Blogarius

Chase your dreams. Full-time.

2015-03-29T22:48:00.005-07:00

One of the most important factors that is preventing us from going for our dreams is money. In fact, the lack of it.

What do we need money for? I've classified it into 3 main categories:

Level 1: Paying bills - rent, food, internet, mobile etc etc
Level 2: Entertainment - movies, restaurants, bars, travel etc
Level 3: Luxuries - buying a car, dream home etc

This post is about solving "Level 1":

Solving level 1 money problem is about "time trading". If you have time, there is nothing to worry. A simple math to prove the point.

Amount of money required for a family of 2: $2000
No. of hours you are willing to work/day: 4
No. of days willing to work: 25 (no Sundays please)
Total no. of hours/month: 4 hours/day * 25 days = 100 hours
Pay/hour: $20
Money/month: 100 hours * $20/hour = $2000

(the above table is not accurate by any means, it just to give readers an idea)

The key take away from this post is that if you work for 4 hours/day for $20/hour for 25days/month you can cover your basics.

Go chase your dream full-time.

Now one key question remains. Who/what will pay me $20/hour? This is where creativity kicks in, the amount of money you can make in an hour is not determined by your physical strength, instead by your imagination.

Bottom-line:

little time + lot of creativity = confortable living + ample time to chase your dreams

Differentiating Content Management and Data Management

2010-10-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Being a Data Management Company, I often encounter people who confuse Content Management with Data Management, hence I would like to throw some light on it. A bit of googling took me to the following article:

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Difference between Content Management, Data Management and Information Management

What is the difference between Data management, Information management and Content management?

Data Management is all about data, which is stored in database. Data is nothing but values stored in structured database as structured data formats. Data does not have any meaning by itself, however if interpreted by human or machine will make it understandable.

Content Management is about managing the content – which includes real stuff arranged in unstructured formats like document, spreadsheet, presentation, flash, images and in other file formats. Content management includes management of content mentioned above and also the metadata.

Information Management, in my perspective is above the data management and content management. Or in other words, a combination of what we do in Content management and data management. May be what Google is doing is Information Management or Information Management in Internet!

Source: http://simplyecm.com/2009/05/24/difference-between-content-management-data-management-and-information-management/

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Speaking about the relevance of the difference between content management and data management to education, I would say, managing student's personal details, staff's personal details, marks, attendance etc would come under Data Management, while managing the article written by students, information published on their website, and sharing documents and presentations as mentioned in the quoted article would essentially form Content Management.

DataBox is a tool for managing the data at school efficiently, and do not confuse it with content management systems like Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how DataBox could help manage data at your school contact us.

Making Google Apps Education Edition more usable!

2010-10-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

One of the most remarkable innovations in recent times, I would say, is definitely Google apps, as it is so accessible, so easy to use, so easy to deploy and it is so economical. Most of all, for small business like ours it's free.

Google apps education edition adds yet another dimension to educational institutions being completely free to use. The world has already witnessed a dramatic adaptation of Google apps by educational institutions, and to add to it around 8 million students are using Google apps as on date.

In spite of the fact that Google apps provides e-mail and document sharing facilities, it is still a product designed for businesses and it has not been specially customised for the needs of educational institutions. Google addresses this by adopting open standards and releasing APIs for Independent Software Developers like us to build a custom applications to make Google apps more usable and more relevant for the needs of the target domain.

DataBox utilises the platform provided by Google apps for making data management at schools much more easier and better organised. For more information on how DataBox could be utilised for managing data at your school, contact us.

Circular Product Development Strategy

2010-09-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Being a product designer, especially if the product is in the early stages of development, the number of ways in which the product could be taken to the next step could be overwhelming. If we could have a framework to guide in choosing the changes or features that could be possibly incorporated into the next release could be of immense help.

I had been using a simple framework, which I learned from products at Google. I call it "Circular Product Development Strategy".

If you have been closely watching the evolution of Gmail or Google docs from the beginning, at no point of time you would have had the feeling that the product is incomplete. I do agree with the fact that Google docs while it was first released, had very little features compared to its counterpart Microsoft Excel, in spite of that the combination of features could give you an impression that it contains enough features to get started with.

So, coming to the point, as a product manager, responsible for product design, I'm sure you would have among your list, certain features that are more important, certain features that are more time-consuming to implement yet immediately required, certain features that could be more visually appealing and certain other features which you would personally love to work on first. The question is, which one to choose?

The verdict: slice through the features and create a combination which would make the product look as if it is complete, that is what I call as circular. Once this releases over, now the time has come to draw a bigger circle around the first one, so in due course of time each one of releases must look like circles around circles thus forming a concentric circle of releases, giving the user the feeling of completeness at every stage of development.

Too much concentration on one area of your product would make it more vertical and would threaten the balance of your application and hence it would not be appealing for certain percentage of your uses, the aversion of which lies in the hands of the product manager.

So remember, concentric circles could possibly your neck!

Core Competency

2010-09-29T21:23:00.001-07:00

Core competency, as defined by Wikipedia is, "a specific factor that a business sees as being central to the way it, or its employees, works."

For a quality to be called as the core competency of a company, it must satisfy the following criteria:

It is not easy for competitors to imitate
It can be leveraged widely to many products and markets.

Sagarius Software Solutions, being a data management and communications company has got the following code competencies:

Build spreadsheet based data management system.
Develop applications on Google App Engine.
Design simple, clean, intuitive and user-friendly user interface.
Product design to fit in to wider variety of target customers.
Ability to operate with a very small team.

Thorough examination would reveal certain other competencies too, hope to update the list soon.

Marketing or Selling!

2010-09-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

We have been so much into direct selling such that almost every one of the marketing executive I have ever met could hardly differentiate between selling and marketing.

In this society we live, marketing is all about carrying a pamphlet, a visiting card and a demo kit and to work in straight away to the customer's doors and give the best attempt at entering it with a few soft skills like knocking the door softly or hustle with a low voice "helloooooo, any one innnnn".

If the scene is a bit different, as in the case of corporate selling, standing in front of the gate and trying to convince the watchmen that you are someone really important and you'd like to see the big cat inside on a mission critical issue.

In either case, be it the housewife or the watchmen, they are as proficient in getting rid of the executive as the executive is proficient in bypassing them.

At the end of the day, it is nothing but a Cold War between two parties, who are supposed to make exchanges that are mutually beneficial. In order to make a sale, or in order to make a transaction or in order to make an "EXCHANGE", I must have something you want and you must have something I want, only if this condition is met, there is any chance that a sale could be made.

So, if marketing executives could understand this, plenty of man-hours could be saved.

To conclude, I would like to say that, "selling is the process of trying to make some money out of a person and marketing on the other hand deals with identifying what the customer really wants such that he would pay for it himself".

DataBox: Under the hood

2010-09-26T21:34:00.001-07:00

Time and time again marketing experts has been using the same metaphor for explaining the selling concept, "people buying drills doesn't want drills, they need holes".

Now we are developing a product for Data Management and Communication, but promising the client of managing the data or to provide them a better mode of communication are just one side of the coin.

What's the other-side?

Almost every institution though they have been registered in the name of trust or a not-for-profit organisation, there is a business motivation behind each one of them. All of these organisations are on a constant lookout for maximising their profit.

In order to maximise their profit, there is a strong need for them to increase the reputation, to provide a strong stakeholder value and to reflect all these on the admissions the successive year.

If you could come up with a product which would enable them to increase the number of admissions the next year, the management is happy and that is all they are in need of. The main objective of marketing is to make the product as relevant as possible, so as to make selling superfluous.

Technically speaking, DataBox is a Data Management and Communication solution but under the hood DataBox is all about making the parents feel that individual attention is being paid to the children and they are being well taken care of at school, thus creating a strong value proposition for the money they pay towards the tuition fee, which in turn would increase the satisfaction therefore creating an image for the school centred around the children.

So, the next time I meet a client, you would have probably guessed, on what point the discussion would be centred.

IE support for DataBox!

2010-09-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

Today we are so excited as the first stable version of Google Code Frame is released.

For those of you who doesn't know what it means, a few words for you.

The biggest challenge any web application developer face is the compatibility between different browsers and the toughest of all is to make your application work with Internet Explorer which, in spite of being the most used browser, is also the most non-standard complaint browser on earth.

Google Code Frame is an open source plug-in for Internet Explorer which once added, would make IE use Google Chrome rendering engine for displaying the web applications which requires advanced rendering capabilities.

Until now, DataBox does not support Internet Explorer for obvious reasons and it was one of the biggest setbacks for the product as most people in India are diehard fans of IE.

Thanks Google Code Frame developers! DataBox would now support all leading browsers including Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8!

Voila!

The reverse approach for Going International!

2010-09-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

We have been developing a product called DataBox, and to put it in layman terms it is a data management system built over Google spreadsheets.

Spreadsheet is a product which is being used to by people belonging to almost every domain and it is also applicable for people with varying degree of technical expertise. But when you build an application over it or add to the functionality of it the scope of the product reduces.

Mathematically speaking, if you add infinite features to an application the applicability of it tends to zero, meaning the target audience will be so narrow such that nobody would be the beneficiary of the product. On the contrary, if I do not add any functionality to my product (i.e. leaving the Google spreadsheet alone) the scope of the product is universal.

Where are we now?

DataBox has enough functionality to make it usable for Indian market. Right now we are planning to make it applicable for international market.

A traditional approach would be to add more functionality to it to make it relevant to a wider audience, but it is far from truth. To make it widely applicable, reduce the features, trim the existing features to be applicable to more people, you'd do less work, in turn making it more applicable, in turn reaching more people, in turn reaping more profits.

Sometimes LESS IS MORE!

PS: Useful products are which some people find useful.

Designing applications over Google Apps

2010-09-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

We have gone a long way in developing an application over Google apps, and there is a whole community out there who are in love with using applications that integrates well with their Google apps deployment. As we have designed the application for educational institutions, needless to say Google apps education edition has got a special community of users and administrators hungry to utilise Google apps in innovative ways to promote education.

Google has also created a dedicated marketplace for selling applications that are designed to work with Google apps. In spite of that we are trying to sell our product to the local market, in which most of the clients are not even aware of Google apps.

It is like designing an iPhone application and trying to sell it across the street. It doesn't make much sense, is it?

Hitting the market isn't everything, hitting the right one is ...

Our next step: Listing DataBox on Google Apps Marketplace

PS: What if our app evokes immense response,, could Sagarius become a million dollar company overnight? fingers-crossed :)

Increasing Market Demand (function)

2010-09-16T22:12:00.001-07:00

Recently I was reading Marketing Management and I was surprised to know that demand is not constant and it is a function which is under the influence of the marketing executive.

To put it in simple terms, for a given product, if the price tends to infinity the demand becomes zero, on the contrary, if the price tends to zero, the demand tends to infinity.

In the above continuum, if you could wisely chose the price, you could dramatically increase the sales volume (of course, the price must be approved by the Finance Department, else every marketing executive would bring in infinite sales by giving the product for free)

Moral of the story: Demand is a function and it's never a constant. Sometimes, understanding of simple concepts like these could make a significant impact.

-Marketing Team, Sagarius

Inclusive of all taxes

2010-09-04T03:34:00.001-07:00

Recently, I have started working with the pricing for the product we have developed and since then I could feel the heat of setting up a price for a product.

Since college I always overlooked the reason for a separate finance department in any company and I always wonder, what graduates at colleges like Indian Institute of Management would do when they actually say they are into finance.

I have always grown up with the notion that, finance is all about maintaining the receivables and payables, and being brought up in the country like India, in which people think who doesn't do a technical job isn't actually doing anything, my perception wasn't any different from the masses.

Now I have learnt a bit of finance and we have also set up the price for our product. I was happy that we have successfully closed two deals without price negotiation. It is yet another aspect of Indian economy that, everything has to be negotiated else you're going to lose money.

The very fact that we have signed contracts without price negotiation could mean two things, one being, we have got the price right or the price has been set too low. While the former is okay, the later is something which has to be addressed. But one thing we are clear is that, at Sagarius we don't negotiate on price.

Be it high or low, one suggestion I could do for start-ups is that, once you are confident on the price, you could get a better control over it, over a period of time, it will give you finance department considerable strength in determining a tag for whatever you do.

I always get irritated when people say there is a 10.3% service tax extra at the end of the negotiation, so we also made sure that whatever be the tag, it would also be inclusive of all taxes.

Maybe including the taxes with the price might make the figure a bit fatter, but at the end of the day your customer would definitely feel the heat, at least make him happy.

Summary:

At Sagarius, we don't negotiate on price and charges are inclusive of all taxes.

DataBox nominated for Architecture Excellence Awards

2010-08-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

DataBox (the product we are working on) was nominated under four categories for ICMG-International Awards on Most Innovative Architecture 2010 held in Bangalore on 27th July 2010.

The details about the awards can be found here:

http://www.icmgworld.com/corp/resource/architecture_awards.asp

"Sagarius Software Solutions" could be found nominated in the following categories:

Future IT (Web 2.0, Cloud and other emerging technologies)

http://www.icmgworld.com/corp/resource/tc_Future_IT.html

Open Source Technologies

http://www.icmgworld.com/corp/resource/tc_open_source.html

Customer Oriented Business Models

http://www.icmgworld.com/corp/resource/bc_customer.html

Best Green Architecture

http://www.icmgworld.com/corp/resource/ec_best_green.html

-Team Sagarius

"Sneak peek" e-school pamphlet

2010-04-13T00:45:00.000-07:00

Hurray! E-school v1.0b released!

2010-03-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

I am happy to announce that the first version of e-school has been released!

E-school was developed with the vision of creating an online ecosystem which would benefit the parents, teachers, students, principal and the society alike. Our objective is to act as a one-stop solution for all the IT related needs of the school and we have barely scratched the surface.

Basically the first release would act as a content management system, through which the school can publish the complete information about the school, alongside adding news, events and photos from time to time. One of the major issues we would like to address through this release is "outdated websites" which hardly reflects the present state of the school.

The technologies used has been carefully selected and we have used the latest we could lay our hands on. E-school runs on Google App Engine (cloud computing infrastructure for developing high-performance applications) and the entire front-end has been developed using GWT (Google Web Toolkit).

The project has been in development since eight months now and has come out well. User experience has been given paramount importance and the application could be handled even by a novice user.

I hereby acknowledge the efforts of the development team for completing the project successfully in spite of the inherent difficulties arising out of developing a cloud computing application. Special thanks to the Australian team for being patient in spite of the unforeseen delay in releasing the project.

Last but not the least, we salute the open source community upon whose shoulders we stand!

The journey was quite tough, but it's a nice feeling though!

Nisha Sowdri NM,

A Sagarian, Sagarius Software Solutions, India

Goddess -- Product or Commodity

2009-07-28T19:06:00.001-07:00

About the difference between a product and a commodity...

All of us are together trying to come up with a design for our project, and and as obviously we are in the initial stages of development, the understanding of certain key concepts could play a vital role in the way we shape our project.

Hence at this point of time I would like to tell you something about the difference between a product and a commodity. At the outset both might appear to denote the same thing, but careful examination would reveal a subtle difference between these two.

The commodities is what you manufacture in the industry and the product is something you sell in your stores. To make it clear, I would like to cite an example: Once the CEO of Revlon, one of the leading manufacturers of cosmetics commented that, "In the factory, Revlon manufactures cosmetics. While in the stores, we sell hope! ". The point is people are not interested in the commodity itself, instead the product. People buy Revlon not just because it is a chemical composition, which is the outcome of years together of research and development; even the advertisements does not tell anything about the technical specifications of the product or how it produces the results it promises to produce. Invariably, almost any advertisement shows that the girl using the product finally ends up having better looks in turn better relationships/job/boyfriend.

As you know the cosmetic doesn't have anything to do with a relationship, a job, or a boyfriend, you got it right this time, the reason it is shown is, the advertiser is trying to instil a kind of hope that Revlon could make their lives better.

What is our commodity?

We are planning to develop a portal which would act as

Student Information System,

School Management System,

Targeted Social Networking System, whatever..

What's our Product?

A better future for the kid;

The concept of the product must not be confused with the application of the project.

Bridging the gap between parents and teachers is the application of the project and it does not provide the reason why someone has to buy it, and hence that is just the application and it's not our product.

The commodity is always centred around the manufacturer, and is limited by the ability/talents of the manufacture. A commodity is the answer for -- What can I do? While a product is the answer for -- What does the customer want?

Always think in terms of the product, because remember nobody would be interested in your commodity, no parent on earth wishes to have a chat with neither the teacher nor the principal. Instead, they are just interested in the future of their children.

Better gear up to come up with a better product rather than just a project..

Deadlines and Targets

2009-07-28T19:05:00.001-07:00

About how to making things happen rapidly.

Before starting any work, it is always a good practice to prepare a not exactly a document, but at least a small written statement which dictates the purpose of the task in hand(Objective) and how exactly he planning to achieve what is stated(Action Plan) and in what duration you are planning to accomplish it(Timeline).

The above statement could be precisely split into three different parts. The first one states about why you are doing a particular task, the second one speaks about the way using which you are planning to reach your destination, and the last and the most important thing speaks about the duration, without which it just becomes a description and not a plan.

As the main objective of this article is to make things happen at a rapid pace, we are obviously talking about the time within which we could accomplish any given task. Hence in spite of the fact that all the three aspects of a plan are equally important, we are gonna limit the discussion to the significance of the last point. What's that is more important about the time and what is the difference between a deadline and a target?

As we continue to exist, we are exposed to different kinds of task on a day-to-day basis, and if we strictly go by science, even sleeping is considered as a work, hence that to becomes a task. As the human life as a whole is bifurcated into two distinct segments, namely personal and professional, all professional work are time bound, and we naturally tend to do the work as our colleagues in the organisation do it or we try to give our best shot at it, to complete it within the given time. But as against the above argument, all personal works are always procrastinated and they are not completed on time. The very reason for this is that, there are always no timelines associated with our personal work. Though we do attach time for certain task, we are seldom penalised for not meeting the deadlines.

When you are a businessman, especially if you're a part of the management team, you can not exactly distinguish between your personal and professional tasks. So what's the big deal? When personal and professional life mixes, things are taken more personally than professionally. As a direct consequence of this perception, almost all the tasks are never assigned any timeline or as I mentioned earlier, you're not penalised for not doing it on time.

"To err is human", and not keeping up with time could also be cited as one of the basic traits of the human species. If that's the case what's all this fuss about? One of the basic assumptions of this article is that, you are a professional who play a vital role in the functioning and the growth of the organisation i.e you're a part of the management team. Hence in this case, your speed determines the rate of growth of the entire company and your ability to complete the work on time determines your speed.

Remember, procrastination is a disease! Hence never put of till tomorrow what you can do today.

Having come this far, it could be a bit confusing while we haven't discussed about the difference between deadline and a target. Here comes it,,

When you try to complete a task before the arrival of a particular time, it means you are actually trying not to mess with the deadline. Deadlines usually occurs in professional engagements. Deadline is something which is imposed upon you by external entity, and invariably humans tend to hate deadlines, the reason being they seldom meet deadlines.

But when we say that its a target -- goal or aim (what ever you call it), it means you wish to complete something within a particular duration. It comes from within!

Though deadline and target could be used interchangeably and they mean the same in most of the context, there is a subtle difference and it could be understood by paying attention to the above two statements.

Deadline - try to complete

Target/Goal/Aim - wish to complete

While deadline could be a burden, target could be guideline which will give you a reason to act now and to act fast. So remember to always prepare an action plan before you take a task and try to associate a particular timeline with it, and better be prepared to stick on to it.

Sagarians are independent, I don't wish to have deadlines imposed on whatever we do, insteads let us all cultivate the habit of setting ourselves targets/goals/aims, which could act as a catalyst in bringing out our endeavours much sooner and much better!

Hence before taking a task in hand, if you know the objective, it means to know precisely where to go. If you have sorted out the Action Plan, you have read the map. And finally if you have defined the timelines, it means you know at what speed you are gonna travel.

Guess, this article would help you to pick up the apt vehicle, best route and the right speed the next time you set out on a voyage. Good luck!

Next time you do something, don't try to do it instead wish to do it! Sagarias could either be a plane or a cycle! What do you think we could possibly be? A Jet? (grinning)