FOSS, GoogleMaps, Poker @ Barcamp Pune June 18, 2006
Posted by rajAT in barcamp, barcamppune, foss, googlemaps, Online Poker.4 comments
Other notable stuff from Barcamp Pune
It is great to see women interest in FOSS. Runa gave a talk on Women's groups in FOSS. Atul Chitnis also gave a talk on "Understanding FOSS business model". I couldn't attend both of them :(. Blame it on 4 parallel sessions. And they were on four different floors and the schedules were getting changed on the fly.
Sidharath Sharma a.k.a patang gave a demo of his Bombay carpool mashup. Code is available on sourceforge. He need volunteers to take the project to next level.
Rakesh Raju from Indecca shared his experiences about the scaling problems they are facing with their online Poker game. Hundreds of thousands of players accessing their games. He mentioned a language called Erlang developed by ericcson is very robust and is great for concurrent programming.
Mandar Patil form OnSkreen gave a demo of their product.
Betterlabs.net @ Barcamp Pune June 18, 2006
Posted by rajAT in barcamp, barcamppune, india, web2.0.3 comments
It is just great to see Web 2.0 sites coming from India. A happenning bunch of people (Vaibhav, Satish, etc.) at Betterlabs.net are doing some great work. Vaibhav is based in Silicon valley. I met Satish and team at Barcamp Pune. At barcamp they presented Indiagoes a news aggregator. They promise that they will not annoy their users by showing them tonnes of advertisements which is the generally the case these days. TimesofIndia is yuck.
Here are their flagships.
All the best guys and carry on the good work :).
Webaroo @ Barcamp Pune June 18, 2006
Posted by rajAT in barcamp, barcamppune, entrepreneur, india, internet, mobile, technology.3 comments
Webaroo guys explained about their product. I have ranted about it earlier here.
Webaroo is a free software program and service that lets you search and browse real web pages without a connection. It lets you take the web with you. Webaroo stores searchable web content on your laptop, PDA or smart phone.Your content is updated every time you connect to the internet.
Well the idea of carrying a copy of internet on your laptop or pda is mind boggling. Yeah , yeah they don’t put the whole world wide web but the subset you are interested in.
I am not sure how much of a success will it be in developed societies where connectivity is not a problem. But yeah in India it does make sense.
They are trying to moentize by showing the contextual advertisements along with the content you are seeing through webaroo. Some debates have cropped up that how can you monetize by showing someones content and putting you own advertisements. Rahul from Webaroo gave the example that Google is doing the same. Hmm.
It is an interesting start. Lets see how things will go for them in future. All the best guys. 🙂
PS: Webaroo is started by IIT B alumni and is incubated at SINE – IIT Bombay.
Mobile Computing @ Barcamp Pune June 18, 2006
Posted by rajAT in barcamp, barcamppune, mobile, technology.2 comments
The first talk I attended was of Atul Chitnis. The topic was Mobile Computing – Think beyond the PC. Atul has given an excellent talk on the topic. He used no jargon but
lots of examples to explain the idea that in coming times digital accessories will be very much part of our lifes. He defined digital accessories as the small gizmos which are always there with you. You don’t go to them. e.g. To switch on a music system you will go to it and switch it on. I know remote is there but maybe switch the main power. I think you got the idea what I am trying to say. But digital accessories like pda’s are always there with you in your pocket like your wallet.
Normally people complain that these gizmos have got small screens or are clunky and are slow or have less space. The Moore’s law will take care of the latter. Memory is getting cheaper. Technology is improving day by day which will surely improve the mobile digital experience. Coming on to the screen part. Atul has used very interesting examples to explain that size doesn’t matter.
A cinema hall screen when viewed from 30-40 feet away has the same impression on a viewer as compared to small pda screen when viewed from a distance of less than a feet. Interestingly, Mobil Extra is running a campaign where the long distance is crunched between a thumb and an index finger. I think that will give you an idea of the perspective. In short, a small screen if it is in your hand will give you the same if not more experience as compared to a bigger experience kept at a distance.
I agree to all this but I think the renewed interest in mobile computing is not because that users have suddenly found them interesting. Users have always rewared them – case in point Sony Walkman. If there is a compelling use case and there is a gizmo that accomplishes it beautifully, consumers are going to just buy it like crazy.
After the presentation I and Atul discussed what is going to be the next Mobile Computing device. Atul is all for the Personal Media Device sans Mobile Phone but I think that the next generation Mobile phones or Smart phones will have all the capabilities of Personal Media device. It makes a lot more sense for a person to carry a single device. Otherwise he will carry a mobile phone, iPod, another gizmo with big screen for movies and browsing the web. This seems a bit far fetched to me. It is difficult to maintain 3 devices – one has to check that they are all charged up. Just couple of times if you found that your favourite, next generation, portable, music player is dead ( no charge ), I am sure you will become a convert i.e. get hooked to converged, smart mobile phone. 🙂
In the end, how much space does a woman has in her purse anway. 😀
Barcamp Pune June 17, 2006
Posted by rajAT in barcamp, barcamppune.add a comment
I am attending Barcamp Pune today.
Vidit and Sachin are also here.
Four parallel sessions are going on.
Will try to blog live.
Dream On ! 