Stock Charts via Google

Via Google Blog

Searches for things like AAPL now bring up stock charts and high/low information at the top of the results.

See Google Stock

Event Space heating Up

Via Ross Mayfield

EVDB took their beta live tonight. Below is a sample published calendar, here is a sample event page. Go poke around.

See that little green button? I'll lay odds you will see it more often over the next year than you imagine.

Yesterday EVDB announced a $2.1 million raise from Draper Fisher Jurveston, Omidyar Network, Esther Dyson, Ev Williams, Mark Pincus and others great angels.

Some people really like it. The event space is heating up, with Upcoming.org and Whizspark with their own approach.

Web Event DB

EVDB is a startup company focusing on providing event information.

From ZDNet

Event information is all over the map in terms of formats, and standards don't exist for event-based services, so EVDB is aggregating and normalizing the content, and exposing it through Web services APIs. Dear views EVDB as being events-obsessed, but doesn't plan to invest in build an events portal. Instead, the startup company is focusing on helping users discover and share (community) events, and provide the tools necessary to integrate events into other applications and services.

Thanks to Jon Udell for the link.

Web events will make a lot of relevance for mobile devices. So next time you are in a new city, you can automatically get information about all personal events that you are interested in.

Booting iPod

Want to boot up iPod with your own kernel? check out this.


Checkout more screenshots over here.

Thanks to Thoughtblogs for the link.

RSS, Podcasting, and Next

HindustanTimes has an article on Podcasting. Interesting to see how fast its growing and indian newspapers catching on the phenomenon. People are still getting used to RSS and blogs. There is a major shift coming in the future of content distribution. Video casting will be the next step, some things already might be there.

A public directory for podcast feeds is available at: see http://www.podcast.net

And yes there are hindi podcast feeds too. http://www.podcast.net/tag/hindi

The biggest value addition to the RSS, podcast or videocast world would be the interface to such technologies. Right now people need to know what RSS is, what podcast is or what a videocast might be. If one thinks why RSS or podcast is hit, its not they are revolutionary technologies, its just there is a demand and supply chain. People are creative and want to publish and share things. And the same people have different interests and want to consume things which they like.

Media Companies, TV channels, can serve specific interests but they won't be able to target interests at individual level. This is where simple technologies like RSS make a difference.

But there is still one technical challenge to be solved. The interface to such technologies is still complex. People need to understand what RSS is. Weblogs, media companies everyone is trying to make people understand what RSS is. I think once this interface changes, where people can have access to such technologies without understanding the technical part, this is when it will be as pervasive as the Internet. We are just witnessing early adopters of technology, the masses have yet to adopt!

How to Start a Startup?

Paul Graham – founder of Viaweb (bought by Yahoo! in the late 1990s) and author of Hackers & Painters wrote an essay on "How to Start a Startup?"

He lists some very interesting points for startups started by geeks. He focuses on three key things:
- Good People

What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people.

- Make stuff people want, and

If you can't understand users, however, you should either learn how or find a co-founder who can. That is the single most important issue for technology startups, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else.

- Spend as little money as possible.

When and if you get an infusion of real money from investors, what should you do with it? Not spend it, that's what. In nearly every startup that fails, the proximate cause is running out of money.

In technology, the low end always eats the high end. It's easier to make an inexpensive product more powerful than to make a powerful product cheaper. So the products that start as cheap, simple options tend to gradually grow more powerful till, like water rising in a room, they squash the "high-end" products against the ceiling.

Thanks to Brad Feld for the link .

College Entrepreneurs

Two weeks back, I had an experience talking to young people in their final year of engineering study and a belief to do something. These brought back memories of my own days 3 years back.

One important thing for all young entrepreneurs is:
- MENTORSHIP: Lot of bright students in indian universities are willing to put risk and do things but they lack serious mentorship. Teachers whom I think should be perfect mentors, they more often take a negative approach. Many times they de-motivate people rather than motivating them.

My personal view for all college entrepreneurs :
- Getting your first Idea! : Even if you don't have an "idea" of what you want to do, start something in which you believe in. If you believe in nanotechnology, mobile-communication, any field - put all your passion in that field. Start working and you will get lot of ideas.

- Working on your Idea : Analyze, study market and the most important part is talk to people. Internet is a vast resource, make best use of it. Just Idea's don't matter so make a plan.

- From Idea to a Plan : Analyze what all you need. No one will come and help you out. You have to learn the hard bits yourself. Most of the plans will fail, but keep carry ing on, refine your thoughts and plans.

- From Plan to a Company : Start working and build up your idea into a product.

There are lot of hard things, one needs people, investment and lot of nitty gritty things. But the overall idea of this article is, ACT - and just don't pass time thinking. Your ACT might or might not lead to a successful company right now but it will give you the experience which will help you build a successful company.

Saral Mobile Sandesh (SMS)

Saral Mobile Sandesh (Hindi name for SMS) or SMS as people popularly call it. Just few days back at home, I had another experience with a simple technology like SMS. My father who is just a common man, non-techy and has never used a PC was using SMS to place his bid for an auction.

I was spell bound for a moment. I just said to myself, this is where the power lies in mobility. I believe strongly the next billion transactions will occur from these small mobile devices and not from the PC. It might take time but the volume coming from mobile devices will surpass the PC volume. But one has to take care, keep things simple (saral as we say in hindi). The moment one makes it hard, the engima dies.

When Life Stops for a Moment

Its been lot of work recently. But when it looks everything will be fine, life just takes a turn. After 3 months I just went home for a break, thinking that I will be back with fresh energy. But then an incident just shocked me.

One of my cousin sister (younger than me) lost her husband in a car accident and its been just around one and a half month of marriage. Yesterday my mother woke me up at 7 am from bed to give this shocking news. It looks just yesterday I attended her marriage. It was so fun and then at another instance life just turns around.

We humans run around for so many things, clock always keeps ticking but moments like this make you realize the importance of life.

Life ..... is just life, nothing more nothing less.

Right now everyone is just spell-bound. No one knows what to do. I know my uncle, aunt, sister, brother - its just hard to digest it. I hope and I pray god gives them enough strength.