Journey

Doris Day - Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)

2015-01-27T11:10:00.001-08:00

Welcoming 2015 with Life of Pi and Life of Manmohan!

2015-01-27T11:05:00.001-08:00

It was start of 2015 and It was by accident, I suddenly picked up a book that was long pending on my bookshelf for almost last 3 years. I borrowed it from a colleague from office when I first heard about a movie on the same book. It was "Life of Pi"

I never really showed a courage to pick it up and read it. But thanks to new year without any plan. Only good thing to do was to pick up something to read. I started reading book midway not knowing whether I would read it or not. But fortunately I did continue and completed it. It was great accomplishment as I think I read and read after long time.

So good start always a good for something. So I got hold of one more new book. thanks again to one more colleague of mine, It was again accidental..not mine ..but its book name "The Accidental Prime Minister", A memoir written by Mr Sanjaya Baru, PMs ex-media advisor. I still remember when this book was unleashed. Media and Politicians did jump on it, taking it in all wrong sense, reading selectively through it to malign Mr. Prime Minister. Anyways when I got hold of it, It was good read in the sense, One knows a lot about PMO, highest decision making body of India. As I always believed to not believe history as its always one sided view of things. This particular history book tells Baru side of story. He succeeded in telling it which keeps you interested in reading the book. I finished this book in 3 days in whatever time I could gather from my other tasks.

This book may be offending or pleasing for person of pro or anti congress respectively, but for person like me its just quite exciting to get to know about how things happen infact unleash.

Somehow I do have respect for Dr Singh, I dont how it is there but its there. so I would like to end this blog by adding excerpt from Dr's undelivered Speech at vote of confidence for Nuclear deal, Hope you get my point.

--- Dr Manmohan Singh ---

I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village.

Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future.

Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village.

The greatness of democracy is that we are all birds of passage! We are here today, gone tomorrow! But in the brief time that the people of India entrust us with this responsibility, it is our duty to be honest and sincere in the discharge of these responsibilities. As it is said in our sacred texts, we are responsible for our actions and we must act without coveting the rewards of such action. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make.

====

ET in defence of Dr. Manmohan Singh

2014-09-12T20:08:00.001-07:00

1) India's release from nuclear apartheid

2) 38% fall in the maternal mortality rate

3) 28% fall in the infant mortality

4) Doubling of the nations installed power generation capacity

5) The fastest decline in poverty in India's history,

6) Structural diversification of the economy that bought down the percentage of the workforce engaged in agriculture below 50%

Shared from Google Keep

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Gotchas - Part 9

2014-07-17T22:55:00.003-07:00

Finally the last final part telling about reliability of Push notifications.

Push Notification Gotchas

Push Notifications needs internet or Data connection!

Your recepients need to have data connection or internet on their phone to receive push notifications. You can not identify the reason why your recepient didnt receive it.

Push Notifications Are Short!

You can only send limited data over push notifications. You need to have extra mechanism to pull more data from server.

Push Notifications Are Unreliable!

They are not reliable! There is no guarantee that push notifications will actually be delivered,

even if the APNS server accepted them.

They can be expensive!

Adding push functionality to your app is fairly easy and inexpensive if you own the data, but can be expensive if you have a lot of users or data you need to poll.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Whats in Market - Part 8

2014-07-17T22:54:00.004-07:00

Whats In Market

Various Push Apps on Apple Iphone

Update: I have taken this from some other article as it is. 'I' or 'me' used below is not 'sandip'

Market Pulse

While the apps that currently use push notifications are handy, I hope that developers will take this opportunity to do some things above and beyond your typical “message waiting” notifiers. E*Trade, Zillow and a few others get the idea. I’m waiting for the app that allows me to get notified of anything I decide I need to be notified about. With all the open APIs out there today, it’s bound to come along.

Things that need to be pushed :

1. Allow me to be notified when my car or house alarm goes off.

2. Google, let me be notified of a new Google Alert I have set up.

3. How about instead of giving me a big vibrating brick of plastic at the restaurant while I wait for a table, let my phone connect to your system and you can ping me instead.

4. I’d also like to know immediately when albert hits another grand slam – or when any other sporting event I’m interested in occurs.

5. What about when I need two days of rain-free weather, within specific degrees, in order to paint a fence or deck. Should I really have to check the weather forecast every day? I’d rather have an app that did the work for me.
Sooner or later, push notification of almost anything will be a reality, making our digital lives even more real-time. What type of alerts would you like pushed to your iPhone?

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Android - Part 7

2014-07-17T22:53:00.001-07:00

Android C2DM (Cloud to Device Messaging) Framework

details

Here are the primary characteristics of Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM):

It allows third-party application servers to send lightweight messages to their Android applications. The messaging service is not designed for sending a lot of user content via the messages. Rather, it should be used to tell the application that there is new data on the server, so that the application can fetch it.

C2DM makes no guarantees about delivery or the order of messages. So, for example, while you might use this feature to tell an instant messaging application that the user has new messages, you probably would not use it to pass the actual messages.

An application on an Android device doesn’t need to be running to receive messages. The system will wake up the application via Intent broadcast when the the message arrives, as long as the application is set up with the proper broadcast receiver and permissions.

It does not provide any built-in user interface or other handling for message data. C2DM simply passes raw message data received straight to the application, which has full control of how to handle it. For example, the application might post a notification, display a custom user interface, or silently sync data.

It requires devices running Android 2.2 or higher that also have the Market application installed. However, you are not limited to deploying your applications through Market.

It uses an existing connection for Google services. This requires users to set up their Google account on their mobile devices.

Components:

1) Mobile Device

2) Third Party Application Server

3) C2DM servers

Credentials

1) SenderId - developers emailId used during app registration

2) Application ID - app id

3) Registration Id - An ID issued by the C2DM servers to the Android application that allows it to receive messages.

4) Google User Account -

5) Sender Auth Token

Life Cycle Flow

Here are the primary processes involved in cloud-to-device messaging:

Enabling C2DM. An Android application running on a mobile device registers to receive messages.

Sending a message. A third-party application server sends messages to the device.

Receiving a message. An Android application receives a message from a C2DM server.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Nokia - Part 6

2014-07-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

Nokia Drop -

Nokia provides Push Notification API, supported in latest phones.

The Notifications API makes it easy to add real-time push notifications to your client applications running on Nokia devices. As shown in the diagram below, applications access the Nokia-hosted Notification Server through two separate interfaces that you integrate in your applications:

The Service API provides access to the Notification Server through an HTTP REST interface. Your service uses this interface to send notifications.

The Client API allows applications on the device to register and receive notifications from the Notification Server. The Client API is available for Qt on Symbian devices. QML support will also be available in the near future.

[Nokia developers website]

Typical lifecycle of a notification

The diagram below shows the typical lifecycle of a notification.

Before an application can receive notifications, it must register with the Notification Server and request a Notification ID. This Notification ID uniquely identifies both the end user and the target client application and is used by the Notification Server to route notifications.

The client application then shares this Notification ID with its respective service; the server now knows where to send the notification.

When a notification is ready to be sent, the service sends it to the Notification Server using the Service API, providing the notification data (also called payload) and the Notification ID.

The Notification Server sends the notification to the client application.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Apple - Part 5

2014-07-17T22:50:00.001-07:00

Apple Push Notification Service

Called APNS in short, also supported by OSx Lion.

The server-side component can send the app a push notification! There are three things a push notification can do:

Display a short text message

Play a brief sound

Set a number in a badge on the app’s icon

Main Roleplayers:

1) Iphone or Mac Application

2) APNS server from Apple

3) Your Notification Server.

What does it need?

1) Iphone Device Token

2) App Id

3) Iphone to be registered with APNS, enabled push notification

4) Your Server registered with APNS

What You need for Push Notification?

An iOS Developer Program membership. - You need to make a new App ID and provisioning profile for each app that uses push, as well as an SSL certificate for the server. You do this at the iOS Provisioning Portal.

A push notification is a short message that consists of the device token, a payload, and a few other bits and bytes.

Example:

{

   "aps":

   {

   "alert": "Hello, world!",

   "sound": "default"

   }

}

Official guide for Push Notification from Apple

Each notification has a maximum size of 256 bytes, which makes it very efficient for services with small data allowances (such as mobile phones

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Blackberry - Part 4

2014-07-17T22:49:00.002-07:00

Blackberry Email Push Notification

Blackberry PNS - details

The BlackBerry® Push Service is an essential component of the real-time, always-on experience of BlackBerry smartphones. It offers an incredibly efficient and reliable way of sending information to your users. It also allows your application to process information in the background and alert users.

Available to all developers

The BlackBerry Push Service is available to all developers and web content providers. By using push technology, you can make your app more engaging and help turn it into a Super App

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - How - Part 3

2014-07-17T22:48:00.002-07:00

How does it work?

1) Mobile Developer will integrate PNS Api In your App.

2) App user registers for Push Notification with OS Provided PN Servers.

3) App user gives your application server access to send Push Notification In-App.

4) Your server sends Notification to OS Provided PN Server.

5) OS Provides PN server sends notification to receiver application in end device.

How does it look like?

http://www.abolkog.com/portal/images/stories/android_notificaions.png

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - What Part 2

2014-07-17T22:46:00.002-07:00

What is it?

Push, or server push, describes a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull, where the request for the transmission of information is initiated by the receiver or client.[WikiPedia]

For ages, Telecom technology SMS is being used for Push notification, its smpp protocol on SS7 networks. Email is also kind of Push Notification using SMTP.

Blackberry or RIM is using it for longtime for Email Notifications while Apple generalized it Now Android and Nokia are trying put their foot forward to enhance its usage. It primarily runs using HTTP/TCP/IP network protocol.

Genaral Use

Push services are often based on information preferences expressed in advance. This is called a publish/subscribe model. A client might "subscribe" to various information "channels". Whenever new content is available on one of those channels, the server would push that information out to the user. [wikipedia]

Techniques

HTTP Push Server:

HTML5 is the WebSockets API, which allows a web server and client to communicate over a full-duplex TCP connection.

Pushlet

The server takes advantage of persistent HTTP connections and leaves the response perpetually "open" (i.e. it never terminates the response), effectively fooling the browser into continuing in "loading" mode after the initial page load would normally be complete.

Long Polling

Long polling is a variation of the traditional polling technique and allows emulation of an information push from a server to a client.(comet programming)

SMS

Andriod application can read all received SMS before it goes to inbox.

WebSockets

HTML5 browsers

Mobile OS/Phone leaders are providing Push notification built into their offerings.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Part 1

2014-07-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

Sometime in 2011, I came to know about push notification being used in mobile ecosystem. I did a short research on this topic. I had made some notes at that time, now in 2014, things are evolved a lot. Publishing my research on blog so that in curious tech historian can use it their studies.

Its quite a long data sheet so I would be publishing it in parts.

I set the agenda first, here is the basic questions of topics I had tried to discover

1) What is Push Notification?

2) How does it work?

3) How does it look like?

4) Does it supported by different major CellPhone OS providers like IPhone, Android, Nokia, Blackberry? Yes!

5) Any Thirdparty Push Service Providers? Yes

a) Urban Airship provides SDK which developer can use while creating their apps.

b) PyAPNS - daemon

c) Xtify

d) Appoxee

e) Pusher / spire.io/socket.io

f) PubNub [In-App, PNS doesnt work when app is closed]

g) App42( Shephertz)

6) Does they charge for Push Notification service? yes but minimal

7) What are use cases?

8) How can we use it?

9) What will be the business case?

10) Is it possible work out something which connects with other solutions?

11) Whats in Market

12) Will SMS gets obsolete, because of Push Notifications on Mobile?

In following blogs, I will be publishing answers to above questions.

Entrepreneurship - Game of Chess or Chase!

2014-06-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

This is piece of imaginative writing drawing comparisons with real experiences. Yes, its abt entrepreneurship and specifically for first timer from first time drawing comparisons from characters of game of chess.

Before I start here is some improvization in the context!

How many roles a entrepreneur must play,
Before you call him an entrepreneur,
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind!

- Bob Dylan - Verse extended in context of entrepreneurship

Here is the original & famous song :

Let the game of chess and chase begin.

1) Pawn

You are star, you are a leader, you have to fight and win battles yourself. You have shown the courage to start on your own but still you are lame pawn. Do you have enemy? No you particularly in your own world, toying with your own ideas, only person can kill you or your venture is you yourself, it might be out of boredom or you do suicidal steps.

2) Group of Pawns

You bring along other pawns after you are able to survive 1st step and successfully bring along other pawns. Do you have enemy? Still no, you practice with your teammates and may have some opponent pawn for a small practice fights. There is high risk that you and your team can self destroy with petty fights or differences.

3) You be a knight

You emerge as a leader of small group of pawns. Now there may be other threats might be lurking where you may get stumped due to financial management getting new pieces in your army. Your aim is to move ahead to get other sub pieces like rook, knight and move ahead to role of king/queen or bishop.

4) You be a king or queen or Bishop

Nnow you are in top leadership. You can go for kill using your special skills. Or get killed in goose chase of hockey stick graph. :) Lot to write here but will write in my spare time.

5) Go Buddha! Detach!

Come out of execution, let experts take the ship ahead, you be a helper and beneficiary.

You be a chess player and all the pawns are under your mercy. #investor or #board. But thing is that you cant go to step 5 directly without doing aboves 4 steps, in real life.

Story can be improvized or may have some gaps, but its first cut. I will keep it updated.

This is not 1984 and ...

2014-04-25T11:09:00.002-07:00

This is not 1984 and You are not Steve jobs running apple. and specially for indian entrepreneurs, You are not in silicon valley.

Understood, now go back and work through your vision and execute your ideas.

Have a look at this video.
Update: Old video was wrong one!

Mr. Legendary definitely had his own karizma.

Entrepreneurs - Spot Your Customers!

2014-04-19T00:01:00.001-07:00

Source: Yavvy.com

This is for entrepreuners burning their midnight oils to run their companies in B2B segments. This piece of knowledge is not an enlightenment for many of you. May be Validation point as this comes from practice, this is what I observed during our startup journey since last 4 years.

From experience at Screen-Magic for 6 years building product & customer base from scratch, I got some wisdom, would like to share so writing this blog. When anyone starts with some kind of product, you dont have budgets & skills to market it. This happens mostly for entrepreneurs.

Here are 3 types of category I can classify, various customers :

Early Adopters - They will find you
      They are high class ideators, master implementers and always willing to try new things to improve their own life. If you create simple but value products, these guys will find you and use your products. They are also advance users of google of knowing tricks of discovering hidden treasures. They will give you some money as well. You should listen to them to get valuable ideas.

Implementers - They will approach you with Reference      They may not ideate themselves but they are highly aggressive implementors. They will keep searching for greenshoots. They will get references and find you. Implement it successfully and will write reviews for you.

Money Burners (earners for you) - You hunt them and Sell services in polished and higher price     These people have been given larger budgets and assigned with huge targets. They run out of ideas, if you have nice website with business oriented content with ROI. These people would love you and would pay your higher cost to achieve success with little efforts. They believe in using products, rather than building it themselves.

All the best for building successful enterprise.

HeartBleed - How to Fix & Test on Ubuntu

2014-04-10T02:48:00.003-07:00

Img Source: WikiPedia

Suddenly There was an havoc on tech networks, created by HeartBleed bug.

As it was related to omnipresent and widely believed to most secure OpenSSL, Everyone on internet is trying to gain traction by writing about it. But very few are writing about how to detect, fix and test.

I got few articles from certain Q&A sites, just thought of putting them all together in easy way.

How to Detect for your ubuntu server :

   Which Ubuntu Servers :

   Dont Know Version? Here is the command :
    $lsb_release -a

   Security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

      Ubuntu 13.10
      Ubuntu 12.10
      Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

   From Your own machine:
    1) Login to your server

       $openssl version -a
        if version is 1.0.1 (till f), your openssl is vulnerable.

    From outside
     1) Visit Fillippo.io

     2) from command prompt :
          $openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -tlsextdebug 2>&1| grep 'server extension "heartbeat" (id=15)' || echo safe

How to Fix for your ubuntu server :

      The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:

Ubuntu 13.10:: libssl1.0.0 1.0.1e-3ubuntu1.2
Ubuntu 12.10:: libssl1.0.0 1.0.1c-3ubuntu2.7
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:: libssl1.0.0 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.12

Or You can do following
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install openssl libssl-dev

Find Which services to restart

sudo find /proc -maxdepth 2 -name maps -exec grep -HE '/libssl\.so.* \(deleted\)' {} \; | cut -d/ -f3 | sort -u | xargs --no-run-if-empty ps uwwp

Restart services which are using OpenSSL like Apache, nginx.

How to Test for Success?

$dpkg -l | grep openssl
You should see, following, then you are ok

  openssl                            1.0.1-4ubuntu5.12                       Secure Socket Layer (SSL) binary

or
Visit Fillippo.io
Hope it helps you to fix Heartbleed.

Bounce or Unbounce on a Product Resource Centers?

2014-03-11T22:11:00.001-07:00

Img Src :startupmywebsite.com

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate)^[1] is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.

- Source - WikiPedia

While going through our recently launched Screen-Magic Website and Resource Center , Analyzing the bounce rate got me wondering about the infering the result from reduced bounce rate on our Resource Center.

Let me explain the confusion, Product Resource centers are designed to help users to

Know more about the product
Help them solving issues
Help them finding out How to use particular feature

Low Bounce rates can be indicative of people staying on your site and not exiting, which may mean

1) People are curious and reading through pages (which is good)

or

2) People may be just browsing as they are not finding what they want in first go.

Similarly High bounce rates can be indicative of

1) People are finding content interesting and exiting

or

2) People are finding what they want easily and exiting.

So whether, rate is high or low, you can not infer anything just seeing the bounce rates, You might need to take into consideration some other factor to draw a correct conclusion, which may be

1) People are asking more or less question about things already present in your resource center.

2) You can provide some way like comments, like to let user give feedback easily about particular content.

3) You can analyze search terms used on your resource center.

This way you can optimize your product resource center serve you and your customers in better way, increases happiness index and customer life cycle and your toplines.

If you have any other ways to interpret bounce rates, please feel free to comment.

Salesforce1 Platform - A Short Overview

2013-11-26T23:49:00.001-08:00

Few days back Salesforce.com, a leading On-Demand CRM provider, announced its new Salesforce 1 Platform. With CRM as a core offering, Offering platform which will help businesses to make their company as Customer Company.

Now What does Customer Company Means?
With Salesforce1, Your business would be :

Customer First
Customer Driven
Customer Centric
Customer Focused
Customer Trusted
Customer Company

With salesforce1, you connect your Customers, Employees, Partners and Product, It makes you connect with customers in a whole new way, a Mobile way, anywhere anytime.

With Mobile Strategy, Salesforce1 is introduced as an mobile container to create an mobile application for your own purpose.

Sales Cloud :- Sales From Anywhere with Salesforce1

Assign tasks while you are travelling
Add opportunities while waiting at launge
Create new leads in Parties/Meetups
Submit forecast on your way back to office
Everything accessible from mobile device
Create contacts on the Go.

Service Cloud : - Service and Engage faster with Salesforce1

Always on Customer
Manage cases from anywhere anytime
Collaborate with Customers
scheduling followup tasks

Salesforce Admin App :- No Desk & Assist from Anywhere

Remotely reset password
Deactivate users
Know about Maintenance updates

Now with Salesforce1, You can add functionality in your Mobile App in few hours. Instead of spending few thousands/million dollars into creating an Mobile Application for your Organization, Use Salesforce1. To Download, Click Here. Its great application built by Salesforce.

Also Read my Post about Salesforce Marketing Cloud :
http://sandipmore.blogspot.in/2013/11/salesforce-1-marketing-cloud.html

So The Question Was...About Connecting The Dots

2013-11-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

If you want to draw a circle by Hand...

How many dots one should put, before connecting these dots with lines, to draw a circle?

And My answer was zero. well the answer was wrong cardinally, there is some ordinal aspect to this problem which I would like to write about here.

... I will write sometime, Its philosophy, Its Irrationality, Its Art and Its Science.

Salesforce 1 - Marketing Cloud Explained

2013-11-24T22:05:00.001-08:00

Mark Benioff, the CEO, Co-Founder of Salesforce.com, a leader in On-Demand CRM platform unleashed its New Look platform Salesforce1 in its annual conference Dreamforce'13. Being connected with Salesforce since last 3 years, I am closely tracking how Salesforce is evolving. Considering Current Buzz of Cloud and Mobile (Smartphones, more precisely), Salesforce has taken big jump with Salesforce1.

This year I didn't go to dreamforce, but Last year I experience this big Party. I attended live presentation by Mark Benioff. It was great. This year, I opted out but I watched keynote on Youtube. It was great show putup by Mark. I was quite impressed by use cases they presented.

Have a look at this must watch video, You can take it as a Benchmark about how to create an intro video of new product. Also I was impressed by the intro video they have prepared for Salesfoce1.

The Salesforce1 Platform brings together Force.com, Heroku, and ExactTarget into one family of cloud services — all built API first — to help deliver apps that connect products, users, and next generation experiences. Designed for scale and speed, it provides a fast way to build apps with open APIs, back-end services, integration tools, starter templates as well as powerful developer environments; there’s no limit to what you can build. - Salesforce Developer Website

Its Amazing!

I took some time to understand the new look Marketing Cloud which is now rebranded as ExactTarget Marketing Cloud or ExactTarget Fuel. For a newbee or first look, Marketing cloud will overwhelm you and additionally all the content salesforce has put up on their website won't give much details. Additionally some links are broken yet.

Here I will try to explain Marketing cloud from layman perspective. Marketing cloud has been built up by several acquisitions SF did in last two years. They are building this cloud offering using acquired companies as Lego blocks.

ExactTarget - Email, Mobile, SMS
Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion just 4 months back and It has taken centerstage for SF marketing cloud. And It has to as it was already boasting of 6000 of Enterprise customers including big names like Coca cola, Gap, Nike.

The dramatic increase in consumer and business use of social networks, mobile devices and new digital technologies is causing a revolution in marketing, as budgets previously spent on traditional media are now moving to digital campaigns. Gartner estimates that by 2015 consumer technology companies will have switched one-third of their traditional marketing budgets to digital*, and CMOs will outspend CIOs on information technology by 2017**. - SF Press Release,SAN FRANCISCO—July 12, 2013

As this integration has happened just 4 months prior to big announcements, It doesn't come as a something which follows salesforce platform philosophy and have tools like Apex and Visualforce providing customisations to it. but As Salesforce is projecting its platform as more of Data API oriented more of moving on from SAAS to be a BAAS player.
ExactTarget basically provide you more richer Email, SMS/Mobile Marketing. Its going to plug a biggest hole in the Salesforce platform.

Buddy Media - Social media Marketing & Analytics
Mark has a knack of identifying or aligning opportunities, He seems to have clearly able to relate growing Social clout with enterprise world. Instead of boasting about its own existing offering, he seems to have gone ahead bravely to adopt futuristic things. Buddy Media acquisition decision was one of them. Salesforce.com closed on its $745 million acquisition of Buddy Media in August 2012. It also occupied centre stage along with Radian 6 in Dreamforce 2012.
Buddy media basically provide business to manage social media marketing and Analytics.

Radian 6 - Listen, Monitor, Engage
Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 in 2010 for $326 million, it also added social connections on main platform. but It didn't make any impact as such in a broader way. But with all the dots connecting, It will definitely a great value add to salesforce platform.
Businesses can use radian6 to listen, monitor and engage on social media. Its kind of beautiful software which enables Marketing team and Primarily Customer Support and service team to use social media effectively.

Social.com - Advertizing on FB and Twitter
Social channel is becoming quite popular for digital advertising as it gives you access to identities and profiles for better targeting. Same thing is not possible in google search or google adwords.
Facebook and Twitter are strengthening their Advertizing offerings, It was good time for Salesforce to jump into it. As Marketing team have to spend budgets on Social Advertizing and if they can do it under same umbrella it would be quite good. They have launched it in April 2013. Its not something which they have acquired.

IGoDigital - Personalized Product Suggestions, Data and Predictive Analytics
IGoDigital was acquisition was not Salesforce brainchild, ExactTarget with keeping in mind Marketing needs of Ecommerce players acquired I Go Digital. With Tremendous growth in Ecommerce, lots of small merchants coming on to internet to do business. ExactTarget acquired IGoDigital, Its personalization technology, the expanded predictive analytics capabilities will enable marketers to leverage predictive product recommendations and content to create personalized experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.

Pardot - Marketing Automation
Messaging is a major part of Marketing. Messaging need to be done on various actions and through various channels. It can't be done manually in efficient way. Again Pardot acquisition is not Salesforce action, ExactTarget acquired it in Oct 2012. Pardot is one of the fewer companies which are providing Marketing Automation for almost all the channels, reducing manual interventions and letting marketing teams to think more on Business alignments and Creations.

-- FROM SALESFORCE Website -- START >
ExactTarget Fuel powers multi-channel marketing programs for many of the world’s top brands. Fuel is an integrated collection of platform technologies that is open to third-party development, enabling you to build upon, extend, and integrate with ExactTarget’s digital marketing products.

Fuel includes:

APIs: Automate email campaigns, seamlessly integrate marketing, analytics, and other business software, and build Marketing Cloud applications.

SDKs: Use native platform and language constructs to integrate with ExactTarget including Java, .NET, PHP, Python and Ruby.

Fuel UX: Build apps the deeply integrate with the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud using familiar JavaScript technologies.

Fuel Cloud Editor: Easily embed world-class content creation in your Marketing Cloud or stand-alone app.

< END -- FROM SALESFORCE Website --

Now with all the lego blocks available, They have put together a marketing cloud but as of now customers can't buy all these in a single pack. As of Now, What I see from individual product websites, they have listed their pricing separately. With ExactTarget just 4 months into Salesforce Cloud, It will take Product Managers enough time to offer all these product under single umbrella with competitive pricing. Otherwise they will stay separated. I also guess as almost all the products are sharing social component, they would be having repetition of features. Salesforce PM team will need to put significant effort in packaging.

Read my Other Post about Salesforce1 Platform - http://sandipmore.blogspot.in/2013/11/dont-build-mobile-app-for-your-business.html

Idea - Predictive Content Editor for Creative Writing

2013-11-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

Img src : Wikipedia

I write blogs, mainly for myself. I write blogs when I am stuck with some thoughts which spins round and round and takes me to another world. Writing blogs and writing it in diary, is one of the easiest escape path to come out of that merry-go-round which sometimes make things un-merry e.g. Ideas can change the world buts also can disrupt your sleep too. So random writing doesn't eat up much of effort but since last few days where I am trying to write by thinking of new ideas, Its sometime turning out to be very difficult, may demotivate you to putting a fullstop on writing tasks you want to take up or has taken up.

Prime problem I do face while writing creative stuff:
1) Getting right Ideas
2) Getting right words to express your thoughts and feelings
3) Finding right references to validate your ideas.
4) Sometime your editor or blogger for e.g. demotivate one due to its oveall UX/UI design

My musings is that, Is there any intelligent editor exists which help me in finding out correct words, will prompt me the links to other articles while I write my Ideas/thoughts.

It should do search in background automatically and suggest me the links to the references of relevant/similar stuff. It will be helpful for bloggers who are writing for earning money from blogs.

If intelligent tool can show a web analytics about probable page rank or popularity of topic on which you are writing on, it would pump extra energy into writing.

If it can suggest me replacement of words with better words which will automatically help me improve my english vocabulary and help me improve my writing.

Recently I came across one very good online blogging software Medium.com, its clean in terms of UI/UX. It would really help if Medium creators make it more intelligent.

I will add some more ideas about this intelligent editor, If anyone knows about some advanced online writing tool can comment about the same on this post.

Pune City :- Water Supply And Drainage System Study (Republish)

2013-11-19T09:46:00.002-08:00

Standing on 11th floor balcony in Nanded City, I was watching construction of Water Tower, It got my brain ticking about the why they do build Water towers and How do they work?

I did research on internet about it and got the Answers, then next question was how many water towers are there in Pune. Are they enough for satisfying the need of water supply of the City which is growing at fast pace?

While Searching for it on google, I came across this informative report published on ICRIER website. On further looking at ICRIER who was publisher of this report, I found that it stands for Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
I guess this report was created as a part of assignment, somebody really did good work.

Report is in PDF and may not be readable on all the devices, so I am just reproducing it as it. My fear is in overhaul of website this valuable piece of research may get lost. This reports seems to be done in 2006.
Original link to PDF is here. Download Full & Original Report

Projected Population of Pune City

Raw Water Sources for Pune City

Water Supply

WATER SOURCES

The city of Pune draws water from the following surface sources :-

Khadkawasla Dam
Panshet Dam
Warasgaon Dam
Temghar Dam

The Total live storage of all the 4 Dams is around 30 TMC. The Todal water supplied to the city is around 14.5 TMC (1250 MLD). Around 70% of the total requirement of the city is fulfilled throught closed conduit of 3000mm Diameter, 30% of the total requirement of the city is fulfilled through open Canal

Water Allocation

As per the agreement between Pune Munciple Corporation and State Irrigation Department, The city has been allocated 11.50 TMC (900MLD) of water Annually against which the city consumes around 14.5 TMC(1250MLD) of water, considering the growth of the city, PMC has approached the State irrigation dept for increasing the water allocation for city's drinking purposes to 19 TMC (1500 MLD).

Water Supply in the City

PMC draws from Khadakwasla dam through

3000 mm MS Gravity main

Mutha right bank canal

Population city is 3.8 million

Daily supply to city is 1222 MLD

Gross per capita supply 321 lpcd

As per PMC data, actual supply is 866 MLD or 228 lpcd

Overall sewage generation can be estimated to be 728 MLD

Per capita supply as per norms 150 lpcd

Warje WTP

City Water Distribution System

56 Storage Reservoirs with a total storage capacity of 400 ML i.e. 30% of the daily demand. A network of around 2500 kms. The pipe sizes in the water supply system vary from 80 mm to 3000mm.

Problems in water distribution

Undulated topography of the city (Sauccer shape)
Unplanned distribution network
Old distribution network

Scope of work for Consultant

Collection of information regarding water supply from water supply department
Carry out hydraulic analysis of the existing water supply distribution network
Preparation of DMA's lead detection studies and Quantification of leakage in the system
Preparation of remodelling plan to bring leakage to less than 15%.
Preparation of estimates for equitable water supply across the city.
Submission of detailed project report to financing agency.

Preparation of Tender Documents.
Completing the tendering process and selection of contractors for execution of works.
Supervision of works as project management consultants.
Carryout public awareness camps.
Supervise the works as consultants during the operation and maintenance period of the contractor.
Train the engineers from PMC for network analysis, lead detection SCADA etc.

Progress of work in Equitable Water Supply Project

Collection of Information regarding water supply from water supply dept
Carry out hydraulic analysis of all the water supply zones of the existing water supply distribution network
Preparation of DMA's for the city (Total 327 DMA's)
Finalisation of report regarding 100% meterisation across the city
Finalisation of scope of work for 5 DMA's which are to be taken up for implementation as pilot study shortly.
Preparation of detailed project report as per guidelines of JNNURM is in progress

Ambitious Ongoing Projects for Future

Equitable water supply scheme for the city
Laying closed conduit of 2500 mm diameter from khadakwasla Dam to parvati water works to avoid uptake from open canal
Construction of 200 MLD water treatment plant at warje water works.
laying closed conduit of 1600 mm diameter from Khadakwasla dam to Warje Water works.
Construction of 5 service reservoires

Projects in Pipeline

Construction of 500 MLD capacity WTP at Parvati Water
Construction of 300 MLD capacity WTP at Cantonment
Construction of 250 MLD capacity WTP Vadgaon
Implementation of Equitable water supply scheme
Construction of Jackwell on the upstream of Khadakwasla dam
Construction of tunnel for conveying water from parvati water works to Cantonment water works.
Development of new source at bhama-askhed, water treatment plant of 200 MLD capacity, construction of new reservoirs, development of distribution system etc.

Facts about Water Supply and Sewage Generation in Pune City

Objective of the assignment

1. To design a project to collect and treat 100% sewage generated in the city of Pune
2. To present the project under NRCD to seek the funding.
Key problems for ensuring 100% collection and treatment of sewage

High rate of water supply – resulting in higher sewage flows

Inadequate / old conveyance or transmission lines causing sewage to flow in Nallas

Problems with the collection system (unconnected areas, leaking main lines etc)

Treatment capacity – some existing plants inefficient

Space availability at the right locations for sewage treatment

Sewage flow Insufficients from upstream outskirts of the city

Steps Involved

Prepare base map and define drainage districts
Collection of data for existing water supply, sewage network and treatment capacity
Carryout detailed ward-wise population projections
Estimation of drainage district-wise sewage flows
Analyse gaps in collection system (conveyance mains and transmission mains)
Analyse gaps in treatment capacity
Design for new infrastructure and improvements
Cost estimation

COMPONENTS INCLUDED IN DPR

Collection system in Balewadi area ( 43Km)
Trunk mains & Conveyance mains (12Nos, 46.03Km)
STP’s for 100% treatment of sewage generated by city up to year 2044
(Financial provision for 2024) – 10 STP’s, 383MLD
Up-gradation of 2 Intermediate Pumping stations
Capacity Building

INITIATIVES TAKEN BY PMC

PMC has made necessary modificatino in the building control rules and has made it mandatory for all housing schemes to have STPs & reuse the treated sewage for flushing, gardening etc.

PMC had started implementing a scheme of recycling 500 MLD treated sewage for irrigation

PMC has made it mandatory to implement rain water harvesting in all new upcoming housing schemes.

Who will vote for UPA in 2014?

2013-11-18T09:58:00.001-08:00

Why shouldn't these people vote for UPA in 2014?

1) people who have bought properties/multiple flats in around 2004-2008. Now property prices has becomealmost 4x to 20x. Turning many of these guys into crorepaties. Similar rise in rates didn't happen in the past.and whole value chain consisting of brokers, banks agents, bankers got benefitted from this.
2) people who got benefitted from many new kits and iims. Although currently these new kits doesn't have facilities and faculties. But w damn care for all this and end of day and life what matters is brand IIT and IIM. One more stamp which provides extra value in job market, shadi market.
3) land owners in various remote regions where land values are suddenly 100x ed. Turning many farmers in labourers.
4) Execs who became rich just due to policies and not due to their hard work.

I guess more such categories would exists, feel free to add those in comments.

I don't know what is the share do they form in overall voters, they should and will certainly vote for UPA.

Shared from Google Keep

Idea - Multiple Recruiter Dealing and Discovery Platform

2013-11-05T09:20:00.004-08:00

While running a startup, you deal with lots of interesting problems. Recruitment is one of the interesting and toughest problem to solve. My guess is Startups are not alone facing this issue, they have company of others as Hiring an appropriate candidate which matches employers expectations is one of the biggest challenge for any enterprise, be it a startup or established enterprise.

A funny analogy, There is a popular belief that It is tough for guys who are in startups to get married but its half truth. If you open your eyes and sharpen your ears, you see (and hear all the gossips) that getting married is one of the toughest problem current generation (of marriageable age) has been facing, It doesn't depend on whether you are in startup or your are earning crores in a big company. It nonetheless exists, for anybody having achieved or not achieved anything in life and having some expectations or not.

Regular expression of Match Making for marriage won't find a correct or suitable match easily - Me

Same is true for Recruiting, Recruiting is another kind of hunting, every company and every candidate thinks they are special, they need special treatment. so in turn, making it difficult for each other. Hunting and Finding Correct Candidates is difficult ballgame altogether. - NP Problem.

Jokes Apart, I guess every problem has some solution if parties involved either takes a step forward.

Here is short description of Problem :-
1) Any company who wants to recruit for certain position is highly dependent on external recruiters, specially companies who don't have in-house HR.
2) Single recruitment consultancy may not be enough and recruitment consultancies don't want to work with companies who has tie ups with multiple recruiters. #catch22
3) Its very difficult to find correct recruiter who has expertize and experience in gauging candidate before it was presented to employers #HuntTheHunters
4) Many recruiters are ladies who may take job off due to marriage and can work alone due to prior experience but doesn't have easy way to get back to work and utilize their skills.

I Propose (a Toast here :) ) solution :-
1) A platform where recruiters can enlist themselves and get the work. Similar to freelancer programmers websites
2) Recruiters enlist themselves and choose job profiles for which they can do recruiting or have expertize and network.
3) A company interested in hiring for some position will log on to this portal and choose recruiters who are claiming expertize.
4) Company can choose more than one recruiter, while recruiter will see how many other recruiters are assigned with hunting task.
5) Recruiter on finding candidate will submit name of candidate to check if its already proposed by any other recruiter if not, he will submit his candidate for job.
6) Company will see list of candidates with recruiter name.
7) Platform can do auto-grading of recruiter and employer according to selections or number of relevant candidate proposed by recruiter.
8) On this platform, anyone who want to do freelancing can enlist themselves and get the work.

If you are recruiter or employer, Let me know what do you think about this? Have I figured out correct problem?

Shared from Google Keep

How to Write-a memo from #DavidOgilvy

2013-11-04T02:16:00.000-08:00

Journey

Doris Day - Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)

Welcoming 2015 with Life of Pi and Life of Manmohan!

ET in defence of Dr. Manmohan Singh

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Gotchas - Part 9

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Whats in Market - Part 8

Things that need to be pushed :

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Android - Part 7

Android C2DM (Cloud to Device Messaging) Framework

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Nokia - Part 6

Typical lifecycle of a notification

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Apple - Part 5

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Blackberry - Part 4

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - How - Part 3

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - What Part 2

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Part 1

g) App42( Shephertz)

Entrepreneurship - Game of Chess or Chase!

This is not 1984 and ...

Entrepreneurs - Spot Your Customers!

HeartBleed - How to Fix & Test on Ubuntu

Bounce or Unbounce on a Product Resource Centers?

What is Bounce Rate?

Salesforce1 Platform - A Short Overview

So The Question Was...About Connecting The Dots

Salesforce 1 - Marketing Cloud Explained

Idea - Predictive Content Editor for Creative Writing

Pune City :- Water Supply And Drainage System Study (Republish)

Projected Population of Pune City

Raw Water Sources for Pune City

Water Supply

Water Allocation

Water Supply in the City

Warje WTP

City Water Distribution System

Scope of work for Consultant

Progress of work in Equitable Water Supply Project

Collection of Information regarding water supply from water supply dept

Ambitious Ongoing Projects for Future

Projects in Pipeline

Facts about Water Supply and Sewage Generation in Pune City

Objective of the assignment

To design a project to collect and treat 100% sewage generated in the city of Pune

To present the project under NRCD to seek the funding.

Key problems for ensuring 100% collection and treatment of sewage

Steps Involved

COMPONENTS INCLUDED IN DPR

INITIATIVES TAKEN BY PMC

Who will vote for UPA in 2014?

Idea - Multiple Recruiter Dealing and Discovery Platform

How to Write-a memo from #DavidOgilvy