Posted via email from Akshay Dodeja

Posted via email from Akshay Dodeja

Mugasha has launched to the public today and is, officially, out of beta! We have been working hard for the past 6 months to make this happen. I remember a few months back, we started talking about launching in May…and then July and now finally August 20th, 2009. So you might be wonder what does this all mean? Or more importantly how does this affect you?

So what does the launch mean?

Mugasha is available to everyone and its free. You don’t have to be registered or logged in to listen to music. We want you to interact and have made the signup process simple, but it is not required. 

We’ve launched a bunch of new features and refinements that make listening to music easier, but the most dramatic difference is the front page. The new homepage is a snapshot of what’s happening on Mugasha. It shows you what’s new and hot. For new and casual listeners, the homepage is a good place to start and discover music. 

The browse pages have also been enhanced. You can browse sets by popularity and newness. You are able to search tracks and artists. The new artist pages make it really easy to find music and events related to that individual artist. 

What else? Well, we are going big… Today we have launched 4 massive new shows on Mugasha!

We’ve got a special event lined up for you tomorrow. Simon Lee & Alvin, the duo behind Radio KUL, are going to be releasing their 100th episode and have a dope 3 hour show hosted by Aruna and guestmixers Myon & Shane 54, Jaytech, and Boom Jinx. Believe me when I say, it’s not to be missed.

So make sure you come back over the next 7 days to check out the new content and releases by new artists. 

What else is new?

Mugasha Aux

We recently launched Mugasha Aux (http://aux.mugasha.com). It’s our blog where we post electronic music news, reviews, interviews, etc. Pretty much all things EDM (Electronic Dance Music). AND we want you to contribute! We’ve set is up so that all of you can post to it. Just write up your post, attach your pictures/videos/etc and email it to: post@mugasha-aux.posterous.com. It’ll get posted automagically, thanks to Posterous. So start posting up your event pictures, album reviews, cool videos, and everything else.

Badges

We’ve made a bunch of badges for you so you can show off your Mugasha love to all of your friends on your Facebook, MySpace, website, etc. You can see a couple of examples below. Head to the Badges page (http://mugasha.com/badges) to copy the code to paste into your site.

What is next?

More content — We are constantly working with Artists and labels to get more podcasts and more electronic music on Mugasha. We hear you. We know you want more DnB, more progressive, more ambient, techno, chill, lounge, trance, minimal etc. and we want to bring it to you. Our goal is to launch 2-4 new shows each month. 

More Facebook and Twitter — We know many of you spend a lot of time on those sites and we want to integrate those sites even better. Expect Twitter login in the next few months. 

Mobile – We are working on our first mobile app already. It is going to be on Android (Google) and it will be very cool. It will even play music in the background. *sigh iPhone*. iPhone users, stay tuned  

Artist platform — We want to make it really easy for Artists to promote and bring content to Mugasha and other sites. We want to make the process simple for them. More on this soon. 

Advertising and Sponsors 

Mugasha is a great way to get your product out. We have some great packages, email us for more info partners@mugasha.com

Thank you. Seriously, thank you.

Thanks for being a part our small company. We’ve got some big dreams, and your guys’ support and feedback keep us going. If you’re diggin’ Mugasha, we’d love if you invited your friends, made blog posts, and got the word out. Let’s build an army. This is just the beginning!

Cheers! 

Team Mugasha (Akshay, Justin, and our awesome interns)

Follow these instructions I found on the internet

Launch word
Go to Word —>Preferences
Click on “General”
Uncheck “WYSIWYG font and style menus”
Uncheck “Show Project Gallery At Startup”
Quit Word
Reopen Word

Evolution
The concept of Startup Weekend began as a team of 68 designers, developers, business developers, project managers and marketing/PR folks working on a single project last July (2007) in Boulder, Colorado. Today Startup Weekend has become more open-ended with smaller teams are working on multiple projects.

The Startups
Micah Elliott, a developer who I met at Startup Weekend put together a great blog post about the Friday activity. There were originally 10-12 ideas which the group collectively narrowed down to 5 startup ideas. Many people found out that startups/services similar to their ideas already existed in some form so they decided to join other groups. Micah has covered the 5 ideas quite well so I won’t cover them until my next post which will be going up after this weekend.

My Idea
Like many people, I am pretty passionate about music. I enjoy electronic music and like to DJ/mix when I get some free time. I can listen to Dance, House, Electro, Trance or Progressive music for hours at a time. In the electronic music community DJ sets are very popular. DJs broadcast live sets about 1 – 2 hours long on a weekly basis. In my personal experience, I have yet to find a service where you can listen to these archived sets online with a simple yet elegant user experience. So my idea is basically a web service that archives DJ sets from popular artists like Tiesto, Armin Van Buren, David Guetta, and Above and Beyond to name a few. Another important feature behind the usage model is that users will be able to choose individual tracks within a set and listen to just those tracks without buffering the entire set (usually ~120 Mbs). In technical terms, the user can scrub to any point within a set (flash player). I won’t spoil it too much for those of you who are curious, you’ll find out soon enough. We are planning to launch a working version of the service by tomorrow night.

The Team

The main reason this weekend has been a such an amazing experience for me is because of our small six-person team. I will talk more about our team in the next few weeks. Thanks to:
Varun Thota – My neighbor/PSU business student – Business Development
Darius Monsef – Marketing and Business Development- Co-founder of Colourlovers.com
Chris Williams – PHP Ninja – Co-founder of Colourlovers.com
Stephen Braitsch – Designer/Flash Developer
Justin Thiele – PR/Marketing/Brand Strategist

The Startup – Mugasha - Music, Gathering and Sharing For All

Stay Tuned…

- Akshay

Portland StartupDrinks

- Akshay

Vision
“To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.”
Dean Kamen, Founder

Mission
Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication and leadership.

What is FIRST Robotics Competition(FRC)?
The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard “kit of parts” and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals. (from USFIRST.org)

Why should you care?
You should care because this program works. It works because it has had huge impact on education and specifically it has impacted thousands of high schoolers. I think programs like FIRST challenges students and it is a program that connects students with mentors. It creates competition and promotes gracious professionalism. This term gracious professionalism was coined by MIT Professor Dr. Woodie Flower.
“Gracious Professionalism is part of the ethos of FIRST. It’s a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community.”

How can you get involved?
Just by attending one of the 30+ regional competitions around the nation you can experience FIRST.
Unfortunately all the regional competitions are over for this season. Although the Championship event is this weekend in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome April 17 – 19
2008 FIRST Championship

Sites to check out
I am an alumni of Monta Vista Robotics Team 115
FIRST Website

I have been eager to take part in one of these events such as Bar Camp or Startup Weekend for quite some time now. Portland Startup Weekend will be a great opportunity for this. If you are interested in taking part as developer, designer, hacker, PR/marketing, cook etc… goto the website and buy your tickets before they sell out. I plan on purchasing a ticket as a User Interface Designer.

Speaking of startups, I am also attending Startup School 2008, which will be held on April 19th at Stanford. My application got accepted last weekend so I am pretty excited about attending. Startup school is another excuse for me to go back to California and visit my friends and girlfriend in Berkeley.

On a side note WebVisions 2008 will be held on May 22-23 right before Portland Startup Weekend (May 23-25 2008)