Saturday, March 26, 2011

FIR Filed Against Facebook in Meerut [FB Is The New Orkut]

Facebook is the new Orkut when it comes to communities (ab)using the service and in the past, a case was filed for ‘Hate Gandhi’ group and before that, few school girls were suspended from school for using Abusive Language on Facebook.

The latest to hit the newsstand is a FIR against Facebook in Meerut city by a social activist.

The FIR accused a Facebook profile of "instigating communal passions" and feared that it could lead to riots in India and the activist has named even those who have commented on the discussion (via) The person who has created the profile has warned of creating such profiles if profiles insulting and abusing Islam were not removed from Facebook. In response to this, people have posted anti-Islam remarks on the profile along with links of websites with equally bad abuses against Islam..

Time has come for Facebook to hire army of lawyers in India as well – earlier, Orkut was used for such malpractices and now Facebook has replaced the socionet.

Do you think Indians overreact?


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Neoteny Labs – 1 year later

On April 2010, we opened Neoteny Labs‘ first fund (Neoteny Startup 1) to investors and capped the fund at US$5 million.  We didn’t want to raise more because we felt US$5 million, combined with the leverage from NRF, would suffice for an early-stage venture fund focused on consumer internet startups in Asia.  A month later, [...] Related posts:
  1. Six winners for NRF Early Stage Venture Fund
  2. Erasmic, Accel merge to form India fund
  3. Why NRF’s TIS may be the Fix that Singapore’s Tech Ecosystem needs

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Creation is…[Travails of a Fledgling]

This post is written by Tamagna & edited by Arvind. Tamagna (works as marketing manager for a major national FM Radio channel) shares his 2 years journey with Arvind about how he was finally able to produce a cohort of art photographs and present the work on a gallery. All from entrepreneurship point of view.

Creation is org*sm. Don’t know about you guys, but at least that’s what I experience in creativity. Nurture creativity, and it will make you feel that you’re the youngest entrepreneur in the room. No matter what age you are. And believe it or not, it is the smaller steps, like strokes of brush or one or two lines of ‘hacks’, that really give the kick, the ultimate satisfaction. Call it pivoting, call it iterations or what you will, but a continuous pursuit to “creatively create” is how you as an entrepreneur are going to weave the yarn around an idea to make it look attractive, feasible and ultimately kiss you success.

IMHO there is no theory of motivation. It simply boils down to just one word – creativity. If at a later stage when your product is successful, and you start loving status quo – your creative pursuits will go down, and thus the motivation of the team will also fall apart.

It is the act to create that gives the kick to move on and make an idea possibly the biggest thing existing in the world. Every venture kick-starts with a zeroth element – an idea – and the only differentiation later on is the number of hacks (high quality small steps) taken over time to push the idea towards its creative identity. Now since I am an artist, who was a hacker earlier (opposite is true for Arvind), I believe that technology cannot replicate human art form. It is not easy, or even possible, for robots to create human beings. Creation is always other way round.

A technologist can org**mic-ally, I mean literally organically grow up, his/her idea right up to the level of an ‘art’ form. Like Steve Jobs did with Apple. But it takes time to bring a piece come to life, bring an order out of the chaos, and like there is a saying – hang around long enough if you really want to see the dream come into reality. Photographs and paintings are my products. I have been able to pursue national & international rock bands, performance artists, guitarists through out the country and do what I do best. Capture the close-ups and let the sheer pleasure run through my veins.

I have now showcased my work in a art-gallery at Mumbai. If you are an art-bug, do share your views on it and this. Better still, if you’re in Mumbai do drop by “The RockYourHami Exhibition” @ Zenzi , Bandra(Mumbai) till 10th of April, 2011. The coffee is on me.

So it took two years for me to reach here. With some connections, it might take less. But honestly, the effort is worth pursuing. Create a lot.

At this juncture you might probably debate whether art and photography depend too much on the individual, his persona, who creates the work? And that its value is dependent on his or her name. I’d say yes, but that doesn’t mean that the new entrepreneur cannot venture. I too want to break the rules, and in some way or the other an incumbent will have to give me a way forward. That’s my story of entrepreneurship, albeit from a different world.

Have you guys experienced the kick in your hacks? What do you think?

P.S: This is my first music photography exhibition at Mumbai.


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The Reason Why I Do Not Trust Banner Ads [and Indian OTAs]

We have been very vocal about the lack of trust eCommerce companies bestow upon the consumers and while few companies openly state that they sell your data, most of them (OTAs) have really failed to build a useful portal [read:Customer Focus : Why Indian online travel space is not with it, mostly].

The rush has been to be on top of Google search result page, to collect your email address (and sell it); but it really is frustrating that companies are misleading customers with wrong advertising of ticket rates which are NOT available on the site!

Misleading Yatra Banner Ad

Misleading Yatra Banner Ad

On the left side is Yatra’s banner ad which clearly mentions that Delhi to Bangalore ticket is priced at Rs. 4739. And on the right side, the real ticket price is Rs. 5,114+ (click on the image for a  better resolution).

While you might want to say ‘chalta hai’ (the great Indian mentality), but isn’t it time that companies stand accountable for what they advertise vis-à-vis what they offer?Do we need an online version of ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India) to stop such misleading advertisements?

What’s your take? As far as I am concerned, this was my last visit to Yatra website.


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EC Navi Establishes “EC Navi Ventures”, Plans To Invest In Japanese And Asian Startups

Things haven’t been looking good for many Japanese VC firms lately, but that didn’t stop Tokyo-based e-commerce company EC Navi, which today announced the establishment of a VC arm called EC Navi Ventures.

EC Navi Ventures is set up as a separate company (also based in Tokyo), which is 100% owned by EC Navi. The VC subsidiary is capitalized at 100 million yen and led by Hidenori Nagaoka (who is the CFO of EC Navi proper).

What will EC Navi Ventures do?
The company says that it will invest between one and ten million yen ($12,000 to $120,000) in seed/early stage web and mobile startups in Japan, China and the rest of Asia. Apart from capital, the startups can expect support in other areas, too, for example business development or organization.

EC Navi is sure to be of help in this regard: founded in 1999, EC Navi is one of Japan’s oldest web companies. It already made various investments in startups before establishing EC Navi Ventures (in Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia).

If you’re an Asia-based startup interested in getting in touch with this new VC firm, you can find the contact information here (English).

Via Venture Now


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Jobs: Web Designer, Senior Technical Lead, iPhone App Developer [and lots more]

Pluggd.in’s job board reaches out to the smartest geeky crowd in India and we are quite proud of the conversion rate that our job board offers. In the next few weeks, we will be announcing a revamped/much better job board catering to needs of startups.

For now, here are the latest and promising jobs for geeks and marketers.

Job Profile Description
UI/Web Designer
Location: Delhi/NCR

We are looking for a highly creative web designer with 1+ year(s) of experience.

MUST HAVE
>> Proficiency in Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver
>> Excellent XHTML/CSS skills and comfortable with creating cross browser compatible designs (including IE6)
>> Ability to write complex JQuery/JavaScript programs
>> PSD to XHTML/CSS creation

Senior Technical Lead
Location: Bangalore
Very hands-on developers – leads who cannot code just would not do. You would ideally be very smart in at least 2 or more areas mentioned in the technical stack and be willing to become smart in the other areas. We need coders who are self starters, stick to coding guidelines, do reviews, have a good sense of design patterns and write unit tests.
iPhone Developer / Programmer Location: Bangalore - High proficiency in Objective C and OOPs. -Strong Analytical Skills -Strong understanding of technology -Good understanding of modern use-cases (social, augmented reality, location based, 1-1, 1-many etc.)
Front-end/PHP Developer Location: Bangalore We’re a growing US-based social commerce startup out of Austin, Texas looking for a talented front-end developer who is comfortable with the following tools/technologies: – PHP – MVC/CodeIgniter – jQuery – Javascript/AJAX – Memcached – XHTML – Facebook Open Graph API – Twitter Oauth API
Front End Dev
Location: Gurgaon
We are looking for a skilled Front End Developer for our Gurgaon office who can translate Photoshop file into clean HTML/CSS, swiftly debug cross-browser issues and use Javascript and AJAX to provide an excellent user experience.
LAMP Developers
Location: Bangalore
1.can write production level code in PHP like poetry. 2.can understand HTML/CSS/JS well enough to help produce an efficient front end. 3.have ability to design production level DB schema from product definition. 4.can play with Apache servers without crashing them. Atleast 2 yrs experience is required.
Content and Social media Strategist
Location: Bangalore
We need a a very creative person who can manage our Content & Social Media. Objectively, we seek a person, who has/is: ? Ability to work in a very fast paced environment. ? Ultra creative with content writing. ? Ability to run several social campaigns and generate buzz around it. ? Addicted to the Internet. ? Eye for collecting intelligence from social networks.

Marketing Manager
Location: Bangalore

Roles:- Coordinate with internal teams and external agencies for developing new marketing creatives and keeping the existing ones up-to-date – Coordinate with SEO and PPC agencies to get marketing strategy devised by Marketing head executed – Complete affiliate management including onboarding, sending updates on new products and releases, answering any queries they have and having the FusionCharts brand on the tip of their tongue

Tech Evangelist cum Community Manager
Location: Bangalore

Develop technical content for our blog and soon-to-come newsletter including implementation tutorials, feature discussions, use cases and community showcase – Handle the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts completely – share educative and interactive content on them on a regular basis, reply to all queries asked and manage minute-by-minute interactions – Develop technical content for external blogs and websites as and when required
PHP & MySQL Developer
Location: Chennai
As a Developer, you will be responsible for design and development initiatives in creating high level designs and complex system architecture for the product and website. You will be responsible to develop the detailed specifications and implementation plan for the inhouse and outsourced development team. You will identify and architect frameworks and methodologies that deliver value to the product.

Core Team – Engineering

Location: Pune.

1. Good understanding of MVC architecture, Agile Development methodologies & language independent Object Oriented Concepts2. Understanding of process flow and ability to see through execution while clearly recognizing the dependencies and impact points.

Core Team Member – Sr. Software Engineer

Location: Pune

* have experience building web applications either in PHP/Python/RoR* have experience with MySQL/PostgreSQL, Testing Frameworks and BDD/TDD tools, Git etc. * 2+ years of work experience

Software Engineer

Location: Mumbai

* Enhancement / Development of new modules for our current product. • Working closely with engineering team & founders of the company. • Design and implement key technology parts and make them available to other developers as framework or components. • Be proactive, opinionated and pragmatic, and yet a team player.

Software Design Engineer in Test

Location: Pune

- Ability to solve complex problems and write automation systems – Ability to elaborate testing techinques and commanding development procedures by understanding the functional requirements.
Online Community Manager Location: Anywhere (Work Virtually) We constantly require community managers for our increasing clientèle. In order to apply you should have the following attributes, 1. Web savvy 2. Good internet access 3. Professionalism towards your work Prior social media marketing experience is a plus.

Software Engineer – Back End & Front End

Location: Mumbai

Must have excellent OOPS knowledge and should have worked extensively on MVC based frameworks. – Extensive knowledge and work experience using tools like PEAR and Smarty. – Detailed knowledge on HTML, Javascript, AJAX and css a must. – Knowledge of open source scripts like ZenCart, Joomla, Drupal and WordPress will be a plus.

Software Design Engineer (Platform Tools)

Location: Pune

Atleast a bachelors in computers. – Atleast 3 years of experience in software development. – Atleast 3 years of experience in Linux. This would warrant a strong command over the OS to the extent of system administration.

Various positions in Software Design Engineering

Location: Pune

- Strong inclination to command “nothing is impossible” in Software. – Strong skills in any object oriented language. We don’t believe that language qualifies merit. Rather language is a conduit to building software. – Knowledge in database, dataminining, algorithm, distributed systems is a mus
Technical Director (Anywhere) We are looking for a new Technology Director interested in bringing their CS skills to the public service sector. Our Tech Director needs to start in April and commit to working over the Summer in India. During April-June, you will be working from your hometown while the team is in the US. In the Summer, our team will travel to India to meet up with you in India and implement our technology with Indian partner organizations.


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Book Review: Women Entrepreneurship [Case Studies of Women Entrepreneurs]

Women in entrepreneurial roles and women at work have garnered a whole lot of literature and attention recently. Women’s Entrepreneurship as a space in focus – both for discourse and action planning will not only boost the body of work but also provide examples to scores of women considering the entrepreneurial path.

The book begins with a reference to Steve Jobs and his entrepreneurial vision. True, that Steve rules the imagination of many entrepreneurial dreams. He also epitomizes the male-driven tech scene, where women have minimal role to play. Apple executive team has no women on it. Moreover, when you propel the conversation by referencing one of world’s most cash-rich, market leading firm, the expectation moves to similar ground. References to the Mckinsey literature on the subject belittle Mridula’s own effort, which is far more contextual and original.women entrepreneurship

The beauty of the book (buy from Pothi) is that the entrepreneurial journeys are endearing, especially ones like MAYA Care. They are also easy to read and contain no heavy jargon or concepts. A great read for anyone seeking to explore the space, find some inspiration and also understand the landscape a little more. There is a warm-personalized touch to each story and each conversation.

What Mridula has managed to do is bring out consistent threads of information via her questions from each entrepreneur she spoke with. One can see some patterns emerging through the book. These include:

  • Majority of entrepreneurs work with co-founders and many are husband-wife co-founder teams
  • Removal from core sectors like manufacturing
  • Entrepreneurial triggers include motherhood, need for alternate formats and keen interest or specializations.
  • Huge amount of personal motivation from each of the entrepreneurs

One of the revelations of the book is how success is defined differently by and for men and women entrepreneurs. Absolute removal from critical questions of scale, market share and strategic intent is visible. However, one does also notice the fact the patterns of balancing personal-professional aspirations emerges.

What one is left wondering about the scale and scope of each business and like often, this time too financials and scale are not delved into in detail. It would have been interesting to see a comparative on geography, sector and demographic as a concluding chapter.

However, that does not take away from the fact it is an easy and interesting read for anyone interested in learning about women and entrepreneurial roles.

The book does not meet the expectations of language and grammar purists, with much left to be desired towards editorial finesse. A visual element would have been welcome too.

Books like these play an important part in highlighting streaks of innovation and change, which typically get little attention in mainstream writing. Overall an easy and simple read especially for anyone interested in the subject. However, if you seek path-breaking research or intellectual stimulation, one needs to find it elsewhere.

[Guest book review done by Sairee Chahal of Fleximoms. If you want to write book reviews on Pluggd.in, do connect with us.]

Recent Book Reviews:


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Tokyo’s Start-ups To Hold A Presentation Night In Seoul

In the beginning of next month, four tech start-ups from Tokyo and two start-ups from Seoul will jointly hold a presentation evening event in South Korea’s capital, which is called Asia Startup Summit, for expanding their presence in Asia and exchanging their perspectives on the region’s start-up community.

Presentations are:

  • Revolutionizing Digital Entertainment by advanced video search technology
    by Jonnpyo Lee (이준표), Enswers Inc.
  • Big trends in Japan – Optimization and Personalization Technology
    by Takashi Uemura(上村崇), ALBERT Inc.
  • Information to collective intelligence LastSupper – spot to intelligent map / mironi – listen, share, enjoy
    by Jongil Yoon (윤정일), Revilx
  • Social Monitoring “@hentaiAlert”
    by  Yusuke Takahashi(高橋雄介), Individual Company
  • Social translation “Conyac
    by Naoki Yamada(山田尚貴), Anydoor Co-founder (see these Asiajin stories for more details)

 

Venue: Spaceplus (스페이스 플러스), 810-10, Yeoksam 1-dong, Gangnam-gu.
서울特別市江南区駅三一洞810-10

Time: 7pm-9pm, April 6th (Wednesday), 2011

Admission fee: Free

The organizers are currently inviting techpreneurs and geeks to the event, if you are interested in attending, please contact them from their Facebook page.   According to Mr. Kobayashi, one of the organizers, their entire presentation will be livestreamed.


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