jugad2 - Vasudev Ram on software innovation

Crashlytics for mobile crash analysis

2012-06-02T04:00:00.000+05:30

http://beta.crashlytics.com/

Crashlytics is a "mobile crash reporting and analysis as a service" company.

"Mobile apps crash over 1 billion times a day" - you're telling me :)

Seems like a good idea ...

Inspired by nature.
- dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

Google Blockly, web-based graphical programming language

2012-06-01T04:45:00.001+05:30

Seen via a tweet by @jeresig.

"Blockly is a web-based, graphical programming language. Users can drag blocks together to build an application. No typing required."

http://code.google.com/p/google-blockly/

http://code.google.com/p/google-blockly/wiki/FAQs

http://neil.fraser.name/software/blockly/demos/maze/

Seems new and may be unstable. But interesting.

- Vasudev Ram

Inspired by nature.
- dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

Gawk.it is useful to search for blog posts and comments

2012-05-30T02:33:00.000+05:30

Seen via this recent post on avc.com by @fredwilson:

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/05/gawkit.html

Gawk.it:

http://gawk.it

It is by Kevin Marshall (@falicon) who earlier created http://knowabout.it, among other things.

I tried Gawk.it out a bit and it works. Has some issues but of course it is very new and Kevin is working on them.

- Vasudev Ram | @vasudevram

Duda Mobile for a quick mobile version of your web site

2012-05-29T04:28:00.000+05:30

Check http://dudamobile.com

Duda Mobile has a wizard that lets you quickly create a mobile version of your web site. The idea and implementation seem good, though it may have some issues.

I tried it out for my business web site http://dancingbison.com and it worked okay.
Here is the resulting mobile site URL:

http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/dancingbison

Try browsing that site on your mobile phone. I did, and it works.

I read that they had a tie-up with Google somewhat recently by which they offer users a free mobile web site for one year, or something like that.

Inspired by nature.
- dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

Shopcade, another social commerce startup

2012-05-29T04:13:00.000+05:30

After recently blogging about PowerReviews and BazaarVoice, it was an interesting coincidence to read about another social commerce company, Shopcade (short for shopping arcade, I guess :-)

http://www.shopcade.com/

GigaOm article about Shopcade:

http://gigaom.com/2012/05/25/with-new-u-s-presence-shopcade-expands-its-social-commerce-business-model/

Inspired by nature.
- dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

BazaarVoice acquiring PowerReviews for $151 million

2012-05-29T04:07:00.000+05:30

I had blogged recently about PowerReviews, a social commerce company. Was interested to see it is being acquired:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/24/bazaarvoice-acquires-powerreviews/

- dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

The real Mountain View :) - Swiss innovation

2012-05-28T08:00:00.001+05:30

http://thenextweb.com/eu/2012/05/27/an-inside-look-at-switzerlands-seriously-ambitious-startup-scene/

Gun.io - Get paid to develop open source software

2012-05-28T06:18:00.000+05:30

Gun.io - Get paid to develop open source software

See: http://gun.io/about/

- dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

PySide Becomes a Qt Add-on

2012-05-28T03:58:00.001+05:30

PySide integrating with the Qt site

PowerReviews.com

2012-05-28T03:42:00.001+05:30

By Vasudev Ram

www.powerreviews.com

They claim to be "the world's largest social commerce network".

Haven't checked them out, but they seem interesting based on these links:

About

Leadership

Featured customers

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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SaaS Commerce Network, global business network for SaaS apps

2012-05-28T02:49:00.001+05:30

By Vasudev Ram

Saw this via Eqentia:

This could be a big deal for SaaS app vendors:

Excerpts from the article:

"SaaS Markets has unveiled a major global business network for Software-as-a-Service Web applications, the SaaS Commerce Network or SCN. The network, which covers at least 71 million businesses, can be advantageously used by SaaS application developers to distribute their SaaS based apps across the world."

"An application provider will receive instant publicity in 32 stores across the globe, in 23 different countries by becoming a member of the SCN. SaaS Markets is working to increase the exposure to at least 100 stores in 2012. Businesses can find out the latest app for simplifying any process in a rapid manner with SCN, where hundreds of new SaaS apps will be introduced every month. SaaS providers are therefore provided with a rapid and simplified method to market their SaaS app to a worldwide business network."

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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PDF Explained - an O'Reilly book

2012-05-28T02:26:00.000+05:30

By Vasudev Ram

A book titled PDF Explained has been published by O'Reilly Media in December 2011. The author is John Whitington, who is the founder of Coherent Graphics Ltd, and "the author of one of the few complete PDF implementations, CamlPDF, which implements the PDF file format from the bit level up".

I had come across CamlPDF (which, as the name implies, is a PDF software product written in Caml, specifically, in the OCaml language) and its set of command-line PDF tools, a while ago (and may have tweeted or blogged about it then), but got to know about this book only today. Even though newer technologies such as EPUB are picking up (EPUB3 has been released), PDF has been and still is in very widespread use worldwide, and is not
likely to go away anytime soon; plus, its goals are not exactly the same as those of EPUB, so EPUB is not a complete replacement for PDF. So this book may be worth checking out for those who are or wish to be involved in PDF processing at a more than casual level.

Coherent Graphics develops command line PDF tools for Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix, and the Proview PDF Editor for Mac OS X.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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Causes, platform for activism and philanthropy

2012-05-27T04:17:00.000+05:30

By Vasudev Ram

Causes is a platform for activism and philanthropy, co-founded by Sean Parker (founding president of Facebook) and 3 others. This is the Causes team. It has a long list of investors.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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OpenGarden - share your Internet access among devices and friends

2012-05-27T01:10:00.000+05:30

By Vasudev Ram

OpenGarden seems like an interesting concept (and implementation). It allows you to "share your mobile Internet among all your devices". Got to know about it via this @fredwilson post:

Open Garden

There are also articles about Open Garden on GigaOm and CNET:

http://gigaom.com/2012/05/22/open-garden-lets-mobile-users-cultivate-a-crowdsourced-mesh-network/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57438789-94/open-garden-seeks-to-crowdsource-mobile-connectivity/

If you want to follow what Open Garden is doing, one way is via their blog:

http://opengarden.net

I was interested to see that Stanislav Shalunov, an Internet architect and earlier with BitTorrent among other things, is a co-founder and the CTO of Open Garden. I had briefly corresponded with him on email some time earlier.

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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test post. ignore.

2012-05-24T08:43:00.001+05:30

test 123

Most interesting thing about YCombinator right now ...

2012-05-23T03:35:00.001+05:30

... is its business model:

http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/yc-y-combinator-scaling/

Yottaa, anti-lean process to speed up web sites

2012-05-22T20:57:00.001+05:30

http://m.xconomy.com/5097/show/7f303a92bfc957ef57b11f7ddb4ec96f/

Yottaa is using an "anti-lean" approach to building infrastructure software to speed up clients' web sites. Akamai is sort of a competitor. Akamai recently acquired Blaze Software (blaze.io) which I blogged about earlier.

- Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com

GTar, the iPhone-powered guitar

2012-05-22T13:36:00.001+05:30

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/incident/gtar-the-first-guitar-that-anybody-can-play

Five Whys help with startups' problems

2012-05-21T19:31:00.001+05:30

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669738/eric-ries-to-get-to-the-root-of-a-hard-problem-just-ask-why-five-times

Wanna be a rockstar programmer?

2012-05-21T03:58:00.001+05:30

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444661

All time favorite Ask HN threads

2012-05-21T03:51:00.001+05:30

Seen recently on Hacker News.

"Ask HN: Favorite HN threads of all time":

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3996652

At least dozens of potentially interesting links and meta-links about all things related to startups and life, all from Hacker News under the Ask HN "category" of posts.
Should give you enough reading for weeks or months.

- Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com

Glenford Myers, software testing guru, is worth reading even now

2012-05-17T04:47:00.001+05:30

This blog post was a result of the frustration I have been feeling due to Android apps on my phone crashing, many times. Also see some of my recent tweets on the same.

Wonder when (if ever) people in general and software developers in particular are going to realize the importance of quality and that Quality Is Free (google the book of that name).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenford_Myers

I have used the principles of his book The Art of Software Testing to good advantage in projects I've led and worked on.

The self-test(ing:) quiz at the start of the 1st edition is mind-opening.

The concept of equivalence classes in testing is another good one.

Nowadays there doesn't even seem to be any discussion of software skills improvement topics in the current (popular) literature. Wondering if it is the economy or something else which is responsible for that ...

- Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com

"Jump!". "How high?"

2012-05-15T07:23:00.001+05:30

http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

DoesWhat.com has lots of startup interviews

2012-05-15T06:59:00.001+05:30

http://doeswhat.com/

"What Are You Going to Do With That?"

2012-05-15T06:57:00.001+05:30

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Are-You-Going-to-Do-With/124651/

Madly good article.