Indian software product start-ups that are making news

The business newspaper Economic Times (Hyderabad edition) carried an interesting front-page article yesterday on successful Indian software products coming out of India.

Over two-and-a-half million people worldwide, half of them in the US, are using word processors,creating slide-show presentations and doing their sums with the help of an online suite of software products built by technology start-up Zoho, located in Chennai.

In Bangalore, InMobi,a company that builds technology for mobile internet advertising,is helping global advertisers and publishers reach 175 million customers every month across Asia,Africa,the UK and the US.

... while it took Infosys Technologies 18 years to record its first $100 million in revenue,product start-ups such as InMobi expect to do so within five years.

In Kolkata, FusionCharts,a graphic data visualisation tool created by startup Infosoft Global is used by 1,500 organisations across the globe, including the US government.

..Webaroo’s SMSGupShup a Twitter-like closed group messaging product for cellphone subscribers, has 27 million users in India. In three months GupShup will be available to mobile users in nearly two dozen countries.

Apalya now has one million customers for its product MiMobiTV that streams live television onto mobiles starting at a subscription price of Rs150 a month.

Earlier this year, Mango Technologies, that was incubated at the NSRCEL centre in IIM-Bangalore, sold two of its proprietary telecom solutions to handset maker, Qualcomm.

This blog uses a contact form that's built with Zoho Creator & I'm happy with the way its been working. Zoho also provides APIs for integrating Zoho services with third-party applications.

The free version of FusionCharts works with PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, RoR, simple HTML pages or even PowerPoint Presentations. I was not aware of it when I was evaluating free ASP.NET charting controls for a project requirement.

Webaroos SMSGupShup was probably the inspiration for Google India's free SMS service called Google SMS Channels.

Similarly, JustDial may have been the inspiration for another Google India Labs service called Google Phone Search. This free service which is in the pilot stage provides voice search for region-specific info like local business listings, movie showtimes etc., in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. While Google Phone Search (toll free # 1-800-41-999-999) uses speech recognition technology to process a query and read out the results or send the information via SMS, a real person picks up the phone at JustDial (phone # in India - 6999-9999; in 240 cities in India) to address a query.

JustDial makes money from small businesses paying up to be sponsored listings. In this fiscal year, it made about $32 million in revenues having answered 72 million calls. JustDial (1-800-JUSTDIAL) has recently been launched in the US. The operations will be handled out of India but it will soon be creating call center jobs in the US.
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Read Telugu news sites in transliterated English

Although I manage to speak decent Telugu (one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of India & spoken by over 74 million native speakers), I have to confess I'm poor at reading it (Why? That's another story). So for long, I wished there was a way to read Eenadu (the largest circulated Telugu news daily in Andhra Pradesh with over 13.5 million readers) in English. My wish has been granted, thanks to a Firefox extension called Padma, a Transformer for Indic Scripts, built by Nagarjuna Venna and Harshita Vani

Padma can understand a variety of fonts used in the popular Telugu-based news websites & convert them to RTS (Rice Transliteration Standard for Roman Transliteration of Telugu)

Here are the steps to read content from the online version of Eenadu (or Andhra Jyothy, Andhra Prabha, Vaartha newspapers) in transliterated English
1) Install the Padma extension in Firefox & restart the browser
2) On the Eenadu site, select content you wish to read in English
 3) Right click & choose the option Padma & then Transform to RTS


Also see:
Free print version of Newspapers
HOW TO GMail Chat in an Indian language
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Face Detection & Tagging

I came across a nice article on a Silverlight 4 application that does real-time face detection (without having to spend a dime on commercial licenses to any APIs) on the Coding4Fun site which features unusual but interesting applications built on the .NET platform. It's amazing how today's tools & technologies can provide "eyes" to the computer & process faces in photos, mostly for free.

Newer versions of the popular photo organizing & editing software Picasa & Windows Live Photo Gallery now have a face detection & tagging feature which finds the people in your photos so that you can add a name to the face. Once you add the names to faces in one photo, the software matches similar faces automatically in your entire photo collection & organizes photos by the name tags.

When Picasa is not sure with the face detection, it provides suggestions that require a manual confirmation.
 Also see:
Digital Photography Tips & Tricks

#551
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Developer Contests

Happy Coder
At any point of time, there are always some Developer contests running. These are especially good for students & hobbyists who can pit their wits against the best in the class, win goodies and get noticed.

I plan to compile a list of contests that I come across & this will be a work in progress. Be sure to check the end dates of competitions.

* .NET Champions: Submit a story or video on a successful & innovative solution you have developed on the Microsoft .NET Platform. Program is restricted to Technology Professionals and Academicians from India
Prize: 1 Windows Mobile every month
More details: .NET Champions website

* Google Code Jam 2010: Google's annual programming competition, where thousands of coders around the world attack algorithmic problems in several 2.5-hour online rounds.
Important dates: Registration Begins - April 7, 2010, Finals - July 30, 2010
Prize: Top 25 finalists will divide over $10,000 in prize money.
More details: Code Jam site

* Google Gadget Ventures - a pilot program to help developers create richer, more useful gadgets. This program is restricted to people who have developed a Google gadget & submitted to Google Gadgets directory and it should generate at least 250,000 weekly page views.
Prize: Grants of $5,000 & Seed investments of $100,000
More details: Google Gadget Ventures FAQ

* Sony Ericsson Train to Fame - Submit Java, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile based applications or games. Contest is open only to Indians but others can submit.
Prize: Sony Ericsson Satio every week
More details: Sony Ericsson Train to Fame contest site

* Nokia Calling All Innovators 2010 contest - Build mobile applications under any of these four categories - Eco/Being Green, Entertainment, Productivity, Life Improvement. The competition is open to all mobile and web application developers worldwide
Important dates: Contest starts - 1 February 2010, Submission Deadline - 18 May 2010
Prize: 3 prizes worth 50000 USD for each category & other special prizes
More details: Calling All Innovators 2010 contest FAQ

Dear reader, if you know of any interesting Developer contests, please inform me & I'll put it here.

#550
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Book Review: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Step by Step

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Step by Step
Like cycling or swimming, Sharepoint is easy but you need help to get started. Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Step by Step lives up to it's title of being a good step by step guide. It walks you through the maze of options in WSS 3.0 by gently holding your hand & showing the way. The instructions are straight-forward & in plain English, like any good technical book should be.

The book is practical & engaging with it's hands-on exercises covering the basic features. The authors highlight important points & offer troubleshooting tips at appropriate places, such as this one -
You can save documents directly to a document library by specifying the HTTP location in place of the hard drive, such as http://wideworldimporters/SharedDocuments/. Only saved documents can be attached to list items as attachments.

This book answers all the HOWs of WSS but not the WHYs and for that you will need another resource. However, after finishing the 16 chapters of this roughly 500-paged book, you'll learn enough to get going on your own. I recommend this guide to beginners. Even after you finish reading it, it'll be a good reference to go back to while you are working on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Also see:
Free Sharepoint 2007 goodies on Microsoft e-Learning

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What's in Windows Phone 7 for Developers

Windows Phone 7 Series
I've been reading with interest all the Windows Phone 7 news thats relevant for developers. I'll keep jotting down summaries here as I find them -
  • Though Windows Phone 7 supports multi-tasking...developers won't have access to it in the initial release.
  • Native applications are not permitted on Windows Phone 7 devices.
  • Developer access to Microsoft SQL Server Compact, a free SQL Server embedded database, is not part of the initial release..."isolated" local storage based on XML files and cloud-based storage are alternatives
  • Windows Marketplace is intended to be the sole means of finding and downloading phone applications
  • ..fast and open process for certifying Windows Phone applications and deploying them to Windows Phone Marketplace
  • With features like push notification service, WP7 is carefully engineered to minimize battery use (Source: ComputerWorld)

  • Windows Phone 7 mobile OS will not include a clipboard capability for copy-and-paste operations - at least not in the first version. (Source: ComputerWorld)
  • The Windows Phone 7 Series supports programs written for either Silverlight or XNA but mixing them up & combining Silverlight & XNA in the same program is not possible for now.
  • WP7 Series OS exposes classes defined by the .NET Compact Framework
  • At the present time, C# is the only supported programming language
  • Windows Phone 7 is "cloud-ready"
  • A Windows Phone 7 can only two possible screen sizes - 480 X 800 or 320 X 480 pixels
  • For better power efficiency, Windows Phone 7 displays will likely use OLED ("organix light emitting diode"). Designing screens with black backgrounds can conserve power.
  • The screens incorporate capacitance-touch technology, which means they respond to a human fingertip but not to a stylus or other forms of pressure. Windows Phone screens are required to respond to at least four simultaneous touch-points.
  • WP7 supports both speech synthesis & speech recognition through classes that are also part of .NET 4.0 (Source: “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series” book by Charles Petzold - 6 Preview chapters available for free download)
Related:
Silverlight 4 & Windows Phone Developer Tools
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Hey RAM

Hey RAM

Having just finished watching the movie Eagle Eye in which a malfunctioning super-computer called ARIA controls virtually anything electronic, I wondered how increasingly dependent we are getting on machines & technology. I remembered this funny poem that is a sort of an anthem for Luddites -

Remember when........

A computer was something on TV from
a science fiction show of note
a window was something you hated to clean and ram was
the cousin of a goat

Meg was the name of my girlfriend
and gig was a job for the nights
now they all mean different things
and that really mega bytes

An application was for employment
a program was a TV show
a cursor used profanity
a keyboard was a piano

Memory was something that you lost with age
a CD was a bank account and
if you had a 3 1/2" floppy you hoped nobody found out

Compress was something you did to the garbage
not something you did to a file and
if you unzipped anything in public you'd be in jail
for a while

Log on was adding wood to the fire
hard drive was a long trip on the road
a mouse pad was where a mouse lived
and a backup happened to your commode

Cut you did with a pocket knife
paste you did with glue
a web was a spider's home
and a virus was the flu

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
and the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
but when it happens they wish they were dead.


(BTW, Hey Ram (in Hindi) or "Oh Ram!" or "Oh God!" were the last words of Mahatma Gandhi)
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Track trackbacks with Google Reader

I've been using Google Reader for over three years now. I also use it to store my bookmarks. I learnt about yet another use for Google Reader besides following feeds. Chris Heilmann uses Google Reader to be notified about trackbacks to his blog (& he actually discovered that there was a spam blog running surreptitously from his domain).

Trackbacks, just in case you didn't know, are the messages typically displayed in the comments list of your blog whenever another blog links back to one of your posts. Trackbacks are fun because you get to know who is following you as well as in what context they are using your material.

Here are the steps to  track trackbacks with Google Reader (or any other feed reader of your choice) -
  1. Search for back-links to your blog on Google Blog Search using the link: operator
  2. Subscribe to the Atom or RSS feed of the results in Google Reader

Now, rather than check manually for trackbacks for each indvidual post or be notified about each of them by email, view them all at one place while you follow your other feeds.
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Book Review: The Engaging Web

Manning's MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) books allow early access to electronic version of the chapters as they are completed. Manning provided me with a review copy of a MEAP version of The Engaging Web by Gabe Zichermann & Christopher Cunningham. Being inquisitive about technologies & ideas related to the Web, I dived into the book intrigued by it's title. Having finished reading it, I'm now sold on the idea that the concepts which make Games popular can be applied to engage users of a website and contribute to achieving the site's goals.  The term Funware is used in the book to describe any application that integrates social game design theories or mechanics with software and services to increase stickiness, user engagement and revenues.
The design philosophy of Funware can basically be summarized as “every application and user interaction can be made more fun.” Through the systematic application of game design principles, fun can be embedded even within the most utilitarian applications.

The authors show examples of how real-life sites use Game mechanics without making us realize that we are engaging in a game (a characteristic of "Funware"). Although they don't mention StackOverflow, the hot technical Forum site that has got popular in a short span of time, I feel it qualifies as a good example of "Funware".

This book builds on the premise that the endearing & addictive qualities of Games can be extended to non-game contexts like Web applications; ranging from anything like consumer finance to booking corporate travel.

The first chapter shows how eBay in fact is a game in the way it induces us to play, win and compare our scores & ratings. It explains how basic game designs (frequent flyer, leaderboard, casino) can be "mashed up" with existing websites and applications. Chapter 2 discusses approaches to offering a game channel. Chapter 3 covers the topic of building websites that don’t just leverage game mechanics, but that are focused on games as a thematic or commercial enterprise. Chapter 4 dwells on principles of Funware and tactics to help you build your own fully integrated Funware applications. In Chapter 5, the authors pick an open source Ruby on Rails Forums application called Altered Beast & extend it by implementing Funware elements into it.

If you want to learn about how game design principles can be applied to a website to improve its viewership  & better engage its users, this book is for you.
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Silverlight 4 & Windows Phone Developer Tools

If you are a developer & kept away from Silverlight, there is no time like now to start playing around with it. There have been a lot of interesting announcements at MIX10, an annual conference for web developers & designers. Silverlight is going to be at the heart of Windows Phone 7 Series development. Silverlight 4 RC (What's RC?)  is out as well with a host of improvements (including Indic Support!). The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP has also been released.

It consists of:
* Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
* Windows Phone Emulator
* Silverlight for Windows Phone
* XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP

So you now have all tools needed to build an app for Windows Phone 7 (the actual phone though will come later in the year) & prepare to submit an application to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Alongwith the motivation & free tools, there are also some great learning resources.
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Display region, route or location with Google Static Maps

Display region, route or location with Google Static Maps

Unlike a regular Google Map that requires JavaScript to fetch the tiles that make up a map, Google Static Maps returns a single map image, is faster to load and does not need JavaScript. To get started, you can use the Static Maps Wizard or use the Static Maps API to customize the map with markers, lines & shaded areas to highlight a location, route or region. Like Google Charts, Google Static Maps API accepts inputs to generate a map through querystring values.


The following URL shows the location of the British Library in Hyderabad as a map image -
http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=17.407256,78.472274
&zoom=16
&markers=17.407256,78.472274
&path=color:0x0000FF80|weight:5|17.42340,78.45685
&size=300x300
&sensor=false

The URL parameters like maptype (optional), center, zoom, markers, path, size, format (optional), sensor are all well-documented.

I learnt about this tool from Christian Heilmann's interesting article on Geo Location. Christian Heilmann is a Web Developer Evangelist working for the Yahoo Developer Network and author of The Developer Evangelist handbook.
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Amul girl creator passes away

Eustace Fernandes is the creator of the famous Amul Moppet that is as well known as R K Laxman's Common Man. In a country where humor is not taken seriously, these icons have managed to tickle the funny bone of millions of Indians.

The wildly popular ad campaign for the Amul butter brand featuring the Amul girl started in 1966 and has been running for five decades now, picking whatever is in the news at that point of time, drawing some analogy with butter & delivering witty punchlines mostly in Hinglish.

(Courtesy: Amul)

Thankfully, the website of Amul has preserved these ads and they make for a interesting visual history of India.

Also see:
Software industry inspires cartoonists & vice versa
Al Jaffee's MAD mag Fold-Ins in Flash
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HOW TO stretch the battery life of portable devices

Tips from a recent NY Times article on increasing the battery life of portable devices like BlackBerry, iPhone, smartphones & laptops:
battery charge indicator
  • Consider using G.S.M. over CDMA for your mobile
  • Turn down the devices' screen brightness.
  • Turn off Bluetooth & Wi-Fi when not required otherwise portable devices will continue to look for Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth headset, using power
  • If you’re in a weak signal area turn off your portable device’s mobile capabilities as your phone must work even harder to find one, decreasing battery life.
  • Set up your phone to check for e-mail and instant messages manually.
  • Put your smartphone into "airplane mode" to cut power to a minimum.
  • Disable Flash when not using wall power; Flash animations are a power hog
  • Get an app to monitor battery life and shut off various functions that cut down on a mobile device’s effective power.
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Hyderabad MMTS on Google Transit

Having tried out Google Transit two years ago in Seattle, I wished a similar facility was available for India & especially Hyderabad. I was happy to read that Google Transit now covers public transportation options in more than 445 cities across the world including Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai & Kolkata. You can find transit stops in your area & plan a trip with Google Transit using the local trains (not buses yet) in any of these four cities.

Hyderabad Multi Modal Transit System (MMTS)The Hyderabad Multi Modal Transit System (MMTS) has become popular in a short span of time as it faster than other commuting options and inexpensive. I tried out a search for Public Transit options from Chandanagar to Somajiguda in Hyderabad

Hyderabad MMTS on Google Transit

The search shows the estimated travel time but unlike in the US, the fares are not shown.

I wish Google Transit results also cover the state-run APSRTC bus service routes as well soon as thousands of Hyderabadis utilize it daily.

Also see:
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools
Make the most of IRCTC
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How can Twitter help me?

How can Twitter help me?

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.-  Eleanor Roosevelt

I've been recommending these articles & video to the Twitter uninitiated who ask me about it. A recent NYTimes article lists some ways in which you can make use of Twitter even though you may not choose to post anything:
  • Custom news feed - you can track news on specialized topics that traditional media may not cover by aggregating as a RSS feed the tweets of folks who post on those topics
  • Lists - Compile a list of people or topics you would like to follow
  • Attend a conference, virtually - A lot of people these days tweet about conferences they are attending & provide updates in real-time. If you know the conference hashcode (for instance, #TED), you can catch up on what's happening there & be part of informal "chat rooms". A hashcode is an informal way to "tag" something to a category or categories.
  • What’s around you right now - You can catch the local news through Twitter’s list of trending topics which can now be searched by city.
  • Ask questions - You can use Twitter to ask questions when you don’t know whom to ask.
Bertalan Meskó, a medical student at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, wrote a post about a patient with mysterious symptoms: “Strange case today in internal medicine rotation. 16 years old boy with acute pancreatitis (for the 6th! time). Any ideas?”

Within hours, specialists worldwide had responded, suggesting gallstones, lupus or growths on the pancreas. One of the suggestions helped the doctors with a diagnosis.
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