How long does it take to completely revamp a web application?

Mbakarma needed a few major changes and I've been waiting for way too long to do them. So last sunday, I decided to start work on it again. I wrote down the features, walked through the details, and finally decided on a list of features and improvements which I think are essential.

Now I didn't want to spend too much time on it, because you know you can spend forever with it and it would still not be complete, so I chalked down a small timeline in which I could add everything I needed.

To make sure I'm doing things on time, there are a couple of really cool applications I'm using this time.

One is Bean Stalk App, which is an online SVN repository. And with a few clicks it integrates with Twitter and the other project management application that I'm using. I'm still using the free account on BeanStalk, and if it all goes well I'll shift to the paid account soon. If you are a startup and thinking about starting work on your application, I would suggest you get an account right now on beanstalk and start using it. You can try running with a local svn repo, but you know hard disk failures are not that uncommon. Also, BeanStalk provides you with fast backups, so that in case they have a hard disk failure, your data doesn't get lost.

The second application is a really a masterpiece. It is called FogBugz. It uses evidence based scheduling to calculate how long it would take to complete the project. Behind the big name, what it really does is this - It asks developers to estimate how much time would each feature/bug would take to complete. Once you allocate a time, and start racing against the time, Fogbugz tracks how much longer you took compared to the estimate you had given. After you've completed a number of feature/bugs, it calculates the probability in which you would complete the fix. So if you always take double the time, and you estimate 2 hours, Fogbugz will count that as an estimate of four hours. Once you add all the developers working on the project, and their probabilities, you have a probabilistic model of how long it would take you to complete the project. There are a number of other really awesome features there, so do check it out when you have the time. They have a 45 day free account, which is long enough for you to find out if you like it.

Still, those are just accessories. You can't rely on them completely and so you are still very important in the whole process. My overall estimate, which I'd rather think of as saying that it is my word, that I would have completed everything by the 15th of April. I know we are all suckers when it comes to estimation, so let's just see if I'm able to stand by my word. After all, what distinguishes us as humans, is our ability to keep our word.

If you want to keep track of how well I'm going with my estimates, (so that you can blast me later) you can follow me on Twitter.

Also, once I'm done, I'll be back with good long posts about what I like and what I do not like about these two applications, and what hot and happening in the brand new Mbakarma.

Till then, Cheers.

Labels: development, estimation, MBAKarma

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Paul Tyma, previously the Chief Scientist at PreEmptive Solutions, now a Googler, is back to blogging after long. And his latest post reminded me just why I haven't been able to remove his feed from my reader. The Feed Readers have changed, but the feeds still go on. And that's just the way it is.

Paul mentions that your customers are the most honest people that you would ever find. In his own words, "They vote with their credit cards and their attention." The success of our websites and applications comes only from their honest appreciation. It is not a refreshing new thought, but old wisdom, which needs to be said over and over again so that it stays fresh in our memory.

But what I actually wanted to talk about was code rewrites. Every developer always finds himself better than the last one, and better than they were two years back. So every two years, given a chance, they would rewrite all their codes with the latest hip language using the most state-of-the-art design and coding philosophies.

But they are usually wrong.

Huge organizations have made the mistake of believing that they could write a better software in six months time, and make it catch up with the old one in two years. But it can never be like that. Softwares like people, have lives. And with life comes experience. This experience is shared between the people who maintain the code, the people who run the hardware and the people who use the applications, and cannot be transfered to the new software.

We are born with our imperfections, and we have to learn to live with them. Sure, we can learn new tricks here and there, but we can never change completely. If we do, we would never be us again. And that's just the way it is.

So Forget about changing the code and go read Paul's Blog, it would be a much better way to spend your time.

Labels: Idea, Issues

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Mike, from the 37signals blog, demystifies the myths perpetrated by the latest edition of Wired to 87367 people following their feeds, and 75000 who come there everyday.

Labels: Blogs, Company

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Gautam Ghosh pointed out on Twitter today that google is showing results from bloggers in a slightly different fashion today. I checked it out and it sure looks great.



This is definitely another great reason to start a company blog. Just replace my name in the picture with that of your company, and the posts by the services that you offer.

So the next time somebody searches for your company, they know exactly what do you do, without even coming to your website. How cool would be that!!

It's probably the best advertisement you can ever get.

Labels: Blogs, Company, Google, Search, Startup, Tips

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The iPaper is here.

Scribd, one of the hottest startups of last year, has just released the Scribd Platform. This would allow developers to integrate documents into their websites, with a simple and clean flash interface.

I have loved Scribd from the moment they came on the scene and have covered them a number of times. But this time I think they have exceeded my expectations. The iPaper is an advanced version of Adobe's Flash Paper, and is specially created for the web. So its a lot faster and efficient, and I believe has the power to replace pdf files from the internet with this great technology.

Since now you don't need to have pdf installed on your machine to view these files, I am sure iPaper is going to make a real killing on the internet.

But the best part about it, is that Scribd managed to see something even mighty Adobe could not. 'Flash Paper' was originally created by Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe because they felt the competition. Now, when Adobe got Macromedia, apparently they just didn't think that 'Flash Paper' was that cool, and it just lay in the dust for over four years.

That was the story until Scribd came along. Scribd initially started out by using 'Flash Paper' to serve the documents. And once it was proven that it was a successful idea (even GigaOm agrees with me here), they started writing their own interface for it, which just got released as iPaper. Adobe could have done it too, but alas they were too busy making AIR.

The mission for Scribd, is not that they can be as viral as YouTube, but if they can completely replace pdf in the long term.

In the end, I think this is as good a strategy as there can be for a successful startup. In just about two years time, this 10-member startup has reached a stage where they can challege Adobe.


Update : Brian from Box.net just informed me that they have already implemented iPaper for all pdf, word and excel files on Box.net. So now before you download, you can watch and read the file before you download it to your computer. Now how cool is that!!! This is going to be great news for Scribd as well, as box.net has been steadily growing towards being the most used online storage website. Do check it out in case you haven't yet.

Labels: Idea, Innovation, Startup, Technology

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There is a new startup on the political scene.

The founders include 8 energetic men, aged 28-45, with degrees and business experience. The startup is still in beta, and you can't yet cast a vote. The priorities and mission statement has been defined, though the last one seems a little absurd, the other two are worth fighting for.

There was another one of the kind, though it started down south. They could not pick up much traction and went down fighting amongst each other a few months later.

We surely need more like them. I would like to wish them the best of luck. Their portal is up. Do check it out - Jago Party.

So do you think you would be willing to bet on them?

(found via Atanu Dey's Blog)

Labels: Entrepreneurship, Startup

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The internet is full of advice, both good and bad, and most of us keep running through hundreds of feeds every day, to make sure that if there is any good in there we will find it.

So when you happen to reach a place where you find tons of excellent posts, it's hard not to talk about it. This is why I though I should be talking about Bootstrapping in Bangalore.

Started by Saurabh Chandra, founder and CEO of Neevtech, this blog is exactly what it's name suggests - Bootstrapping in Bangalore, and if you're one of those bootstrappers, you are going to love it. And yes, you can read it even if you are bootstrapping elsewhere.

Like all good things in life, the wisdom (read post) comes in slowly with enough time in between for you to digest and assimilate the information. Now, if you're just starting out, take care, read maybe half a post a day, or you're going to get a lot more than you'll be able to handle.

Now, I might say that it is quite like Ask the Wizard, which is written by Dick 'The Wizard' Costello founder of FeedBurner.com, but in reality it is much closer to home, and hence much closer to heart.

And for those who would prefer the wisdom (again read post, didn't I tell you that already) to come to them rather than clicking your way through the blog, don't worry, I'm here to grant your wishes. Here are some of the best posts, not in any particular order : Keep Jumping, What are we starting, Start Early, Doing Events, Some Basic Accounting.

Go on enjoy the posts, and when you're done, come back here. I'll be here granting more wishes.

Labels: Blogs, Business, Company, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Tips

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Twitter Mobile is now really here in India.

You can message to Twitter directly by sending it to Shortcode 5566511.

Happy Twittering.

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Like always, the IIM servers have crashed again.

As expected, the 240,000 students and their parents and friends are busy opening the same page and as a result the servers have not been able to handle the pressure.

At peak load, I would expect no more than 240,000 x 10 requests over the one hour period when the results come out. A rate of about 650-700 requests per second.

I haven't been able to get the exact page size of catiim.in site yet, but I would expect it to be less than 20kb. Hence the required download rate would be about 13.5 Mbps.

Now, I have heard that IIMs usually outsource this part to a private company which can handle the data. So I did some checking up, and catiim.in site resides on a websrvr.soft.net server, which is believe it or not, from Software Technology Park of India, Bangalore.

I find it strange that even they have failed to design a system which can handle the traffic. Either the budgets are too low, or there isn't enough technical expertise to handle the same. Though I am sure that none of the above is an issue which can't really be fixed.

So why do we still have to make the students keep trying again and again. Even with the coming of the IT revolution in India, do we still lack the infrastructure?

UPDATE : Even though the capacity I have considered is taking the worst case factor into consideration, it is possible to use service which scale to that level.

I had expected a download rate of 13.5 Mbps which translates to about 1139 GB of data transfer per day.

I was just trying to find out if Amazon Webservices are able to scale to that level and I found something interesting

Within the next day, the news was covered by both SlashDot and Boing Boing, sending a tremendous amount of traffic to its web site. With its media files stored in Amazon S3, it was able to instantly scale and handle the 3.5 million requests and 758 GBs in bandwidth in a single day.

Hmm.. So it might work. And what about the cost? Here is what the article says

Blue Origin’s total charge for Amazon S3 in January? Just over $300.

$300 is equal to almost Rs 12,000. Now thats really not that much is it!!

UPDATE 2 : I just checked again. It's 5 in the morning, and the site opens up quickly. But surprisingly the home page is about 94KB in size. Our of which about 77KB (82%) are images.

After the home page one needs to go to an index page which is about 13KB in size. Finally you get to the final result page which is about 8KB.

All in all, a user needs to download 115KB to view the result.

This means that we need to edit our calculations, and at the current rate, IIM would require a maximum of about 6550GB of bandwidth.

The sad part is that the small images on the home page, would consume about 4385GB of data.

Labels: India, Internet, MBAKarma

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QuarkRuby, one of the hottest shopping startups in India has a new post about building widgets. It is a great post and they talk about all sorts of widgets one can possibly make.

On seeing a post on programming, it is surprising that most developers at Indian Startups hardly ever talk much about the technology they are using. Maybe it's because none of us here are really innovating all that much, and most of it is not already available on the internet. But I am sure there are a lot of really good programmers out there with loads and loads of tricks up their sleeves. Somehow none of it ever comes out in the open.

There are some like Vikas Patial of NGCoders, who is literally a God. Everybody always wanted RSS on Orkut, but he was the guy who actually brought it out. I know what everybody is thinking now, but no, that's not important. I don't care how much money he made off the script. What's important is that he made a script which worked like a charm, and he just put it out there for everybody to use.

There is so much talk about how much funding each of the startups are getting, how much business they are doing and what not. But the most important stuff gets left out in the middle. Something that we all love doing. Programming.

Until we start talking about it with the same dedication and emotion as we talk about our big idea, it would be really difficult to build an ecosystem of quick, smart and experienced programmers who create the next generation of applications.


Is there anything like this which is already happening and I'm unaware of?

Labels: Programming, Startup

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