With the UEFA Champions league going on, as usual there are always these crazy set of fans, the soccer maniacs. But many a times I see these young freaks, who are equally lunatic about soccer as the adults, but don’t get the opportunity to get a seat in the stadium. Simply because they can’t afford it, the pocket money is way too low, parents are not ready to sponsor as the recession effect is still not over for many. And for others who do part time, weekend or summer jobs, the earnings is still not enough, to get through to the soccer stadium.

Lowering down the rate doesn’t help, as the soccer stadiums also need to meet their daily expenses, so, what could help? We need something that could help bring in more business to the soccer stadiums and also lower the rates for the young fans.

My friend Amrit, told me about an idea that he learnt from L.A. Galaxy. Introduce sky boxes in soccer stadiums! Amrit is one genius business analyst, he was an inch away from getting into ComScore but got struck by bad luck.

Coming back to the topic, for those who don’t know what sky boxes are: Sky boxes, also known as private boxes or luxury boxes are specially designed private luxury suites, designed for the high profiled elite crowd. To understand better, you can read the detailed explanation from wisgeek: what is a sky box?

In U.S. the baseball and super bowl stadiums have these luxury suites, sky boxes, which are usually booked by the Corporates for the CEOs, Presidents, Directors and Managers.

Sky boxes are your 5 star suites, providing pleasant facilities. Depending upon the type of suite, you’ll have large High Definition LCD screens, drinks and food delights on menu, stewards and attendants at your service and various other amenities.

Such sky boxes serve a good beneficial purpose for the corporates to have their entrepreneurial meetings and at the same time enjoy the game as well.

The soccer stadiums can thus earn a good amount of profit from the sky boxes, and lower the rates for the usual seats.

I know the soccer stadiums do have private cabins and privileged cubicles reserved, in case some celebrity, minister or high end personality makes a visit. But they are not like the ones we see in baseball or super bowl stadiums. Hence they don’t bring in any extra profit.

The best part about watching a game from a sky box is; they give you a whole different view and aura. It makes you feel as if you are a part of something big, looking at the game, the field and whole stadium from a very wide perspective.

Photo Source: toksuede

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Title: PingMe

Platform: Android, IOS

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Bottom Line: PingMe app is a collection of features from other social apps, but with some minor changes.

I have been writing too much on messaging apps, earlier i had on whatsapp, then mysms and now PingMe messaging app. the thing is, i love testing out new messengers and social sharing apps. The question here is, how can you make communication more simple, fun, useful and addictive? Its not that easy. Thats where whatsapp rocked.

I know i have praised whatsapp a lot, I am not a whatsapp PR or marketing guy nor am i paid for it. Its everyday observation, i see people using whatsapp everyday, even, every new person i meet has got whatsapp, its like facebook of mobile.

Coming back to topic. Pingme is the new social messaging app by RadiumOne, its got a sleek UI, easy to use. Satisfactory UX, too much use of pink color, that gives it a minus one.

In Pingme, you can converse with your friends, as you do in facebook and google+, you can question a community, there are different communities, sports, lifestyle, technology, etc. you can post your question in the community section, like you do in reddit or quora, and this how you get get in touch with like minded people.

Pingme’s features seems like a collection of features from other social apps, but with some minor changes.

In most apps you have your ‘Like / Dislike’, in PingMe there’s a ‘Heart and Broken Heart’, In facebook you poke, In pingme, you wink.

Verdict: Overall PingMe seems to be good, easy to use, but its a tough road ahead, i used it for few weeks, even invited all my contacts to join PingMe, none came. what i found is, everyone has gtalk, facebook messenger and whatsapp on their mobile. Even i have those, again a new messenger, and again wait for everyone to join in, that feels fatigue.

Pingme is available for iphone, android and blackberry phones, but they have not released for windows phone, i think they should release the windows phone app as early as possible. windows mobile has a different eco system of users, so, PingMe may strike a chord there.

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• Download PingMe Messenger for iPhone 2.0.1 (news.softpedia.com)

Title: Mysms

Platform: Android, ios, windows, web

Rating: 4.5/5

Bottom Line: An excellent messenger and message manager.

You can say Mysms is what whatsapp should have been, its got all the features that are missing in whatsapp. Signing up is easy, you install the app, add in your mobile number, set a password and you are done.

You don’t need to add contacts to it, it fetches all of them from your phones contact list, Now, if you are thinking this is the key feature of whatsapp itself, then let me differentiate it for you.

When you install whatsapp it detects which other people mentioned in your contacts have whatsapp installed on their phone. In short it connects whatsapp to whatsapp, its the same BBM concept.

While in mysms it fetches all your contacts and then detects which one of them have mysms installed, so the ones which have mysms app installed can be texted directly using your 3G or GPRS connection, while others can be texted the usual SMS way, for which your basic SMS charges will apply. So, its like one app for controlling messages sent via SMS or 3G/GPRS.

The best part what i liked about mysms is, it can be accessed from web, you can login at mysms.com and manage all your messages and even send and receive. This is what i really wanted from whatsapp.

Why the 4.5 and not 5 out of 5, even after calling it excellent? The downside of mysms, what I feel, is its UI, its too dull. If you look at whatsapp, which is still going very strong, it has a great UI, its fun to use. I think that’s where whatsapp stands out from the rest.

If mysms could get the UI right, that would make it one tough contender against all other messenger apps.

Verdict: I’ll surely recommend it, its light and fast, i have been using it for past 2 months, many a times i did access it from the web as well, when my mobile battery drained out, logged in to mysms.com, sent and received texts, works smoothly without any hassles.

Related articles:

• Mysms text message sync app launches for Android tablets (androidcommunity.com)
• Android Architecture Patterns (stackoverflow.com)
• Extending the Deadline for Built for BlackBerry (devblog.blackberry.com)
• Five Tip Friday – BlackBerry Messenger 6.0 (helpblog.blackberry.com)

Sweden has one of the highest broadband internet penetration in the world, it had a 10Mb symmetric to majority of its citizens already in 1998.

A Swedish Perspective consists of 3 lessons as i discovered from tpbafk.tv, movie website for the documentary The Pirate Bay – Away From Keyboard.

Speaker: Jonas Birgersson.

Lesson 1 – There is no Conflict between Creator and Consumer :

According to a very interesting survey, done by Ulf Pettersson at Utsala University, If you look at the revenue sharing, of course the consumers pay 100%, how much of that actually goes to the people that create the content? His study shows that 2% on an average go to the people who actually create the content.

And this is not only in Music or Film, it is for all of the different art forms that get intellectual property right contributions, from the Swedish system.

What this means that if you today pay 20 Euros for a Music CD, that would be in Sweden after taxes 16 Euros, then the people who actually created the music, they actually get 0.32 Euros, and of course this creates an enormous opportunity.

What if the creator could sell directly to the consumer? Let’s assume that the creator would sell for 1/10th of what the consumers pay today. So if you are a consumer, this means tat you get a 90% discount and based on the 1.6 Euros for exactly the same material the creator would now get 5 times more for exactly the same creation. So 90% discount for the consumer, and 500% more money coming to the people creating the content.

There is no conflict between creative people and the consumers.

Lesson 2 – Conflict regarding intellectual property rights :

So why is there a conflict regarding intellectual property rights if you look around the world today?

Basically we have 3 parties, We have the creative people, we have the consumers and we have the others. Labeled as the others, the Non Creative Non Consuming Organisations, they basically want to keep heir very big part of the revenue share. Because of all the technical advances that has made their job much cheaper, less risky, they keep the same huge amount of the revenue share.

One common way of describing the evolution of a company or a group of companies or an idea is something called the S-curve. Basically the S-curve describes that a company is born, it develops, it matures and then it dies, a common way of describing when you go from 3rd to the 4th field is that you start putting more resources in stopping the coming S-curve, instead of enhancing your own products, and the Non Creative Non Consuming Organisations, have reached that point.

Basically trying to keep the technology away, instead of improving their own offerings, and that’s why we have a conflict.

Lesson 3 – Technology and Creativity :

So, is the new technology killing creativity? the Non Creative Non Consuming Organisations have basically with every introduction of new technology proclaimed the death to creativity as we know it. This has been from the self playing pianos to the internet.

Fortunately they have been wrong every time. All people are naturally creative and to create is an integrated part of life. Of course everybody has different skill sets. But the new digital technology has super empowered every kind of creative expression.

Not only the creative process itself has been empowered but all aspects of creative life, such as, global participation, global sharing and global remixing, and creative people that share ad remix each others work, have created a super productive culture, sometimes called a community, that has produced unique projects such as the open source revolution and Wikipedia.

So creativity is basically exploding with all these opportunities.

You can watch the videos below or from the movie website at TPBAFK.TV/video

Photo Source: flo_p 

Related articles

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No bazinga here, but what has been observed, mostly in cities and some developed towns, the no. of young people watching TV has gone down, yes, the youth have started quitting on TV and switched to youtube and other web alternatives to watch movies, shows and other general videos.

This was expected and the trend will grow as internet reaches more towns and rural areas across Asia, and also videos going viral is not new.

What was not expected is a TV Series becoming so popular, its like gone viral and along with the series, its main character Sheldon Cooper played by Jim Parsons, has become a sensation.

The USP of the show is the funny sicence talks, which i am sure, not many people understand, but still they tend to tickle a funny bone in everyone of us and keep us stuck on to it.

Hats off to Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady to come up with this awesome idea.

A Brazilian biologist Andre Nemesio who recently discovered a new species of bee, named the bee species Bazinga.

Google for the word Bazinga, and see what all sites and pages you’ll discover.

I found a website named http://mybazinga.com a webapp for property builders and Condo makers.

I am sure there may be more sites and apps which may have picked up something from The Big Bang Theory.

I am not a TV guy, and still don’t own any, i quit TV long back, and i don’t even follow  any and i am not even a regular viewer of any TV series, but this one got me.

Is there any other TV series which has reached this level of viralness? Do share it in comments. Even if you find some which is uncanny or creative, and is unnoticed, share that too, let us have a look at it.

Please do watch the short video above, its really interesting, and if you just wanna listen to the original theme Song, here’s the GrooveShark Link:

The Big Bang Theory Theme Song by the Band named Barenaked Ladies

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This post is just a small initiation, to share hacker stories with you, There are few more Movies and Books, I would like to talk about and share with you, but for now, lets talk about Clifford Stoll.

The Cuckoo’s Egg is a true story of tracking down of a Hacker Markus Hess, something that started with tracing of a menial error, but ultimately led to tracking of a Nuclear spying by one Nation on another.

This is not a sponsored post, This book was first published in the 90′s and its popular even today.

Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, had to take up a job as a Computer System Administrator, since he ran out of his research grant money.

But the missing 75-cent, this is ignition, he’s been given the job to trace the error of the missing 75-cent, and here starts the most unpredictable journey, anyone could have ever thought of. Tracking error of a missing 75-Cent could lead to a Hacker in some other part of the world, and the way story unfolds, you’ll realize, this is no ordinary hacker, a very calm and composed mastermind. Even the CIA is hunting him.

The narration in the book is brilliant, it never disinterests, except for some small parts, where Clifford Stoll talks about Martha and Claudia, his roommates, there you feel, cut this and get back to the hacker, whats he doing? whats he upto? what other loop holes has he found?

Till first half of the book, observing the hacker’s movements and with help from some other guys, traces him upto North Virginia, and believes he is hiding somewhere there, he may be some college kid, fiddling around.

But then there’s the turn, the hacker is not from US, but somewhere half way around the world, and he is no college kid. In the second half, the story crosses the US borders and reaches Germany, in search of the hacker, and yes Clifford Stoll does come face to face with the hacker.

There’s a police raid searching for hacker, not like the one that happened for Kim Dotcom, here its police raid of the 80′s, but still exciting.

The book doesn’t end here, there’s more, Clifford also helped NASA in tracking down Robert Morris, famous for creating the morris worm.

Two things i learned from this book and made a note of it.

| The baud rate measures the speed that data flows through a line. And 1200 baud means 120 characters per seconda few pages of text every minute. Dial-up modems over telephone lines run at 1200 baud.

| The astronomer’s rule of thumb: if you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.

At present, Stoll runs his own company Acme Klein Bottles, he manufactures and sells Klein Bottles.

These Geeks, freaks and nerds are the unsung heroes, the real people, who make a real difference, put a real dent in the world, still remain unnoticed.

If you know of some cool hackery Movies, stories, books, posts do share it in comments would love to cover them in our blog.

Photo Source: Docklandsboy

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Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu OS, are not new into the OS business, but they are new in the mobile market.

If we come to computer OS, Ubuntu is very popular and widely used in Servers and by System Admins, and their desktop version has improved a lot, and since the version 11, they have redesigned and taken aesthetics seriously, i strongly recommend it to everyone, its sure a Windows killer, the programs and functions were always better performing than windows, first timers do find it difficult to adapt, but with the new versions, it won’t take much time.

Coming back to mobile, looking at Mark Shuttleworth’s video, introducing the mobile OS, it looks beautiful, it may make it, but they have not yet launched in the market, and at present, there’s no announcement or notice or any hint or clue on when actually they are going to launch, they are looking for manufacturers who would be interested in manufacturing phones with their new Ubuntu OS.

If Canonical is planning on just targeting the geeky ubuntu loving audiences, in that case, no worries. That makes me realize, they won’t need to wait and search for early adopters, they are already present, curiously waiting.

As every entrepreneur knows, a basic and very important rule of any business, your early adopters decide the fate of your product. Canonical just needs to make sure the OS works smoothly without any flaws and glitches.

One thing, for which Ubuntu and the whole OpenSource community really deserves an appreciation, is, the idea of crowd-sourcing. Yes, One man Linus Torvalds, invented Linux and since then, people started contributing, and now they are so many programs and applications, which may not be present in other Operating Systems, and there are different flavors too.

Ubuntu being the most popular, having a good team of Engineers, Coders and freelance contributors and there are also System Admins and tutorials and forums, to help newbies and anyone facing any issue.

Looking at the speed with which Ubuntu comes up with their new versions, they have the most hard working people, constantly improvising and coming up with new features and applications.

I don’t like to make predictions, i am not an entrepreneur, but Ubuntu already has their early adopters, eagerly waiting. They just need to make sure, they get it right, they make their early adopters happy and they will seriously be on their road to success.

Photo Source: Benjamin Humphrey

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• Mark Shuttleworth’s Hands-On Ubuntu Mobile Demonstration (lifehacker.com.au)

User Experience (UX) is the most important factor in making a product a success. Its the awesome UX that makes apple products stand out from the crowd and that’s what even microsoft is trying to achieve with its new windows 8 phones.

I have been an open source guy for the past 8 years, I started with Fedora for first couple years and then switched on to Ubuntu, and since then, growing up with it. But still, working on a mac gave a different experience, and then after a couple of days I would quit the mac and get back to my Ubuntu, as I was not able to use it completely. (Please note, the new Ubuntu versions, 12.04 and above have a great UI, I strongly recommend giving it a try.)

Similarly, I was highly excited when i purchased my first Android, still, getting my hands on the iPhone made me more excited, its only after I am done playing with its apps and all the features, I used to start comparing it with my Android and then realized, my Android has much better specs than the iPhone.

What I learned from this is, apple does’t sell specs, it sells experience, that’s what made it different and crush out the competition.

Its the same with Research-in-Motion, they had their own elite audience, but some recent server downs and OS lag issues, caused the blackberry’s downfall.

One more lesson to be learnt, along with a good UI, you need to make sure it functions well, without any errors.

Among the android phones, for me, htc stands out from the rest, I know there’s already a lot of buzz about the battery issues. But if you recollect, even before Android and iPhone made it in the market, in the old Symbian days, HTC had a class of its own.

Now, every phone manufacturer tries to get the best in aesthetics, its like every one is trying to compete and beat the iPhone. That’s not going to help. To get ahead in the race, they’ll have to move out of the race and think different, and after a long time htc seems to make a great comeback with its droid dna and google also seems to have got something awesome out, the google nexus.

One uniqueness I found in HTC phones, is the rear end plastic is soft touch, which gives a feel good thing, and the audio is by beats, one of the best, i have heard after a long time.

I have not yet got my hands on the Google nexus, just curiously waiting.

We don’t know who’s gonna stand out, but for everyone, from phone manufacturers to app makers, the turf is tough. the question is, who’s getting the UX right?

Photo Source: Samer Hassan89

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The common approach I found in startups, recruitment starts with looking for developers to get started with ruby, Python or PHP, then comes in the Sys Admin and then starts the construction of a web app or site.

What’s the idea?

New age entrepreneurs very well know the importance of mobile, they can’t ignore it. If you are just building an information website or blog, you’ll just need to make it compatible for mobiles, that’s not a difficult task, there are service available like mobify and dudamobile. But if your idea is a web app, social network, news, media, SaaS or PaaS, then you clearly need a mobile app. Why am I pressing on initiating with mobile? Because it is more difficult than building the web app, and as an entrepreneur you know that eventually you’ll have to bring your app to the mobile turf, so why not tackle the hard part first.

Planning:

Planning the UX for your mobile app will be a tough challenge, the app needs to be easy to use, soothing, and fast. Also you need to plan for all mobile platforms, particularly the 3, iPhone, android and blackberry. The more platforms covered, the more will be the user base. Note, importantly, don’t rush, planning the UX, Designing, Development, Database, architecture, flow, is an arduous undertaking. Go steady, set every step firm, before taking the next.

Who’s needed in the crew:

The Sys Admin will surely be required in any case. Sys Admins play a crucial role in smooth functioning of your site or app on the web. They are the linchpin, between the developer, webmaster and the server. The Sys Admins I found in startups and mid sized firms, take care of web servers, database, the office network, OS issues as well as desktop and laptop issues. Some companies have special database admins to manage and take care of the database. But, yes, a Sys Admin will be needed.

Now, searching for developers to work on iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms. I never found a single guy who works or has experience of working on all 3 platforms, there’s always separate developers for each one. So, you realize, the search and recruitment will be a work at the salt mines.

Mobile conquered:

When you are done with the mobile app, if you pause for a moment and think, most of the foundation, the critical and important parts, have been covered. The database, the architecture and servers, have been set. Now, planning for the web should be much easier.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

photo source: byte

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Python is one beautiful programming language. Simple yet extensive, flexible and powerful, and has a huge community.

It is being used in so many differnt kinds of projects and applications, from web based applications like youtube, google, redit, disqus to standalone desktop appilcations, scientific research, industrial automation, game development, network and systems programming, 3D grapgics.

Python has a very extensive standard library, it contains built-in modules written in C, that provide solutions to so many problems, which you find missing in many other programming languages, even the new ones.

connecting to your usual popular databases and datawarehouses, like, MySQL, Postgres or oracle, there’s a library or module, every programming language has. But connecting to things like mongodb, cassandra, kyoto cabinet, tokyo cabinet, couchdb, voldemort, hadoop, greenplum, python has it all covered.

Also, python is the main preferred programming language by scientists and engineers when it comes to research, Automation, Data mining, machine learning, Maps, non-relational data warehouses, cloud computing and artificial intellegence.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Just dip your toe and decide for yourself.

Python is something, which gives you the power, yet brings in fun to programming.

Django is a popular python framework, but i see many find it incomplete or tough. Learning django may seem to be like learning a whole new programming language. But python has many other various frameworks, that can replace django and perform even better.

If you love pure python, and need something simple to get on to the web, then you can try micro frameworks like, Bottle or Flask, both are awesome.

If you want a simple and powerful framework go for web.py or web2py. Web2py is extensive, yet very simple. If you are looking something to replace django, i’ll recommend web2py, it performs much better.

To get started with python there are many excellent free resources, books and tutorials available.

A Byte of Python

learnpython.org

pyschools

Online Python Tutor

If you would like to opt for learning from books,  i would recommend:

Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional – Magnus Lie Hetland

Beginning Python – James Payne

Python for Unix and Linux System Administration – Jeremy Jones and Noah Gift

If you are currently using python or have used python or any of its frameworks, please do share your experiences.

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