Alchemist

Dear Aamirkhan,

I lost hope, Hardly switch on the television, except few chosen programs on cnbctv18, hated what media projects,makes and pushes to the audience without meaning or sense of responsibility.

NOT ANY MORE!

सत्यमेव जयते Changes it once for all. Thanks to Aamir Khan and team for coming up with responsible,Ideal,Innovative Platform for a Better India, Better tomorrow.

First episode addresses Female Infanticide, Experts,activists and couple of journalists who have done sting operations and at the end of the episode Aamir sends a letter to the CM of Rajasthan where infanticide rates are frighteningly high.

Thanks again to Aamir and Team for wonderful episode.

For those who have missed it, Don't forget to keep remainders for 11:00 AM IST on Sunday

Important Update :

I am so fortunate to know doctors Dr. Ramachandra Rao, Dr. Jayalakshmi from Kuchipudi parents of Dr.Movva Srinivas (Cardiology) and Dr. Sridevi (Gynacology ), I think their efforts to reduce female infanticides/Foeticides by asking the parents and families of the girl child if they want a girl child or not, taking care of the child themselves till they find a suitable parents who are employed,financially stable  without children. 

Being in Rural Andhra Pradesh, I think their services do deserve "Thanks" and "Appreciation" for doing noble thing without expecting anything in return.

I hope many doctors take them as example in saving the precious girl child.

In Continuation to my previous blog post (Say Yes! Only when you mean it!) I wanted to hint on most common factors successful Entrepreneurs have

After little reading and little observation I jotted down 4 of them

Commitment: Commitment should be felt in writing, in words and actions because otherwise its at the best a good intention. Commitment not only makes you think rigorously about what you want to do but also convinces your friends family who should always support and clients.

Conviction: Commitment itself is not enough because Entrepreneurial route, is not a free ride and you may not see success as quickly as you want to see it, so more than any one you should first believe in yourself and your idea.

Creativity: Creativity may not sound the right word, but Innovation is also one kind of creativity which makes users /clients think about your product or service while they ask for USP (Unique Selling proposition).

Communication: You have all the 3Cs above, but unless you go out and communicate about it,its impossible to convince and make a business of your efforts. You need to be your Brand Ambassador, Brand Manager and Evangelist making every possible conversation you have with others a sales pitch.

I am not sure if they are difficult or easy, but feel most essential for me and for many in the Entrepreneurs.

All the very best for your future

crossposted from my (http://www.nen360.org/blog/4cs-entreprenuership)

Spam is inevitable evil mails,comments in blogs,un wanted pop ups all unsolicited sh*t is growing in numbers and Wikipedia is a notable victim, trying hard to keep its sanity. Now Unfortuntately Quora gets it too ...

Until recently Quora is closed, Knowledge gate which gave entry only to the authorised,tech savy experts who genuinely wanted to contribute.

Now for the past couple of visits It changed, I repeatedly encountered link building activities mostly on ecommerce queries Here and Here Its painful because I was helpless! There is no way I can report content spam, I can report the name of the person is wrong etc., down vote but its not going to solve the problem.

Why Downvoting is not spam protection ? Because you can collaboratively upvote to promote your posts making them stick. and downvoting only means the content is less worthy than it is. In the case of spam it is not the story.

I have 0 tolerence for spam in Quora because that is the most valuable resource for people really interested in collaborative learning and many really contribute because of that reason.

With increase in such activities, I am sure there will be contribution but not as passionately as it is supposed to be.

If you love Quora and if you think it need to be addressed please do something about it.

I moved from Godaddy, which gave worst imaginable service as a server with no credibility and accountability from the staff and the servers to Hostgator India.

Its been nearly a month and unlike with Godaddy,Its been really worth every micro penny I spent on these guys. They Deserve appreciation for commitment and ability to provide commited and  apt solutions. Being godaddy subscriber its really a quantum leap in service for me.

Hostgator in their unlimited plans provides space as /home/primarydomain/ while your webroot will be /home/primarydomain/public_html all your sites ideally sit in that webroot making it extremely difficult for you to organise backup or migrate to different servers.

They may not be completely messy but you will struggle to identify dependencies if the directory names does not have extensions such as .com/.co/.in/.org etc and if the migration or backup is for primary you will have hard time escaping the unnecessary subfolders created for the addon domains (not subdomains alone).

I asked if there is a way to do this better ? there is no documentation or help in this regard and they did try their best to explain how it can still be organised but I am against the idea of putting folders in a less secure way (Have to handle permissions for each of them seperately etc)

After they tried their best I decided to get my hands dirty before its too late and since I have not started migrating to hostgator yet.

I simply created a folder other giving access to all in /home/primarydomain and started hosting all the domains now my primary web root /home/primarydomain/public_html is  intact, serving only my primary domain while /home/primarydomain/other/addondomain1,addondomain2 s handling their own space respectively.

Seems like they liked the idea and hope they will make other's experience less painful in the future.

When you provide good service, entire ecosystem will help you to do your job better, Its not closed innovation anymore.

I recommend using hostgator for anyone wanting best performing service at affordable price, NO Kidding They really impressed me. I strongly encourage startups to consider This.

BTW Thanks Hostgator guys You rock!

This is what I thought I can do for them and you, You can click on the link below and get the benefits.

I think flipkart and letsbuy are two possible acquisitions for amazon.com in India, Flipkart was more closer with market reach,nearness to the amazon in India than letsbuy but with high valuation and series of funding from the VCs, though is far from realising profit yet did not get through the acquisition.

Obvious alternative for Amazon Acquisition would have been LetsBuy, with its simple alternative with some what less market penetration, but with open source backed cms, and little funding from the VCs beyond family funds.

For e-commerce of the scale of either letsbuy or flipkart to survive against new entrant(Junglee/Amazon) need more synergy and collaboration than before and letsbuy adds that to flipkart. This makes Junglee stick to its initial price comparision model, unarmed by the competition because of the lack of operational experience in the new demography.

I don't doubt Amazon's ability to start afresh but that would not be as easy as it would have been if they could acquire a company already doing that.

Now Why Flipkart acquired letsbuy, is not just a simple answer to say acquire new vertical/bring some thing to board etc., though they are part of the package. This move is more towards disarming the competition.

And I am surprised by the agility of this entire process once they realised new (ar)rival.

I love startups, through out my career if there is some one who made me understand the creation of brand,process and building an organisation leaving what is called "Well Paid, Secure Job" and the Ups,Downs and extreme excitement of building something I attribute it to Karthik K of Ogive.

I think its destined for me to be an entreprenuer, though I did not know in the beginning of my journey that I will, atleast so soon. Its so challenging,exciting for the reasons far from business, Its value creation, continues learning and getting a chance to work with wonderful people.

So when I saw Redbus Fastcompany 50 Innovative Comanies list I was thrilled, but not surprised as my experience started with Redbus precisely on 22 Feb 2007. I interacted with them on chat support for my failed transaction, then they immediately got back to me with ticket with which I travelled, but had a bad first experience So I sent the following mail to those guys

worst service 1 message Vasundhar <bvasundhar@gmail.com>	Thu, Mar 1, 2007 at 17:48
To: contactus@redbus.in
Hi I booked a ticket from Chennai to Bangalore last sunday ie 24 Feb 2007 for 10:45 PM bus of sharma travels, the ticket number mentioned in my ticket was 23 and the same ticket was given to 3 more people. finally your phones were all dead and the server was down when I tried to reach you by mail from there. Finally we managed to board the bus only because the travel agent took responsibility. Let us know if you want us to act on it or will you be acting yourself ? to make it better ? -- Best, Vasundhar -- If Physics is my God, Linux is my Girlfriend. I go to the temple of biology to understand God with my girlfriend. ;) [Some call it Bioinformatics

Then after nearly six months, I had to book and travel with redbus, This time since I had to go straight from office which was located off Indiranagar road, pretty close to the redbus office, I asked if I can collect the ticket from their office and if they can arrange it there, They told me to come over and what I found is a duplex house with bunch of cables lying here and there and few young chaps of my age working on the first floor, if I remember right his name was shiva, who helped out that day by calling the agents to confirm the tickets and wrote the number etc., on the paper. (I think they had some issue with the database or something to process the payment or something similar)

First things I noticed after going there were bunch of computers, with ubuntu , numbers of many travel agents marked in all the colours and few guys taking care of the backend,reservations and so on...

But they were extremely friendly and customer focused. Needless to say the travel had no hiccups this time as they seem to have workedout on the complaints from me and other folks complained about on 1 March 2007. Then I wrote the following mail.

Tremendous Improvement 1 message Vasundhar <bvasundhar@gmail.com>	Sat, Aug 18, 2007 at 16:56
To: support@redbus.in
Hi Team, I am very happy with the kind of service you are providing, with commitment. I gave a bad feed back about your service on March 1 2007, and Best Feed back now which really is great deal of effort on your part in gaining customer satisfaction and trust, All the best for your future, Vasundhar.

Since then it became kind of habit for me to go there and book tickets either online or go visit those exciting guys (They were not that famous back then though they did great job)

I wanted to feel the excitement and they never turned me down to visit and share few plesantaries.

When I see the news about them knowing the startup ups and downs of redbus as a customer, I thought of sharing what I feel is a great Team Effort in building one of the most innovative and successful brands. Taking an opportunity to Thank and Congratulate the entire team and founders vision in successfully executing it.

Congratulations Redbus. and Thank You.

I know many use wordpress as their primary blog platform, both for work and personal blogging needs. It becomes crucial to protect 

• 516,000,000+ Users using wordpress
• 8,112,782+ (3.3)
• 29,863,395+ (3.2)  by own environments. (2012 Feb 13 )

There is no reason to believe, these are the upper limits, with experience of using the same source for more than 9 installations.

Since this many users are using wordpress and since I wanted to extend the security of my professional blog platform, portfolio sites and personal blog, I did research on extending the security like I can do with other open source Content Management Systems like Drupal,Magento,Joomla etc., 

There were many discussions online about inability to change the admin login url from the default wp-admin/ It is partially true. As you can't change the wordpress url without lot of dependency checks (May be you can but it needs more than 8+ expert level on unix/php/coding and logic so lets talk about the common souls like me. while Ideal bet is to do a regex match and replace where ever your pattern matches the expression.)

There are two plugins from the http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stealth-login/ 

• Hide Login http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hide-login/ 

• Sabre http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sabre/

Sabre 

Version 1.2.0
Updated 2011-1-28
Downloads 66,313

Sabre is extremely well documented, Feature rich with options to choose the complexity of captcha,math,detection of java script, invite only registration and so on but sadly the last update is on 28 Jan 2011, but It is very much compatible with WordPress 3.3.1 

Hide Login

Version 2.0
Updated 2012-1-29
Downloads 1,489

This Plugin does what its name says, Changing the login URL for the administrator and users to custom urls instead of generic wp-admin, and disabling the users from directly using the wp-admin. However ths doesn't seem to be fool proof but solves the purpose to some extent.

There are more solutions available on hardwiring your apache http://www.askapache.com/wordpress/htaccess-password-protect.html , http://blogsecurity.net/wordpress/article-210607

More interesting story for the motivation of this blog comes from the seach made to see if I can actually use WiKID a two factor authentication method (http://www.wikidsystems.com/) and result was the url pointing how we can actually achieve this.http://www.howtoforge.com/secure-your-wordpress-blog-administration-with-two-factor-authentication with few tweaks to apache.

I think I will choose not one but combination of the two factor Auth with WiKID with Hide Login,for less complex, and WiKID + Sabre for the the critical ones.

I think it was great learning, worh mention of credits to the guys contributed, for the stories, and ways to solve my problem.

• http://wordpress.org/support/topic/admin-login-url-change-possible-what-will-be-effected
• http://preachsecurity.blogspot.in/2009/08/wordpress-bugs-disturbing-vulnerability.html
• http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/11-best-ways-to-improve-wordpress-security/

Please check for the dependencies and start your journey with Wordpress Sabre,Hide Logn and WiKID.

This is my side of story: Only mine.

I got a ping from my right hand man, in the middle of the night, for an enterprenuer middle of the night may range any thing between 1:00 AM to 7:00 AM depending on which time zone you operate in (it is not necessarily the time zone you are physically present in.)

S.. > Call Now !

I strongly believe conversations need not be lengthy to be understood, as long as they are precise. This is one such and since I was on a call with my son, who rarely gives me an appointment to talk over phone because of his busy schedule with his cousin to run behind, I think I gave it less priority than I normally would. Then came a buzz on my cell phone. So I thought I better attend, and wanted to hear what that critical pressing need could be

"Amazon Launched" Again as Hanuman spoke to Rama while returning from Lanka, "Seen Sita" not giving a millionth of second for worry. Ok I told and instantly hitting my fingers like playing tabala,making huge noise, which was loud enough for my buddy to hear on the other side of the ear dispite hundreds of miles between us. www.amazon.in,<ctrl+t> www.amazon.co.in <ctrl+k> amazon India ... after couple of more I said no ... then he said "No " they launched just now and he started his rampage on the laptop sending @vineetdhanawat 's post "http://www.junglee.com/ is up! No More Redirections" By then I realised Amazon has come in disguise.

Next couple of hours gone by in discussing why and how a giant can enter a market silently, what are the features, opportunity and threat analysis. What should our next strategy be if its real risk, and possible action.

Then we started thinking, If we are thinking this much poor flipkart guys must be in a bad state, worrying about the biggest ever competion unnoticingly arriving in India to fight head on. We had our sympathies and wishes being customers, alumni ... so on and soforth. Loss to an yet to be launched ecommerce site, compared to the one with heavy operational burden worried us quite a bit.

It infact continued till late when we actually started looking at the platform from various angles, Flipkart is the startup revelutionising the mindset of Indian consumer by planting "Trust". While Amazon delayed their operations, purely because of logistical hurdles they are not accustomed to in their base. So Flipkart is brave, clear winner because have been there and done that, knows the risks and rewards. While Amazon might recruit Indian experts but starting something from scratch is different from running something. So they Amazon Don't seem to have competitive advantage. Amazon knows about it, hence launch of junglee.com in beta, as primarily as a product comparision search engine rather than electronic retailer.This could as well be a solution to solve regulatory hurdles. Flipkart has already taken care of this. So so far Flipkart is in good shape.

Biggest question was why Amazon, Did not acquire flipkart ? This would have been the best route, for that one reason is flipkart's high valuation despite its current financial situation (Nothing bad, but just being funded repeatedly, acquisitions and mergers etc.,) might have prevented Amazon from taking that route.

So Junglee.com is a price comparision search engine, directing kindle orders to USA, other ordes to different associates/vendors registered with amazon. Which means Flipkart can optionally use this additional medium if they want to to sell online. Its not just flipkart, but any small or medium company in retail with or without online presence can use amazon for their web expansion.

So what is going to happen with the bubbling startups in e-commerce retail ? Is it a threat to all those brothers dreaming of becoming next flipkart ? Unlike what pluggd.in claims being a pro entreprenuerial magazine (atleast as it claims) Is not going to kill startups.

Junglee is going to help startups by providing another marketplace to showcase distribute and expand their channels.

Why Junglee has Zero effect on entreprenurial ecosystem ? Any person making purchases online, has been moving vehemently across the the results thrown by google researching site to site if there is any place cheaper than the one offered. so IMHO, Junglee just reduced one step, making the user do that comparision (as long as the merchants are registered) at a single place and charging the vendor for selling that product. How can this create problem to an entreprenuer or flipkart ? It does not effect revenues significantly.

Flipkart by the way doesn't sell from local retailers, they often get their products from the publishers,manufacturers by becoming a virtual distributor. While Amazon model depends on distributors and vendors, who have to forgo part of their earlier revenue which may not be significant but is contributing towards amazon revenue.

As a seller I would be more interested in trasfering that additional burden to the end customer than bear it myself. So in effect your flipkart may have to reduce their margins little bit but not going to shake even a bit.

Coming to Flipkart vs Amazon experience : We are comparing a toddler with athlete in speed is it possible for a toddler to ever reach the speed of an athlete ? Its a process that takes time. Flipkart UI is improving and not that bad either.

While Flipkart / Other e-commerce companies learn great deal about the "Customer Focus" - This is all about Amazon. Amazon will learn the logistical overheads,bottlenecks and ways to improve the sytem here in India and in USA.

I think Flipkart did a tremendous job by turning the customer favourable to e-commerce in India,for which each and every indian e-commerce company born after flipkart (even the few older ones) should be thankful for showing the path.

As we know, There are tons of successful e-commerce startups in USA despite Amazon's presence. So I don't see a point why we should worry. Its only innovation that can sustain and I am sure Indians and Entreprenuers in India got enough to successfully launch,run and lead in e-commerce space by concentrating on value creation to the customer, Innovative logistics and targetting niche areas.

Do let me know your thoughts.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/IndustryTrends/How-Flipkart-broke-India-s-online-shopping-inertia/SP-Article1-780440.aspx

It opens a simple looking site with intended focus on User, blurring rest of characters. It says

"How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where google+ results are now hard coded .."

All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google's own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.

With a snapshot of how google search is looking currently vs how the new script is going to change the way google results look.

This comes with Examples,demonstration video hosted on youtube recorded while using google chrome no cross advertisement except when he searches for facebook to show the relevance , FAQs seems to have ulterior motive of explaining

1. How this tool works in general (to eliminate legal headaches  they clarified use of only google information and no other source/API) 
2. Where New Search Results Appear
3. Source of Images in new applet , Why they are not displayed in native search result though Google is providing provision for the site owners to customise and why only google plus profiles come with pictures and how linkedin and other social network profiles are sensored.
4. What if it does not work

Video explains all the caveats, how to make it work and re emphasise what is told in faqs.

With this video it is evident that the social media guys never want to bump into search domain but not liking the google intervention and prevention of their content only partly  represented despite content owners efforts to make their content appear  in the form they wish to display.

It also explains and convinces us, or atleast tries how monopolistic google is when it comes to promoting their services even in so called organic search and preventing other networks from using the medium.

It also pokes Google's inability to weigh Social search in a socially significant way.

If you want to see this as just a java script or bookmarklet, you are grossly mistaken, Its just is a needle ready to punch on google's vital organs slowly but significantly in coming few days.

I loved this more because of the opportunity and technical abilities these guys used to build a tool to flatten an emporer. Smart strategic coordination with timely release .

Last report reads, Google is in Intensive Care unit, waiting for next doctor to come, who is on rounds in the Mountain View, California.

Not Surprisingly , Name of the folder carrying the script is "Don't  Be Evil" rings a bell ?

"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting. -- Wikipedia

Have you read "use the enemy's own strength against him." and "Hide your Dagger behind a smile" Must read 

• http://www.chinastrategies.com/list.htm  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Chapter_summary

UPDATE 24-Jan-2012: My Friend today pointed out saying "Facebook,Twitter" doesn't allow you to export your contacts very true good article is here http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/facebook-google-contacts/ 

I am not saying if google is good or bad, but its about how competition makes use of opportunities. Is it fair ? May be , May be not.

By the way Have we understood  "Google " Relevant search right ? Its not relevent, Its relavant to google

They always had clarity.

If you think Apple is in leadership crisis because of Steve's passing, you are grossly mistaken!

I am not denying the fact that he is Charismatic, Intelligent,Forward looking but his team is not going to let you down in the years to come.

While reading the stock market analysis from various sources and reports of paranoidal analysts on how to sell before its too late and crap like, I still suggest you to hold the stock/ buy as much stock as you can when the market is still foolishly or should I say sheepishly follows the herd.

Its going to increase and stabilise in the near future regardless of fluctuations you might see in the short run.

I must say, Steve jobs saved the company again by exiting at the right time[avoiding], of all he never wanted his successor to be an accidental leader but a chosen one. meaning Steve,Apple and the Board had complete confidence on Tim Cook. He successfully executed and demonstrated his abilities in the past by optimising ops, and he will continue to do so.

There is certainly a difference between a hardcore Entrepreneur who wants to make his organisation stand out and stand on the top and an employee, but I strongly believe the difference has been substantially neutralised not to make you feel a hitch in successful organisations in this case "Apple".

I Don't think so Apple is only producing wonderful applications by choosing manufacturers and machines carefully, Its a company, and Companies work for a common goal , united. This is what Apple is going to prove to you in the long run.

We saw many exemplary CEOs, Entrepreneurs giving the world sustainable organisations that are larger than their lives. For example IBM did not die after Watson's demise it just continued its tradition successfully.

If your question/worry  is about succession post super star CEOs, Steve Jobs is not the only one, and Super Star CEOs don't just accumulate all the credit and leave, their success is in building their organisation and making every employee feel the need to work as one. I am sure who ever you think is your Super Star successfully accomplished that task first and more than any other externally visible marketing speech.

Apple is going to do just that, with lot of confidence and passion like it always had, I am not talking like a biased apple user, but outsider who loved observing the companies and how they perform, why perform.

So next time you hear some one saying "Sell your Apple stock", 1. Either he wants to make use of the fluctuations 2. He is really clueless about market dynamics.

• http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/aapl/charts
• http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/apple-laughing-stock/
• http://hbr.org/2001/03/the-job-no-ceo-should-delegate/ar/pr
• http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2008/08/when_jobs_leaves_will_the_appl.html
• http://www.bersin.com/blog/post.aspx?id=72a43072-e599-4dd0-9205-d1eacc25f434
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/tim-cook-heres-how-to-lead-apple/2011/10/03/gIQAEXpIIL_story.html
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/03/08/apple-after-steve-an-insiders-view-on-whats-next/