theCancerus

Category: general

  • How do I find out more about the startup ecosystem in Pune?

    Their was a very good discussion that happened at Pune  startups mailing list.  Topic of discussion was how do students find a way to get inside startup fraternity. Result of that discussion is that, we now have POCC-students group and mailing list created to help fill the gap.

    What is the most interesting is,  we were discussing how to get students invlove in open source, while techstart.in group was formed to give students mentoring.

    Anyways,  I thought I will just put action points from that mailing list as a blog post so that few more people could find it.

    Here is what Navin and other’s believe should be done by students to connect with  Pune startup faternity.

    To stay plugged in to the Pune startup ecosystem, I suggest the following:

    1. Subscribe to the PuneStartups (POCC) mailing list:
    http://groups.google.com/group/punestartups
    2. If you are a student, or interested in students, subscribe to the
    POCC mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/pocc-students
    3. Stay in touch with Pune tech community events and other information
    via PuneTech: http://punetech.com/subscribe
    4. Join twitter. I’ve found that twitter is a great place to get
    information about Pune Startups. On twitter follow @punetech

    As startups always look for passion and skill in people they hire, so being active on one of the forums mentioned below can increase you chance of getting hired and also to interact and find mentors in local community.

    Please choose according to your interest

    1. Join PHPCamp mailing list http://groups.google.com/group/phpcamp
    2. Join Drupal India Community mailing list at http://groups.drupal.org/india
    3. Join Joomla User Group Pune mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/jugpune
    4. Join Barcamp pune mailing list at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/barcamp-pune
    5. If mailing list is to much for you, then follow some of the most active pune techies and tech events on twitter.

    Again, I am biased towards PHP and PHP Community, so I have very limited knowledge of other tech events and their mailing list, So if any one of you are active on any other mailing list that is useful for students than please leave a comment I will update the post.

    Are you satisfied with your knowledge? No, then spent 15 minutes every day on PHPCamp.net a knowledge sharing website for our own PHP community

    Update

    Here are few more groups for you

    1. Join Null group at http://null.co.in/, they talk only about cyber security and hacking.
    2. Join Flex users mailing list at  http://groups.google.co.in/group/pune-flex-users
    3. Join Pune Linux User group at http://www.plug.org.in/mailman/listinfo/plug-mail
    4. For Techie Girls out their, Join LinuxChix  http://mailman.linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/indichix
    5. Join Ruby users mailing list at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/puneruby/
    6. Join Pune Java User Group http://groups.google.com/group/Pune-Java

    So many options, and still students ask where to look?

  • Round off

    Their are lot’s of tech events happening in Pune.

    Recently Concluded was IdeaCamp 2, you can read about it on Bhavya’s blog post.

    Upcoming events that I know of

    1. WATBlog Wednesday Pune on 21st January,
    2. Drupal Camp Pune, it is going to happen on 31st January,
    3. On 13th – 14 Feb( yes !!!) we are having Gnunify’09.  and
    4. Joomla Day India, for the first time in India, we will have a day dedicated to Joomla. This will happen on 25th April.  Announcement about it should happen in a day or two.

    Too know about more tech events that are happening or happen in Pune, keep checking Pune Tech Events Calendar.

    For last few week I have been doing lot of things and learned a lot, stay tuned..  till then

    Have fun

  • India I Care, So Let’s Be Social..

    We are happy to announce the success of Opensocial Developer Garage.

    We were able to prototype the ‘India I Care’ orkut app for IOFC. It will be soon released for everyone to use. We build this app with active contribution from Shardule, Rohan, Parag and our speaker Shishir.

    Priyank and Aman has already covered the event in detail, also check what another speaker Arpana has to say about it.

    Photos of the event :

    http://picasaweb.google.co.in/thecancerus/OpensocialDeveloperGarage08

    From Opensocial Developer garage’08

    I would like to thank everyone who made this event possible.

    Have fun.

  • FireUnit

    Today John Resig, Jan Odvarko released ‘FireUnit’ a very useful JavaScript unit testing extension for Firebug.

    Fireunit will make JavaScript logging very easy, and we will not have to use alert boxes any more.

    You can download the extension at http://fireunit.org/

  • The List of 5 Pune Tech Events and Their Twitter Accounts

    After creating a list of people, who are very active in Pune tech scene, to follow on twitter, I thought a list of technology events happening in Pune with their own twitter account is also due. twitter

    So here is the list of events with their twitter accounts

    1. Barcamp Pune @barcamppune
    2. PHPCamp @phpcamp
    3. ClubHack @clubhack
    4. JoomlaDay Pune @jugpune
    5. OpenSocial Developer Garage @devgarage
    6. Gnunify @gnunify (tip by @abhisheknagar)
    7. Pune Flex User Group @punefug (added on 28th Feb 2009)

    Off course there are more events happening in Pune, but these five seven have a Twitter account that I know off.

    If you want to keep an eye on other events without twitter accounts, then you should follow, following twitter accounts which live tweets tech events most of the time.

    1. PuneTech.com @punetech
    2. Pune Tech Live @punetechlive
    3. Dhananjay Nene @dnene_liveblog

    If I am missing any event with twitter account from this list or any one who live tweet the tech events then leave a comment with their twitter ID, along with yours so that we know.

  • 6 Pune Techie’s To Follow On Twitter

    In Barcamp Pune 5, we had our first twitter meet up, where we compiled a list of  twitter users. During that I thought, we also need to have a list of most active tech people in Pune, who also actively use twitter.
    twitter
    So if you want to keep an eye on Pune technology scene, then following these people on twitter is a must

    1. Navin Kabra @ngkabra
    2. Dhananjay Nene @dnene
    3. Rohit Srivastwa @rohit11
    4. Rohan Dighe @irohan
    5. Priyank Kapadia @whereispriyank
    6. Shardul Mohite @shardulmohite

    Apart from them you may also want to follow me ( @thecancerus ) as well 😉

    I know this list is incomplete as I have a very narrow technology vision, so if you follow someone who plays an active role in Pune and is not on the list then leave a comment along with your own twitter id.

    PS: if you have no idea about importance of twitter, then you should check out ‘Why you should be on Twitter – and how best to use it’ by Navin.

  • Barcamp Pune 5, Back To Basics, No Frills Camp

    Fifth edition of Barcamp Pune is here(on 29th Nov actually) at SICSR, model Colony.

    This time the theme of the event is ‘Back To Basics’ initially it was supposed to mean that focus of this event would be teach basics of technology to youngsters, but with time, its meaning changed to represent ‘No Frills Camp’.

    Yes, you heard me right BCP5 is going to be a Freecamp aka ‘No Frills Camp’, which means if the only reason you used to attend the barcamp’s was t-shirts then you better don’t come, you will be disappointed. Their will also be no free snacks, and lunch will cost you around 60 Rs.

    barcamp pune 5, back to basics

    What it also means is that if you have passion for technology then you will find people who share your passion and no freeloaders. For once, at least, Barcamp is only about technologies and not freebies. And as Tarun rightly said Freedom To Be will be the mantra or this one.

    Now, what are you waiting for, if you have still not registered then head over to http://barcamppune.org/ and register yourself.

    See you all on 29th @ SICSR, do drop by to say hello.

  • I Am Good But….

    You must have heard this phrase form your friends, colleagues or candidates, while explaining the reasons of why they have don’t have success.

    I am for sure used these excuses during early days of my career, before I realized my mistake.

    So what are the excuses I am talking about?

    Well, here they are

    1. My company is not good.  yeah sure, is my response to this. I really don’t understand this excuse, after all how a company is related to the program I write.
    2. My project is not good. This basically means that what  I am doing, is not what I want to do. Sometimes in professional life it is possible to get stuck in projects that we don’t like, but I have always believed that even a boring project can be made challenging and all exciting by simply setting some higher standards for  yourself in the project.
    3. My clients are not good. This one I understand and relate to, but looking back I can say, I have learned maximum while I was working with these not so good clients. Their near impossible demands(at that time) helped me stretch my ability, which might not been possible with if I had only worked for good clients.
    4. My Seniors are not good. When someone say this to me, I always ask them why should they. After all sooner or later you will be competing for their positions.
    5. My Team mates are not good. They never are, accept this fact and consider your self very lucky if you get good team mates. Again the reason is quite simple, only one among your team can become next team leader. I am sure you want to be that person, but so does other members of your team. Now you tell me, will you help your team mate in his quest to become next team leader? understand what I am trying to say.

    I am good

    Now to answer the inevitable question that these people ask after giving these excuses

    (more…)

  • Opensocial Developer Garage

    During PHPCamp Pune 08 we saw lots of interest in Opensocial, so some campers decided to give Opensocial it’s due.osd_logo

    We are now organizing first edition of Opensocial Developer Garage in Pune on 20th December 2008. So get over to http://developergarage.in and register yourself as soon as possible, as this is invite only event and only 200 people will be invited.

    If you want to speak, then please fill speakers registration form. This time we will choose the speakers in advance and will let everyone know who is speaking and when.

    While we are still looking for venue (as usual), you may want to spread the word to you friends.

    PS: we are also looking for sponsors, to make this event a free affair for participants. check out our budget needs and if you are interested send an email to developergarage@gmail.com

  • akIndicPlugin For Writing In Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam And Other Indian Languages

    For those in hurry,  download [download#13#nohits] now.

    akIndicPlugin was born, when I needed to demo a website in Hindi. This plugin is adapted from a WordPress plugin Indic by nbachiyski, which is is actually based on Gamabhana library written by Omkar Joshi.

    I adapted it so that I can use it in my websites.

    As it is based on Gamabhana, it currently supports following 8 Indian languages

    1. Devanagari(Hindi)
    2. Bengoli
    3. Gujarati
    4. Kannada
    5. Malayalam
    6. Gurumukhi
    7. Telgu
    8. Urdu

    It is released under GPL, so go ahead and use it as you see fit in your web application. Writing in India languages could not get easier then this.

    akIndicPlugin

    How To Use

    Copy the files in plugin directory of your tinyMCE folder and when you are initializing tinyMCE just add  akIndicPlugin to list of plugins to load and also to list of buttons.

    For example

    tinyMCE.init({
		theme : "advanced",
		language : "en",
		mode : "specific_textareas",
		safari_warning : false,
		plugins : "advlink, advimage,  preview, visualchars, media, nonbreaking, akIndicPlugin",
		theme_advanced_buttons3_add : "styleprops, visualchars, media, nonbreaking, akIndicPlugin",
		debug : false,
		fullscreen_settings : {
			theme_advanced_path_location : "top"
		}
	});

    Simple isn’t it?

    Troubleshooting

    If characters doesn’t show properly in your browser you can find some helpful hints in this Wikipedia page( “Multilingual support (Indic)”).

    If you are looking for key sequence to which letter corresponds, have a look at the nice table at the Gamabhana library site. Devanagari is used there, but the same logic applies to all other scripts.

    akIndicPlugin currently supports only tinyMCE 2.x series, stay tuned for tinyMCE 3.x support.