Are more and more Web 2.0 companies / websites dragging the industry towards another burst?

I get more and more worried now when I see more Web 2.0 companies doing the same mistakes of the web 1.0 like, doing crazy things (like paying users to add video to their site, paying users to use their sites) to generate more page views or eye balls and there by placing more advertisements and generating more revenues from them and most importantly getting funded with crazy bunch of amounts.

I am not saying innovation/knowledge is not worth for the amount of funding, but I am saying about inflation of the valuations.

The main debatable thing is that, most of the companies are dependent on their page views / advertisements for their survival. Though Google transformed a lot in the online advertisement industry, running a site only on advertisements is a very bad business plan. It could be the case for some of the content sites. But I don't think relying on the advertisement amounts only is a good deal to bet on.

The reason I am skeptical about the online ads is that, when I go to any websites or blogs to read their contents, I don't even look into what Google is displaying in their AdSense bar. I believe Google has to do something innovative to make sure they are properly serving the ads and in a new way to get the user attention. And also some sites just fill up their pages with full of Google ads with a small (sometimes even no content) at the center. Google should also make sure they are not overloading the same page with too much of ads though they might be placed in different corners of the same page.

What are your comments ?

Of late I have been hearing about the latest buzzword in the web 2.0 world "social shopping". There are lot of companies which try to solve this problem (is it a problem/necessity or is it an improvement?) like Kaboodle, ShopWiki, DealsPl.us, Wists and many more.. Kaboodle & wists are the sites where you can capture a deal page, tag it and share it. ShopWiki is a social shopping site or should I say a shopping site where people can enter the product information (socially) by using a wiki. Can these sites be termed as real social shopping sites? I believe dealspl.us can be termed as kind off a social shopping site or should we call it as a social shopping deals site?

What you can do on Dealspl.us is that, you find an online deal in some site then add it here and share it. The only major difference between Kaboodle & wists with dealspl.us is that, in the first set of sites you capture & tag any shopping information - it could be that you like the design, price, product info anything. While Dealspl.us with the name suggesting, you see a good deal at any site, then tag them and share them.

Stating all of the above points, which of the site can we say as the real "social shopping" site? If we couldn't find anything and we want to have something new what are the features we would like to have?

Hi Everybody.. As I told in my previous post, I am going to mention about my experience of getting a new (well a used) bike for me to roam around Chicago Suburb (Wheeling).

Two weeks back I decided to buy an used bike (ofcourse a bi-cycle) for not more than $100 worth. I didn't want to buy a costlier new bike because, it is just for fun I am going to use it and also after 2-3 months the climate is going to be getting very cool. Also, who knows. If my boss from India is calling me back, then I have sell the bike for a loss and return.

So I tried to find one through Craigslist. I found one bike near my area and before I could finalise that one it is sold out. Same happened with one more. Atlast I found a posting for the WorkingBikes. I called them and decided to go on a Saturday. It is in Chicago downtown. I have not gone to downtown more than twice in the last six months I am staying here. After great amount of research I found the easiest (and also the cheapest) possible public transportation to the workingbikes shop at the Western. I reached the place well before in advance and waited for the store to be open. It was not a store kind off thing but it was ok. I looked into the cycles they had and was checking the bikes one by one. You know, I have special requirements.. Since I am more than 6 ft tall. Atlast I decided on one for $60 and I was about to leave.

The returning was more interesting story. I took a ride back to the station and waited for the train. I carried the bike in the train with people being very courteous in helping me. I found onething very strange in this country. People give respect to you even when you are driving a bike. Ofcourse many respect everytime. But you feel more proud when you are driving the bike.

Coming back to my experience, After I got down from the CTA @ Jefferson Park station I was waiting for the bus which will drop me nearer to my home. The bus came and there I am standing in front of the bus holding the bike and doesn't know how to hang the bike in front of the bus. One elderly person came forward and showed me how to do that. If you are new person you will never know that. I thanked him for his help and went inside the bus. He sat beside me and telling me that he used to stay in the chicago downtown area where he used to use his bikes very frequently but after moving to the suburbs he is not using them much nowadays.

Being in the bliss of what is happening I found that I am almost alone in the bus and realized that the bus is not going to the place where I was planning to get down but returning halfway. Then I had to get down halfway and drove back to my home. It would have been nearly some 6-7 miles to my home. But I never felt the pain as I was enjoying my way back. It was really superb. With all those river trails and foot path, green grasses. It was really a worth of bike ride. Also that evening it was not so sunny and not so windy, it was pleasant experience.

I couldn't take any pictures as the Camera which I had ordered 4 weeks back @ Dell.com has not yet been delivered. So, the pictures of those pleasant ride are captured only in my mindspace and not in any cyberspace. But I will surely take one another trip there to capture those beatiful spots as I have got my camera now.

Look out for the next post on my trip to California and about the techcocktail event which happened in Chicago.

Hi All,

Offlate I have not updated my blog for a very long time. Does it mean that I don't have anything to update? Nope... Last two weeks are really cool & adventurous and there are something to mention about. Last weekend it is about my trip to California (Sanfransisco, Santa Crutz & Monterey Bay Drive). The previous weekend is about my hilarious & adventurous purchase of a Bike (bicycle) from WorkingBikes . I am little bit lazy to upload my photos of my vacation in Siliconvalley and too lazy to take the picture of my bike. Once I am done with that which I hope to be done by today I will post two separate posts about the same soon.....

Till then wait & watch and enjoy the World filled with Innovations & Creativity.

Sorry for posting a journal to this blog after nearly a month. I was so busy with my official work that when ever I come back from office I grab some ready-to-eat stuff and go to my bed. Ok.. now.. coming to the point....

In my last post I told about a new project which I started some time back before I started for US. That project is standing at the same place... I need somebody to help me in building that project. It will based on Ruby-on-Rails with meaningful AJAX... Though it is not a google-like idea, it is worth a try. Anyone interested in joining me for this can post a comment on this blog.

I dont have any hard written criteria for you to join me.. ;)

This is my first post after nearly a month and half gap. I was busy with my official work and some other personal stuffs. Also.. nothing much to update also..

I am getting a feel that I am wasting lot of my team without completing my project which I started some three months back.

For the last two-three years, I have been working on something or the other which will tell the outside world what I am capable off. Some of them are :

1) medical billing service - You know what it is,

2) MakeYourCD.com - A website where people can select freeware/shareware products to be written in a CD and sent to them thru a courier for a nominal cost. In India two years back there were no affordable broadband connections. People use to browse the Net thru the dial-up connections or from the browsing centres, were they cannot download large sized Applications which are free or trial editions. For example, when I was doing my M.Sc I wanted to install the Java Application SDK with its IDE softwares for my project purpose. But, I could not download them because of their sizes. Like this many people where facing problems. With lot of applicatios ranging from Office Suites to Operating Systems to compilers available for free but not able to download, the cry was huge. Since most of these applicatios were freely distributable, I got an idea of hosting these application links in my site where people can come and select them to be written to their custom CD to the maximum CD size of 700MB. I can charge them a flat rate of Rs.100 (apprx. 2.5$ with current market rate) for the service. Ofcourse the Computer magazines in India like CHIP, PCQuest and others were distributing these softwares with their monthly magazines free of cost. But you may don't know with which magazine, when and what was distributed. The day I was about to book this domain name somebody else took it and we (myself and two of my friends) decided to book writeyourcd.com. Though we booked the domain name, nobody else were much interested on this. So it just went down.... :-(

3) Database Migration Product - It was a hot market at that time. Worked a little bit on the Database Data migration for migrating data from one database to another. Nothing worked out well as my knowledge on this was very less. This one also went down.. :-(

4) Database Archiving - It is a very good concept and still hot. Though used in bigger and propreitary applications like the ERPs, CRMs and other Big applications from Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP & SEIBEL, I felt a need to have them supplied with the Open source applications like the SugarCRM, Compiere and other smaller ERP solutions. The current solutions are talking about archiving them to different storage mediums while my idea was to have the older data in the same medium but after compressing them..For example you move the older data to a history table and instead of storing the history table data in a separate medium store it as it is, compress them and then use them similar to WinZip. This way you have the data at the same place while it is not taking much space and performance. Booked two websites for the same, did some documentation and coding stuff. But, didn't proceed with that one... Again ! ... :-(

5) Team Alarm web service - This is a small project to have an alarm service (remainder service) not for one person but for a team of people. I was very impressed with the BirthdayAlarm website. It was a nice simple concept executed neatly. Based on this will it be useful to have an remainder/alarm site for a bunch of people in a Team? But I didn't proceed with this one also. Yep.. this one also .... :-(

6) TrackRank - This is one more pet project which I completed. This website is inspired by one other sebsite called Trendmapper . TrackRank tracks the rank of your website for a particular search word in the top three search engines. It collects the data every day and shows it in a graphical format. I first did this one in Java. But once I booked my website and moved my code there, I figured out that my webhosting company doesn't support for running Java based applications as cron jobs. But, I somehow wanted to complete this one as I spent nearly Rs4000 (Aprrx.100$) for this. So what should I do? I immidietly rewrote the whole application in PHP. I didnt know PHP much, But I succeeded in that one. It was running successfully and launched. After its launch, it didn't generate any hype at all. The reason - there were sites which were already providing this kind of service as part of their Search Engine Optimizations service. So, I lost my interest and didn't improve the site further. Though it was a failure in usage, it gave me a good intro to the web based applications. I felt happy that I completed this one atleast...:-

7) MyDateLog - This one is inspired on the social-networking based applications like the 43things, 43places and others. This one if for tagging your important days/dates in your life and sharing them. It could be the calendar dates or days like your first day in college, office, your birthday, convocation day, wedding day, etc. Again, I didnt continue it.. :-(

8) LinkUpd8 - About this I have already posted in my January's post.

9) Another stealth mode project. The details of this I don't want to revel now as I am currently working on that one. I started working on this project some 3 months before as PHP/AJAX based application. But I am not continuing with that one as the PHP based application is taking too much of development effort. So, I am planning to use the RubyOnRalis framework. I am currently going thru the Tutorials of Rails.

Out of my last 9 products/services only one I completed and 8 others I didnt complete atall. And none of them didn't get the recognitions. What could be the reason? I think I am working alone and don't have the somebody to support/help/advice/encourage me.

So I have now decided to lookout for somebody's help. Currently I am working on a project which is a web 2.0 product/service having some (if not big) financial/profit generating biz model. If somebody is interested to help me in this project (ofcourse, I may not be able to offer any cash right now) and have some web designing and RubyOnRails knowledge then please respond to this post.

Almost on a daily basis you see new new applications that are driven by the AJAX concept. I am not sure who started it first but I knew the first working public tested and accepted system when I saw the GMail application. Then came lot of applications like Google Suggest, Google Maps. Then came the mainstream web applications like BaseCamp, Writely, Meebo, Google Reader, Google Desktop and what not.. I don't have the list of all of them. Probably you can check out the list which Mike has at Techcrunch. Though all the list are not of AJAX, most of them are based on AJAX.

Now we are having two more launches. One from the never less Google - Google Page Creater for creating your web pages on the fly and the other is the online photo editing PXN8.

How are these companies/products doing? Just because they are AJAX based and having a great User Interface, will all these companies and products taste the success?

The reason I am feeling sceptical is just because the product is AJAX because will not inspire the people to use the product always. AJAX cannot simply be a differentiator. Ofcourse, with AJAX we can have better applications which can be used by the Business Users. Like, having a financial/HR applications used by the users which is far more easy to use and easy to deploy(install - Literally no install at all). Like, It exactly works in the same way a windows based GUI client works, but you dont need to install them on every body's machine.

Since I am working on a PeopleSoft platform, I find a resemblence between Event based architecture in AJAX and the Event based architecture in PeopleSoft PeopleTools. Except that in PeopleTools when you have made the page as Interactive mode and you tab out of the field and the event gets fired, it tries to refresh the whole page which is different from an AJAX based architecture. AJAX based architecture doesn't need to reload the page. And since AJAX is passing the XML data between the browser client and the server, the load on the server is going to be less when it is reloading for the events.

Probably I will talk about this at my next post at length.

In today's post I am concentrating of one of my idea.. which I didnt complete as usual..

What is next to be tagged ?

We first had the tagging concept introduced on the urls and photos. Then it was for your goals and places. Now we are having the tagging for almost everything.. including shopping. I donot remember if we have any more interesting websites already which are useful for the users.

Some time.. or should I say long time back.. I got an idea of tagging your dates and days.. For example you don't want to forget your birthday, your first day in school, in college, your convocation day, you first day in office, the day you got your first pay check, your marriage date, your kid's birthday.. and so on..

And you definitely want to share this information with others and would be interested to see others who are having the convocation day as yours on the same day..

What do you think about that one?? Will it work or should I have to ask? If we have something like that will it be usefull for others? I started to work on this one for some time and then later left it thinking that there is no body who will use this kind of solution. If somebody wants to do that one then let me know.. I can help you in doing those things..

In my last post I quetioned about the selection criteria used by many of the Silicon Valley companies (in general many of the tech companies). I don't say the selection process is wrong but what I say is, it is not a written proof that all from the great colleges are highly intelligent and others from ordinary colleges are of no use.

In my four and half years of experience, though I haven't seen much people from the top US Universities or the IITs (India Institute of Technology), I have seen many people from really good engineering colleges and universities who don't know to code a sequence of statements easily, quickly and correctly.

I experienced the same thing in my colleges. The girls in my class have a very very powerful RAM memory. In the sense, what ever goes into their brain comes out fluently in FIFO (First In First Out) order. Yes, of course it is a talent. But do we require that kind of a talent in our industry with so much hype??? And even if some companies recruit them for the sake of their marks and colleges then it will not take much time for them to get the real truth. Even then, the HR managers or project managers who recruit them don't how these people are working. Only people like us know how they work. Most of the time they get the work done with the help of somebody else.

Coming back to my question, If you have a degree from a lesser known college or with lesser marks then does it mean that you don't have enough brains and make you not eligible for applying to these companies ? I completely disagree with this one. I really wanted to stand as an example for this one. May be I will definitely get one opportunity to prove that point.

Does anybody else agrees to my point?

I really want to work for a company like WorkDay not for what they are working on but for the people who are working on. My dream will come true someday.

All, This Saturday was boring for me. I saw some movies from YouTube browsed a lot of websites and blogs. Added my blog to Technorati profile, hoping to get somebody see my blog and Added the SiteMeter snippet to make sure that somebody did come here.

I am not sure how it is going to be tomorrow. May be I might go out somewhere for sight seeing or If I get time I will definitely try to work my project. It is very long time since I sat down to complete on my project. I think I really lack confidence and motivation. Though at times I feel I should finish it off, but my lack of skills with HTML design and Core PHP programming drags me down. If some one is really great @ Designs or PHP or AJAX and want to help me, then please shoot me an email rbalu2k at our very own google's mail.

You know what, I believe is really good enough to apply some patent for so that some one else doesn't steels them.. But it seems patent filing is not a simple and cheap job. It goes for thousands of dollars. With my earning, I will not be able to do that.. Lets see how it goes.

Also one thing. Yesteray I saw some news about PeopleSoft's founder Dave Duffield's new company Workday which tries to revolutionise the ERP technology. They are trying to do something different with more of open systems concept. I am sure that they will come up with a good product. Afterall it is the team which came up with the superb PeopleTools. I am really a big big fan of PeopleTools. For the last two and halfs years I have been working with PeopleSoft PeopleTools and with my experience I really think those guys have a very good technology / architecture only for which Oracle purchased it. I was happy to see some job postings in their site for which I immidietly jumped off to apply. Then I realised that I am not authorised to work in US for any other company other than which I came for. Though I can claim myself in PeopleTools as a Pro, I will not be able to give them a try.

There are lot of companies (of which I like the most are Kosmix, Riya and ofcourse Yahoo! and Google) in silicon valley which are looking for right kind of people (may be like me), but the criteria they have is ridiculus about which I will post separately.

Hi All,

I have been busy with my work and other stuffs because of which I was not able to post much frequently to this blog.

I am just thinking of what should I post about which is unique from others who have all along posting about great stuffs and areas with thousands of followers.

May be I am thinking of posting my intuitions and creative thoughts about new new ideas which I will be getting every now and then.

If somebody wants to put use of them, then please shoot me a mail so that I will feel happy.

More coming up soon.

Hi, Forgot to post my photos which I took last when I enjoyed my first @ Chicago. We had snowfall and we went to the Aurora Balaji Temple.

Hi guys. Two weeks back (Jan 14th to be correct) I touched down the soil of the "Land of opportunities" on my official trip. I had been waiting to write my post from the Chicago land. But, I couldn't do so. I waited for almost two weeks to get my laptop and here i am today..

I am writing my first post from Chicago with my new laptop. I got a brand new Sony Vaio notebook with all the other stuff. I have been waiting for this moment. If I could have got it yesterday I would have got a better deal. But never mind I am happy to get my new laptop and here I am connected to the internet on the very first hour...

I badly needed a laptop for various reasons..
1) One to connect to my parents and sister back home in India.
2) I use to read a lot of good blogs which I didnt wanted to do from my employer's machine. I can now do it with lot of happiness.
3) I have been trying out lot of interesting stuffs on internet based stuffs.. I cudn't do those things when i was there in Pune (India) bcos, I had to connect to the net from a browsing centre. It was costly for me..
4) I need to read/learn a lot. Many might have known that I am working on an ERP platform and though I am technically strong in that .. i need to learn a lot in the functionaliy..

so.. this laptop shud help me in all these activities.. hopefully i shud be able to post on a daily basis or atleast more frequently than what i used to do..

catch you all soon again..

I just registered my new site with DreamHost. Man, what is that they are offerring?? The actual plan states for 4.5GB of storage space with some 150GB of Bandwidth and I saw a post @ their blog stating that they are increasing the storage space upto 4 times and the bandwidh upto 8 times. That is hugeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee for persons like me.

Will they be able to sustain/ be afloat by offering this kind of hosting for so less amout??

That is the question to be asked.

Last two days I was going thru the blogosphere to find out some good sites like Quimble.com and WordofBlog.net .

Mike of Techcrunch has been writing a lot about the web 2.0 companies. I am proud and happy to say that I am tracking Techcrunch right from the days when it had few hundred subscribers. Now I am seeing that it has about 19k subscribers to the RSS feed. If you include people like me who read the blog by accessing the site, I think the count might double.

With so many people reading his blog, how much of an effect he will have on the products, companies and websites he writes about?

Hi !!!

This is my first post in 2006 and that too after a very long time. Last time I held myself back from blogging because I was working on a blog tool which would have helped the publishers and the readers of the blog from clicking on a broken link in the blog post. But, I didn't proceed with that one.

The idea was simple: You add a java script snippet to your blog template. The script will look for all the external links you have in your posts and if the link is newly added it will try to store the status of the link - Active, Inactive, Moved out or Warning. When the user accesses your blog for each link will display the last checked status of the link when the mouse is moved above the link. The user has the option of checking for the current status of the link before he actually clicks on the link. By this way the user experience will be much enhanced. Also, with the status you will see the title of the page when the status was checked for the first time.

But I discontinued with that development, because I got satisfied that I was able to solve the problem with AJAX and JS. If somebody is looking for that kind of an utility, then please let me know. I will be happy to share the details with you.

Even now I am currently working on a concept which I think should be usefull to others. I am thinking of applying for a patent for that one. If anyone have any idea about patents then please help me.

Catch you soon.

Oflate many would have seen hits from my site and that too frequently and quite a bit in more numbers. Well, as I told you before, I am trying some concept of managing the outgoing links of a Blog with the help of AJAX. In this regard, I am working hard to ship the concept out soon.

If you are willing to help me or try it out or dicuss with me on that, then please drop a comment.

Before I sign off, I wanted to mention abou the new idea which I happened to come across thru Ojos. It is working on a concept of auto tagging your photos, based on a photo which you give to it.

I feel a very important need of having a software like that which will do actual image search (search images with image) instead of Google's Image search (search images with text in their names).

I couldn't post much for this month also. I am not sure when I will become a regular blogger (atleast post twice in a week). I was busy with my work and also, I went to my native for a vacation for nearly after 6 months. I am back now.

Between this period, we had major buyout. eBay buying Skype and Oracle buying out Siebel. I am not sure how much Larry is planning to buy ? Should be watched closely....

I am back to my link utility which I am currently working on. It should be ready by the end of this week if everything goes well.

Many would have heared about the great tool call MyBlogLog which will track the number of clicks for the outgoing links in your blog site. I am working similar to that one but for a different purpose. I need people who would like to try it out. If you are interested in testing the utility, giving suggestions and helping in motivating me, then please drop a comment or an email. Thanks :-)

Talk to you all, soon.

Continuing with my previous posts on useful tools that can be used by the publishers in the blogosphere, I got a comment from phil hollows telling about FeedBlitz. I knew about this cool service when Brad Feld mentioned about the problems he face with the Bloglet service and why he moved to FeedBlitz.

As I told before, I am still working on the utility for helping the readers of a blog and enhancing the user experience.

I am almost done with the design and shoud be letting you all know about the service soon. Since I am very busy with my day job, I am not able to sit to do the development. Shud be doing it by this weekend and informing you all.

Keep watching it here.

Trying new Blog tools and coming up with a utility which will help the blog publishers post, maintain and track the links (which they point to outside blogospere).

And I will also be updating this blog more frequently.

Keep watching.

The popular Blogging tools which I like are:
FeedBurner: Core RSS feed and page view metrics
AWStats: Core page view metrics
Google AdSense: Page views by channel, ad click throughs
Amazon: Online purchase metrics
Bloglet: Email subscribers
MyBlogLog: Outbound link tracking
MeasureMap: Inbound / outbound link tracking (in alpha)
Technorati: More link tracking
Feedster: Even more link tracking
Amazon: Reading Now, Read Recently, Toy of the Month
Jinzora: Listening Now
Word of Blog: Promoting Now
MyBlogLog: Outbound link tooltip
FeedBurner: FeedCount (subscriber count), BuzzBoost (republish Mobius PR feed)
NewsGator: Subscribe button
Bloglet: Email subscribers
Google: Search on blog
Page Two: My random page where I play with stuff until I put it in production

Welcome to the new post of this April. Had gone on a picnic to Deveagar. Left on April 1st evening and after a very long journey reached the place just after midnight. The journey was jumpy-bumpy. But had lot of fun with Anthakshari and other spoofs..

April 2nd went to the beach with a bunch of 20 odd people. Hmm.... It was too good. Spent almost 3 to 4 hours in the beach water. After a very very long time spent this much time in the beach. Though a resident of Chennai with its famous Marina Beach, didn't spent time in beaches all these days. May be, when ever I go to Chennai, I should spend time @ the beach.

After the days enjoyment in the water, was daam hungry and willing to eat anything that tastes good. But got a very good konkani vegetarian lunch. hmmmm... I liked it very much. After the heavy lunch.. played some indoor games and in the evening.. ready to start back..

Reached house @ 11 pm and went directly to bed.

It was a tiring trip but enjoyed a lot too..

Will update once got the photos.

Hi All

A warm good morning / good evening.

First of all let me ask sorry for not posting for long time.

Today I have an important announcement.

There are lot of things happening in the Tech world. Oracle buying PeopleSoft, Retek (and now Oblix - latest news), Yahoo buying flickr, HP buying SnapFish, Google buying Urchin Software, AskJeeves buying BlogLines, InterActive buying AskJeeves, VC/Investment firms buying SunGuard for whopping $11B.. phew... I expect the list to go on..

Are we heading back to the dot-com boom ?

My fear is, will the burst follow this ?

Let me know your thoughts.

:-)

Happy surfing.

Having spent the whole night thinking about, how did the example is solved I came in the morning to crack it again.

I couldn't understand the question properly. Then I happen to see the code of others.

Then I realised something which made sense. Then I realised that it is not I am bad in ideas, but the question doesn't mention the problem correctly.

I then coded the solution and Hurray.. my code is also working... :-)

I had decided to work on Java, though it has been a very long time for me since I touched Java.

I submitted the 1000 points program for a mere 300 points (because of me opening the question, one day before).

Then I tried to crack other programs too. Hurray, I solved two more problems in the same day, within a span of just 2 hours.. That was a very good improvement from my side.

Let me see how much more I score in these Practice sessions. :-)

Thanks to my bay met, Vaibhav. I just happened to see the ad of Google India Code Jam in his monitor when he was browsing the Google India About page.

I immidietly jumped into the website to see it myself. I tried to register myself for the Competition.. Hurray.. I got an entry.. You might think what is there to be so exited in getting entry. There is reason for that too. Last year or the year before, I happened to see a similar advertisement in the newspaper for the Verizone Code Contest. I saw it in the morning and when I tried to register for that after coming to the office at 9 am, It said "Oops sorry. The entry for 500 persons is closed".

So this time I am atleast getting a chance to look into the Coding exams.. :-)

There is more about that. After logging in, I tried with the problems in the Practice Area.
There were two problems - 1st with 400 points and the 2nd with 1000 points.

Since it was late that day, I took the printout of those problems and tried to solve it in my house. Man, what questions are those???? I am still not able to understand the first problem and the second one I think the question is not clearly stated. I tried the whole night that day, but I couldn't figure out how the example 1 is solved.

I went to sleep at early morning, still thining "how the hell did he get that answer?"

I will try to solve the next day atleast. !!!

This is my first Blog and I need to mention the whole world of Innovations that is happening around.

I was feeling bored in the morning and was trying to find out the cool new startups that are happening in the Technology Industry. Browsing something, I happened to see the websites of the VC (Venture Capital) firms like Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (www.kpcb.com) and Draper (www.dfj.com). I was amazed to see the new startups and their buisiness. Everytime I see those things, I get pumped up to start something of my own..

May be time will come where in, I will start something on my own and I sincerely believe that, that time will come soon.. So.. Keep watching here ..

I will post some of the ideas which amazed me and some of my own ideas which could be amazing too...

Balu.

Hi all!!!

We (a group of 40 people) went for a trekking trip to Rajmachi (Near Lonawala, Pune, Maharastra, India) last Saturday (29th January 2005).

Here is the Group photo. You can find me - sitting second from left, blue color T-Shirt with a reverse Cap.



That was my first Trekking experience in a professional group. I remember going to the mountain (definitely not this much height) when I was in my college days. Those are the mountains and forest areas which Keech is displaying in his MondayBlues (www.mondayblues.org) website. That one is nothing compared to what is there in Rajmachi.

It is huge trekking experience - mostly walking and little climbing. I heared that the total distance that we covered is nearly about 15-18 KMs one way (which means 30-35KMs totally) . The last time I walked this much was when I went for the Thiruvannamalai Giri Valam which I think was in the range of 13-15 KMs of only walking and it is the total KM travelled. If anybody doesn't know what is Giri Valam, it is nothing but going around the Thiruvannamalai Mountain, which has the main Thiruvannamalai Shiva temple.

The Trekking of Rajmachi was really energetic. We happen to see lot of scenaries and it was a learning experience for me. You might think what is that learning for me?? Right ? There is something to look into. Mostly from my school days, I have been an average performer. May be naturally average or I didn't try hard to become super performer. Mostly I will be in the mediocre degree - neither super performing nor bad performing. This case applies to my studies, sports, acting etc. Ofcourse from my college days I started to realise my potential in studying (not to a great extent)..

Experience from this Trekking to my life -> While I started the trekking I started as usual in the middle.. Then slowly I started moving faster and one time I realised that I am leading the whole group.. Shocked!!! If I try to apply this in my life, then definitely I will not be left behind. Right? Is this not a learning experience?

There is one more thing I learned from this Trekking. Mostly I am not comfortable with heights that too if you see the valley below your legs from a point 1300 feet above from the sea level. In the trekking I took the decision of climbing up to the Fort with few others while others said they are happy taking rest at the Rajmachi Flat land. Getting thru the fort steps were really scarry. After certain steps, I got an idea of looking only the steps and not valley below that. That way my concentration was only on the steps and I never bothered about the height. Because of this idea, I could reach the top and enjoy the beauty of the whole Valley. Even though, I couldn't reach the peak. But it was a good experience for me.

The same is the case when I am thinking about any great idea or project or anything you name it. I get frightened if I see them as a whole. I feel it is too huge and I cannot do it. If I try to follow the approach of Divide and Rule or Concentrate on what you do now, I can win many things. I am sure this approach will help lot of us in this world.

After a gruelling day, I reached home and had some cakes and puffs as my dinner.

If I would been provided a good Dinner (south indian meals) I would have taken two person's meals.

Ok.. Cath you Later with more Blogs from me.

For more photos on Rajmachi Trekking, Check out below. I will add some more to them.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rbalu2k/album?.dir=2236&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rbalu2k/my_photos

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