave porandhadhu) as I would term.
She implements many of the data structures such as Stack and Queue. She spawns a thread to lookup the stack of her memory lane and would do a context switch, back to the topic with the result. (Just to prove, Me the MCA ;D )
I believe she has her own dictionary, as she picks the words from, to be used not to hurt anyone. Getting up at 5:00 am is her routine (not to mention that she goes to bed only at 12:00).
Saturday, December 13, 2008
KAMAL HAASAN - The TERROR
It may be quite common for anyone to ponder on the title of this post calling KAMAL HAASAN as terror.. I fear his versatility and hence consider him terror :-)
He is one of the living legends in the history of mankind. His expressions astonish one to a great extent in films like Varumai niram sivappu, Guna, Nayagan, Moondram pirai, Anbe sivam to name a few..
Iam puzzled at how a person from a middle class society could bring emotions of an unemployed educated youth (in the film Varumayin niram sivappu) without having confronted with such circumstances in real life.
I believe any human with a certain amt of hard work and dedication could scale upto the marks where achievers like Narayanamurthy or Viswanathan Anand are today.. But I put my foot down to say that, it would be a herculean task even to draw comparisons with KAMAL HAASAN.
Iam a die hard fan of Dr.KAMAL HAASAN, No wonder, you may have guessed it by now!!
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