Doris Day - Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)

Welcoming 2015 with Life of Pi and Life of Manmohan!

It was start of 2015 and It was by accident, I suddenly picked up a book that was long pending on my bookshelf for almost last 3 years. I borrowed it from a colleague from office when I first heard about a movie on the same book. It was "Life of Pi"

I never really showed a courage to pick it up and read it. But thanks to new year without any plan. Only good thing to do was to pick up something to read. I started reading book midway not knowing whether I would read it or not. But fortunately I did continue and completed it. It was great accomplishment as I think I read and read after long time.

So good start always a good for something. So I got hold of one more new book. thanks again to one more colleague of mine, It was again accidental..not mine ..but its book name "The Accidental Prime Minister", A memoir written by Mr Sanjaya Baru, PMs ex-media advisor. I still remember when this book was unleashed. Media and Politicians did jump on it, taking it in all wrong sense, reading selectively through it to malign Mr. Prime Minister. Anyways when I got hold of it, It was good read in the sense, One knows a lot about PMO, highest decision making body of India. As I always believed to not believe history as its always one sided view of things. This particular history book tells Baru side of story. He succeeded in telling it which keeps you interested in reading the book. I finished this book in 3 days in whatever time I could gather from my other tasks.

This book may be offending or pleasing for person of pro or anti congress respectively, but for person like me its just quite exciting to get to know about how things happen infact unleash.

Somehow I do have respect for Dr Singh, I dont how it is there but its there. so I would like to end this blog by adding excerpt from Dr's undelivered Speech at vote of confidence for Nuclear deal, Hope you get my point.


--- Dr Manmohan Singh ---

I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village. 

Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future. 

Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village. 

The greatness of democracy is that we are all birds of passage! We are here today, gone tomorrow! But in the brief time that the people of India entrust us with this responsibility, it is our duty to be honest and sincere in the discharge of these responsibilities. As it is said in our sacred texts, we are responsible for our actions and we must act without coveting the rewards of such action. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make. 

====

ET in defence of Dr. Manmohan Singh

1) India's release from nuclear apartheid

2) 38% fall in the maternal mortality rate

3) 28% fall in the infant mortality 

4) Doubling of the nations installed power generation capacity 

5) The fastest decline in poverty in India's history,

6) Structural diversification of the economy that bought down the percentage of the workforce engaged in agriculture below 50% 

Shared from Google Keep

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Gotchas - Part 9

Finally  the last final part telling about reliability of Push notifications.

Push Notification Gotchas

                        
 Push Notifications needs internet or Data connection!

Your recepients need to have data connection or internet on their phone to receive push notifications. You can not  identify the reason why your recepient didnt receive it.
 

Push Notifications Are Short!

You can only send limited data over push notifications. You need to have extra mechanism to pull more data from server.

Push Notifications Are Unreliable!

They are not reliable! There is no guarantee that push notifications will actually be delivered,

even if the APNS server accepted them.

They can be expensive!

Adding push functionality to your app is fairly easy and inexpensive if you own the data, but can be expensive if you have a lot of users or data you need to poll.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Whats in Market - Part 8

Whats In Market

Various Push Apps on Apple Iphone

Update: I have taken this from some other article as it is. 'I' or 'me' used below is not 'sandip'

Market Pulse

While the apps that currently use push notifications are handy, I hope that developers will take this opportunity to do some things above and beyond your typical “message waiting” notifiers. E*Trade, Zillow and a few others get the idea. I’m waiting for the app that allows me to get notified of anything I decide I need to be notified about. With all the open APIs out there today, it’s bound to come along.

Things that need to be pushed :

1. Allow me to be notified when my car or house alarm goes off.

2. Google, let me be notified of a new Google Alert I have set up.

3. How about instead of giving me a big vibrating brick of plastic at the restaurant while I wait for a table, let my phone connect to your system and you can ping me instead.

4. I’d also like to know immediately when albert hits another grand slam – or when any other sporting event I’m interested in occurs.

5. What about when I need two days of rain-free weather, within specific degrees, in order to paint a fence or deck. Should I really have to check the weather forecast every day? I’d rather have an app that did the work for me.

Sooner or later, push notification of almost anything will be a reality, making our digital lives even more real-time. What type of alerts would you like pushed to your iPhone?

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Android - Part 7

Android C2DM (Cloud to Device Messaging) Framework

details

Here are the primary characteristics of Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM):

• It allows third-party application servers to send lightweight messages to their Android applications. The messaging service is not designed for sending a lot of user content via the messages. Rather, it should be used to tell the application that there is new data on the server, so that the application can fetch it.
• C2DM makes no guarantees about delivery or the order of messages. So, for example, while you might use this feature to tell an instant messaging application that the user has new messages, you probably would not use it to pass the actual messages.
• An application on an Android device doesn’t need to be running to receive messages. The system will wake up the application via Intent broadcast when the the message arrives, as long as the application is set up with the proper broadcast receiver and permissions.
• It does not provide any built-in user interface or other handling for message data. C2DM simply passes raw message data received straight to the application, which has full control of how to handle it. For example, the application might post a notification, display a custom user interface, or silently sync data.
• It requires devices running Android 2.2 or higher that also have the Market application installed. However, you are not limited to deploying your applications through Market.
• It uses an existing connection for Google services. This requires users to set up their Google account on their mobile devices.

Components:

1) Mobile Device

2) Third Party Application Server

3) C2DM servers

Credentials

1) SenderId - developers emailId used during app registration

2) Application ID - app id

3) Registration Id - An ID issued by the C2DM servers to the Android application that allows it to receive messages.

4) Google User Account -

5) Sender Auth Token

Life Cycle Flow

Here are the primary processes involved in cloud-to-device messaging:

• Enabling C2DM. An Android application running on a mobile device registers to receive messages.
• Sending a message. A third-party application server sends messages to the device.
• Receiving a message. An Android application receives a message from a C2DM server.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Nokia - Part 6

Nokia Drop -

Nokia provides Push Notification API, supported in latest phones.

The Notifications API makes it easy to add real-time push notifications to your client applications running on Nokia devices. As shown in the diagram below, applications access the Nokia-hosted Notification Server through two separate interfaces that you integrate in your applications:

• The Service API provides access to the Notification Server through an HTTP REST interface. Your service uses this interface to send notifications.
• The Client API allows applications on the device to register and receive notifications from the Notification Server. The Client API is available for Qt on Symbian devices. QML support will also be available in the near future.

[Nokia developers website]

Typical lifecycle of a notification

The diagram below shows the typical lifecycle of a notification.

1. Before an application can receive notifications, it must register with the Notification Server and request a Notification ID. This Notification ID uniquely identifies both the end user and the target client application and is used by the Notification Server to route notifications.
2. The client application then shares this Notification ID with its respective service; the server now knows where to send the notification.
3. When a notification is ready to be sent, the service sends it to the Notification Server using the Service API, providing the notification data (also called payload) and the Notification ID.
4. The Notification Server sends the notification to the client application.

 

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Apple - Part 5

Apple Push Notification Service

Called APNS in short, also supported by OSx Lion.

The server-side component can send the app a push notification! There are three things a push notification can do:

1. Display a short text message
2. Play a brief sound
3. Set a number in a badge on the app’s icon

Main Roleplayers:

1) Iphone or Mac Application

2) APNS server from Apple

3) Your Notification Server.

What does it need?

1) Iphone Device Token

2) App Id

3) Iphone to be registered with APNS, enabled push notification

4) Your Server registered with APNS

What You need for Push Notification?

An iOS Developer Program membership. - You need to make a new App ID and provisioning profile for each app that uses push, as well as an SSL certificate for the server. You do this at the iOS Provisioning Portal.

A push notification is a short message that consists of the device token, a payload, and a few other bits and bytes.

Example:

{

   "aps":

   {

   "alert": "Hello, world!",

   "sound": "default"

   }

}

Official guide for Push Notification from Apple

Each notification has a maximum size of 256 bytes, which makes it very efficient for services with small data allowances (such as mobile phones

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Blackberry - Part 4

Blackberry Email Push Notification

Blackberry PNS - details

The BlackBerry® Push Service is an essential component of the real-time, always-on experience of BlackBerry smartphones. It offers an incredibly efficient and reliable way of sending information to your users. It also allows your application to process information in the background and alert users.

Available to all developers

The BlackBerry Push Service is available to all developers and web content providers. By using push technology, you can make your app more engaging and help turn it into a Super App

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - How - Part 3

How does it work?

1) Mobile Developer will integrate PNS Api In your App.

2) App user registers for Push Notification with OS Provided PN Servers.

3) App user gives your application server access to send Push Notification In-App.

4) Your server sends Notification to  OS Provided PN Server.

5) OS Provides PN server sends notification to receiver application in end device.

How does it look like?

http://www.abolkog.com/portal/images/stories/android_notificaions.png

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - What Part 2

What is it?

Push, or server push, describes a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull, where the request for the transmission of information is initiated by the receiver or client.[WikiPedia]

For ages, Telecom technology SMS is being used for Push notification, its smpp protocol on SS7 networks. Email is also kind of Push Notification using SMTP.

Blackberry or RIM is using it for longtime for Email Notifications while Apple generalized it Now Android and Nokia are trying put their foot forward to enhance its usage. It primarily runs using HTTP/TCP/IP network protocol.

Genaral Use

Push services are often based on information preferences expressed in advance. This is called a publish/subscribe model. A client might "subscribe" to various information "channels". Whenever new content is available on one of those channels, the server would push that information out to the user. [wikipedia]

Techniques

HTTP Push Server:

HTML5 is the WebSockets API, which allows a web server and client to communicate over a full-duplex TCP connection.

Pushlet

The server takes advantage of persistent HTTP connections and leaves the response perpetually "open" (i.e. it never terminates the response), effectively fooling the browser into continuing in "loading" mode after the initial page load would normally be complete.

Long Polling

Long polling is a variation of the traditional polling technique and allows  emulation of an information push from a server to a client.(comet programming)

SMS

Andriod application can read all received SMS before it goes to inbox.

WebSockets

HTML5 browsers

Mobile OS/Phone leaders are providing Push notification built into their offerings.

My Research - Push Notification in Mobile Ecosystem in 2011 - Part 1

Sometime in 2011, I came to know about push notification being used in mobile ecosystem. I did a short research on this topic. I had made some notes at that time, now in 2014, things are evolved a lot.  Publishing my research on blog so that in curious tech historian can use it their studies.

Its quite a long data sheet so I would be publishing it in parts.

I set the agenda first, here is the basic questions of topics I had tried to discover

1) What is Push Notification?

2) How does it work?

3) How does it look like?

4) Does it supported by different major CellPhone OS providers like IPhone, Android, Nokia, Blackberry? Yes!

5) Any Thirdparty Push Service Providers? Yes

a) Urban Airship provides SDK which developer can use while creating their apps.

b) PyAPNS - daemon

c) Xtify

d) Appoxee

e) Pusher / spire.io/socket.io

f) PubNub [In-App, PNS doesnt work when app is closed]

g) App42( Shephertz)

6) Does they charge for Push Notification service? yes but minimal

7) What are use cases?

8) How can we use it?

9) What will be the business case?

10) Is it possible work out something which connects with other solutions?

11) Whats in Market

12) Will SMS gets obsolete, because of Push Notifications on Mobile?

 In following blogs, I will be publishing answers to above questions.

Entrepreneurship - Game of Chess or Chase!

This is piece of imaginative writing drawing comparisons with real experiences. Yes, its abt entrepreneurship and specifically for first timer from first time drawing comparisons from characters of game of chess.

Before I start here is some improvization in the context!

How many roles a entrepreneur must play,
Before you call him an entrepreneur,
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind!

                               - Bob Dylan - Verse extended in context of entrepreneurship

Here is the original & famous song :

Let the game of chess and chase begin. 

 
1) Pawn 

You are star, you are a leader, you have to fight and win battles yourself. You have shown the courage to start on your own but still you are lame pawn. Do you have enemy? No you particularly in your own world, toying with your own ideas, only person can kill you or your venture is you yourself, it might be out of boredom or you do suicidal steps.

2) Group of Pawns

You bring along other pawns after you are able to survive 1st step and successfully bring along other pawns. Do you have enemy? Still no, you practice with your teammates and may have some opponent pawn for a small practice fights. There is high risk that you and your team can self destroy with petty fights or differences.

 
3) You be a knight 

You emerge as a leader of small group of pawns. Now there may be other threats might be lurking where you may get stumped due to financial management getting new pieces in your army. Your aim is to move ahead to get other sub pieces like rook, knight and move ahead to role of king/queen or bishop.

4) You be a king or queen or  Bishop 

Nnow you are in top leadership. You can go for kill using your special skills. Or get killed in goose chase of hockey stick graph. :) Lot to write here but will write in my spare time.

5) Go Buddha! Detach!

 

Come out of execution, let experts take the ship ahead, you be a helper and beneficiary. 

You be a chess player and all the pawns are under your mercy. #investor or #board. But thing is that you cant go to step 5 directly without doing aboves 4 steps, in real life.

Story can be improvized or may have some gaps, but its first cut. I will keep it updated.

This is not 1984 and ...

This is not 1984 and You are not Steve jobs running apple. and specially for indian entrepreneurs, You are not in silicon valley.

Understood, now go back and work through your vision and execute your ideas.

 Have a look at this video. 
Update: Old video was wrong one!

Mr. Legendary definitely had  his own karizma.

Entrepreneurs - Spot Your Customers!

Source: Yavvy.com

This is for entrepreuners burning their midnight oils to run their companies in B2B segments. This piece of knowledge is not an enlightenment for many of you. May be Validation point as this comes from practice, this is what I observed during our startup journey since last 4 years.

From experience at Screen-Magic for 6 years building product & customer base from scratch, I  got some wisdom, would like to share so writing this blog. When anyone starts with some kind of product, you dont have budgets & skills to market it. This happens mostly for entrepreneurs.

Here are 3 types of category I can classify, various customers :

Early Adopters - They will find you
      They are high class ideators, master implementers and always willing to try new things to improve their own life. If you create simple but value products, these guys will find you and use your products. They are also advance users of google of knowing tricks of discovering hidden treasures. They will give you some money as well. You should listen to them to get valuable ideas.

Implementers - They will approach you with Reference      They may not ideate themselves but they are highly aggressive implementors. They will keep searching for greenshoots. They will get references and find you. Implement it successfully and will write reviews for you.


Money Burners (earners for you) - You hunt them and Sell services in polished and higher price     These people have been given larger budgets and assigned with huge targets. They run out of ideas, if you have nice website with business oriented content with ROI. These people would love you and would pay your higher cost to achieve success with little efforts. They believe in using products, rather than building it themselves.

All the best for building successful enterprise.