Saturday, December 15, 2007

Coffee with Minekey Team - Information Session

Folks from our Sunnyvale team, Delip (our CEO) and Raymond and Rajiv (Product Management) are in town, and what better way to spend sunday than to have a chat with us over a few cappuccinos? This is a great opportunity to meet with the Minekey team members (both from Gurgaon and Sunnyvale) and hear stories about working in one of the hottest tech startups. We are hiring and expanding our team in Gurgaon and so this is a great opportunity for both of us to learn about each other in an informal setting.

We will be hosting two events:
Gurgaon
Location: Terrace - MGF Megacity Mall, Gurgaon. http://www.mgfindia.com/megacity_gurgaon/index.htm
Time: Sunday, December 16th, 11 am

Noida
Location: Costa Coffee (basement), Noida Sect 18, Shop# G-45, Sect 18, Near Centre Stage mall, Noida
Time: Sunday, December 16th, 4 pm

This is an invitation only event. Please RSVP to me at gauravb at minekey dot com.

Monday, December 10, 2007

We're hiring at Minekey

Here's the job description
COMPANY

Minekey develops applications and widgets for online social networks and blogs, using a proprietary recommendations technology.

iThink, Minekey's flagship product, is an opinion sharing and polling application for social networks. Currently the second most popular application in the politics category on Facebook, iThink is also available on Friendster and will soon be available to members of other leading social networks. With iThink, users can share their opinions about anything from politics, sports, entertainment, food and more.

Minekey has headquarters at Sunnyvale, CA and has development center in New Delhi, India and an R&D team at IIT Kharagpur. Minekey completed a Series A Round of financing in July 2007, led by Vinod Dham of NEA-IndoUS Ventures, acknowledged to be the Father of the Pentium chip.



POSITION

Senior Software Engineer
• Design and deliver a world-class web application infrastructure for Minekey's next generation product.
• Drive the product through the lifecycle of conception, design, coding, testing and rolling into production
• Work closely with cross-functional teams including development, product management and QA on requirements gathering, analysis and testing
• Do whatever it takes to build and ship a world class product

Requirements
Must have
• Entrepreneurial spirit and desire to be a in startup
• Bachelors or Masters in computer science or related field with 1-5 years of work experience
• Strong programming experience in User Interface Design (Javascript, HTML, CSS, AJAX and UI development technologies) and/or
• Strong programming experience in Web Application development (PHP/ASP/JSP/SQL)
• Be an excellent team player

Desirable
• Experience developing applications/widgets for social networks such as Facebook (FBML), OpenSocial/Orkut, iGoogle, Friendster etc.
• Expert knowledge of development in the LAMP environment
• Experience building high-end scalable distributed systems
• Research or industry experience in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
• Live and breath Web 2.0 technologies including blogging, social networking platforms etc.


Location: Gurgaon, India
Send resumes to careers at minekey dot com

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

What I think - on iThink

Now you can check out what I think on iThink. A powerful, new self-expression application on Facebook.
http://apps.facebook.com/ithinkapp/userprofile?id=653042558

Friday, October 12, 2007

Social Networking with a cause

Here's an interesting social network that lets you connect with people for domestic help.
http://babajob.com/
http://babalife.com/

Having been thru 5 car drivers in the last 6 months, this seems to be very promising. Some problem with my drivers:
1. driver 1: nice guy, drove very well, a true gentleman. however, called in sick all the time.
2. driver 2: very nice and polite kid. had a fake license. went home for 2 weeks to get a real one. had to let him go
3. driver 3: drove very well. BUT rude personality and a very bad attitude. took 4 days off without notifying me. had to fire him
4. driver 4: didnt show up on first day of work.
5. driver 5: drives ok, good attitude. but shows up late for work every single day. i have figured out how to put buffers in place to work around this. doesnt seem like a long term sustainable option.

I would hope referrals would fix this.

Once it's launched in Delhi, I am on this thing big time.
Excerpt from Aloo-Techie:
But both seek to achieve the same purpose — to help poor people like maids, cooks, drivers and watchmen to find jobs through the power of social network. Founded by a former Microsoft employee Sean Blagsvedt, Babajob currently focuses on Bangalore, with plans to spread to other Indian cities and perhaps globally.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Latte Art


For people who like their lattes to be creative.
More here

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Satellite radio - awesome!

Last few months I have been desperately trying to find good radio programming in Delhi. There is only so much Radio Mirchi and Radio One a person can put up with (i.e. 15 minutes). All India Radio (AIR) of course has never been particularly enticing with back to back news broadcasts in Hindi, English, Punjabi and some sitar/santoor recitals (btw, now that I am in India I have confirmed my hunch that no one I know really listens to sitar or drinks mango lassi in India - the two symbols of India that you always find at ANY Indian restaurant you visit in the US). Anyway, in my moments of desperation I was downloading podcasts from National Public Radio site: npr.org (in mp3), burning them to a CD and listening to them in my car. Nothing beats Fresh Air with Teri Gross when your stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on National Highway-8. And then one day, I discovered and installed Worldspace! Guys, this is the best thing to happen in India after Internet Radio :-) The selection of channels is incredible - 40 commercial free stations (NPR, Art of Living Radio, Comedy, College Rock, Rock, 80s Music, Indian and Western Classical, Bollywood, Old-era Bollywood to name a few), the sound quality is phenomenal, the programming amazing - superb content selection. Now I am getting my daily dose of NPR, Bollywood music without the annoying DJs and 80s rock, bhajans and above all satsang with Sri Sri Ravishankar.
Listening to it right now at 3:15 am and the room is rocking. Two thumbs way way up for Worldspace! If you love music, live in India - you HAVE to get thing.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

It's not coffee, it's a religion

Found an interesting post by Chris Pirillo on Peets vs Starbucks. In which he writes:
If you consider yourself a Starbucks fan, you are to be considered someone who doesn’t know good coffee - and therefore, your opinion on anything related to coffee is completely null and void. I have nothing against Jana personally, but it really pisses me off when people try to compare Peet’s to anything else. Comparing Peet’s to Starbucks is like comparing Ruth’s Chris to the Sizzler. Gimme a break - they’re not even in the same league.

As a coffee lover and coffee house addict, I agree with Chris that Peet's offers a superior product (coffee and espresso. i generally dont try the iced stuff) and experience (service, ambience). And of course, the selection of teas at Peets is in a completely different league. However, Starbucks has some great stuff with the Sumatra and House blend.
On an interesting note, great news is that Starbucks is coming to India (Delhi and Mumbai) in next few months. It will be interesting to see how the Indian population reacts to Starbucks given the already over saturation in popular areas of Barista, Cafe Coffee Day and Costa. It is not uncommon to see all three vendors present in the same marketplaces very close to each other. What will Starbucks compete on? The experience at these cafes is already really good with nice sofas, guitars, games, books etc. Not sure if the general population is discerning enough to pick Starbucks on the taste (drip coffee and cappuccions/lattes are relatively new to the general Indian population). Here's an idea: Most of the existing places open only after 10 or 11 am or so. What I miss is the early morning dose on my way to work or right after a nice run. A cafe that opens at 6 am will certainly get me there. Found another interesting post on this on the unofficial Starbucks gossip blog.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Minekey at AlwaysOn Stanford Summit

Delip will be presenting at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit this week. See Delip's post for details. If you are at the event, do stop by and meet with Delip and the team.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

A Samosa with your Chianti?

We all had an excuse to drink that extra glass of Cabernet - it's good for the heart, right? Well now you can order that extra cheeseburger or samosa too - it will cut down your risk of cancer. Article today on Yahoo News reports that:

Lowering cholesterol as much as possible may reduce the risk of heart disease, but with a price: taking it too low could raise the risk of cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. Patients who took statin drugs to lower their cholesterol had a slightly higher risk of cancer, although the study did not show that the statin drugs themselves caused the cancer. The researchers found one extra case of cancer per 1,000 patients with the lowest levels of LDL -- low density lipoprotein or so-called bad cholesterol -- when compared to patients with higher LDL levels.

So if your LDL has been dipping too low, you should eat a samosa and fix that. However, to counter the ill-effects of that on the heart, don't forget to wash it down with a nice glass of Chianti. The samosa and Chianti the "cornerstone of a nutritious meal"

What a great quote towards the end of the article:
"Something is going to get us. If we don't die of heart disease, then we die of cancer or Alzheimer's. We don't want people to stop something that we know has benefits."

Honestly, the more health news I read, the more I become unsure of what is the right thing to do.

A link to the entire article is here. Note that the link may expire after sometime (Yahoo expires the articles)

Plan afoot to make entire Delhi Wi-Fi

Delhi rocks! Article from IndiaTimes on the Wi-Fi enablement of the city:
NEW DELHI: Taking a cue from cities like Bangalore and Pune, the Delhi government is planning a Wi-Fi future for the city. The city government's information technology department is exploring options to ensure Delhiites have wireless net access on laptops. Bangalore is already Wi-Fi enabled, while Pune and Kolkata are on their way to attaining the status. The entire article is here

At Proto.in over the weekend


It was an exciting weekend. I was at Proto.in in Chennai. Proto.in is intended to be India's version of Demo.com. Minekey was one of the presenting companies - selected as 1 of the Top 25 companies in Asia! Yours truly gave a 6 minute demo of Minekey in action. Overall, a great event. Some very interesting companies were there including Tolmolbol, Routeguru, Tyroo, ZivaSoft, Buzzworks, Genie Interactive. For a complete list see and for Minekey coverage click here. This was such an excellent event to meet people from the entrepreneurial community as well as the investors. Great presence from the blogging and media community as well. The perfect ecosystem any startup could ask for. Look forward to organizing Proto.in in Delhi.
Some pictures from the presentation (Amit is running the demo):

Monday, July 23, 2007

India Poised by Amitabh Bachchan

Growing up in the 80s, Amitabh Bachchan was for me, just like for any other kid, God. Over the years though, the hero worship faded esp. when I started to admire more of the tech icons. When I saw the following video played at Proto.in, it brought back the great admiration I had for Amitabh. Watch the video, the personality and delivery of the great legends in Bollywood - unparalleled! What an inspiring video.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

New Template

Time to try out a new template for the blog. Picked rounders from the template directory on bloggger. Nice look and feel. Love the colors, the blue and the gray. Happy with the choice.

Monday, June 11, 2007