Month: March 2009

Munnar trip: Part 1


Blogging about my Munnar trip is a long pending task… It all started with a call from Vijay Krishna asking me to join them for a trip to Punnagai Mannan falls (falls was named after Kamal Hasan’s movie Punnagai Mannan) near Coimbatore… I told them that I can join them only on Sunday as Saturday is a working day for me… Then I started my ay is office as usual and I got a call from Vijay telling plans got changed to Munnar… I was little upset because I was not mentally prepared for some other place and I was eager to visit a place which I just watched in a movie…

I packed my bags to Munnar by 3:30 PM and went to Bus Stand to board Munnar Bus… On reaching the bus terminus I was told direct bus to Munnar is scheduled only in the mornings and I was asked to goto Theni and then catch a bus to Munnar from there… Then I boarded a bus to theni & within 30 min drive from Madurai tyre got burst… Bus was jam packed and many people started boarding other buses… But I stayed in the bus and thought I can see what happens… Then suddenly driver said there is a spare tyre(stepney) and he changed the type and dropped in Theni within 2 hours… I reached Theni around 8 o clock and I was told next bus to Munnar is at 10 o clock…

I though I can have my dinner in a local hotel to get a feel of the place and in the hotel I engaged a conversation with two boys who were sharing my table… They became good friends and till now we keep calling each other :)… They told me about unexplored places in Theni and about local culture, they were very curious to know if I know any tamil actors and their houses… For them Chennai looks like heaven and it seems they have never been there… I’m really excited by the way they helped me…

Then I boarded the Munnar bus and I asked the conductor about journey time to munnar… People found from my lingo that I’m from Chennai… One particular gentleman started telling names of each and every place enroute to Munnar… I’ve never had such a journey; it was a great experience…

 I was told there will be lot of elephant crossing in the nights and if any elephant sleeps/stands in the road vehicles has to shut the head light n engine and wait till the animal moves… Unfortunately that didn’t happen in our journey and I missed that experience… But on the way we saw an elephant and it roared, but I didn’t have time to pick my camera and take a snap…

Then I slept for sometime and all of a sudden bus stopped because of traffic jam…I went out for a leak and assumed traffic jam was because of elephants crossing… Then I walked further to see if there is any elephant…

One enquiring the status from a cab driver I came to know traffic jam was because of some quarrel between a tourist van and a truck driver… It took 30 min for the quarrel to get over and for traffic to get cleared… Then atlast I reached munnar by 2 o clock in the morning… It was shivering cold in the night…
Straight away went to the hotel and the doors were locked… I was preying for folks to pick the call… They didn’t pick my call making me scared and for a moment I thought I must sleep in the streets shivering the whole night… Then got a call from Vasanth and he opened the doors… Vasanth, Vijay & Sathish came from Coimbatore… All of us were tired because of the travel and we all crashed to immediately….

Then next day we all started for site seeing by 8.30 in the morning…

To be continued………
Part 2 coming soon……

Wikipedia & I


Yesterday I was hacking thru Wikipedia to post an article about RBS… What was thought to be challenging and confusing for last couple of years ended up very interesting and I learned the nuances of the system and wiki markup in 4 hours and  created an article for RBS (Don’t know if it will be there anymore as editors have recommended to delete it citing itz a new software)…

I started playing with Wikipedia by 10 PM yesterday and ended by around 2.30 AM today morning… Went home happily and had a nice sleep… Came to office in the morning and checked the article and was taken back seeing the recommendation to delete the article…

img-deletedmsg

You can see a box with red vertical line, which says “It is proposed that this article be deleted”

If you are a Wikipedian or if know any Wikipedian please let me know how to save my hard work… Anyways I’m not giving it up easily I’ve replied to the editors as well as I’m digging into Wikipedia help to know more about their systems and rules…

Ok now I want to explain my key learning’s and how I fell for Wikipedia… After deciding to post an article in Wikipedia I started searching for “Create Article” link & was try “Upload File” under tools to upload my logo… I read lot of wikis and their Help and after enough struggle I found out that a person has to become an Autoconfirmed user to upload things else we have to apply by filling a request form which will be reviewed by editors and based on their judgment things will be approved or rejected… To become a Autoconfirmed user we must have edited/contributed atleast 10 articles…

I started editing articles and this is when I fell in love with Wikipedia and decided I must become a Wikipedian… Initially I added Cogzidel under companies in Madurai, Adambakkam, economy of Chennai, then I went to my area Porur to share information I know and finally I made some edit for my college GLIM…

By this time I finished editing 10 articles and became an Autoconfirmed user automatically and posted my article for RBS(also my first article)…

Before concluding let me share some of my pleasing moments…

This is my first Wiki markup code;

{{Infobox_Company
| company_name = RBS
| company_logo = [[Image:Rbs-logo.jpg|center|RBS Logo]]
| company_type = [[Private company|Private]]
| owner = [http://www.cogzidel.com Cogzidel Technologies]
| foundation = [[Chennai, Tamil Nadu]]<br> [[2009]]
| location_city = {{flagicon|India}} [[Chennai]]
| location_country = [[India]]
| industry = Internet <br> Service Marketplace <br> Workforce Management <br>Bidding System
| key_people = [http://www.anandnataraj.com S.Anand Nataraj], Founder
| num_employees = 30 (2009)
| slogan = ‘Real bid real success’
| homepage = [http://www.cogzidel.com/products?view=productdetails RBS]
}}

And these are my contribution to Wikipedia till now…

img-usercontribution

Reliance ADAG offers Instant Office Space…


The current economic slowdown, growing lay offs, high infrastructure costs, bureaucratic delays, and uncertain markets have compiled many businesses / Entrepreneurs / SME’s / Startups to hold back their capital expenses and adopt a ‘wait and watch’ policy, test before invest and looking for more and more flexible solutions where there are no long term commitments.

Taking the advantage of the prevailing network and footprint (105 Cities) Reliance World Stores have tailored a very economical, flexible and attractive business proposal of providing instant offices (Ready-to-use offices). These offices come fully furnished, air-conditioned and with high configuration PC’s and unlimited usage of Broad Band internet Connection all of these combined into a package.

The advantages of Hiring Reliance World instant offices are:

1). Ready Availability across 240 locations Pan India.

2). No Brokerage and No Deposits.

3). No hassles of Carpet Area and Built up area, Payment by use of spaces.

4). Locating offices in prominent places of main business districts as all our facilities are situated in those areas.

5). Flexible Rental Options without Lock In periods.

6). Technical and Secretarial Services on Demand.

Other details are available in the brochure enclosed, for more details feel free to contact the following:

1). Srinivas : +91.93201 08347

2). Pooja Gupta : +91.93222 83054

3). Suhas : +91.9324113411

RBS – Cogzidel’s first product launched


RBS – Cogzidel’s first product was launched on late hours of 25th March, 2009 at 23.45 IST… It is a proud and exciting moment for the entire Cogzidel team… I take this opportunity to thank Mr.Senthil Guru who started the project and Mr.Sathick Basha who took over from Senthil and completed the mission… I must also thank Mr.Pandi who assisted Sathick, Mr.Saravanan for CSS work, Mr.Major Karthik for his design, Mr.Bala Subramaniyam for managing and getting the product out successfully, last but not least it is our Bala Krishnan for his commitment and passion he contributed a lot encouraging the team and he acted as System Analyst for the project…

I’ll write a detailed blog about the product tomorrow… For now let me keep it brief; RBS is abbreviation for Reverse Bidding System, it is a bidding system which is developed by taking inspiration from Scriptlance.com… We have more features in mind to make the product unique and we will be evolving the product in a phased manner by releasing update at frequent intervals which will be bundled with new features and patches…

Product is launched under Creative Common license and is offered for free… This must be a bonanza for webmasters… We are offering the project for free to create more entrepreneurs & webmasters… You can think why we are offering it for free, let me explain it with an example,

“A has one rupee and B has one rupee… Both exchange that rupee… They go home with one rupee each!
But if A has one idea and B has one idea… Both exchange that idea… They go home with two ideas.”

Same way when we offer something for free lots of people will try it and it will create an eco-system where it will create lots of opportunity for many people and ideas will be flowing… So, we want to create such a eco-system and that is why we are offering the product for free…

In coming days I think there will be lots of success stories and I wish it happens soon……

Major Karthik honored us by launching the product… Here is the launch picture…

rbs-launched-by-major

Here is the link for products page http://cogzidel.com/products?view=productdetails

It is now official


Yes. It is official that the person whom we doubted is the real hacker… Also hacking was done using some holes in Scriptlance… Ok now let me explain the post events that happened after our previous blog post…

We go an email from the hacker and bala invited him for a chat in Yahoo!… The hacker acknowledged and they started negotiating terms… Parallely we were also working with Scriptlance guys… Yesterday bala proved me a point that every time we can’t mean business… Bala convinced the hacker claiming his act has cost him his job and some how got hold of the account… The hacker seems to be of good heart :), by now I think bala and hacker must have become good pals…

In the mean time Scriptlance was prompt in suspending the account and they started the act after we our self recovered the account from the hacker… But now we have to release the account from suspension… Scriptlance had some IVR system to confirm the phone number, they asked for last three transactions and the bank account used to withdraw the funds from Scriptlance… Also they asked an ID proof… At last we got our account released from suspension…

What worried me was Scriptlance didn’t give us any reason & assurance that this will never occur again… Also they deleted our post in their forum where we posted that our account was hacked and asked if there were any other person who has lost his/her account, which means Scriptlance forum is not transparent…

What ever the case many be we got the account back and the funds in the account is also safe… Today I’m having a meeting with bala to see how we can cope with marketing without Scriptlance…

Now Cogzidel has a William Wordsworth


It is always nice to get motivation from someone… Also in an organization if someone take initiative and start showing the path it is even more exciting… Today I think we have two mangoes in one shot… I’m doubly thrilled… The reason is;

We are opening up night shift from tomorrow and I don’t know if people have fully accepted the change… When we communicated this information in our mailer, Ms.Narmatha started a loop of fun with her poetry skills… It brought the entire situation to funny zone and people started telling they are the ones who will be working on the night shift… Here goes her quote;

“Hai,
How lucky the moon is!
Finally it got the chance to enter his rays into Cogzidel.
Take care Friends.”

Here is a screenshot of her mail, which has a reply from saravana proudly claiming that he one among the lucky ones to work under the moon :(…

narnadha

Our Scriptlance.com account hacked


Today morning my colleague Mr.Balakrishnan came to me asking if I changed the password of ourScriptlance account… I said I didn’t do anything with the account and immediately bala went to his system trying to reset the password… Only then we came to know our account was hacked…

There is no way our account could have been hacked because no one other I and bala knows the password and our systems are also not shared with other networks in office… Also we never share passwords using IM’s… So, we confirmed it must be some miscreant inside Scriptlance…

In the whole episode two things happened

  1. Irony with Scriptlance support desk…
  2. An email from the hacker…

First let me share you the screenshots of things, experience with Scriptlance & hackers email…

morning_mail

Myself and bala were using the account till 11.30 PM yesterday night and the site must have got hacked in another 15 – 30 min… We calculated this using time on the mail received… We took this screenshot by 3.45 PM today and 16 hours before must be around 11.30 PM – 12 AM yesterday or the day beginning… This screenshot has been sent by Scriptlance confirming the change in account details, without this alert we wouldn’t have found about this hack quickly… Now the irony part you can see the text in this screenshot “If you did not request this change please contact support” below IP address in this screenshot… On clicking that link we were taken to the screenshot which comes next…

guest_form

I filled all the fields in despair which again resulted in despair :(… Please look at next screenshot to see what happened

guest_form_error

Our account is hacked but Scriptlance’s system didn’t take up the complaint stating we are not guest and it promptly says we have an account by name “COGZIDEL”… Reason is because of cookie, but when things go wrong everything goes wrong…

Now comes the best part… Couple of minutes back bala got an email from the hacker asking for a ransom to release the account… Here is the screenshot of the mail received by bala…

hacker

This drove our interest to dig deep inside and bala was very proactive in finding who did this and we zeroed in on a person… But we must have released this report only after the investigation is fully complete and once we are sure about the hacker… But I’m sharing the details of the person whom we think is the man behind this attack :(… Look at the email id specified in the email screenshot received form the hacker it has come from “viroxic@gmail.com”… We searched in Scriptlance for “viroxic” and found that there is a user with that handle… Then we traced the IP address which was sent in the mail (check first screenshot), the IP was traced to Morocco… Also we googled “viroxic”, we got two more profile’s with the name “viroxic” from other sites… Look at those profiles

https://www.eufreelance.com/users/26190.html
https://www.scriptlance.com/cgi-bin/freelancers/buyers.cgi?view=viroxic
https://www.getafreelancer.com/users/868495.html

In his profile it states he is from Morocco… So, we think we have almost zeroed in on the hacker…

But still we didn’t get any response from the webmaster/customer support department of Scriptlance… Still we are keeping our fingers crossed and we must see if we are the only ones who are affected or there are couple of other who are affected… We have posted a post in Scriptlance Forum and waiting for more reactions… Our first priority is to get the account back and then understand how this hacking was done… Then we have to take a strategic call if we must continue with Scriptlance or not…

Please share with us if you have any such experience so that others can learn from our experience… Also I promise to share the entire case once we are out of this…

Struggles makes us strong…


Once upon a time, a man found the cocoon of the butterfly. He kept it with himself for observation. Then he noticed an opening in the cocoon. He sat there and watched how butterfly struggled to come out of the opening. Then after some struggle, it seemed that butterfly stopped its efforts and sat there as it is.

Man by that time decided to help the butterfly and took a pair of scissors and cut the remaining bit of cocoon so that butterfly could come out easily. But what happened there after, he never imagined that.

After cutting the cocoon, he was expecting that butterfly would come out any moment with its enlarged wings and fly. He was watching the whole thing with great concentration. But nothing of that sort happened. In fact, what happened was horrible. Butterfly could never open its wings. It spent rest of its life crawling around with shriveled wings and swollen body.

By struggling, its body out of the hole, butterfly was trying to release the fluid in the wings and the man by cutting its cocoon stopped that natural process.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.

Why is there deuce in tennis?


Ancient civilizations in Rome, Greece and Egypt have made claim to the sport’s origins, but what we recognize today as tennis is widely accepted to have begun in France. Where else but in the land of romance would athletic measure be articulated in the terms “love” and “deuce” (as in, it takes two)?

During the Middle Ages, French monks hit balls with their hands over a rope stretched across the cloistered quadrangles of their monasteries. What they called jeu de paume (palm game) evolved into “tennis” courtesy of the serving player, who initiated action by shouting “Tenez!” — roughly, “Take it!”

In the game’s incrementally peculiar scoring, the first point is 15 (or 5, if the players went to prep school), the next is 30, the third, 40, then game over, provided the winning margin is two points. Players can be tied at 15 and at 30, but not beyond; 40-all is deemed “deuce” because it is a “deux du jeu” — two points away from winning the game.

The next point remains estranged from the numerical and in league with the verbal, with the winning player deemed to have the “advantage.” If he wins the next point, he wins the game. If the opponent wins, it’s back to deuce.

As in baseball, the clock is not a factor in tennis, so the deuce dance can become a marathon. Among professionals, the longest known singles game appears to have occurred at the 1975 Great Britain Championships in Surrey, England. Competitors Anthony Fawcett of then-Rhodesia and Keith Glass of Britain played 37 deuces among 80 total points in a game that lasted 31 minutes. Tenez! Encore. Et encore. Et encore . . .

— Ellen Alperstein

Interview with Mr.Nandakumar, Founder Ndot


Today I’m proud to be with Mr.Nandakumar, Founder Ndot… Nanda is a budding entrepreneur with lots of business ideas and passion for technology… Let us get more from horse mouth…

Q. Hello Nanda. First of all tell us about yourself?

A. I’m a cool guy, much interested in advanced internet technologies.

Q. When & how did your entrepreneur desire started & evolved?

A. In the beginning I was inspired by Microsoft Bill gates and wanted to run a big firm like him. Name “N.” was taken in my college days itself. But did nothing big till 2006. My inspiration is my Dad, he chosen different path in our village, still learning so many things from him.

Q. Tell us how Ndot took shape?

A. Well, I started it to focus on Social Media solution. We started “N.” with 3 guys. Currently we have employee base of 9 for providing solutions to many clients. Our main aim is not to deliver the code like a web company. We should deliver the result, co-create & provide options.

Q. Tell the challenges you faced (Pre formation & post formation)?

A. First of all we had initial investment of 0, We reinvested the revenues to make our company grow. Challenge we faced and facing is Cash Flow. And I can say that will be the biggest thing for every (startup) company. I had few failure startups before “N.”, learned so many things from those failure with which I gained expertise in business & Social Media.

Q. Tell us about Ndot’s business model?

A. Our business model is totally based on Products & services ( Both mostly on Social Media ). We also have our own startup stuff, which will be our unique thing.

Q. Tell us about Ndot’s services & products?

A.  We providing services & solutions in Social Networking, Business solution for social media. Currently we are developing 2 to 3 products. We developed our own social networking framework to make our development very faster. Also we plan to launch that application as Opensource soon.

Q. Do you feel the impact of recession? How do you plan to overcome this recession?

A. Impact, actually no, sometimes I feel when I don’t have good cash flow. Don’t have plans to overcome, but reading lots of books/articles/news. I don’t want to think about recession when working, I feel there are lots of opportunities to crack. Economic downturn, there are lot of problems in the economy. That means for an entrepreneur there are lots of new opportunities are available to solve. Recession needs us.

Q. What are your future plans?

A. We will rock the web One day. Have good future scope on semantic & AI web, and started focusing on it. Working on educational startup, aim to release soon.

Q. What is your advice for new startups and wannabe entrepreneurs?

A. Make sure everyone have good cash flow every month. Do some services side, to make your company for long run. Keep running with your concept side by side, which is going to make you unique.

=====> End of interview <=====

Thank you very much Nanda for sparing your valuable time with us and it was really inspiring to be with you. Your answers were really inspiring and motivation… I’m sure this interview will kindly the egos of many wannabe entrepreneurs and will make them jump into the world of entrepreneurship…

We wish you all the very best for your initiatives and wish to see Ndot a major force when it comes to Social networking or education or retail…