How much it will cost to host web application with Amazon AWS

Point to Note : Description  says App can serve approx 10k pageviews per month. around 300 pageviews per day. Isnt it Overcommissioned/overpriced estimation for serving such a low load?







Courtesy Amazon AWS - Sample Account

FDI in Retail

Neighbourhood stores provides me these many options, if I want to buy Rice, Gehun. 

While If I go to Reliance store, I have only one option to choose. And lots of packaged variety of Basmati rice. 

Can I see same picture in Future? Will they be able to Survive with Multi-brand retail.

Only Time will tell. 

Computing In the Cloud!

Recently I was invited as a guest speaker at International Educational Conference held in Pune, India. Here are presentation slides of my talk.

Installing Mosquitto & LibMosquitto for python on Mac OSX 10.8 (Mountain LIon)

Its quite easy, though not many online posts are available. Mosquitto site doesnt give much information apart from suggestion to install it using brew.

First Install Mosquitto using brew
$brew install Mosquitto
it may fail due to wrong perms on /usr/local so change ownership of local dir

$sudo pip install Mosquitto 
To Use Mosquitto from Python

It may give following error
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/pip", line 5, in
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/pkg_resources.py", line 2603, in
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/pkg_resources.py", line 666, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/pkg_resources.py", line 565, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)  # XXX put more info here
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: pip==1.1












You need to upgrade Pip as you are using old pip
$sudo easy_install -U pip
and try again

$pip install mosquitto

It works. Confirm it.

$pydoc mosquitto

Twitter - Mega Network with Micro Updates.

I did analysis of Twitter usage by Common people and Enterprises. This is How twitter started and grown in to Mega Network with Micro Updates.
1) Tech people were early adopters
2) People used it as a replacement for blogger where they need to give a lots of time for posting anything. Twitter was easy,no-brainer, one can tweet whatever they have on their mind. They dont have to ruminate over it.
3) People loved it.
4) Additionally it enabled open conversation across the globe. Just simple stream of interesting thoughts, updates abt various people by themselves, you didnt need approval to follow him/her. 
5) It enabled way to hear thoughts of people who shares common interests with you.
6) It was not like other social networks where you start with connecting people you are already friends with.
7) Everybody actually liked the Idea, even Celebrities came directly on twitter. Interacting with their fans openly. People loved this more.  With Celebrities, more fans logged on Twitter. For Example, many of the people in India registered on Twitter to Follow Little Master Sachin Tendulkar. 

With Millions of real people having open conversation on Twitter and additional features built like Trends. For Marketers, It was gold-mine to catch the people. Specific targetting was possible just scanning through one's tweets. Lots of startups have emerged which are providing various services  including analytics of data and techniques to increase follower counts.
From My point of view, we can clearly seperate companies in 2 types
Type B2C = Business to consumers Model
Type B2B = Business to Business Model

For B2C Enterprises, value proposition is quite clear as many of their existing and target customers possibly would be on Twitter. They can use Twitter for Customer Service, Marketing and Advertizing. They can run Loyalty programs also.

But what would be value proposition for Enterprise who has B2B model, because they would be trying to sell their products to companies only. so How Twitter can be useful for B2B model companies. Because Twitter accounts of these companies would be handled probably by Marketing Team. If Twitter accounts of 2 businesses converse with each other, which means basically Marketing teams of 2 companies are talking with each other. Which will not help one of them who wants to sell his product to other.  As other's marketing team might not be decision makers in various purchase decisions or business decisions. 
Although Conversation may not help either of them to get business. but connecting with people who are following/followers of target company may help. 
What enterprises can use Twitter for?
1) Share/Evangelize knowledge abt their company, product.
2) Connect with people who are connected to your targets.
3) Spread the word abt your company in related open conversations.

Actually I am not a Marketing guy but had some thoughts abt using Twitter by Enterprises so just shared them here.  You can have many other great ideas abt Twitter usage, You can share it with me via comments on this blog.

Fail2Ban & Iptables conf for Preventing Hacking Attempts on Ubuntu

I noticed lots of intrusion attempts on our servers, so was in search of utility which will let me prevent these attacks automatically.


Fail2Ban is an intrusion prevention framework written in the Python programming language. 
It works by reading SSH, ProFTP, Apache logs etc.. and uses iptables profiles to block brute-force attempts. 
For Installation and configuration details, Visit Fail2Ban On Ubuntu




While searching for other methods , I came across which proved Iptables configuration to defy intrusion attacks on ssh port. Here is the How to Block SSH Attacks


Here is process to unblock ipaddress which got blocked by mistake
Delete Blocked IP address

Fraud Detection of Phone Calls from Banks/Telecom Companies

Hello Readers,

Please help me with following survey!

I want to see how many people are concerned about fraud happening over
unsolicited verification calls from banks and other companies.
I also want to find out solutions are in place or need to be there, to
verify sources of these calls.
 

Take The Survey

[No Email or Phone asked in this survey]

Please share this survey among your friends. I will share the results once
I got enough responses.
 

My QR Code

Rachleff's Law of Startup Success

The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

Andy puts it this way:

• When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
• When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
• When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.

You can obviously screw up a great market -- and that has been done, and not infrequently -- but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. 

Market matters most.

Published excerpts from Mark Anderseen article

How to get Free Promotional Code for Adwords worth $100

I have existing account with Adword which I created in initial buzz when Adwords launched by google but didnt use it as I was just explorer then.

Now comes 2012, We wanted to run a demo campaign from Adwords to know adwords effectiveness and also learn the ways to use adwords.

I noticed promotional code box in billing information, I did received promotional code from Google in the past. So I searched from google and tried them but it didnt work as they were very expired.

While searching on Internet to see if anyone has posted promo code, I didnt succeed but I did get pointer saying that Hosting providers do give some credits for free.

On searching further, I got below link, and Did as per instruction and got $100 worth free credits.

To Use Your Promotional Google AdWords Credit

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. In the My Account section, go to the Payments tab, and then click Advertising Credits.
3. On the Advertising Credits page, click the Activate Credit link for the advertising credit you want to use.
4. Click the Sign Up Now link.
5. Follow the sign up process to redeem your Google credit.

Click below link to know the detailed process with images.

Get Free Promotional Code from GoDaddy

Restore Deleted folder/directory from Subversion/SVN

You need to copy directory from revision history usin copy command.


 svn copy <repo_path/directory>@version .


then commit the directory
 svn commit -m "restore deleted directories" directory 


Directory gets restored with its history.

I

CodeIgniter - Upgrade from 1.7.x to 2.x.x - Session Reset issue

Hi you can follow instructions given at below link

Upgrade to 2.x.x


You will get stuck at session issue as session gets reset after you redirect. Redirects might be required in authentication flows.

You will face this issue particularly when you use database table "ci_sessions" to store session information.

CI upgrade have changed ci_sessions table structure in 2.x.x.

CodeIgniter - Sessions - Documentation


CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS  `ci_sessions` (
session_id varchar(40) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
ip_address varchar(16) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
user_agent varchar(120) NOT NULL,
last_activity int(10) unsigned DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL,
user_data text NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (session_id),
KEY `last_activity_idx` (`last_activity`)
);


in previous version user_data size of varchar(50), this causes session data being stored partially, and not able to retrieve it afterwords.


You just need to backup previous session table and create new ci_sessions table with above script.

Sify Broadband - Make it work with Router

Here is the process with which you can make your router work and use more than one PC using Sify broadband.


for Sify you need to first log in using Sify client. Sify provides their own client to connect.

Some hacker has come up with his own client SuperSify which works on every os.

you can download it from http://thegoan.com/supersify/

You need to have java installed on your machine.


You can make ur router work like follows.

ss.sh -u <username>  -p -m <macaddress of router >

Nokia Care in Aundh, Pune

I was searching for Nokia care in Aundh, google search and google map confused me abt location. Addition to that one mobile repair shop misdirected me saying that Nokia care in Aundh is dysfunctional and I need to go to FC Road.

Finally I could locate the Nokia Care in Aundh.

Here is the location

Office No 3 Dhanshree Heights, Next To Shivaji School Above Cosmos Bank Chattrapati Chowk, Aundh Gaon-Aundh, Pune - 411007

When you go towards wakad from Bremen chowk, it just before Rajiv Gandhi bridge, near Siddharth Nagar on right handside at Aundh Gaon Signal. Its on 2nd floor.

Nokia Care people are very cooperative and prompt in their service.

Unsubscribing Hathway Internet Connection

How to Remove Hathway connection.

1) Pay pending bills if any
2) Disconnect Modem and Remove modem from wire
3) Take modem with you to Hathway center
4) Ask the guy to make entry in Hathway CRM.

Game of Real Estate - Rental Market Tricks

Since last 2 years fortunately or unfortunately, I spent lots of time in searching and hiring rental flats/office space. It was specifically in Mumbai and Pune.  I also stayed in Hyderabad in 2004-06, at that time there were not need of agents as rents were pretty low, we used to pay 4k for 2bhk+waiting room  and normally House owners use to put up boards on building itself telling about rent.

In early 2006, I had to search for home in Vashi, Mumbai. Scene at that time was, builders relative was looking after that building so it was difficult bypass  him but rent was just 6k for 2 bhk so again It was not issue paying brokerage.

But after 5 years in 2011-2012, picture is pretty different, rents are skyrocketed everywhere.
In Mumbai, In area like gorai and anand nagar in Dahisar, every building has a office of agent.
Single flat is shown by multiple brokers :)

Brokerage business is at its prime, Many of brokers own cars in Pune, instead of bikes as they used to.
And they demand 2 months rent as brokerage. Trick behind this is normally 3-4 brokers are involved with 1 flat so every one of them need to get respectable share of income. so they normally dont negotiate on brokerage.

Here are some of quirkiness of brokers and dont believe them

1) Even if there are lots of properties available, broker will first tell you that there are almost no flats are available or they will give you options of just 2-3 flats.

2) If you went to broker well in advance for say 2 months, He will not at all cooperate with you, as you are not needy, he cant play games with you as you are at comfort.

3) If you are looking space for Office, Owners and Brokers will tell you that Office is very lucky for previous owners and whoever rents this space, grows with no Limit.

4) There is always space for negotiations with broker, Its easy to convince broker than Owner as for broker its onetime income while for owner its yearly income.

5) If you like some flat or space, Owners will tell you that there is one more party interested in said flat/space and some will add a punch that other party is offering more. also he will tell you that they want good people. This is trick to stop you from negotiations.

6) Specially in Pune, Many flat owners are Mumbai investors, They try to play game with Mumbai Rules, so dont get into their talks.. for example they will ask you high rent and 6 months rent as a deposit, which is normal in Mumbai but Pune rules are different. its 2-3 months of rent as deposit

7) Trick is to Fix your Budget for rent and tell Broker budget 10% lower. Contact multiple brokers, make sure that they are not connected to each other.

8) Most important is Dont Giveup and Commit early on deciding on some flat/office space, always borrow some time from owner to think whether it is satisfying most of your requirements like locality, rent, transportation, water, electricity, internet.


9) Following sites are good for Getting flat ads directly from owners:
    a) Quikr
    b) Sulekha
    c) Magic Bricks
    d) Anand Property listing (very good)
    e) Olx


Happy Searching and All the best.

How to calculate Marketing Budget - Grabowski Ratio

Some one asked a interesting question about calculating Marketing budget.
Whether you are Startups or established Big Company, Marketing is important aspect of business.
It is  qualititive, not quantitive. We can not easily measure the effects of Marketing and budget.

I hit this document through quora and found it quite interesting.

http://www.slideshare.net/dmitryklimov/ralph-grabowski-fullarticle


here is summary, which I understood,
a) Invest more in Marketing (exclusive of Promotional and selling) than in Engineering
b) At Early stage of Product development, One should allot budget in ratio of 1:1 for Market Research and Engineering.
c) Low ratio will lead to failure
d) How much is More Marketing?
     Marketing is defined as a upfront process that comes before the product is ready. (Promotion and selling comes after product is ready)
e) More Marketing is qantified into recommendation that technology based enterprises invest more than one dollar in marketing for each dollar invested in engineering

f) Marketing/Engineering Investment ratio > 1

Planned Skyscrapers, Mumbai, India

India Tower, at Marine Lines 125 floors (on Hold)

World One, Worli India, 117 floors (under Construction)

Orchid Crown, Prabhadevi (under construction)

Group Buying - Real Estate

Some Popular group buying portals:
www.gemideals.com
www.groupbookings.com
www.groffr.com
www.dealflats.com ( Delhi, Hyderbad, Mumbai, Bangalore)
www.indianrealestateforum.com

Cruelty with Python (Azgar)

Today morning I got shocked scene at bus stop. Normally I travel to office by Bike, but today I thought of  travelling by bus. When I approaching busstop, I noticed one long wood in half-burnt state. but when I reached near, I found out that it is not wood but brutally killed python. His mouth was beaten till death..and body half burnt.

It was shocking... I dont know why someone has to kill it. They easily couldhave called up SGNP authorities to catch this wild beast and take it to release him in jungle.

Shame on those people who kill snakes, out of fear.

Poonam Haveli - Udaipur

This is just acknowledgment to Poonam haveli for making our stay in Udaipur pleasant.

This hotel is just walking distance from City Palace and Bagore ki haveli.

Also Hotel Manager is very knowledgable person, will help you in your all sightseeing.

Normally foreigners stay in this haveli, but it didnt seem problem for us as  staff was good.

Poonam Haveli
Hotel & restaurant
39, Lal ghat, Udaipur,
Rajasthan, India
313001

Email poonamhaveli@hotmail.com
website: http://hotelpoonamhaveli.com

Mobile: 9828112828


Rates :

1) Ground floor: 800 Rs per day.

2) 2nd floor with Lake View: 1200 Rs.

2G Scam explained - India - summary - part 1

All companies, who bought 2G licenses, combinely paid the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's telecommunications division Rs. 10,772 crores.

The amount of money expected for this licensing by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India was Rs. 176,000 crore

Here are 2G license deals

1) Unitech bagged licence for Rs.1661 crore.
    sold 60 % stake in wireless division to Telenor for  Rs.6200 crore,
    Unitech valuation rose to  Rs.10,333 crores.

2) Tata paid Rs 1600 crores to get licenses -  
 DoCoMo the go-ahead to buy 27.31% stake in TTSL (Tata Teleservices) for Rs.12,924 crores.
and  12% stake worth Rs. 570 crore in TTML.  total =  Rs.13,494 crores.
 TTSL valuation Rs. 47,866 crores

Source: MediaName

3) Swan bought licenses for Rs.1,537 crores, 
UAE's Etisalat acquired a 45% stake in Swan Telecom for  Rs.9,000 crores,
Swan(Rcom) valuation becomes Rs.20,000 crores
- making the DB Group firm the first of the new mobile licensees to have made a killing. Swan valuations 

- 10 times
Source : Economic Times

4) Shyam Telelink paid Rs 1,626.32 crore to get 21 licenses.

Sistema in-principle agreed to buy 10% of the company for $11.4 m (Rs 45 crore) valuing thecompany at Rs 450 crore. 
 Govt of Russia) paid Rs 2,699 crore to get 17.14% of the company (Annexure-G) ; thus 
valuing the company at Rs 15,750 crore

source firstpost

This pictures clearly shows Indian businesses were clearly gained from this, and loss of revenue for government.

Next post about Involvement of politicians in 2g Scams.

List of cancelled licenses
http://www.scribd.com/firstpost/d/80198932-List-of-122-Licences-Issued-on-10-January-2008

2G scam details on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G_spectrum_scam

The Berkus Method - Valuing the Early Stage Investment.

From Berkonomics

You should be able to adopt it to most any kind of business enterprise if your aim is to establish an early, most often pre-revenue valuation to a start-up that has potential of reaching over $20 million in revenues within five years:

If Exists:	Add to Company Value up to:
Sound Idea (basic value)	$1/2 million
Prototype (reducing  technology risk)	$1/2 million
Quality Management Team(reducing execution risk)	$1/2 million
Strategic relationships (reducing market risk)	$1/2 million
Product Rollout or Sales(reducing production risk)	$1/2 million

  Once a company is in revenues for any period of time, this method is no longer applicable, as most everyone will use actual revenues to project value over time.

What is Boxing Day!

From Quora - Lou Davis, Emergency Nurse, Clinical Nurse Educator




Boxing Day is the 26th December and is a national holiday in the UK and Ireland.

Why is it Called Boxing Day:

Arguments abound on the origins of the name Boxing Day.

A ‘Christmas Box’ in Britain is a name for a Christmas present.

Boxing Day was a day off for servants and when they received a ‘Christmas Box’ from the master. The servants would also go home to give ‘Christmas Boxes’ to their families.

A box to collect money for the poor was placed in Churches on Christmas day then opened the next day.

Great sailing ships when setting sail would have a sealed box containing money on board for good luck.If the voyage were a success the box was given to a priest, opened at Christmas and the contents given to the poor.

A/B Testing

- Reposting from Wikipedia

A/B testing, split testing or bucket testing is a method of marketing testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates. A classic direct mail tactic, this method has been recently adopted within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails and landing pages.

Significant improvements can be seen through testing elements like copy text, layouts, images and colors. However, not all elements produce the same improvements, and by looking at the results from different tests, it is possible to identify those elements that consistently tend to produce the greatest improvements.

Employers of this A/B testing method will distribute multiple samples of a test, including the control, to see which single variable is most effective in increasing a response rate or other desired outcome. The test, in order to be effective, must reach an audience of a sufficient size that there is a reasonable chance of detecting a meaningful difference between the control and other tactics: see Statistical power.

As a simple example, a company with a customer database of 2000 people decides to create an email campaign with a discount code in order to generate sales through its website. It creates an email and then modifies the Call To Action (the part of the copy which encourages customers to do something - in the case of a sales campaign, make a purchase). To 1000 people it sends the email with the Call To Action stating "Offer ends this Saturday! Use code A1", and to another 1000 people it sends the email with the Call To Action stating "Limited time offer! Use code B1". All other elements of the email's copy and layout are identical. The company then monitors which campaign has the highest success rate by analysing the use of the promotional codes. The email using the code A1 has a 5% response rate (50 of the 1000 people emailed used the code to buy a product), and the email using the code B1 has a 3% response rate (30 of the recipients used the code to buy a product). The company therefore determines that in this instance, the first Call To Action is more effective and will use it in future sales campaigns.

In the example above, the purpose of the test is to determine which is the most effective way to impel customers into making a sale. If, however, the aim of the test was to see which would generate the highest click-rate - i.e., the number of people who actually click onto the website after receiving the email - then the results may have been different. More of the customers receiving the code B1 may have accessed the website after receiving the email, but because the Call To Action didn't state the end-date of the promotion, there was less incentive for them to make an immediate purchase. If the purpose of the test was simply to see which would bring more traffic to the website, then the email containing code B1 may have been more successful. An A/B Test should have a defined outcome that is measurable, e.g. number of sales made, click-rate conversion, number of people signing up/registering etc.

Start Now, No Funding needed

This is answer to startup related question from  Unni Krishnan Koroth  

1. Dont quit your job now.
2. Find a cofounder. If you are from a technical background(Hacker), find a person who can sell and collect money from your future customers(Pirate). If he doesnt have a job now, he can take care of the company formation and other works while you can support him continuing in your present job.
3. Talk to your family about this. Please note that the social status of entreprenurs are very low in India. They get high status only when they succeed. If you have financial commitments, finish it before resigning from your job. You should start your company with a clear and focused mind.
4. Make an emergency fund. 50,000 rupees per year for the next 3 years. It takes minimum 3 years to build a good company.
5. Don't take an office. Don't recruit employees. If you are doing a business it should be a scaling of what you can do alone. See this video 
6. -
7. When you are quiting your job, dont burn the bridges. Keep good relation with your existing company.
8. Register the company and a good domain name. Start working and focus on giving value to your customers.
9. And remember "People overestimate what they can achieve in one year. But they underestimate what can be achieved in ten years."
10. Save every single rupee. Enjoy getting rejected from your potential customers

Twitter for India

India flavour on Twitter homepage