Zenning!

It’s been some time since I blogged. I am running so short of time nowadays. Friends feel ignored; my projects are pending; almost no time for socializing. The main reason of my busyness is a project called yellO that I have been part of since March ‘08 (full-time since August ‘08). This unique and one-of-its-kind portal (and magazine) of local services in Pakistan is finally ready for show time!

It’s something big!

We have been working on yellO for almost an year now. It’s been an exhilarating experience for me to be part of the development, design and strategy formation processes of one of the most authentic and superb piece of web application/portal to surface from this part of the world.

We had tough days. We had boring days. We had frustrating days. We had days on which we almost thought to give up on it since we were too bored working on the same thing everyday for so many months! But now that yellO’s development is complete (for launch) and it’s all ready to go live, I am really satisfied with the outcome. And quite excited too!

The Visionary

I remember that I was a bit reluctant when Samir – the visionary behind yellO – had asked me to join team yellO. I had other offers too at that time and they were offering better package than what I was being offered for yellO. But in the end, it was Samir’s passion and fervor, and his desire to bring positive change in the world – the same ideals that I myself follow – that sealed my decision in favor of yellO.

The Team

The most important component in realizing a vision is the team that is responsible for turning an idea into reality. And the team assembled for yellO had all the characteristics of a winning team!

Adeel, the lead developer, and Saad, the lead designer, have both remained an indispensable asset for yellO. Zulfiqar has been an amazing artist and (print) designer. Aamir has been great at handling graphics and publishing stuff. Mudassir is new but he’s learning to walk the tight rope of the Linux administration world well. Young Shahrukh is intelligent and full of curiosity, and he is a great asset for the community building part of yellO. In the past, Ali Raza, Asim, Waleed and Faraz have worked for some time on yellO before parting in search of other opportunities.

As for me myself, I have been responsible for handling all the stakeholders, mentioned above; making sure that we followed the timelines and that everyone was working in congruency. Also, I tend to the strategic aspect of yellO as, officially, I am the Strategy Director for yellO.

All in all it has been a great fun and an exciting experience building a major venture like yellO.

Join yellO today and start adding and reviewing interesting places on the map.

Wow! This multi-touch design kicks ass!

Not sure who has provided those statistics on Google, but I think it is true … and funny. My main activity on Google is to find useful information. But I have to agree that I do use it for spelling checking, very rarely though.

Palm is back! After almost going into obscurity, Palm makes a sexy and stylish return with a new phone dubbed as the Palm Pre. Here’s a glance on what the Pre looks like:

This hot new gadget from Palm is slated to be available in the first half of 2009. So get ready. It looks like a worthy competitor to both the Blackberry range and the iPhone. Is this the iPhone killer?

Sounds sweet? Find out more with these 7 most useful Palm Pre resources:

Palm Pre – Palm
Palm Pre: Everything you ever wanted to know – Engadget
First impressions: Palm Pre | CES 2009 – CNET Blogs
Palm Pre Preview: Simply amazing – Gizmodo
Hands-On: A closer look at the Palm Pre and WebOS – PC World
In a nutshell: Palm Pre vs. iPhone vs. G1 – Gizmodo
The Pre’s got mojo: a developer speaks about Palm’s new SDK – Ars Technica

Darwin said:

It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent …
but those most adaptive to change.
– Charles Darwin

Darwin said it for living species, but I find this as much true for businesses and organizations too. So Mr. Darwin, would you be so kind enough to allow me to evolve your theory to fit the business world? Oh my, thank you Mr. Darwin.

So here it is, the evolution of the survival theory:

It’s not the strongest of the species businesses that survives, nor the most intelligent …
but those most adaptive to change.
– Charles Darwin Sawant Shah

Gracias.

Just read an interview of Brandon Schauer, who works at Adaptive Path, on Design Thinking at Jess McMullin’s blog. Here’s a piece that I found well worth quoting here:

You don’t necessarily need to go and get an MBA – I’ve heard an MBA called a degree in common sense and I can’t necessarily argue with that. But the key is just realizing the world that your business partners come from, whether they’re looking through a lens of finance or of operations or management, and being able to understand the issues they are dealing with. Having empathy with the issues that they come to the table with and actually being able to resonate with those by having read similar topics, having an appreciation for what their needs are and listening to them just as you would listen to a customer when you go out to do your research can really change how you work together.

Empathize.

Interesting experience of why Rob Christensen, from Adobe AIR product development/management team, decided to switch to Apple iMac in his post Six reasons why he made the switch. His reasons are quite compelling and I agree fully with what he has to say against Microsoft Windows and in favor of Apple Mac. My most compelling reasons, from Rob’s post, for switching to an Apple Mac would be:

Apple. In the past year, I’ve purchased two iPod Shuffles: one for myself and one for my wife. When I thought I had lost my Shuffle recently (for the second time), I decided to upgrade to an iPod Nano. It’s an absolutely incredible piece of technology. … The allure of hooking up iPod hardware to a Mac is difficult to ignore. Also, Apple’s decision to extend the hardware capabilities of the iMac has really put it in direct competition with Dell’s flagship desktop products like their XPS line.

Apple, and Steve Jobs, is an inspiration. I had the first generation iPod Nano and it was awesome! I love Apple and what it is creating. Correction: Innovating!

Media Management. It’s truly shocking to me that Microsoft has not improved the user experience with Windows Media Player (WMP). Something about the design of WMP has always felt exceedingly video centric as opposed to library focused. Playing an .mp3 will force most of the screen to be taken over by an annoying visualization. … In addition, the lack of basic photo management in Windows has been the source of tremendous grief.

I have to agree with Rob’s WMP experience. Though I have been a Windows Media Player user since long (I was hooked to the ex-king Winamp before that, during its 1.x and 2.x versions reign, and Sonique too – ah what a super cool player that was!), but since my WMP music database has been wiped out (the database itself, and not the music files) after the Vista of my laptop’s pretty Windows was shot down by a vicious virus and I installed it anew, I am trying out a new media player: the open source Songbird. And it’s pretty good.

Most applications are now on the Mac. Nearly all of the applications I use are now available on the Mac such as Firefox, the Creative Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.), Office, Stellarium, AIM, Google Earth, etc. If the tools you use and depend on are portable, then it makes it even easier to make the switch.

That’s definitely a compelling reason. And on top of that, if a Windows application has not yet been ported to the Mac, one always has the option of Boot Camping to Windows. Tada! Nice one, Apple.

Now all these reasons make me crave for an Apple iMac/Macbook all over again! I hope I’ll be able to afford one soon.

If you are like me then you probably avoid having any antivirus or antispyware installed on your PC/laptop because it renders it slow or cumbersome. Instead, you install stuff from only trustworthy sources. And you have this innate ability to tell a malicious site, software, download, ad, link from a good one.

But one day all of that changes, when you let someone else use your computer for a while. Your PC gets infected!

Badly!

That is exactly what happened with me: After 1 year and 8 months of getting my laptop (an HP 6000 series), having it run without any antivirus, without any formatting or reinstallation of Windows, my Windows Vista OS just stopped working, except for the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)! The culprit? Some “autorun” virus that infects USBs! It was my brother’s USB and although I had told him so many times (whenever his PC gets infected) that he should be careful of these autoruns from USBs and cameras, but, it had to be my laptop this time!

Unfortunately, the DVDRW of my laptop was also not working (I wish they were any better from HP)! So I couldn’t get to boot to DOS, with a bootable CD, and install some antivirus or backup software. So I ended up reinstalling Windows Vista with the inbuilt setup that came with my laptop. Thus, ended up wiping out everything that was on my C drive, including the My Documents and Desktop folders. But I didn’t lose much data since I keep most of my data on other drives/partitions. I also lost my WMP Media Library, specifically the play count of songs (yes that’s important to me). Saved passwords in Firefox and other little details were lost too. Though I was able to recover some of my wiped out files through a recovery software – Easy Recover Professional.

Checklist to save yourself from such a fiasco:

1. Do NOT trust autoruns on USBs, cameras, media/mp3 players
2. If multiple people use the PC/laptop, completely disable autorun on USBs and other devices
3. Install an antivirus and keep it updated
4. Keep as much of your data on other partitions as possible
5. Have a working DVD drive, in case you need to boot into DOS and run a virus check or recover data from there
6. Keep backup of your data on DVDs/BluRays
7. Also get a backup external hard disk, it will be much convenient

I will post on the above steps in detail in later posts. Please post any queries in the comments.

It has been some time since I blogged. There are a couple of reasons for my absence and lack of posting. The most important one being: Wateen’s screw up!!

Wateen, the only WiMax operator in Pakistan, had been working quite well for me since I subscribed to their services at the start of this year, so much so that I had been all praise for it off and on amid a plethora of criticism against them. But all of that changed come 6th of September.

I was out of town from the eve of 5th September till the eve of 7th September (weekend). Upon my return, when I tried to get back on the virtual world from my home through Wateen, I started getting “User is Invalid” message. That marked the start of a 5 weeks period, during which I called their support center so many times and was only given complaint #’s after complaint #’s (with a few reassuring words) but without any solution.

The problem was: A humongous telephony bill that was laden with a three days spree of bogus calls amounting to a whopping 12000 rupees!!

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