Venturewoods

Launch of a facebook clone in Drupal: Smart move by EBIZONTEK

2008-03-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

Crawling around web, i recently found a website kickwork.com.For a second i got confused whether i have opened facebook by mistake.Guys watch out KICKWORK, these people have done a mind blowing job.They have actually built a facebook clone.On doing lot of research on kickwork , i found kickwork is not just a social networking platform but the power that it carries with itself is the framework on which it is buit...what else...its DRUPAL.
I think with Drupal as the platform on which kickwork is built , kickwork can actually rock the world. The guys around kickwork are the same who released Drupaligg (an open source Digg clone).They are Ebizontek guys.Every next day i see some or the other new application released over Drupal by ebizontek.It seems Ebizon guys are drupal experts. I think launching kickwork at this moment in time when the social networking market is really really HOT is a very smart move by these guys.They might be thinking of making it open source(thats why its a smart move at teh right time). Drupaligg has already hit the Digg clone market all over the world. Now its kickwork's time.
The myth that indians are far behind in open source development has been made true by these people. Infact, when i started with Drupal development, i heard that there are hardly 50 good drupallers in india.But the trend seems to have been changed.Ebizontek has done a wonderful job not just technically by making Digg clone and Facebook clone but also strategically by making kickwork and Drupaligg open source.
Hats off to you guys. I am waiting anxiously for kickwork to be open source. I desperately want to see its code and contribute to the development of Kickwork.

Dupaligg over Pligg

2007-11-27T04:12:00.000-08:00

Long time back i had posted about creating Digg Clones DRUPALIGG and PLIGG. The power of Drupal brings Drupaligg over Pligg.
Reasons:

Adding modules in Drupaligg is very much easily possible. Like if you want to add something like Digg spy, it is really simple with Drupal6.0.

Flexibility in adding Forums/Blogs.
Flexibility in creating custom themes or modifying current theme.

Social networking is a real hot market these days. It is mushrooming at an excellent rate. Because Drupaligg is created over Drupal, so any social networking site can be integrated with Drupaligg. Imagine a facebook + Digg . Social Networking can be tied to anything and everything.

The Live sites running over Drupaligg are:
Minkit
MyMobilePals
SocialWeBee

Diggindianews is now MinkIt

2007-10-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

Diggindianews is now with a new avatar as Minkit. The concept of MinkIt is simple. Open source happens when the demand side starts supplying itself. As Open source came as a revolution to proprietorship, the same way MinkIt is born as a revolution to current indian mainstream media. Presently mainstream media is in the few hands and is easily manipulated and influenced by rich and powerful people. MinkIt has the power to turn readers into news editors and transform conventional journalism to Distributed journalism.

For those of you who haven't heard about MinkIt, it's a news site for india that relies on its readers to determine what the most important news stories/headlines are that day. With lots of newspapers being in india, each one it either gives a scattered news or even if it is local there is still no platform that gives local news for a location on internet. MinkIt brings localised concept to news. Any local news for a particular city from classifieds to jobs to news can be published by any user. The most minked news comes in the front page. Any person from a local city can bring his news/blog/matrimony/resume/advertize his shop/classifieds for anything, and submit in MinkIt. He does not need to visit newspaper publishing houses and spend money in getting his news published because MinkIt provides this facility free of cost. A common man can simply target the local public for his business through internet. Lets say for example i stay in noida and i have a car that i want to sell then i simply join MinkIt and go to classified section and make a posting for my maruti car. The people of that city who are interested in buying my car can contact me by seeing my classified posting.

MinkIt has been launched at a perfect timing when indian mainstream media has made normal public frustrated of the way how they manipulate news as per their business. MinkIt is powerful because the public has right to vote down the news which is absolute junk. This is why MinkIt is called Distributed Journalism. We have the right to enjoy democracy in every aspect and with Minkit we can surely bring transparency to indian news content.

Online photo rating site for india ------ratehotindia.com------

2007-10-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

Are you interested in knowing how hot you are??How people rate your attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10??If this is what you are looking for then RateHotIndia would be the best place.

RateHotIndia is an online photo rating site where community rates a users photo on a scale of 1 to 10.There are already similar successful companies like HOTorNOT in USA. As internet user growing at an exponential rate in india, it seems RateHotIndia could be an exiting space targeting indian internet market. Plus the timing seems to be right for the launch. Lot of other startups have been running after rating engine but rating photos is by far the best concept that i have come across because of the charm that a photo carries. Any two people can have different choices in defining how HOT a person is on a scale of 1 to 10.

The revenue stream for RateHotIndia would be advertisements as of now. But as they expand their target would be around subscription for dating i suppose. A question that has come to my mind is how are these people connecting users? Is it through comments or sending emails or something else which is going to get launched soon?? Well thats a mystery i suppose. And as of now comments and messages are meant to connect users.

New release of Drupaligg(Themes more stable)

2007-08-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

As i have mentioned in my previous post about Drupligg release.I faced some issues during installation which are mentioned below:
1) Voting views
2) Problem in theme.When opened in Firefox, few links were not getting clicked. The release wasnt quite stable in IE and Firefox.

These issues have been solved in latest release of Drupaligg. Now the theme seems to be stable in IE and Firefox both. Download the source code for the same at: Drupaligg Source Code:Latest release as of 24/08/2007.

The Drupaligg team seems to be working hard to make Drupaligg more and more stable.I saw their blog Drupaligg Blog which says that "Next Drupaligg Release is likely have more themes and also, would include blogs, articles and other drupal content types in the voting widget that would be configurable. I would also try to incorporate more power into Drupaligg like creating user karmas based on voting, invitation and some action."

But the best thing that would help me personally and might be of useful to many of Drupaligg users would be thePligg to Drupaligg Migration Script.I am eagarly looking forward to have this script released asap.

Share files for free on "FTP2share"

2007-08-24T03:07:00.000-07:00

In this era of Internet, content sharing platforms have also become very popular. Some content sharing ventures include Stumbleupon for sharing websites, Slideshare for sharing powerpoint presentations, Diggindianews for sharing news.
The next killer startup in this domain is FTP2Share. As the name describes, it is a tool which allows you to share your files with as many people and that too absolutely free. It is very simple to use. In simple words it is Single Upload - Single Link - Multiple Download Sources
People who host websites that share information which needs to be downloaded can benefit a lot from FTP2share. Also, it can be useful for the people who want to share music,data etc.
I used to upload loads of files to various file uploading sites ( eg. rapidshare.com) for sharing among my friends. But all these services had some time limits and download limits . To overcome this i had to create a number of mirrors of the same file in different services. But thenit is quite tedious to manually upload the same file in different services through a web interface . Today while i was surfing Diggindianews, i came to know about a FTP2SHARE service which is easy as well as free.

Drupaligg: The Open Source Digg/Reddit clone using PHP based Drupal

2007-08-17T04:07:00.002-07:00

Popularity of Digg is increasing day by day and the demand for Digg clone is even higher.When i was crawling over internet to find Digg clone, i came across Drupaligg which built around Drupal with the functionality of Pligg also there. Drupal+Pligg Content management system. And the best part is it is available open source.The source code for the same can be downloaded at Drupaligg Source Code
I have been using Pligg by far but was stuck with the limitations of Pligg in adding forums,blogs,etc. Well with Drupaligg, the advantage of Drupal comes free with Pligg.The power of not only gives voting API but also social networking feature addition becomes easy.
I am just waiting for Drupaligg people to release migration script so that i can easily migrate my content from Pligg to Drupaligg and release my product asap.

Diggindianews: Indian content (news/blogs/stories) sharing platform

2007-08-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

I excitedly watch for new start-ups coming up in India. Today I came across another Web2.0 venture - Diggindianews. As the name may suggest it is a India based content sharing and discovering platform where the content that rocks is promoted to the front page.Amazing thing is if a story becomes popular it can literally drive thousands of visitors to a Web site within minutes.

Being indian i would promote sites that promote swadeshi content.Unlike digg which is too much segregated because of sharing entire worlds content, Diggindianews best thing is its localised concept which brings focus on indian content.

On looking at Diggindianews, one question that came instantly to my mind was "So why would anyone come post on Diggindianews instead of Digg?".My point is correct to an extent.But apparently i realised it is a simple issue of branding,brand image and brand recognition.As Coca Cola is linked with drinks so is Google with search and so is Digg with content sharing.Founder of Diggindianews says,"Diggindianews is not engaged in a battle to replace Digg instead it has altogether a different market to capture i.e India.In todays internet world, everything is becoming open source from search engines to social networks then why now open journalism where reader is a publisher.In a democratic country like india, people have right to express their thought then why not readers decide the promotion of a news instead of editors".

A recent Wall Street Journal article, The Wizards of Buzz, defines social bookmarking sites as “A new kind of Web site turning ordinary people into hidden influencers, shaping what we read, watch and buy.” Diggindianews seems to one platform through which the India news would be no more influenced by editors but by user ranking.As rightly said Be indian,buy indian, i would add appreciate products that focus on india.

Guruji - The Indian Search Engine!

2007-08-12T05:19:00.000-07:00

From quite sometime i have been seeing how Guruji, an indian search engine is publicising about it.They have organised contests on guruji search, sending spam mails to inboxes of people, coming forefront in media, publishing articles in sites like Guruji: The Indian Search Engine , and a lot more....
I had anxiety as to what is so special about this search engine in a list of search engines that are competing with big "G"(none other than Google).I thought it might be some xyz in the big list of search engines.But to my surprise, when i started using Guruji, i realised they have a big market which needs to think beyond Google and come back to Swadeshi Guruji.

As the name says, Guruji is about india, for indians and made by indians.This makes it localised.If you want to search some hotel in india you cant go to google and search for your specific results in a long list of result that it shows.One can do it by specifying related keywords,but the point is if Guruji provides this feature why should i scratch my head for finding keywords??

Obviously you need localised search which is where Guruji comes into picture.Guruji has no competition with Big G as they have entire indian internet market which itself is in billions.Guruji would return the result in the very first page with less no of clicks unlike Google.Localisation is a key aspect.Its a simple maths, if i live in Noida then i would like to buy a pair of shoes from Noida rather than delhi unless i have lot of time to roam around."Ninety per cent of Internet search queries are local in nature and therefore provides ideal platform for Guruji.com to enter and tap this market",says the Gaurav Mishra,co-founder & COO of Guruji.com.

Whenever i see digg, what i see is the top links have basically US news/blogs.Since they havent localised it i hardly find news/blogs related to india which is of more interest to me.I hope, very soon people will come up with idea of localised digg for india also.

Related articles about Guruji:
Indian search Engines: Who is winning the race?
Guruji- What value is it adding?

Indians have a flair for Entrepreneurship

2007-08-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

Lately, i read an article on whether indians lack a flair for entrepreneurship? The article of course uncovers the fact that by far indians have made successful buisnesses almost in the whole of world.
From America to Canada to UK to UAE, indians have proved to have entrepreneurship flavour inspite of the fact that the environment,society and family does not always support.
Infact there is a Gujrati chain in US who have captured 60% of the food chain in US.A very recent example is Mr Lakshmi Mittal who is the steel king of the world,then there was Dhirubhai Ambani,Tatas,Birlas,Mahindras, the list goes on....

Infact I am surprised how can people think of putting such ridiculous questions on indians.Inspite of lack of support,financial crisis and family responsibilities on us, we have proved to be so good entrepreneurs.

It is comparitively easy to start a technical venture in US.It is said that if you are in a right place at right time then nothing can stop you from rising, similarly students in US raising fundings, starting ventures and because the market is hot they are turning out to be successful entrepreneurs.And on the other hand the time is same(Market is HOT) but raising funding in India is quite difficult.VCs are not ready to invest till the time your venture isnt successful.Now the point is when you are successful why would you want funding..haha:) Inspite of such nonsupporting environment, startups in india still are growing at such a fast pace.I must say i am proud of being citizen of a country where such brilliant people live.

Few years ago i came across an IITian who was in his final year.He had his own startup in Buisness Incubator while he was in 3rd year.Isnt it inspiring...a graduate in his third year is running his own venture and trying out his best to convert his idea into a good revenue buisness.I began thinking what is so special in IITs that give birth to an entrepreneur from an undergrad student. What i found to my surprise was its not the academics nor it is the learning, rather it is the attitude which makes IITians different from non IITians.To start your own venture you need to think beyond boundaries. Rightly said, "Think Big,Work smart,Put in your Best and Make it happen" is the philosophy behind success in any field.

Why Google is not God

2007-08-12T03:48:00.001-07:00

Very often i have seen people saying Google is God...google is everything...how can we work without Google.For particularly those people who cant live without GOOGLING, i would say that Google didnt make us rather we humans made Google.Infact everything in this world from humans to animals to google is mortal.Each and every particle is this universe has an end today or tomorrow.
People join communities saying Google is God,Google is my religion,Google aarti,blah blah
This is just in mind.infact today Google is so big because of us.Subconciously we keep on giving energy to something which is not more than a tool.Yes it affects our day to day activity but surely not our lives.I am also a big fan of Google,I was also the part of such communities but lately i have realized that its just in mind and giving so much energy to it would bring me nothing.
Often we give energies to these entities like Google, Coca Cola and make them rule our world. And it is us who are the rulers instead. This is difficult for most people to comprehend, but anyone has read some sort of magic books would agree with me.

Why Google is not God

2007-08-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

Very often i have seen people saying Google is God...google is everything...how can we work without Google.For particularly those people who cant live without GOOGLING, i would say that Google didnt make us rather we humans made Google.Infact everything in this world from humans to animals to google is mortal.Each and every particle is this universe has an end today or tommorrow.
People join communities saying Google is God,Google is my religion,Google aarti,blah blah
This is just in mind.infact today Google is so big because of us.Subconciously we keep on giving energy to somehting which is not more than a tool.Yes it affects our day to day activity but surely not our lives.I am also a big fan of Google,I was also the part of such communities but lately i have realised that its just in mind and giving so much energy to it would bring me nothing.